Supernatural Fan Fiction ❯ Zhai'helleva, Ashke ❯ Ashes, Ashes... ( Chapter 6 )

Chapter 6

 

Something went wrong.

You're not laughing.

It's not so easy now to get your smile.

You gotta be strong

To walk those streets

And keep from falling.

But when you're not, just let yourself cry.

 

The grass was dead.

 

Sam idly plucked a few blades from the ground next to him and studied them intently. When he found nothing out of the ordinary, he began to methodically rip each one into small pieces. Wholeheartedly absorbed in his task, he apparently wasn't noticing anything around him at all.

 

Dean watched him from a few feet away, not taking his eyes off his brother even as he spike to the surprisingly sympathetic medic standing next to him.

 

“He's gonna be okay?”

 

The medic took a deep breath. “Just lucky you were there. You got him out before he even inhaled that much smoke. He'll be all right.”

 

Except…except Sam wouldn't be all right.

 

And didn't that just suck?

 

“Thanks, man,” Dean said, still without taking his eyes off Sam. He waited for a response, then steeled himself and walked over to crouch down next to Sam. “Hey, Sammy,” he murmured, more quietly than he ever would have thought he could.

 

In reply, Sam decapitated a dandelion.

 

“Sam…” Dean sighed, reaching out to take the dead flower from his hand. “C'mon, man, what did the flower ever do to you?”

 

Sam didn't answer—he hadn't said a word since he'd been pulled from the fire, and the silence was starting to creep Dean out.

 

“Listen, Sammy,” he said, keeping his voice quiet and soothing. “I know this sucks, okay? I can't even imagine what you're going through right now. But you need to stay with me, okay? I'll take care of everything. Just…stay with me.”

 

Sam sat utterly still for a few moments, then abruptly tossed his grass aside, stood up, and walked away.

 

XXX

 

Dean took care of everything, as promised. He fended off the cops by convincing them to substitute his statement for Sam's, and even managed to wrangle a truly staggering group of Sam's friends who turned up, frantic and disbelieving, demanding of every single person in the vicinity to know what was going on.

 

He didn't tell them Jessica was dead. He only told them who he was, and that he had Sam and was taking him to a motel.

 

Then he booked, so he wouldn't have to watch their reactions when they found out the truth, like the coward he knew himself to be but that no one else would ever admit he was.

 

Least of all Sam.

 

God, Sam.

 

Said little brother was standing at the trunk of the Impala, and only his hands moved, the rest of him utterly still. Dean walked up next to him and saw that he was following with one of the guns. His hands were perfectly steady, and you could never tell his grief from the outside.

 

Until you saw his face.

 

Of course, it might not be plain even then, if you didn't know him as well as his big brother did. But to Dean, when Sam glanced up at him as he stopped, the pain and grief and shock was clear as day, and so raw that Dean could feel it bleeding over into him.

 

Then suddenly, Sam nodded, for all the world as if someone had actually spoken, and took a deep breath, and turned away. He looked back into the trunk, his hands still moving. He finished doing…whatever he was doing with the gun, and then he tossed it back in—and spoke.

 

“We've got work to do.”

 

You've been working hard,

Just trying to pay the rent,

Tryin' to draw the line between who you are

And who you invent.

But if you throw a stone,

Something's gonna shatter somewhere.

We're all so fragile.

We're all so scared.

 

The next couple of days were unadulterated hell, and that was painting a kind face on it. Dean spent almost all of his time with his brother, with the exception of bathroom time. His intention never to leave Sam alone for more than ten minutes was pathetically transparent, but at this point he was past caring, and besides, Sam himself barely even noticed.

 

The night of the fire and the morning following it were filled with the ringing of Sam's cell as his friends and Jess's dialed their only source of information. Sam answered each and every one, even when Dean vehemently protested, and even after it had begun to wear on him he still sounded like the strong one, the rock.

 

Yeah, Sam had a rough couple days of it. He kept busy, distracting himself with everything from doing laundry to cleaning the already-clean weapons. It was a completely healthy way of dealing—on the surface.

 

But under the healthy business was an entirely unhealthy rage, all the more worrisome because it was so tightly and rigidly controlled. Whenever he wasn't cleaning something or on the phone, he was buried in their dad's journal, or hooked up on the internet, or otherwise trying to track any kind of lead to his girlfriend's killer.

 

And then there were the nightmares. They came in twos and threes and more, whenever Sam closed his eyes. He wouldn't say what they were about, and in fact, unless the phone was glued to his ear, hardly talked at all.

 

There was no sugarcoating it—Sam was obsessed, depressed, and getting worse every day, and there wasn't a damned thing to be done about it.

 

You say you wanna learn how to live your life

Without tears,

But we've been trying to do that for thousands of years.

So go on and cry Ophelia.

It's the only thing to do sometimes.

You know I'm crying, too,

Right there with you.

It's all right Ophelia.

Everybody cries.

 

At first, it was a toss-up whether Sam would actually attend his girlfriend's memorial service or simply lose his mind entirely and spend the time huddled in the corner of the motel room eating his hair. Lately the latter was becoming more and more of a possibility.

 

When Sam finally made his decision, the only indication of it was his telling Dean, “You don't have to go. I can do this alone.”

 

Dean didn't reply to that, except with a look that said it all.

 

And so, three days after the fire, the Winchester brothers dressed in rented suites that Dean didn't once complain about, and went to their first-ever funeral.

 

That day was obviously and visibly the most difficult one of Sam's life so far, and of Dean's by extension. The all-powerful big brother suddenly found himself helpless, unable to do anything but sit next to Sam and offer silent support through the empty priestly comfort, the eulogy, and all of the other ceremonies of the memorial that in the end amounted to nothing because Sam's girlfriend was still dead and his grief was still too vast to put into words.

