Fic: Light Will Guide You Home
Author: tahirire
Wordcount: 2663
Rating: PG 13
Beta: Thanks to samidha for looking this over for me.
Genre: A/U tag for 6.22
Spoilers: Up through 6.22
Warnings: My generic major character death fic list. Hurt!Sam, permanent disability of a kind, overuse of spectrally descriptive words, second person Sam pov, Sam/Sarah.
Summary: I wrote the first section of this for the ohsam comment fic meme, but then it grabbed me and I had to see where it went. Title from Snow Patrol (gee I wonder how that happened) but really the fic was inspired by Florence and the Machine's Cosmic Love. Dedicated to blacklid for her birthday - see you soon! :D
Original prompt - Sam/Sarah Blake, anytime after they parted ways at the end of "Provenance." Because Sam needs non-monster lovin', and he's into dark-haired girls anyway.
Light Will Guide You Home
~A falling star fell from your heart and landed in my eyes.~
"Sam?"
You don't recognize her at first. Not because of time, or because she's changed, but because you can barely sense her standing there. But she is there and she glows, one light brighter than the dead souls all around you. Even though you can't see her face, the sparkling purple aura that surrounds her makes you want to smile.
"Sarah Blake,” you say, drawing the name out slow. It has been at least five years - more than a lifetime ago. You answer without turning around, knowing that she hasn't seen you yet - not really - and you aren't sure that you want her to.
Then her hand is on your shoulder and you let her turn you - you don't want to burn her - and you wait to see her soul-light stutter and grow dim like all the others.
Nothing happens for a handful of heartbeats. You hold your breath.
Then she moves, but to your surprise, it isn’t to pull away. There is a rustle of fabric, probably something sheer - classy - and Sarah’s small hand touches your cheek. You close your eyes, for what protection it will give her.
“Sam,” she says again, in that soft hushed tone you are used to hearing in hospital rooms and funeral homes, and then it comes, the flutter you were waiting for. The vibrant purple light deepens and takes on a darker hue, rippling with what can only be a growing wave of fear.
You move to turn away from her before her fear can become grief. You are tired of seeing people grieve for you - grief is wasted on the dead.
You manage two steps and it hurts -you are trying to push too hard, move too fast, escape - every ounce of weight sends screams through the fissures and pits that Lucifer left inside you, and you can’t help it, you bite back a groan of pain and wipe the sudden sweat from your brow with your sleeve.
Sarah catches your hand and you freeze, disbelieving. “Sam, wait,” she says, and the dark hue covering her soul swirls into the mist and is gone, leaving the bright, untainted light behind. You can picture the flush of her cheeks, the way she bites her lip shyly as she threads her fingers through yours, barely reaching all the way around. “I missed you,” she says, and, “Come with me.”
Now she is the one holding her breath.
You shake your head out of reflex. “I couldn’t, I ...” you start to say, but the lights shimmer and dance, and you feel her laughter before it meets your ears.
“Nonsense.” She dismisses your weak protest with a haughty toss of her soft brown hair. It is shorter and there are more layers, and you wonder if your fingers would recognize the strands. “You’re coming with me.”
She’s just as willful as she was on the day that Dean told you to marry her, and now you really do smile.
She pulls your hand in close to her heart, threading her arm through yours. She is small, but what little weight she takes from you feels huge. She starts to move through the crowd, and you go with her.
You go.
~The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out.~
To pick up where you left off would be impossible. To stay, even more so.
Sarah sets your hand on a thick wooden banister, apologizing briefly as she steps away to shed her coat. The house feels tall and wide - at least two stories - and empty save for the echoes of her energy around every corner.
When she returns, she takes your hand again. A wisp of thought drifts across the lights, closer than the others; she is going to offer you a drink. You pull your hand from hers and place your fingers over her lips. You still haven’t opened your eyes, but you watch the thoughts all flit away like minnows in a summer creek bed.
“I want to look at you,” you tell her, and you hear the thump of her heartbeat. Your voice is harsh and rusty, unused for so long, accustomed only to screaming. You hesitate. “Can I …?”
She nods wordlessly, and the motion grazes the fullness of her lips across your fingertips.
