A disturbing lack of faith (mild Sam/Dean, pg, 2700 words, au)
I have more spies, but first - this! How to explain this? Erm, so Kripke references Star Wars a couple of times, and incest is kind of canon in Star Wars, and Star Wars was one of my first fandoms. And this is a very short reworking of part of Lazarus Rising… set a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
A disturbing lack of faith
(mild Sam/Dean, pg, 2700 words, au)
A Jedi, a wookiee and a pilot walk into a bar…
A tiny white light on the console blinks on and off silently.
On, off… on, off… on, off…
Dean's eyes crack open, fix blearily upon the light. His cheek is flat against the controls of the navigation panel, the keys no doubt imprinting their shapes into his skin. After a moment of continued nothing, he sits up and looks about the cockpit. No one but him. The ship seems to be running itself, albeit without a course set. It's just - just drifting.
Space is huge and black and immense beyond the cockpit window, and Dean has a fleeting recollection of breaking glass, of his body floating out amongst frozen, glittering points of light, of something curling in around him from beyond the Outer Rim.
He shakes his head to clear it and settles more comfortably in his seat. It's easier to focus on what he knows - running systems diagnostics and trying to make out from the star charts where the hell he is - than to even briefly touch on the big blank in his memory. Give Dean a ship to fly, and the rest of the galaxy can go fuck itself as far as he's concerned.
According to the star charts, Dean has lost four months. The closest planet is Manaan and as far as Dean's aware, he hasn't been to Manaan in years and really doesn't want to. But still, the ship - which is a rust bucket compared to the Impala - is working okay. There's some damage to the shields, which suggests Dean took a hit at some point, but the shields are still functioning. Engine's running fine. Weapons are fine. All good there.
Dean has a ship to fly and a brother to find. He's got a whole list of things to think about before he even has to consider the last four months.
:::
There's a junked-up supply ship abandoned up ahead and Dean opens comms. channels, but there's no one to answer. Which, to a guy like Dean, is as good as an invitation. He docks and goes on board, armed with a single blaster that looks like it was put together back when the Republic was big.
The ship looks recently abandoned and Dean notes, with unease, that there's nothing actually wrong with the engine. He finds a datapad on one of the computers but it's general chatter: a new Czerka outpost on Corellia, some self-righteous lecturing from the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Nothing that gives Dean any more details to work with.
He shuts the datapad down, turns to see what else he can find of use, and the whole ship shudders. Dean braces himself against the side, palms pressed flat to the metal, and waits for the turbulence to subside. There's nothing to be causing it. There are no alarms, no beeping from the cockpit to suggest they've run into anything other than more dead, flat space.
As suddenly as it starts, the shuddering ends. The ship is silent and still once more.
Dean grabs some supplies and gets the hell back to the dubious safety of the ship he came to in.
He settles back into the cockpit, heartbeat smoothing out surrounded by the things he knows best, and goes back to the star charts.
Sam could be fucking anywhere. It's a big galaxy and Sam's had four months to lose his stupid Jedi ass in it. Dean's gaze drifts helplessly to Korriban, ancient home world of the Sith, and he offers up a silent plea to anyone he might give a damn about him and what's left of his family that Sam's safe. Please let Sammy be safe. Dean doesn't trust the Force, never has never will, but please, please, let it have kept Sammy safe.
Kashyyyk's close by.
Dean shrugs. He's got nowhere better to try.
:::
See, the thing about Wookiees is that, once you've won their loyalty, you can count on them for pretty much anything. But just because you can trust them, doesn’t mean they'll trust you. No matter how much like family you are.
Bobby throws Dean into a tree, almost rips Dean's arm out of the socket, and attempts to snap his neck. Thankfully, Dean is a pretty sturdy guy and Bobby isn't as young as he used to be.
"It's me, old guy!" Dean chokes out. "C'mon, you know me! Please, you gotta help me!"
