To Rise, We Must Fall (1/2)
Sam wakes in the middle of the night and lurches upright, clutching his chest, as a lightning bolt of terror makes it’s way through the entirety of his body. The sheets are wet beneath him and his heart is hammering so fast, that he feels like he can’t breathe. And the more he tries to regain his breath, the further it seems to escape him.
Sam tries to focus on the fuzzy alarm clock numbers, but his eyes only scream with protest. He crawls out of bed and stands up, looking dazed in the middle of his bedroom. Carding shaky fingers through his damp hair, he catches his reflection in the mirror above his dresser. He couldn’t make out the time, but he can see that he looks like shit.
Standing before the mirror, Sam looks at himself and puts a hand over his heart, mentally willing it to slow down. It takes a few minutes, but he’s successful. He takes a deep breath and nods to himself in the mirror as he feels the panic leave his body.
‘You’re okay,’ he thinks to himself and tries to mean it. ‘You are--you’re okay.’
He gives himself another good look in the eyes and they are hazel and clear and everything that is his. The images from his nightmares flash through his head--of black eyes, of fire and smoke, of bodies--so many bodies laying before him, and at the end of all of it is Dean--on his knees. Dean on his knees, his head bowed and a bloodied knife in his hand, the bodies around them, clearly an offering to him. And then Dean looks up and something about the look on Dean’s face terrifies him enough to lurch him into a full scale panic that always jars him awake.
Sam looks into the mirror again, leaning closer, making sure the sunflower hue of his eyes are truly reflecting back at him and not those horrifyingly empty black eyes. He waits, blinks, opens his eyes and tilts his head. Still the same. For the first time since he woke up, he feels a small tremor of calm trickle down his spine and he greets it warmly with a dry swallow of his throat.
Throwing on a wrinkled t-shirt that he plucked from the floor, he turns and looks at the mess that is his bed and decides that sleep is not his friend, but that coffee is indeed his friend. Maybe if he drinks at least four pots he can convince his body that he feels a whole hell of a lot better than he looks. There’s obviously not enough coffee in this world to wipe away the bags of sleepless nights from under his eyes, but damn it if he wasn’t going to try.
Heading for the kitchen, he stops outside of Dean’s door and touches the door knob. He feels his chest constrict with pent up emotions and immediately lets go of the knob and paces himself slowly down the hallway. His shuffling feet echo like drums as he walks, as though the bunker is eager to remind him that he is all alone. Even the beat of his heart is louder within these walls and when he tries to quiet it, it only gets more pronounced.
Sam pulls up the research he was doing from the night before on his laptop and mentally wills himself to not look at the date. But the numbers seemingly throb from the corner of his eyes and he is helpless to look. And when he does, his loudly thumping heart, sinks.
Three weeks.
It’s been three fucking weeks since Dean vanished like a zombie from his room. Three weeks of looking around every corner and under every damn rock he could think of. There are no signs of his Brother and with every day that passes, the harder it gets to save face and pretend that he’s truly optimistic about the situation.
After all, it’s a little hard to be hopeful of the outcome of a dead Brother who vanished from his very room, without a trace--without a word.
Sam sips his coffee slowly and tries to forget the dreadful tickling thoughts in the back of his head. Instead, he scrolls through freshly written news articles and prays something hairy will show up on his radar. And he hopes it’s sooner rather than later.
_____________________________
Four days later, Sam thinks he’s found a lead in a couple towns over. A man fitting Dean’s description was reportedly causing havoc in a local bar and well, Sam knows it’s most likely a stretch, but he has nothing else to go on--so this is it.
He borrows an old jeep from the bunkers garage and hauls himself down the interstate. His foot presses eagerly into the accelerator, the almost happy panic that fill his body whole is edging on worrisome, as though his body will explode if he doesn’t get to his destination fast. Every nerve in him is focused on one thing and one thing only--finding Dean. Of seeing him and reassuring himself that Dean is okay, that they’ll both be okay.
They have to be.
