Bonitatem et Disciplinam et Scientiam Doce Me

Supernatural

2008-07-05T11:51:37Z

I had a season four dream last night. I don't remember much about it except that there was beat poetry and wolf!Dean. It...seemed really cool at the time.

Vegetables Are What Food Eats

2008-06-24T13:33:13Z

"I tell you what: bring the cow out here, I'll cut off the pieces I want and ride the rest home."

Every once in a while I click one of those random YouTube links. Supa Beef! The video isn't really all that interesting, just some footage of those super muscle-y cows they breed. But, because I can't resist a good train wreck, I found myself reading the comments, which contained your typical vegetarian outrage.

Obviously, it's a free country and if someone chooses to not eat meat, that is their right. But these people who go around saying that humans are not "natural" meat-eaters (however the fuck one is supposed to define "natural," which they never do, leaving their audience to do the work for them), well, they baffle me.

Whaddya mean humans don't eat raw meat? I eat my beef raw all the time. I also salivate when I see a cow. Seriously. Live cows make me HUNGRY. And to say that humans don't have the natural equipment to hunt down our prey and eat it?! Have you been paying attention for the past few million years? Our greatest evolutionary adaptation is our brain. Or, from a religious perspective, we are made in God's image, i.e. with an intelligence that is an echo of His. A long time ago, humans started hunting with their brains, fashioning crude tools that over the course of human history were slowly but surely replaced by clever inventions like domestication, artificial selection and slaughterhouses. So, anyone who says we don't have the equipment to hunt for meat can suck balls.

Also, even if it were true that humans don't "naturally" eat meat, why should that make any difference in our diet? It's "natural" to die of influenza, too, if by "natural" you mean the course of events in the absence of human (technological) intervention. But I bet you're still going to want your flu shot this year.

By the same token, eating meat is not automatically morally justified because we have been doing it for so many millennia. So, I can understand someone not eating meat on moral grounds. It's a logical position if you believe that all living creatures have the right to live free and unmolested. It's not a personal belief of mine, but I can grok it. Just don't try to sell me on this "defending the natural order of things" bullshit. Primates are omnivores, with a metabolism adapted to a mixed plant/animal diet. Get used to it.

ETA: Seriously? The spellchecker will accept "millenniums" but not "millennia?" Are you shitting me? You wait till the Roman Empire makes its comeback. They'll pwn your Anglicizing asses!

ETA2: Also, someone compares artificial selection of livestock to Nazi eugenics/genocide. Because...what? Jewish people (and gypsies and homesexuals and the handicapped, etc) are morally equivalent to cows? There's no moral difference there? Are you serious?

WoW Lets Me Out on Patch Day!

2008-06-24T11:52:07Z

Was Reading My Friends List for the First Time in Ages...

So james_nicoll linked this news about Terry Goodkind. Weird! I always felt a bit strange enjoying his books after I found out that he was basically writing Objectivist allegories (since I hate allegory), but this makes it sound like he sees Fantasy as an inferior mode. I suppose there's no crime in wanting to move to a different genre if that's what gets him stoked, but I can't see myself picking up his "mainstream" books, seeing as the preachy philosophical parts of his later books were "skim-only" material for me. Ayn Rand did that already, after all. It was of some passing interest the first time, but I don't really see any point in revisiting it.

Been Watching a Lot of Doctor Who...

In "The Impossible Planet," they talk about a piece of rock in "geostationary orbit around a black hole."

Dot. Dot. Dot.

Am I wrong? I mean, to be in GEOstationary orbit, don't you have to be, I don't know, orbiting the earth or something?! Does a black hole even rotate? I don't know a whole lot about astrophysics, but this made particularly little sense to me.

luxorien @ 2008-01-03T00:06:00

2008-01-03T05:10:10Z

From CSICOP:

The scope of the design act is breathtaking. It can be as simple as enhancing a mood by moving one stone in a Zen garden, or as overwhelming in complexity as conceiving the space shuttle. The diagnostic commonality here has nothing to do with material or manufacture, nothing to do with specificity or irreducibility or organization or any attempted combination of these and other qualities. The diagnostic commonality in design is intent. We know that something is designed when we understand the deliberation that produced it. Design is the expression of purpose. And the truth is there is only one way we can know that purpose is inherent in any act or artifact, and that is to know something of the designer. When we recognize design, it is either because we are familiar with similar systems or structures that we know to be designed, or we are familiar with the design processes that might have produced it. All such familiarity is based, at root, upon knowledge of the designers.

In the immortal words of the late, great Charlie Brown...THAT'S IT!

Swimming the Lethe (7/?)

2007-12-06T14:55:38Z

Title: Swimming the Lethe (7/?)
Author: Luxorien
Words: 3156/?
Rating: R (violence, Dean's potty mouth, no porn--sorry)
Genre: Gen/Dean Gets Supernatural Mojo/Dark!Dean
Pairings: Dean/OFCs (no romance; just sex of the off-screen variety)
Feedback: Yes? Please? Help?
Notes: I was playing WoW, okay? Leave me alone.
Summary: After an infelicitous one-night stand, Dean becomes a danger to Sam. This chapter: Dean tries to fix things. So does Sam. Charity hangs out.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Farr off from these a slow and silent stream
Lethe the River of Oblivion roules
Her watrie Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
-Paradise Lost

The world was the double yellow lines weaving across the small strip of illuminated blacktop in front of his bumper. Nothing else existed. He wouldn't – couldn't – allow it. Not yet.

Miles died behind him. Beyond the reach of city lights, where there were no shops or motels or residences – just empty Texas desert – he pulled to the shoulder and slammed to a stop. He let the engine idle for a few moments before he cut it and climbed numbly from the car.

The darkness here was absolute, but with his augmented vision, he saw the landscape in clear shades of grey. The moon was new and hidden, the endless sky awash in diamond dust. It made the world up there look more real than the dead monochrome that surrounded him. He breathed, his breath slightly fogging the dry, cold air. He breathed, the world expanded again, and the fire tore into him, roiling inside his chest like a live animal. It was catching his memories, breaking them down to ash and rebuilding them, filling dark, cold rooms with light and heat. Everything suddenly, painfully, meant.

His mother, no longer just a blonde woman in a white dress, now again as she had been: angels turning their backs, a soft touch and a sweet voice disappearing forever. He was wracked again by a grief that only children know.

His father's pyre before his eyes, tears not just remembered but felt: a strength that had deserted him, willingly swallowed, self-betrayed. It was as if it had just happened, the chain of his family broken, the principles they fought for destroyed from within.

Sam, flooding back into him, a tiny bundle of jerky limbs, a duty, a job to do that turned into a labor of love, and of desperation. Sam, the only path he could take, the only clear way, even if it ended in fratricide, in blood and madness that would end all roads.