 

They didn't stick around after the service. Sam was almost entirely catatonic by the end, and so he didn't even attempt a protest when Dean decided they should skip the condolences and just get him out of there.

 

The thing was, Dean had no idea what to do once he'd succeeded. For some reason, the idea of just going back to the motel and spending the rest of the day watching Sam obsess some more was absolutely revolting to him, but he couldn't really think of any alternatives.

 

So, in the end, he reverted to his constant and comfortable fallback: big brother mode. Take care of Sammy. Always, this had been his solution when he simply didn't know what else to do, and apparently that hadn't changed in their time apart.

 

So, step one in the Big Brother Mode Handbook was to get Little Brother some food. At this point, it didn't' matter what, but he hadn't seen Sam eat an actual meal in well over forty-eight hours and that just had to stop now.

 

They stopped at a diner, and Sam ate the burger and fries Dean bought him with mechanical indifference while Dean watched him like a hawk and grew more concerned by the second.

 

Something was different here, since the memorial. For days Sam had been focused and down-to earth. He'd talked a little, sometimes. He'd tolerated his brother's close scrutiny with good grace. In short, he'd been so rational and logical that he seemed constantly on the verge of cracking.

 

But something had changed. Sam hadn't said a word since early that morning, and he didn't even seem to care that Dean was staring at him. Where before there would have been mockery, or at least a display of wry humor, now there was nothing.

 

And it wasn't even like he wasn't all there. There was absolutely no indication that he'd finally lost his mind completely. He was quite obviously all there, just…distant, and apathetic. Like from food to human interaction, it was all simply too mundane and unimportant to be noticed.

 

Was this, then, the fine line between grief and insanity? Was Sam tiptoeing that line even now? And was there any way at all to keep him from crossing over?

 

Dean sighed, toying unenthusiastically with a fry, and though Sam glanced at him, he didn't say anything.

 

What a surprise.

 

“You ready to go, Sammy?”

 

Sam hesitated, his mouth opening with agonizing slowness as if he were about to speak, and Dean waited, surprised to find that right now he wanted absolutely nothing more than for Sam to say something and sure that he was about to get his wish.

 

But then the moment passed, and Sam shook his head slightly, pushed his plate away, got up and headed for the door.

 

Thank God for my bad memory.

I've forgotten some of the stupid things

That I've done.

I've come to a little wisdom

Through a whole lot of failure,

So I watch more carefully what rolls off my tongue.

 

By the time Dean gave up and turned the car toward the motel, he was beginning to wonder if Sam had taken some kind of vow of silence. He didn't even complain when Dean turned his Metallica up so loudly the car began to shake, in an admittedly desperate attempt to get a rise out of him, and that was most alarming. When they got back to the motel lot, he gave no indication that he cared where he was, or that it was barely four in the afternoon and already they'd run out of distractions. He just stared at his hands for a moment and then got of the car.

 

Dean trailed at a distance, tugging at his tie until it came loose and hung limply in his hand, using the distraction as an excuse to look away from his brother for a second, just long enough to gather some measure of control in preparation for what he must do now that no other option had presented itself.

 

Sam was in the bathroom when he got to the room. Dean changed while he waited, using the time to prepare his words, having never done this kind of thing before.

 

After a few minutes, Sam came out, dressed in jeans and a plain white T-shirt, and went straight to his bed.

 

He was almost sitting on it before Dean spoke.

 

“We need to talk.”

 

Sam turned to him almost immediately, eyebrows raised in question.

 

“That okay with you?” Dean asked uncertainly, confused by the reaction.

 

Sam shrugged, which certainly wasn't positive encouragement. Then again, neither was it negative, and so Dean steeled himself and plunged in.

 

“I'm worried about you, Sam.”

 

Sam's eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hair, his expression one of sad amusement.

 

“Well, can you blame me?” Dean asked, for all the world as if his brother had actually spoken. “You're acting like a fanatic, man! You've been stapled to that damn journal for days now, and you don't even care that if there was really any information in there we would already have it. You're obsessed. Do you even realize how dangerous that is?”

 

Sam's expression wasn't even remotely amused now. In fact, it was blanked of all emotion, and Dean didn't have the faintest idea what he could be thinking.

 

“Look, Sam,” he said, his voice gentler now. “I know you're hurting, okay? You're hurting, and you're angry, and I can't possibly understand what you're going through. I realize that. But you're killing yourself over this, and even if I can't understand, I still need you to talk to me. I need you to let me try and help you.”

 

Dean stopped talking then, and for a few seconds he honestly thought Sam hadn't absorbed a word of his speech. But then Sam's eyes raised to meet his, and finally, after days of detachment, they were wet. Dean was exalting in his victory and about to say something else when Sam stood up.

 

His eyes still wet and his face still blank, the youngest Winchester walked over to their empty little table, hesitated—and then quite deliberately turned it over.

 

Things just sort of went downhill from there, and Dean watched in shock as his generally soft-spoken, quiet little brother systematically destroyed their motel room with one thought on his mind.

 

How was I supposed to be prepared for this?

 

You pray for rain,

But you don't want it from a storm.

You find a rose,

And cut your finger on a thorn.

So go on and cry Ophelia.

It's the only thing to do sometimes.

You know I'm crying, too,

Right there with you.

It's all right Ophelia.

Everybody cries Ophelia.

 

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Author's Note: Okay, so this chapter was absolute hell to write. I'm not even kidding. It was hard! It just wouldn't go! For some reason I couldn't seem to portray Sam's grief too well, and therefore, I have no idea if it's good or bad. So…tell me. Please. And thank you.