And maybe the nightmares Sam’s been having have caused him more sleep deprivation than he'd thought. Because he doesn’t make it but 10 miles down the road, when he starts to feel strange. Like there’s a pull in his brain, like a hand is in there and it’s pulling him somewhere else. And then he notices the music on the radio and how it seems to get further and further away, no matter the volume.
It happens slowly, the world around him going from bright and sunny, to severely overcast. A whisper in the back of his head tells him to relax, and without questioning it, he does.
The last thing Sam can coherently remember, is mile marker #48 slowly whirring by and then his entire world fades to nothing.
**
Dean stands before him, a satisfied look sitting across his lips. As though he’s been waiting for this moment, for a really long time. And well, it has been a long time--3 whole weeks in fact. But Dean looks like he’s waited longer, so much longer.
“Dean?” Sam calls out, not sure of what is happening or if it’s truly Dean he sees.
“Oh, it’s me , Sammy.” Dean chuckles as he answers a question that never left Sam’s lips. “And I’m better than ever. And soon, you will be, too.”
Dean looks at Sam and smiles. But the smile is wrong; it’s somehow misplaced.
Dean has smiled at Sam a hundred and two-million different times during the course of their lives, and this smile--this smile is dark and it’s twisted. It bears no resemblance to the one Sam’s always known. And this realization, pools a troubling thought at the deepest part of Sam’s stomach. It’s heavy and it’s ugly in it’s boldness. It clings to his stomach and festers like a rotting corpse. It’s a single terrible thought and it repeats endlessly within him-- ‘will he’ll ever see ‘His Dean’ smile again?’
“I brought you here, because we need to have a little chat.”
Sam follows Dean as he walks back and forth. A shadow seems to follow him as he walks and Sam can’t decide if he should be worried or not.
“Here?” Sam somehow manages through his traffic jammed thoughts.
“Consider this a dream,” Dean says and then winks. “A dream within a dream.”
“A wha--?”
“This, this is our true destiny, Sammy…” Dean seethes creepily, his eyes flashing black, his words echoing repeatedly around them. “It’s was right in front of us the entire time.”
Sam’s heart races as he tries to process Dean’s eyes and how they mirror the nightmares where he, too, has black eyes. It can’t be coincidence, but he shuts off the thoughts of it being something--because this, this is not their destiny. He’s not sure how Dean is the way he is, but he’ll fix him, there has to be a way--
“Sammy, stop.” Dean chides and offers a pitying look. “I don’t want to be fixed. But, I will fix you.”
“Fix?”
“More like, see-to-it that you reach your full--” Dean stops and thinks for a second, before being satisfied with the word, “potential.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam spits, confusion bubbling within him like a boiling pot of water. The entirety of his body tightening like a taut rubber band, as ‘Not Dean’ Dean circles him like a vulture.
A warm calloused hand cups the side of Sam’s face and Sam arches his body away involuntarily. No matter how much he’s missed his Brother, no matter how much he longs to feel that hand on every inch of his skin, he can’t bear this ‘thing’ charading as his Brother, to touch him.
Dean steps back and away and nods as though he understands, a sadness falling over him. And it’s strange how this ‘Not Dean’ Dean with his black eyes and his destiny speeches, can look so much like the Brother that Sam has always loved.
Sam’s brows furrow as he tries to really look at Dean and see if he can find the places he’s memorized with the back of his hands and the lick of his tongue. As though, if he looks long enough, he’ll find the cracks in the seams. That he’ll see where ‘Not Dean’ and ‘His Dean’ begin and end.
“I’m all here, Sammy.” Another answer to an unasked question.
“How are you doing that? Stop!” Sam shouts, suddenly more angry than he is scared. Annoyed that this ‘Not Dean’ Dean is such an intrusive asshole. “If you can read my mind, hear this--” Sam snarls as he tells Dean to fuck off over and over and over, in his mind.
“That’s not very nice, Sam.” Dean laughs with amusement and then lazily lifts his right hand to play with the amulet around his neck.
