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dime_lioraLast Part
It’s weird to walk while holding Sam’s hand.
It’s not like Dean hasn’t done it before. Shit, he spent the first nine or ten years of Sam’s life hanging onto his brother’s hand. Holding Sam back from rushing into the street, keeping Sam close in case of danger, and comforting Sam when his brother woke up from nightmares.
But they haven’t done it much since Sam grew up and started to think that holding his brother’s hand was a sign of weakness. Of childhood.
And then, of course, holding hands took on another context that couldn’t be underlined in public.
Dean looks at the way their fingers link, how Sam’s hand is bigger than his, but so fragile looking in comparison. Sam’s fingers are long, delicate, and Dean’s hands are blunt and thick. Knuckles broken over and over again in fights and hunts. Used to curling around weapons instead of flesh.
“Dean. You’re wandering. That’s not the best plan in here.”
He looks up to see Sam staring at him. They’ve stopped in front of a door, and Dean hesitates before he answers.
“I should never have turned my back on you, Sam. I should have kept my eyes on you. I know you grew up, I know you became a fine man and a damn good hunter, but you were still my little brother. I lost that somewhere, and I lost you right after.”
Sam’s lifts Dean’s hand, kisses his slightly crooked knuckles, and then lets go of Dean’s hand.
“You did the best you could.”
“No. I didn’t. But thanks for that.”
There’s liquid seeping from the rocks now, and Dean doesn’t want to touch it and see what it is. The speakers look malformed, slightly melted, and the cords leading to them are frayed and worn. The hallway is falling apart.
Dean is running out of time.
Sam opens the door, and Dean hesitates again.
“How much more is there?”
There’s a look then that crosses Sam’s face, something pitying, and Dean wonders about it.
“That’s up to you.”
And that’s the best he’s going to get. Dean steps into the room and finds himself standing in another motel. There are no distinguishing features, and Dean doesn’t recognize the lay out at all. It’s a complete mystery.
Sam touches Dean’s fingers again, and when they reflexively uncurl he hands Dean a knife.
“Good luck Dean.”
And Dean believes that the part of himself playing Sam legitimately means it this time. Then the front door opens, and the woman walks in.
The monster.
And Dean knows where he is and what’s about the happen. He knows, but he doesn’t understand why this is so such a crux. All the other scenes were something that put his brother’s life in danger, that made the gap between Dean and Sam a little bigger. This isn’t. This is simply cleaning up a mess that Dean let stay for too long. Cutting a loose thread.
Amy tilts her head, looking at him, and there’s confusion in it. A confusion he remembers.
People are who they are.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Dean. Sam’s brother.”
There’s a flash of betrayal on Amy’s face.
“Sam sent you here?”
“No. Sam doesn’t know I’m here.”
“But he told you about me.”
Now in the clear light of the memory Dean can see things he couldn’t then. The real emotions flitting across Amy’s face, no mockery meant to make her seem more human, and the true fear that lingers in the back of her eyes as she fights to not look to the left. Not to stare at the door that Dean now knows holds her son.
As she fights to not give away her boy’s position, no doubt in the hopes that he’ll run as fast and as far as he can.
She could be blonde, hair a little softer and finer, and her eyes a clear blue. She could be wearing a nightgown, and rushing up the stairs to her son’s nursery. She could be human. She could be a good mother.
People are who they are.
“People change.”
It physically hurts him to say it, and Amy’s confusion and fear only increase in the face of such a nonsensical piece of conversation. She steps back once, eyes finally giving up the fight to flicker to her son. Dean wonders if she thinks it’s the last time she’ll ever look at him.
“Please, my son-“
“Is safe. And so are you. Because people change.” Dean steps forward and ignores the sting when she cowers a little anyway. The knife is still in his hand anyway. He knows he’s an imposing figure to monsters.
Even the ones that are mothers.
Mothers with little boys who did nothing worse than be born into a destiny they couldn’t change.
“I don’t understand”
“I know you don’t. But I do, and that’s what matters. Don’t kill again, disappear with your boy, and live as human as you can. I can’t protect you from anyone but me.”
And Amy’s eyebrows lift, but she nods before stepping around Dean with as much of a wide berth as she can manage before she gets close enough to pluck her on up from the doorway and run.
Sam is standing in the doorway when she disappears. His face is placid, unemotional, and he raises one eyebrow in lieu of actually asking.