You release the banister and bring both hands to cup her face, slide your fingers into her hair. She knows instinctively what you need,and she drops her hands to your hips, steadying you before your torn muscles can betray your pain. The pads of your thumbs skirt the high arc of her cheekbones, her eyes, her lips; you don’t need this to see her, not the real her, but her solidity grounds you in the present.
“Sam,” she whispers, and for a moment you think you’ve gone too far, that you’ve frightened her with your intensity, but then she adds, “Show me?”
You shudder, and then her hands are reaching for you, running through your hair, skirting the lines of your face. You wonder if you should try to explain before she sees, if she would understand on any level what the double vision did to you in those months following the wall’s collapse. You don’t know how to tell her that you chose this for yourself, that second sight over first was the only way to keep your mind from shattering to pieces. You don’t know how to tell her, once you open your eyes, that the Sam she knew was dead and gone long before the man standing in her living room was ever born.
But Sarah doesn’t ask you what happened, between then and now. She only nods, and she tells you to watch your step as you both climb the stairs.
~No dawn, no day, I’m always in this twilight.~
You walk slowly, stiffly, hating the way you tremble from the exertion as Sarah guides you down into her bed. You collapse into the softness - pillow top mattress, 3000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets - and let the coolness wash over you. Sarah’s hand is over your heart, pressing gently down, and you take the gesture as a quiet permission to pause here.
She grounds you for a handful of heartbeats, just long enough for you to catch your breath. Then she moves down your side, her light sliding with a simple fluidity across the comforter. She unlaces your boots, pulls them off, and drops them unceremoniously on the floor.
You feel the bed dip slightly as she settles down beside you. You draw her close, and she rests her head against your chest. She smells like Chanel. She glows softly, her light closer and stronger to you than the others; the nearest star in an infinite universe of souls.
Sarah begins to tell you her story. You watch it unfold in hues of silver and violet, see it twirl across from her mind to yours thread by thread, like a rhythmic dancer spinning ribbons across an endless night sky.
Sarah left New York not long after you did, using the confidence you gave her to strike out on her own. Once she knew the truth about the dark, she says, there was no forgetting. She spent time in the oldest places of the world, searching for something that would tell her what it all meant, who she was supposed to be. She saw beautiful things, she says, wonderful things; but two years ago the world became a dangerous place, and her father called her home. She stayed at his auction house until last summer, when he sent her out West to open a new branch with nothing but a large portion of her trust fund and his blessing.
She’s been happy, more or less, but there is a somber hue at the center of her story that tells you she never found what it was she was searching for - until now.
Eventually the colors fade, and Sarah watches you closely. She’s waiting for you to speak, to tell her where you’ve been, to fill in the blanks, but the blanks are chasms of darkness filled with fire, and you don’t want to go there with her.
Except you want to go everywhere with her.
You take a deep breath. “Sarah - you’re amazing. You are, and thank you for all of this,” you tell her, hoping that she can feel how much you mean it.
Her light retracts, shrinking in on itself, bracing for a hit as she asks,“But?”
You open your eyes and imagine that you are staring at the ceiling, wishing not for the first time that you had the ability to not see, to look at something else. “But,” you admit, “I can’t be here. It’s not safe.”
Her light ripples at the edges. Her comforting weight rolls away, and you pride yourself on the fact that you somehow manage to let her go. You pull yourself up, wincing only slightly at the constant crackle of heat beneath your skin.
Before you can stand, her arms wrap around you from behind. You flinch. You’re still jumpy whenever you bump someone in a crowd, and you haven’t been touched by someone that knew you since before you woke up in the panic room alone. Sarah catches her breath; you startled her. Suddenly you are grabbing for her hand before she can pull away. “I’m sorry,” you press the words into her palm, and her fingers curl into the stubble of your beard.
Her light flares, surrounding you as she pulls you close. When you look at her you can see yourself. Angry splotches of dark red stain what used to be shining gold, tarnishing it, turning it to ribbons. Your breath hitches as you absorb the extent of the damage. There is almost nothing left of you.
Sarah swings around to face you, stretching her leg across your knees to settle in your lap. Her hands grip your shoulders. “Hey,” she says firmly, “listen to me.”
