Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You’re eleven years old and your arm aches as you watch Sammy’s be encased in plaster.  You remember learning about the ancient Egyptians—from school, from television, but mostly from books dad forces you to read, recite, memorize. Myths that aren’t always myths. Mummification. How the heart remained but the brains were pulled out with a hook through a nose. Gory. Real life myths.

Sam is being mummified and you think it isn’t the least real myth you’ve ever read. Only the most special, only those close to gods and sacredness, were given such a privilege of being prepared and entombed, gifted and upheld. Sam fits the criteria.

You wonder sometimes about how Victorians ate those mummified elite. How cannibalism became fashionable centuries after the pyramids were out of use, after raiding the ancient tombs. King Tut had a big butt, you heard. You have had no such luck on learning its color, but someone knew how it tasted. Or could taste. Does one mummy taste the same as another?

You feel every bit as miserable as Sammy looks sitting on the exam table, the kindly old doctor patiently wrapping up his broken arm.

The mangled X-rays hang on the wall nearby, mocking your failure.

You remember how two towns back a boy in your class came back to school in the middle of the day with his cast fresh-off. How pale and shriveled his arm seemed in that moment.

You think mummification should preserve but you’re unsure how well it does.

“Sam—” your father says, rushing into the area behind the curtain. It’s a Sunday, and two hours ago you pedaled your neighbor’s borrowed bike as quickly as you could with a quaking Sammy on its handle bars, perversely clutching his arm, as your heart raced, as you made him hold on, as you wanted to cry, too, but seeing your seven year old brother suppressing his pain in silent sobs even after falling from atop the monkey bars, where you knew—you knew— he shouldn’t have been, but you dared him, and he never backs down, and this is your fault, and so you didn’t cry, you kept silent too.

“Dean, what happened?” dad asks, and you hate that it’s accusatory, but you expected it. You deserve it. You open your mouth, about to confess.

“I fell off the monkey bars,” Sam says. “Down at the park.”

“And where were you?” dad asks, still looking at you, the follow up question the only indication of dad acknowledging Sam’s input. “I told you to keep an eye on him. I told you to stay put. Not to leave the room—”

Suddenly, your dad seems to realize there is a stranger in the room to witness your family drama.

“We’ll talk after,” dad says seriously, a tone that has caused you tremors before, but you’re exhausted, body barely settled down from the adrenaline that had been pumping in it.

“See, Dean? I can climb as high as you!” Sammy had yelled, as he scaled the bars nimbly.

You had smirked, enjoyed the show, loving it like you always did when your little brother showed off for you, showed you that he wanted to do whatever you wanted to do, wanted to be like his big brother. You loved the idea that you were near mirror images in different bodies, two complementary sides on the same coin. Sam, heads, Dean, tails.

And then, as if in slow motion, your baby brother fell, and it was so fast, and he cried out, and the noise—the noise—

You could hear the snap.

You knew dad said to stay put, you knew what that meant, but Sam was going stir crazy, and so were you—he is, you are—heads and tails.

So even though you knew—you knew—dad would be mad if he found out, you also knew he wouldn’t be back for hours, and what harm could it be to go across the street to blow off some steam? See how high you can swing, race around with Sammy, play pirates on a ship, but all you are is up on the platform of the jungle gym, and Sammy is always First Mate and you’re always Captain, except for when Sam was the parrot that one time, and that had made you both laugh—

And then Sammy was dared to walk the plank, and you did it you did it you did it—

You and Sammy wait in the hall side by side in a couple of chairs while the doctor talks to dad. He said he had follow up questions, and while you were relieved to have respite from dad, you know it won’t last. The whooping would wait until you’re in private.

“You know it wasn’t your fault?” Sam asks, verbose as any seven year old you’ve ever met.

“Of course not,” you say easily, stomach churning as you lie. “It was a pirate foul.” That’s what you and Sammy say when you do something un-pirate-like. “You should have gotten a peg leg, though. I’ve never seen a pirate with a broken arm.”

“I’m the first,” Sammy says. “So—ha—no foul.”

