Chapter title is from song by Dead Confederates.

59

Start Me Laughing – Dead Confederates

Heartbeats.

Ba-thump, ba-thump, .thump, hammering and hammering. Near and far, racing and incessantly drumming, thundering against his ears and he just wanted it to stop.

He wanted it all to stop.

Ba-Thump. .BATHUMPTHUMP.

He whirled on the source of the sound nearest to him.

A flash of silver, cutting and bright, held in its hand.

Gray thing.

BA-THUMP.

It was writhing, the gray thing. Wreathed in uncertainty and doubt and guilt and darkness and it was approaching him with bright pain in its hand.

He wanted it to stop.

A snarl sprang from his throat, a deep low growl like a cornered animal. A wise thing would have heeded the warning. A smart thing would have stopped, but the gray thing kept coming.

Doubt and sorrow like an approaching storm, threatening to drown him.

He couldn't let it drown him.

The brand on his arm heated up. Warm and comforting. Sure. The job his Father had given him.

Hunt.

He swung the weapon in his hand, pouring the fire and conviction hot on his arm into the swing, but the gray thing moved. The blade swept past its abdomen, slicing clean through layers of cloth down to bare skin. A tingling buzz shot up his arm. This was what he was supposed to do.

This would make it all stop.

The silver pain in the gray thing's hand came up, came closer. He gripped his weapon more firmly and lowered his shoulder, preparing to knock the bright pain aside when the gray thing suddenly lowered it.

Dean.

Who?

It was looking at him. THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP, its heartbeats faster and drumming away like a head pounding KISS number, breath all tangled up and knotted, something stupid in its eyes, something stupid like someone used to do, once upon a time, such a long time ago, before he'd screwed everything up and lost it all. He could still hear the voice.

I'm saying, you want to work? Let's work. If you want to be brothers…

The Mark on his arm burned hot.

Do this. Do this, and everything will be okay.

His arm quivered, watching the bright pain stay stationary and lowered and unmoving in the gray thing's hand.

It was barely a whisper.

Dean.

He blinked because everything went fuzzy.

Sam?

There was a giant gash in Sam's shirt, like something had cut it wide open.

The First Blade was in his hand.

Ohgodohgodohgod.

Cold shuddered through him, numbing his fingers, and he dropped the jackass' jawbone, dropped to his knees and heaved up breakfast and dinner and yesterday's lunch. Cold racked through him, violent and unrelenting. He put one hand on the ground to support himself, except the ground was slippery, entrails and pulp and zombie mush, rank and thick, squishing up between his fingers and he heaved again, bitter bile and blood torn out of him, everything pulled out of him until he was a shell and he was cold.

He should be cold. He would rather be cold.

Another spasm convulsed him until he doubled over. He would have fallen face forward into the slime and his own vomit except for Sam's arm sliding around him, Sam holding him up, Sam grabbing on tight and not letting go. He could feel the thready panic in Sam's words, Sam's voice breaking as Sam looked at all the blood he had coughed up, the traces of which he could still feel on his lips and smell.

"Oh god, I've got you. Oh god. Hey. Hey hey. It's okay, it's okay. I've got you."

He grabbed Sam's jacket with one fist, right at the cut edge in it, bunching up Sam's shirt beneath. He forced his eyes to focus, looking for blood.

"Hey." Sam seized his other shoulder, grip tight and reassuringly firm. "It's okay. You didn't get me. It's just the clothes. Just the shirt. You didn't get me. You didn't know."

Didn't he?

Do this. Do this Do this Do this and it will all be okay.

He shook his head to get rid of the insistent whispering filling his ears and fisted his hand tighter, his fingers digging into the wad of plaid flannel like it could sop up all the blood and put out the fire.

Except flannel burned.

With a hoarse yelp he let go. His stomach convulsed, wrenching in painfully on itself, and he gagged again, his blood tangy and metallic, iron-sour in his mouth, coming out as a spitting cough. With a twist he yanked out of Sam's supporting embrace and found his feet shakily over the numbness of his knees, his eyes skimming over the revealed swath of Sam's skin to check again for a cut, to make sure Sam wasn't lying to him, because Sammy was holding something back.

The sound of footsteps distracted him. He would have tensed, but he recognized Zee's light tread. She was picking her way across the warehouse floor to them, holding something in her hand. She had to pick her way because the floor was a mess. The floor of a slaughterhouse, slick with zombie guts and strangely wet red-green-black bits, reminiscent of hell.

Where he belonged.

Another tremor rocked him. He waved off the concerned reaching of Sam's hands, cinched his lips in grimly, watching the way Zee's eyes flicked to the gaping gash in Sam's shirt and then to Sam's face, that tiny head shake Sam gave her, it's nothing, it's fine. It was not fine, it was anything but fine, and he half expected her to do something about it.

