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vail_kagamiFandom: Supernatural
Beta:
minviendha Characters (overall): Dean, Castiel, Sam, plus a number of angels and demons
Rating (overall): NC-17
Warnings (overall): violence, torture, drug use, insanity, mentions of rape
Spoilers: Going AU during episode 5.18: Point of No Return. No spoilers for after season five.
Words (this chapter): 7,627
Summary: A man wakes up in a ruined wasteland, without memories, without a name, without knowing the strange guy who claims he used to be an angel, or that he once had a little brother. All he knows is that the world is dying, everyone is lying to him and that somehow, somewhere, something went terribly wrong. Because someone said Yes when they should have said No, and someone else paid the price.
Masterpost
So what happened, apparently, is that Dean collapsed from exhaustion combined with what was left of his concussion. Except it was less of a concussion and more of a cracked skull. Jena fixed that but not completely, so Dean’s body, stressed and undernourished and tired, eventually refused to go any further.
As for Sam, this is basically the normal setting for him. The demon blood keeps him from starving and gives him strength, but that strength isn’t his own. It only covers his weakness, doesn’t erase it. Little is needed to remind Sam’s body that it is ill and broken.
Dean feels a lot better now, though far from perfect. But the long rest did him good, as does not having to walk for miles and miles and miles every day. The food helps, too: as it turns out, Jena didn’t leave them to starve but left them quite a lot of cans, dried meat, as well as the typical small, crippled-looking fruits and vegetables. The best is the water, though: there’s a whole basin one floor below and for the first time in ages Dean gets to really clean himself. So do the others. He only notices how much they all stank when they don’t anymore.
There’s also a whole bottle of demon blood waiting for Sam. He still holds back because they don’t know how long it will be before they find the next one to bleed out, but at least he doesn’t have to torture himself anymore by waiting too long.
It doesn’t escape Dean’s notice, though, that the longer Sam is back to using, the more he needs to still the craving. He still holds back, which maybe explains why he’s not really getting well, physically and mentally.
Or maybe the damage is simply too great.
“Where did we get the blood?” Dean asks Cas at the end of their first day, and Cas just shrugs and says, “Gabriel brought it.”
“Of course he did.”
They are sitting at the table in the last light of day, playing cards. Soon it’ll be too dark for that since they don’t dare to make any kind of light in here. There are curtains in the bedroom that they pulled closed, but even so the risk is too high. This is only a good place to be as long as no one knows they are here.
Dean wishes he knew what Jena was up to.
He takes another sip from his glass of water. They don’t really have anything else to drink. Dean would love alcohol but alcohol makes people drunk and drunk people are careless, so he gets why there isn’t any. They can’t make coffee or tea because they can’t heat it up and every juice in the world has long since expired.
Sam is sitting at the other end of the table. He’s not playing with them, claiming he lacks the focus for poker right now. Instead, he’s doodling something on a piece of paper with a pen he found in a drawer, along with countless other pens , most of which don’t work anymore. Right now, his hand is mostly moving sluggishly over the paper and his eyes are struggling to remain open.
“Sam,” Dean says sternly. “If you don’t go to sleep now, I’m gonna carry you to bed and sing you a fucking lullaby.”
Sam blinks at him as if he was considering taking him up on the offer, and Dean is already making a list of songs in his mind that would greatly annoy his brother. But either Sam’s not really willing to take the risk or he accepts that it’s getting too fucking dark to keep writing, or drawing, or whatever it is he does, because he gets up and limps out of the room.
Dean is pleasantly surprised, since he half-expected Sam to go to sleep on the mattress on the floor of this room instead of the nice, comfy bed he has in the other room. His satisfaction turns to irritation when Sam doesn’t turn towards the bedroom but wanders down the hall.
“Where the hell is he going?” Dean asks, the game forgotten. Apparently Sam is so tired that he needs help remembering where his bed is. It’s possibly the last bed he will ever sleep in (and there is a happy thought, just keep going, Dean) and he should fucking appreciate it.
Cas just shrugs. “Brushing his teeth, I would think.”
Dean just stares at him because it makes so much sense. Of course Sam would. The boy has frigging standards, after all.
Five minutes later Sam comes limping back, lets himself fall onto the mattress with something like a pained yelp and buries his face in the pillow.
-
Dean, still not entirely fit, falls asleep not long after that. He does so sitting at the table, only realizing what happened when he wakes up with kinks in his neck and feeling the return of his headache. Just great. Sam isn’t the only one who might never be offered this much comfort again, so he should really make use of it.
According to Cas, they will be able to stay for about a week before they have to move on in order to evade detection. They have enough food here that they don’t, for once, have to ration it. If by the end of their week there’s anything more left than fits into their bags, they won’t be able to take it with them, so there’s no point in not filling themselves up.
