Supernatural Fan Fiction ❯ Live Together, Die Alone ❯ To Live Again ( Chapter 1 )

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the characters of Supernatural—at all, period—or the song “Someday Out of the Blue” by Elton John.

 

Characters: Sam and Dean Winchester, with mention of Jessica Moore, Pastor Jim, John Winchester, Missouri Mosley, and Bobby No-Last-Name

 

Setting: Futurefic, anytime after IMTOD

 

Warning: Deathfic

 

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Live Together, Die Alone

 

Someday out of the blue,

In a crowded street or a deserted square,

I'll turn and I'll see you,

As if our love were new.

Someday we can start again,

Someday soon.

 

It's difficult to say why some people see the dead. There is simply no way to tell what makes a person's eyes pick up the image of a person long gone—not without delving into things and ideas and minds we have no business so much as glancing at. All we know is that some people see their dead as clearly as if that person really were standing right in front of them, close enough to touch, while others maintain that death is—or should be—the end.

 

Sam Winchester is one of those in the former category; Dean belongs to the latter.

 

That's why Sam has never told Dean about seeing Jessica in Toledo, and that's why he keeps quiet about all the other times.

 

And there have been other times. Ever since they left Ohio what seems like so long ago, he has been seeing Jess. It isn't constant—it's more random than anything else. He'll be at a corner shop to get coffee at midnight, and she'll be behind the guy ringing up the price. They'll be driving to some obscure corner of the world, and Sam will glance in the mirror and see her sitting demurely in the backseat, hands folded in her lap. He'll be brushing his teeth, and she'll be standing behind him when he glances in the mirror.

 

If Dean wonders why he sometimes seems jumpy, and starts for no reason at odd moments, he never asks, and Sam is relieved.

 

Jess is thoughtful enough not to show up during hunts, but she makes up for it at night. From the time the sun sinks below the western horizon to the time it rises, she is there every time Sam opens his eyes, and it doesn't matter where he's looking.

 

She doesn't look angry like in his dreams. She just looks sad—a deep, quiet sadness that tugs at him, pulls him in, surrounds him like a physical thing. It is at those moments when Sam feels his heart tearing in two. He wants to close his eyes, wants to scream at her to leave, longs to beg her to stay. He feels like laughing and weeping, hating and loving her in equal measure.

 

She never says anything—just looks at him.

 

She never asks like him to come with her, and that is a blessing.

 

It is a blessing because he wants to so badly.

 

Here comes the night.

Here come the memories.

Lost in your arms,

Down in the foreign fields.

Not so long ago,

Seems like eternity,

The sweet afternoons

Still capture me.

 

Pastor Jim is the first soldier down.

 

Sam can remember Jim better than he can remember anyone else in their circle. He hasn't seen the man in many years, but he can still bring the kind face easily into the forefront of his mind.

 

Pastor Jim had been Sam's favorite of his father's friends. From day one he'd seemed to sense Sam's deep love of reading anything he could get his hands on and he'd allowed Sam free run of his truly gigantic library, with not even a warning not to mess anything up. He'd been the only one who never mocked Sam for his love of ancient Latin texts and old, obscure languages. He never said anything against anyone, radiating a peace that seemed to well up from deep within.

 

Sam supposes it must be because he was a priest.

 

He wonders if Jim still held that peace even as he died.

 

He hopes so.

 

He wonders if Jim has made it to the angels he so loved.

 

He hopes so.

 

He wonders if he'll see Jim again soon.

 

He hopes so.

 

With all his heart, he hopes so.

 

Someday, out of the blue,

In a crowded street, or a deserted square,

I'll turn and I'll see you,

As if our love were new.

Someday we can live again,

Someday soon.

 

John sacrifices himself for his children, as Sam has always secretly known he would.

 

The circumstances around his death seem fitting, somehow, and Sam knows that is how John wanted to go—protecting the most important people in his world. Sam knows it, and so he mourns, but deep down, he is satisfied, as John is satisfied, somewhere outside of this reality.

 

Dean is not satisfied.

 

Dean does not mourn.

 

Dean will not allow himself to forgive.

 

Sam doesn't know how to help him.

 

He knows his brother inside and out—knows him better than anyone. That is why he can't do anything. He and Dean are so close, and now Dean refuses to allow himself that closeness. He thinks he deserves it—this pain, this ripping, tearing guilt—and nothing can convince him otherwise.

