original by joans23

[spnremixfics]

Remix Title: Turn To Run (Love in a Bubble Mix)
Remix Author: poisontaster
Original Story: Turn To Run
Original Author: joans23
Rating: R
Pairing: Dean/Girl!Sam
Summary: It's the end of everything. And the start of something else.



Sammy stands some distance off. Still where Dean can see her, 'course, but far enough that the Impala doesn't block her vision or her line of sight.

Dean still can't figure out how to take this new Sammy-Sam, she says to him, with every bit of kid sister spite she's ever had. She's worlds away from the skinny, book-loving, geek girl he left behind, turned cold and tough and strange, almost taller than him, and her sun-browned arms wiry with muscle.

Sam was fourteen when he left for the Corps, angry with him, angry with Dad for what she felt was a double standard, angry with Mom for not standing up for her more. Now, even her anger has changed, buried but still smoking, like a volcano. Dean's just waiting for her to blow.

Of course, he's got anger issues of his own.

Dean didn't mind the Corps. His master sergeant was a lot like his dad, his coach and that dude from all the movies rolled up into one bad attitude, but Dean had never had problems following orders, going and doing like he was told. But those same guys that were showing him how to be forever faithful are the same guys that did this-created this mad-dog wasteland of sickness and death.

Sammy calls them demons, her lips pressed thin and white when she spits the word out, like it offends her.

It's only recently he's tipped to the idea that she's not just using it as a euphemism.

xxxxxxxxxx

Dad was the one who called, but it was Sammy who had to actually tell Dean that Mom had died in the fire. The old man hadn't even been able to choke the words out and just thinking about those harsh, cawing sobs made Dean want to hurl.

Two months later, Dad and Sammy had disappeared with everything the family had left in the world-which pretty much equaled the Impala. Nobody knew where they'd gone...not that there was much of anybody to ask. Dean had lived in Lawrence his whole life before signing up and the Winchesters had pretty much hung together. Not because they had to, mind, but because they were just that tight.

Which was great when Dean was there with them and frustrating as hell when he was on the outside and overseas in freaking Africa-trying to get some goddamn information about what the fuck had happened to his family.

Dean had tried to get leave, but from anything anybody could tell, Sam and Dad had packed up and left of their own accord and everyone agreed that it was a shitty goddamn situation, but no one (except Dean) thought it was serious enough to let him go. It was more than six months before he could negotiate his way back to American soil and another month before he could wrangle enough red tape to secure leave. By then, Dad and Sammy were ghosts in the wind.

Dean looked for them until his leave ran out but there wasn't anything to find on a seven month cold trail and he's no detective. He hired one-a P.I.-once he got back to base and there wasn't anything else he could do. More than one, funneling every bit of his pay he could into it.

Not that it did him much good.

xxxxxxxxxx

"Hey. You still with me?" The rough harshness of Sam's voice drags Dean back to himself. He finds her standing against the sun like some kind of avenging angel, frowning down on him.

"Yeah." He can still taste the gasoline in his mouth. He turns his head and spits, scratching idly at his knee with the hand not holding the hose.

"You can't do that, Dean." Sam's fingers are white knuckled around the butt of her gun. "I need... You have to stay focused."

"Sam, we haven't found anything other than corpses for over a week now." He hears the deep glug of the Impala's tank about to overflow and tugs the hose loose, jamming the dribbling end into one of the cans lined up in front of him.

"Doesn't mean there's no one out there," Sam argues, still scanning the landscape over the Impala's roof. "Doesn't mean it's not dangerous." Disdaining safety, she hunkers down and grabs his jaw, grimy thumb smoothing along the bone. Even that light touch makes him shudder with goose bumps. He twists his face out of her grip so violently that he falls back, out of his crouch, and has to catch himself on his hand.

Sam doesn't move back, though, not even a little bit, though her mouth pinches flat. Relentlessly, she says, "You're all I have."

xxxxxxxxxx

"Why do you call them demons?" He asks the question as he watches her circle their room like a prowling dog, casting handfuls of salt and writing in grease pencil across the doors and windows.