She’s too close, she’s staring into your eyes and you don’t know what she sees, but you don’t know how anyone could look at a man so torn and find anything but horror there. Beneath you, deep in the center of the Earth, Lucifer is watching. His voice whispers in your ear that you belong to him.
Your pulse pounds in your ears; you don’t want her light to touch yours. You don’t want to poison her with the twisted shrapnel of the dark grace inside of you. You struggle weakly to push her away.
“Sam!” She shakes you a little. “Listen to me, it’s okay. Hey, it’s okay. Please, just -” She sighs loudly and cups the back of your head, pulling until your forehead is resting against hers. You close your eyes and breathe, and you feel her breathing with you, trying to quiet your panic with her steady rhythm. The pounding in your chest stops, but the Devil remains.
“Sam,” she whispers, “You saw me when I was too lost in my own darkness to remember who I was. You saved me. You saved me, Sam.”
You shiver, because that can’t be true.
“Yes, you did,” she insists. Her insistence fuels her light and it flares brightly. “Well, now I see you. Let me help.”
You take a breath. The horrible images wash away, melted by Sarah’s violet glow.
Bright, cautious tendrils of longing float outward, seeking you. Sarah moves through the vast array of souls until she’s close enough to flood your mind with her light and hers alone. Her lips brush yours gently, asking permission at the same time that her hands begin to demand. As she pushes your button-down off of your shoulders, you lean into her, deepen the kiss, allow yourself to taste something other than ashes and death.
You tighten your grip on her waist. Her soft skin is cool to the touch and for a moment, the flames of Hell are chased away.
You fall together into a different kind of fire.
~In the shadow of your heart.~
Sarah’s voice breaks the silence. It causes a small ripple to fan across the calming sea of light that you’ve been floating in. Her lips brush your neck.
“What does it look like?” Her hair is falling across your face but you don’t mind. Her hand strokes lightly back and forth across your chest, leaving purple watercolor patterns behind.
Your hand rests in the curve of her back. “Colors, mostly. Lights. Souls.”
“Souls?”
You nod.
You feel her staring, searching your face. She wants to know more, but you only want this moment to be a good memory. When you don’t elaborate, she shifts up onto her elbows and brushes her fingers through your hair. “A story for another time,” she says, and she kisses you. She twirls one strand of hair and makes a tsk-tsk sound. “Really, Sam. We are getting you a haircut.”
You make a face in her general direction. “I don’t even know how you recognized me in the first place.”
She leans to whisper conspiratorially in your ear. “The best and most beautiful things in the world can’t be seen or touched ... but are felt in the heart.”
You chuckle, because she hasn’t changed at all, and if you still understand her then maybe that means there’s hope for you, too. “You’re quoting Helen Keller to a blind guy? Really?”
Bright, strong laughter ripples across the space between you, flows over you in waves. You shake your head in mock disgust, but you kiss her one more time before you pull away. You find the edge of the bed and drop your feet over, searching first for solid ground before you try to stand.
“You never told me what you’re doing in Van Nuys,” she says.
You stand and walk forward carefully, hand outstretched, until you can feel the window frame beneath your fingertips. Your eyes gaze sightlessly out into the night, but in your mind you can see forever.
“Sam?” Sarah’s voice is questioning, concerned. She wraps an arm around your waist and you wrap yours around her shoulder.
Somewhere nearby is a room that shines white with ancient magic. Sigils and wards drawn into the very fabric of the universe mark the walls, and molten, furious gold marks its single occupant. It is the one soul that has been calling you like a beacon since you woke up. It may not be there when you get there, but you have to try.
“I’m looking for my brother.”
Sarah follows your endless gaze out of the window, and where she is curled against you you feel a shiver run across her skin. She holds you tighter.
“I’m coming with you,” she says firmly, and there is no uncertain flicker this time.
On the other side of the country, two tiny hazel souls move about their day, calm and collected, not a worry in the world, and they don’t see the corded spheres of grace inside of them, walling off the best times of their lives. They don’t remember having something that they would have fought and died for. They never got the chance to choose.
“Hey,” Sarah hisses, jabbing you in the ribs, “I said I’m coming with you.”
You turn into her and pull her close. She isn’t asking your permission, so you say the only thing you can say.
“Thank you.”
Deep at the center of the Earth, Lucifer is watching, but he won’t get to see you fail. Not this time.
