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fannishlissTITLE: "The Night Weighs Heavy"
SUMMARY: Sam's not a hunter any more. He left that world behind when he came to Stanford. But now his world is dissolving into a series of horrifying nightmares and he can't shake the feeling that it's all his fault. Is there any one who can help him?
PAIRING: canon compliant Sam/Jess (background only)
RATING: PG-13 (Gen)
SPOILERY? No. Assumes familiarity with events through s4.
LENGTH: approx 3000 words.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Supernatural and this story is written with no intent for profit.
WARNING: Character Death. But not in a despairing sort of way.
NOTES: This story follows my Dean-centric story "The Long Hall". Also, it was influenced by the Adrian Lyne movie Jacob's Ladder (1990) starring Tim Robbins. Thanks to everyone who asked for Sam's story -- it only took me three weeks to sort it out!
~~o~~
Sam held a gun in a shaking hand. A good gun – the one Dean picked out for him when he turned eighteen, a real hunter, or so Dean thought at the time. Sam held the gun trained on a woman -- Madison -- a werewolf. “I want you to do it,” she said. She affected a brave smile, and closed her eyes to hide her tears. “Thank you, Sam,” she said.
Sam could barely see through the haze of tears, he was crying so hard, but he took careful aim before he pulled the trigger. The impact of the bullet threw her back, blood blossoming on her shirt. The spark of life faded from her eyes. All because Sam couldn’t save her.
Dean gripped Sam’s shoulder tightly—when had he come in? Dean’s green eyes were bright with tears while Sam shook with sobs, wrecked...
He woke up in a panic. Nightmare. It was getting worse. As Sam lay panting, Jess sat up beside him and snapped on the light.
“Sam? What’s wrong, baby? Why are you crying?” Jess opened her arms and Sam tried to relax into her embrace. Jess stroked his hair, murmuring. “It was just a dream.”
But it didn’t feel like just a dream—more like a vivid and horrifying nightmare involving the bloody execution of someone he’d never met. His mind raced and chased around and around the confusing elements of the dream, which had seemed so visceral, so real. He had never shot a werewolf – he’d certainly never shot a woman. The disturbing clarity of the dream finally began to fade and recede, but Sam spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling in guilt and confusion.
In the morning, Jess tried to tempt Sam to the breakfast table with a special treat of banana cashew pancakes. Sam scalded his tongue on the strong black coffee, and the pancakes seemed to stick in his throat, tough, dry, and horrid.
Sam smiled wanly as Jess kissed his cheek with a worried look. They both had classes and Jess worked that evening. “Take care of yourself, Sam, and call me if you need me,” Jess said, hoisting her backpack loaded with books for the day.
Sam’s morning class was a total loss. Despite his efforts to concentrate, his thoughts kept wandering away from the lecture. He couldn’t really tell where the lecture was going or what it had to do with the topic. His professor’s voice seemed to drone on and on. Sam at least tried to open a book, to scan the material the professor was covering, but his eye skipped randomly across the pages. In his notebook he’d produced nothing but scrawled, random doodles.
After his miserable morning finally crept to a close, Sam tried his favorite lunch place. There was a new girl working the cash register, and for no apparent reason, she gave Sam the creeps. Her long blonde curls – very similar to Jess’s – left him feeling slightly sick. By the time the line had inched forward for him to pay, he felt almost panicky. He handed her some cash and received his change with sweaty palms, loathe to touch her. Her plastic smile almost made him bolt from the restaurant.
He had ordered his favorite, Cobb salad, but he couldn’t eat. He felt achy and dehydrated, his mouth was dry, and his eyes were burning. Sam mechanically shovelled in some lettuce and avocado, and he managed to eat the hard boiled egg, but he had to throw away the rest uneaten. He couldn’t take any more. He finished the liter of water he’d bought, chugging it, but his painful thirst wouldn’t go away.
Even as off as he felt, Sam still made an effort to go to his afternoon class, practical ethics. As soon as he saw the face of the scheduled guest lecturer, a pediatrician specializing in children who’d been abused, he escalated from panicky and jumpy about nothing to pure, murderous hatred. For no reason, the man at the front of the class, smiling and chatting with a few students before class got underway, filled Sam with a loathing there was no way to explain. Sam froze at the door, swallowing down his unexpected rage, till he realized that students were bumping into him, trying to get into the classroom and shooting him angry glares as he obliviously stood there, wide as a barn door. Sam came to his senses, turned on his heel and left the building.