 

The situation moves beyond words very quickly—moves past the point where Sam can save the situation. An impassable wall springs up from the earth to divide them, and Sam has no idea how to break it down, to reach everything that is his brother, everything that is Dean.

 

He knows he will not succeed. He and Dean are divided—maybe forever.

 

And—just maybe—that is a fitting loss, too.

 

I still believe.

I still put faith in us.

We had it all and watched it slip away.

Where we are now,

Not where we want to be.

Those hot afternoons

Still follow me.

 

When Missouri Mosley dies, it isn't because of anything supernatural. In fact, it's from something so normal that Sam feels a bizarre, hysterical desire to laugh when he hears the news.

 

Heart failure.

 

Normal, average heart failure, complete with all the signs—high blood pressure, high cholesterol, the works.

 

Neither of them believe it at first, when Bobby calls them. (It is still a mystery how he picks these things up, but the brothers don't ever think to question it.) Heart failure? In a stubborn, sure, lively woman like Missouri?

 

No. No, it must be something else.

 

Only it isn't. When Dean and Sam go back to Lawrence, they find nothing—and they look harder than they've ever looked for anything or anyone in their lives. But it is useless, and it soon becomes clear that even Winchesters can be touched—can be hurt—by something other mortals are touched and hurt by every day.

 

Because Missouri is dead of heart failure, and it's random, and it's terrible, but in normal life, it happens.

 

And that is how Sam comes to wish for something other than normalcy, for the first time in his life.

 

Someday out of the blue,

Maybe years from now,

Or tomorrow night,

I'll turn and I'll see you

As if we always knew

Someday we would live again,

Someday soon.

 

Dean and Sam are actually around the day they lose Bobby, and that is something new. They are on a hunt—a normal hunt, all of them together—when he falls, the victim of old age that made him slow and allowed the claws to slash his heart.

 

The Winchesters are there to see the light leave his eyes, to see him slip away, to become truly encompassed by their loss.

 

They burn him themselves, in his own backyard because neither he nor they can afford any sort of cremation ceremony. It is like losing John all over again, only not really, because this time Dean allows himself to cry. There is nothing he can blame himself for, and so he cries.

 

Sam doesn't cry.

 

Sam mourns, but only on the inside.

 

And the grief is not for Bobby alone, although he feels that pain like he'd been the one cut down.

 

No, the grief is split between two. One is dead.

 

The other is alive, but Sam grieves as if he were dead.

 

Because Sam knows, though he is the only one in the world who does.

 

There isn't a vision—there is nothing supernatural about his knowledge, but he has it all the same.

 

He knows that Dean will be next.

 

I still believe.

I still put faith in us.

I still believe.

I still put faith in us.

I still believe.

I still put faith in us.

 

Dean leaves the world on a day between April showers and Mayflowers, a few months after they leave Bobby's ashes behind.

 

Sam has spent the last months with all of his attention on his brother, trying as hard as he can to protect Dean without letting Dean find out he is being protected. Sam refuses to let his brother find out he's going to die, because the fact is, there's no predicting how Dean might take that news.

 

Normally, Sam would be able to tell. He always could read Dean like a book, and it's never been difficult to predict Dean's thoughts and reactions.

 

But that was before.

 

Before all the death.

 

Before all the grief.

 

Before the relationship between the Brothers Winchester—the secret envy of all who looked upon it—eroded on grounds of pain, and changed shape, becoming something strange and unrecognizable.

 

He and Dean rarely talk anymore. Most of their time is spent in silence, unless they are on a hunt. There are no jokes, no brotherly banter, no life left in their relationship at all. Dean has even quit listening to his music. There is simply nothing left to say, for anyone, and Sam has no idea how to break the silence.

 

A part of him doesn't want to.

 

But none of that is even the point. The point is, Dean is going to die today.

 

Sam doesn't know how, and he doesn't know why, but it's going to happen unless he stops it.

 

He spends the entire day hovering close to his brother, as close and protective as he can be no longer caring if Dean notices. He has to notice, but he says nothing to acknowledge the fact. He doesn't even ask why Sam is acting so strange.

 

Maybe he doesn't care.

 

Maybe he already knows.

 

Maybe both.