Dean hasn’t been this sated in ages. He would have eaten even more if he wasn’t still feeling a little crappy. Sleeping at the table did not help.
Cas is nowhere to be seen. Dean considers going over to the bedroom to sleep in the bed, leave Sammy his space – but Sammy wouldn’t have opted to sleep here if he didn’t want to be near the others, so Dean just slips under the covers beside his brother and closes his eyes. This is becoming a habit.
There are worse.
The next morning Sam wakes before him. Dean opens his eyes to a hiss of pain as Sam tries to get up and his crippled legs struggle to push up his weight.
“Did I tell you recently that you’re a moron?” Dean mutters sleepily. He rolls off the bed, yawns, stretches, and finally offers his idiot of a little brother a hand so he can pull him to his feet. Sam, ruffled and unshaven, glares at him and shuffles off.
Little brothers. Seriously.
Dean’s sitting at the breakfast table when Sam comes back, almost an hour later. He’s accompanied by Castiel and both of them are clean shaven, so they probably had a bonding moment in the bathroom over razor blades or something. Dean had a bonding moment with some slices of fruit, a few slices of smoked deer and a can of possibly-cat-food. All things considered, this is one of their better mornings.
“You know, there’s a reason why I got the mattress on the floor and you got the nice comfy bed,” Dean says with his mouth full of stuff. He swallows so Sammy can understand him better and maybe make sense of his words. “And that not just because the bed is nice and comfy, but also because it’s higher off the ground so it’s easier for you to get up and down. I know this is hard to understand, but it will make your life easier. So how about you try it next time?”
Sam doesn’t answer, just glares at him in passing. He flops onto the chair, looking out of the window. His hair is wet and hanging down onto his shoulders and his eyes are bloodshot. Bad night, Dean gathers. He reaches out to touch Sam’s forehead and finds it no less warm than he’s used to, but also no more.
“Nightmares?” he asks, suddenly worried. Not that Sam doesn’t constantly have nightmares, it’s just that Dean didn’t notice him having any last night, and that’s what concerns him.
Sam makes a vague gesture that Dean interprets as ‘Yeah, horrible ones, but not really worth mentioning.’ The usual, then. Probably Lucifer torturing him in his dreams. Or just memories of Lucifer torturing him in his dreams, or in Hell, or in person. He or his demons. Or the other demons. Or the angels. Or other humans.
It’s nice to know there has been variety in his brother’s life.
It’s not fair that they finally get some comfort and the illusion of safety and Sam still has no chance to get proper rest.
Cas sits down opposite Dean and reaches for the bowl of fruits in the middle of the table. Dean’s not even sure what it’s supposed to be. Pears, maybe. Crippled little pears that learned to live without sun. They are very watery anyways. Dean thinks about squeezing them out and creating fruit-juice, see if Sam can drink that and keep it down.
He just can’t imagine demon blood tasting all that good. Though for Sam, the taste is probably the last thing that matters.
Dean’s brother has his own breakfast: a sip from one of the re-filled flask, and Dean notices his hands trembling, can only imagine how much Sam wants to drink all of it, all at once.
There’s enough right now. Gonna last them weeks, but Sam’s careful. “I’ll need more than a little gulp if we get attacked and I need my powers,” he just said when Dean pointed that out to him the day before.
Now he pushes the bottle away with jerky movements. Dean does him the favor of taking it out of reach.
Outside, it’s begun to snow. Fat white flakes are falling against the windows, melt there and slowly slide down to pile at the bottom until the pile gets too heavy and falls down the side of the building. If this keeps up, if it gets just a little colder, they won’t be able to look out of the window anymore in a day or two.
Beneath them, a city Dean can’t identify lies still and dead, mostly rubble, though some parts look almost intact from up here – including some other buildings as high as the one they are in, standing like monuments in a sea of debris. Dean wonders if there is anyone living in the intact houses but no matter how long he looks out of the window, he never sees any movement.
The day passes without anything that deserves mention. For the most part, Dean is happy to sit or lie around, have food enough to not be hungry and not having to walk anywhere. He can’t fight the tension, though, that comes with not knowing if there is anyone already looking for them in the area. The place feels too exposed.
Perhaps Jena found the demons that were following them and turned them to ash. In that case it would have been nice if she had dropped them a note.
Cas does a lot of sleeping, showing how exhausted even he has been. When he’s not sleeping, he does a lot of sitting around, meditating or daydreaming or whatever it is he does.