Amber eyes that burned like whiskey went like a laser scan over his face, and moved on.

What?

She was looking past him, past his shoulder, all around the warehouse, along the walls, paying no attention to him and the threat he posed at all. What the hell? She kept looking around as if she were searching for something, moving incautiously towards him so she could see around him to the spot where Jake had been. Was she stupid? Did she not see? The exploded zombie bits all around them. The gash in Sam's shirt. Everything he'd done. Everything he'd become. It was sheer folly to be standing where she was, her shoulder inches away from his chest, as if she were perfectly safe within his reach.

He was about to step back, push her away, one or the other, when her lips tightened, staring at something behind him. He turned to see what she was looking at and saw nothing, nothing being an accurate description of the amorphous red smear that was left on the ground, the bloody mess of skin and guts and flesh that had once been his two friends. The torn sleeve of Yeager's denim jacket, and a few feet away, Jake's stupid affectation of a hat. A scattering of color between the two things, like Skittles strewn carelessly into the muck, bright spots of sunny yellow and primary blue, red and orange and green and purple, absurdly untouched and plastic looking, like they might be some kind of toy beads.

Unease coalesced in his stomach. It brushed down the hairs on his arm like a kiss of frost.

He snatched the bit of paper Zee was holding out of her hand. A photograph. It was a photograph. Some strip mall photo booth shot of a woman in a Santa cap holding a little girl on her knee, both of them laughing. His eyes locked on the rainbow colored bracelet around the girl's wrist.

His hand shook.

"I…" He stared at the spots of color on the ground, trying to remember. It had all been a blur, Jake screaming, the rank undead grabbing at him, their unbearable hunger, all of it pressing in and in on him, loud, and he hadn't seen anything else, felt anyone else.

Had he?

In a panic he turned to Sam, the worried expression on Sam's face. Gray thing, gray thing rang through his mind and he gulped, shaking violently all over again, trying to remember. He hadn't seen, and he wasn't sure he would have, when the Mark burned and everything blurred. He smelled of blood and guts and sulfur, like Hell, like now. His eyes fell to the slashed edges of Sam's jacket, and he tried to get words out around the clog of bile in his throat and he couldn't remember.

"Did I?…..I…. I didn't …..I don't…"

His voice trembled, unable to find the words or to form them.

Cool hands framed his face, her thumbs over his cheeks. She tugged his face downward, insistent, a command to be obeyed. He looked down, into those eyes of pure whiskey, sharp and warm at the same time.

"No."

She sounded sure. How could she be so sure?

He tried to turn around, to look again at the mess he made, the things he'd done, but her hands locked on his face, stronger than he expected, keeping his gaze on her.

"No. It was already done. You were too late."

It was the preferable sin. Her voice was firm. Clear. There was no give and no quarter, and she wasn't making excuses for him as Sam might have done. He closed his eyes, willing himself to draw a steadying breath. She swiped one thumb gently against his cheek, brushing away the wetness there before it could leave a traitorous track. He would have felt shame for his weakness, except there was no room for it in her eyes, because it was a feeling, and feelings weren't relevant.

He breathed again, straightening. She gave his face another quick scan, checking that he had his shit together before she let him go, swiping the blood off his lips with another quick efficient stroke of her thumb. She bent down and picked the First Blade off the ground like she did it all the time, no muss, no fuss, and handed it to Sam. Sam took it wordlessly, because Sam knew, they both knew, he couldn't bear to touch it just now.

He looked around the warehouse again, hesitating before he felt around. Nothing. He glanced up at the rafters, gray daylight trickling in through the grimy windows near the ceiling, illuminating the mess on the ground. A trap within a trap—this had that feeling to it. He was being guided and driven, pushed and prodded, to somewhere he didn't want to go. The urge was to bolt, to blow this joint, but there was one thing he had to do first.

"Get the gas."

Sam started when he said that, with a quick glance around saying there was too much to burn, but he caught Sam's eye resolutely. They weren't going to just leave Yeager and Jake and Jake's family tangled up in this mess, whatever was left of them.

Zee flashed him a quick glance, but he didn't budge. Maybe it was foolish, maybe it was in vain, but if there was any hope at all, they deserved better. What was left of them deserved a hunter's funeral. He wasn't going to leave them to chance, stuck here and doomed to become ghosts, turning into the things they had once hunted. Sam caught Zee's eye too, his arguments that it was already too late, that they should just bail, held at the ready, because that unnerving feeling that they were standing between the jaws of a bear trap would not have escaped either of them.

Zee blew out a soundless stream of air before she decided.

"Come on." She said curtly to Sam. "Let's get this cleaned up."