brosedshield: (Default)
brosedshield ([personal profile] brosedshield) wrote2010-09-18 08:52 pm

His Father's Son

Title: His Father's Son
Disclaimer: If anyone owns anything in this relationship, Supernatural owns my heart. And won't give it back. And won't pay me for it. (i.e. Don't own, don't profit)
Characters:
Sam, Dean, John, Yellow-Eyed Demon
Warnings: major character death, suicide 

Rating:
R
Word count:
364
Spoilers:
S1 finale, alternate ending
Summary:
AU of "Devil's Trap." Dean dies inside the cabin, and that changes everything.
Author notes:
So much in the Supernatural universe hangs on the delicate thread of true family linking the Winchester men. This fic explores the choices that might have been made when part of that web is de-anchored. [livejournal.com profile] lavinialavender  is my beta, though she didn't read it directly before I posted it, so there may be errors, and they are all mine.
Author note #2: I have fallen in love with parenthetical, italicized flashbacks. Absolute love. I may have written a story recently that didn't have them, but I don't remember it. And I fully admit that part of this love is they wouldn't have let me do that in undergrad. I'm pretty sure the profs would have given me the look, you know?

With Dean dead, bled out on the floor from coughing up his own lungs (that’s all of his family dead, right there. Mom he never knew, Dad he never trusted, and Dean), there’s really no family to preserve, no reason not to pull the trigger.

Sam shoots the yellow-eyed bastard in the head in the battered cabin in the middle of nowhere. Shoots him with the Colt, kills him as dead as man and God can make him, and doesn’t really give a damn that it’s John’s corpse lying there when the supernatural flicker of his death-throes ends.

He’s wanted to kill his dad a thousand times, but never thought he’d pull the trigger, never thought the man would beg him to. Never thought he would feel so hollow afterward, like his insides had been scooped out like a pumpkin, lit with the end of a black candle. Anything burning inside Sam that night flickers in the wind. 

Hollow and numb, he goes to Dean and pulls his brother’s body onto his lap. The wind blows the trees in the night, and the lights hold steady, and he knows (“Sam, lines of salt in front of every window, every door.” “I did it, Dad.” “Well, check it.”) no demon or ghost will touch him tonight, unless it’s Dean come to tell him what he did wrong, how he failed them this last time.

Sam would welcome even that, to see his brother moving again.

The Colt rests loosely in his hands across Dean’s chest, and Sam can’t stop staring at the barrel of the gun. Of all the things that ever mattered to Sam, all are gone now in one way or another. The nebulous dream of a normal life is gone. Jess is gone, and so is the bastard that killed her. Dad is gone, utterly dead with the rest. And Dean is dead in his arms because he couldn’t save him.

By midnight, Sam has decided not to use the Colt. Waste of a bullet.

He uses Dean’s semi-automatic instead, and wonders—if there is an afterlife, a heaven that he gets to go to—if he’ll see his brother there.
ext_14783: girl underwater (SPN - grief)

[identity profile] lavinialavender.livejournal.com 2010-09-19 02:03 am (UTC)(link)
This fic will never stop breaking my heart, no matter how many times I read it. Double-suicide is the only way for the Winchester boys to go, in the end. Oh, and I really love the pumpkin/jack-o-lantern metaphor.

And I fully admit that part of this love is they wouldn't have let me do that in undergrad. I'm pretty sure the profs would have given me the look, you know?
I DO INDEED KNOW THE LOOK TO WHICH YOU ARE REFERRING, MADAM.

(Surely it's not because we had the same profs and most of the same classes...)
Edited 2010-09-19 02:08 (UTC)

[identity profile] brosedshield.livejournal.com 2010-09-19 02:59 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you, thank you for the wonderful things you say!

And yes, I think that pretty much any prof I had, you were right there next to me (or across the room) to also see the looks. Thank heaven WE didn't get the look as much as others might have. But that might be because we didn't put in silly things like parenthetical flashbacks.

I think I got the idea from "The Shining", and, what can I say, it's wooooonderful.

[identity profile] mangacat201.livejournal.com 2010-09-19 06:19 am (UTC)(link)
OH dear... that would have been the reason if any. Also, it would have cut us awfully short so phhhst, we didn't do that. Only we did... I love fanfiction for that.
Cat

[identity profile] brosedshield.livejournal.com 2010-09-19 06:36 am (UTC)(link)
Totally. I mean, I would have been heartbroken and thrown things (or maybe just stared in confusion) if the show had ACTUALLY ended like this but for the fic...it works and it hurts, and it was lovely to write. And makes me happy to see them alive again, if only in the hope that they will be HAPPY some day. *sigh* Doubtful as that is.

[identity profile] glimmerella.livejournal.com 2010-09-19 06:52 pm (UTC)(link)
*cry*

This would have made for a very short and disappointing series. :(

Glad it's just an alternative.

[identity profile] gidgetgal9.livejournal.com 2010-09-20 12:58 am (UTC)(link)
This definitely rang true to the Winchester curse and men- a sad ending but one that would make sense if the cards had played out that way.

[identity profile] brosedshield.livejournal.com 2010-09-20 08:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Definitely. I think part of it is just that Sam doesn't have a reason to hold the family together without Dean. Recently re-watching S2.1, and Dad is completely ungrateful that his son didn't shoot him. *sigh* They are so messed up.