She only looks at him sidelong, a gleam of eyes in the hazy lamplight. The room smells like mildew, itching at his nose. "Because that's what they are."

"Demons." He wants to scoff, but he can't, quite. He hasn't fired it, but his gun feels warm as he disassembles it, bright parts that fit together seamlessly, logically. "Like...wrath of God type demons."

Her lips twitch as she turns away from the window, a shy glimpse of the Sam he used to know. "Yeah," she answers, unruffled. "Real wrath of God type." She tosses the grease pencil on the lopsided table and rubs her palms across her hips, moving slower now that she's completed her protective rituals. After a moment of standing there awkwardly, she comes to perch next to him on the bed. "I wish you'd believe me."

Dean lurches up, dumping the gun parts on the blanket in a tumble that makes him wince. "I gotta take a piss."

"Dean-" Sam's words break off as jaggedly as those pieces had hit the quilt, gouging deep like shrapnel.

"I just gotta take a piss," Dean repeats, sharper than he means to. "Don't make such a production out of it, Sa-man-tha."

Something hits the bathroom door as he closes it behind him.

xxxxxxxxxx

Dean had been planning to get out of the Corps when he finished his tour, hoping that enough time would've passed to bury everything that went wrong with him and Sam. Thinking that by then, she'd probably be off at college, fucking some nerd-boy with a stack of books as high as Dean was tall. It twisted inside him like a shank to think about her like that, some soft-bellied, pasty geek slobbering all over Sam's smooth, slim body...but it was better than the alternative.

But once Mom was dead and Dad and Sammy had disappeared, Dean didn't much see the point. The Corps was the only family he had left. He figured he'd find a war somewhere and look for a bullet with his name on it. Or die trying.

Turned out that the Corps had other plans for him.

xxxxxxxxxx

He wakes up to the sound of Sam, half-moaning, half-crying in her sleep. His gun is in his hand before his brain boots up, but the room is empty, still except for Sammy writhing on the sheets. He leaves the gun on the nightstand in easy reach and goes to her, dog tags and the little spiky amulet she gave him tapping time against his bare chest.

Sammy's hair is all sweated out when he puts his hands in it, soothing through the tangled locks. It's shorter than he remembers, but still so warmly soft. "Sammy." He tries to blink the fug from his eyes, still mostly on automatic. "Sammy, wake up."

He feels almost like he's dreaming himself. It's been a long time since he's even had the opportunity to be this tender with somebody, so different from the impersonal atrocities of his work for the CDC, being their muscle, their weapon arm. His fingertips finds places he remembers-the soft hollow of Sam's temple where the blood beats against thin skin, the heated and high flat arch of her cheekbone, the secret dip behind her ear where he used to whisper secrets and once-and only once-he put his mouth.

"Sammy, you're dreaming. C'mon. Wake up."

He's fucked girls from Bragg to Bahrain and it comes back to this, it always comes back to this. To her.

"...find us..." Sam mutters and then, gasping, comes awake like a convulsion, hands closing on his forearm and shoulder and digging in, holding on. "Oh, God, he's going to find us!"

"Who?" Dean asks, then shakes his head. "Sam, you were dreaming. Okay? Just dreaming."

"No." The tears she'd been crying in her sleep thicken her voice, but the no-uncertain-terms bite is back in her tone, even as she keeps clinging to him like he's going to run away. Maybe she's not so wrong as that. "Dean...we've got to get out of here."

"Sam, it's the middle of the night. What's the rush?"

All at once, she pulls away from him, scrambling to the foot of the bed and kneeling up, head tilted, like she's listening. "I didn't tell you everything," she says, in the rough, tight voice that means she's embarrassed and defensive. Her shoulders knit in, a solid, tense line and her hair making it look neckless, like a turtle.

A laugh startles out of him, strangled and pitiful. "Shit, Sam, you didn't tell me much of anything."

The truth is that he was so happy just to see her, find her, driving Dad's Impala and looking like a refugee from a Terminator movie that he didn't much care where she'd been or what had happened. Only that they were together again, even if the world was dying around them.

