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Title: Not The Road I See Ahead - Verse Two
By:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Fandom: SPN
Rating: PG (language/adult themes)
Category: Gen - apocafuturefic
Words: 1,977
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no money!
Spoilers: None
Notes: Prequel to Not The World I Left Behind - can be read as a standalone.
Summary: Between blinks, Sam Winchester loses his brother.
Prologue | Verse One | Verse Two | Verse Three | Verse Four | Verse Five
Verse Two – Ripples In The Pool
You ever think how dangerous you might be?
Sam jerked awake when one of Sarah’s hands bumped up against his arm in her sleep. Sam gritted his teeth because even the barest of touches sent waves of toomuchtoomuchtoomuch through him.
They were bunking in an abandoned motel, Sam having heavily salted the doors and windows. Sam had found a room that didn’t smell too bad with a King sized bed that looked okay. Sarah had offered to sleep separate but Sam had wanted her close, knowing that the salt and the symbols he carved into the flimsy ply wood of the walls wasn’t always enough.
They’d compromised and he’d let Sarah build a wall of pillows and blankets between them so they wouldn’t accidentally roll together in sleep. Sarah had still managed to breach the border. Sam shuffled carefully from under her hand, not wanting to wake her and make her feel worse. He still hadn’t explained exactly what had happened to her and he just hoped she understood his need to work up to it.
Sam stood and crossed to the window, looking out into the deserted parking lot. The neon sign was unlit by any normal power but every now and again No Vacancy flaired to life and then died. Sam tried not to shiver.
He looked back at Sarah, who had curled again to her own side of the bed now he was up and sighed. He missed his brother and the pain of it was so close and sharp that Sam had to turn back to the window and press his forehead to the glass for a moment and breathe.
000
When they returned to Lawrence, it was to find that the houses on either side of Missouri’s were burnt out husks. Sam felt real fear well inside right up until Missouri appeared on her front porch, wiping her hands off on a dish towel and looking for all the world like everything was perfectly normal.
“Poltergeists think it’s Christmas,” she offered by way of explanation when Sam raised his eyebrows at her. She had an arm out to Sarah and curled the smaller girl against her. Sarah smiled for a moment but then something seemed to break inside and she collapsed against Missouri, tears finally set free.
Sam stood at the bottom of the front steps and puts his hands in his pockets, feeling miserable. He hadn’t been able to do that, such a simple thing that she so obviously needed. Missouri looked at Sam over the top of Sarah’s head and her smile was gentle and understanding.
“Well,” Missouri huffed when Sarah had cried herself out and was trying to pull herself back together, pushing hair out of her face and stepping away. “I thought you were going to keep comin’ back empty handed.”
“So did I,” Sam admitted, letting himself feel the smallest measure of happiness for his triumph. He’d actually found someone and brought them back.
“Let’s get you fed,” Missouri said, herding Sarah inside. “The pair of you ain’t nothin’ but skin and bones.”
000
Missouri made herself scarce that evening and Sam knew he had questions to answer. He set about making a fire in the living room and could feel Sarah’s eyes on his back long before he was done. He turned to find her sitting in the middle of the couch opposite, wrapped in a big purple blanket. There was only a spill of dark hair and her eyes showing.
“It’ll warm up in a sec,” Sam promised, laughing when Sarah’s eyebrows went up. She slid to the floor and knee-walked forward until she was able to drop right in front of the fire, careful about keeping a space between herself and Sam. He appreciated her making the effort to not touch him but he hated that she had to.
“So,” Sarah said, letting the blanket drop enough so he could see her face.
“So,” Sam repeated, sitting back and drawing his knees up to his chest.
“Where’s Dean?” Sam is surprised that this is her first question and he took a moment to formulate an answer. Finally he gave up and shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t-”
“He got… taken. Near as I can tell he was the very first although I can’t be one hundred percent sure about that but I… I’m pretty sure.” Sam remembered something brushing by him and without a shadow of a doubt he knew what or more specifically who it was. The fact that whatever had landed in Dean had looked damn surprised about it wasn’t reassuring.
“Oh, Sam,” Sarah said, looking stricken and he held up a hand. She seems to understand his silent plea for what it is. He didn’t want her to be sorry or to grieve because that would mean Dean was actually gone. He wasn’t there yet, isn’t sure he ever will be. “Okay,” Sarah said, nodding. “Do you know what happened?”
“From what Missouri and I have been able to piece together, this is a full-on incursion. Demons out of hell in their hundreds, maybe thousands. The bigger, nastier ones used people as doorways in the first wave. Opened portals for a lot of smaller ones to swarm through.”
Sarah shuddered, biting on her lower lip. “I thought… I’m not sure what I thought really. I had been hoping that it was maybe just my area, city… that if I was able to travel far enough I would find somewhere normal.”