 

But the day passes normally, and when they stumble back to their rooms that night, both of them are exhausted from yet another hunt, but they are unscathed. Dean is still alive, and Sam's feeling of impending death has eased enough to make him think he may have been wrong.

 

Dean falls asleep fairly quickly, with not a word spoken between them.

 

Sam stays awake for hours, determined to at least keep watch over his brother until daylight washes these traces of fear away. He is still awake when dawn touches the eastern horizon, and the fear is almost gone.

 

He blinks once, and Dean is on the ceiling over his bed.

 

Only his face isn't Dean's now. It is Jessica's, and Mary's, and John's, and all the faces of all the people that Sam has loved and lost. They all flash before him, and only then do the features become Dean's.

 

He doesn't look frightened. He doesn't seem to be in pain. He is just as empty at this moment as he has been for months on end. He doesn't seem to care that his life is about to end, and even as Sam screams for him, the hazel eyes close, and Dean's body embraces and is embraced by the flames.

 

Like the knight in the poem, he scorns to seem afraid.

 

Here comes the night.

Here come the memories.

Lost in your arms,

Down in the foreign fields.

Not so long ago,

Seems like eternity.

The sweet afternoons

Still capture me.

 

Dean has always watched out for Sam. He's been doing it all their lives—it comes as easily as breathing. Whenever the opportunity comes up, he'll say he's looking out for Sam, because that's what he does.

 

But now Sam knows better.

 

Watching out for Sam isn't what Dean does.

 

It's what Dean is.

 

Sam has never realized this. He's never noticed, because he's never needed to notice.

 

But now he realizes it, because his protector is gone, and now he has no idea what to do, what to feel.

 

So he chooses anger.

 

Anger is the only thing that saves him, because at the moment he wants nothing more than to stay and burn along with his brother. In fact, he almost does. But in the distant corner of his mind still capable of thought, he realizes that he is the only one with a hope of killing The Demon.

 

And so he leaves his world behind. He walks away, and leaves his brother there to burn, and with every step he loses heart and soul and warmth, until by the time he gets outside he is nothing but a frozen shell.

 

The anger grows as he talks to the cops, the firefighters, all the officials who have come to figure out what happened. He speaks to them calmly even as he tells them his brother is dead, and every single one of them looks startled when they speak to him, but he can't find it in him to care, and he only sticks around long enough for a few terse words of explanation before he leaves, ignoring the calls and demands to wait.

 

And through it all, only one thought sticks out clearly in his mind.

 

It's time.

 

It's time to finish this.

 

Someday out of the blue,
Maybe years from now
Or tomorrow night,
I'll turn and I'll see you,
As if we always knew
Someday we would live again.

Someday soon.

 

The anger sustains him for the next six months. It is sharp, and it is clear, and it doesn't fade with time. It banishes any fear he might have had for the moment he finds his brother's killer.

 

And it makes him eager.

 

It makes him bloodthirsty.

 

It makes him want nothing more than to kill.

 

He has never felt that way before. He has never felt this kind of hatred—not for a single thing he's ever hunted. But he feels it now, and he can't wait to find the yellow-eyed demon and coat himself in its blood.

 

He doesn't talk to anyone anymore. He makes no effort to return e-mails and calls from his friends at Stanford. He doesn't hunt. If he gets visions, he ignores them.

 

People are startled by him when he goes into a diner to get something to eat, or any other time he simply must interact with them. Maybe they think he's just a rude guy. Maybe they're frightened by the emptiness in his eyes. Either way, it doesn't matter. They are nothing to him, anyway.

 

They are nothing, and he is nothing, and soon, the yellow-eyed demon will be nothing.

 

He is getting stronger every day—stronger in body, stronger in power, stronger in everything but humanity—and soon, he will be ready.

 

Soon.

 

Soon.

 

Someday out of the blue,
In a crowded street or a deserted square,
I'll turn and I'll see you,
As if our love were new.
Someday we can start again.

Someday soon.

 

Sam kills the demon on Dean's birthday, and that was the one thing he hadn't expected. He'd been prepared for almost anything—except to find what he'd been searching for on his favorite day of the whole year.

 

And the really funny thing about it all was that he didn't feel a single thing about it. Not depression, not irony, not even a sense of accomplishment or anticipation. All he felt was more of the anger.

