Surrender to the Nightmare
Thanks to the latest little stint of angst thrown our way, I have a sudden, desperate need for fluff. Sadly, this is not fluffy, not even cute. It's angsty, I should be working, but the omgsadness! has taken over the rational part of my brain. Dean is right. Sam needs to get laid. Because seriously people, there is only so much heartbreak I can take. I hereby take this opportunity to beg for fluff. Any fluff, because I really don't trust myself to try and veer of the angst-beaten path ahead of us. Whimper.
All evil is like a nightmare; the instant you stir under it, the evil is gone.
-Thomas Carlyle
Growing up, there had never been a single moment in Sam Winchester's life in which Dean had not represented safe. No matter the problem, natural or otherwise, Sam was safe with Dean. Safe in a way he wasn't with his crusading father.
His brother could be sick, injured, handcuffed to a table, fucking dying, and his mere presence alone would be the balm on a wound that just wouldn't heal. In the face of things that went bump in the night, Dean was his very own wise-cracking, leather-wearing guardian angel.
When all else could be abruptly, painfully, ripped away from him, Sam had been convinced that Dean and safe would be one constant security.
He was wrong.
Dean isn't safe, not any more.
Dean is broken. And it is Sam's fault.
Sam finally took over the wheel a few miles over the border into Nebraska. Dean protested enough to protect his tough-guy mentality, and promptly passed out in the passenger's seat five minutes into the drive. Since then he stirred twice, once around Valentine, when Sam had pulled them over for gas, and again near Red Cloud, where he stumbled to the truck stop bathroom. Sam drove for close to twenty hours, stopping only for gas and coffee, until he was wired and beyond weary, and Dean was as confused as fuck to wake up and find himself back in Kansas.
Every ten miles or so, he stoped ignoring the music and tried to wrap his head around all that had happened.
He hadn't missed the irony of it all. For all his battles against his 'darker' side, and for all Dean's adamant protests to save him, help him, kick the shit out of anything that touched him, it had, in some twisted way, been because of Dean that he had crossed the line and taken a human life.
Their second favourite demon of all time had an axe to grind with his brother. Sam had always said that one day being the Scourge of the Underworld would come back to bite Dean in the ass. Instead it had forced them both to visit their worst nightmares.
And that was when Dean and safe failed to co-exist.
For as long as Sam could remember, he had suffered the nastiest nightmares. Even before Jessica, before the prophetic Joseph dreaming, as a little boy, his sleeping world had held all the horrors of existence. Demons and monsters and shadows, and the failing grade in math, they all liked to vie for turns in his torment. Through them all, Dean had been there, hauling his ass back into the real world. Shaking. Poking. Soaking. Threatening. Dean had used every trick in his dictionary long book to save Sam from the nightmares.
And that was fine. Nightmares he could deal with, because in the daylight, with Dean, he was protected from the shadows in his mind. Safe.
Then this demon. Then Steve Wondell, the blood on his hands, the bullet in Dean's shoulder, the burn, the bruises, the taunts and the lies, and the mocking voice in his head that said this is all Dean's fault, you know. Your nightmare is his torment. Your soul for his pain- a good trade, no?
They found a motel room, hit the beds without changing or brushing their teeth. There is a bible stacked up on the table -Sam threw it behind the dresser.
Dean was unconscious again before his head hit the pillow, his face like that bad Batman villain-one side as pale as a corpse, the other black and blue and yellow, swollen and red.
Sam slept, sucked into the nightmares.
Dean did't wake him when he started to thrash.
In the dark, it is always the same. Oh, the details differ, but the plot doesn't change. Sam had a gun, a knife, a machete, rope, his bare hands and Dean was there, gun trained in a grip that didn't tremble.
There was always a third player. Bobby. Jo. Ellen. Even those long dead. Dad. Jim. Caleb. God forgive him, mom and Jess had even stared in the sick games of the night.
He kills. Tortures. Maims. Then burns. Everything burns.
Dean still didn't wake him, even then.
He just watched, dry eyed and pale faced. Dean, the protector of defenceless women, small children and kittens, watched Sam become the nightmare, and didn't make a move to stop him.
That was when Dean stoped being safe.
Sam woke up, his heart pounding loud enough to wake the dead two states over, and Dean's shoulder was bleeding again. Instead of finding comfort in the daylight, in Dean, Sam wished he had never woken up.
The nightmares he can deal with. They are not real.
It is the reality that scares him. Because now he knows. Dean won't kill him. Not to protect, not to stop.
Dean will save Sam from everyone but himself.
No longer safe, Sam longed for the oblivion of his nightmares.