Sam.

Blood on his hands, on the knife they held. A gun that had never, ever, been pointed at Sam (never point your gun at something you don't intend to shoot) lined up for a kill shot. Sam's form framed by three-dot sights. He'd pulled the trigger. He'd actually pulled the fucking trigger.

He puked again, as he had in the hospital, only this time he knew why. He heaved his guts out on the dusty ground. It was hot under his knees, still bleeding heat into the air. His head dipped, and he fought to catch his breath. When he looked up, he saw her. She was standing a stone's throw from the berm: a modern witch in strappy sandals and a form-fitting top that didn't reach her jeans. Her eyes were as blue as the day he'd met her, all her crazy locked up inside.

A pistol appeared in her hand. He looked down, and found that his own hand had drawn a Colt – not the Colt, just his 1911 - he hadn't realized he'd been carrying. The smile that answered his unspoken question was a lover's smile, warm and inviting. He could read her intent, knew where she would point the gun, because she'd already done it. She would keep doing it until the bullets reached Sam. If one method failed, she'd try another: gun, knife, bare hands (his hands) until the job was done.

Dean didn't hesitate. He didn’t even blink.

* * *

It was the second time he'd seen Dean die, but the first time the gun was in his brother's own hands.

The vision came on him suddenly. No foreplay this time. No pretending to be an incipient headache. The double sight slammed into him at the same time as the blinding pain, and Sam closed his eyes tight to ward off the vertigo of receiving two versions of sensory input at once. When he came out of it, Charity was standing over him, looking concerned, but refraining from actually touching him. In the heat of that interminable moment, she meant nothing to him except what she could do, and he spat orders at her that were laced with pleading. "Help me up" and "Where's your car" and "Faster."

Charity seemed to catch his urgency, because she obeyed without question, loading him into her car and following his terse directions. The Cavalier rattled as it approached sixty on the highway, and skidded noisily when she slammed to a stop after spotting the chrome of the Impala's bumper reflecting the light of her headlamps. Sam was out almost before they stopped, staggering out into the night, clutching the stitches across his abdomen and calling for his brother. Twenty yards from the road, he found him: a hunched silhouette blocking the light of the stars that hovered over the distant horizon.

Something clinked on the ground as he moved forward, and he paused to look down and observe the casings strewn about, the discarded pistol with its slide locked back, empty. The blood soaking the thirsty ground. Everything was painted with the red of the Cavalier's brake lights, but he was sure it was blood. He moved for his brother, hiding panic in movement and action and what next. Dean's face appeared out of the darkness, coated in the same red-on-red, his eyes silver in the dark and naked with desperation that propelled Sam forward, looking for its source. But Dean retreated as Sam advanced, his movements strong, if jerky, and betraying none of the weakness of the walking wounded. Sam, his insides held together with surgeon's thread, was certainly in no position to push the issue, and quickly pulled himself to a halt.

"Dean, Jesus…"

"Sammy," Dean replied, his voice hoarse and pitched low. "You gotta get outta here."

Something sailed through the air towards Sam, and he snapped out a hand to catch it: the keys to the Impala.

"Pick a direction and shag ass," Dean continued. "Anywhere that's not here. You see me again, shoot and keep runnin'."

Sam hesitated, confused and reeling from unused adrenaline. The vision was still hanging in the future…

He looked again at the shells on the ground, remembered the way Dean's body had jerked with the impact of the bullets when Charity shot him, and the way he'd gotten up like nothing happened.

"Oh, fuck," he whispered, wanting to say more, needing answers, but he was still stuck on the idea of Dean trying to kill himself, and the fact that the witch's magic was the only reason his brother was still alive. Sam felt like he was unraveling.

"She's usin' me to get to you. I'll keep…she'll keep trying to use me to kill you. I can't stop her. I tried." The evidence of the attempt was scattered across the dirt at his brother's feet. "Go, Sam. Hurry."

Sam gaped at him, his mind running in a dozen directions, trying to put the pieces together and figure out what to do, but his brother was in agony, and that made it hard to think about anything except that things had to be really bad if Dean wasn't pretending they were okay.

"What are you, high? I'm not leaving you anywhere."

Dean opened his mouth to protest, but Sam steamrolled over whatever words he would have formed. He was surprised at how steady, how quiet his voice sounded, even as his body trembled with the force behind it.

"It's both of us or neither of us, man. You know that."

"Sam…" His voice was gravelly with annoyance and argument and inarticulate despair.

"If it were me, you wouldn't leave. How can you ask me to?"

"You don't understand," he insisted. "I can't stop her. I'll kill you, Sam."

The words should have chilled him, but Dean was looking at him – really looking at him – for the first time since the whole nightmare started, and he couldn't feel anything but relief that his brother was finally back. That was Dean looking out at him through a sheen of barely-controlled tears. The gleam of his irises couldn't change that.

"Dude, we'll figure something out. Now that we know what kind of spell it is-"

"Sam, goddammit-" Dean stopped short, reined himself in. With his eyes closed, he was a dark profile against the sky. "Just go."

Sam let out a little huff of grim amusement, and pulled his Beretta.

"Dean, if I have to shoot you and toss you in the trunk, you're coming with me."

As it turned out, that was exactly what Sam had to do. Well. Charity did most of the heavy lifting.

* * *

"Ow," Dean said when Sam opened the trunk.

"You shouldn't be so stubborn."

Dean scowled and launched himself feet-first onto the pavement, ignoring Sam's outstretched hand. In retrospect, Sam had to admit it wasn't the brightest idea he ever had, trying to haul his brother out of the trunk when he couldn't even support his own weight without leaning on the fender.

"Where's your partner in crime?" Dean asked, casting about for the Cavalier or its driver.

"I sent her home." Sam tossed his brother a wet rag and a clean shirt. Dean set the shirt on the car and began scrubbing his face with the rag. "We can take care of this now, you're…"

"Not quite so homicidal?"

"Yeah."

"You should get inside," he said. "Rest. And lock the door."

Sam just stood there as Dean tossed down the bloody rag and peeled off two shirts, replacing them with the t-shirt Sam had offered. The complex tattoos looked even more sinister in the sodium light, and the razor lines of scar tissue across Dean's back showed in sharp, white contrast. They were different. Not just different spells, but of completely different characters. He filed that information away, to be examined by a brain not quite so exhausted as his was at the moment.

"You need to sleep too, Dean."

"No, actually, I don't. And if you think I'm spendin' the night in the same room as you, you're a bigger dumbfuck than I thought."

Dean tossed his bloody shirts next to the rag and leaned back against the car, eyes anywhere but on Sam. It was as close as he would ever get to conceding the point Sam had been trying to make. But he still worried.

"So you can take off again?"

"I'll be here when you get up. Promise." Throat-clearing. A carefully controlled breath. "Then we'll go back to the foundry."

