Author:Mirrordance

Title: Seasons

Summary:E/O Challenge."What's one bullet, dad?" Dean asked, delirious, between bouts of screaming. Everything, Sam's panicked mind filled in, It's everything if it's the end of you. Mirrordance's sophomore (un)drabble response for "Dry" in 4 attempts.

Hi guys,

Thank you so much for the very welcoming reviews of my previously-posted virgin-'drabble' Senses. This is an absolutely awesome community! Granted, I'm pretty darn awful at keeping to the word-limit (or targets, I should say haha), an emerging flaw that will be noted in this installment too, but the themes people come up with are just so inspiring that when I get started, I can't stop! I'm a bit embarrassed posting these un-drabbles since the scandalous excess to the word-limit rule seems like impunity, but I couldn't resist. Anyway, you've been warned... I think I'm getting worse and worse at this, but for those who move forward, thank you for bearing with it (at least so far, haha)!

Anyway, without further ado, best wishes to the brilliant and wonderful PADavis, and here's my take on "Dry" in 4 loosely-related but can-stand-alone un-drabbles (I figured I don't have a right to call them drabbles right now):

Seasons

1: Spring Rain

805 words

Sam is thirteen and looking for a reason to stay.

The only thing keeping him rooted where he was and in some greater sense, even standing or put together at all were the arms wrapped tight around him, holding him close, whispering in his ear that everything was going to be okay.

They sounded like lies; his father was a liar of the worst kind - habitual, unconvincing and also profoundly un-self-aware. That was what he said the first time they noticed the cut on Dean's arm. That was what he said when Dean lilted and fell, his face pale and his skin burning. That was what he said when Dean started to writhe and scream.

It was the worst way to die, they said of this poison. It tears you apart slowly, and keeps you awake, aware, right to the very, very end.

"What's one bullet, dad?" Dean had asked, delirious, begging, in between bouts of screaming and restless shifting, "What's one bullet?"

It's everything, Sam's panicked mind had filled in, It's everything if it's the end of you...

His father had looked anguished, but the one worse thing than that defeat and sorrow was the thought that streaked into his eyes – considering. For a moment, Sam thought he was going to do it; Dean looked so broken, begging for death when he was not delirious with pain and fever. For a moment, Sam thought about letting him.

"Don't you do it, dad," Sam breathed, saving them all, "Don't you do it."

He didn't.

The three of them decided to tough it out.

The fight was running out of Dean, though. Sam could still hear him crying and screaming, but he hasn't been aware in hours, was just lost in his suffering, fading fast.

That meant that the fight was running out of Sam too because he knew in the deepest parts of him that if Dean died, there would be no reason for him to stay here. If Dean died, he'd run away; be something else, somewhere else, not stuck in this life that had taken his youth, consumed his father and now stolen away his brother.

He heard the rumbling thunder heralding the April showers from inside the room where Dean lay in his agonies, and suddenly he couldn't get outside fast enough. He wanted to be clean and washed, be surrounded by life instead of death. The rain was cool on his skin, soothing on his head, and they hid the tearstreaks from his face. He cried and the skies wept with him. He cried 'til his eyes hurt; they felt five times larger and alien, and he knew that if Dean died, they would never feel the same way again, they'd never see the world the same way again, they'd never be dry again, they'd never be his again.

His father caught up to him and took him in his arms. He couldn't remember the last time he was held like this by his dad. It scared the shit out of him, but he let himself be held. Held by his father under the rain, letting the water run over them both, letting its sounds dull further the muffled sound of Dean screaming out of his mind in the house,a sound he could hear from out here, a sound he knew he'd hear for the rest of his life in his nightmares.

The sound stopped, abruptly.

Maybe the rains fell harder, covered it up. Dean wouldn't just fall silent...

The rains probably just fell harder...

Sam wept harder with it. His father's grip tightened around him.

The door to the house opened behind them, and Sam didn't want to turn around, didn't want to be told his brother was gone. If he ran away now and never found out, then maybe one day he'd believe it never happened.

"Cut the waterworks, Sammy," came that unmistkably unflappable rasp.

Sam twisted around his father and found Dean, precariously gripped in Bobby Singer's arms, a blanket covering his shoulders. The older hunter looked disapproving, but his eyes were shining in relief. Sam jerked from his dad's grip and tossed himself into Dean's.

His older brother received him with a startled oomph!, but weak arms went around Sam. It was a hold much weaker than their father's iron grip, but it was also paradoxically stronger.

"I'm okay," Dean assured his younger brother, whose face was mashed against his chest, "You all right? Bobby said you ran so fast we had to get you from China or something. 'S why I had to get off my ass."

"You're all right?" Sam asked, wetly, his nose a mess on Dean's sweat-soaked shirt.

"'Course I'm all right."