Sam watches Dean twirl the golden horned token between his index finger and his thumb, as though it’s giving him advice that Sam simply cannot hear. But then Dean lets it go to fall against his chest, tapping it meaningfully as he looks directly into Sam’s eyes.
“It was right here the entire time.”
Dean doesn’t say more, he just lets the silence envelope them whole for a few minutes. And the sound of nothing, sounds louder than any voice or noise Sam can ever remember hearing. It’s deafening and seemingly endless. It’s got the back of Sam’s neck covered in a thin sheen of sweat; has his leg bobbing anxiously as his fingers curl around the arms of the chair he sits in. There’s so many questions he wants to ask, but somehow he knows, there’s simply just not enough time to ask them.
Dean breaks the quiet air once again. Sam sighs with relief and tightens immediately when he feels his body try to relax.
“Sammy, it was right there ,” Dean says again, this time more enthusiastically, as he waves his hands around the amulet suggestively. “All this time, it was right in front of us. We just never saw it.”
Sam doesn’t know what Dean’s talking about, so he stares dumbfoundingly in his direction and waits to be enlightened.
“You are our King and you will rise ---oh, Sammy--you will be an amazing King!!”
And before Sam can get the words ‘of hell?’ out of his mouth, Dean’s fingers are at his temple and suddenly he is overwhelmed by a million flashing images inside his head. Images so vivid and real, they’re like memories he’s never known he’s had; so real, they stimulate every sense he possesses.
(Yellow eyes. The taste of warm blood on the tongue. The scent of fire, of flesh burning, the sound of screams like a symphony on the most crooked of strings. The feeling of two arms carrying him, always carrying him. His mighty chariot, protecting him and loving him unconditionally--even the darkest parts of him. A love so real, he can taste it. It’s like the finest wine he’s ever had the privilege of drinking. Of a golden horned amulet that glows in his palm, a pendant that feels like home, one that mirrors the face he’s been seeing in his nightmares. The face in the nightmares, decorated with golden flecks of ash, a horned crown sitting upon his head and when he opens his eyes, they’re black--black as Dean’s. The amulet is in Dean’s hands, given to him by his own small hands. And then he feels his knees hit something hard and he looks up to see his Brother hovering above him with nothing but utter devotion in his eyes. And then he feels a thousand coursing lightning bolts swimming through his veins and he knows what it means because he sees the foot of his throne and he sees his feet besides his Brother’s in a sea of broken bodies, all in His name. He feels the mighty chant of His name on every crooked tongue that’s ever come to be-- ‘Boy King! Our King! Boy King!’. They bow, they all bow--even his Brother, whom he’s always bowed before. His own voice rings, he can feel it vibrate in his throat and he says, ‘ I am here. ’ )
When the images dissolve and his eyes put back the pieces of his Brother standing before him, his fingers still at his temple, he looks at the amulet hanging loosely between the both of them. He stares at it and manages to get some barely tangible, hiccuped pictures, of himself in gold. And he can’t help but wonder, was it all really right there this entire time?
Sam looks up and he is met with green eyes, the same hypnotizingly beautiful, green clover eyes he’s always known. And something inside of him wants everything to go back to normal, but something else, a strangely deranged part of himself, wants to accept the reality Dean had just shown him.
“I’ll find you, Sammy.” Dean whispers it tenderly and kisses Sam’s lips meaningfully.
And before Sam can digest the lips pressed hotly against his, or any number of the other things going through his mind, he is met with utter blackness once again.
**
Something hard and painful against Sam’s ribs, is what stirs him back to reality. When he opens his eyes, it’s dark outside and he’s still in the jeep that he borrowed from the bunker. He finds himself haphazardly sprawled across the center console and it is a seat belt buckle that is the cause of the throbbing pain at his side. And when he moves to get away from it, his body aches with stiffness, as though he’d been out for more than just a few hours.