Sam blinked. "Why the hell would we do that?"

"Because, Sam. If we're doing this, you're gonna take some fucking precautions."

"I'm not chaining you up and leaving you!"

"Then we're not doing this."

"You can't be serious."

Dean just looked at him. He was a little ragged around the edges, and his eyes were the wrong color, but it was Dean, deadly calm and humorless. Not a version of his brother that got a lot of play. Certainly no point in arguing with him. But then, Sam sometimes felt he spent his life tilting at windmills, especially where Dean was concerned.

"Look, if you're that concerned about it, we can set something up here. You don't have to-"

"Sam." He said his name like a warning, violence in his tone.

"What's so special about the foundry? We've got cuffs."

"The ones she set up will hold. Nothing else will."

"How do you know?"

"I just know."

Sam gave a defeated sigh. His side was pulsing with regular throbs of pain. His legs felt slightly gelatinous. If he didn't lie down soon, he wouldn't make it on his own.

"Fine. We'll talk about it tomorrow. So you better be around to do the talking."

"I will."

"I'm serious."

"I'll be here, Sam."

The response was short and clipped, but Sam believed it. At least, he thought he did. His head was still pounding from the vision. The risk of Dean slipping away during the night was a very real one; if Dean didn't want to be found, he could disappear off the face of the fucking planet. But Sam was so tired, and Dean was the one person he was supposed to be able to trust. The knife sliding in, shock and cold and bite. Gunshots flung from a nightmare into the waking world. Dead silver eyes like coins in the darkness.

Sam walked to the door of the motel room and unlocked it, pausing in the threshold to look back at his brother. Dean was still leaning against the car, eyes on his feet. He looked like a Beckett character, waiting for something that would never come.

It was getting late. Sam started to shiver.

He turned around, shut the door. And, after hearing his name called out in reproach, he locked it and drew the chain.

* * *

It helped to have a locked door between them.

Dean knew it wouldn't stop him; he could easily kick the thing down (something which, judging by the condition of the jamb, several cops or spouses had already done). But doing so would certainly wake Sam, and an awake Sam had a much better chance of defending himself.

As the night wore on, he tried to pretend that he was watching over Sam, standing guard from a strategic position. He didn't exactly sleep these days, and it wasn't as though he had anything better to do. But the ridiculousness of it destroyed the illusion. He was the biggest danger to Sam right now. He tried to pretend, and he choked on his own panic over what might happen if the witch's influence acted on him before he could get to the foundry. He was practically trembling with the need for shackles, for the relief of being unable to harm Sam. Pretty messed up, actually. But when hadn't their lives been fucking twisted?

More than once he considered hotwiring the Impala, but every time it came back to the weariness in Sam's eyes, the stiffness of his movements, the injury that Dean had himself caused. He'd promised. He was terrified of hurting Sam, but he had promised. There'd been a time when that wouldn't have mattered, when Sam's safety would have superseded his happiness. But that was a attitude taken towards children, and Sam was no longer a child. Not tonight. Not since Dad, maybe.

Dean couldn't trust his own judgment, was the thing. He'd tried to end this himself, and had failed. He could only trust Sam, because he was all out of options. That bitch had fucked him up but good. He was holding onto himself by his fingernails, and sometimes he wished it would all just stop. He was so goddamned tired.

He pushed his sleeves up and stared at the black ink on his forearms, the intricate symbols he didn't recognize. He could feel them, though. What they meant. Like tiny, sharp claws in his skin, piercing deep into bone and soul. A different kind of shackle. He dropped his hands and stood staring into darkness that wasn't dark - not for him.

He started getting jittery a few hours in. It was the waiting again. Nothing to do, nothing to be done. Stillness that killed with suffocating slowness. He walked a few blocks to the 24/7 Quik Mart by the expressway. The dark streets, perfectly lit to his eyes, reminded him of a Twilight Zone ghost town. He passed a chain-link fence with a badass mutt behind it, some combination of fighting breeds, loyal and vicious. The animal moved towards him as he approached, but stopped without making a sound, and watched without making eye contact. It remained in that attentive, submissive posture until Dean turned onto the side street that ran towards the interstate. Weird dog.

The convenience store was a island of artificial light in the natural darkness. There was a steady trickle of customers passing in and out, holding bags of chips and candy bars and caffeine pills. Truckers and travelers and insomniacs, passing each other in the fluorescent glare. Dean bought a fifth of Jim Beam and two packs of Kentucky's Best, unfiltered. He took a different route back to the motel, telling himself that he wasn't avoiding the dog. But he kind of was. Fucking creepy.

The bourbon didn’t last long. Might as well have been drinking water. He had more success with the cigarettes. There was no sedative effect, but he started to relax with the motion from hand to mouth, and the heightened awareness of his breathing. He pulled the smoke in deep and let it out slow, watching it curl up and out into the darkness. When it escaped the dim shine of the streetlight and he could see it in total darkness, it looked like the breath of ghosts.

Dad had made it clear when they were kids that if he ever caught them smoking they'd regret it 'til the day they died. Dean had never been tempted. Smoking, like long hair, was a liability. Lung capacity matters when you're running from (or towards) a psychopathic spirit.

Or when you're watching out for your little brother.

He'd pulled Sam away from the school dumpster once, and punched the kid who'd been handing out the stolen cigs. The idea of telling Dad had never crossed his mind, but he was so pissed at Sam. Wasn't like him to go that far just to fit in. But that had been a difficult year, a new high school every few months and more hunting than ever before. Sam hated it and Dean loved it. At least, he'd thought he had. Lately, it'd been hard to separate the job-worth-doing sentiment from the blood and the death and the sheer sacrifice. They'd lost so much. Everything they'd ever had. There had to be an end to it, somehow. It couldn't go on forever.

The compulsion came just as the sky was hinting at dawn. For the first time, he could separate it from his own will, and he almost sobbed with the relief of it. It was all he could do to stay where he was, to not kick down the door and start in on Sam with his bare hands. He couldn't move, was barely holding himself in place against the foreign tide, smoldering cigarette dropping from a nerveless hand, but at least he was no longer swept up in the spell. It was a sweet agony to be aware, finally, of what was happening to him. Like being torn apart from the inside, but he would never want it like he did in the memories that were nightmares. He had a choice, at least until he reached the end of his endurance.

Not Sam not Sam not Sam not Sam…

The earth turned, the sun began to rise, and Dean prayed to a god he didn't believe in that his brother would find a way to kill him.