He aimlessly went to a nearby coffee bar, feeling wiped out and pathetic, unsure about anything more than just making some motion toward wasting the afternoon.
He bought a nice enough looking espresso brownie and another liter of water from a dark-haired barista.
“That’ll be three ninety-seven,” she smiled sweetly. But her doe-brown eyes and knowing smile triggered another upsurge of betrayed, sick hatred that left Sam feeling nauseous and even more guilty and confused. Dropping his gaze, Sam tore out of the coffee shop.
Before he knew quite what he was doing, Sam went to the local supermarket and found himself pushing a cart down the aisle. Efficiently, a man on a mission, he gathered up utility candles, matches, Sharpies, several rosemary plants from the flower section, a small funnel, four big bottles of Elmer’s glue, and four big boxes of kosher canning salt.
He paid and rushed home, lugging the plastic grocery bag stuffed carelessly with rosemary plants in one hand, the salt in his bookbag, the rest of the stuff in the other.
Sam’s panic and confusion calmed a little as he systematically began to salt the apartment. He whispered up a short prayer of thanks that at least, despite all the craziness, Jessica was still in class.
Down on his hands and knees, Sam applied a fat white line of glue near the wall around the entire circumference of the apartment. He made the glue especially thick at the threshold. With the small funnel, he directed a thin trickle of salt into the white glue, and as it set, he did it again. He went all the way around the apartment three times, overlaying layers of glue and salt until he was satisfied. Then he opened all the windows and did the same thing to the sills. In each open window he set a pot of rosemary, and prayed, with his whole heart, to whoever might care, for the rosemary’s purity to ward off evil. He lit candles at the four directions, not wanting to overlook any possibility.
Lastly he went around with the Sharpies. Across the lintel of each doorway in the place, he inscribed protective scriptures, just hoping that the Name of God would be enough to turn back evil. On the rosemary pots, he drew the quincunx, a hoodoo symbol of protection he had picked up somewhere. After inscribing as many protective symbols as he could think of, everywhere he could secret them, he trashed all the empty glue bottles and salt boxes and took them out to the dumpster.
Worn out by the day’s crazy nerves, not to mention the lack of any sleep the night before, Sam flopped back onto his bed, exhausted.
He felt a wet droplet splash onto his forehead. Then another. He opened his eyes to the horror of Jessica pinned to the ceiling. Her eyes were wide, imploring him. She couldn’t move. Her white satin nightgown was emblazoned with red, a deep gash across her abdomen soaking the material, sodden and dripping.
A hoarse roar of anguish tore itself out of Sam’s throat. He started up off the bed, reaching desperately for Jessica. A gout of unholy flame devoured her, and he threw his arm across his face, fell back against the bed. He heard Dean’s shout, felt his brother’s strong grip dragging him out of the room...
... and Jess was there, shaking him awake, concern clouding her face.
“Sam – Sam! Come on, baby, wake up! What’s wrong?”
It was all too much. Sam burst into tears, unable to tell Jess what he had just dreamed. It was too real, too immediate-- and somehow, it was all his fault. Something in him, something bad, drew these bad things down on the people he loved. Sam was cursed, and there was nothing he could do about it -- especially since he had left hunting, left Dean to fight back against the dark without him. Sam lay in Jess’s arms and desperately tried to escape the helpless guilt, but it was no use. If he abandoned Dean, if he got Jess killed, what hope was there for him?
The dreams escalated, rapidly reaching a fever pitch, taking over Sam even when he would have sworn he was awake. He dreamed of driving alone in the Impala, hours on end, mechanically taking out a nest of vampires. Sam couldn’t explain how he knew how to kill vampires – he’d never seen one before he came to Stanford.
Once his guilty thoughts about Dean came to the surface, he dreamed of Dean incessantly. Dean was acting silly, taunting him like brothers do, but then Dean was down, bleeding out on the asphalt, in front of some random motel, and Sam’s heart was broken. He dreamed of Dean dying a hundred different ways, but Sam was never able to stop it. Every time, it was all his fault!
Dean was torn apart by hellhounds, and Sam could only watch in terrified, helpless fury. Dean tried to console him, reminded him to do like Dean taught him, but Sam knew he was somehow to blame.
