Supernatural Fan Fiction ❯ Apocalypse Nowish ❯ Apocalypse Nowish ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: Well, despite how long it's taken me to update, I still don't own the boys. I also don't own the title—it came from one of three possible shows: Buffy, Angel, or Charmed. I think.

 

Characters: Sam and Dean Winchester. For once, it's just them.

 

Setting: Pre-Pilot and Season 4

 

Warnings: None, except possibly a screw-up of dates…

 

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Apocalypse Nowish

 

Christmas 1991

 

“Dean?”

 

Dean looked up from the pendant he'd been studying in the faint light of their sad little tree, and tossed a surprised glance at the small figure framed against the headboard of one of the beds. “Hey, I thought you were asleep, kiddo.”

 

Sam shrugged. “I woke up.” His voice sounded…off.

 

“Sammy, are you crying?”

 

“No!” Sam said defiantly, but in a tiny voice that squeaked.

 

“Yes, you are,” Dean said, getting up off the floor and going to sit next to his brother, sliding an arm around the shaking shoulders. “Did you have a nightmare or something?”

 

The shoulders lifted and dropped again. Dean took it as a yes.

 

“About…Dad? And…you know…stuff?”

 

Sam didn't answer. Instead he just leaned back against the headboard and stared at the tree, his eyes wide and shining in the dark, without a trace of sleepiness even though it was the middle of the night.

 

After a while, though, Sam said, “Dean, how do you know when the world's going to end?”

 

“What?” Dean asked, his hand clenching spasmodically around his new pendant.

 

“Well, I was just thinking. If monsters and stuff are real, then maybe the Bible is, too.”

 

Dean stared at him for a moment, then burst out, “What are talking about? What do you know about the Bible? And what does it have to do with the apocalypse?” Seriously, who would have even mentioned that kind of stuff to Sam? Dean hadn't, and he was pretty sure Dad wouldn't have—not anymore. So who?

 

Sam, though, just looked at him like the answer was obvious. “The apocalypse is in the Bible, Dean. Kinda. And I was thinking—the stuff in the Bible is way more well-known than the stuff just Dad knows about, so how can it all be wrong? Some of it has to be true. So what if the apocalypse is real? And how do we know it's not coming? Like, tomorrow, even? Or just really, really soon?”

 

“Sam, where is this coming from?” Dean asked. As he did, though, a thought occurred to him. “Wait…was that what you were dreaming about?”

 

Sam sighed and admitted in a small voice, “Yeah.”

 

Dean shook his head and leaned back until both he and Sam were lying down. “I knew I shouldn't have told you all this stuff yet. You weren't ready.”

 

“I was, too!” Sam protested. “I'm fine.”

 

“Sam, you had a nightmare about the world ending.”

 

“Well, yeah, but…but I had to find out sometime, didn't I?”

 

“It didn't have to be now. But anyway, I'm pretty sure I never gave you the idea that the world was going to end anytime soon.”

 

“Well, no, but…it's just logical. And…and what if I'm right? How would we tell?”

 

“Sam, the world is not ending,” Dean said firmly, trying not to show in his tone exactly how much their father was going to kill him. “Nothing like that's gonna happen, okay? There'd be…like…signs and stuff, and there aren't. Besides, Dad wouldn't let the world end.”

 

Sam giggled a little at that, but sobered quickly and looked solemnly up at Dean in the dim light.

 

“Dean, if the world really were ending…”

 

“It's not.”

 

“But if it was,” Sam said insistently. “What would we do?”

 

Dean couldn't answer, but he stayed up, thinking about it and fingering the amulet Sam had given him instead of their father, long after Sam had fallen back into an uneasy sleep.

 

XXX

 

When Sam woke up the next morning, the first thing he felt was embarrassment, remembering last night only too well. Why, oh, why had he ever brought up the end of the world to Dean? His big brother must have thought he was as lame as it was possible for a younger brother to be. Here Sam had kept insisting that he was old enough to handle anything, that he was mature, practically a freaking grown-up—and the first time Dean let him in on something real, he reacted like this.

 

And to make things worse, as he thought over his theories with the bright light of morning coming in through the window, they began to look…a little silly.

 

A lot silly, in fact, as wild horror-movie-based theories are bound to in the daytime.

 

Seriously. The end of the world? Armageddon? The apocalypse? Not likely.

 

What had he been thinking?

 

“Sam, I know you're awake.”

 

Of course he did. He wished Dean could just be clueless about something.

 

“`M not…”

 

“Liar. Come on, get up.”

 

“No.”

 

“Sam, if you don't get up you won't get your Christmas present.”

 

Sam weighed this information in his mind. On the one hand, he resented being bribed like he was little enough to still believe in Santa Claus. On the other hand…well, presents.

 

So he compromised.

 

“It's not Christmas anymore, jerk.”

 

He could practically hear Dean rolling his eyes. “Sammy., you're the only nine-year-old I know who would argue whether or not a present is a Christmas present. Fine, then come get your un-Christmas present.”

