original by fryadvocate
Remix Title: The Last Step, Last Breath (The In Loving Memory remix)
Remix Author: kellifer_fic
Original Story: She said, don't scare the guests, that's what the dogs are for
Original Author: fryadvocate
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: None
Summary: Right before you die, you remember.
Right before you die, you remember
Sam thinks about that as he floats at the bottom of the school’s Olympic-sized pool, handcuffed to the bottom rung of the ladder at the deep end. There’d been a key to the cuffs and he’d thrown it into the bushes just outside the large enclosed space before he’d entered.
You remember…
Meg, it comes from nowhere. She’d told him her name like it was something he could hold onto. He had trouble though, like all the others. He had to concentrate very hard to remember his own name, let alone a girl with pigtails and a wicked smile who hadn’t been like the rest of them. She had a teddy backpack and gum but Sam had known in the deep-gut way that she wasn’t a student.
Right before you die…
Sam is wondering why he’s so calm. His body seems to remember this, staying submerged for a long time and he realizes he’s holding his last breath in. He lets it out in a gush of bubbles because the idea wasn’t to prolong anything.
The yellow-eyed man had sat him down on the end of a motel bed on the first day, on the only first day he could remember and had asked what his name was. The yellow-eyed man had looked inordinately pleased when he couldn’t say for sure.
Your name is Sam, he’d supplied, rubbing a hand over Sam’s head briefly. But that’s the only thing you can keep from before because I like it. Sam, a strong name.
His brain is going far away but instinct kicks in. His hands reach for the cuffs, scrabbling uselessly and then he’s trying to yank upwards, like he can leave the traitorously cuffed appendage behind. The struggling is only making this go quicker, somewhere very far away he knows this but he can’t help it.
For the longest time, body-memory was the only kind of memory he had.
Right when his vision starts graying out and he feels like his chest is burning, he does, indeed, remember.
Sometimes demons lie.
Sometimes they tell the truth.
xxxxxxxxxx
It was the easiest thing in the world to stay behind and prepare. They already had a school and once the alter was found and tipped over, the collared Reapers who were their keepers for the longest time retreated, glad to be free of the place as much as some of the students.
Dean is standing at the gates. He’s one of the few people who has kept the uniform, somewhat comforted by the continuity of it although Sam was sure he would have stripped out of it and salted and burned the thing if given half a chance. Dean’s tie has been flipped over his shoulder by the wind and he’s pushed his jacket sleeves up his arms to the elbow.
“What’s out there?” he asks as Sam approaches. He might’ve gotten most of his memories back from before, but he doesn’t know everything.
“You might want to lock this thing up at night,” Sam comments instead of answering, tugging at Dean’s jacket sleeve. “Andy’s been cutting up any uniforms left unattended for more than a few minutes.”
“He could just tell me to take it off,” Dean says and Sam grimaces.
“Yeah, but he won’t,” Sam says.
xxxxxxxxxx
Sam was in a long dorm room with about twenty-five beds and only twelve occupants. He was watching Gracie shove one of the beds right at the end towards the door in small increments just by narrowing her eyes at it. He supposed he might’ve been able to do something similar but he can’t for the life of him quite remember how.
xxxxxxxxxx
Dean tells him about the day he was taken in fits and starts. He figures that was the start of it all, the beginning of the war that lead to all this. The yellow-eyed demon taking it upon himself to physically remove those he found to be promising before he dropped the curse that wiped everyone clean, left tens of millions tumbling and crying into the streets.
Those closest to ground zero didn’t have to worry about forgetting their own names when they just as easily forgot how to feed themselves, fight for themselves, some even how to breath.
Before it all though, their father had found the thing that had killed their mother and it had beaten him down, but hadn’t killed him outright. It had wanted John Winchester to watch as it made off with his youngest, his baby boy. Dean spoke of sitting beside his father in the last few hours, feeling hopeless and powerless and so impotently angry at the world that he was frozen in place.
Say goodbye to your brother, Sam
“I thought that was the worst day of my life,” Dean says and Sam catches the past tense, raises his eyebrows and knows that even though Dean isn’t looking at him directly, he catches it out of the corner of his eye and reads the question Sam doesn’t bother to ask.
“Turns out it wasn’t,” Dean sighs, a long exhalation. “Every day after that. The ones where I couldn’t remember you at all… “
Dean leaves the rest of it unspoken but Sam understands perfectly.
xxxxxxxxxx
Meg had turned up when Sam had been at the school for two months. She wasn't in their dorm room and that was the first clue that she wasn't like the rest of them. The second was that she didn't have that blind panic at the back of her eyes like the rest of them did.