In Nomine (1/1)

2007-11-19T13:11:01Z

Title: In Nomine
Author: Luxorien
Pairings: None.
Rating: R (Potty Mouth, Potty Mouth, Dean has a Potty Mouth!)
Words: 319
Spoilers: "Sin City"
Summary: AU "Sin City" scene borne out of my frustration that the Winchesters never thought to memorize the Rituale Romanum, and my vague memory of the way exorcisms are supposed to have worked in the early Christian church.
Author's Note: I don't know what the hell happened here. Either I'm blaspheming (in which case, don't tell my bishop 'cause I kinda gotta go to Mass and stuff), or I'm writing religious!Dean (oh God, please, NO), or I'm writing Christ-figure!Dean (hot in a rilly wrong sort of way?). I can't really figure out which of these is the least evil (and there's still some crap that doesn't fit into any of those categories) so...this drabble just crawled out of my head, and I am taking no more responsibility than that. I am, however, taking responsibility for a shower and a nap.
Gratuitous Author's Note: Oh, come on! Who DID pay attention?! We were all too busy drawing beards on Cornelia and inking over Gaius's pink shoes! (I think it was Gaius...)

In Nomine

"Guess you should have paid more attention in Latin class."

He surprises her by laughing.

"For something so goddamned old, you got a short fucking memory." He's dusting himself off, climbing to his feet. Readying some unspeakable attack. The fear that always worms inside of her, the fear that drives her and makes her brave, it writhes and snaps, threatening to break free and reduce her to hell-state: groveling, mewling, inarticulate, agonized. A mortal! A thrice-damned mortal, already doomed to walk the same road. What has she to fear from him?

"Guess we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way." And he looks her in the eye, doomed and as unafraid as all of hell's legions - which is to say, excruciatingly terrified, but charging ahead anyway. She looks into his soul (eyes are windows) and she sees it all laid out there, paradoxical and unavoidable.

"You can't." For the first time her voice, dancing to the tune of a hapless bartender's vocal chords, sounds weak in her stolen ears. "You...we own you...faithless..."

He layers a smirk over his face, like he's possessing himself, and it says, Hey, look, you caught me being awesome. Then the impossible words (from that mouth, that bartered away its own humanity) are assaulting the world around her, collapsing the pillars of the earth in on her essence, driving her out. She can hear them over her own screaming, over (what feels like) the end of everything, over the roar of the singularity that drags her back down into what she is.

"In the name of Christ, I command you to get the fuck out of here. In the name of Christ, I command you to leave His child the fuck alone. In nomine Christe, Khristos, Yehoshua, Iesous, Jesus H. tap-dancing Christ in a cartoon, LEAVE."

And just like that, eternity starts over at the beginning, playing the same tired tape of lightless self-loathing and nothingness.

Eternity her ruiner will share.

Pleasure, Texts, and Sex

2007-11-19T09:30:19Z

Dood! Lookit! Jim Butcher is Roland Barthes! Only...less confusing and French.

Swimming the Lethe (6/?)

2007-11-19T09:06:53Z

Title: Swimming the Lethe (6/?)
Author: Luxorien
Words: 2738/?
Rating: R (violence, Dean's potty mouth, no porn--sorry)
Genre: Gen/Dean Gets Supernatural Mojo/Dark!Dean
Pairings: Dean/OFCs (no romance; just sex of the off-screen variety)
Feedback: Yes? Please? Help?
Notes: I'm finally releasing this chapter from purgatory. It's not going to get any better, no matter how hard I stare at it. :\
Summary: After an infelicitous one-night stand, Dean becomes a danger to Sam. This chapter: Dean tries to murder Sam in his sleep.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

Farr off from these a slow and silent stream
Lethe the River of Oblivion roules
Her watrie Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
-Paradise Lost

The third time Dean tries to kill his brother, it feels less like a decision and more like a reflex.

He's cleaning an assortment of weapons, keeping his hands busy with rods and brushes. He wipes down the actions of his carry pistols every day, but the others haven't been taken apart since Dean and Sam stopped in Clarksville with nothing to do and not enough daylight to hit the next town. That was when he would have listened to Joe Walsh and argued with Sam for the hell of it. This time he is silent and so is the room. His brother, a prescription bottle on the table beside him, is asleep on the other bed. Three days out AMA and fucking proud of it, he breathes with deep, convalescent breaths. Dean listens to them, trying to remember what they mean.

There's nothing.

As he slips the slide of the 226 off the rails, he wonders how long he'll last with his insides ripped out and scrapped. He can drive a car and fire a gun, put together a pattern of mysterious deaths or burn a spirit's bones to ash, but it's all unsupported rote. Habits belonging to a dead man. Not near enough to feed living flesh and blood. He finishes the takedown with familiar motions, brushes away the dirt, wipes down every piece and oils every surface. Snaps everything back in place and shoves the magazine in. Racks the slide to chamber a round.

Picks a target on his brother's chest and fires.

The action doesn't exactly surprise him, but he doesn't plan on doing it either. He isn't thinking beyond the aiming and the firing. He doesn't know what he'll do when the bullets hit. Will a dead Sam finally fill him? Give back the true memory of the life he's just destroyed? Or will he simply walk out, take the guns and the Impala, and not look back?

Doesn't matter, because Sam is somehow, miraculously, launching himself at the floor in the instant before the shots are fired. His eyes are snapping open: wide, lucid, instantly awake. He spends no time assessing the situation, doesn't even look at Dean. His reaction time is zero. It is as if the jump to the floor is a continuation of some motion he has been performing in a dream.

As if he's been warned.

Dean has never been one to stand around wondering what to do, and his run-in with Psycho Bitch hasn't changed that. He quickly begins gathering up the weapons and cleaning supplies, while Sam lies on the floor cursing through gritted teeth. By the time their stuff is in the car, his brother has managed to sit up against the bed. His shirt is dark where he's popped a few stitches and his face shows a thin sheen of sweat.

"What the fuck, Dean?" he pants.

Even if he wanted to answer - and a part of him, lost in the corridors of his mind, does - he couldn't begin to explain himself. It is as much a mystery to him as it is to Sam.

"Cops'll be here," he says, pulling Sam to his feet. "Let's go."

* * *

It wasn't a dream. "Nightmare" didn't begin to fucking cover it. When it released her, Charity launched herself out of bed, limbs flailing and clumsy. She felt like she was moving someone else's arms and legs, some other body newly released from the paralysis of the vision. She struggled to remember who she was, where she was, but her head was rimed in emptiness and agony. She grabbed for handholds as she stumbled across the room, missed, and crumpled to her hands and knees, shaking and panting with the force of what she had seen.

She'd known she was only buying time against the inevitable. She'd spent the last few days trying to gather her strength, but it seemed pointless now. There was nothing she could do to prepare, no comfort she could take with her that would make this desert any easier to cross. Dean was going to rip her apart one way or another. They were connected, now. She could face this, or she could wait for the blackness to pull her in with dark heat, and need, and that torturous hollowness.