Wordcount: 2663
Rating: PG 13
Beta: Thanks to samidha for looking this over for me.
Genre: A/U tag for 6.22
Spoilers: Up through 6.22
Warnings: My generic major character death fic list. Hurt!Sam, permanent disability of a kind, overuse of spectrally descriptive words, second person Sam pov, Sam/Sarah.
Summary: I wrote the first section of this for the ohsam comment fic meme, but then it grabbed me and I had to see where it went. Title from Snow Patrol (gee I wonder how that happened) but really the fic was inspired by Florence and the Machine's Cosmic Love. Dedicated to blacklid for her birthday - see you soon! :D
Original prompt - Sam/Sarah Blake, anytime after they parted ways at the end of "Provenance." Because Sam needs non-monster lovin', and he's into dark-haired girls anyway.
Light Will Guide You Home
~A falling star fell from your heart and landed in my eyes.~
"Sam?"
You don't recognize her at first. Not because of time, or because she's changed, but because you can barely sense her standing there. But she is there and she glows, one light brighter than the dead souls all around you. Even though you can't see her face, the sparkling purple aura that surrounds her makes you want to smile.
"Sarah Blake,” you say, drawing the name out slow. It has been at least five years - more than a lifetime ago. You answer without turning around, knowing that she hasn't seen you yet - not really - and you aren't sure that you want her to.
Then her hand is on your shoulder and you let her turn you - you don't want to burn her - and you wait to see her soul-light stutter and grow dim like all the others.
Nothing happens for a handful of heartbeats. You hold your breath.
Then she moves, but to your surprise, it isn’t to pull away. There is a rustle of fabric, probably something sheer - classy - and Sarah’s small hand touches your cheek. You close your eyes, for what protection it will give her.
“Sam,” she says again, in that soft hushed tone you are used to hearing in hospital rooms and funeral homes, and then it comes, the flutter you were waiting for. The vibrant purple light deepens and takes on a darker hue, rippling with what can only be a growing wave of fear.
You move to turn away from her before her fear can become grief. You are tired of seeing people grieve for you - grief is wasted on the dead.
You manage two steps and it hurts -you are trying to push too hard, move too fast, escape - every ounce of weight sends screams through the fissures and pits that Lucifer left inside you, and you can’t help it, you bite back a groan of pain and wipe the sudden sweat from your brow with your sleeve.
Sarah catches your hand and you freeze, disbelieving. “Sam, wait,” she says, and the dark hue covering her soul swirls into the mist and is gone, leaving the bright, untainted light behind. You can picture the flush of her cheeks, the way she bites her lip shyly as she threads her fingers through yours, barely reaching all the way around. “I missed you,” she says, and, “Come with me.”
Now she is the one holding her breath.
You shake your head out of reflex. “I couldn’t, I ...” you start to say, but the lights shimmer and dance, and you feel her laughter before it meets your ears.
“Nonsense.” She dismisses your weak protest with a haughty toss of her soft brown hair. It is shorter and there are more layers, and you wonder if your fingers would recognize the strands. “You’re coming with me.”
She’s just as willful as she was on the day that Dean told you to marry her, and now you really do smile.
She pulls your hand in close to her heart, threading her arm through yours. She is small, but what little weight she takes from you feels huge. She starts to move through the crowd, and you go with her.
You go.
~The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out.~
To pick up where you left off would be impossible. To stay, even more so.
Sarah sets your hand on a thick wooden banister, apologizing briefly as she steps away to shed her coat. The house feels tall and wide - at least two stories - and empty save for the echoes of her energy around every corner.
When she returns, she takes your hand again. A wisp of thought drifts across the lights, closer than the others; she is going to offer you a drink. You pull your hand from hers and place your fingers over her lips. You still haven’t opened your eyes, but you watch the thoughts all flit away like minnows in a summer creek bed.
“I want to look at you,” you tell her, and you hear the thump of her heartbeat. Your voice is harsh and rusty, unused for so long, accustomed only to screaming. You hesitate. “Can I …?”
She nods wordlessly, and the motion grazes the fullness of her lips across your fingertips.