Instead she was almost gleeful as she lead Sam by the hand down to the furthest corner of the grounds, mostly shielded by ancient trees and shadows.
“You have no clue who you are, who you’re meant to be,” she said in almost wonder as she circled Sam like a shark in glittered barrettes.
“I don’t think I like you,” Sam had said because he wasn't sure of a lot those days but that…
That he knew.
“Relax string bean, I’m here to give you a gift,” she had said and then she leant up on her shiny black shoes and Sam remembers when sometimes he forgets how to tie his shoelaces, what the press of her mouth against his ear felt like.
“Right before you die, you remember.”
xxxxxxxxxx
The place had once been a school but it had become a holding pen, a place to usher those too stubborn or willful to just lay down and kick off the ol’ mortal coil like they were supposed to. Old yellow eyes probably thought it was funny to dress them in striped blues and knee socks.
A real laugh-riot.
Sam watches Dean run about thirty-five teenagers through their paces. It’s target practice today and Dean is yelling at Missy Belinski because she’s nudging her shots in the right direction.
Sam’s not sure exactly how, but Dean always knows when the special ones are cheating.
“You think we’re going to get close enough, be quick enough to use these?” Jake scoffs from his place in line, waving the crossbow he’s got in hand.
“Not all of us can punch through steel, so why don’t you just shut up, Superman,” Dean snaps, staring Jake down.
Jake snorts and leaves practice and Sam is surprised to see him in the cafeteria when the sun sets.
“Well, where the hell else am I supposed to go?” Jake demands shortly, spooning packet mashed potatoes onto his plate.
It’s true.
It didn’t stop about twenty of their number from making for the hills as soon as they could.
Sam wonders about them sometimes, but not for very long if he can help it.
xxxxxxxxxx
“The game was your idea, wasn’t it?”
They have a boarding school with about a hundred rooms to choose from but Dean still insists that they sleep in the same one.
Sam doesn’t really protest all that much.
Dean is nothing but shadow and back and Sam is sure that Dean isn’t going to answer when he actually does.
“How’d you know?” he asks.
The students here had heard, like Sam had, that near death or just before it, you remembered. Dean and his dorm-mates had taken turns drowning each other. It had been dangerous but most of them were in a place where they wouldn’t care too much if they weren’t revived afterwards. Sam remembers all too vividly a girl swinging, another caught up in reeds at the lake’s edge, how Dean himself had walked straight into the lake with his pockets full of stones because he hadn’t been able to think of another way to leave.
“Just seems like something…” Sam makes a helpless gesture with his hands and Dean grunts in the darkness.
“Get some sleep, Sammy,” Dean says, sounding so much like their father that Sam has to bite his lip for a moment to stave off tears.
xxxxxxxxxx
Afterwards, Sam remembers the yellow-eyed demon sitting him down on the edge of a motel bed. He still had bruises circling his wrist from struggling and Dean’s name still caught in his throat.
“Your Daddy’s a fool,” the demon had said, holding a box that Sam remembered John carving himself. “He didn’t know what he was making here.”
“What is it?” Sam asks.
“The end of the world.”
xxxxxxxxxx
Dean has their bags packed one morning before Sam even cracks open an eye.
“We going somewhere?” Sam asks, sitting up and trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes and the hair out of his face in one movement. He kind of leans backwards when Dean approaches him fast, the last two years making him jumpier than he would’ve liked.
Dean doesn’t hesitate though. He gets arms under Sam’s and hefts him upwards like a sack of potatoes. Sam goes with it, even manages to get his feet under him right before Dean…
Hugs him.
It’s quick but it’s real and Sam didn’t realize how much he’d missed his brother, even when he didn’t quite remember him, until that very moment. In his surprise, he doesn’t even get time to get his own arms up and join in before Dean is stepping away and back to their bags.
“Gotta get back in the game, Sammy,” Dean says, rolling a pair of jeans efficiently. Sam notes that the uniform has finally been abandoned, in a crumpled heap in the corner of the room, tie lying on top like a shed snake skin.
“What?” Sam asks numbly, because he’d always been a creature of routine despite their father’s tendency to uproot them with absolutely no notice. A rolling stone Sam wasn’t.
Sam can now hear running feet outside, the sounds of people packing up.