She staggered to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. She tried not to see Dean when she looked in the mirror, but he was there. He was always there. When she closed her eyes, she could hear that same refrain: save Sam.

"Why is this happening?" she rasped at her reflection. Why me? Isn't there anyone else?

There was no answer, of course. And what would that change? She would bend in this wind, or she would break.

* * *

Sam was alert and sitting up when Charity entered the motel room, but his face was pale and haggard. She tried not to look back at Dean, who was closing the door behind her.

"Maybe you should go back to the hospital," she said as she approached the bed.

"I can take care of myself," Sam replied firmly. She swallowed, and tried not to inch away when Dean stepped up next to her, face casually blank as he looked on. It was hard to reconcile him with the man who had smiled at her, kissed her, fucked her, made her scream. She wanted to scream now, for entirely different reasons. "Besides, we can't go back there."

"Yeah, I heard about you guys on the news. Shooting through a motel wall, that was fucking brilliant. Y'know, you get more points if you kill innocent bystanders."

"That was a mistake," Sam said, his voice hitching slightly at Charity's no-shit expression. "Dean's not, uh, handling weapons anymore."

"That's comforting."

"You didn't hear about this on the news, though." Clearly a statement, not a question. Charity frowned at the change of subject, and stared at him a long time before answering.

"I sort of had a dream."

"So did I. Except it wasn't a dream. You knew what was going to happen, and you stopped it."

"Maybe," she said slowly. "It's not like I had any control over what happened."

"But you have control now."

"I don't know what you think I can do," she lied.

"You're connected. She used your hair as a ritual object." Sam's voice took an inward turn, as if he were thinking out loud, talking for his own benefit as much as hers. Which was good, because she had no clue what the fuck he was going on about. "There are a lot of rites that recognize the symbolism of sexual unions. She used that symbolism twice, to make sure she could get in deep enough. That kind of thing doesn't go away easy. The link is obviously still active. Maybe you can use it."

"Use it to do what, exactly?"

"Help my brother."

The same arguments that had driven her from the hospital pushed at her now: not my problem, not my fault. But the wreckage of Dean's soul was staring her in the face, demanding justice. She looked at Sam, barely strong enough to make it to the bathroom five feet away. Pale, a little high on painkillers. Desperate. Grieving for one not dead.

Save Sam.

"Godfuckingdammit," she said.

She didn't see Sam's reaction because she looked to Dean, and he pulled her into the empty halls behind his eyes, the Spartan headspace where everything that didn't have a deadly purpose had been removed. She felt burning cold, and then…

…she's back in the dream. She's sinking into the forgetful waters, drifting in currents that go nowhere.

But there is fire in the water. She's running, and there is fire. Smoke burns her lungs. She has her orders. She has to get out. Don't look back. She's carrying something (someone) and she has to get OUT.

She stands on a threshold, heat licking at her back. There is a woman standing in the way. Her look is wild, and fevered with madness. They must all die, the woman says without speaking. Her eyes are endless mirrors, and the past behind them is bloody, littered with corpses. One of them has the same blue eyes as the killer. The yellow demon has touched them, her silence says, they must all die: sisters and brothers, daughters, sons - all of them. The woman is a wall of terrible sorrow, of pain and violent anger, but the flailing bundle pushes against Charity's chest, crying out with helpless need, and the fire is burning, driving at her back, driving her into the arms of the kinslayer.

Charity opened her eyes and found the world not where she left it. Sam was next to her, addressing the floor. She struggled to sit up and make sense of things, but her muscles had liquefied somewhere between standing and sprawling on the floor. She settled for rolling to the side and peering blearily at Sam. He was sweating and trembling with the effort of his movement, but his voice was steady as he called for his brother.

Dean, lying bonelessly on the thin motel carpet, did not answer. He breathed shallowly. Even his eyes were still beneath the lids.

"What happened?" Sam asked when he noticed Charity stirring.

She blinked a few times, tried to formulate a response. Nothing came consciously, but her mouth started forming senseless words of its own accord. "He woke up," she heard herself say.

Sam didn't have to voice his incredulity. Charity mirrored his expression.

"I don't know, man. I saw…there was a house on fire, and I…Dean was running, carrying something. A kid."

Sam's head snapped up at her words and she fell silent under the force of his gaze. He looked as though he would say something, but he just turned away again, confused and clearly distressed.

"Does that mean something to you?" she asked. When Sam answered with a pensive frown, she added, "Come on, we're past privacy here."

"When we were kids," Sam replied, after a long pause. "There was a fire, and Dean sort of…carried me out."

"Who's the yellow demon?" she asked, trying to sort through the symbolic and the literal. She wasn't prepared for the change that came over Sam. Like blast doors slamming shut.

"What about it?"

"That witch or whatever she was, she was there. And she said something about a yellow demon, about killing the ones he'd touched. That mean something to you?"

Sam's averted, shuttered expression did not change.

Charity bit her lip in irritation and got up to leave, her limbs still wobbly, but doing their jobs. "Fine. Whatever. Good fucking luck."

"Wait," Sam said as she reached the door. "Just…was there anything else?"

She stopped, but did not turn around. "Bodies. She's killed before. I think…I think she killed her sister."

She wrenched the door open, fearing more words, more questions to tug her back by her sense of duty. But Sam was quiet, and she made it outside where no demands would be made on her, and the darkness hid nothing to frighten her. She made it to her car, but didn't get in. She told herself that she'd done all she could reasonably be expected to do. She told herself that Sam was hiding things from her for scary reasons, that she was getting involved in something really weird and dangerous, and that running was the smartest thing she could do.

She told herself those things, but she couldn't leave.

* * *

He thinks he is dreaming.

He thinks this because the scene is constantly shifting, and life doesn't have scenes - just stuff, and places. Then there's the dream-drug, the indifference that softens and blurs the edges that draw blood in the waking world. What he sees, he sees from a distance. Some part of him is relieved by this, though he doesn't know why. Hasn't it always been like this? Won't it always be? He is aware of time passing like a great, slow-moving river. It washes over him with steady, soft currents, with no end and no beginning. The Mississippi of the fucking universe. Straight out of Buddhism for Dummies. Time is a river, and life is a journey, interrupted only by rest stops with dim lighting and no TP.

The locations are all familiar. Bring-your-own-soap, thirty-dollar motels. Bars with neon PBR signs and no windows. Graveyards. The woods at night. He plays pool or drinks beer. Stalks through shadows with a gun in his hand. Always goes back to her place, not his. Digs and burns, digs and burns, in an endless cycle of death and more permanent death. Sam is never there. He thinks that maybe Sam should be there, but he never is. No Sam. It's like missing a limb he doesn't remember ever having.