Maybe it's the 'please' that does it. Maybe it's because Dean has stuck solely to defence. Maybe Bobby just wants to believe. Whatever it is, Dean suddenly finds himself smothered in smelly, slightly damp fur as Bobby squeezes him so hard Dean's sure he can hear his ribs cracking. He's being hugged. By a wookiee. Which is even more uncomfortable than it sounds.
"Yeah, hi, missed you too," Dean wheezes. He pats Bobby ineffectually on his massive arm, pauses to pluck a leaf out of the badly kept fur, which is greyer than he remembered. "C'mon, loosen up. Losing oxygen here."
Bobby lets him go with a particularly expressive howl. He looks pretty damn wretched and keeps on pawing at Dean. He gives another yawning roar and Dean shrugs.
"You're asking the wrong guy. I just… woke up. Fine and in one piece." Bobby howls and Dean pulls a face at him. "I know! Look, if I knew, I'd tell you. But I don't have the first fucking clue what pulled me back. Now, c'mon, where's Sam?"
Bobby shambles away into the dark, heavy vines of the forest, his quiet rumble of a response almost lost in the cool, damp air.
"What?" Dean says, hurrying after him. "How could you let him go? You were s'posed to be watching out for the kid! You know the kind of crazy ideas he gets! You were s'posed to be taking care of him for me!"
Bobby's howl suggests that Dean might want to back up with the accusatory tone, and Dean may not be great at taking a hint, even when delivered by a seven foot Wookiee, but he's still aching from where Bobby almost took him apart.
Obviously Dean's gonna have to leave the recriminations for a while.
:::
Maybe finding Sam is like trying to get a tan in the ice-wastes of Hoth, but no power in the galaxy can hide the Impala from Dean for long. And whereas Sam might ditch Bobby, there's no way he'd ditch Dean's baby. When he locates the Impala, Dean's pretty sure he's found Sam.
The Impala is docked on Manaan, right by where Dean woke up in his crappy rust bucket starship. He and Bobby exchange glances at that little connection but neither of them says it. Neither of them wants to be the first to bring up just what kind of power Sam must be throwing around if he managed to drag Dean back from beyond the Outer Rim.
Manaan's a nice enough planet. Blue skies and bluer oceans. It's what passes for civilised these days, even if the constant aquatic gurglings of the natives always gives Dean enough of a headache to tempt him to act in some seriously uncivilised ways.
They ask around and a guy in the cantina tells Dean he saw someone matching Sam's description at the nearby apartment complex. Dean thanks him and then soundly whips the guy's ass in a game of Sabacc. They have a brief but friendly conversation - well, Dean's friendly, he can't be answerable for other people's bad tempers - about whether Dean maybe cheated a little with the cards. Bobby puts in a meaningful howl about how he doesn't think that's the case, and he's apparently very convincing because the guy backs right off.
Still, Dean and Bobby don't hang around in the cantina any longer after that than they have to.
The apartment complex is a little rundown, not one of the nice plush places they passed on the way, and Dean's inexplicably reassured by that. Dean likes to needle at Sam about the judicious use of mind-whammies to get them decent accommodation at a decent rate, but Sam's always been too Lightside for crap like that. And it looks like he still is.
Except - there's a hot Twi'lek where Sam should be. She's only half-dressed, leaving bare plenty of smooth skin - skin the red-gold colour of a Tattooine sunset. Her headtails, elegant and striped with black, are coiled back behind her neck. Dean tries really hard not to get sidetracked, because finding Sammy is even more important than super-hot Twi'leks, but wow! She really is super-hot.
"Help you?" she says, in a tone that says the complete opposite.
Dean glances uncertainly at Bobby and then shakes his head.
"Sorry, my mistake. I thought-"
Sam's there. Sam is there. Standing right behind her. It's Sam. And shit, Dean remembers nothing of the last four months, but he remembers missing Sammy. His baby brother stands there, all grown up, hulking great manbeast of a guy, who could probably arm-wrestle Bobby and win, and… Dean's smiling before he can think of anything to say.
