Chapter Text
Author's notes: Several people have very supportively asked me to try and continue this. The risk is that the entire `story-line' of season three goes AWOL. but this is fanfic. So I will have a go.
For Sam.
By Patroclus76
It is said that when Achilles was brought news of the death of Patroclus, he fell into despair and tried to take his own life. Young Antilochus, son of King Nestor, wrested the dagger from his hand and beseeched him to avenge the death of his lover and to save the Greeks, who otherwise faced destruction. Finally Achilles agreed, yet he did so in the knowledge that his life was already forfeit - Robert Graves. The Siege and Fall of Troy.
`It is an evil thing when men die and look not to it.’ Lord Stanley in Shakespeare's Richard III.
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First there was only the wind blown darkness, thick under the bare veined trees and wet with the smell of earth. Then slowly, stumbling forward, his torch carving out an arch of sheeting rain, Dean saw the first of the houses. They were insubstantial, like apparitions, briefly and randomly drawn together in the night like frightened cattle. Pausing for breath, Dean shouted out Sam’s name as if it was an incantation, a binding spell that would snatch Sam free of danger and throw him majestically into the powerful safety of his brothers arms.
`Dean, quit your calling!’
Bobby slipped and staggered his way to Dean’s side. His breath clouded the front of his face and his eyes were wide with fear. They had been jogging through the forest for almost an hour, blind, wayward. Bobby’s chest was tight and airless.
`Sam!’
Bobby turned to launch another rebuke but realised the tone of Dean’s voice was different now, no longer a question pinched with anxiety.
`Look, over there!‘
Bobby glanced forward to see a tall figure zig zagging towards them, exhausted, like a man walks in his drink.
`Wait Dean -’
But Dean had recognised Sam before Bobby; caught his scent, the radiant heat of his brother‘s love. Dean’s body language relaxed, his face breaking out in a smile but then a shadow, something vague and incoherent, appeared behind Sam and moved towards the younger Winchester with cold precision. It the wet fug it was hard to make out who or what it was, white starring eyes, a demon, no - a black youth in fatigues? But before either Dean or Bobby could think further or move there was a blur and rush of movement, a penetrative lunge and a single, piercing cry and Sam’s arms exploded up in a gesture of surrender.
`SAM!’ The name tore from Dean’s lips. It was not a voice he recognised, but something bestial, a scream. It filled the world around him with a yawp of rage and terror. Dean broke cover, dashing for Sam as his brother crashed down to his knees like a giant tree felled without warning. Bobby, gun cocked, roared forward like a bull directly at Sam‘s assailant and drew rapidly away into the glowering darkness of the houses.
When Dean took Sam in his arms the younger brother seemed not to recognise him at first. Sam’s face was shockingly raw, his eyes locked in a frown, the broad shouldered torso limp.
`Sam, Sam! Sam it’s ok, it’s ok. I’m here now. I found you!’
`Dean?’
The voice was thin, a tone of incredulity and then his head flopped forward, hitting Dean’s collar. Dean shook him, the head lolled, fell forward again.
`Sam!’
Sam‘s lips parted and the wind blew his hair over his forehead like a caress. For a moment there was a soft grey gleam in Sam’s half closed eyes, like pale winter sunlight, and then an empty, eternal stare.
`Sam! NO! NO!‘
Dean's brother’s cheekbones were silk smooth, dabbed with bloody fingers like war paint. Dean crushed him into a tight embrace as if to keep the life in him, as if Sam's spirit was a fickle thing with half a mind to stay. As if Dean’s own life force could reanimate the physical beauty that was Sam and burn him back into the world.
`SAM!’
Dean screamed again, an animal howl of unimaginable, irretrievable loss that rattled the dark night, and then he crashed into Sam again, his hand on the back of his neck, pressing him into his own body. Already Sam’s warmth was fading, drawn out into the chill wet air. Weeping, Dean's arm reached the sticky mess of Sam’s lower back, torn wide with a deep thrust of a knife. He knew then with chilling finality that Sam was dead.