 

In point of fact, he doesn't even find the demon. No, actually, the demon finds him—comes to him in the middle of the night while he's trying to go to sleep.

 

Sam never does find out why—why the demon chose to come that night, what made it think it could convince Sam to join it this time, when it was so very unsuccessful before—and he doesn't want to ask, because like everything else, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that after all this time, The Demon—bringer of pain, harbinger of death, center of the entire Winchester universe—is standing in front of him, and the bloodlust is raging within him.

 

He isn't sure how long the battle lasts. It could be seconds, or it could be hours, or it could be days spent locked in purely mental battle. If he tires, he doesn't feel it. If The Demon injures him, he doesn't feel it. If he is afraid, he doesn't' feel it. All he feels is the anger, consuming him, filling him with strength whenever he begins to falter.

 

It's because of the anger that he doesn't feel his body beginning to die, torn apart from the inside by the forces ripping through it at his command. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing—he wouldn't have cared if he realized what was happening, but it might have distracted him, so actually ignorance really is bliss at this moment.

 

It does have its drawbacks, though—when he finally kills the demon—doesn't send it back to hell, but actually kills it, sends it flying apart into bits of dust scattered all over the room—he doesn't have any time to revel in the fact. He doesn't have time to think about the fact that he has finally succeeded, has finally accomplished the goal his entire family and more than his family have been working toward for decades. He doesn't pat himself on the back, doesn't congratulate himself or gloat.

 

He just stares at the dust for a moment, and then, for the first time, crumbles.

 

Sam falls.

 

I still believe.

I still put faith in us.

I still believe.

I still put faith in us.

I still believe.

I still put faith in us.

 

He can't remember the last time he knew something besides anger, and maybe that's why it takes him a long time to put his finger on what he feel when he swims back up to consciousness—because it isn't anything remotely resembling anger.

 

No, this is something else. It's…peace. Warmth. Love.

 

It's everything that he's lost, everything he's forgotten he's missed.

 

And there's only one reason he can think of for his feeling this way. But…it's an impossible reason, an insane reason, and just about the only thing he hasn't become in the last long months is insane.

 

But before he can dwell on the idea anymore, the questions are answered, because Jess comes to him.

 

He thinks later that maybe she was the most logical choice to appear to him first, because she's basically the only one who wouldn't scare him out of his wits. As it is, her presence calms him, because he's become so used to it. So when she comes forward and takes his hand, he doesn't shout or cry out or shove her away—he just jumps a little, because not once has she ever touched him when she appears.

 

Then she kisses him, and he doesn't wonder why, because it's just such a wonderful feeling after so long. The kiss is long and deep, and it doesn't have to end because they're not breathing and there's something wrong with that but he doesn't worry about it because it's just not the time for that.

 

And then Sam looks up, and they are surrounded.

 

Jim is there, and Missouri, and Bobby, and Caleb, and all the demons he's faced have been lying because John is standing there, and he is smiling through his tears, and next to him is Mary, and she is crying and laughing at the same time, but she doesn't come forward and he wonders why…

 

But then Jessica steps away from him, and Dean is there.

 

Dean hugs him, holds him the way he never did in life, squeezes him up all tight and murmurs all sorts of apologies for leaving him, for making things so bad between them. Dean's voice isn't empty anymore—it's full of so much love and joy that it trembles.

 

And Sam weeps, buries his head in his big brother's shoulder and cries, hugging him with all he has, his strength so much greater now than it has ever been because it is born of love and not hate.

 

He feels everyone pressing in close, pounding his back, and that is when Mary finally comes forward, wrapping her arms around him from the side so that she doesn't inadvertently break apart her sons' embrace. Then John joins them, and all their friends watch as the family becomes whole again.

 

Sam doesn't lift his face from Dean's shoulder, but somehow he knows all this is going on, and as the warm white light engulfs them all, he knows something else.

 

He knows that it's all going to be all right now, that all his pain—all their pain—is finally behind them, forever and always.

 

He knows that it's time.

 

Time to live again.

 

I still believe.

I still put faith in us.

 

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Author's Note: I…cannot believe I just did that. What is with me lately?! God! I hate deathfics!!! So what on earth inspired me to write this?

 

Well…hey, here's one good thing: it's all uphill from here!

 

Please, please review, even if it's just to tell me I'm insane and I suck!

 

Only…please don't use those words, `cause that would make me sad…