“No. I don’t think she changed. I think she was always that way. I never killed her because of what she was Sam. I killed her because of what I was. It wasn’t the knife that made me like this. It was me.”
He thinks Sam will make him talk that out more, explore it and turn it over until Dean has picked himself apart and broken down, weeping for forgiveness the way he should have years ago. Asking Sam to make him human again instead of the blunt instrument his nightmare self once told him he was.
But Sam doesn’t. He dangles a shirt out to Dean on his fingertips, waits for Dean to put it on, and never asks for the knife. Back.
Apparently Dean’s choice earns him two prizes.
---
There’s standing water in the hallway now. Holes in the stones show a nightmare landscape beyond of organs, veins and arteries, and bones. Dean sees the red of his blood pumping along highways, the smooth muscle of his stomach working around his last meal, and the thickness of his ribs.
He has to look away, made dizzy by the motion and the implication, and Sam is there in front of him. Solid and real as anything else. Waiting for him.
The hallway ends in a door up ahead, Dean can see it, and he feels his hands start to shake as the big door made of smooth flesh pulses in and out to his heartbeat.
“Sam. Sam if I don’t make it-“
“You’re going to make it. I believe in you Dean.”
But he doesn’t believe in himself. Never has and doesn’t know how to start now.
“Hey, you remember that time I broke my leg, and you were stuck doing your homework in the living room with me and watching every bad Western the TV would play?”
Sam’s lips curl in the ghost of a smile.
“Yeah. You were such a pain in the ass.”
“That was one of the best weeks of my life. Just sitting there being your brother. I never forgot that.”
Sam’s hand settles on a knob of vein on the door, fingers stroking it once and coming away slightly bloody.
“Mine too. I can’t go past here. This is it for me. Now you have to make your way alone.”
Dean’s hands are shaking harder, but he reaches out and tips Sam’s face up. Kisses him once gently and softly.
“Thank you.”
Sam smiles at that, real this time, and nods before opening the door and stepping aside.
----
Dean steps out into a wasteland. The ground is rocky, barren, and too hard to have seen liquid any time in the last few hundred years. Nothing living is anywhere in sight, and when he turns around there’s no door and no way back to Sam. Just the nothingness in front of him.
There’s no real thought to his decision, Dean just takes one step forward, and then another, and another until his feet are moving at a regular pace and he is headed into the unknown. The ground makes no sound under his boots, there’s no wind, and the sun is locked into position over his head.
He can’t help but imagine how Sam would interpret this. Dean’s heart is a desert wasteland. His eyes scan the horizon and see nothing, and the lack of a destination causes a bit of panic. What if he was supposed to force Sam to come with him? What if he never finds his way out of here?
With every second that Dean wastes wandering around in the desert his brother is out there with a demon. A demon that Dean created. He stumbles on something, stops to look down, and sees a step. It’s by itself, sticking out of the ground and looking like it was carved out of the earth. Dean bends to run his fingers along it and doesn’t shudder when the texture is bone instead of rock.
As his fingers rest on the smooth and slightly porous surface there’s a rumbling, and Dean’s eyes drag along the ground to see steps lifting and rising out of the hard packed ground. One by one the steps build, the ground splitting away from them and framing the staircase that’s forming in front of him. It’s as good a destination as any, and something different from the nothingness he’s been traveling through for what feels like forever.
Dean puts his foot on the first step, tests its strength, and feels it give a little under his weight. It’s not enough to ensure that he’ll take a fall, but its worrying enough that Dean steps up on the ground beside it and begins to walk along the deepening cut lining the bone staircase.
He curves a bit, putting more space between himself and the stairs, watching the ground under his feet carefully to make sure that it doesn’t open up in front of him. The terrain is changing around him slowly but surely. Lifting and sharpening. Dean glances up once to see mountains in the distance, clear and distinct in the bright sun, and ahead of him hills offer a break in the monotony but there is still nothing living in sight.
It’s a symptom of his time here that Dean becomes introspective in the face of the landscape changes. What does it mean? There’s still no life here, no color, and everything is hard and monochrome. Is this really what’s become of Dean’s heart? He doesn’t think it’s true or fair. He loves Sam. It may be a complicated love, but it’s got a pulse that Dean’s always felt beating with his own. Sam is always a part of his thoughts, his movements, and there’s nothing of Sam here at all.
