Chapter Text
Shines for You
The Things We Lost in the Fire Chapter 13
Category: Angst, Dark Winchesters
Rating: drinking, multiple uses of the word fuck, injury, super death stuff, ahead be frank sexual situations, 18
Character(s): Dean, Sam, Rowena, reader
Pairing(s): Dean x Reader, Sam x Rowena
Warnings: see rating above, and trigger as fuck people. It’s a dark series on purpose. I’m not giving away shit here so if that’s a concern; please don’t read because I’m 100% not here to take your shit over a piece of fiction
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Card design by Phantom Rim
This is the way that it is-
Your ribs twist, fluttering and cracking open, you feel the tear- the divide. Its wrenching- the realization that Deans exposed you- but the heart is a fist of muscle, violent and craven in its own way. Only restrained by a birdcage, a dollhouse. You shed your armor, the last bit - ready to carve out your place in his chest so he can feel the same loss, that same vulnerability that feels like pain.
All locked doors and bloody teeth sharpened into grimaces, until- water slides down your throat like snakes. When you try to scream- a scream so loud the bubbles would look like broken glass…but you don’t. You can't. You feel it creep into your lungs, fiery eels of pressure. When you break through the surface there’s no relief, only exhaustion. Even the scream dries up, choking out on weary relief.
There's only water- indigo and endless, too cold and too warm simultaneously. Thrashing doesn't help, this night sky has no stars, no port to guide. Your head slips under.
You’re seven and wearing your favorite little mermaid shirt. The babysitter is nicer to you than your brother. He colors with you and lets you eat spaghettios and stays up late watching movies. When he touches you you feel the scream build up and flutter out. It waits somewhere in your chest, hides behind his finger against your lips.
For later. For always.
He licks the inside of your mouth as you bleed on a toilet. You wonder if this is the hell the priest talks about. The sin licking your mouth open. You cry so much your face swells. No one asks you why.
When you learn about Maria Goretti in religion class, you want to cry again. Is it bad that you didn’t die? Purity is something intangible and you already feel like it’s out of grasp. Something you can’t touch like stained glass windows.
The water swells over you, washing you away.
You’re nine and you think you know the meaning of never again. You have a hard time making friends except for at camp, at night, when the girls talk about hands and pain. You find out there’s a you that’s only loved in the dark. You won’t wear dresses and you cut off all your hair. They try to put you in a program at school, but your dad fights it. There’s nothing wrong with you, he says and you love him for it. Sometimes it’s worse to be singled out. Your brother's fourteen year old friend corners you in your grandparents house. His grabbing claws reach from under pool tables and kitchen tables like some nightmare monster. He kisses you with tongue and tries to go under your clothes. When you tell him you don’t like it, he accusingly says you don’t like anything. He says it like there’s something wrong with you. You curl your fingers around your shorn hair and wonder what other things you’re saying without actually saying them.
When he crawls into your bed one night, you wonder if anywhere is actually safe.
Your grandpa comes in time, but you think that he looks at you differently. You never talk about it.
That scream keeps building in your chest. The tattoos on your arms have lost their meaning, they drip blue the way the rest of you drips red. You used to know that face, but thinking about it hurts and you've grown weary of pain. There's just a stream of here and now, big and little, girl and woman.
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Deans stuck in the backseat, watching over your shoulder. He drowns in the oversaturation of your memories, no longer movies, but reenactments. The ink that ties him to your arm starts to fade as you lose yourself in them. He hears Chuck laugh, more than the sound- the skitter of it ripples along the back of his neck, riding piggyback on him like he's doing to you. “I'm the dungeon master here Dean, it's my story and this time the devil gets his fiddle of gold.”
You’re the lost boy now, and he’s going to have to be Peter Pan or the Pied fucking Piper to get you back in the drivers seat. Dean knows that he can't venture too far, he's still too scattered for that, but he can whisper. He wraps his arms around you, causing a shudder, but you still walk through the past. Your form begins to change with each leap and he worries about how he can reach you like this. He wanders through his memories of dream walking and he begins to tell a story.
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Sam watches Rowena out of the corner of his eye, the main focus still on the road. The bunker may not be up to her standards but she's going to call it home until this whole mess is straightened out. Dean would make a hell of a doula he allows himself, wishing more than hoping that said brother will be waiting to berate this decision. Rowena has a petulant smile painted on her face, but he can still tell that she isn't that displeased. Seeing her gently rounded belly is making his insides flip flop, the sheer possessiveness riding high. He knows hes going to fuck her again, the urge is already making his knuckles whiten on the wheel and his legs restless. He wants to see his hand splayed over that porcelain skin, cradle her stomach as he slides in from behind. The thought makes his upper lip sweat as he tries to declutter his brain.
“I know you won't be open to Fergus, but how do you feel about Liam?” Rowena almost whispers and it brings Sam to a screeching halt in processing.