`God no. No! Please God no!‘
It was not possible. It was not in the nature of the world that Sam could die. Not yet, not here in this place and in this way. It was a mistake, a joke. He half expected to feel Sam jerk awake and, laughing, swing up and kiss his brother on the lips. For a moment Dean even started to smiled at the audacity of Sam’s dare and then he felt again the hole in his brother’s lower back, the waxy coldness of his face and the realisation that Sam’s body was empty, an abandoned husk, never to speak or smile again. Dean closed his eyes and howled.
Sam’s dead weight pinned them both down into the dark spreading mud for what seemed an eternity. The black peaty water chilled Dean’s thighs and knees but he stayed on, clinging to the wreckage of his life and its true meaning. When Bobby returned he saw them like that, on their knees pressed into each other, symmetrical in their form like a child who prints its wet hand and then folds the paper. Mirrored one on one, hinged together at the neck, they looked almost in prayer. Their intimacy was almost too much for Bobby who had let the quarry slip away, misled and panicked by the empty maze of streets and faint with exhaustion. He could see immediately that Sam was dead, already half planted into the earth and the dark rich decay of soil. And he could hear Dean sobbing and cursing God and calling down the fury of heaven. To his own surprise perhaps, Bobby’s eyes weld up with tears.
He had always suspected that Sam and Dean had taken each other as lovers. Whatever their respective promiscuity, Bobby had often seen the quiet coded signals pass between two men that no woman would ever separate. It had been a sort of magic, especially given Dean’s temperament, to see Sam frown, smile and narrow his eyes and then watch Dean come to heel, like an angry colt sensing his young master. That sort of power was rare to behold. And yet while Bobby had loved Sam he had always been equivocal as to who Sam was, unsure what it was that walked besides the young man in his tall beauty. Good or evil? However green Sam could appear, there had been old wisdom in that pretty face, a knowledge of the world in its making, but whether Sam was of the light or the darkness Bobby had never known for sure, except perhaps now.
Bobby wiped his face and beard and struggled towards Dean. For a while he stood stupefied, aware of the empty, gaunt ruins around them that watched and whispered maliciously, crowding in. They were hopelessly exposed to attack and Bobby knew instinctively that, for a while, Dean was lost to him or worst still, a liability to them both.
`Dean man, come on, let’s get him inside.’
For a moment there was no movement, no recognition that Bobby had spoken at all, and then slowly Dean looked up, his face lost and wild, almost dehumanised with pain. Blood, presumably Sam’s, lay smeared on his mouth and chin as if Dean has tried to breath him awake in one final desperate act.
`Dean - come on!’
`Ok, ok!’
They fought hard to grip Sam in the cold wet, their fingers numb and raw. At one stage Sam almost fell sideways like a dummy in some grotesque pantomime, caught only just in time by Dean who, breathless and almost comatose, slipped his hands under the neck and the crook of the boy’s knees and pulled him free from the sucking greedy earth. They had then staggered to the nearest house, an old postal office with a side room and the remains of a single cot. There Dean had laid his brother out, on his back, his face turned away and his arms casually by his side as if he had drunk himself into a stupor and needed time and patience to wake up. The illusion to the peace of sleep was extraordinary. By now it was dawn, and the wet silver light coated Sam’s face pearly blue. Ghostly smooth, he looked like a statue found from some ancient temple and brought back into the world’s morning, a young god, coy but powerful, faking his own death.
Dean sat holding Sam’s hand to his lips. Bobby looked at Sam’s face and then anxiously at the older Winchester. The morning would bring them some respite, but they had to move soon and moreover Sam would have to be burned. The covenant between soul and animal was broken. In a few hours the limbs would stiffen and then would come the sweat brown smell of decay. It was more than Dean could probably deal with, and for a while Bobby stood pensive and silent, chewing his lip, afraid to test Dean’s mood but more afraid to leave him alone to his madness.
`Dean. Dean we have to burn Sam. You have to let him go.’
Trance like Dean looked up but said nothing. Bobby walked carefully into the room and stood at Sam’s feet. Before the fatal blow, Sam had been hit hard on the lower chin by a fist or a wide blunt object. A great bloom of bruise and blood stood out, drawn down into his neck and the open throat.
`No one came for him.’ said Dean quietly and with an odd calmness. Unsure as to his meaning, Bobby grated his beard hard and shook his head. What could he say? What words were there to undo the monstrosity of what they had seen?