The sounds of an army moving out.
“We’re going to war.”
Remix Author: kellifer_fic
Original Story: She said, don't scare the guests, that's what the dogs are for
Original Author: fryadvocate
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: None
Summary: Right before you die, you remember.
Right before you die, you remember
Sam thinks about that as he floats at the bottom of the school’s Olympic-sized pool, handcuffed to the bottom rung of the ladder at the deep end. There’d been a key to the cuffs and he’d thrown it into the bushes just outside the large enclosed space before he’d entered.
You remember…
Meg, it comes from nowhere. She’d told him her name like it was something he could hold onto. He had trouble though, like all the others. He had to concentrate very hard to remember his own name, let alone a girl with pigtails and a wicked smile who hadn’t been like the rest of them. She had a teddy backpack and gum but Sam had known in the deep-gut way that she wasn’t a student.
Right before you die…
Sam is wondering why he’s so calm. His body seems to remember this, staying submerged for a long time and he realizes he’s holding his last breath in. He lets it out in a gush of bubbles because the idea wasn’t to prolong anything.
The yellow-eyed man had sat him down on the end of a motel bed on the first day, on the only first day he could remember and had asked what his name was. The yellow-eyed man had looked inordinately pleased when he couldn’t say for sure.
Your name is Sam, he’d supplied, rubbing a hand over Sam’s head briefly. But that’s the only thing you can keep from before because I like it. Sam, a strong name.
His brain is going far away but instinct kicks in. His hands reach for the cuffs, scrabbling uselessly and then he’s trying to yank upwards, like he can leave the traitorously cuffed appendage behind. The struggling is only making this go quicker, somewhere very far away he knows this but he can’t help it.
For the longest time, body-memory was the only kind of memory he had.
Right when his vision starts graying out and he feels like his chest is burning, he does, indeed, remember.
Sometimes demons lie.
Sometimes they tell the truth.
xxxxxxxxxx
It was the easiest thing in the world to stay behind and prepare. They already had a school and once the alter was found and tipped over, the collared Reapers who were their keepers for the longest time retreated, glad to be free of the place as much as some of the students.
Dean is standing at the gates. He’s one of the few people who has kept the uniform, somewhat comforted by the continuity of it although Sam was sure he would have stripped out of it and salted and burned the thing if given half a chance. Dean’s tie has been flipped over his shoulder by the wind and he’s pushed his jacket sleeves up his arms to the elbow.
“What’s out there?” he asks as Sam approaches. He might’ve gotten most of his memories back from before, but he doesn’t know everything.
“You might want to lock this thing up at night,” Sam comments instead of answering, tugging at Dean’s jacket sleeve. “Andy’s been cutting up any uniforms left unattended for more than a few minutes.”
“He could just tell me to take it off,” Dean says and Sam grimaces.
“Yeah, but he won’t,” Sam says.
xxxxxxxxxx
Sam was in a long dorm room with about twenty-five beds and only twelve occupants. He was watching Gracie shove one of the beds right at the end towards the door in small increments just by narrowing her eyes at it. He supposed he might’ve been able to do something similar but he can’t for the life of him quite remember how.
xxxxxxxxxx
Dean tells him about the day he was taken in fits and starts. He figures that was the start of it all, the beginning of the war that lead to all this. The yellow-eyed demon taking it upon himself to physically remove those he found to be promising before he dropped the curse that wiped everyone clean, left tens of millions tumbling and crying into the streets.
Those closest to ground zero didn’t have to worry about forgetting their own names when they just as easily forgot how to feed themselves, fight for themselves, some even how to breath.
Before it all though, their father had found the thing that had killed their mother and it had beaten him down, but hadn’t killed him outright. It had wanted John Winchester to watch as it made off with his youngest, his baby boy. Dean spoke of sitting beside his father in the last few hours, feeling hopeless and powerless and so impotently angry at the world that he was frozen in place.
Say goodbye to your brother, Sam
“I thought that was the worst day of my life,” Dean says and Sam catches the past tense, raises his eyebrows and knows that even though Dean isn’t looking at him directly, he catches it out of the corner of his eye and reads the question Sam doesn’t bother to ask.
“Turns out it wasn’t,” Dean sighs, a long exhalation. “Every day after that. The ones where I couldn’t remember you at all… “
Dean leaves the rest of it unspoken but Sam understands perfectly.
xxxxxxxxxx
Meg had turned up when Sam had been at the school for two months. She wasn't in their dorm room and that was the first clue that she wasn't like the rest of them. The second was that she didn't have that blind panic at the back of her eyes like the rest of them did.
