Set is season 14 Soon after they get Dean back from Michal. Dean is working though his thoughts after having his autonomy stripped away.
"I know things have been pretty crazy...but," Sam's brows get earnest, "you know I'm here, right?" His eyes still say they know what it is to drown and to be nothing but nothing.
"Course, Sammy." His throat is small and parched and the words are dry like paper. Flimsy and flammable. Go up in smoke and leave ashes.
Includes modified parts of the poem, "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley
Dean's hands move in perfect awareness of each other. Synchronicity. Drying dishes, one hand wet. That uncomfortable feeling like his dry hand is a desert now. Like it has to match the other. Dunk itself in water.
He asks Sam 'why' just for something to say.
"They're soul mates," Sam says and shrugs with his tired smile.
His smile is always tired now. Pulled too tight. How much tension can it take before it breaks?
Thirty years of tension before he broke.
Thirty years, and then he snapped like a rubber band, lashing out leaving welts, and bruises, and—cuts. He is still lashing out, a dangerous strip of human.
Cuts.
They put the dishes away like domesticity will save them. In the kitchen, it's just the two of them. Enough space to breathe at 3 A.M.
"Want to watch something?" Sam's eyes are understanding. Seeing Dean like they know. They do know. And it's like being cut open. Eyes like knives.
"Sure."
And Sam's eyes tell Dean over, and over, that it will get better, that someday it will be better, but Dean's hands still tremor like minor earthquakes and scream that nothing will ever get better.
He knows.
They walk past the library and it's littered with unfamiliar things. A duffel here, a discarded cap there. Pages scrawled with words written by an unknown hand. A foreign land now. He's an alien here. He hasn't learned their names.
"You don't have to stay in your room all the time; they don't bite," Sam hints with a voice too soft for a real jest.
Cuts and bruises. Drowning for an eternity and coming up as something else: conquered, a conquest won. Beaten. Cut. Never untouched again.
Dean nods, and he knows that Sam knows what he means is he can't. He can't. Not yet.
They look at him like he doesn't belong. Like they expect him to crack open any moment. Maybe he will. Will he?
Sam's eyes quick glance at him like they are minding their own business and they say 'I know' even when they are looking at his feet.
Soul mates.
Heaven with Thanksgiving and strangers.
Strangers filling the bunker now, sleeping in beds that were dusty and empty before. Before when he was still...him. Unconquered. Invictus. Out of the night that covers me.
He starts walking again so that Sam's mouth won't open and fill the 3 A.M. silence. Sam is awake because Dean is awake. He feels nocturnal, Something that crawls out in the night so it won't be seen by things with beautiful bodies and beautiful minds that don't feel like drowning and don't break. Crack open. Bleed an agony of liver brown memories.
"Dean," Sam says behind him. He turns and sees Sam's eyes screaming 'I know, I know, I know what it's like to drown and lose and be only a thing, be only nothing'.
Victus, victim, I have winced and cried aloud.
"Hum?" Dean says casual, like they aren't talking about souls and death and never ending, spiraling, consuming darkness. No choice.
"I know things have been pretty crazy...but," Sam's brows get earnest, "you know I'm here, right?" His eyes still say they know what it is to drown and to be nothing but nothing.
"Course, Sammy." His throat is small and parched and the words are dry like paper. Flimsy and flammable. Go up in smoke and leave ashes.
My head is bloody and bowed.
The tight smile again. Maybe they both forgot how to smile without the pull of world ending tension long ago.
They sit on Dean's bed and something is on the computer in front of them, a series of images that their eyes pretend to watch, like Christmas night before the deal came due. Thirty years and then a snap. Watching something is normal, and then they don't have to listen. Listen to the silence. They don't have to talk.
Sam's eyes glance, and Dean pretends not to see, or hear the refrain: 'I know, I know, I know.'
Dean feels the reply echo in his head and run down to his hands.
'I did that to you. I did that to you,' the tremors in his fingers weep. His earthquake-like hands are wrapped tight around him so they will shut up. Soul mates. 'I did that to you!' Drowning and nothing and conquerable soul.
Soul mates.
Battered
Raped
Ripped
Burned
Slashed
Shattered
Sam moves an inch closer and his warmth radiates. Dean's body is shaking with the words it can't say: 'I did that to you!'
Sam's arm brushes against his and it says 'I forgive you.'
One hand a desert without the other. Drown together. Unafraid.