`You came, Dean.'
`No one came, Bobby!’ Dean’s voice was light with sarcasm. `Not even his god! Especially his god! The god he prayed to every night!’ and then he laughed, genuinely amused but half in spite. `The same god my mother prayed to, incidentally!’ and then Dean sprang up and roared `Where the fuck were you, God! You son of a bitch!’ with such intensity that Bobby leapt backwards.
`Dean! Dean stop this. We have to burn Sam and get help. Something big is happening here, I mean, end of the world big!’
`Then let it end!’
`You don’t mean that! You can’t!’
`Can’t I!’ Dean’s face was twisted with rage, chalk white, the eyes dark and wild. `Haven’t I given enough! haven’t I sacrificed everything! My mother, my father, Sam? And what am I now, Bobby, what is there left, when all that is good in me has been dug out and taken away! Nothing! I am nothing without him! I never was!’
A sob tore through the man in front of Bobby, like a physical blow, and Dean threw himself down at Sam’s side. Stung by the scale of his grief, Bobby struggled to find a voice, to choke back his own fear.
`You can’t believe that, Dean! Do you have so little opinion of your own worth? Do you think Sam loved you because you were worthless and without purpose!’
A patch of early yellow sunlight spilt onto Sam’s shoulder and touched the corner of his cheek bone. It seemed to centre the room and to calm the men who lapsed into their own thoughts. It made Sam look contemplative, as if he was frowning slightly at the argument in front of him.
`Get me some water.’ whispered Dean eventually, his hands pressed against his skull as if he was in physical pain. `And there is some fuel in the car, and a sheet.’
Bobby paused to consider how wise it was to leave Dean alone, but the request seemed considered and reasonable. He needed some air, anyway to clear his head.
`Sure. Sure, Dean.’
Bobby returned with a pitch of water which Dean then insisted he heated. Bobby tried to point out the absurdity of the request but eventually complied, touched by Dean’s quiet persistence. As he piled up an open fire, Dean gently stripped Sam’s body by removing his boots and peeling away the fouled clothes. The tall athletic body was pale white now, with rills of blood settled into the buttocks and thighs. An old tan line stood out across Sam’s toned stomach, and a wedge of old scars and cuts marked his chest like a constellation. The simplicity of Dean’s instinct to wash his brother’s body moved the old hunter to tears again. Bobby’s lineage was an old one, drawn back into the mountains and plains of his homecoming; a hunter’s boy of a hunter before him. Although no scholar, Bobby could read the land and the ancient mysteries. In many cultures the body in death was a source of pollution, something to be avoided and protected against, even appeased. He smiled gently to himself to see Dean inadvertently pay homage to Sam’s faith: or perhaps he did it deliberately, despite his anger and his pagan cynicism.
Dean caught sight of the old man’s look. For the first time since Sam’s death. Bobby thought he saw a trace of a smile on Dean‘s lips.
`What? You don’t think he asked me to do this! You don’t think that Sam thought about this stuff! Always thinking, planning ahead, asking questions.’ Dean stood up and moved towards Sam’s rucksack. `He used to tell me that the ancestral line between primates and men was drawn not over burial, but the ritual of burial, the communal treatment of a body, grave goods, alignments.’ Tears bled over Dean’s face as he rummaged through his brother’s stuff.
`He was right as always.’ said Bobby unevenly, fighting to hold his emotions in check.
`Yeah, tell me about it. And when he wasn’t right it made no fucking difference. Pagans north to east, Christians east to west. Animists burned in sacred groves or near liminal open places, you know, all sky and sea, buried with totems and amulets to ease their passage.’ Dean retrieved a small bottle of Chrism, viscous and golden in his large hand. Bobby had never heard Dean speak like this before. It was as if he was speaking to Sam inside his head, talking out loud, with Sam gently chastising his doubt and prodding Dean playfully to comply. Bobby had seen Sam do that countless times.
`Is that myrrh?’
`Oh yes, Bobby, And only the best. Sam bought it and squirreled it away next to a fucking thesaurus and a copy of the new testament. He once caught me frying onions with it!’
Despite himself Bobby laughed, the tears back on his face, his hands shaking.