 

“It's Sam.”

 

Sam's eyes had been screwed tightly shut all the way through the conversation, but they snapped wide open when a hand fastened itself on the collar of his shirt and pulled until he was sprawled on the floor, purple from lack of breath and glaring up at the grinning face floating over his.

 

“Was that really necessary?”

 

“I'm pretty sure it was, yeah. Do you want your present or not?”

 

Sam sat up and said suspiciously, “I guess…if you promise it didn't come from some girl down the street.”

 

“Cross my heart and hope to cry,” Dean said, with an impish grin that always had and always would make him look all of about six. “Now get up, lug, and open this.”

 

Sam only became more suspicious when he saw the gift, because there was no way Dean had gotten it before he'd gone to sleep. He certainly hadn't bought wrapping paper—it looked as if he'd taken the newspaper his own gift had been in, and then scrounged whatever else they'd had in the room, and taped it all to a box to create a rather comic effect.

 

So that left the question—if Dean couldn't afford wrapping paper, then how did he buy a whole present?

 

Well, he couldn't have, of course.

 

Which left another stolen Christmas present, only this one taken from a store, probably one with security cameras and uniformed guards and really big dogs…

 

“Oh, wipe that look off your face, Sammy,” Dean said irritably, shoving the box toward him. “Look, I promise I didn't even leave the motel for this, okay?”

 

Since a promise from Dean to Sam was pretty much an unbreakable thing, that at least was one worry lifted, and Sam finally reached for the package and began to take the paper off it.

 

Inside the paper was a box that Sam recognized as one of the ones Dad had used for their supply of salt before he'd gotten a bigger, stronger one from Uncle Bobby. Dean had obviously “liberated” the old one, and donated it to his own cause.

 

The box was made of wood, dark brown and thick, and it was about a foot long and eighteen inches wide. Dean had written across the lid in neat, all-capital, black-marker letters “Apocalypse Survival Kit.”

 

“Dean, what the he—eck is this?” he asked, backtracking when Dean's eyebrow went up.

 

“Thought you could read better than that, Sammy. Go on, open it.”

 

Seeing that that was all he was going to get, Sam shrugged, popped the lid off and set it aside.

 

The little box was crammed full, so Sam started taking it all out piece by piece, piling all it around him.

 

The first thing was a flashlight—one of the gigantic ones that could blind several men or take out a deer in an instant. It was one of Dad's, but since he had about twelve, he probably wouldn't even miss it.

 

“We'll need it if all the lights in the world go out at once,” Dean explained.

 

The next thing was a family-sized bag of M&Ms. They were Dean's favorite, and Sam's too, though he refused to admit his weakness for the things. This one looked well able to feed them both for days, albeit at the expense of any nutrition whatsoever.

 

“Because we'll definitely need lots of chocolate if we have to hide underground,” said Dean.

 

Then there was a deck of cards, which actually hadn't been stolen either—Dad had bought them for Dean to keep him from driving everyone crazy on long drives from state to state. They were looking a little worn by now, but still usable.

 

“To keep us all from killing each other when we haven't been outside for days,” was Dean's reasoning.

 

There was also an Apocalypse Now tape, and that was not theirs—but Dean also hadn't stolen it. Exactly. They'd rented it a few months ago, and had only discovered that they hadn't returned it when they were three states out.

 

“It's not exactly a `how to' guide, but the name seemed appropriate,” Dean chuckled.

 

Taking up most of the room in the box was a blanket. It was an old, ratty, threadbare blanket that had faded until it was more white than blue, and it had been washed so many times that it was a miracle it was still in one piece. It had been Dean's, and then Sam's, and then locked up in a box of the things that had made it out of the fire and left there.

 

And now Dean had dug it out, for the same reason he'd bothered putting all this together in the first place. He didn't need to explain this one—Sam understood.

 

“Dean…” Sam shook his head, trying to pick one thing to say out of the number flying through his head.

 

He finally settled on “Thanks.”

 

XXX

 

Christmas 2008

 

While on the road to Hell, Dean had called Sam the boy who hated Christmas, and now he indulged in a biter laugh at his own expense as he thought about it.

 

He and Sam were stranded at another motel in Minnesota while a blizzard reinforced the walls of their prison from the outside. They'd been trying to work their latest job for two days and the storm, as if sensing this, hadn't abated a single time.

 

Earlier Sam had risked his life (in Dean's opinion) to go out and get some food from half a block down. Dean, feeling like quite the only sane person there, had stayed firmly seated in front of the TV, eating from this emergency stash, but Sam scoffed at the chips and chocolate as something less than food.

 

“Dean, I'm not going to live off that crap. If we die in here, my corpse is not going to weigh three hundred pounds,” he'd snapped, eyeing the snacks askance.

 

“Don't be a princess, Sam,” was the fond reply, and the next thing Dean knew he was alone in the room, without even the certainty of whether or not Sam was really angry at him or just being his usual cranky anti-Christmas self.