It wasn’t just Dean-- so many people died, and he couldn’t save them. And then it got worse. Sam gave up on sleep altogether when he started to do the killing himself.
He found himself drinking blood from someone possessed by a demon. He ran and emptied his gut in the toilet. Jess patted his hair and tried to comfort him, but it was no use. Sam longed for Dean-- his brother was the only one who understood, who could help him with this. He needed Dean, but he’d left him behind. Sam could’ve almost laughed at the irony of it – the one person he was sure who could’ve helped him understand all this, to find out what to do, to somehow evade the curse he was sure was on him – Sam had wounded Dean where it hurt the most, had left him behind, unneeded, uncalled for.
Unwilling to rest, unable to do anything else, Sam wandered aimlessly around his neighborhood. The lunch girl smiled at him, licking her lips. “Sammy, you tried so hard to get out, to be normal. And it all went straight to Hell anyway!” The peals of her laughter rang in Sam’s ears, but she was just ringing out the coin drawer.
The barista smirked knowingly, wiped her mouth slyly on her arm. “You did it, Sam! I knew you would! I was so sure!” But she was just giving him a brazen, toothy grin.
They handed him his change, and their smiles seemed to insinuate truths about Sam he had never wanted to learn.
That night, despite four cups of coffee, Sam tortured an innocent woman, locked her in a car trunk, then tore open a vein while she cried and screamed, as Sam sucked out every drop of her blood. It took him a while, her cries getting weaker and weaker, but the demon inside her kept her alive till he finally felt the last of it sliding down his throat, a horrid exultation singing in his veins, even as the soul inside him shrivelled in shame. He had to do this for Dean. For Dean! he insisted, but Dean still thought he was a monster. Sam was in a delirium of torment. Was he a monster? Was that what all this meant? Was that his awful, inescapable destiny?
Boy king, the lunch girl and the barista hissed. Boy king, snarled the pediatrician.
Then, like a glimmer of light in the darkness, he seemed to hear Dean: “We’re brothers, you know? We’re family. No matter how bad it gets, that doesn’t change.”
3 am, Sam found himself at a local bar, banging on the door. It seemed unlikely he’d be let in at such a late hour, but then a girl appeared at the door. Dark hair, sparkling eyes--he remembered her as one of the bartenders.
She gave him a gentle smile, but wrinkling her brow, she asked, “Why are you here so late – Sam, isn’t it?”
Sam levered himself to the bar, trying not to dissolve. Then a flash of white light, abrasive and sudden, violently threw him back into the world of his nightmares. He was clutching his brother – it was all his fault –Armageddon -- the Rising of Lucifer. “I’m sorry!” he whispered to Dean, and his brother nodded, but the light bringer neared.
In horror, Sam clawed himself back to the present.
The bartender girl -- Tress? Tisha? -- was still there, watching Sam with greater concern.
She silently poured a stiff whiskey and slid it across the bar.
He downed it, feeling the burn, felt it begin to dull the jitters from all the caffeine he’d been pounding since this began.
“Sam, what is it? You look bad.”
At Tisha’s straightforward words, Sam felt his defenses, already weak, give way. He haltingly began to recount his nightmares, the feeling that he was facing a reckoning for all the worst things he might ever do.
“I just feel like it’s all my fault, and I know the worst of it is, if I only had Dean here with me, I’m sure we could figure it out together. But I left him. And I haven’t talked to him in so long.”
Sam felt like a freak, crying over missing his brother, but he couldn’t help it. Dean had been more than a brother -- they were like two halves of a whole, and Sam had done the cleaving in twain. It was his own fault he was here alone now.
Tisha just shoved his own phone towards him, where it lay on the bar with his keys. “Call him,” Tisha urged.
Sam held the phone a long minute, but finally keyed in the number he knew would reach his brother. He poured out all his fears in the message. “Dean, please, you’ve got to help me. It’s all my fault. I keep trying to do the right thing, but I’m messing it up, I’m messing it up so bad, Dean, please. I need you. I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry. I’d do anything to make it right. Just, Dean, please. Please come.”
Sam’s confession exhausted him. Tisha led him to a back room with a cot. The sheets smelled fresh and clean, and the pillow was deep. Sam was still afraid to fall asleep, but the whiskey brushed over him with a hazy calm. Tisha promised to stay nearby, to wake him if Dean called back.
In the morning, a clear new stillness was in the air.
The sun shone bright through a window high up the wall.