Sam reads. There are books here, and they don’t look particularly exciting to Dean, but Sam devours them like a man who hasn’t read anything in decades. There is stuff on economy that even Sam won’t touch (What for?) and stuff on history that he loses himself in though it probably doesn’t tell him anything new. A few works of fiction is there as well – mindless romance crap, mostly, and some detective novels that, upon closer observation, turn out to belong to Arthur Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series. Dean’s pretty sure Sam’s read them before, but it’s not like he has a lot of alternatives to choose from.
So Sam reads – mostly on the couch, or at the table until his bones hurt too much to keep sitting on the hard chair. If he’s not reading, he’s dozing. If he’s not reading or dozing, he doodles away in his little notebook that usually disappears somewhere when he’s not using it.
He has two nightmares that Dean notices and wakes him from, another one he can’t wake him from that might have been Lucifer in person. He drinks about one sip of demon blood a day, claiming he doesn’t need more to get by if there’s no exertion.
He looks like he’d really want more. On the third day he limps up and down the corridor restlessly, and nothing in the world could convince Dean that he’s not fighting the craving.
At night, when the light disappears and no more doodling or reading is possible, Sam agrees to go to bed and not just nap wherever he happens to be at the time. Dean even manages to make him sleep in the real bed by sleeping there as well. It’s not hard; after all, it’s cold, and they have spent the last several weeks basically sleeping on top of each other anyway.
It’s at night that Cas finally stops with the sleeping. Instead, he sits around and does his meditation thing again while staring out of the window. Dean isn’t exactly surprised when he realizes that their friend is keeping watch.
If Cas weren’t doing it, he would.
Sam is a cuddly, fever-warm ball against him. Dean hardly finds any sleep because Sam keeps twitching. Just before dawn, Dean finally drifts off. Just after dawn, he is woken by Sam kicking him in his sleep, whimpering. Dean shakes him until he is half awake and lets him sink back under, then he carefully crawls away to visit the bathroom downstairs and crawls back in. He sleeps until midday.
The next day, Sam has a splitting headache and stays in bed until evening. Cas feeds him – the drops on the palm method, as if he didn’t trust Sam to hold back. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to torture him with the possibility of more.
A sleepless night follows the day in bed. Dean dozes off eventually, on the mattress again since Sam and Cas are both sitting on the couch, Cas sitting half-sprawled over the sidearm, Sam kneeling on the seat with his arms hanging over the back, looking out of the window. It stopped snowing the day before, starts again that night. The snowflakes are almost glowing in the dark.
Dean hears them talking quietly as he falls asleep.
-
At some point that night, he thinks he might be hearing Sam laugh; a soft, quiet sound that drifts through his dreams and makes them better.
-
When Dean wakes up, Sam is still awake. He’s reading in the weak morning light falling in through the window, filtered by dust and snow. Between turning the pages, he yawns, and when he blinks, his eyes stay closed a little too long each time.
It’s obvious that he’s exhausted and needs sleep. That he doesn’t try means the nightmares are extraordinarily bad.
But it’s not that, Sam claims when Dean tells him to get some rest. “I’m tired, but I can’t sleep,” he admits. “Can’t stop thinking. I just need something to take my mind off things.” And he’s nodding towards his book in explanation, but that one’s not helping if Sam can’t focus on the words anymore. So Dean takes matters into his own hand like the good big brother that he is. He leads Sam into the bedroom by the arm, and Sam follows willingly. He’s wearing a shirt and sweatpants from the pile of clothes Jena left them, both too wide and hanging off him like any shirt did when he was smaller and wearing the clothes Dean had grown out of and Sam not quite yet grown into. He also keeps rubbing his eyes, which doesn’t help erase the impression that Dean is leading a five-year-old by the hand.
The bedroom answers the question of where Cas has gone. Their friend is sitting on the foot of the bed, knees drawn up, reading one of the books on economics with a slight frown on his face. He still does things that make no sense, and somehow that’s nice to know.
He looks up when Dean and Sam come in but doesn’t move, and Dean doesn’t pay attention to him beyond acknowledging his presence with a nod. The bed is broad and Sam easily fits in beside him, especially since he curls up so his feet are not even in the vicinity of Castiel’s ass.
In his too-wide clothes and with the ruffled hair, Sammy really does look like a child. “C’mon, let me tuck you in, baby brother,” Dean teases and Sam very maturely sticks out his tongue and smiles a little.
“I don’t think this is gonna do the trick, mom,” he says, daring to voice doubt with Dean’s brilliant plan.
“You have no idea what I’m planning, sweetheart,” Dean coos.
“Tuck me in and make me sleep? Read me a story, perhaps?”
“Sorry, baby. There are no books around here that are appropriate for your age – though I bet I could put you to sleep with the thing Cas is currently reading.”