“Lot of folks had that idea. People crossed the country looking for safe harbour but there wasn’t any. We got a lot of demons all at once and people just weren’t prepared. A lot of folks were too scared to even try and save themselves.”
“How horrible,” Sarah breathed, pulling the blanket tighter around herself.
“There’s a good side.”
“There is?”
“So many demons all at once, so much chaos, they started turning on each other. Jockeying for position or just such mindless evil they don’t know what they’re doing but hell, I’m all for them taking each other out.”
“You think they will?”
“Not all of them, but people like Deacon would be taking advantage while they can, before the larger demons can reign in the smaller ones. There’s this window where we can level the odds and I’m just hoping it stays open a lot longer.”
“What happened to you?” Sarah asked. Her hand came out and hovered in the space between them before curling into a fist and dropping into her lap. Sam could still remember what it felt it felt like to cup her face in his palms, how she’d smiled while he kissed her and laughed afterwards. He wanted nothing more than to lean forward and see if she tasted the same but he can’t.
He knows that he can’t.
“Not entirely sure,” Sam admitted with a half-shrug.
You ever think how dangerous you might be?
Sam was caught by the voice in his head because he recognised it. He remembered Bobby saying those exact words to him and his shoulder itched for the first time in a long time since he had gotten a single tattoo by Bobby’s hand.
One Dean never knew about.
Sam dropped his head, chin almost touching his breastbone and breathed deep for a moment. It had suddenly occurred to him that maybe, just maybe he was responsible for what had happened to Dean. The Demon, their demon so far as he could tell, was wearing Dean like a coat and it had tried to take him first.
Of that Sam is damn sure.
“Sam?”
Sam had almost forgotten Sarah was in the room with him and he looked up, trying to smile at her but it felt all wrong. He knew she needed the whole story, deserved to be told.
Sam braced himself and began at the beginning, telling her of a boy who lost his mother when he was six months old and how the Winchesters were never the same.
000
..Eighteen Months Earlier..
“You ever think how dangerous you might be?”
Sam was sitting at Bobby’s kitchen table, copying some of the more useful symbols from the Key of Solomon into the journal he’d started to keep. He knew it would be years before his started to look anything like his father’s but he couldn’t bring himself to add to John’s. It just didn’t feel right.
“Hmm?” Sam looked up from his books, pen held loosely in his fingers. Bobby dropped into the chair opposite and the vague sounds of Dean working on the Impala out in the yard could be heard, tools clinking and the faint strains of Enter The Sandman filtering through to the kitchen.
“I just been thinkin’,” Bobby continued and something cold uncurled in Sam’s belly because Bobby wasn’t meeting him in the eye and that was always a bad sign. “I’ve seen a demon get inside a seer before and it’s a bad business.”
“I’m not a seer,” Sam said, snapping the Key Of Solomon shut and pushing it aside. He looked at the door that led out into the yard and tried willing Dean to come back inside because he just knew that this conversation would halt the moment his brother appeared. Bobby had waited until he had Sam alone for a reason. “I’m not like Missouri.”
“No, you ain’t at that but we’re not really sure what you can do. I guess all I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to be finding out when someone else is at the wheel.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Hell it’s not,” Bobby snapped and Sam blinked at him. He’d seen Bobby mad a total of once before when Bobby had run his dad out of the house at the business end of a shotgun. He and Dean had never been able to find out exactly why that had happened. “You ever thought your Daddy could be taken?”
Sam swallowed hard. The pain of his father’s loss was too new and raw. Add to that Dean’s self-imposed isolation and Sam felt like he was drowning. “What are you saying?”
“I found something that might be useful.” Bobby stood and crossed to the bookshelf over his fridge. Slotted in beside a dozen dusty cook books that Sam didn’t think Bobby had ever cracked, was a leather-bound tome with yellowed pages. Bobby set it down on the table in front of Sam and used a faded ribbon that was attached to the top to flip it open to the page he wanted. “Powerful stuff, is said to be able to deflect possession.”
Sam glanced down at the book in front of him and the symbol etched on the page. The writing framing it looked to be Latin at first but when Sam tried to read some of it his eyes watered and he had to look away for a moment, feeling motion sick.
“If it protects against possession then Dean should get it too,” Sam said, sliding out from between Bobby and the table and making for the door.
“Sam, no,” Bobby said simply and Sam turned, confused. “Look, stuff like this isn’t to be used lightly. There’s always a cost to magic this powerful. I wouldn’t have suggested it for you if I didn’t think the risk wasn’t necessary.”
“You think I could be that dangerous?” Sam asked but he already knew the answer because he’d been worried about it himself. The raw power that had arced out of him when he’d thought Dean was going to die had scared him. Something dark in his mind had opened, a yawning cavern that Sam had balanced on the edge of. He was just doing his damndest not to pitch into the abyss.
