A/N: Okay, I am sorry for this ridiculously short chapter. Holiday season is here, and I work retail.
Yeah.
Retail.
God help me.
Anyway, think of this short chappy as a way to launch into a few more cases featuring a full out Sam 2.0. He's been waffling and indecisive, but I have officially given myself permission to go all out with Sam 2.0, and see just what he can do.
If you follow my other stories, bear with me. Nothing has been dropped, but I just spent the last two weeks working and/or cooking (Thanksgiving!). No Cluck in a Bucket for my family!
Reviews are love. This story has gone longer than I originally intended, mostly due to feed back that asked for a longer story, so let me know if you guys are interested in where I am taking it. Sam 2.0 is a little like soulless Sam, and a little like trials Sam, and quite a bit like John.
John. Oh, John.
You guys want a redemption arc for John in this? Right now, I'm 50/50. I could go either way...
As Always,
EverReader
Prisoner Of War – Chapter Thirty-Six
"At War With Myself"
Dean awoke in a panic, startling so heard his arms and legs flailed, jerking into wakefulness with the violence of a car crash.
Silence.
No screaming, no moaning.
No sounds of Sam breathing in the bed beside him.
Dean catapulted out of his bed, launching himself towards Sam's to find nothing but empty blankets and sheets, long cold.
Early morning sunlight streamed through the dusty windows, but Dean ignored it as he barreled downstairs, yelling Sam's name at the top of his lungs.
He tried desperately to remember the last time he'd checked on Sam, but he'd spent over a week in a state of near exhaustion. He hadn't bothered setting an alarm to wake him to check on Sam, because the regularity of Sam's nightmares had rendered it unnecessary.
He slid into the kitchen, instinct and the scent of coffee leading him more than any real plan.
Sam looked up, startled, a cup of coffee halfway to his lips.
"Sam!" Dean nearly cried with relief as he stumbled over, nearly knocking Sam's cup of coffee out of his grasp as he began the familiar motions.
Check for fever, check to see if Sam felt to cold, check his eyes, check the shadows under his eyes...
"Dean?" Sam asked mildly, raising a brow. "You okay, man?"
"Me? Am I okay? You freaking disappeared on me, man!" Dean scolded, relieved to find that apparently Sam's fever was gone for the moment. Of course...
"Did you take some medicine for your fever?" He asked.
Sam shook his head, finally taking his sip of coffee. Swallowing, he said, "Didn't need to. Fever was gone when I woke up."
"Yeah, well, we know that little trick. It'll be back." Dean said, thinking back to the phantom fever that had seemed to play hide and seek with them over the last few days.
Sam just shrugged. "Maybe." He agreed.
"Did a nightmare wake you up? Why didn't you wake me?" Dean asked, slumping in a chair beside Sam, energy flagging as his adrenaline started to subside.
"Nope." Sam replied, killing off the last of his coffee.
Standing, he walked back over to the coffee maker to refill it. Dean frowned, both at the sight of how much weight his little brother had lost, and the fact that Sam was apparently drinking his coffee black, which Dean knew Sam hated.
"No nightmares last night."
Sam returned with a mug for Dean also, and Dean thanked him wearily.
Sam shrugged. "You look like you needed it. That and about forty hours of sleep." He pointed out with a mild criticism.
Dean snorted into his cup. "Seriously, dude? Like you are one to talk. When's the last time you grabbed six solid hours in a row?"
"Last night..." Sam murmured, picking up the newspaper he had been glancing through when Dean had interrupted him.
"Seriously though, no nightmares?" Dean asked incredulously. He knew how nightmares worked, god knew, he had enough of his own. You didn't go from half a dozen a night to none, they tapered off slowly.
"Nah. I'm good. Slept hard, woke up feeling better than I have all week. Guess Dad was right. Just a cold giving me rough dreams." Sam said easily, as if Dean hadn't just spent the last week watching him breathe just to make sure he still was.
Dean stared at him in astonishment. "What, no fever? What about your head? Cough? Your chest hurt?"
Sam looked at him over the paper, a look Dean usually expected to get from John, not Sam.
"Ye-es." He said the word slowly, a tinge of annoyance threading through it.
Dean shook his head. "Well, even if, and I'm saying 'if' your fever broke, you can still put that damn paper down. You need rest, or you'll just get worse again.
"There's something fishy going on down in the southeast corner of the state." Sam said, obviously ignoring every word Dean had just said, as he studied the paper again.
"Great." Dean snarked. "I'll make a call. You get your scrawny ass in bed, and I'll make you some breakfast."
"Already ate." Sam replied, not missing a beat. "There's eggs left over in the microwave, if you want. You might think about hitting the rack yourself, seriously, Dean. You look like crap. You're right, I'm not at full strength yet. I've missed a lot of training. I'm gonna take a shower. Why don't you call Bobby about the haunting down state before you go back to bed?"
With that, he practically breezed out of the kitchen, leaving Dean sitting there, feeling steamrolled.
"What. The. Fuck." Dean muttered to himself, staring wide eyed at the seat where Sam had just been sitting. His grip tightened on the handle of his coffee cup until his knuckles showed white.
No way.
No. Fucking. Way.
No way was Sam just magically...all better.
He had looked better, it was true. He was still pale and far too thin, but the shadows under his eyes hadn't been quite as bad, and his eyes themselves were clear.
He was coherent, speaking in full sentences, and the fact that he was out of bed at all, much less cooking breakfast was a minor miracle in itself.
Still.
The kid had been the better part of delirious for almost a week, Dean had been a heartbeat from loading him up and taking him to the hospital and begging the doctors to do something...
And now, what?
He was just...all better?
No. Fucking. Way.
Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural
Sam stood under the hot spray of the shower, feeling the needling of the hot water work it's way into the knots in his muscles.
He cast his mind over his memories of the night before. He couldn't say they were pleasant, but at leat he hadn't woken up screaming.
They were muddled, distant and confused, but Sam hadn't been lying to Dean downstairs earlier.
He didn't just feel better, he felt much, much better. Lighter, as if the weight on his shoulders had shifted.
It hadn't disappeared, of course. His problems hadn't just melted away in the night, he was still a freak, an abomination.
He was, in all likelihood, evil, and almost certainly damned.
So the weight of these secrets hadn't disappeared, no.
But they had...shifted.
Now, they seemed to sit a little more evenly on him, metaphorically speaking, and this morning he had awoken feeling like he could stand up straight for the first time in...
Hell.
His whole damn life maybe.
Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural Supernatural
Sam stood, triumphant, his chains a broken and cracked heap of metal behind him. The wall he had been bound to was nothing more than rubble.
The body lay still, a pool of dark blood spreading around it.
He crouched beside it, taking a moment to study the face that was his, and not his, all at once.
"I get it, now." He remarked to the silence, twirling the other Sam's knife through his fingers as he studied his fallen opponent.
Sightless eyes stared back, the once clear hazel now a muddy collage of things that no longer were.
"You were right. All this time, I've been fighting myself, when really, I should have been fighting the monsters. I've been trying to be something I can't be. I'm not normal. I'm not good. Hell, I'm not even human, not really."
He stood, sheathing his blade.
"There's only one way out of this."
It was time to wake up.
"I'm not running anymore."