You release the banister and bring both hands to cup her face, slide your fingers into her hair. She knows instinctively what you need,and she drops her hands to your hips, steadying you before your torn muscles can betray your pain. The pads of your thumbs skirt the high arc of her cheekbones, her eyes, her lips; you don’t need this to see her, not the real her, but her solidity grounds you in the present.
“Sam,” she whispers, and for a moment you think you’ve gone too far, that you’ve frightened her with your intensity, but then she adds, “Show me?”
You shudder, and then her hands are reaching for you, running through your hair, skirting the lines of your face. You wonder if you should try to explain before she sees, if she would understand on any level what the double vision did to you in those months following the wall’s collapse. You don’t know how to tell her that you chose this for yourself, that second sight over first was the only way to keep your mind from shattering to pieces. You don’t know how to tell her, once you open your eyes, that the Sam she knew was dead and gone long before the man standing in her living room was ever born.
But Sarah doesn’t ask you what happened, between then and now. She only nods, and she tells you to watch your step as you both climb the stairs.
~No dawn, no day, I’m always in this twilight.~
You walk slowly, stiffly, hating the way you tremble from the exertion as Sarah guides you down into her bed. You collapse into the softness - pillow top mattress, 3000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets - and let the coolness wash over you. Sarah’s hand is over your heart, pressing gently down, and you take the gesture as a quiet permission to pause here.
She grounds you for a handful of heartbeats, just long enough for you to catch your breath. Then she moves down your side, her light sliding with a simple fluidity across the comforter. She unlaces your boots, pulls them off, and drops them unceremoniously on the floor.
You feel the bed dip slightly as she settles down beside you. You draw her close, and she rests her head against your chest. She smells like Chanel. She glows softly, her light closer and stronger to you than the others; the nearest star in an infinite universe of souls.
Sarah begins to tell you her story. You watch it unfold in hues of silver and violet, see it twirl across from her mind to yours thread by thread, like a rhythmic dancer spinning ribbons across an endless night sky.
Sarah left New York not long after you did, using the confidence you gave her to strike out on her own. Once she knew the truth about the dark, she says, there was no forgetting. She spent time in the oldest places of the world, searching for something that would tell her what it all meant, who she was supposed to be. She saw beautiful things, she says, wonderful things; but two years ago the world became a dangerous place, and her father called her home. She stayed at his auction house until last summer, when he sent her out West to open a new branch with nothing but a large portion of her trust fund and his blessing.
She’s been happy, more or less, but there is a somber hue at the center of her story that tells you she never found what it was she was searching for - until now.
Eventually the colors fade, and Sarah watches you closely. She’s waiting for you to speak, to tell her where you’ve been, to fill in the blanks, but the blanks are chasms of darkness filled with fire, and you don’t want to go there with her.
Except you want to go everywhere with her.
You take a deep breath. “Sarah - you’re amazing. You are, and thank you for all of this,” you tell her, hoping that she can feel how much you mean it.
Her light retracts, shrinking in on itself, bracing for a hit as she asks,“But?”
You open your eyes and imagine that you are staring at the ceiling, wishing not for the first time that you had the ability to not see, to look at something else. “But,” you admit, “I can’t be here. It’s not safe.”
Her light ripples at the edges. Her comforting weight rolls away, and you pride yourself on the fact that you somehow manage to let her go. You pull yourself up, wincing only slightly at the constant crackle of heat beneath your skin.
Before you can stand, her arms wrap around you from behind. You flinch. You’re still jumpy whenever you bump someone in a crowd, and you haven’t been touched by someone that knew you since before you woke up in the panic room alone. Sarah catches her breath; you startled her. Suddenly you are grabbing for her hand before she can pull away. “I’m sorry,” you press the words into her palm, and her fingers curl into the stubble of your beard.
Her light flares, surrounding you as she pulls you close. When you look at her you can see yourself. Angry splotches of dark red stain what used to be shining gold, tarnishing it, turning it to ribbons. Your breath hitches as you absorb the extent of the damage. There is almost nothing left of you.
Sarah swings around to face you, stretching her leg across your knees to settle in your lap. Her hands grip your shoulders. “Hey,” she says firmly, “listen to me.”
She’s too close, she’s staring into your eyes and you don’t know what she sees, but you don’t know how anyone could look at a man so torn and find anything but horror there. Beneath you, deep in the center of the Earth, Lucifer is watching. His voice whispers in your ear that you belong to him.
