A/N: Okay, one of those shorter, introspective chapters, because I know everyone is dying to know what Sam is thinking.
So, let's see.
All the Pretty Monsters, How To Fix A Winchester and Tuesday's Child have all updated this week, so lots going on.
My Mom will be getting out of the hospital this week also, so hopefully my chapters will be a little longer from here out.
I have gotten some amazing prompts for How To Fix A Winchester, if you've prompted and haven't seen yours yet, I work them in order, oldest first, so just keep reading. Also, if any of you have read any of my Confessions 'Verse stories (all canon) and want to prompt for that universe, I have wanted to do prompts for that project from the get go, I just haven't gotten any yet.
Thank you so much to all my readers and reviewers!
As Always,
EverReader
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox
Trigger Warnings: Suicidal thoughts in this one, read responsibly
Prisoner of War- Chapter Twenty-Two
"Things Left Behind"
Sam never said another word about it, as far as Dean could tell.
Oh, he reported back to John honestly, almost clinically, in fact, but he never really said another word about it, real words, like how he was feeling, or what he was thinking.
John, surprisingly, had taken it in stride.
"Where have you boys been?" He had asked, when they returned to Caroline that night.
Dean had paused, trying to find a good way to explain that they had taken a case against his orders, dealt with a giant talking teddy bear, discovered an evil Mayan coin of doom, shot the bad guy's fiance, and were now ready for dinner.
There just had to be a better way to word all this...
Sam had just looked directly at John. "Berryville was a legit case. It was a cursed object granting wishes. When we got the original wisher to take back the first wish, all the other wishes were undone. And I killed someone, but to quote Dean, it 'didn't stick'."
"Come again?" John had said in the the closest tone to alarm he ever used.
"She was shooting at me, and Sam returned fire. It was undone when all the other wishes were. No one even remembers." Dean said hurriedly, looking over at his younger brother like Sam had just starting speaking French.
Sam had been watching John, almost as if he were waiting to see John's reaction.
John swallowed, looking between the boys. "Dean, you good?" He asked finally.
Dean swallowed. "Yeah, her shot went wide, it nearly clipped Sam though."
John nodded. "Well, Dean, go get one of the lock boxes Bobby brought us on his last trip. We better lock that object down tight."
Dean looked at John, trying to gauge if he was really mad at them and just not revealing it yet.
"Dean." John said impatiently.
"Yes, sir." Dean said, going upstairs to there storeroom.
He left his father and his brother in the living room, a thousand unspoken words between them, like the worlds most complex minefield.
Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural
Sam slammed his locker shut, juggling his books over to his good side. He'd refused to put a new sling on, insisting to Dean it was fine.
Dean had agreed reluctantly, and Sam got the feeling he was walking on eggshells around Sam because of Berryville, as Dean had taken to calling the incident.
Because of Hope.
Sam swallowed suddenly, as nausea rose up in his throat unexpectedly. He struggled to slow his breathing, pulling large breaths in through his nose and exhaling them through his gasping mouth.
It was Tuesday, and this had been happening to him on and off for three days now.
Suddenly the hall, the whole second floor, hell, the whole goddamned high school felt too small, like the walls were closing in on Sam and maybe there wasn't enough air in the whole entire world for Sam to get a deep breath in.
He still had three classes to go, but suddenly Sam knew he couldn't do it.
Quickly, he shoved his books back into his locker. Power-walking down the hall as panic clawed at his chest, he let himself out of a side door.
He broke into a run, quickly putting distance between himself and the eight hundred people his age who would never ever understand a single thing about him.
He wasn't wearing the right clothes for running, his jeans rubbed and his chest was starting to ache, but Sam didn't slow. Running was one of the few things that gave him any peace.
Images of Hope's lifeless body, interchanged with the vision of Dean's lifeless body that had struck him in Berryville flooded his mind, and suddenly he swerved off the road, walking into the tree line. Finally losing the battle to his rising nausea, he leaned over next to a tree a lost his lunch.
I shot her I shot her Oh God,I shot her-
Sam forced air into his screaming lungs through sheer will power, his legs were unsteady, his hands were shaking, and unwilling tears were trickling down his cheeks.
Sam managed to stumble another couple of yards farther into the treeline, now well hidden from the road. Coming to rest against a large pine tree, he slid down slowly until he was sitting with his back against the trunk.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the object that had been haunting him for three days.
It was a bullet.
It was the bullet.
When Emmett had undone his wish, almost everything had returned to normal.
Annabelle's teddy bear had returned to normal size, and thankfully stopped talking, but when the boys had last seen her, the bear had had a suspicious looking bandage wrapped around it's head that Sam hadn't even wanted to think about.
Her parents were back, but her Dad had the worst case of sunburn Sam had ever seen.
Sam's sling had remained torn where it had been sheered by Hope's wild shot.
And where she had been laying, on the sidewalk in front of Wong Foo's, Sam had found his bullet.
The blond was gone, like it had never happened.
One moment, Sam had been staring down at Hope's lifeless body (I killed her, I shot her),
The next, the entire world had seemed to shift for one crazy moment, and then suddenly a very confused Hope Danvers had been standing on the sidewalk looking around in mild alarm.
She had looked right at Sam. "How did I get here? Do I know you?"
Sam had had to fight down the manic laughter that had nearly broke from his throat at her question, because how unfair was that, that Sam had killed her and she didn't even know it.
There would never be a trial, no forgiveness, because the crime had been forgotten by everyone but Sam, Dean and Emmett.
And it was a crime.
