gavemea_45 | (no subject)

(no subject)

[From here.]

It's still cool this early in the morning, here in Wyoming in late spring. The eastern sky is only beginning to lighten with the brightness of false dawn, but it's enough to see the dark shape of the Impala a few yards away, parked beside the road.

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His face is horribly blank, and twitching.

The stench of charring blood is rising, sharper and fouler than the burning leaves.

It's mixed with the sharp smell of heated metal. The steel door is beginning to glow a dull red, and lines of red-gold fire are beginning to appear at the seams between stone, all around the tomb.

Sam moves right up to the edge of the wire structure, looking back and forth from Andrew to the mauseoleum, his face twisted in agonized indecision.

The low thrumming underfoot is scaling upward in pitch and speed; the hiss abruptly grows louder as though joined by more sources, and the ground begins to shake. At the cardinal points of the circle, the candles flare up and melt into puddles of wax.

One arm of the thorned pentacle lock slowly sags, followed by another.

No, no, shit--

"Andrew, snap out of it!" Sam reaches out as though to grab his arm, but is stopped by an invisible wall of force. He whirls to stare in growing horror at the tomb, then back at Andrew, his fists clenched helplessly at his sides.

"Goddammit, Andrew, answer me!"

No response. The twitching and shaking is getting worse, as though jolts of electricity are running through him, speeding up --

The last of the blue fire struggles, gutters, and dies. In the space of a blink, the red and gold fire contracts back toward the half-melted pentacle lock, draws itself into a single blinding point, and goes dark.

A deep shivering boom sounds as the shockwave of a broken spell explodes outward, ripples toward the horizon.

Andrew's whole body jerks, convulses, and topples over sideways.

He's knocked sprawling by the explosion, fetching up hard against a gravestone.

Sam ignores the pain from his bruised ribs and pushes himself up, scrambling across the ground and the now-dark wire circle to reach Andrew's side.

"Andrew? Come on, man, say something--"

Andrew's lying on his side, legs still tangled together and drawn up in that frozen crouch, bandaged arm pinned under him. His eyes are open, glazed and staring.

He isn't breathing.

"No, no no no no no no oh god no--"

It's a nightmare, or at least it feels like one, and as Sam stares at the fallen body for an instant all he can see is the blood everywhere, and Dean's open, empty gaze.

Sam doesn't even realize that he's weeping as he reaches out to take him by the shoulders.

"-- please, please, no, wake up, please wake up--"

No movement. No breath.

Nothing.

And then a heaving gasp, sucking in air, and Andrew's feet scrabble uselessly against the ground.

"It's okay, I gotcha--"

He shifts automatically to provide support and mild restraint together.

"--take it easy--"

Another hoarse gasp, and another, the breath wheezing in his throat. He's shivering violently, and the cold of his skin is palpable even through his clothes.

It takes a moment before his gaze focuses on Sam.

"... d-did ... did it --"

He coughs, and blood flecks his lips.

Silently, he shakes his head.

He blinks at Sam -- and then his gaze shifts, looking past Sam to the mausoleum.

And stares in shock.

The entire gate is slagged over: the thorned pentacle of the lock, the steel bindings with their crescent-ornamented crosspieces, the doors themselves, all melted together into a single slab of blistered metal, unrecognizeable.

Sam doesn't turn to look again. Not yet. He'd seen enough in the first quick glance.

(It'll take months of work to try to even get through the damage, and even if the locking mechanism's intact beneath, he still doesn't have the Colt.

Nor any other way in.)

His gaze drifts aimlessly aside instead, down at the nearest grave.

It's not all that different from Dean's, really. Just another mound of dirt, sealing a body away into the dark.

I broke it.

Andrew swallows. There's the taste of blood in his mouth.

No wonder there are tears in Sam's eyes. No wonder Sam isn't looking at him.

(He can't stop shivering.)

It takes a few moments to notice that the subtle vibration under the supporting hand he's got on the other guy's back isn't out of tension in his own body; Andrew's shuddering.

Sam looks quickly back up at him.

"You okay? Cold?"

Just after dawn on a Wyoming May morning isn't exactly warm, after all.

"I --"

Sometime in the past however many minutes, he discovers, he bit the inside of his cheek rather badly. He swallows salt blood, and turns to Sam with a look of frantic pleading in his eyes.

"I can fix it. I -- let me try again, I'll, I can f-find out what I did wrong --"

He shakes his head, looking away toward the gate.

"... I don't think it's going to open again anytime soon," he says, very quietly.

A beat.

"And since you damn near died trying the first time..."

He blinks.

"... I what?"

"You stopped breathing."

Sam finally looks away from the tomb, at him.

"I thought you were gonna die. I thought I'd killed--"

He chokes on the words, and leaves it at that.

(killed your friend)

He stares.

(to open a gate to hell)

"Oh."

He glances away again.

"Yeah."

A pause.

"Think you can stand?"

He tries.

"... gimme a minute?"

"Sure."

Low; barely audible. Sam's still looking away, staring at the sealed tomb.

"Take all the time you need."

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