Dean loves Cas like family, still holds all the love and anguish for his parents, for Bobby, and for all the other people that became a part of their lives before being brutally ripped away. Dean isn’t empty or hollow, he isn’t dead below the neck, and there’s no reason this place should look that way. It’s inconsistent, unrealistic, and Dean wonders if there’s someone he can file a formal complaint with.
Which is how Dean misses it he guesses. Because there’s no booming of footsteps, no shaking of the ground, and no warning whatsoever that the beast comes. It’s simply there when he looks up to see if the sun has moved at all.
The thing towers over him, its paws straddling the cut over the staircase and its face placid and calm. Dean recognizes it twice, and the recognition clears up a lot of his confusion about this whole process. Its face is that of the amulet, long beard braided, earrings dangling from beneath its horns, and the bronze cap twisting into the sky above all with the loop at the top that hangs around his leather strap.
Marduk. Dean remembers the long and dry lecture Sam gave him about the nature of the amulet and its meaning. They were in bed in Omaha, post hunt, and Sam’s fingers dragged over the bruised length of Dean’s ribs as he talked. Babylonian, a god above all other gods, and Dean can’t believe he didn’t see it earlier when he was locked in the broadcast room with the hippie. The tablets, the name, all of it add together. Bel. Sam had told him about the many names, and Dean had simply nodded his head and waited for Sam to get to the business of fucking.
“Bel.”
The things great head tilts, eyes a bright white with no pupils to break the color.
“Dean.”
They stand perfectly still, the god’s chest moving only slightly to indicate that it is alive, and Dean wonders if this is going to end as badly as it feels like it will.
“What now?”
The god’s lips move silently for a moment, and then it leans back a bit and briefly gives a bland smile.
“You must sacrifice. Give me my symbol, and you may pass into the world beyond.”
Dean reaches up, gripping the leather thong and pulling up to remove it from his neck and let the necklace dangle from his fingertips. The god stares at him, expression gone again, and Dean thinks that maybe there’s an out. Maybe there’s an escape.
Maybe he can make it to the end of this.
And then he feels it. Deep and cold in his heart. The loss of the amulet again. Dean remembers how easy it was to give it up the first time, fueled by bitterness and anger at Sam, the desperation of the situation, and the realization that there was still a little part of him that thought any second now God would arrive and fix everything.
They were entirely alone and had been so since the beginning. Just like Dean had logically believed. But he’d wanted to be proved wrong. He’d wanted to be made a fool.
Dean had simply opened his hand then and dropped the amulet into the trash, his back turned to Sam and his eyes fixed on the featureless door. But now his hand cramps around the leather, feels the weight of the little amulet swinging underneath his hand, and the part of his chest that lacks weight and remembrance.
“No.”
Marduk, Bel, the Beast tilts its great head again.
“What?”
“I said no. I know you can hear me.”
“But Dean, this is the way out. Do you not want to return to Sam? The trials are over boy. It is simply a matter of paying the toll.”
Dean licks his lips, sets his feet, and pulls his knife. It’s so puny, and he knows it, but Dean will be damned if he gives up Sam’s love again. Possibly quite literally.
“I’m not paying the toll today.”
Marduk laughs once, head thrown back and earrings jingling, and then all expression leaches out of his face and he leans forward, breath puffing Dean’s clothes back and stirring the dirt at his feet.
“Then come to me boy. Come and meet your death.”
And Dean does. He rushes forward, low and tight, and twists at the last second to miss the god’s great mouth before sinking the small knife into the flesh of its face. The head recoils pulling back, and Dean runs. Runs faster than he has ever run before.
He feels the breath again, and then he’s being lifted in the air, teeth buried in the button up shirt he’s wearing and lips pressed to his flesh. Dean thinks about being eaten, about Sam back in the real world never knowing how much progress Dean has made, and slices the knife forward down his own chest and cuts the buttons and himself in the process.
But the shirt opens, and Dean relaxes his arms and lets himself fall out of it. He hits the ground hard, bones jarring with the impact, and then rolls onto his feet and starts running again. Dean hears the movement of the air and hits the ground, sliding down the rocky wall and landing on one bone step that cracks under his weight even as a huge paw slices above him where his head used to be.