“Yeah, if you let it fall on my head,” Sam notes drily. He yawns again and pushes himself up on his elbow. “Look, this isn’t going to work. I just need to wait until I fall over,” he says, even as he shakes his head to clear it.
“You stay down,” Dean orders and pushes him back onto the pillow. He grabs the blanket and tugs it around his brother. “Looking at you makes me tired, so I’m doing this for myself and you will fucking help me, understood?”
Sam rolls his eyes, makes a face, and flops down. He obediently closes his eyes and shifts, and after a minute he shifts again and Dean can see his eyes move beneath his eyelids in a way that has nothing to do with REM sleep.
At least he has the sense of not opening his eyes again, even as he rolls around to lie on his back, a half-irritated, half-defeated expression ever so faintly visible on his face. Not being able to sleep has to suck. Dean’s gone through a few sleepless nights in his life, so he can sympathize – even though it never happened when he was that exhausted and had that little time to recover.
It makes Dean restless just watching him. He reaches out and places a hand over Sam’s eyes, saying “Shh.”
Sam immediately seems to become calmer so Dean leaves his hand there for a long moment, and when he moves it, it’s only to stroke his brother’s long, soft hair. And he keeps stroking it, and he starts humming “Stairway to Heaven” under his breath before he even realizes what he’s doing.
While his eyes remain close, the hint of a smile plays around Sam’s lips, just for a second. Dean doesn’t stop. Instead, his voice picks up strength and he lets the soft tune reverberate through the room.
It’ a long song. By the time he’s done, Sam’s breathing is deep and calm and he doesn’t move when Dean carefully gets off the bed.
The glare he sends Cas is a precaution: if the former angel feels like giving him funny looks for humming his brother to sleep then he may be burned to ashes with the power of Dean’s eyes. However, Cas isn’t giving him funny looks. Cas’ head has sunk to his chest, his bangs are hanging before his eyes, and he’s snoring softly.
Shaking his head to himself, Dean wanders over to the desk on the other side of the small room, sits down on the chair in front of it and looks out of the window for any kind of movement disturbing the cover of snow.
-
A hand on his shoulder brings Dean back to awareness and he opens his eyes to darkness. For a moment, panic comes over him, before he realizes that it’s Cas (just Cas) shaking him awake. Dean can just about make out his face as his eyes grow accustomed to the dark.
“Sam’s still sleeping,” his friend says quietly.
If that’s the most important thing to mention (Sam’s asleep, be quiet), Dean can’t have missed anything dramatic when he shamefully fell asleep on his watch. Now Cas quietly shuffles off, either for food, or the bathroom, or the other window, and Dean stretches his aching limps, rolls his neck, and decides to get some proper sleep if he can. Sam curls against him when he slips under the covers and Dean wraps an arm around him and closes his eyes. He falls asleep, listening to the darkness.
-
The next day he wakes with Sam’s arm draped over his chest and Sam’s face buried in the crook of his neck. The last time someone snuggled against Dean in a similar way, they’d had sex before, and her hair had smelled of flowery perfume mixed with the cigarette smoke that filled the bar she had worked in.
Now that girl is as dead as everyone else Dean ever slept with and he really, really can’t afford to wonder if it was one of Michael’s city-leveling blows that killed her, or the hunger and epidemics that followed, or if a demon got her. Instead he concentrates on his brother’s weight, warm and alive, against him, and on the fact that his fever is down.
The next things Dean notes are connected to his state of being hungry and the fact that he has morning wood. Normal enough, especially with a full bladder, but not something he wants his little brother to wake up to, so he carefully slips away and to the bathroom to take care of it.
When he’s done, he checks on Sam again, finds him curled up and stirring softly. He’s going to wake up soon, but Dean won’t disturb him before he has to. He goes to find Cas at the table in the other room and feels unexpected warmth running through him when he sees that his friend has prepared breakfast for him. There’s even fruit juice waiting on the table.
“Sam’s better,” he says as he sits down. Castiel nods.
“Good.”
“How much longer until we have to leave? What do you think?”
“Two days, three at best.”
“You think Jena will be back by then?”
“I can’t tell.” Cas reaches over and snatches a handful of berries. “Either she’ll be back, or she won’t. We can’t wait for too long.”
“Let’s hope Sam’ll be up to it.”
“He’ll have to be.”
Dean has heard those words far too often lately. Sam has to be strong. Sam has to survive. Sam has to walk fifty miles through the frozen wilderness because there’s just no alternative.
The notebook Sam likes to write in is lying on the table beside Dean and he absentmindedly fondles the pages. “Provided there’s a way to stop Satan,” he says. “And provided you make it out alive, what are you going to do then, when it’s over?”