There's no Sam, but there are others. A fuckable chick with leaves in her hair: she plays nine-ball against him and wins. An old man with an eye patch: he stares from the counter of a greasy spoon, silent like he knows more than he should. Twin brothers with streams of hippie-long hair: they race their bikes against the Impala, eating up the highway until there's nothing left but sky. Another chick, this time with roses: she refuses to leave with him, but smiles invitingly all the while.

He feels their eyes on him everywhere, while the tape of his life keeps playing itself out: fighting and fear and close calls and shore leave. He knows the words and the rhythms, but he knows them like they belong to someone else. A movie he's memorized, or a song he knows by heart. It doesn't feel like his life.

Scene. The police station is dark, and the front desk is hard against his back. The silver-eyed woman is on top of him, and he remembers this part. She's using tongue, hands, hips, and soon it will be her whole body. But something happened didn't it? Something went wrong. What was it? It's so hard to think with her there, seeping into him. Her lips aren't moving, but he thinks he can hear her talking, cajoling.

The flames burn some of the haze from his mind. The wall is sheathed with them by the time he notices. This isn't how it happened. He tries to get up and run, but the woman on top of him holds him down like she wants to watch him burn. It's nothing, she says without saying anything. And he thinks, She's wrong. The fire's everything.

Figures emerge from the approaching flames. He feels the furnace heat and the smoke, but his eyes are clear. He sees the pool-player, the old man, the two boys, the cocktease. And there are others, looking like more than they are: just people in ordinary clothes, but they aren't really people. He thinks that maybe he's having a fucking religious experience, except his gods are holding assault rifles and handguns and tactical knives. Firelight glints off gunmetal and steel in a solid wall behind him. The witch's nails are digging into his skin like claws. She pulls at him, voicelessly, but the heat drowns her out, and he's hearing his father's voice instead. It's a lecture he was given often, in state after state, hunt after hunt.

Better to make the wrong decision than no decision, son. The safest place for your bullet is in the other guy's chest. You don't hesitate, you don't go halfway. You do it, or you don't.

It's liking waking up from a dream he didn't realize he was having, and in his sudden awareness, his instincts scream for him to act. He pushes against the weight on his chest. Her claws rip at him as they grapple. He shoves her away and stumbles for the door, bursting out onto wet grass. The house that was a police station a moment before is being consumed, casting flickering light out over the deserted street. He kneels on the ground, panting, disoriented. He forgot something. There's something he has to do. Something about the fire.

Then it comes back, like a mountain crashing on top of him. The house. That night. The light reflecting off the Impala's hood as the second floor is consumed. He screams his brother's name, and the world shatters around him.

Chapter 7

Appearances

2007-11-19T08:25:29Z

James Hetfield has a ridiculous beard. Or maybe it just looks ridiculous because of his ridiculously large head.

Still, you can't listen to shit like this and honestly tell me that isn't the best sound you've ever heard.

I would have sacrificed an alarming number of innocent goats to have been present at that concert.

"Eye for an Eye, GSW for a GSW"

2007-11-11T05:32:04Z

Title: "Eye for an Eye, GSW for a GSW"
Author: Luxorien
Words: 395
Rating: R (violence and language)
Genre: Gen, AU
Pairings: None
Spoilers: For "Bad Day at Black Rock"
Summary: Apparently the Dean Winchester in my head is more of a badass than the Dean Winchester onscreen. Or maybe certain writers don't know their own character. Whatever. This is rewrite of that climatic scene. I feel better now that it's out of my head and screaming its head off to teh intarwebs.

"You don't just go around shooting people!"

"Oh, please. It's just a flesh wound. I can aim."

Dean's brain gave up conscious control of his limbs for a short while. When he came back to himself, he was straddling Bela, the gun in his hand. It had discharged when he made his play for it. He knew this because he could smell the powder and he'd felt the recoil. Strangely, he didn't remember hearing anything.

His first conscious act was to place the muzzle of the semiauto against her knee. Their eyes met as the metal bit through her clothes and into the skin. Her gaze challenged him, either because she didn't think he'd do it, or because she was too proud to beg.

Irrelevant, either way. He pulled the trigger. A few pounds of pressure, and the joint shattered messily, spattering him with blood and bits of bone. Bela screamed and Sam cried out, but he ignored both of them. Grabbed the bitch's chin, forced her to look past the pain and see him. She eventually blinked away the agony long enough to pay attention. He could feel her teeth grinding together where his fingers were pressed into her jaw.

"I ever see you again, the next one goes in your skull, you get me?"

He pushed the hot barrel against her temple for added emphasis. She trembled, but didn't react.

"You get me?" he asked again, drawing out each syllable with boiling anger. Her eyes followed his trigger finger as it drifted back inside the guard and started inching backwards. She swallowed, and offered an almost imperceptible nod.

Dean sprang to his feet and got to work burning the goddamn stupid rabbit's foot. Sam was saying something, but he couldn't hear it over the flames. He was so fucking pissed he couldn't get his sensory input straight.

As he took off his top layer and tied it around the wound in Sam's arm, it finally registered that Sam was objecting to his treatment of Bela.

"I don't see you bending over backwards to help her," he replied shortly.

Sam's mouth opened and closed a few times, but he didn't say anything. He looked back at her bleeding figure twice as they walked back to the Impala. Dean didn't. He was too busy running over the list of possible complications, and making plans for a hospital heist.

Just a fucking flesh wound. Christ, what an idiot.

Sin City

2007-10-26T07:57:51Z

I want more episodes like "Faith" and fewer like "Houses of the Holy." I already bitched about them destroying Dean's religious beliefs in a stupid way. I'm going to do it again, because "Sin City" was...lackluster.

I did enjoy the way the demon talked about Lucifer as the god of the demons. That's a cool idea to use. But all this crap about humans being corrupt and blahblahblah despaircakes? It got kind of old. I was not impressed by Dean's convo with the bartender from Hell. It was like that episode of House where he didn't do anything but talk in circles at that rape victim. I don't mind the dialogue, but it's gotta be good dialogue.

Still, great acting all around, so there's that. Bobby shot the demon chick, which pleased me. Sam did not, which infuriated me. I know, I know. It would destroy the plot. *sigh* I just like it when the Winchesters are all badass. Doesn't happen nearly as often as it should.

I don't really buy Dean's new religion. He came to it for a completely stupid reason. I liked him better as an atheist. I guess he's agnostic now. Oh, well.

Bobby still rocks the hizzie. And manwhore!Dean still makes me squee.

ETA: The Cheney crack? I hate that shit. It's not that I like Cheney, I just hate political crap in a TV show that has nothing to do with politics. Talk about a fucking buzzkill.