It takes too long to get upright again, but Dean does it. He runs on the stairs, hearing each one break under his feet, and the booming of the god as it chases him down. Dean runs, lungs heaving, hands clutching the necklace and the knife, and eyes fixed only on the forward progression.
He will make it. He must make it. He must get back to Sam.
Behind him Marduk lets out a howl, ground shaking under Dean’s feet, and then he plants his left boot too hard and pauses too long. The steps shatters under his foot, and Dean falls through the space that once was a step, bone cutting him sharply as he drops into the void.
His last thought is of Sam.
----
Dean opens his eyes.
He’s in a motel room he doesn’t recognize, and Sam is across the room from him with his arm in a sling and a look of exhaustion so deeply cut into his face that Dean hurts to see it. His brother seems to be contemplating the very existence of the salad sitting in front of him.
Dean just hurts honestly. His chest burns, his legs are sore, and his hands are gripped so tight his joints creak when he releases his grip. But the amulet is still there even though the knife is gone. The amulet is with him.
Sam looks up from the wilting meal, eyes wary and unsure, and Dean sees the second Sam notices the amulet. Sees the look of confusion bleed into wonder and hope.
And Dean lifts the amulet, lowers it around his head to drop onto his chest, and then crosses the room to his brother.
He kneels, knees cracking with the deep bend and hands moving slow but sure to take Sam’s. This is the moment he fought so hard for. This is the reality he wanted to return to.
This is the life he must make again.
“Sammy. I’m fucking hungry dude.”
His brother’s face crumples, laughter and tears bursting out at the same time, and Dean thinks it looks good on him. Sam has always been an ugly crier, but mix in dimples and the picture is sort of charming.
“Jerk.”
“Bitch.”
Masterpost
It’s weird to walk while holding Sam’s hand.
It’s not like Dean hasn’t done it before. Shit, he spent the first nine or ten years of Sam’s life hanging onto his brother’s hand. Holding Sam back from rushing into the street, keeping Sam close in case of danger, and comforting Sam when his brother woke up from nightmares.
But they haven’t done it much since Sam grew up and started to think that holding his brother’s hand was a sign of weakness. Of childhood.
And then, of course, holding hands took on another context that couldn’t be underlined in public.
Dean looks at the way their fingers link, how Sam’s hand is bigger than his, but so fragile looking in comparison. Sam’s fingers are long, delicate, and Dean’s hands are blunt and thick. Knuckles broken over and over again in fights and hunts. Used to curling around weapons instead of flesh.
“Dean. You’re wandering. That’s not the best plan in here.”
He looks up to see Sam staring at him. They’ve stopped in front of a door, and Dean hesitates before he answers.
“I should never have turned my back on you, Sam. I should have kept my eyes on you. I know you grew up, I know you became a fine man and a damn good hunter, but you were still my little brother. I lost that somewhere, and I lost you right after.”
Sam’s lifts Dean’s hand, kisses his slightly crooked knuckles, and then lets go of Dean’s hand.
“You did the best you could.”
“No. I didn’t. But thanks for that.”
There’s liquid seeping from the rocks now, and Dean doesn’t want to touch it and see what it is. The speakers look malformed, slightly melted, and the cords leading to them are frayed and worn. The hallway is falling apart.
Dean is running out of time.
Sam opens the door, and Dean hesitates again.
“How much more is there?”
There’s a look then that crosses Sam’s face, something pitying, and Dean wonders about it.
“That’s up to you.”
And that’s the best he’s going to get. Dean steps into the room and finds himself standing in another motel. There are no distinguishing features, and Dean doesn’t recognize the lay out at all. It’s a complete mystery.
Sam touches Dean’s fingers again, and when they reflexively uncurl he hands Dean a knife.
“Good luck Dean.”
And Dean believes that the part of himself playing Sam legitimately means it this time. Then the front door opens, and the woman walks in.
The monster.
And Dean knows where he is and what’s about the happen. He knows, but he doesn’t understand why this is so such a crux. All the other scenes were something that put his brother’s life in danger, that made the gap between Dean and Sam a little bigger. This isn’t. This is simply cleaning up a mess that Dean let stay for too long. Cutting a loose thread.
Amy tilts her head, looking at him, and there’s confusion in it. A confusion he remembers.
People are who they are.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Dean. Sam’s brother.”
There’s a flash of betrayal on Amy’s face.
“Sam sent you here?”