“I never thought about that.” Which probably means he doesn’t expect to survive, or that killing Satan is even possible. Cas tilts his head and looks at Dean. “What will you do?”
“I’ll stay with Sammy.”
Cas doesn’t bother to point out that Sam’s chances of survival are even worse than anyone else’s. He just nods.
“Hey, Cas.” Dean clears his throat. “I’m sorry.”
Cas looks at him unblinkingly. “Me too.”
“I mean it. And, uh, thank you. For taking care of Sammy.”
“Sam is my friend.”
‘Yeah, and he’s my brother, but that didn’t stop me from royally fucking him over,’ Dean thinks. But he just nods and finishes his breakfast. The juice is a little bitter, but still incredible after such a long time of only drinking water. Dean identifies the taste as apple.
Cas probably pressed them out himself, at some point in the night when the others were sleeping. “Sam would love this,” Dean muses and tries not to let it make him sad.
He flips open the journal and leaves through the pages. Sam usually keeps with him when he is awake and maybe he doesn’t want Dean seeing it, but Cas does nothing to stop him.
There’s no reason to, either, because the notebook is full of symbols that don’t make sense to Dean. He recognizes the Enochian, though. At some points it’s barely legible, the symbols slurred or drawn across each other when the light was fading or Sam go too tired to write clearly. Not that it matters to Dean. He’s the only one here who can’t read it, which means that he is the only one Sam doesn’t want to have insight in his scribbling.
So it comes as a surprise when Cas says, “It’s for you.”
“What does it say?” Dean doesn’t for one moment believe that Cas didn’t read Sam’s diary while he was asleep.
“I don’t think he wants me to tell you.” The ‘yet’ remains unspoken.
It looks like Sam is pretty convinced of both Dean’s and Cas’ survival. Dean closes the notebook and shoves it away, trying not to think of his brother preparing for his final showdown.
-
Just after noon, Sam comes limping into the room. For all that he’s slept for days, he looks terrible: ruffled, pale, bloodshot eyes – but the way he keeps blinking sluggishly reminds Dean of the little boy he used to be, coming back to his feet after a week of being down with the flu.
“You hungry?” he asks because that is still easier than saying ‘You’re craving demon blood right now?’ Sam nods and Dean gets the bottle currently in use and hands it to his brother. Sam stares at it for a long moment without opening it, until Dean realizes that he’s probably scared he won’t be able to hold back once he started drinking.
So Dean takes the bottle back, but instead of filling the blood into his own open palm the way Cas and Jena tend to do, he takes Sam’s hand and lets a few drops of blood fall onto his own palm. Everything inside him rebels against feeding his brother like a pet.
He tries not to watch as Sam licks the blood off his skin greedily and then closes his eyes and leans back a little, his expression as mix of relief and pain.
“How much longer will we stay here?” he finally asks, his voice rough.
“Couple of days,” Dean replies.
“And then?”
“Then we wait for Gabriel to find us while we keep moving,” Cas explains.
Sam just nods and reaches for his notebook. “We should restock while we’re in the city. How’s your hand?”
Cas lifts his hand and shows Sam the pink scar on his palm left by his own sword. “It healed well.”
No human would have healed that quickly, and any human would have needed to be very lucky to not retain lasting damage. But Cas is an angel and all that’s left is a scar. Even Dean’s palm, merely cut open on a sharp rock, looks worse.
“How is your head, Dean?” Sam wants to know, just when Dean wonders if he should feel neglected for Sam not worrying about him.
“It’s fine,” he grunts. “Don’t worry about me.” Sam just snorts softly and begins to write.
-
Later that day, Dean throws a not-yet-processed fur at Cas and asks him how to turn it into clothes. “We should make those silly hats with ears,” he suggests and Cas looks at him like he doesn’t know if he should laugh or cry.
They spend the rest of the day making clothes out of furs and spare blankets. Sam joins them at some point and makes fun of Dean’s inability to cut a clean shape with his hunting knife – not that Sam is much better. Cas rolls his eyes and guides their hands like a long-suffering parent and actually offers to read them a story when it’s time to go to sleep because his eyes are better with the dark and he’s obviously feeling like being silly. Dean accepts, just out of evilness.
To his surprise, Cas actually keeps to his offer.
-
The next day, something falls over a few floors below them, the sound echoing through the hollow building. They all start, staring at the open door to the corridor, their hearts beating in their throats. No other sound follows. It was probably the wind that is blowing strongly this day. Cas said there are windows broken on the lower levels.
They look at each other and silently agree to go packing.
-
When Cas said that there were broken windows on some of the floors, apparently that was an euphemism for “Some of the floors are lacking walls”. There are gaping holes that they pass on the way down, the long-dead cables swinging in the wind and their footsteps crunching over broken glass. The skyscraper they are in is just as much of a ruin as every other building and Dean is left feeling relieved that it didn’t just collapse under their asses.