Sam reaches for his cellphone sitting in the passenger seat and flips it open. He’s been out for more than 8 hours and he looks around him to see he’s parked in a random diner’s lot, yet he has no memory of driving there at all.
He wipes his hand over his face and makes the mistake of looking into the rear-view mirror. And the only question that finds itself home within his brain--
Is he really a golden crowned king, hanging from his Brother’s neck?
_____________________________
Sam stares down at his plate of over easy eggs and half eaten hashbrowns and feels his stomach beg for food like he hasn’t eaten a bite. There’s a gnawing hunger in his bones, it’s been there ever since he woke up in the parking lot of the same diner he now sits in. And it’s a familiar pang, one he’s felt once before, but he sweeps that thought away immediately.
He finishes the rest of his $3.99 ‘on the run’ breakfast special and stares at his shadowed reflection on the white, egg yolk smeared plate. Maybe if he stares long enough, black saucer like eyes will appear in his eye sockets--just like the vision ‘Not Dean’ Dean showed him. But minutes pass and he feels nothing but the strain of his tired eyes screaming at him to relax, so he looks away.
The brunette waitress with a gentle smile waves a pot of coffee at him from the table over and he feels a shiver of gratitude for small miracles in this world. He needs all the refills he can get and the waitress obliges him with a small nod before disappearing back behind the counter once again.
Sam pulls out a twenty dollar bill and leaves it tucked under his plate, before finishing off his ‘refill’ quickly and shrugging back into his jacket. He looks back down at the empty plate and can’t help but let that unrelenting itch in the back of his throat, coax it’s way back into his brain.
He’s hungry alright.
But it’s what he’s hungry for that has him on edge and freaked out. Every fiber of his body is calling for it, his tongue literally aches in his mouth . He’s seen it a billion times throughout his life, he’s cleaned it up and he’s had his hands and clothes soaked with it--but this, this is a different type of need.
Sam exits the diner and heads for the jeep parked around the corner and finds his tongue licking his cracked lips with need. It’s as though his tongue has it’s own brain, for it doesn’t listen to his own. It knocks at the back of his teeth and it pleads to be drowned in a crimson red delicacy that only pulses beneath the flesh of his Brother’s skin.
He’s hungry for Dean’s blood.
And just the sheer construction of that sentence in his brain, makes him empty his ‘on the run’ special in a bush by his jeep.
_____________________________
Sam finds his way down the stairs to the empty bunker he had left earlier in the day and can’t help but feel an itch in the back of his head. Maybe he’s just had a really long day, too much coffee and not nearly enough sleep, but something about the space around him feels electric. Feels like something has changed, something he can’t quite put his finger on, but something big enough to have him looking over his shoulder and trying to smooth the raised hairs on his forearms.
He inches his way to the landing and drops his backpack and slowly peels off his coat, singing it to rest over the railing as he scans the space around him. It seems untouched. And yet in the same, it seems disturbed. He can’t quite put his finger on just what is different.
Relinquishing the notion that something is off, he sits at the library table and picks up the open whiskey bottle and pours himself a full glass. It’s been a full glass type of day. A full glass or two, or three, type of day really. He smiles around the rim of the glass and welcomes the burn that traces all the way down into his empty and starving gut. Perhaps parts of him hope it will satisfy the growing and festering chants of his bodies wants.
Sam’s hopes they are quickly squelched however, when he feels a wave of bold want, so strong and paralyzing, sweep over his body like an evening tide.
He remembers his jaunt with the demon blood. Remembers what it cost him. What it cost Dean. What it cost everyone around him. And after all this time, after all the fucking regret and trying to atone and wash himself clean of it--here he is, craving it. And not just it , but a particular brand.
Dean’s.
What kind of sick freak craves his Brother’s blood? He swallows down another glass of whiskey at the thought. Because he’s always been a freak. He’s just played cat and mouse with wanting to accept it. But this, this right here, solidifies his opinion of himself.
He is a freak.
And with that, he finishes the rest of the bottle.
part two | masterpost