“No. Sam doesn’t know I’m here.”
“But he told you about me.”
Now in the clear light of the memory Dean can see things he couldn’t then. The real emotions flitting across Amy’s face, no mockery meant to make her seem more human, and the true fear that lingers in the back of her eyes as she fights to not look to the left. Not to stare at the door that Dean now knows holds her son.
As she fights to not give away her boy’s position, no doubt in the hopes that he’ll run as fast and as far as he can.
She could be blonde, hair a little softer and finer, and her eyes a clear blue. She could be wearing a nightgown, and rushing up the stairs to her son’s nursery. She could be human. She could be a good mother.
People are who they are.
“People change.”
It physically hurts him to say it, and Amy’s confusion and fear only increase in the face of such a nonsensical piece of conversation. She steps back once, eyes finally giving up the fight to flicker to her son. Dean wonders if she thinks it’s the last time she’ll ever look at him.
“Please, my son-“
“Is safe. And so are you. Because people change.” Dean steps forward and ignores the sting when she cowers a little anyway. The knife is still in his hand anyway. He knows he’s an imposing figure to monsters.
Even the ones that are mothers.
Mothers with little boys who did nothing worse than be born into a destiny they couldn’t change.
“I don’t understand”
“I know you don’t. But I do, and that’s what matters. Don’t kill again, disappear with your boy, and live as human as you can. I can’t protect you from anyone but me.”
And Amy’s eyebrows lift, but she nods before stepping around Dean with as much of a wide berth as she can manage before she gets close enough to pluck her on up from the doorway and run.
Sam is standing in the doorway when she disappears. His face is placid, unemotional, and he raises one eyebrow in lieu of actually asking.
“No. I don’t think she changed. I think she was always that way. I never killed her because of what she was Sam. I killed her because of what I was. It wasn’t the knife that made me like this. It was me.”
He thinks Sam will make him talk that out more, explore it and turn it over until Dean has picked himself apart and broken down, weeping for forgiveness the way he should have years ago. Asking Sam to make him human again instead of the blunt instrument his nightmare self once told him he was.
But Sam doesn’t. He dangles a shirt out to Dean on his fingertips, waits for Dean to put it on, and never asks for the knife. Back.
Apparently Dean’s choice earns him two prizes.
---
There’s standing water in the hallway now. Holes in the stones show a nightmare landscape beyond of organs, veins and arteries, and bones. Dean sees the red of his blood pumping along highways, the smooth muscle of his stomach working around his last meal, and the thickness of his ribs.
He has to look away, made dizzy by the motion and the implication, and Sam is there in front of him. Solid and real as anything else. Waiting for him.
The hallway ends in a door up ahead, Dean can see it, and he feels his hands start to shake as the big door made of smooth flesh pulses in and out to his heartbeat.
“Sam. Sam if I don’t make it-“
“You’re going to make it. I believe in you Dean.”
But he doesn’t believe in himself. Never has and doesn’t know how to start now.
“Hey, you remember that time I broke my leg, and you were stuck doing your homework in the living room with me and watching every bad Western the TV would play?”
Sam’s lips curl in the ghost of a smile.
“Yeah. You were such a pain in the ass.”
“That was one of the best weeks of my life. Just sitting there being your brother. I never forgot that.”
Sam’s hand settles on a knob of vein on the door, fingers stroking it once and coming away slightly bloody.
“Mine too. I can’t go past here. This is it for me. Now you have to make your way alone.”
Dean’s hands are shaking harder, but he reaches out and tips Sam’s face up. Kisses him once gently and softly.
“Thank you.”
Sam smiles at that, real this time, and nods before opening the door and stepping aside.
----
Dean steps out into a wasteland. The ground is rocky, barren, and too hard to have seen liquid any time in the last few hundred years. Nothing living is anywhere in sight, and when he turns around there’s no door and no way back to Sam. Just the nothingness in front of him.
There’s no real thought to his decision, Dean just takes one step forward, and then another, and another until his feet are moving at a regular pace and he is headed into the unknown. The ground makes no sound under his boots, there’s no wind, and the sun is locked into position over his head.
He can’t help but imagine how Sam would interpret this. Dean’s heart is a desert wasteland. His eyes scan the horizon and see nothing, and the lack of a destination causes a bit of panic. What if he was supposed to force Sam to come with him? What if he never finds his way out of here?