The wind is icy, howling through the structure wherever there are holes on two sites and they have to keep to the right for a long stretch of way because part of the staircase is missing. Dean suspects that either Jena or Cas know the area very well, since that would be the only explanation how they could have thought this was a good place to be.
He has to wonder how Jena and Cas managed to get both him and Sam up there with both of them being out for the count. Can’t have been fun. He’s kind of glad he missed that part.
Also, he’s very glad that he didn’t know how badly damaged the building was while staying in it. Did wonders for his nerves.
They’re pretty high up. Of course Dean knew that before, but standing in front of a gaping hole with nothing behind it is kind of different to looking through a closed window.
Worst is how exposed Dean feels, though – even with their dark clothes before the dark backdrop of the unlit ruin.
Once again he sticks close to Sammy and notices Cas doing the same. Apart from the company, the whole trek down the building reminds Dean painfully of his way down the building he met Lucifer in, a lifetime ago. (Leaving behind Sam’s scarred, lifeless body, far up above Atlanta, with the Devil who had him on display like a fucking trophy.)
They pass the biggest hole, come to a part where the windows of the staircase are blackened by smoke and let through very little light. All of them are tense, expecting an attack at any moment. The darkness continues all the way down, until the stairs end at a door with a broken lock that leads into the entrance hall.
Broken glass doors let in the already fading daylight. The floor is made of marble – this was one of the more expensive office and apartment buildings, apparently. There’s a reception desk and behind it, barely visible in the shadows, what’s left of a skeleton.
The building must be full of corpses.
The wind hardly reaches them here, but they hear it whistle and scream around the ruins. It hits them full force once they step outside and for a moment Dean can barely breathe. The cape they created for Sam out of a blanket billows in the wind and nearly knocks him off his feet. He tumbles against Cas and is caught before he can be blown into the pile of rubble and broken glass beside the entrance.
In all the time since he woke up in the wasteland, Dean has never experienced a storm like this. It’s probably not a good idea to be outside in this weather – not in an area full of loose shindles, broken wood and stones balanced precariously on the edge of broken walls.
They get into the shelter of the next building, look for the best path away from their skyscraper. It’s not the only high building still standing in this city; through the window Dean saw a few others, some looking mostly intact, one little more than a skeleton, and one that leaned to the site until it crashed into another building, the two now standing in a colossal, unstable embrace. (There isn’t enough left of this place for Dean to recognize any special architectural landmarks.) But now they are all swallowed by the snow and dirt whirled up by the storm, leaving only the vague outline of something big nearby as a point of orientation.
They slip through a ruin and out on the other site, looking for new shelter while at the same time wanting to get away from their old one. There’s a reason they are leaving, after all. The further they get from the place all their traces lead to, the better.
But it’s hard, getting anywhere in this. Once, Dean looks the wrong way for a second and is overcome by a terrible sense of déjà vu when he turns to Sam and Cas and can’t see them. They emerge behind a small wall after a second, but it reminds him how very easy it would be to get lost here.
And there’s no telling how long this storm will last.
As soon as they find a remotely sheltered place, they rest; set down their bags and huddle together against the icy cold, Sam, as always, in the middle. Dean would aim for the next intact building if he could actually see it.
The only upside of the storm is that it conveniently blows away the traces they leave the snow.
Then they get up and go on. It’s a little easier to move forward once they reach an area where the buildings stand closer, but Dean keeps paranoidly expecting something heavy to fall down from above and crush one or all of them. The icy wind is cutting into their faces and hands and the view gets even worse as the daylight fades. Maybe they shouldn’t have left this late in the day. Maybe they should have waited out the storm.
Maybe Michael is already roaming the apartment they occupied until a few hours ago.
They are lucky that Sam has recovered from his illness as much as he did, otherwise it would have been a short trip. Even so, whenever they rest, Dean feels him tremble and hears him cough, almost non-stop. Out the in the open, the sound is torn away by the wind.
Eventually they come across a smaller building that still has four walls and a roof. The windows are all broken to let in the wind, but they pile up in a central room without windows that Dean believes has been a walk-in closet once. He drags in the leftovers of a couch from the neighboring room and they try to get as comfortable as possible with the wind howling outside and just their body heat for warmth.
Contrary to what movies would have people believe, no sex happens between them that night. Instead, Dean listens to his brother’s rough coughs and worries that they’ll have to be audible for miles, when actually they won’t be audible outside the house.
Altogether, they probably didn’t make more than three hundred yards that day.