Sam turns her head and it's too dark for him to see much of her expression, but it's not hard for him to imagine the scornful cut of her eyes and the dissatisfied pinch of her lips. "You wouldn't have believed me."

"Well, I'm listening now."

Sam shakes her head and dives off the bed, grabbing one of the duffels and starting to throw their stuff in it helter-skelter. "It doesn't matter. We don't have time."

"Sam-" Dean stands up too, but he can't get much further than that, feet stuck to the tacky carpet.

"I just need you to trust me," Sam say, sounding like she expects him to do nothing of the sort. "Please, Dean. Just...trust m-"

She's cut off by a sound, by something shaking the walls of the motel like a giant fist knocking. It's not an earthquake. Dean's been through earthquakes and they don't sound or feel anything like the enormous reverberation that goes through the cheap, thin walls, shaking dust and plaster from the foam core ceiling. Dean rocks on his feet, catching himself on the nightstand. Sam reaches into the duffel and then drops it, leaving only the shotgun held in her taut fingers.

"What-?"

"Dean, come here." Sam sounds almost calm, betrayed only by the agitated jerk of her hand as she beckons him.

Two things are ingrained in him-following orders and protecting Sam. Crossing to her side is easy and instinctive as taking a breath. "Sammy. What's going o-"

Another giant-fist blow against the motel walls, shaking the room around them. Though neither of them move, all the lights come on at once, the overhead chandelier, the bedside lamps, the fluorescents in the bathroom...even the parking lot lights. He can see Sammy clearly, ashy under sun-kissed brown, scared, when he's never seen her afraid of anything. He only has a moment to see her that way before the glass of the bulbs whines and hums, filaments flaring white-hot, blinding him for long moments before he has to squeeze his tearing eyes shut. Sam's arm fumbles around his waist and for once, he doesn't flinch from her, letting her press solidly against his side.

The bulbs pop and explode in a brittle tinkle of glass. Dean tries to tuck Sam under him, shoulders hunching against the rain of hot shrapnel on his head and shoulders. Sam's too tall to be tucked anymore, really, but he shields her the best that he can and this close, he can hear the murmured run of her voice above the ringing, metallic whine that's risen to fill the room, making the bones of his ears ache.

He doesn't recognize the words-a little like Spanish, a little like French-and he realizes (especially when he catches a whispered fidelis) that it must be Latin. "When did you learn Latin?" he demands.

The corners of Sam's mouth upturn into a smile, barely seen in the dimness, but she doesn't stop talking-chanting, really-husky and sure.

One last concussion against the walls and the door bursts open in a tearing protest of wood. Dean pivots and tucks his shoulder against the new hail of projectiles, protecting Sam's face, her body. As a result, he doesn't know anyone's there until a familiar voice-in a quiet, slinking tone he's never heard before-purrs, "Isn't this cute? The family's all together again."

Dad?

"Dad?"

Dean turns back to the door, his arms falling from around Sam. "Dad?" he says again, hardly daring to believe it. When Sam showed up all alone, he'd assumed the old man was dead, through virus or misfortune, and he hadn't prodded for more, glad just to have Sam back. Just Sam had seemed like a miracle anyway.

With all the light gone, Dean can't make out a face-not from this far away-but he feels like he'd know his father's silhouette anywhere. Hell with that, he would know the man's silhouette anywhere and, seeing him, there in the dark, Dean feels some extinguished pilot light ember of his soul come back to life. "Dad, what-"

He takes a step toward Dad only to get drawn up short by Sam's fingers fisted in his shirt. "Dean, no."

He tries to pull away from her, more surprised than anything. "Sam, it's Dad, what the-"

"That thing is not our father," Sam says, voice vibrating with tension. Again, he's surprised by her strength, knuckles biting into his arm.

"Now is that any way to talk to your father?" The figure in the doorway spreads his arms and beckons with both hands. "Come here, baby, and give Daddy a kiss."

Freezing cold trip-walks down Dean's neck and spine. That's their Dad's voice, his body...but that sounds nothing like Dad.

What the hell is going on?