`It’s all bull, of course. But Sammy insisted! Anoint me, Dean, pray for me, ask for forgiveness!’
`Sam knew that anointing the body is a symbol of the divine in all us, Dean. A recognition of that which is numinous and sacred.‘
`Don’t!’ said Dean curtly. He poured a drop of oil into the palms of his hand and gently massaged Sam’s cold sculptured face, the boned forehead, the rune of vein and cheek and down in gently arcs to the broad wide shoulders. He did so with particular care and intensity and Bobby, unable to watch, backed away to the fire and closed his eyes tightly. In the end, cautious as to any possible movements on the road, Bobby walked to fetch the gasoline and the sheet. As he walked away he heard Dean talking in earnest to Sam, a torrent of words as if a dam had broken and carried off his reason.
Dean wrapped Sam in a shroud and stitched it close to his body with gently skill. Before he covered the face, Dean kissed his brother and removed a lock of his hair, the stray threads that often hung question like over Sam’s eyes and made it his habit of swishing his head back, like a horse with a fly.
They built a pyre near to the place they had last seemed Sam alive, leaving Sam‘s body guarded by salt and powerful charms against some last evil molestation. Outside they worked quickly and in silence as the morning waned towards noon. All this time they had not seen or heard any other living thing but themselves. Finally the pyre was ready, a sturdy platform with timber and debris, dry for the most part, brought out from the houses.
`Should we say something? I mean? Some last words?’ Bobby hesitated, anxious not to rekindle Dean’s agony. For some time the surviving Winchester had lapsed into a strangely peaceful mood.
`You mean a prayer?’ Dean said, his voice dark with irony. `A Missa pro defunctis for the departed soul of my lover?’
Bobby frowned, puzzled as to whether Dean had intended to say brother, but either term seemed appropriate at the end of all things.
`Yeah. Did he ask for that?’
`He sure did. He asked me to beg God to save his soul and avenge his death and to protect and guide me until we would be together, united and happy, in one fucking heavenly love in!’
`Dean!’
`What! What is the point? I’m doing this because I loved him Bobby, I loved every inch of his crazy god damn head and every last stubborn pedantic little gesture. I’m not doing this for God or faith, or for a touch of grace! There is no god, just evil, Bobby! This is the proof! A world without divinity just full on hardcore evil without reason! No god, no angels, no hope! No one came for him, and he knew that himself, at the end. I saw it.’ his voice broke at last. `I saw it in his eyes. Tomorrow you will burn me and then on and on, right down to the last fucking hunter!’
`Pray for Sam, damn you, you stubborn bastard! Prey that his faith, like his love for you was more than just words. Dean, but an oath of allegiance - a promise that nothing could break!’
`No!’ but Dean’s voice had lost some of its brash conviction, stung by Bobby‘s temper. It sounded tired and hollow, a mere catechism of rage. And despite himself, despite his despair and his own faithlessness, Dean suddenly found himself praying for the first time in his life, slowly at first, awkward under Bobby’s stare, but then slowly with zeal and passion, his eyes streaming with tears, begging pleading ntil exhausted, he leaned down to the ground and wept.
There came a noise then, a soft clatter as if something had moved back behind them. Fearing attack they both swung around, Bobby levelling his gun, Dean instantly attentive, focusing on the building where they have left Sam. The sun was high and warm over the clearing.
`What is it? Bobby?’
The hunter walked forward tentatively, moving his head slowly. In a clatter of wings, two wood pigeons put off from the eves of a nearby cottage, startling them both.
`I don’t know.’
`Lets get Sam!’ Dean went to rush forward but Bobby caught his shoulder.
`Wait, Dean. They’re enough charms on Sam to ward off Lucifer himself. Whoever it is they’re probably human, the black army dude probably.’
`Fucker, then I’ll tear him limb from limb!’ Dean pushed forward, ignoring Bobby’s protest, storming across the rutted track back towards the ruined office.
Sam’s body had gone. The sheet had been unstitched without damage and lay neatly folded at the foot of the cot. Sam’s clothes had gone too, neat and careful withou break or rummage and the bottle of Chrism that Dean had emptied was full again, winking its oily light, with the stopper sealed closed.