 

The Sam who had returned to the room, though, was a pretty mellow—if cold—one. He slapped a bag down on Dean's bed, whisked the “crap” away, and left his brother to dine on two double burgers and fries and a piece of chocolate cake while he himself burrowed under his blankets and munched on a turkey club, fries and a salad.

 

“You'd better not have wrecked my car for this,” Dean said, by way of thanks.

 

“I walked,” was the unexpected reply, and Dean stared incredulously for a moment before snapping, “`Scuse me?”

 

“It was half a block, Dean, and it's not like I walked it shirtless,” Sam had pointed out in irritation, pointing to the thick coat, jacket, and sweater on the floor across the room.

 

Dean hadn't spoken to him since, and for the last two hours Christmas had been spent in strong silence, leading to the bitter introspection as Dean recollected how very crappy the time since he'd returned to Hell had been, and how long before he (and the rest of the world) could expect to be returned there.

 

He was interrupted in this morbid task when his mattress dipped as something heavy was dropped on it.

 

“Here,” Sam said shortly before returning to his bed.

 

“Uh…what the hell's that?”

 

“Shut up and open it before I change my mind.”

 

Dean stared at him for a moment, but Sam still looked cranky and not too willing to explain, so finally Dean shrugged and reached for the paper-covered package that must have come from under Sam's bed.

 

He didn't really know what he'd expected to find. Not a Christmas present—that night last year had been a one-time thing, something they hadn't indulged in since they were little and probably wouldn't indulge in again. So when the paper revealed exactly that—and one he recognized—Dean wasn't quite sure what to make of it. He didn't say anything, but the look he pinned on his brother demanded an explanation and they both knew it.

 

“I…uh…gave Bobby a call once I knew where we'd be at Christmas,” Sam said awkwardly, not quite looking him in the eye. “He's been storing it for me for…well, years actually, but I asked for him to send it to me here.”

 

Dean looked down at the present he'd forgotten, the one that had passed from his hands to Sam's on Christmas night seventeen years ago. A silly gift, but one that had comforted them both, and now here it was again.

 

Dean's hand traced the scrawled letters across the lid for a moment, before Sam broke the silence.

 

“Open it. It's not exactly the same as it was when you gave it to me—I had Bobby change it up a little for me. He was disgusted that I gave him such short notice, but he did it anyway.”

 

Feeling strangely fascinated, Dean pulled the box open and started digging through it, remembering exactly what had been in it when he'd made it so long ago and making note of exactly how it had changed.

 

Nothing had been taken out, he discovered. The flashlight that had been Dean's idea of a joke at thirteen, the M&Ms—a new bag, of course, but the same size and kind—the playing cards and the DVD, and even the ratty old blanket—it was all there. But a couple of things had been added, too.

 

First there was an I Am Legend DVD, still unopened.

 

“I figure movie proves that if Will Smith can survive Doomsday, so can we,” Sam said, without cheer but with irony.

 

Then there was a decent-size iron cross.

 

“I know you're not into religion and all, but even you can't deny that God exists anymore.”

 

Yes, he could, since he'd only ever seen an angel, but Dean decided not to argue and pulled out the last thing—a piece of paper, folded and then untouched, resting at the bottom of the box.

 

The note was short, but Dean was acutely aware of Sam shifting awkwardly on the bed the whole time he was reading it, and by the time he finished he knew why. He also knew instinctively that Sam would be turning rather red right now.

 

Dean, (the note began):

 

I know this has been a really crappy year for both of us. But it's been worse for you than for me, which is why I got you a Christmas present again. Presents two years in a row—it really must be Armageddon, huh?

 

Anyways—I don't want you thinking that this is going to be too sappy. I really did try to tone it down a little. But the thing is, I've been doing some thinking, mostly about the night you gave me this when I was nine. I didn't really get it then. I thought I did, but I didn't—not really.

 

But the thing is, now we really are facing the answer to my question from that night. If the world really was ending, what would we do?

 

You weren't able to answer then, but that's okay. I can answer myself now. It's pretty simple, actually.

 

If the world ended, we would fight.

 

And if the world ended, we wouldn't go down alone.

 

Sam

 

It really was a sappy note, but not unforgivably sappy, at least. And how could Dean mock his brother, when Sam was already blushing so red and looking so completely embarrassed, as if he wondered how he'd thought this worth it in the first place?

 

Well, he could, but not `til later.

 

Right now, he had to try to sort out something to say.

 

He finally settled on, “Thanks.”

 

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Author's Note: Well, the ending feels a little clunky, but it wasn't unforgivable, was it? Not so unforgivable that we can't put it down to the fact that I haven't written a thing in over two months?

 

Anyways—whatever you have to say, please, say it! And also, I promise, I have a slightly more well-thought-out story in mind than this one. This was just kind of a whim and I was so desperate to post something that I started in on the first thing that came to mind…