Hands, Eyes, Hearts - A Collection of Supernatural Drabbles

4 // Dean

Canon AU, mental hospital. A job went wrong — or overly long — and while Dean holds out hope that Sam is working to get him out of there...

A clock ticks slow and methodical from high upon the wall, the only sound in the room. Not even the air conditioner whirrs this loudly. Someone's idea of a joke.

They tell him: when he first came here, that clock got him like nothing else. Frustrated, irritated. Tense. They tell him he'd pace and snap his fingers counter-time, humming snatches of songs to the beat. He doesn't remember that. There are more important things to remember; and anyway, he's used to the ticking now. Doesn't faze him in the least. They try to label that, like they labeled the other behaviors, like they label everything he friggin' does.

They're talking about him, sitting behind the mirrored wall. He knows they're there. They don't know that he knows; but he's seen the door, and sometimes he can hear the murmur of voices getting too heated from what should be insulated wall. He sits in his usual spot, profile to their scrutiny, his eyes hooded and his fingers in a steeple. Buzzard posture, contemplative. His gaze is fixed on the wall ahead. They like to try and puzzle out his staring; he knows they think he's reached a state of catatonia after hours of no movement, steady breathing, rhythmic blinks. They don't know. They don't ask the right questions to know. Nobody knows that he can see his memories played out like projected movies on all that clean, white space. Memories he holds on to with all his strength, more beloved grains of sand than those forced into his hourglass by this place.

All of Sammy's birthdays, in full Technicolor. The last time Dad and Bobby clinked beers and laughed. His precious few memories of Mom, framed in fragile glass, viewed through the rosy lenses of innocence.

He watches some of them over and over, until they're so sharp it aches.

They only allow him to stay in that room for so many hours. He thinks it's because they can only take so many hours of him just staring, them unable to understand why. Humans fear what they don't understand. It didn't take him long on the road of monsters to learn that. He thinks that maybe all of these bespectacled faces should take a long drive, maybe stop at a barn of fang-mouthed freaks and learn what true madness is, and how much there is in this world that no one can truly understand.

Everything in this goddamn place is white. The clothes they make him wear; walls, floor. The plates on which they slop the food that he barely even touches. He wonders why they think it would help to remove him from that room, make him walk around this place, when everything is the same blinding lack of color and he can still see Sammy's dimples, Mom's golden hair, the dash of his gorgeous Baby laid out against every surface.

In the beginning, some of the others that are trapped in here tried to talk to him. Some of them stammered, some of them shook, all of them dressed in white. They were so curious, but that began to fade when they realized he wasn't going to answer the way they really wanted him to. Nothing but yes or no, or noncommittal grunts. Nothing about himself. Nothing about his... family.

Right now, sounds range muted around him, colorless as the walls, broken by the clink of his fork against the white plate. He's not hungry. Never really is. There's something about this food they serve, like it's just an extension of their questioning, just another thing that's trying to get him to give himself up and become less than he really is. It shouldn't be this difficult for them to understand, that's the one thing he will never do. Apparently, though, not everyone is blessed with common sense.

His room, when they lead him to it, is done in shades of blue. A calming, "tranquil ocean", as he's heard it described to the families of prospective patients. Some nights, though, when the memories by themselves are not enough? Dean flies awake from a nightmare and feels like he's drowning.