He takes a step towards Sam -
- and only narrowly misses the burning stroke of Sam's yellow lightsaber before Bobby hauls Sam away. There's a lot of noise - Bobby roaring at Sam to stop, wait a second, it's him, it's him, the dull hum of Sam's lightsaber, the angry half-words spilling from Sam's lips that he shouldn't be saying, because anger leads to the Dark side of the Force.
And all Dean can think is that Sam should know.
Slowly, the rage drains from Sam's face - rage that should never have been there - and a trembling desire to believe takes its place. The blade of Sam's lightsaber flicks out. Dean risks a half-step towards Sam, and Sam meets him there.
They hold onto each other because they are tiny specks of nothing in the hugeness of the galaxy, but together, they matter. Nothing in the galaxy means a goddamn thing if they don't have each other. Sam's fingers are knotted into the back of Dean's thin shirt and Dean buries his face in Sam's neck, eyes closed, so that all there is for him to know is Sam. It hurts how tight Sam's holding him but he doesn't have a single thought of getting free.
Yeah, it hurts how tight Sam's holding him, but it hurts more when they have to step apart.
"I thought Jedi weren't allowed boyfriends," the Twi'lek chick says in a small, unsure voice.
"No, no. He's my brother," says Sam.
Dean flashes her a smile, because she can't possibly understand everything that means. No one understands what it means like they do. Not Bobby, not John.
Nobody but Sam and Dean.
:::
After Sam's unceremoniously kicked the hot Twi'lek from his room - and the kid's obviously learnt a lot from his big brother, because there's no way he'd've known how to pick up a chick like that on his own - they lapse into an awkward silence.
"So," says Dean, helping himself to a better blaster from Sam's kit and abandoning the old one. "What Force power did you use to pull it off, huh?"
Sam looks up at him, confused, and Dean searches his face for any sign of corruption, any trace of Dark side taint. Not his baby brother. Nothing wrong with his Sammy.
"The girl? Dean, I don't need that kinda help. Plus, it'd be wrong in really skeezy ways."
"Getting me back, Sam. How'd you do it?"
Bobby puts in a grumbling snarl and Sam frowns at them both.
"It wasn't me," he insists. "I got word that some of Darth Li Leth's apprentices were here and I came looking for-"
"Revenge?" Dean puts in, eyebrow raised. "You were going after a Sith Lord, solo, for revenge, and you stopped off to bang a hot Twi'lek, and it's all coincidence that you just happened to end up right next to where I woke up? Yeah, okay. Whatever."
Dean's angry and he's scared and there's that silence in his head, the silence from beyond the Outer Rim, and he has to keep talking to shut it out. Has to keep talking even if he doesn't like the words he has to say.
"And not even dealing with the revenge part," he says, "but are we're going to talk about how banging hot Twi'leks, lust, like everything else even remotely fun, leads to the Dark side? I'm guessing not, because I'm guessing it's all too fucking late for that."
"I haven’t gone Dark side, Dean!" Sam snarls.
He's up in Dean's face, too tall and radiating a subtle, secret menace. And even Bobby's picking up on it; Dean can hear the unhappy growl thundering in his chest.
"I couldn't do it, all right?" says Sam. "I tried! I tried getting you back, but I wasn't strong enough!" His whole face crumples. Like he's a kid again. This fucking stacked Jedi and all Dean sees when he looks at him is his kid brother. "I wasn't strong enough. I'm sorry."
It's all still wrong and screwed and Dean's still got this deep-down sense of dread. But Sam's all right. Sam's safe and in one piece and Dean's got him right here. Dean can take care of him again.
:::
They'll leave the next morning. Bobby's gone off to track down a contact, someone in touch with the Force who might be able to find them some answers. Sam seems on edge, keeps darting furtive little looks at Dean and Dean can't blame him - four fucking months while Sam tries to take on a Sith Lord by himself - but it's not exactly helping Dean settle.
So Dean brings him up onto the roof of the apartment, where they can watch the sun dipping into the glittering surface of the ocean and the stars freckling the sky like raindrops on a window. Sam doesn't bother pulling the hood up on his robe and it strikes Dean, suddenly, how used he is to seeing Sam dressed like that. Took him so long to accept his brother was never going to be like dad, never going to be like Dean.