Your pulse pounds in your ears; you don’t want her light to touch yours. You don’t want to poison her with the twisted shrapnel of the dark grace inside of you. You struggle weakly to push her away.
“Sam!” She shakes you a little. “Listen to me, it’s okay. Hey, it’s okay. Please, just -” She sighs loudly and cups the back of your head, pulling until your forehead is resting against hers. You close your eyes and breathe, and you feel her breathing with you, trying to quiet your panic with her steady rhythm. The pounding in your chest stops, but the Devil remains.
“Sam,” she whispers, “You saw me when I was too lost in my own darkness to remember who I was. You saved me. You saved me, Sam.”
You shiver, because that can’t be true.
“Yes, you did,” she insists. Her insistence fuels her light and it flares brightly. “Well, now I see you. Let me help.”
You take a breath. The horrible images wash away, melted by Sarah’s violet glow.
Bright, cautious tendrils of longing float outward, seeking you. Sarah moves through the vast array of souls until she’s close enough to flood your mind with her light and hers alone. Her lips brush yours gently, asking permission at the same time that her hands begin to demand. As she pushes your button-down off of your shoulders, you lean into her, deepen the kiss, allow yourself to taste something other than ashes and death.
You tighten your grip on her waist. Her soft skin is cool to the touch and for a moment, the flames of Hell are chased away.
You fall together into a different kind of fire.
~In the shadow of your heart.~
Sarah’s voice breaks the silence. It causes a small ripple to fan across the calming sea of light that you’ve been floating in. Her lips brush your neck.
“What does it look like?” Her hair is falling across your face but you don’t mind. Her hand strokes lightly back and forth across your chest, leaving purple watercolor patterns behind.
Your hand rests in the curve of her back. “Colors, mostly. Lights. Souls.”
“Souls?”
You nod.
You feel her staring, searching your face. She wants to know more, but you only want this moment to be a good memory. When you don’t elaborate, she shifts up onto her elbows and brushes her fingers through your hair. “A story for another time,” she says, and she kisses you. She twirls one strand of hair and makes a tsk-tsk sound. “Really, Sam. We are getting you a haircut.”
You make a face in her general direction. “I don’t even know how you recognized me in the first place.”
She leans to whisper conspiratorially in your ear. “The best and most beautiful things in the world can’t be seen or touched ... but are felt in the heart.”
You chuckle, because she hasn’t changed at all, and if you still understand her then maybe that means there’s hope for you, too. “You’re quoting Helen Keller to a blind guy? Really?”
Bright, strong laughter ripples across the space between you, flows over you in waves. You shake your head in mock disgust, but you kiss her one more time before you pull away. You find the edge of the bed and drop your feet over, searching first for solid ground before you try to stand.
“You never told me what you’re doing in Van Nuys,” she says.
You stand and walk forward carefully, hand outstretched, until you can feel the window frame beneath your fingertips. Your eyes gaze sightlessly out into the night, but in your mind you can see forever.
“Sam?” Sarah’s voice is questioning, concerned. She wraps an arm around your waist and you wrap yours around her shoulder.
Somewhere nearby is a room that shines white with ancient magic. Sigils and wards drawn into the very fabric of the universe mark the walls, and molten, furious gold marks its single occupant. It is the one soul that has been calling you like a beacon since you woke up. It may not be there when you get there, but you have to try.
“I’m looking for my brother.”
Sarah follows your endless gaze out of the window, and where she is curled against you you feel a shiver run across her skin. She holds you tighter.
“I’m coming with you,” she says firmly, and there is no uncertain flicker this time.
On the other side of the country, two tiny hazel souls move about their day, calm and collected, not a worry in the world, and they don’t see the corded spheres of grace inside of them, walling off the best times of their lives. They don’t remember having something that they would have fought and died for. They never got the chance to choose.
“Hey,” Sarah hisses, jabbing you in the ribs, “I said I’m coming with you.”
You turn into her and pull her close. She isn’t asking your permission, so you say the only thing you can say.
“Thank you.”
Deep at the center of the Earth, Lucifer is watching, but he won’t get to see you fail. Not this time.