Instead she was almost gleeful as she lead Sam by the hand down to the furthest corner of the grounds, mostly shielded by ancient trees and shadows.
“You have no clue who you are, who you’re meant to be,” she said in almost wonder as she circled Sam like a shark in glittered barrettes.
“I don’t think I like you,” Sam had said because he wasn't sure of a lot those days but that…
That he knew.
“Relax string bean, I’m here to give you a gift,” she had said and then she leant up on her shiny black shoes and Sam remembers when sometimes he forgets how to tie his shoelaces, what the press of her mouth against his ear felt like.
“Right before you die, you remember.”
xxxxxxxxxx
The place had once been a school but it had become a holding pen, a place to usher those too stubborn or willful to just lay down and kick off the ol’ mortal coil like they were supposed to. Old yellow eyes probably thought it was funny to dress them in striped blues and knee socks.
A real laugh-riot.
Sam watches Dean run about thirty-five teenagers through their paces. It’s target practice today and Dean is yelling at Missy Belinski because she’s nudging her shots in the right direction.
Sam’s not sure exactly how, but Dean always knows when the special ones are cheating.
“You think we’re going to get close enough, be quick enough to use these?” Jake scoffs from his place in line, waving the crossbow he’s got in hand.
“Not all of us can punch through steel, so why don’t you just shut up, Superman,” Dean snaps, staring Jake down.
Jake snorts and leaves practice and Sam is surprised to see him in the cafeteria when the sun sets.
“Well, where the hell else am I supposed to go?” Jake demands shortly, spooning packet mashed potatoes onto his plate.
It’s true.
It didn’t stop about twenty of their number from making for the hills as soon as they could.
Sam wonders about them sometimes, but not for very long if he can help it.
xxxxxxxxxx
“The game was your idea, wasn’t it?”
They have a boarding school with about a hundred rooms to choose from but Dean still insists that they sleep in the same one.
Sam doesn’t really protest all that much.
Dean is nothing but shadow and back and Sam is sure that Dean isn’t going to answer when he actually does.
“How’d you know?” he asks.
The students here had heard, like Sam had, that near death or just before it, you remembered. Dean and his dorm-mates had taken turns drowning each other. It had been dangerous but most of them were in a place where they wouldn’t care too much if they weren’t revived afterwards. Sam remembers all too vividly a girl swinging, another caught up in reeds at the lake’s edge, how Dean himself had walked straight into the lake with his pockets full of stones because he hadn’t been able to think of another way to leave.
“Just seems like something…” Sam makes a helpless gesture with his hands and Dean grunts in the darkness.
“Get some sleep, Sammy,” Dean says, sounding so much like their father that Sam has to bite his lip for a moment to stave off tears.
xxxxxxxxxx
Afterwards, Sam remembers the yellow-eyed demon sitting him down on the edge of a motel bed. He still had bruises circling his wrist from struggling and Dean’s name still caught in his throat.
“Your Daddy’s a fool,” the demon had said, holding a box that Sam remembered John carving himself. “He didn’t know what he was making here.”
“What is it?” Sam asks.
“The end of the world.”
xxxxxxxxxx
Dean has their bags packed one morning before Sam even cracks open an eye.
“We going somewhere?” Sam asks, sitting up and trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes and the hair out of his face in one movement. He kind of leans backwards when Dean approaches him fast, the last two years making him jumpier than he would’ve liked.
Dean doesn’t hesitate though. He gets arms under Sam’s and hefts him upwards like a sack of potatoes. Sam goes with it, even manages to get his feet under him right before Dean…
Hugs him.
It’s quick but it’s real and Sam didn’t realize how much he’d missed his brother, even when he didn’t quite remember him, until that very moment. In his surprise, he doesn’t even get time to get his own arms up and join in before Dean is stepping away and back to their bags.
“Gotta get back in the game, Sammy,” Dean says, rolling a pair of jeans efficiently. Sam notes that the uniform has finally been abandoned, in a crumpled heap in the corner of the room, tie lying on top like a shed snake skin.
“What?” Sam asks numbly, because he’d always been a creature of routine despite their father’s tendency to uproot them with absolutely no notice. A rolling stone Sam wasn’t.
Sam can now hear running feet outside, the sounds of people packing up.
The sounds of an army moving out.
“We’re going to war.”