And now, looking at him, it fits. His baby brother, a Jedi knight. How's that for crazy?
"This is yours," says Sam into the silence, and pulls Dean's amulet off over his head.
Dean looks at the tiny bull's head hanging from the cord, wonders whether it's warm from Sam's skin, and then leans closer to let Sam put it on him. Sam's fingers brush Dean's neck as he lays the amulet under Dean's shirt. It is warm.
Sam doesn't move out of his space - Dean doesn't want him to.
Instead, Sam traces the bone structure of Dean's face. Fingertip trailing over his eyebrow and cheekbone and lips, as if considering how Dean had been put back together. His eyes look black in the setting sun.
"Don't laugh," Sam says, his voice small and distant.
"Depends what you're gonna say."
"There's… there's a disturbance in the Force. Everything feels wrong." He swallows, looks down at the ground almost shamefully. "I've been scared."
"Fear leads to the Dark side," Dean says. It's only half-mocking.
Sam smiles faintly and Dean mirrors it. Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous for a guy like Dean to be spouting crap like that. Still, liking the Jedi, having faith in the Force, Dean doesn’t need any of that to acknowledge that Sam's walking a dangerous line.
"I've been scared without you," Sam says. "Felt like I've been going crazy."
"Well," says Dean, breaking eye-contact briefly to look up at the stars, "I'm back now. Don't need to be scared, Sam. So long as I'm here, you don't gotta worry. Everything's going to be okay."
But when he looks back at Sam, Sam won't meet his eye. Perhaps it's the dusk, but Sam's face is abruptly alien and Dean doesn't know him at all. Sam's mind is a million miles away, kept carefully tucked out of sight from Dean.
From nowhere, a cold breeze ripples over Dean's skin.
"You're not doing any of that Dark side stuff, right?" he says, unsure why that question is back all of a sudden.
Sam flicks a glance at him and Dean shivers in the growing wind.
"You're not, right?"
"No," says Sam. "It was practically your dying wish. Of course I'm not."
And Dean believes him. He does. But… he has a bad feeling about this.
~end
ETA: Bobby by wanttobeatree
A disturbing lack of faith
(mild Sam/Dean, pg, 2700 words, au)
A Jedi, a wookiee and a pilot walk into a bar…
A tiny white light on the console blinks on and off silently.
On, off… on, off… on, off…
Dean's eyes crack open, fix blearily upon the light. His cheek is flat against the controls of the navigation panel, the keys no doubt imprinting their shapes into his skin. After a moment of continued nothing, he sits up and looks about the cockpit. No one but him. The ship seems to be running itself, albeit without a course set. It's just - just drifting.
Space is huge and black and immense beyond the cockpit window, and Dean has a fleeting recollection of breaking glass, of his body floating out amongst frozen, glittering points of light, of something curling in around him from beyond the Outer Rim.
He shakes his head to clear it and settles more comfortably in his seat. It's easier to focus on what he knows - running systems diagnostics and trying to make out from the star charts where the hell he is - than to even briefly touch on the big blank in his memory. Give Dean a ship to fly, and the rest of the galaxy can go fuck itself as far as he's concerned.
According to the star charts, Dean has lost four months. The closest planet is Manaan and as far as Dean's aware, he hasn't been to Manaan in years and really doesn't want to. But still, the ship - which is a rust bucket compared to the Impala - is working okay. There's some damage to the shields, which suggests Dean took a hit at some point, but the shields are still functioning. Engine's running fine. Weapons are fine. All good there.
Dean has a ship to fly and a brother to find. He's got a whole list of things to think about before he even has to consider the last four months.
:::
There's a junked-up supply ship abandoned up ahead and Dean opens comms. channels, but there's no one to answer. Which, to a guy like Dean, is as good as an invitation. He docks and goes on board, armed with a single blaster that looks like it was put together back when the Republic was big.