A shaft of sunlight angled down toward the door.
Sam opened his eyes and wondered what would happen. Patiently, he waited and watched.
The door opened and Dean strode in.
Dean looked better than Sam remembered. His hair, artfully mussed as usual, glinted with gold in the gleam of light, his eyes jade green, bright and full of mischief. He was dressed just like always, jacket, boots, ring, the amulet Sam had given him. He had on a worn black T shirt with a silkscreen of a redhead in a valkyrie costume.
“Hey there, Sasquatch,” Dean said, his voice low and rough. “Did you wanna live forever?”
Dean extended his strong, calloused hand, and pulled Sam up into a hug.
Sam thought to himself, we only hug when one of us has been dead – when suddenly the truth just slapped him in the face. It was over. He was finished. It was time to go.
All the bad things he remembered – yes, he had done them. But he and Dean had made it through, regained their trust, become a team again. And at last Sam was truly a Hunter, with a heartfelt belief in the good they did.
It had been hard after Dean went down, but Sam was careful. He hardly ever went in alone if he needed backup. This last hunt -- a thirsty Japanese ghost driven to drain its victims dry – he’d taken it out, but it must’ve gotten him too.
Dean grabbed him around the shoulders. Sam straightened, stretched. He felt strong again, whole. As Dean gave him a brotherly noogie on the back of the head, Sam grinned. The light through the door grew brighter and brighter.
As the light grew beacon bright, the girl Sam left resembled Jess, but older, more serene. As she turned back to the cot, Tessa smoothed the features of the man lying there, brushed back stray strands of brown and silver from his forehead, closed his hazel eyes for the last time. Sam Winchester had gone to his reward.
~~o~~
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
The soundtrack to the piece turned out to be "Twilight Zone" by Golden Earring! Forty-eight years rocking = two really good songs.
PS -- I'd love any advice on where to cross post! Comments will be ADORED.
SUMMARY: Sam's not a hunter any more. He left that world behind when he came to Stanford. But now his world is dissolving into a series of horrifying nightmares and he can't shake the feeling that it's all his fault. Is there any one who can help him?
PAIRING: canon compliant Sam/Jess (background only)
RATING: PG-13 (Gen)
SPOILERY? No. Assumes familiarity with events through s4.
LENGTH: approx 3000 words.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Supernatural and this story is written with no intent for profit.
WARNING: Character Death. But not in a despairing sort of way.
NOTES: This story follows my Dean-centric story "The Long Hall". Also, it was influenced by the Adrian Lyne movie Jacob's Ladder (1990) starring Tim Robbins. Thanks to everyone who asked for Sam's story -- it only took me three weeks to sort it out!
~~o~~
Sam held a gun in a shaking hand. A good gun – the one Dean picked out for him when he turned eighteen, a real hunter, or so Dean thought at the time. Sam held the gun trained on a woman -- Madison -- a werewolf. “I want you to do it,” she said. She affected a brave smile, and closed her eyes to hide her tears. “Thank you, Sam,” she said.
Sam could barely see through the haze of tears, he was crying so hard, but he took careful aim before he pulled the trigger. The impact of the bullet threw her back, blood blossoming on her shirt. The spark of life faded from her eyes. All because Sam couldn’t save her.
Dean gripped Sam’s shoulder tightly—when had he come in? Dean’s green eyes were bright with tears while Sam shook with sobs, wrecked...
He woke up in a panic. Nightmare. It was getting worse. As Sam lay panting, Jess sat up beside him and snapped on the light.
“Sam? What’s wrong, baby? Why are you crying?” Jess opened her arms and Sam tried to relax into her embrace. Jess stroked his hair, murmuring. “It was just a dream.”
But it didn’t feel like just a dream—more like a vivid and horrifying nightmare involving the bloody execution of someone he’d never met. His mind raced and chased around and around the confusing elements of the dream, which had seemed so visceral, so real. He had never shot a werewolf – he’d certainly never shot a woman. The disturbing clarity of the dream finally began to fade and recede, but Sam spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling in guilt and confusion.
In the morning, Jess tried to tempt Sam to the breakfast table with a special treat of banana cashew pancakes. Sam scalded his tongue on the strong black coffee, and the pancakes seemed to stick in his throat, tough, dry, and horrid.