They spend a cold, miserable night that has Dean miss their old room and almost makes him regret their hasty retreat. Sam only falls asleep for an hour or two before weak light starts to fall in through the cracked door of their closet, while Dean and Cas don’t sleep at all, just sit there listening to Sam’s wheezing lungs, the wind and the darkness surrounding them.
-
The miserable night is followed by a miserable morning. Dean is stiff, his fingers icy despite having been wedged between his body and Sam’s all night, and he’s hungry and sore. Cas still moves like a cat and doesn’t seem to feel the cold as badly, but Dean can hear his stomach growl. They have a few bites that make their backpacks lighter but also reduce the number of days they can go without finding something new. Sam takes a few drops of blood, turning down the offer of more with obvious effort.
The storm hasn’t lessened. Maybe, Dean thinks, it never will.
They leave the dark hole they spend the night in and get back into the not much brighter day. Their fingers and faces are numb with the cold that wouldn’t be so bad if the wind didn’t make it feel about 20 degrees colder. At least their ears are protected by the hats they created just the day before leaving…
If their pursuers are sensible, they are not pursuing them all that hard in this weather. On the other hand, Dean doesn’t know from what direction they are pursuing them. He and the others might be running towards them rather than away.
Also, he’s not sure how impressed an archangel would be by a storm like this. And thinking back to the conversation he had with Jena about the drop in temperature, there’s no way of telling that the angels aren’t responsible for the storm in the first place.
Sam is slower this day than he was yesterday, stopping every so often to double over coughing or to catch his breath. The wind blows a few shards of broken glass off a windows sill once, to come crashing down right beside them and make them wary of staying too close to the walls that are the only thing protecting them from the full force of the storm.
At some point, Sam grabs Dean’s arm and points in the direction of Castiel, who stands a few yards away, his cape blowing in the wind to form a mockery of wings. He’s gesturing for them to follow and when they do he leads them down a slope and into the dark mouth of a tunnel.
The wind comes from the wrong angle to blow through it, so the moment they disappear into the dark, the wind stops, leaving only the chill that settled deep into their bones.
The first thing they do is stop, lean against the walls, and breathe. Sam’s coughing, trying visibly to calm down. It doesn’t work and the coughing just goes on and on and on.
Cas stands beside him, gently stroking his bend back, and Dean can barley see them from his place a few steps away until his eyes got used to the meager remnants of light.
Strangely enough, he feels neither the need to go over there nor jealousy. Cas is Sam’s friend and takes care of him. He’s done so for decades. There’s something comforting in the knowledge.
Cas’ concern for Sam is something Dean can rely on – and something he will have to rely on if they want to get through this together.
First they will have to get through this tunnel. It’ll protect them from the wind, but it’s also dark and there might be many things inside they can’t see. Cas has excellent night vision, though – he can lead them through this, and if it takes time, that’s all the same to Dean. He’s in no hurry of getting back into the icy wind.
Sam’s coughs echo in the dark, alerting anything and anyone who might be in here with them. Getting attacked is the one thing Dean worries about here. Without seeing anything it’ll be hard to only slash at what he wants to slash.
Also, the trek through the dark reminds him a little too vividly of getting lost in the mountain.
But this time, he’s not alone. And when Sam’s coughing has finally subsides and they are ready to move on, it’s Dean’s brother who steps over and says, “Hold on to my arm,” while Cas is already moving into the blackness ahead.
There’s so much about his brother Dean still doesn’t understand. “Is it the blood?” he asks after a minute or two of Sam leading him through the dark with sure steps, sometimes pulling him gently to the site to avoid an obstacle Dean can’t even get the barest hint of being there.
“I guess.” He can feel Sam shrug, the bony shoulder moving underneath the coat and blanket. “There is a car wreck right ahead. Careful.” He steers Dean all the way to the left until he touches the tiled wall of the tunnel and warns him to lift his feet. Dean awkwardly and blindly climbs over something metal, and ahead of him he hears something heavy being moved and flinches whit the rush of adrenaline running through him at the sound.
“That’s just Cas, getting something out of the way,” Sam assures him. Dean hates being so damn helpless and dependant on others.
If Dean tries really hard, he thinks he can see the weak shine of light at the end of the tunnel. It might be his imagination, though, or just the residual light creating shapes before his eyes that takes weeks to be fully gone. “We’re alone, right?” he asks, hating that he can’t see. “Think there’s anyone else in here?”
“No. No demons, at least.”
That doesn’t rule out humans, angels or any other kind of monster. Cold as it is, they wouldn’t even notice a ghost standing right beside them, and none of them have an angel-radar. Not even Castiel, as proven when he and Dean were ambushed in Georgia. And Sam…
Sam would only notice Lucifer approaching. So at least that guy isn’t anywhere near them.
