A Long Hunt

Last Night on Earth

It was late; Sam’s head was in his hands as he tiredly lay against the wooden motel table. Gabriel had returned with Bobby hours ago and they all had been working on created a large stockpile of protective weapons and demonic bombs. Heather was still being a pouty, rebellious, teenager and Sam was about done with her attitude.  They had even bought her a separate room, but Bobby had insisted on staying in there with her just in case Crowley or any other demon scum tried to take away the only true advantage that they had. As long as Sam didn’t have to stay in there with her, he didn’t care.

Worry was chewing at the walls of his stomach making it impossible to eat anything.  It wasn’t just the upcoming fight that was worrying him either. Castiel had said something earlier about Dean that was troubling him. It was the dream. Sam had known Dean to have nightmares before and normally his brother kept them quietly stashed away from everyone, even himself, but usually they were only dreams. Not memories.

Castiel had said that there was an awful darkness and paralyzing terror in this dream. The angel had also said, with fear dripping from his voice, that he wasn’t even sure how his Dean was up and about and acting completely fine. No normal person could go through a dream or real event like that and just block it out and keep on fighting, without some kind of repercussion. His brother seemed totally unaware that Crowley had forced him to kill a copy of everyone he loved in cold blood. Eventually, all of this was going to come crashing down and Dean was going to collapse in on himself. People can’t keep stuff like that bottled up forever, it would kill’em!

‘What did Crowley do to Dean that made him able to kill everyone he cares about? How many years of hell did Dean endure this time? How much damage did his brother take down there?’ These questions were still firing like shotguns around Sam’s head, ricocheting off the walls of his minds in a wild frenzy.

Sam removed his hands from his face and looked down at the table in front of him. His hand gun was still halfway taken apart and waiting for its owner to finish field stripping and cleaning it. He had been unable to focus as he worked and he had put the gun together incorrectly at least half a dozen times already.  It should have been a mindless action, but he just felt so off today. The combination of stress and tiredness was finally catching up with Sam. The past 24 hours had defiantly been well…. it had been one hell of an adventure, and the next 24… were going to be a nightmare.

Sometimes Sam wished he could get a break. He wanted to settle down and relax without worrying about monster fights and dying every day of his life, but there was another part of him that was tied to fighting evil. Sam knew they couldn’t ever truly get out of the business, but he sure as hell dreamed of getting out.

Sam knew that for Dean, there was no ‘out’. His brother was tied so deeply into the family business that he survived off the thrill of the hunt. He got jittery and jumpy when there was a particularly long gap between hunts. Dean always denied it, but Sam knew his brother too well. The business was engraved deep in Dean’s bones, leaving behind a painful reminder of what he had sacrificed.

Sam sighed and tried once again to put his weapon back together. This time, he managed to put everything back together properly and made all the gun’s parts all slide into to place smoothly.  As his finished, he set down the working gun and picked up his bottle of beer only to find that it was empty.

The youngest Winchester pursed his lips and pushed his chair out to stand up. He walked into the kitchen and wondered where Gabriel had gone off to. The archangel had returned with Bobby and vanished not long after saying that he needed to pick up a few angelic weapons from Balthazar’s old hidden stash.  Castiel had given his brother a very sour look when he realized that Gabriel actually knew where those weapons were. That had literally looked all over the place for those back when Luci was let out of his cage.