“Or an eye patch,”  you continue, glad that the sheen of sweat and tears had finally abated from Sammy’s face, and that you were making him smile. “Then I could draw you an eye on it and sign my name. An eye for an eye.”

“You couldn’t sign an eye patch!” Sam laughs.

“Who says?”

“You just can’t!” And, unthinking, you nudge your shoulder against his, and it’s his bad arm, and he hisses, and there are those tears again in his eyes, and you hate yourself. Hate hate hate—

“Sammy, oh—oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking, oh god—” You’re on your feet in an instant to crouch down in front of where he sits.

“It’s ok, Dean,” Sam says, attempting a smile through his wince. “I’m ok.” Sam’s eyes lose the glossy shine a moment later, and your panic settles some.

“It is my fault,” you say, honestly, guiltily. “But it’s nice of you to say it’s not.”

“Don’t listen to dad,” Sam says, leaning forward to wrap his good arm around your shoulders, forehead against yours. “He is always blaming you but sometimes—sometimes accidents are accidents. That’s what my teacher told us.”

For all that you and Sammy have been through today, somehow your sweet brother comforting you so earnestly is what finally causes you to break, tears suddenly streaming down your face.

“Sorry—I—sorry—” you say, wiping uselessly at your eyes. “I don’t like seeing you hurt, you know that—”

“It’s your job to protect me,” Sam finishes for you. “And you did. Dad didn’t bring me to the hospital, you did.”

You suppose you did. However you got so lucky, you don’t know, but you’re sure you have the smartest and wisest and kindest baby brother in the whole world.

“You’re like a mummy now,” you whisper, somehow feeling the need to speak quietly while so close to Sam, like how you sometimes do at night when you are awake and dad is snoring three feet away, but you have a story to tell, and Sam has questions to ask—

“That’s cool,” Sammy sighs, eyes fluttering shut. This close, you can smell the day on Sammy, the stress, the dirt and grass.  You can see all of his little freckles like speckles of paint and eyelashes like brushes.

You like the idea of that. Of Sam being made up of paint and brushes. Of being able to create. Somehow, you feel like it makes sense. Sam created you, after all. Without heads, tails would mean nothing. 

Chapter Text

You’re twenty-two years old and you’re no one. Your Golden Fleece was stolen, and you’re finally the one without weapons and protection.

A protector turned prey—irony exists there, but you can’t see straight.

Stumbling down the wet asphalt, you can only see through one eye, but you might as well be blind. You drank your weight in poisons and beer, hit on anyone with two legs and a friendly smile, and somewhere between then and now realized you could eat your weight in what haunts you.

Who haunts you.

You would consume him if you could. You wish you had. In your fumes of toxic inebriation that has become habit, you fucking wish you had. Then instead of having no body and being no one, you would have kept him, and you would have kept your Golden Fleece and resurrected him again.

Sam is gone. He could be dead for all his absence makes you mourn.

You are blind with grief—or at least that is the name for what you have put to this feeling. You feel dramatic and whiny, but a lifetime of fixed identity and purpose has disappeared, and your devoted hospitality amounts to nothing, and you’re unmoored.

You hate that you’re so equipped for these horrible metaphors. You hate that dad drilled you to death in these poetic legends. You hate that you’re not dead when you feel like you are.

Dad said that with knowledge comes preparedness, comes vigilance, comes perspective.

You think now, two hundred yards from the motel’s neon beacon of doom, that he was full of shit and that with perspective comes horror.

It wasn’t until Sam left—until that haunting nightmare came true—that you knew you could never catch up to him again. He sailed away and you were stuck on your little island, feasting on bodies in bars like it could mean something, like anyone could mean a fraction of what Sammy meant to you—what he means to you—

A successful lover, you were—you loved that boy like your heart would stop beating if you didn’t—but you took too much.  You drained him dry, dead. In the end, you didn’t succeed in your most important and ultimate goal: Sammy, yours, yours and safe.

But even though your brother (your one true love, your breath, your everything) wants to be no body to you, you will never forget his name and will never stop hunting for him, yearning for him, come high seas, come ships crashing into rocks, come death.

You enter your motel room, and the door slams behind you. You are alone.