Supernatural

2007-10-25T04:17:20Z

I like the comedy episodes. I really do. It's just...all drama/action shows have a problem when they start doing "funny" episodes: it's really hard to do drama and comedy at the same time. IMO, the best comedy is the sort of serious kind, but it's so difficult to hit that mark. This is what happens: you start sacrificing character on the altar of humor. That's what killed Gary Hobson. And it sorta...wounded the Winchesters last week.

Here's my big beef: Dean should have, at the very least, shot the bitch lady. Yes, it's very funny that she fooled them and I know this episode was supposed to be all lighthearted, but SHE SHOT SAM! And Dean Winchester just ignores this after a brief flirtation with disbelief, anger and near-panic.

I just don't buy it. Dean would have given her double what she gave Sam. Maybe shot out a kneecap or something.

On the positive side of things, Padalecki did a great job with Hapless!Sam. I loved the rueful resignation. He was hilarious, without sacrificing the dignity of his character. I think the script leaned a little heavily on Sam, but Padalecki turned it to his advantage.

Swimming the Lethe (5/?)

2007-10-15T15:16:29Z

Title: Swimming the Lethe (5/?)
Author: Luxorien
Words: 2463/?
Rating: R (violence, Dean's potty mouth, no porn--sorry)
Genre: Gen/Dean Gets Supernatural Mojo/Dark!Dean
Pairings: Dean/OFCs (no romance; just sex of the off-screen variety)
Feedback: Yes? Please? Help?
Notes: I give up.
Summary: After an infelicitous one-night stand, Dean becomes a danger to Sam. This chapter: Sam has a plan. Charity makes a break for it.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

Farr off from these a slow and silent stream
Lethe the River of Oblivion roules
Her watrie Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
-Paradise Lost

"You could say something." Sam sighed and leaned back against the wall, Sig still in hand. "I know you want to kill me, but don't you want to tell me your evil plan first?"

Dean gazed at him emptily.

"Yeah." He scoffed. "You don't have an evil plan. That's sort of the point, isn't it? Well, maybe I'll tell you my brilliant plan to save your sorry ass."

Sam slid down the rough wall and held his gun carefully in both hands, his attention still on Dean but his eyes watching the dull gleam of the flashlight on the weapon's alloy frame.

"The ritual she used is obscure. No record of anyone ever pulling it off. It's supposed to be a last ditch defense against evil. You take a willing sacrifice and call on the gods to recognize that sacrifice with divine gifts." His tone was as mild as it ever was when they were on a hunt, hashing out theories or reporting on research. He knew nothing he said would make any difference to Dean as he was, but it felt wrong to do what he came to do without a word of explanation. "No specifics on what form those divine gifts should take, but there's some stuff about the recipient's soul, I guess, being uncovered. Actually, the word is nacod, which became naked. I thought you might enjoy that."

There was, of course, no response from Dean. No dirty joke, no leer, no playful bite of the tongue. None of those things would serve any tactical purpose. Sam hit the mag release on the Sig and then cleared the pipe. He would approach Dean symbolically unarmed.

"Thing is, she modified the ritual. Added something. Used a seal to lock you away while you were…open. I have no idea why. But I can fix it." He took a breath. "I think."

In the garish light, his hand looked as pale as the chalk he held, but it was steady as he drew the lines of the symbol around Dean. He'd carefully memorized the words of the fourteenth-century counterritual. Latin slipped from his tongue in graceful, rolling cadences. The magic slowly took hold, locking Dean more firmly in place than physical restraints ever could. Sam removed the cuffs and shifted Dean's arms out to the sides.

He drew the tactical knife he'd prepared: eight inches long, razor sharp, and illegal in most states. It felt heavy with blood that hadn't even been shed yet. He hesitated a moment and then plunged it into his frozen brother's back, pushing Dean to the ground with the force of it. The move didn't even elicit a grunt. Sam put an unnecessary steadying hand on Dean's neck and began adding fresh lines to the pattern of scars on his brother's back. The only sound Dean made was a rough, wet coughing when his lungs filled with blood, but Sam could see the fatal wounds beginning to mend themselves already, even through the stinging dampness in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Dean," he whispered, and then finished off the incantation in the original language of the Anglo-Saxon ritual.

"Modceares gemyne dyrnne dream."

Heart-cares remember, and hidden joy.

"Thole thu ond leofa…"

Suffer, and live.

He could feel the power of the ritual, contained and channeled by the containment circle, whipping around them and through them as it was released. There was a sound/feeling of something snapping or breaking, and he could see, for a moment, his brother's face twisted in agony. Then his vision was swept away in the shockwave of some new spell he hadn't initiated. It was coming from Dean, and he had just enough time to recognize it as some sort of goddamned mystic tripwire before Dean stabbed him with his own knife.

Poetic justice, maybe. The knife did technically belong to Dean.

* * *

Charity was standing in the stiff breeze, guzzling a Red Bull, when she watched her one-night stand flee the scene with bloody hands. The Impala growled sweetly and took off in a gravelly cloud of dust that smelled of isolation and rust and abandonment. As soon as the vehicle reached the highway, she bolted for the foundry, smashing down metal stairs and crunching debris with her boots as she raced through the dimly lit metal graveyard. Her flashlight bounced crazily across the walls and floor, splashing her retinas with ugly glances of neglect. She slid to a stop at the threshold of what she thought of as The Room, the only piece of the industrial ruin that mattered, and found Sam adding a fresh coat of blood to the concrete floor. She called his name to no response, put pressure on the gushing wound in his abdomen, and made some swift calculations.

"Son of a shitfucking-"

She cut off sharply, conserving the breath she would need, tied Sam's shirt tightly around the wound to keep him from bleeding to death and pulled him over her shoulder with great effort. On a good day, she could bench Sam's weight, but that was benching. Carrying was something altogether different, but she managed. She pulled five different muscles and wrenched her back, but she managed.

"Red Bull does give you wings," she panted as she laid him in her rustbucket Cavalier and took off in a second tornado of dust. Red Bull, adrenaline, whatever. She redlined the tiny sedan all the way to the hospital and collapsed in a plastic chair as soon as Sam disappeared into the ER. Her arms and legs felt like they were vibrating apart and she kept seeing shadowy black flashes in her peripheral vision. Nobody needed to tell her to let the professionals do their jobs. She dodged the paperwork by insisting that she didn't know who she'd brought in and fell asleep sitting up.

The dreams that greeted her were of blood and glittering eyes.

* * *

He's running. Asphalt disappearing beneath chrome, an endless ribbon leading into nowhere. Only the vaguest notion of what (or whom) he's running from, but the inchoate, instinctual impulse is enough. Something's wrong. The job went south.

He'd had him. The ritual had changed something inside him, shifted the hallways of his mind (again), but his arms had been free and he hadn't hesitated on the first thrust. It was only when he pulled the knife back for a more immediately fatal cut that his arm seemed to catch on the other's eyes. He remembered them well, having looked into them or suffered their gaze on a daily basis as long as he could remember. He knew their color and size, knew the habits of the creature to whom they belonged.