Sam smiled wanly as Jess kissed his cheek with a worried look. They both had classes and Jess worked that evening. “Take care of yourself, Sam, and call me if you need me,” Jess said, hoisting her backpack loaded with books for the day.
Sam’s morning class was a total loss. Despite his efforts to concentrate, his thoughts kept wandering away from the lecture. He couldn’t really tell where the lecture was going or what it had to do with the topic. His professor’s voice seemed to drone on and on. Sam at least tried to open a book, to scan the material the professor was covering, but his eye skipped randomly across the pages. In his notebook he’d produced nothing but scrawled, random doodles.
After his miserable morning finally crept to a close, Sam tried his favorite lunch place. There was a new girl working the cash register, and for no apparent reason, she gave Sam the creeps. Her long blonde curls – very similar to Jess’s – left him feeling slightly sick. By the time the line had inched forward for him to pay, he felt almost panicky. He handed her some cash and received his change with sweaty palms, loathe to touch her. Her plastic smile almost made him bolt from the restaurant.
He had ordered his favorite, Cobb salad, but he couldn’t eat. He felt achy and dehydrated, his mouth was dry, and his eyes were burning. Sam mechanically shovelled in some lettuce and avocado, and he managed to eat the hard boiled egg, but he had to throw away the rest uneaten. He couldn’t take any more. He finished the liter of water he’d bought, chugging it, but his painful thirst wouldn’t go away.
Even as off as he felt, Sam still made an effort to go to his afternoon class, practical ethics. As soon as he saw the face of the scheduled guest lecturer, a pediatrician specializing in children who’d been abused, he escalated from panicky and jumpy about nothing to pure, murderous hatred. For no reason, the man at the front of the class, smiling and chatting with a few students before class got underway, filled Sam with a loathing there was no way to explain. Sam froze at the door, swallowing down his unexpected rage, till he realized that students were bumping into him, trying to get into the classroom and shooting him angry glares as he obliviously stood there, wide as a barn door. Sam came to his senses, turned on his heel and left the building.
He aimlessly went to a nearby coffee bar, feeling wiped out and pathetic, unsure about anything more than just making some motion toward wasting the afternoon.
He bought a nice enough looking espresso brownie and another liter of water from a dark-haired barista.
“That’ll be three ninety-seven,” she smiled sweetly. But her doe-brown eyes and knowing smile triggered another upsurge of betrayed, sick hatred that left Sam feeling nauseous and even more guilty and confused. Dropping his gaze, Sam tore out of the coffee shop.
Before he knew quite what he was doing, Sam went to the local supermarket and found himself pushing a cart down the aisle. Efficiently, a man on a mission, he gathered up utility candles, matches, Sharpies, several rosemary plants from the flower section, a small funnel, four big bottles of Elmer’s glue, and four big boxes of kosher canning salt.
He paid and rushed home, lugging the plastic grocery bag stuffed carelessly with rosemary plants in one hand, the salt in his bookbag, the rest of the stuff in the other.
Sam’s panic and confusion calmed a little as he systematically began to salt the apartment. He whispered up a short prayer of thanks that at least, despite all the craziness, Jessica was still in class.
Down on his hands and knees, Sam applied a fat white line of glue near the wall around the entire circumference of the apartment. He made the glue especially thick at the threshold. With the small funnel, he directed a thin trickle of salt into the white glue, and as it set, he did it again. He went all the way around the apartment three times, overlaying layers of glue and salt until he was satisfied. Then he opened all the windows and did the same thing to the sills. In each open window he set a pot of rosemary, and prayed, with his whole heart, to whoever might care, for the rosemary’s purity to ward off evil. He lit candles at the four directions, not wanting to overlook any possibility.
Lastly he went around with the Sharpies. Across the lintel of each doorway in the place, he inscribed protective scriptures, just hoping that the Name of God would be enough to turn back evil. On the rosemary pots, he drew the quincunx, a hoodoo symbol of protection he had picked up somewhere. After inscribing as many protective symbols as he could think of, everywhere he could secret them, he trashed all the empty glue bottles and salt boxes and took them out to the dumpster.
Worn out by the day’s crazy nerves, not to mention the lack of any sleep the night before, Sam flopped back onto his bed, exhausted.
He felt a wet droplet splash onto his forehead. Then another. He opened his eyes to the horror of Jessica pinned to the ceiling. Her eyes were wide, imploring him. She couldn’t move. Her white satin nightgown was emblazoned with red, a deep gash across her abdomen soaking the material, sodden and dripping.