Sam growls, the sound ranging up in tone until she screams, "Fuck you, you Hellspawn errand boy!" She tugs at her grip on Dean's sleeve and, bemused, he retreats the one step he already took. Sam flattens her hand across his stomach, edging in front of him. Instinct tells him to protect her, baby sister. The awareness that he's suddenly in way over his head holds him back. Quieter, but still in that smoking furious voice, Sam grits, "You don't get to have me, Azazel."

At the name, the thing's eyes blaze sickly yellow, illuminating its face-his father's face-but its voice is syrup sweet as it asks, "Who says I'm here for you, Samantha?"

"No." Sam's fingers bite into his belly and he can feel her shaking. Stronger, she says again, "No. Dean is mine."

Dean's not sure about the sear that goes through him when Sam claims him as hers, but it's neither the time or the place. He nudges the duffel bag full of weapons with his toe, wonders if he has enough time to dive for one of the guns. Wonders if it'll do any good if he does.

Demons. He doesn't want to believe it, but he can't think of any other word to describe the thing in the doorway, wearing his father's skin. Nothing he's seen in movies, nothing the Corps put him through-not even the virus-prepared him for this. Real wrath-of-God type demons.

"Does he know what you are, Sammy-girl? The things you've done?" The demon leans forward, hands spreading flat across the open air of the threshold like it's doing push-ups. "See you've learned a few tricks since we last saw each other." It smiles, lazy and open-mouthed, like a happy pit-bull. "Does Dean know how you killed your dear, old Daddy?"

Smashed flat against each other, Dean can't help but feel the way that one jerks through Sam like a bullet. What she says is, "I'll show you how much I've learned."

She holds up her hand again, flat-palmed like a traffic-cop signaling a halt. And then from nowhere-everywhere-light and sound fills up the darkness, blotting everything out in incandescent white.

xxxxxxxxxx

She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

Too young, scared, and yet so goddamn stubborn. So goddamn fierce, like a hawk raised in a flock of sparrows. It would be a lie to blame it all on her, to say he was seduced.

The truth was that he wanted to be seduced.

"Dean, let me...just let me..."

"Sammy, it's going to hurt."

"You think it doesn't already?" she asked, with all the melodramatic seriousness of fourteen, when everything is life or death. She held him in her hand like something precious, inexperience making her grip too light, too loose. Didn't matter. Dean felt like he could blow one just from her fingers-Sammy's fingers-touching him. His own hands he kept tucked under his head, too afraid to touch, as much as he wanted to. "Feels like I'm dying sometimes."

He didn't mean to laugh. It wasn't even a laugh, really. Just a choked off noise that never even made it all the way out of his throat. But her fingers tightened on him anyway, that desperate hawk-like look stealing all the softness out of her face. "Don't laugh, Dean, don't you dare."

"I'm not laughing." Dean shook his head against the pillowcase, rousing her scent from it like a restless spirit. "This is wrong."

She leaned down, silk-softness of her belly rubbing against his cock and her hair falling down all around him, a curtain that enclosed their faces, nothing else in the world but her. "It's not wrong." He wished he had the confidence he heard in her tone. "Nobody's ever going to love you like I do."

Even then, sick with dread, sick with want, reaching for her... Even then, Dean knew it was nothing less than the truth.

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Dean wakes up to fingers of sunlight and shadow playing across his eyelids. For a moment, he thinks it's Sam, playing games like when they were kids. When he opens his eyes, though, it's to the end of the world, the devastated motel room, an open door and the waving branches of the trees across the way.

He blinks at the door stupidly, trying to understand what about that pastoral scene-swaying trees, the iron supports of the bridge, the clustering hills on the other side of the unseen river-is wrong.

Sam.

He scrambles upright and makes a fast, cursory search of the shattered room and bathroom, even though he knows already-can taste in the air-that he's alone.

Sam hadn't wanted to move to one of the other rooms, preferring the safety of her salt and sigils over any considerations of comfort. Dean had slept in worse situations. Besides, after everything that had happened, he wasn't going to doubt Sammy's words.

They'd slept together on the bed furthest from the door-just slept-Sam curled up inside the curve of his body like a pill bug despite her gangling height.

And Dean knew it was the end.