But as he lay there with one bloody fist poised to douse their light, something tugged at him, a memory of a memory, something he'd forgotten. He'd been able to read those eyes once. He remembered that. He didn't remember how to read them and their expression was now a mystery to him, but he recalled a time when subtle muscle contractions in his brother's face had told him important things, or things that had seemed important at the time.

There's something missing inside him, he decides. A jagged hole where a part of him has been ripped free. It makes him suddenly and violently angry. Anger at such a violation is something he can feel and he lets the emotion wash through him. It doesn’t fill the vacancy – nothing can do that – but it pushes hard against the wound, cauterizes it. They reached inside him and fucked with him, rearranged his soul for purposes of their own. He's already killed the woman, but the boy (Sammy – whose name used to mean something) is probably not dead. Yet.

He remembers the cold concrete, the metal on his wrists. Remembers being slammed to the floor. The searing bite of the knife in his back. The taste of his own blood in his mouth. Hot anger flares from cold detachment. He relishes the irrationality of it: something beyond the indifferent calculus of the hunt. He remembers how to hurt, and how to strike back, and that's something. Not everything, not the missing piece of himself, but it's something.

He skids to a stop and reverses direction, his blood burning hot as the rubber on the Impala's tires.

* * *

It was night, and Sam was drowsing on a gentle sea of painkillers when he saw his brother's eyes in the darkness. Even after he registered the sharp, smooth blade against his throat, his senses were some time in convincing his brain that he was neither dreaming nor hallucinating. He stared while adrenaline vied for control of his nervous system, and Dean stared back. The knife began to tremble; Sam felt it bite ever so shallowly into the skin above his collarbone.

Then the knife and the eyes disappeared, and he heard someone retching.

The dim tunnel of his vision expanded, and he starting taking in his surroundings. Hospital whites painted grey and black by the moonlight. Vertical shades on the large window to his left, half-open and casting stripes of shadow on the pale floor. A wide door leading to an empty hallway, dim and third-shift quiet. And Dean. Standing in the bathroom doorway, leaning against the jamb. He looked pale, and unsteady on his feet. When he spoke, his voice was a hoarse whisper that carried easily in the small room.

"What did you do to me?"

Sam had thought he'd be relieved to see any expression on his brother's face, any indication that the ritual had brought him back to himself. But he looked in Dean's eyes and felt like an accomplice in the violation that had caused the desperate, confused despair he saw there. He tried to push through the chemical and emotional clouds that obscured his thinking, tried to find the right words and string them together.

"Dean, I'm sorry." His throat felt like it was clogged with broken glass. "She fucked with your head, man. I thought, if I could reverse the ritual..."

He trailed off in the face of the obvious discrepancy between planning and reality. His brother slid slowly down the wall, as if he hadn't really expected an answer – a reason – to solve anything. He sat there. Just…stopped. His knife, lying in one limp hand, reflected a low strip of moonlight, eerily matching the faint phosphorescence in his eyes. A few small, still moments passed before he spoke.

"I came here to kill you."

Sam swallowed. "But you didn't."

"Wanted to."

The words came with a breathy exhalation, an echo of a fierce desire. Sam groped for a response, but his tongue felt thick and slow and clumsy. He didn't know how to tell his brother that was okay, wasn't sure Dean wanted to hear it or that he was even capable of saying it. Just wasn't sure.

"I was…angry," Dean continued flatly. He drew his knees up to his chest and crossed his arms over them. "I was so fucking pissed. Wanted to so bad. Wanted to cut you 'til-"

Sam hadn't realized he'd stopped breathing until Dean slipped abruptly into silence and he let out a long, painful breath. He knew that his Dean – the real Dean – couldn't want something like that. He knew it was impossible. But he was still afraid. Still overtaken with a personal sort of terror that went beyond the sharp pull where the knife had slipped into his flesh. He had to force himself to disbelieve, had to remind himself that Dean needed him to not fuck this up.

"But you stopped," Sam said, somewhat surprised by how calm his own voice sounded. Maybe it was the drugs.

"Couldn't tell you why."

"I'm your brother, Dean."

"I know. I remember…things. I just don't-" Confusion settled over his blank face as he struggled for words. "It doesn't mean anything."

"It does mean something," Sam replied gently. "Just…stay, okay? Stay, and we'll figure this out. I promise."

Dean turned to face him, and Sam kept his eyes on his brother, willing him to be as stubborn as he'd always been, not to give up this time. Because Sam couldn't bear it if Dean ever stopped fighting.

Dean didn't answer him, just turned back to the wall. But he didn't leave, either. He sat there while Sam caught a slow boat to Darvocet-induced slumber. The dark image of his brother's hunched form followed him into his dreams.

* * *

When Charity walked into Sam's room the next morning, she started at the sight of Dean slumped against the opposite wall. Sam was awake, but she didn't get the impression that she'd walked in on anything. The boys just stood there (or, in Sam's case, sat there) in silence.

"Hey, Charity," Sam said. She didn't look at him. Dean hadn't moved, hadn't reacted at all to her presence, but she still didn't move any further into the room. "It's okay. Dean's…we, uh, talked."

"Was that before or after he stabbed you?" she asked, turning to Sam and finding a pale, hollowed version of the guy she'd blindly trusted. It was hard to feel threatened by him now.

"Um. After."

She turned back to Dean, eyeing him warily. He returned the look with customary indifference, but there was much more behind that carefully blank look. Something had changed: darkness filling the empty spaces. It frightened her and she recoiled.

She was taken suddenly by a deep memory: a hot summer, and the yellow-painted kitchen of her childhood home. Her mother, sweating as she spread peanut butter on bread, telling Charity that a good man could be as dangerous as a lousy one, in his own way. And she'd taken her sandwich, set it next to her milk and thought of her father, whoever he was, and said nothing. Nothing, until her mother died without answering the unspoken question and she was left with the empty house and the silence.

She looked at Dean and saw also Dean-that-was, the Dean of her memory. The contrast between present and past was sharp and cutting, and made her think of her mother's words. When she finally came back to herself, she realized that Sam had been asking her something.

"What?"

"I asked if you could, you know, read him for me?"

Charity chewed her lip anxiously, looking from one broken brother to the other. That foreign impulse was sweeping over her again in hot waves: SaveSamSaveSamSaveSam… She could hear her mother's voice. Sometimes a good man is more trouble than a lousy one. And she understood, finally, what her mother had meant.

She backed away, shaking her head and trembling.

"I'm sorry…"

She fled the hospital and didn't look back.

Chapter 6

No Use Whatsoever

2007-10-12T02:34:51Z

I am soooo drunk right now.

Someone log on so I can talk at you. Drunkenly.