With every second that Dean wastes wandering around in the desert his brother is out there with a demon. A demon that Dean created. He stumbles on something, stops to look down, and sees a step. It’s by itself, sticking out of the ground and looking like it was carved out of the earth. Dean bends to run his fingers along it and doesn’t shudder when the texture is bone instead of rock.
As his fingers rest on the smooth and slightly porous surface there’s a rumbling, and Dean’s eyes drag along the ground to see steps lifting and rising out of the hard packed ground. One by one the steps build, the ground splitting away from them and framing the staircase that’s forming in front of him. It’s as good a destination as any, and something different from the nothingness he’s been traveling through for what feels like forever.
Dean puts his foot on the first step, tests its strength, and feels it give a little under his weight. It’s not enough to ensure that he’ll take a fall, but its worrying enough that Dean steps up on the ground beside it and begins to walk along the deepening cut lining the bone staircase.
He curves a bit, putting more space between himself and the stairs, watching the ground under his feet carefully to make sure that it doesn’t open up in front of him. The terrain is changing around him slowly but surely. Lifting and sharpening. Dean glances up once to see mountains in the distance, clear and distinct in the bright sun, and ahead of him hills offer a break in the monotony but there is still nothing living in sight.
It’s a symptom of his time here that Dean becomes introspective in the face of the landscape changes. What does it mean? There’s still no life here, no color, and everything is hard and monochrome. Is this really what’s become of Dean’s heart? He doesn’t think it’s true or fair. He loves Sam. It may be a complicated love, but it’s got a pulse that Dean’s always felt beating with his own. Sam is always a part of his thoughts, his movements, and there’s nothing of Sam here at all.
Dean loves Cas like family, still holds all the love and anguish for his parents, for Bobby, and for all the other people that became a part of their lives before being brutally ripped away. Dean isn’t empty or hollow, he isn’t dead below the neck, and there’s no reason this place should look that way. It’s inconsistent, unrealistic, and Dean wonders if there’s someone he can file a formal complaint with.
Which is how Dean misses it he guesses. Because there’s no booming of footsteps, no shaking of the ground, and no warning whatsoever that the beast comes. It’s simply there when he looks up to see if the sun has moved at all.
The thing towers over him, its paws straddling the cut over the staircase and its face placid and calm. Dean recognizes it twice, and the recognition clears up a lot of his confusion about this whole process. Its face is that of the amulet, long beard braided, earrings dangling from beneath its horns, and the bronze cap twisting into the sky above all with the loop at the top that hangs around his leather strap.
Marduk. Dean remembers the long and dry lecture Sam gave him about the nature of the amulet and its meaning. They were in bed in Omaha, post hunt, and Sam’s fingers dragged over the bruised length of Dean’s ribs as he talked. Babylonian, a god above all other gods, and Dean can’t believe he didn’t see it earlier when he was locked in the broadcast room with the hippie. The tablets, the name, all of it add together. Bel. Sam had told him about the many names, and Dean had simply nodded his head and waited for Sam to get to the business of fucking.
“Bel.”
The things great head tilts, eyes a bright white with no pupils to break the color.
“Dean.”
They stand perfectly still, the god’s chest moving only slightly to indicate that it is alive, and Dean wonders if this is going to end as badly as it feels like it will.
“What now?”
The god’s lips move silently for a moment, and then it leans back a bit and briefly gives a bland smile.
“You must sacrifice. Give me my symbol, and you may pass into the world beyond.”
Dean reaches up, gripping the leather thong and pulling up to remove it from his neck and let the necklace dangle from his fingertips. The god stares at him, expression gone again, and Dean thinks that maybe there’s an out. Maybe there’s an escape.
Maybe he can make it to the end of this.
And then he feels it. Deep and cold in his heart. The loss of the amulet again. Dean remembers how easy it was to give it up the first time, fueled by bitterness and anger at Sam, the desperation of the situation, and the realization that there was still a little part of him that thought any second now God would arrive and fix everything.
They were entirely alone and had been so since the beginning. Just like Dean had logically believed. But he’d wanted to be proved wrong. He’d wanted to be made a fool.
Dean had simply opened his hand then and dropped the amulet into the trash, his back turned to Sam and his eyes fixed on the featureless door. But now his hand cramps around the leather, feels the weight of the little amulet swinging underneath his hand, and the part of his chest that lacks weight and remembrance.