Sam had tried to rationalize it to himself. He'd barely gotten to the restaurant in time to take the shot at all, breathless and still half out of it from his vision. He'd known that if Hope wasn't stopped, Dean would die, and there wasn't any real certainty that Emmett un-wishing everything would bring someone back to life, after all.
If it came down to Hope or Dean, Sam would chose Dean. Right this moment, if he had to choose all over again, he'd still make the same choice, but still...
Sam hadn't shot to wound, hadn't shot to try an disarm. He'd looked at a woman, a victim, and he'd shot to kill.
And he had, in fact killed her.
Sam meant what he said. No matter how hard Dean might want to ignore that little fact, a woman had died, and Sam had been the cause.
Not a bad guy, not a monster, just an innocent woman who'd gotten caught up in a spell gone wrong and Sam had killed her for it.
John was right. Sam was absolutely sure about it now. Sam could never have a normal life, could never be a part of decent society. The darkness in Sam was growing, the visions and his actions were proof of that.
Sam was a monster.
He'd made the decision to put everything he had into hunting, desperate to try and earn some kind of redemption.
Instead, he had murdered a victim.
He turned the bullet over and over in his fingers, thoughts pinwheeling through his mind.
A part of him thought he should put the bullet to better use than a paperweight in his pocket, but the religious lessons he had received from Pastor Jim held firm in his mind.
If demons were real, then Hell surely was, and Sam shuddered to think what he'd become one he was there.
He didn't want to die, not if it meant going to Hell.
Sometimes he wished it would just all be over, just darkness and quiet, no more guilt, no more pain.
No more father watching and waiting for the day Sam let loose the monster sleeping inside himself. No more brother trying to fix something too broke to even know what it was supposed to be anymore.
No more of Sam's endless quest to try and redeem himself.
No more fear.
A part of Sam was angry. A part of Sam was furious, in fact. Some demon had done something to him, made him bad, made him unnatural, made him wrong.
Wouldn't it just be a kicker if Sam took these visions or nightmares or whatever the hell they were and turned them against the other monsters?
A monster to hunt the monsters...
Sure, he could never be normal, could never be human, or innocent or even just good, the way Dean was.
But what was that old saying?
Be good or be good at it.
Sam knew he could never be good, had never, in fact been good. He was tainted, damaged goods and had been since the night his unsuspecting brother carried him out of their burning house.
Be good at it.
Sam stared musingly at the bullet in his hand. This time, when the mental image of Hope lying in her own blood flashed across his mind, he forced it down with ruthless will power.
He couldn't afford to feel guilt, to feel remorse.
Maybe he couldn't afford to feel anything.
He truly believed what he had said to Dean on the dock.
Love destroyed.
People did desperate, crazy things for love. Their father had dragged two small children across the country in a car full of weapons out of some misguided sense of love for his murdered wife. Sam's mother had died trying to protect him from the monster, more love gone wrong.
John had learned that Sam was evil, had Demon blood in him, but instead of putting a bullet in Sam's head like he would have any other monster, he'd let Sam live, and Sam could only chalk it up to more misguided love.
Sam had no doubt that if Dean had though Hope was going to shoot Sam, he'd have plugged her once in the heart and once again in the head for pissing him off, and that would have been out of love , also.
Love was the enemy, it made you do things you'd never do otherwise, just as fear did, because they were just different sides of the same coin. Loving something or someone meant spending every second of your life being afraid of losing them.
Love and fear and the stupid, desperate things people would do for it.
Love destroyed.
Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural
Dean stuck his head in Sam's darkened room. He'd already been there when Dean had gotten off work at the garage.
"Sam? You okay?" He said carefully, trying to study his brother in the dim light.
Sam sat up on his bed. "Yeah, I just left school early. Migraine, but the medicine seems to have worked."
Dean frowned. "You need an ER?" He asked, trying to remember the last time he'd had to take Sam to the hospital for a migraine. On average, they had to go three or four times a year. Sam had medicines for them, but it was really only a fifty-fifty chance of them working.
In a perfect world, Sam would be treated by a neurologist, but that wasn't really an option for the Winchesters.
Sam stood slowly. "Yeah. I'm fine now. Just needed to get my head in order."
Dean studied him. "Sam, you know you can talk to me, right? About anything. Even the chick-flick shit, if that's what you need..."
Sam tilted his head at Dean curiously. "Nope. I'm good to go. Like a said, just needed a couple of hours to get my head on straight."
Dean nodded. "Okay, then. Um, back a bag, will ya? Two or three days worth, the rest can stay here. Bobby sent Dad some coordinates for a town in Indiana. He thinks the town's doing some creepy harvest sacrifice or something. Dad's sending me and you to check it out."
Sam nodded. "So, like the lottery?" HE asked.
"Huh?" Dean said, and Sam shook his head.
"Let's go, then." Sam said, reaching over to the small nightstand beside his bed and drawing out his gun, tucking it securely into the small of his back.
He looked up, meeting Dean's eyes squarely. Dean swallowed, the sight of the gun in Sam's hands bring up memories or Berryville, and the look in Sam's eye's when he'd shot Hope.
Dean had never held it against Sam, not even for a second. He'd drive back to Berryville right now and shoot her again if he thought she was a danger to Sam. It was unfortunate that Sam had had to shoot a victim, but sometimes it happened, especially when they became aggressive.
But Sam had looked almost...resigned.
Sam walked past him, duffel in hand.
"You coming, Dean?" he called as he started down the stairs.
Dean shook himself out of his reverie.
"Yeah. Let's do this."