The ship looks recently abandoned and Dean notes, with unease, that there's nothing actually wrong with the engine. He finds a datapad on one of the computers but it's general chatter: a new Czerka outpost on Corellia, some self-righteous lecturing from the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Nothing that gives Dean any more details to work with.
He shuts the datapad down, turns to see what else he can find of use, and the whole ship shudders. Dean braces himself against the side, palms pressed flat to the metal, and waits for the turbulence to subside. There's nothing to be causing it. There are no alarms, no beeping from the cockpit to suggest they've run into anything other than more dead, flat space.
As suddenly as it starts, the shuddering ends. The ship is silent and still once more.
Dean grabs some supplies and gets the hell back to the dubious safety of the ship he came to in.
He settles back into the cockpit, heartbeat smoothing out surrounded by the things he knows best, and goes back to the star charts.
Sam could be fucking anywhere. It's a big galaxy and Sam's had four months to lose his stupid Jedi ass in it. Dean's gaze drifts helplessly to Korriban, ancient home world of the Sith, and he offers up a silent plea to anyone he might give a damn about him and what's left of his family that Sam's safe. Please let Sammy be safe. Dean doesn't trust the Force, never has never will, but please, please, let it have kept Sammy safe.
Kashyyyk's close by.
Dean shrugs. He's got nowhere better to try.
:::
See, the thing about Wookiees is that, once you've won their loyalty, you can count on them for pretty much anything. But just because you can trust them, doesn’t mean they'll trust you. No matter how much like family you are.
Bobby throws Dean into a tree, almost rips Dean's arm out of the socket, and attempts to snap his neck. Thankfully, Dean is a pretty sturdy guy and Bobby isn't as young as he used to be.
"It's me, old guy!" Dean chokes out. "C'mon, you know me! Please, you gotta help me!"
Maybe it's the 'please' that does it. Maybe it's because Dean has stuck solely to defence. Maybe Bobby just wants to believe. Whatever it is, Dean suddenly finds himself smothered in smelly, slightly damp fur as Bobby squeezes him so hard Dean's sure he can hear his ribs cracking. He's being hugged. By a wookiee. Which is even more uncomfortable than it sounds.
"Yeah, hi, missed you too," Dean wheezes. He pats Bobby ineffectually on his massive arm, pauses to pluck a leaf out of the badly kept fur, which is greyer than he remembered. "C'mon, loosen up. Losing oxygen here."
Bobby lets him go with a particularly expressive howl. He looks pretty damn wretched and keeps on pawing at Dean. He gives another yawning roar and Dean shrugs.
"You're asking the wrong guy. I just… woke up. Fine and in one piece." Bobby howls and Dean pulls a face at him. "I know! Look, if I knew, I'd tell you. But I don't have the first fucking clue what pulled me back. Now, c'mon, where's Sam?"
Bobby shambles away into the dark, heavy vines of the forest, his quiet rumble of a response almost lost in the cool, damp air.
"What?" Dean says, hurrying after him. "How could you let him go? You were s'posed to be watching out for the kid! You know the kind of crazy ideas he gets! You were s'posed to be taking care of him for me!"
Bobby's howl suggests that Dean might want to back up with the accusatory tone, and Dean may not be great at taking a hint, even when delivered by a seven foot Wookiee, but he's still aching from where Bobby almost took him apart.
Obviously Dean's gonna have to leave the recriminations for a while.
:::
Maybe finding Sam is like trying to get a tan in the ice-wastes of Hoth, but no power in the galaxy can hide the Impala from Dean for long. And whereas Sam might ditch Bobby, there's no way he'd ditch Dean's baby. When he locates the Impala, Dean's pretty sure he's found Sam.
The Impala is docked on Manaan, right by where Dean woke up in his crappy rust bucket starship. He and Bobby exchange glances at that little connection but neither of them says it. Neither of them wants to be the first to bring up just what kind of power Sam must be throwing around if he managed to drag Dean back from beyond the Outer Rim.
Manaan's a nice enough planet. Blue skies and bluer oceans. It's what passes for civilised these days, even if the constant aquatic gurglings of the natives always gives Dean enough of a headache to tempt him to act in some seriously uncivilised ways.