She’s staying. Sam whooshes out a breath that he didn't know he was holding, and he reaches out like that first hopeful dawn light, taking her hand, “ I love Liam.” He replies.His foot eases a little off the gas and the tightness in his chest that has been lurking since Dean unravels a little. “It's going to be ok.” Sam states, more for himself than her. They can figure this out. Rowena lets a small smile slip and grips his hand harder. He remembers that she's never had a partner for this, and he promises whatever's left listening that he won't fail this. Fail her.
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Angel of Thursday. Angel of Mercy, Angel of Longing, Angel of Goddamn Catastrophe- Castiel flounders, reassessing. Michael the general; Michael the unfeeling, unflinching moral compass; that Michael he has always known, followed- that Michael is gone. Reshaped by a human man, by wearing his flesh and tasting his memories.
Being an Angel is like being a song, thousands of chorusing voices joined together in a perfect harmony. It's the corner of a room, neither here nor there, the last flash of light as the sun sets. Taking vessels makes everything have limits, wakens sensations that were never meant to be borne.
There's a poetry to it, Castiel thinks, now that Metatron had given him a proclivity for it-
“I've forgotten the words to every prayer,
but still I lift my hand to my mouth,
expecting nothing,
finding blood."
[ID: "Prayer to the Angels of Fever, by Ieva Dapkevicius]
He watches Michael touch Adam's body, intimate- familiar. This isn't a fallen comrade as he had first suspected. This is the touch of a lover. Michael doesn't use his will to make Adam clean, he bathes him. Softly, tracing curves like they feel different from the outside.
It makes Castiel think of studying the bend of Deans wrist, curved like poetry. The lean slice of skin along the back side of his ear, still soft and unscarred. He touches his own lips and wonders at the fullness, the sensation. His memories of being human beckon, the sheer thrill of touch and taste, more layered and complex than he had ever known. There's a veneer over it now, power thrumming, deadening that fine nerve response. Something shifts inside him thinking of Dean tethering his soul to someone else. The fact that he’d been instrumental in that now felt like falling again. Like looking for the earth beneath your feet and finding it gone.
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One minute there are ribbons in your hair, the next you are sixteen, sweating off makeup in a small apartment bathroom. Your hands are bleeding from tearing the towel bar off the wall, your lips are kiss swollen into a grimace. When you hit Dan in the face the blood feels like baptism. Tease cuts out from between his broken teeth. You stumble out of the room, chunks of hair missing and shirt torn, still clutching that towel rack.
The nights are too hot for these kinds of secrets.
The streets as empty as your optimism, torn shirt flapping-a flag to predators. An engine starts up, headlights ripple across you. Seeing an older car puts you at ease, the familiarity of it, your heart calms to the thrum of it- that liquid black Impala, nostalgia and danger wrapped into one. It feels like a dream- this car. A mirage. It flickers like it doesn't belong, but that's probably the concussion talking. It rolls up and the man inside eyes your towel bar, one you hadn't realized you'd raised already in defense.
“You're not walking home after that.” His tone is even, flat. It's not a question or a threat but a shiver works its way down your back anyway. You can already feel that walk like it's done- jumping at lights, cold and not numb enough. Miles to go.
You have no one else to call.
So, uncharacteristically, you get in. Something inside you unclenches, and there are tears that aren't born out of fury. The man's hand finds its way into yours, and even though he never looks at you, you hear the words- a tone below a whisper- Safe.
It goes like this- Dean writes himself into the margins of your memories- a ride, a dollar, a hand. Sometimes a fist. All brief. All kind. Asking nothing, half formed like deja vu. A ghost, a wish.
Your teeth still crack and break against a nightstick, but there's ice this time. Still a long walk in the swamp, but this time you find shoes. Someone always manages to call ambulances for you instead of dragging yourself to debate the worth of it. You can feel the wrongness of it, a poorly set metronome.
When you stare at the water- far below the bridge you're standing on, and it feels like the wind is calling you to fly, you hear it- that guardian angel, the devil on your shoulder-
You are not your own.
It's louder than the lovely velvet navy of the water, more solid than the wind pushing at your back. You turn around and no one is there.
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The problem with living this kind of life, Dean Thinks, is coexisting as several contradictory things at once. And somehow the brain organizes that into a labyrinth of rooms to navigate, each hallway different from the last, never knowing if the door he's opening is into his own mind or yours. Rattling around a sub-liminal space organized around shitty motel hallways was getting old. He felt less like swiss cheese, guess you'd gotten around to most of his parts by now, almost a running car.
Weary of being a memory concierge, he lets himself resent you a bit- “Go fuck yourself Lurch” he mocks in your tone before checking the next door and wincing it closed. It chafes, this chase; seeing under the curtain more than anyone deserves. It makes him want to curl against it, give the new doors his back. There are things that can't be Unseen. Once they are, they take on a texture, a soul of their own.
He lets himself have a minute of sneering disdain, bleeds it into dripping pity, forms it into resolve. Remembering that you'd been leaving mint on his pillows while patching him together like a scarecrow. He chuffs out a laugh at his own expense, got the bitching part done. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that the hard part is the act, and the kindness isn’t. Hard not to scoff at something his father thought he beat out of him. It’s been so long that kindness feels like a lie, or worse, something more akin to muscle memory than an impulse. You wear the mask too long and it ends up wearing you.