A hoarse roar of anguish tore itself out of Sam’s throat. He started up off the bed, reaching desperately for Jessica. A gout of unholy flame devoured her, and he threw his arm across his face, fell back against the bed. He heard Dean’s shout, felt his brother’s strong grip dragging him out of the room...
... and Jess was there, shaking him awake, concern clouding her face.
“Sam – Sam! Come on, baby, wake up! What’s wrong?”
It was all too much. Sam burst into tears, unable to tell Jess what he had just dreamed. It was too real, too immediate-- and somehow, it was all his fault. Something in him, something bad, drew these bad things down on the people he loved. Sam was cursed, and there was nothing he could do about it -- especially since he had left hunting, left Dean to fight back against the dark without him. Sam lay in Jess’s arms and desperately tried to escape the helpless guilt, but it was no use. If he abandoned Dean, if he got Jess killed, what hope was there for him?
The dreams escalated, rapidly reaching a fever pitch, taking over Sam even when he would have sworn he was awake. He dreamed of driving alone in the Impala, hours on end, mechanically taking out a nest of vampires. Sam couldn’t explain how he knew how to kill vampires – he’d never seen one before he came to Stanford.
Once his guilty thoughts about Dean came to the surface, he dreamed of Dean incessantly. Dean was acting silly, taunting him like brothers do, but then Dean was down, bleeding out on the asphalt, in front of some random motel, and Sam’s heart was broken. He dreamed of Dean dying a hundred different ways, but Sam was never able to stop it. Every time, it was all his fault!
Dean was torn apart by hellhounds, and Sam could only watch in terrified, helpless fury. Dean tried to console him, reminded him to do like Dean taught him, but Sam knew he was somehow to blame.
It wasn’t just Dean-- so many people died, and he couldn’t save them. And then it got worse. Sam gave up on sleep altogether when he started to do the killing himself.
He found himself drinking blood from someone possessed by a demon. He ran and emptied his gut in the toilet. Jess patted his hair and tried to comfort him, but it was no use. Sam longed for Dean-- his brother was the only one who understood, who could help him with this. He needed Dean, but he’d left him behind. Sam could’ve almost laughed at the irony of it – the one person he was sure who could’ve helped him understand all this, to find out what to do, to somehow evade the curse he was sure was on him – Sam had wounded Dean where it hurt the most, had left him behind, unneeded, uncalled for.
Unwilling to rest, unable to do anything else, Sam wandered aimlessly around his neighborhood. The lunch girl smiled at him, licking her lips. “Sammy, you tried so hard to get out, to be normal. And it all went straight to Hell anyway!” The peals of her laughter rang in Sam’s ears, but she was just ringing out the coin drawer.
The barista smirked knowingly, wiped her mouth slyly on her arm. “You did it, Sam! I knew you would! I was so sure!” But she was just giving him a brazen, toothy grin.
They handed him his change, and their smiles seemed to insinuate truths about Sam he had never wanted to learn.
That night, despite four cups of coffee, Sam tortured an innocent woman, locked her in a car trunk, then tore open a vein while she cried and screamed, as Sam sucked out every drop of her blood. It took him a while, her cries getting weaker and weaker, but the demon inside her kept her alive till he finally felt the last of it sliding down his throat, a horrid exultation singing in his veins, even as the soul inside him shrivelled in shame. He had to do this for Dean. For Dean! he insisted, but Dean still thought he was a monster. Sam was in a delirium of torment. Was he a monster? Was that what all this meant? Was that his awful, inescapable destiny?
Boy king, the lunch girl and the barista hissed. Boy king, snarled the pediatrician.
Then, like a glimmer of light in the darkness, he seemed to hear Dean: “We’re brothers, you know? We’re family. No matter how bad it gets, that doesn’t change.”
3 am, Sam found himself at a local bar, banging on the door. It seemed unlikely he’d be let in at such a late hour, but then a girl appeared at the door. Dark hair, sparkling eyes--he remembered her as one of the bartenders.
She gave him a gentle smile, but wrinkling her brow, she asked, “Why are you here so late – Sam, isn’t it?”
Sam levered himself to the bar, trying not to dissolve. Then a flash of white light, abrasive and sudden, violently threw him back into the world of his nightmares. He was clutching his brother – it was all his fault –Armageddon -- the Rising of Lucifer. “I’m sorry!” he whispered to Dean, and his brother nodded, but the light bringer neared.