They ask around and a guy in the cantina tells Dean he saw someone matching Sam's description at the nearby apartment complex. Dean thanks him and then soundly whips the guy's ass in a game of Sabacc. They have a brief but friendly conversation - well, Dean's friendly, he can't be answerable for other people's bad tempers - about whether Dean maybe cheated a little with the cards. Bobby puts in a meaningful howl about how he doesn't think that's the case, and he's apparently very convincing because the guy backs right off.
Still, Dean and Bobby don't hang around in the cantina any longer after that than they have to.
The apartment complex is a little rundown, not one of the nice plush places they passed on the way, and Dean's inexplicably reassured by that. Dean likes to needle at Sam about the judicious use of mind-whammies to get them decent accommodation at a decent rate, but Sam's always been too Lightside for crap like that. And it looks like he still is.
Except - there's a hot Twi'lek where Sam should be. She's only half-dressed, leaving bare plenty of smooth skin - skin the red-gold colour of a Tattooine sunset. Her headtails, elegant and striped with black, are coiled back behind her neck. Dean tries really hard not to get sidetracked, because finding Sammy is even more important than super-hot Twi'leks, but wow! She really is super-hot.
"Help you?" she says, in a tone that says the complete opposite.
Dean glances uncertainly at Bobby and then shakes his head.
"Sorry, my mistake. I thought-"
Sam's there. Sam is there. Standing right behind her. It's Sam. And shit, Dean remembers nothing of the last four months, but he remembers missing Sammy. His baby brother stands there, all grown up, hulking great manbeast of a guy, who could probably arm-wrestle Bobby and win, and… Dean's smiling before he can think of anything to say.
He takes a step towards Sam -
- and only narrowly misses the burning stroke of Sam's yellow lightsaber before Bobby hauls Sam away. There's a lot of noise - Bobby roaring at Sam to stop, wait a second, it's him, it's him, the dull hum of Sam's lightsaber, the angry half-words spilling from Sam's lips that he shouldn't be saying, because anger leads to the Dark side of the Force.
And all Dean can think is that Sam should know.
Slowly, the rage drains from Sam's face - rage that should never have been there - and a trembling desire to believe takes its place. The blade of Sam's lightsaber flicks out. Dean risks a half-step towards Sam, and Sam meets him there.
They hold onto each other because they are tiny specks of nothing in the hugeness of the galaxy, but together, they matter. Nothing in the galaxy means a goddamn thing if they don't have each other. Sam's fingers are knotted into the back of Dean's thin shirt and Dean buries his face in Sam's neck, eyes closed, so that all there is for him to know is Sam. It hurts how tight Sam's holding him but he doesn't have a single thought of getting free.
Yeah, it hurts how tight Sam's holding him, but it hurts more when they have to step apart.
"I thought Jedi weren't allowed boyfriends," the Twi'lek chick says in a small, unsure voice.
"No, no. He's my brother," says Sam.
Dean flashes her a smile, because she can't possibly understand everything that means. No one understands what it means like they do. Not Bobby, not John.
Nobody but Sam and Dean.
:::
After Sam's unceremoniously kicked the hot Twi'lek from his room - and the kid's obviously learnt a lot from his big brother, because there's no way he'd've known how to pick up a chick like that on his own - they lapse into an awkward silence.
"So," says Dean, helping himself to a better blaster from Sam's kit and abandoning the old one. "What Force power did you use to pull it off, huh?"
Sam looks up at him, confused, and Dean searches his face for any sign of corruption, any trace of Dark side taint. Not his baby brother. Nothing wrong with his Sammy.
"The girl? Dean, I don't need that kinda help. Plus, it'd be wrong in really skeezy ways."
"Getting me back, Sam. How'd you do it?"
Bobby puts in a grumbling snarl and Sam frowns at them both.
"It wasn't me," he insists. "I got word that some of Darth Li Leth's apprentices were here and I came looking for-"
"Revenge?" Dean puts in, eyebrow raised. "You were going after a Sith Lord, solo, for revenge, and you stopped off to bang a hot Twi'lek, and it's all coincidence that you just happened to end up right next to where I woke up? Yeah, okay. Whatever."