Dean goes to the doorway. The thing in their Dad's body had gone, still wearing John Winchester like a meat suit. Where it stood, the pavement is scorched, a faint dust of yellowish sulfur in the indentations. Whatever Sam did, it was enough to drive it away, but not to kill it. Afterwards, Sam had collapsed to her knees, sobbing like everything inside her had torn loose. And maybe it had.

The motel sits just off the side of the bridge's end, first thing coming in, last thing going out. The sun's new and fragile feeling on his sleep-heated skin and the air's glassy-sharp and crisp. Autumn's coming, blowing in on the wind. Dean wonders where they'll be come winter, if they'll be still roaming the roads like a tumbleweed, looking for survivors.

Squinting a little, he can see Sam sitting out on the bridge, hanging onto the cross-braces and leaning out into space.

He feels a bit hesitant about crossing Sam's magicked threshold, but there's nowhere on Earth or the afterlife that he won't follow her, so he tucks his hands in his back pockets and ambles his unhurried way over to her.

She still seems strange and new to him, this grown-up, dangerous Sam, but when she looks up at him, her face crumpled and tired, he sees only Sammy. His one and only Sammy.

"Scootch."

Her butt scritches over, making enough room for him to fold down next to her, knees and shoulders bumping. The river's high above its banks, a tobacco-brown ribbon glittering with shards of new sun. Dean rests his forehead against one of the braces and watches the birds catching bugs above the sparkling water.

It's not just their Dad that's dead, or the whole world. It's them, too...or Dean's idea of them, which amounts to the same thing. Fighting for Uncle Sam, Dean's given a thought or two to the end of things, the end of his own dull, pointless life, but he'd never jiggered too much about what comes after it. Dean had no sense of the afterlife.

This. This, right here, is his after-life.

"I didn't kill Dad." Sam's voice should be a surprise, coming so sudden, but it isn't. Just another piece of this newborn morning. Even so, her voice grits over the words, hurt and sticking. "I didn't kill him. I just...couldn't save him." She turns her head to look at him, fear muddying up her hazel eyes like the waters down below them.

Dean reaches out, takes her hand, lacing their fingers together. Last time he remembers holding hands with a girl... It was Sammy then, too. He pets her thigh with their conjoined hands. "I know that. It was just that demon talking."

She takes a breath, shaky and relieved, and Dean's amazed all over, amazed that she can be afraid of him. "It's just...we fought so much, me and Dad..."

Dean shakes his head. "Can't be that mad at someone you don't love." He looks at her. "You think I didn't know that, too?"

Sam's shoulders hunch and shrug. "Still my fault. And...and Mom, too." Her knuckles tighten, hurting him, like she's afraid he's going to pull away. "That demon-Azazel-it's looking for me."

"Yeah. Figured that part out, Sam."

Sam chokes on a laugh, startled. It's gone all too quickly, the smile falling off her face and the fear coming back like a tide rising. "There's... There's something inside me, Dean. I don't know what it is, exactly. A power. It scares me, but..."

It's Dean's turn to squeeze her fingers, shaking his head. "Doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter?" she repeats, disbelieving.

"You're still my sister. Still...everything. Everything I got left." Dean shrugs. "I don't know if it's right or wrong anymore. Don't know that it matters. It's still true: no one loves me like you do. And nobody'll ever love you like me."

The kiss is the beginning; Sam's mouth sweet as sin and deep as the Pit itself. Dean cups her face between both his hands and lets himself fall.

Sam's eyes are confused and heavy-lidded when Dean pulls back, his thumbs making wings on her jaw and neck.

"What now?"

Dean pulls back, pushes up to his feet and holds his hand out to her. Sam snorts and pushes his hand away, scrambling up on her own. She doesn't protest, though, when Dean slips his fingers through hers again, tugging her back toward the motel. "Well, first, we're going to find out if I can make you see God." Sam gives another sharp, startled laugh, smile lighting her face slowly. "And then..." Dean takes a breath, thinking about the miles of road in front of them and the demon in their wake. The demon that killed their parents, killed maybe the whole world.

"We have work to do."