“No.”
Marduk, Bel, the Beast tilts its great head again.
“What?”
“I said no. I know you can hear me.”
“But Dean, this is the way out. Do you not want to return to Sam? The trials are over boy. It is simply a matter of paying the toll.”
Dean licks his lips, sets his feet, and pulls his knife. It’s so puny, and he knows it, but Dean will be damned if he gives up Sam’s love again. Possibly quite literally.
“I’m not paying the toll today.”
Marduk laughs once, head thrown back and earrings jingling, and then all expression leaches out of his face and he leans forward, breath puffing Dean’s clothes back and stirring the dirt at his feet.
“Then come to me boy. Come and meet your death.”
And Dean does. He rushes forward, low and tight, and twists at the last second to miss the god’s great mouth before sinking the small knife into the flesh of its face. The head recoils pulling back, and Dean runs. Runs faster than he has ever run before.
He feels the breath again, and then he’s being lifted in the air, teeth buried in the button up shirt he’s wearing and lips pressed to his flesh. Dean thinks about being eaten, about Sam back in the real world never knowing how much progress Dean has made, and slices the knife forward down his own chest and cuts the buttons and himself in the process.
But the shirt opens, and Dean relaxes his arms and lets himself fall out of it. He hits the ground hard, bones jarring with the impact, and then rolls onto his feet and starts running again. Dean hears the movement of the air and hits the ground, sliding down the rocky wall and landing on one bone step that cracks under his weight even as a huge paw slices above him where his head used to be.
It takes too long to get upright again, but Dean does it. He runs on the stairs, hearing each one break under his feet, and the booming of the god as it chases him down. Dean runs, lungs heaving, hands clutching the necklace and the knife, and eyes fixed only on the forward progression.
He will make it. He must make it. He must get back to Sam.
Behind him Marduk lets out a howl, ground shaking under Dean’s feet, and then he plants his left boot too hard and pauses too long. The steps shatters under his foot, and Dean falls through the space that once was a step, bone cutting him sharply as he drops into the void.
His last thought is of Sam.
----
Dean opens his eyes.
He’s in a motel room he doesn’t recognize, and Sam is across the room from him with his arm in a sling and a look of exhaustion so deeply cut into his face that Dean hurts to see it. His brother seems to be contemplating the very existence of the salad sitting in front of him.
Dean just hurts honestly. His chest burns, his legs are sore, and his hands are gripped so tight his joints creak when he releases his grip. But the amulet is still there even though the knife is gone. The amulet is with him.
Sam looks up from the wilting meal, eyes wary and unsure, and Dean sees the second Sam notices the amulet. Sees the look of confusion bleed into wonder and hope.
And Dean lifts the amulet, lowers it around his head to drop onto his chest, and then crosses the room to his brother.
He kneels, knees cracking with the deep bend and hands moving slow but sure to take Sam’s. This is the moment he fought so hard for. This is the reality he wanted to return to.
This is the life he must make again.
“Sammy. I’m fucking hungry dude.”
His brother’s face crumples, laughter and tears bursting out at the same time, and Dean thinks it looks good on him. Sam has always been an ugly crier, but mix in dimples and the picture is sort of charming.
“Jerk.”
“Bitch.”
Masterpost
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no subject
Date: 2015-01-22 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-17 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-22 04:23 pm (UTC)I particularly liked the decisions that Dean revisited, they were a perfect blend of history and guilt and angst and self loathing that give us Dean's frame of mind.
The artwork is also gorgeous! What a terrific interpretation your story is to the art.
no subject
Date: 2016-07-17 03:53 pm (UTC)Thank you so much! I love you wifey! I saw this picture and just KNEW that was what needed done. The Samulet will haunt us all forever. I'm so glad you liked it and I love you!! Sorry for how late this reply is!!
no subject
Date: 2015-01-22 09:07 pm (UTC)♡
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Date: 2016-07-17 03:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-24 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-17 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-24 10:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-17 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-24 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2015-01-25 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-17 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-08 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2015-03-07 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-17 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-15 03:54 am (UTC)Your last lines made me laugh out loud and go all watery. Perfect, perfect!
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Date: 2016-07-17 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-23 11:59 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2015-03-29 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2015-06-05 06:24 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2015-07-04 01:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-17 09:15 pm (UTC)