Something is dripping down the wall next to them, making Dean wonder if the tunnel is going beneath a river and if there’s any chance it’s going to collapse under the weight of the water. He hopes not. The light before him has strengthened to the degree that he’s sure it’s actually really there, but it’s still very far away.
Cas is waiting for them a few steps away. Dean notices him because he blocks the light, but also because Sam mindfully lets his brother run into him. “Hi Cas,” Dean says once he pulled his hat out of his face.
“Hello.”
“How’s the weather.”
“Still bad, apparently.”
“Think that might be Michael’s doing?”
“What makes you think that?” Cas sounds honestly confused there.
“Jena mentioned the recent cold might not be entirely natural.”
Cas is silent after that. Dean can’t see them but he can fucking sense him and Sam exchanging a glance over his shoulder. “It’s possible,” Cas eventually says. “But it might just be nature."
The answer isn’t helpful, but Dean has stopped expecting anything really helpful for evaluating their situation. It sucks, their prospects are shitty, and no matter if the weather is natural or angel-induced, they will have to deal with it, period.
There’s a pile of cars near the exit of the tunnel, blocking the way. Even Dean can see them now, if badly. He only needs a little directing from the others to climb over the obstacle, but it’s still difficult because the whole thing shifts when he’s right on top of it and for one fearful second he’s convinced that the pile is going to collapse and crush Sam.
It doesn’t. Dean makes it to the other side without doing more than twist his ankle a little because the hood of a car he wanted to stand on while climbing down has a hole in it he didn’t see. The security of Sam’s and Cas’ movements that he can only vaguely make out makes him wonder if he was the only one needing the torches in the caves, or if the total blackness of that place, without the barest glimmer of light falling in from a far exit, was too much even for them.
Apparently, Sam’s vision isn’t perfect here either, or he didn’t pay enough attention, or maybe it’s just bad luck. In any case, he doesn’t make it over the cars entirely unscratched. It’s just a scratch on the hand though, from placing it on a shard of metal or broken glass or something and simply completes their set of hand injuries after Dean cutting himself on the rock and Cas getting his palm impaled by this own sword. Though Sam’s hands are already scarred enough so he really doesn’t need another one.
Dean only notices this new one when they are almost outside and he can see enough to make out his brother pressing his cape against his palm. Three minutes later the small but badly bleeding wound is dressed in a makeshift bandage and they stand in the mouth of the tunnel, discussing their options, which are few.
They can either stay here and wait until the next day, see if the storm will lessen, or they can move on and look for better shelter. In the end they all opt for moving on – the day’s still too young to waste like this, the tunnel protects them as long as the wind doesn’t change directions but offers no comfort otherwise and neither of them feels good with a space so open to two sides – least of all Dean, who would not make out anything creeping closer through the dark.
So they leave the shelter they have search for a better one, with Cas leading them out into the fading light.
NEXT
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Date: 2012-06-09 11:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-15 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-09 05:49 pm (UTC)I'm ambitious. I would really, really like to see their struggles rewarded with success and a world starting to regrow.
But right now they're kind of at peace with each other, and that's success of a sort.
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Date: 2012-06-15 12:31 am (UTC)Thank you for commenting! It makes me so happy that you're still reading this!
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Date: 2012-06-09 07:57 pm (UTC)I hope I'm doing this right because I've never commented on anything before!
I only found your writings two days ago but I've devoured everything you've written so far (that I've found. I really hope I've missed a lot of it!)
Of course, I don't have anything profound to say now that I'm here. I just really want to say how much I love your stories, all of them. This story (series? I don't know the lingo, I'm afraid) is particularly amazing. The depth of your characters and the painstaking detail of the heartbreaking scenarios you put them in are fabulous to read.
I couldn't even hazard a guess as to what direction this story will end up going in but thank you so much for sharing it with us. I can't wait for the next chapter.
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Date: 2012-06-15 12:36 am (UTC)The lingo is a little fuzzy in places since not everyone uses the labels exactly the same way, but this would be a story. There's also a related sidestory to it, which makes it a 'verse, but in this context, story is the word.
Anyway, thank you so much for your comment! It means a lot to me that you took the time to leave a few words, and I'm really happy you like my writing!
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Date: 2012-06-11 01:33 am (UTC)You are one of the best, if not the best, SPN writer I've come across. Your amazing talent continues to enthrall me.
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Date: 2012-06-15 12:39 am (UTC)Yeah, things are going down right now, but they'll get better again. And then very bad... you know the drift. There is an end in sight, though, and I won't tell you whether it'll fall on an up or a down. :P
Thank you so much for your continued support! You guys keep me writing!
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Date: 2012-11-12 02:42 pm (UTC)