“I think so, yes.”
By:
kellifer_ficFandom: SPN
Rating: PG (language/adult themes)
Category: Gen - apocafuturefic
Words: 1,977
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no money!
Spoilers: None
Notes: Prequel to Not The World I Left Behind - can be read as a standalone.
Summary: Between blinks, Sam Winchester loses his brother.
Prologue | Verse One | Verse Two | Verse Three | Verse Four | Verse Five
You ever think how dangerous you might be?
Sam jerked awake when one of Sarah’s hands bumped up against his arm in her sleep. Sam gritted his teeth because even the barest of touches sent waves of toomuchtoomuchtoomuch through him.
They were bunking in an abandoned motel, Sam having heavily salted the doors and windows. Sam had found a room that didn’t smell too bad with a King sized bed that looked okay. Sarah had offered to sleep separate but Sam had wanted her close, knowing that the salt and the symbols he carved into the flimsy ply wood of the walls wasn’t always enough.
They’d compromised and he’d let Sarah build a wall of pillows and blankets between them so they wouldn’t accidentally roll together in sleep. Sarah had still managed to breach the border. Sam shuffled carefully from under her hand, not wanting to wake her and make her feel worse. He still hadn’t explained exactly what had happened to her and he just hoped she understood his need to work up to it.
Sam stood and crossed to the window, looking out into the deserted parking lot. The neon sign was unlit by any normal power but every now and again No Vacancy flaired to life and then died. Sam tried not to shiver.
He looked back at Sarah, who had curled again to her own side of the bed now he was up and sighed. He missed his brother and the pain of it was so close and sharp that Sam had to turn back to the window and press his forehead to the glass for a moment and breathe.
When they returned to Lawrence, it was to find that the houses on either side of Missouri’s were burnt out husks. Sam felt real fear well inside right up until Missouri appeared on her front porch, wiping her hands off on a dish towel and looking for all the world like everything was perfectly normal.
“Poltergeists think it’s Christmas,” she offered by way of explanation when Sam raised his eyebrows at her. She had an arm out to Sarah and curled the smaller girl against her. Sarah smiled for a moment but then something seemed to break inside and she collapsed against Missouri, tears finally set free.
Sam stood at the bottom of the front steps and puts his hands in his pockets, feeling miserable. He hadn’t been able to do that, such a simple thing that she so obviously needed. Missouri looked at Sam over the top of Sarah’s head and her smile was gentle and understanding.
“Well,” Missouri huffed when Sarah had cried herself out and was trying to pull herself back together, pushing hair out of her face and stepping away. “I thought you were going to keep comin’ back empty handed.”
“So did I,” Sam admitted, letting himself feel the smallest measure of happiness for his triumph. He’d actually found someone and brought them back.
“Let’s get you fed,” Missouri said, herding Sarah inside. “The pair of you ain’t nothin’ but skin and bones.”
Missouri made herself scarce that evening and Sam knew he had questions to answer. He set about making a fire in the living room and could feel Sarah’s eyes on his back long before he was done. He turned to find her sitting in the middle of the couch opposite, wrapped in a big purple blanket. There was only a spill of dark hair and her eyes showing.
“It’ll warm up in a sec,” Sam promised, laughing when Sarah’s eyebrows went up. She slid to the floor and knee-walked forward until she was able to drop right in front of the fire, careful about keeping a space between herself and Sam. He appreciated her making the effort to not touch him but he hated that she had to.
“So,” Sarah said, letting the blanket drop enough so he could see her face.
“So,” Sam repeated, sitting back and drawing his knees up to his chest.
“Where’s Dean?” Sam is surprised that this is her first question and he took a moment to formulate an answer. Finally he gave up and shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t-”
“He got… taken. Near as I can tell he was the very first although I can’t be one hundred percent sure about that but I… I’m pretty sure.” Sam remembered something brushing by him and without a shadow of a doubt he knew what or more specifically who it was. The fact that whatever had landed in Dean had looked damn surprised about it wasn’t reassuring.
“Oh, Sam,” Sarah said, looking stricken and he held up a hand. She seems to understand his silent plea for what it is. He didn’t want her to be sorry or to grieve because that would mean Dean was actually gone. He wasn’t there yet, isn’t sure he ever will be. “Okay,” Sarah said, nodding. “Do you know what happened?”
“From what Missouri and I have been able to piece together, this is a full-on incursion. Demons out of hell in their hundreds, maybe thousands. The bigger, nastier ones used people as doorways in the first wave. Opened portals for a lot of smaller ones to swarm through.”
Sarah shuddered, biting on her lower lip. “I thought… I’m not sure what I thought really. I had been hoping that it was maybe just my area, city… that if I was able to travel far enough I would find somewhere normal.”