Dean's angry and he's scared and there's that silence in his head, the silence from beyond the Outer Rim, and he has to keep talking to shut it out. Has to keep talking even if he doesn't like the words he has to say.
"And not even dealing with the revenge part," he says, "but are we're going to talk about how banging hot Twi'leks, lust, like everything else even remotely fun, leads to the Dark side? I'm guessing not, because I'm guessing it's all too fucking late for that."
"I haven’t gone Dark side, Dean!" Sam snarls.
He's up in Dean's face, too tall and radiating a subtle, secret menace. And even Bobby's picking up on it; Dean can hear the unhappy growl thundering in his chest.
"I couldn't do it, all right?" says Sam. "I tried! I tried getting you back, but I wasn't strong enough!" His whole face crumples. Like he's a kid again. This fucking stacked Jedi and all Dean sees when he looks at him is his kid brother. "I wasn't strong enough. I'm sorry."
It's all still wrong and screwed and Dean's still got this deep-down sense of dread. But Sam's all right. Sam's safe and in one piece and Dean's got him right here. Dean can take care of him again.
:::
They'll leave the next morning. Bobby's gone off to track down a contact, someone in touch with the Force who might be able to find them some answers. Sam seems on edge, keeps darting furtive little looks at Dean and Dean can't blame him - four fucking months while Sam tries to take on a Sith Lord by himself - but it's not exactly helping Dean settle.
So Dean brings him up onto the roof of the apartment, where they can watch the sun dipping into the glittering surface of the ocean and the stars freckling the sky like raindrops on a window. Sam doesn't bother pulling the hood up on his robe and it strikes Dean, suddenly, how used he is to seeing Sam dressed like that. Took him so long to accept his brother was never going to be like dad, never going to be like Dean.
And now, looking at him, it fits. His baby brother, a Jedi knight. How's that for crazy?
"This is yours," says Sam into the silence, and pulls Dean's amulet off over his head.
Dean looks at the tiny bull's head hanging from the cord, wonders whether it's warm from Sam's skin, and then leans closer to let Sam put it on him. Sam's fingers brush Dean's neck as he lays the amulet under Dean's shirt. It is warm.
Sam doesn't move out of his space - Dean doesn't want him to.
Instead, Sam traces the bone structure of Dean's face. Fingertip trailing over his eyebrow and cheekbone and lips, as if considering how Dean had been put back together. His eyes look black in the setting sun.
"Don't laugh," Sam says, his voice small and distant.
"Depends what you're gonna say."
"There's… there's a disturbance in the Force. Everything feels wrong." He swallows, looks down at the ground almost shamefully. "I've been scared."
"Fear leads to the Dark side," Dean says. It's only half-mocking.
Sam smiles faintly and Dean mirrors it. Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous for a guy like Dean to be spouting crap like that. Still, liking the Jedi, having faith in the Force, Dean doesn’t need any of that to acknowledge that Sam's walking a dangerous line.
"I've been scared without you," Sam says. "Felt like I've been going crazy."
"Well," says Dean, breaking eye-contact briefly to look up at the stars, "I'm back now. Don't need to be scared, Sam. So long as I'm here, you don't gotta worry. Everything's going to be okay."
But when he looks back at Sam, Sam won't meet his eye. Perhaps it's the dusk, but Sam's face is abruptly alien and Dean doesn't know him at all. Sam's mind is a million miles away, kept carefully tucked out of sight from Dean.
From nowhere, a cold breeze ripples over Dean's skin.
"You're not doing any of that Dark side stuff, right?" he says, unsure why that question is back all of a sudden.
Sam flicks a glance at him and Dean shivers in the growing wind.
"You're not, right?"
"No," says Sam. "It was practically your dying wish. Of course I'm not."
And Dean believes him. He does. But… he has a bad feeling about this.
~end
ETA: Bobby by wanttobeatree