Looking back means being lost. Makes things ache that he didn’t think lived here anymore. Dean rubs his chest, ghostly as it is, wondering if you got buried in your own facade. Wonders how much remodeling covers the bricks of who you are and what you want. House don’t fall if the bones are good, he sigh-sings it, tired and hopeful, sarcastically mocking the knowing of the tune no matter how appropriate. He realizes that when this is all over, he can’t spin kind into proprietary, tapestry it into practicality.
Why is it easier to make himself weak by donating enough blood to lose consciousness instead of confessing? Why is it so hard to admit to himself that you matter when he has to talk to you after? It makes him remember that boy standing outside a fire, holding a baby in his arms and weeping. The fire that burned away everything.
At least John hoped it had. Deans been drinking and fucking it away too long to wonder of its hope or horror at the thought.
So he wades through, the names of new gods being born and dying on his tongue- kindness, empathy, thoughtfulness. Walks in and out of shrines and masses, worshiping at your altar, following you like a weary apostle hoping for the end of your forty days in the desert. Makes him think about Chuck, that echo of a laugh behind closed doors. Rolls around ideas like mouthing an unlit cigarette.
If he wanted blind adoration he should have never given us memory.
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Smoke is clogging your lungs, thick as tar, searing its way across your throat. Your brother burrows himself as far into your arms as he can get, not minding the skin flaying off or the shrill sound that rips out of you each time he touches where there used to be flesh. You can feel it, the insidious fingers of flame tip toeing up your neck, snaking down your pant leg, wrapping around your arms. Its embrace is closer and more intimate than any human contact you've ever allowed. The wet drag of grass is a ripping relief, you let yourself let go, roll out the fire and drag in deep grateful breaths when your brother manages to edge out- “You have to go back, we have to get it!!” He grabs the intact part of your arm; pupils blown wide with terror and need and chemical help. “If you don't get my shit, I'm a dead man.” You're on your feet before you understand, some visceral part still in save mode. You smear mud on the burns you already have, quenching it and protecting at the same time. You stand in the foyer of what used to be a house, surrounded, the fire claimed this place and made it into hell. A sigh sneaks out, because you know how this ends. You know how it all ends. For a moment, you aren't trapped in the memory, but the weight of knowledge is too much to bear anyhow. You don't want to move forward, even with the memory pulling at you like fishhooks. You just want to burn to ash. You want Dean. You want to forget and remember. You wish you could talk about this in a way that doesn't make you scream.
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Deans poised at the edge, still in the gray, one foot in memory and one in the hallway to it. The doors open to the inferno, and it makes him feel small. Makes him remember that acrid taste, that jarring loss. The worst memories aren't the pain. Not the blood or the crunch of broken bones. It's the knowing. And he sees it as you cross the fire- not hurried like it should be, but the drag of inevitability. He sees you find a bag, gently tap out the flames and look out, your brother curled in the grass still screaming at you. The bag dangles from your limp fingers and he’s terrified, so much so that he's frozen. That fire fucked his whole life, and even then, that small child, he knew. He knew it meant that everything in his life was broken and would never be fixed. He saw the cracks in the world, and there's no unseeing that. This is that moment, and all the nightmares he's been through, all the hell he's walked down and clawed out of, this is the thing that terrifies him the most.
He walks through anyway.
He lifts the bag out of your numb fingers and gently turns you to face him. Even though the fire makes him shudder, even though he's not sure what comes next, he waits for you to give him permission. He holds the bag up as a question and just waits. Fire or no fire, he’ll wait until you're both ash until he opens this door. Till you let him for once. Seconds tick into minutes and Dean feels the heat, watches your skin peel back and char. The ghost of pain roars through him, his senses kicking into overdrive. You reach over and open the zipper for him, watching his face like you're begging him to understand- but you're too tired and hope is just a word that people use for defeat.
There are drugs. Just drugs. There's no map to redemption, no promise of better. You didn't even know what you were expecting to find that first time. This is what your brother sent you to die for, even now screaming about how it was more important than your life. He sent you there for this, this is the measure of your worth. This is all that you are.
Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.
‘you have been weighed, you have been measured, you have been found wanting’
Dean can hear these thoughts like they are spoken, and he cups the damaged side of your face, “This was never all that you were. This is all that he was. I'm not just the arms that carried my brother. Their intentions don't define us anymore.”
It cracks you open when he drops the bag, fire eating through memory to lap it up. He stands there holding your hand as you watch the house fall down around you. You feel like you can finally ride away with the ash, float through the night on sparks, fixed in the sky like a star. You let go. Your armor burns with you.
Maybe it burned away the second Dean took that bag, held that weight for you. You float until you aren't sure which particles are yours and which are his, or if somehow you're still standing there, hand in hand, no longer afraid of fire.