“Lot of folks had that idea. People crossed the country looking for safe harbour but there wasn’t any. We got a lot of demons all at once and people just weren’t prepared. A lot of folks were too scared to even try and save themselves.”
“How horrible,” Sarah breathed, pulling the blanket tighter around herself.
“There’s a good side.”
“There is?”
“So many demons all at once, so much chaos, they started turning on each other. Jockeying for position or just such mindless evil they don’t know what they’re doing but hell, I’m all for them taking each other out.”
“You think they will?”
“Not all of them, but people like Deacon would be taking advantage while they can, before the larger demons can reign in the smaller ones. There’s this window where we can level the odds and I’m just hoping it stays open a lot longer.”
“What happened to you?” Sarah asked. Her hand came out and hovered in the space between them before curling into a fist and dropping into her lap. Sam could still remember what it felt it felt like to cup her face in his palms, how she’d smiled while he kissed her and laughed afterwards. He wanted nothing more than to lean forward and see if she tasted the same but he can’t.
He knows that he can’t.
“Not entirely sure,” Sam admitted with a half-shrug.
You ever think how dangerous you might be?
Sam was caught by the voice in his head because he recognised it. He remembered Bobby saying those exact words to him and his shoulder itched for the first time in a long time since he had gotten a single tattoo by Bobby’s hand.
One Dean never knew about.
Sam dropped his head, chin almost touching his breastbone and breathed deep for a moment. It had suddenly occurred to him that maybe, just maybe he was responsible for what had happened to Dean. The Demon, their demon so far as he could tell, was wearing Dean like a coat and it had tried to take him first.
Of that Sam is damn sure.
“Sam?”
Sam had almost forgotten Sarah was in the room with him and he looked up, trying to smile at her but it felt all wrong. He knew she needed the whole story, deserved to be told.
Sam braced himself and began at the beginning, telling her of a boy who lost his mother when he was six months old and how the Winchesters were never the same.
“You ever think how dangerous you might be?”
Sam was sitting at Bobby’s kitchen table, copying some of the more useful symbols from the Key of Solomon into the journal he’d started to keep. He knew it would be years before his started to look anything like his father’s but he couldn’t bring himself to add to John’s. It just didn’t feel right.
“Hmm?” Sam looked up from his books, pen held loosely in his fingers. Bobby dropped into the chair opposite and the vague sounds of Dean working on the Impala out in the yard could be heard, tools clinking and the faint strains of Enter The Sandman filtering through to the kitchen.
“I just been thinkin’,” Bobby continued and something cold uncurled in Sam’s belly because Bobby wasn’t meeting him in the eye and that was always a bad sign. “I’ve seen a demon get inside a seer before and it’s a bad business.”
“I’m not a seer,” Sam said, snapping the Key Of Solomon shut and pushing it aside. He looked at the door that led out into the yard and tried willing Dean to come back inside because he just knew that this conversation would halt the moment his brother appeared. Bobby had waited until he had Sam alone for a reason. “I’m not like Missouri.”
“No, you ain’t at that but we’re not really sure what you can do. I guess all I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to be finding out when someone else is at the wheel.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Hell it’s not,” Bobby snapped and Sam blinked at him. He’d seen Bobby mad a total of once before when Bobby had run his dad out of the house at the business end of a shotgun. He and Dean had never been able to find out exactly why that had happened. “You ever thought your Daddy could be taken?”
Sam swallowed hard. The pain of his father’s loss was too new and raw. Add to that Dean’s self-imposed isolation and Sam felt like he was drowning. “What are you saying?”
“I found something that might be useful.” Bobby stood and crossed to the bookshelf over his fridge. Slotted in beside a dozen dusty cook books that Sam didn’t think Bobby had ever cracked, was a leather-bound tome with yellowed pages. Bobby set it down on the table in front of Sam and used a faded ribbon that was attached to the top to flip it open to the page he wanted. “Powerful stuff, is said to be able to deflect possession.”
Sam glanced down at the book in front of him and the symbol etched on the page. The writing framing it looked to be Latin at first but when Sam tried to read some of it his eyes watered and he had to look away for a moment, feeling motion sick.
“If it protects against possession then Dean should get it too,” Sam said, sliding out from between Bobby and the table and making for the door.
“Sam, no,” Bobby said simply and Sam turned, confused. “Look, stuff like this isn’t to be used lightly. There’s always a cost to magic this powerful. I wouldn’t have suggested it for you if I didn’t think the risk wasn’t necessary.”
“You think I could be that dangerous?” Sam asked but he already knew the answer because he’d been worried about it himself. The raw power that had arced out of him when he’d thought Dean was going to die had scared him. Something dark in his mind had opened, a yawning cavern that Sam had balanced on the edge of. He was just doing his damndest not to pitch into the abyss.
“I think so, yes.”
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The rest is in beta-land soon to be back (hopefully!)
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*pets them all*
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you rock!
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