Sam lifted his head from Dean's shirt and looked up at him, "Then I'm all right too."

2: Sunburn

404 words

Sam is eighteen and finding every reason to leave, every reason to get annoyed, every reason to get angry. He is parched forest in the dry heat of high summer noon, waiting for the spark that would start the fire that burns everything in its path.

"I'm sorry," Dean said to him, and it made him feel wretched because his older brother looked perfectly miserable and sick; drowsy, profoundly chagrined gaze, red nose, pale skin, huddled and trembling beneath the flimsy covers of their motel bedroom, even as Sam sweat profusely.

"It's not your fault," Sam told him, still underlined with a little bit of heat that he has not been able to let go of lately. "Dad's supposed to be here. Dad's supposed to be watching out for us, dad's supposed to let us be kids sometimes, dad's..."

... supposed to be a lot of things he's not...

"Listen, you can still go," Dean said, pushing himself up to his elbows, insistently. They shook beneath him, but his eyes were steady on Sam.

"I'm not gonna leave you here," Sam sighed, "You're really sick, Dean."

"It's just a couple of hours," Dean argued, "I'll be fine. And it's your graduation night, for crying out loud, when else are you gonna see these people again?"

"I'm not gonna leave you," Sam said, the tone of supremacy unmistakable, because invariably he was making sure his moral high-ground against their absentee father was well established – I'm not gonna leave you, not like him.

"Sure you are," Dean said softly, his breath whistling from the cough that's been plaguing him, "I'm not an idiot, Sammy."

Sam blinked at him, considered lying before just breathing out, "How did you...?"

"What don't I know about you, kid?" Dean asked, tiredly, resignedly.

"Does dad know?"

"No," Dean winced, "But he's not blind and deaf either, Sam. He knows you're flying away, he just doesn't know where. You got that look down, like you're just waiting to get outta here."

"I'm sorry."

"You gotta do what you gotta do," Dean told him, "Find your fricking place in the sun, whatever. I get that. Just... don't burn your bridges, man. Don't forget us little people."

"You are little."

"That's not fair!" Dean exclaimed, making him cough, and Sam laughingly pat his back comfortingly, "You're just really tall--" he hacked.

"Breathe first then talk," Sam sighed, "You're just so easy to spark sometimes."

3: Falling

509 words

Sam is twenty-two and trying to return.

"Hey, hey Dean?" he called out softly, placing a hand on his brother's forehead. Dean's eyes fluttered, fighting to open.

"You with me?" Sam encouraged, "That's it, follow my voi—fuck!"

A hand shot out and nicked him right on the nose, tossing him from Dean's side of the bed to his rump on the floor. He was seeing stars but apparently, his brother must have been seeing fricking suns because his eyes kind of just rolled back and he was out again.

"Shit, man," Sam murmured, curbing his annoyance. He really should have known better, in afterthought. A lone hunter down is like a wounded animal, all defenses up as far as they can go. And Dean... more and more Sam is seeing that he's been a lone hunter too long.

Sam on the other hand... neither a hunter nor alone, these last years...

And so the world turns to Jessica again, and this sick, nauseous pit in his stomach that screams of anger and helplessness and hungry, hungry vengeance.

It was Dean who was grounding him since she died. Dean's voice emerging from beneath the nightmares, Dean's hand on his arm when he's walking around blindly, Dean's gentle coaxing for him to sleep, eat fucking breathe...

His head had been in the clouds, the last couple of... days? Weeks? He had no idea what day it was, only that it must still be autumn, bridging on to winter. He knew that because when he found his brother staring blearily up at the skies and lying on the ground on which he had fallen, he was covered in dried, curling red-brown leaves. Sam had to pluck them from Dean's hair and clothes and drag him back to their motel. He panicked a little, forgot how to live like a hunter again, forgot how to live beneath the law, forgot how to lick at his own wounds, forgot how to be here, and how to be this. Mostly, he realized that he'd forgotten, especially in these last few days, how to look after anyone but himself.

He used to like the Fall, liked the winds bringing in change so unquestionable that you smelled it in the air and saw it in the color of the leaves and heard it when they rustled and left. This season, however, was no so great; he had just lost his future, lost the love of his life. Some damn change.

But he had his work, didn't he? He had his work, and he had Dean to look after. He can be good again, at both.

He got up from the floor and watched Dean's eyes open slowly, staring up at the ceiling emptily. His eyes were just blown in concussion. Sam kept a decent distance, now.

"Hey Dean?" he called out, "You with me?"

"You're not," his brother muttered, "Sam left."

"You got a concussion, all right?" he explained gently, stepping forward little by little and thankfully not getting decked, "It's me, I'm back."

4: Of Our Discontent

612 words

Sam is... god knows how old (ancient?) and is fairly certain that wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age; he was quite plainly not sure where to go from here.