In horror, Sam clawed himself back to the present.
The bartender girl -- Tress? Tisha? -- was still there, watching Sam with greater concern.
She silently poured a stiff whiskey and slid it across the bar.
He downed it, feeling the burn, felt it begin to dull the jitters from all the caffeine he’d been pounding since this began.
“Sam, what is it? You look bad.”
At Tisha’s straightforward words, Sam felt his defenses, already weak, give way. He haltingly began to recount his nightmares, the feeling that he was facing a reckoning for all the worst things he might ever do.
“I just feel like it’s all my fault, and I know the worst of it is, if I only had Dean here with me, I’m sure we could figure it out together. But I left him. And I haven’t talked to him in so long.”
Sam felt like a freak, crying over missing his brother, but he couldn’t help it. Dean had been more than a brother -- they were like two halves of a whole, and Sam had done the cleaving in twain. It was his own fault he was here alone now.
Tisha just shoved his own phone towards him, where it lay on the bar with his keys. “Call him,” Tisha urged.
Sam held the phone a long minute, but finally keyed in the number he knew would reach his brother. He poured out all his fears in the message. “Dean, please, you’ve got to help me. It’s all my fault. I keep trying to do the right thing, but I’m messing it up, I’m messing it up so bad, Dean, please. I need you. I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry. I’d do anything to make it right. Just, Dean, please. Please come.”
Sam’s confession exhausted him. Tisha led him to a back room with a cot. The sheets smelled fresh and clean, and the pillow was deep. Sam was still afraid to fall asleep, but the whiskey brushed over him with a hazy calm. Tisha promised to stay nearby, to wake him if Dean called back.
In the morning, a clear new stillness was in the air.
The sun shone bright through a window high up the wall.
A shaft of sunlight angled down toward the door.
Sam opened his eyes and wondered what would happen. Patiently, he waited and watched.
The door opened and Dean strode in.
Dean looked better than Sam remembered. His hair, artfully mussed as usual, glinted with gold in the gleam of light, his eyes jade green, bright and full of mischief. He was dressed just like always, jacket, boots, ring, the amulet Sam had given him. He had on a worn black T shirt with a silkscreen of a redhead in a valkyrie costume.
“Hey there, Sasquatch,” Dean said, his voice low and rough. “Did you wanna live forever?”
Dean extended his strong, calloused hand, and pulled Sam up into a hug.
Sam thought to himself, we only hug when one of us has been dead – when suddenly the truth just slapped him in the face. It was over. He was finished. It was time to go.
All the bad things he remembered – yes, he had done them. But he and Dean had made it through, regained their trust, become a team again. And at last Sam was truly a Hunter, with a heartfelt belief in the good they did.
It had been hard after Dean went down, but Sam was careful. He hardly ever went in alone if he needed backup. This last hunt -- a thirsty Japanese ghost driven to drain its victims dry – he’d taken it out, but it must’ve gotten him too.
Dean grabbed him around the shoulders. Sam straightened, stretched. He felt strong again, whole. As Dean gave him a brotherly noogie on the back of the head, Sam grinned. The light through the door grew brighter and brighter.
As the light grew beacon bright, the girl Sam left resembled Jess, but older, more serene. As she turned back to the cot, Tessa smoothed the features of the man lying there, brushed back stray strands of brown and silver from his forehead, closed his hazel eyes for the last time. Sam Winchester had gone to his reward.
~~o~~
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
I know this was a thousand times darker than Dean's afterlife story... Dean just kind up woke up dead and was like, huh, this is pretty cool. But Sammy! Boy, does he feel GUILTY. Poor guy. He had a lot of stuff to work through before he could go with Dean. In case you remember it, the plot riffs on the main idea of the Adrian Lyne film, "Jacob's Ladder" (1990), starring Tim Robbins.
I also get the impression that Sam will be more touristy in his afterlife. Once they get to Valhalla, Sam will be all like,"hey Dean, let's go to Shangri La-- I bet we can drive there from here!" or "you know? I've always wanted to hang out for a while in Tir Nan Og."The soundtrack to the piece turned out to be "Twilight Zone" by Golden Earring! Forty-eight years rocking = two really good songs.
PS -- I'd love any advice on where to cross post! Comments will be ADORED.