One more motel, one more middle of nowhere, one more hard-backed, unmerciful, miserable seat turned toward the window of their room. He watched as the snow fell all around the parking lot, the white powder beginning to coat the gleaming black skin of their car. Everything outside looked dark and gloomy, matching his mood. He took a reckless slug off of his whiskey bottle.

The sheets behind him rustled and the man beneath them shifted and groaned awake, muttering incomprehensible curses lost somewhere within lewd statements from the remnants of a dream about a woman.

At least no nightmares about hell tonight, Sam thought as Dean padded over toward him and dropped gracelessly to the seat beside his. Sam glanced at his brother, noted the heavy, sleepy gaze, the slumped posture, the hair that was impossibly messy, previously unimaginable because it was so short.

"Okay, what?" Dean asked, testily.

"What do you mean, what?" Sam replied, more mildly, the inebriation numbing his senses.

"You're sulking here," Dean said, throwing his arms around recklessly, "What?"

Sam looked back out the window. "Nothing."

Dean snorted, snatching the bottle from Sam's slack hands and capping it. "This is mine."

Sam just shrugged.

"Sam," Dean said, "Wha--"

"Who pisses off both angels and demons, man?" Sam asked, chuckling mirthlessly, "Seriously? Heaven and hell? Geez, the angel-thing bothered me, sure, but to be hunted around by both is kind of... kind of..."

"Insulting?" Dean filled in, dryly. The humor gave Sam's laugh a bit more of truer cheer.

"Yeah..."

"You're such a sensitive flower, little brother," Dean said drowsily, "Only you would be offended by pissing off the demons."

"It's like no one's on our side," Sam expounded, "Like we're two freaks freakier than everyone else."

"You've always been--"

"And I keep finding new lows," Sam ranted, "Anytime I think we're rock-bottom, there's another floor. Mom died, and then we were just poor, you know, and then I find out nightmare things are real and that we hunt them, and then Jess dies and then dad dies and then I have demon blood in me and then you have to kill me and then you die and then you go to hell and then you had to torture souls and then angels are bastards and then--"

"Listen to me Sammy," Dean said, wide-awake now, placing a calming hand on the other's shoulders, "You're drunk and this goddamn miserable weather ain't helping you any. Let's dry you out, it'll all be better in the morning. Except for the hangover."

"Another new low," Sam snickered, looking up at his older brother blearily, "I can't get up."

"When has that ever been a problem for me?" Dean grunted as he hefted his younger brother up by supporting him and dragging him to his bed.

"Say something reassuring," Sam demanded, looking up at Dean as his older brother tugged at the blankets and tucked him in.

"'Can Spring be far behind?'" Dean asked him with a smirk.

Sam laughed aloud, thinking that Dean was just a bag of surprises sometimes, "Percy Bysshe Shelley."

"Nope," Dean said, grinning, "Sam Winchester, fourth grade talent show. The teacher said you were precocious. I got another."

"Oh god."

"'Now is the winter of our discontent,'" Dean went on.

"Shakespeare," Sam murmured, sleepily.

"Nope," Dean said, "Sam Winchester, senior year play."

"Smart guy."

"Everything's gonna be okay, Sammy," Dean said quietly as his brother closed his eyes, "It'll get better. I said so."

The End

May 31, 2009

Author's Notes

The uniting theme of the chapters is of course, the four seasons figuratively, and also seasons as they pertain to time – each 'drabble' is a turning point in Sam's life.

So far, I've been finding inspirations for the drabble challenges from looking up the definitions of the words, and 'dry' struck me as highly weather-related, hence the prominence of the seasons in this offering.

1: Spring Rain emphasized the meaning of "dry" as it relates to wetness, so I tried to incorporate visually-wet related words to this section: crying, rain, april showers, cleaning and washing, etc. I also used the Spring section for this point in Sam's life - aged thirteen - because it just emphasized the coming-of-age thing of springtime.

2: Sunburn emphasized the meaning of "dry" as it related to hotness, so I incorporated words that evoked heat: parch, burn, spark, etc. In keeping with that theme, I used this section to show him as a hot-headed eighteen-year-old itching to get away and quick to be angry at everything.

3: Falling used "dry" pretty basically with the dry leaves of the season. Note, though, that "Fall" was used here both as the season and both as coming down from a height, and also showed Sam's descent into the 'winter,' darker underworld of hunting.

4: Of Our Discontent rounds up the seasons-theme with winter. The title of this section is borrowed from Shakespeare: 'Winter of our discontent,' which means hitting the tail-end of a bad run; that things are going to be okay. "Dry" in this section is used in terms of getting sober and humor, which are forms of recovery from something.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I tried my best and this is still really fun and new to me :)

C&C's welcome as always and 'til the next post!