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remix_reduxTitle: Vigil (The Waiting in the Dark Remix)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nekare
Summary: When Sam and Dean come home two days before Halloween, it’s to an empty house.
Rating: PG
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: None
Warnings: None
Words: 2800
Original story: Vigil byishafel
Notes: Thanks so much toamchara for the beta!
***
Vigil (The Waiting in the Dark Remix)
When Sam and Dean come home two days before Halloween, it’s to an empty house.
It’s not like it’s never happened before – Dad has been leaving them on their own since Dean was strong enough to hold a gun between his hands, but this feels weird, out of character for their father. The door is unlocked, the same as the sad excuse for a wooden door in the back of the house, and there are no salt lines in sight. The window on Sam and Dean’s room is open, and the radio is still on, as if someone had forgotten to turn it off before leaving.
Sam can see Dean’s mouth turning into a thin line while he searches in the kitchen cabinet and realizes their father didn’t leave any money for them. It’s something that has never happened before, and that’s about the time Sam realizes Dean is actually worried. Their father might be prone to up and leave whenever there’s a mean-enough critter nearby in need to be wiped off the earth, especially now that Dean is twelve and can watch for Sam a few days in a row, but he’s never left like this, leaving nothing behind to help his boys take care of themselves.
Sam checks the wards around the house as Dean checks Dad’s room, and the sense of worry just grows when he comes back with Dad’s journal, something Sam knows he never goes hunting without. Dean sends him outside just to get him out of the way, looking pale, as if he really thinks Sam’s too small to figure out just how wrong this entire thing is.
He checks for blood on the driveway anyway. Better be safe than sorry.
They keep looking as the day wears off, but when darkness falls their father’s still missing and they still don’t have any idea of what could have happened. Sam wishes Pastor Jim or even Bobby would call back already – Dean’s always taken care of him, but he’s still small enough to wish there was a grown-up around to make it all better.
They’re almost out of food, and they end up having frozen waffles and tuna fish with crackers for dinner. Dean’s actually a pretty good cook, but there’s only so much he can do with canned fish and waffles, so it doesn’t end up tasting so good. Sam has a hard time swallowing it; not so much for the taste but for the way his stomach’s tied in anxious knots. He knows Dad’s a good hunter, and can hold his ground against pretty much everything, but it doesn’t stop him from worrying.
They sleep in the car that night. Dean builds something that looks like a pillows and blankets fort in the backseat, probably to cheer Sam up, and Sam is surprised when it actually does work. Besides, it’s cozy. Dean reads The Stand out loud for him, squinting at the pages with his old flashlight as the only light, and it puts Sam to sleep almost immediately.
He dreams that the house is trying to eat him.
He wakes up, sweaty and scared, in the middle of the night, face pressed against the leather of the backseat. He’s tempted to climb into the front seat with Dean, but when he turns around he can see his brother leaning against the steering wheel, eyes open and alert and with their father’s Magnum pointing straight at the house. It soothes him, knowing Dean’s there to protect him, and he falls back into an uneasy sleep.
Dean shakes him awake when it’s starting to get light. He gives Sam the gun and instructions to not let his guard down. Sam’s startled by this – he’s the baby of the family, and in the Winchester world, being spoiled means running fewer laps than his older brother and not having to stand watch on hunts.
Dean falls asleep immediately, curling himself into a tight ball to keep warm and Sam suddenly feels selfish for not having even offered to help with keeping watch earlier in the night. He disentangles himself from Dean’s comforter and wraps it around his brother.
His small plastic watch says it isn’t seven yet, and the street is silent and empty. First, he rests his knees on the backseat and faces the window, both hands outstretched while holding the gun, but soon enough his legs fall asleep and begin to hurt, and he resigns himself to wait in a less imposing position.
About an hour later, someone knocks on the opposite window, and Sam turns, gun lowered like he has been taught, even if his instinct is to aim straight ahead. It turns out to be a good choice, because their neighbor, Mrs. Kayes is knocking softly on the window, eyes squinting to see the inside of the car more clearly. Sam hides the gun quickly in between the blankets, trying to make it look as inconspicuous as possible. Mrs. Kayes is an elderly lady with unruly white hair and glasses that make her eyes look too large for her face. She’s originally from Florida, and she’s always complaining about the cold. She hardly ever bothers talking to Sam and Dean, unless it is to yell at them for being too loud.
Sam rolls down the window and puts on his best smile. “Anything wrong, Mrs. Kayes?” he asks with his little boy voice, the one Dad always makes him do whenever they have to interview a female/young/elderly/dorky/crying witness. It works like a charm every time, and Sam’s been thinking about asking Dad for compensation.
Mrs. Kayes frown at him. “What are you boys doing out here at this hour of the day?”
Sam swallows. “Uh,” he says, and he wants to kick himself for sounding so dumb.
Mrs. Kayes is a no-nonsense kind of woman. “Well?” She asks, eyebrows raised.
“You see, we have this, uh, tradition in my family, where Dad lets us sleep inside the car one night every year, it’s like a, ah, an adventure!” he finishes lamely, wishing he looks cheerful enough.
Mrs. Kayes’ frown deepens.“All alone? I’ll have to have a word with your father, then. Two boys your age shouldn’t be alone for so long.”
Sam can almost taste the panic. “No, no, Dad sleeps in here too, he—” it sounds silly, even to him, and he can already hear her saying bit crowded in there, huh?. They’ve been avoiding social services for years now. Sam’s not about to screw everything up. “He just went back in, actually, said he’d gotten a horrible crick on his neck.”
He’s worried for a minute that she won’t buy it, that she’ll see right through it, but lying has been the family’s livelihood for as long as he remembers, and he can tell that she’s bought it the minute her jaw unclenches.
“Very well. I’ll still like to a word with your father, boy. Making forts with pillows is all fine and dandy when it’s done inside a warm house, but cars are cold and he shouldn’t go around risking his boys freezing to death.”
Sam nods eagerly. “Of course, Mrs. Kayes, I’ll tell him.”
He doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath until Mrs. Kayes door closes behind her. He slumps down the seat, feeling tired. He suddenly remembers what he’s supposed to be doing, and hopes nothing happened in the house while he hadn’t been paying attention. He wonders if he can get away with not telling Dean.
He keeps his eyes fixed on the house for a couple of hours, occasionally remembering his dream and narrowing his eyes at the windows. It had felt awfully real, or, as real as a house eating you can feel.
Dean is up the moment Sam says his name. They piss against the abandoned flower bed in their backyard and drink cold water from the tap. The water moves around in Sam’s stomach, making him realize how empty it actually is. Dean gives Sam a knife just before going back in the house and claims the Magnum for himself.
Everything looks the same inside, including the lack of Dad. Dean sends him to go watch television while he checks the messages in the answering machine.
Sam would very much rather help Dean with something, but Dean looks pale and scared, something that Sam doesn’t remember having seen in his brother’s face before, so for once he does what he’s told without complaining. He doesn’t pay attention to the TV screen, though. Instead, he tries to listen as Dean talks to Bobby over the phone, but he’s too far away and the infomercial’s music is too loud.
He blinks. When he opens his eyes again, the living room has vanished, along with the rough rug he had been sitting on, the sunshine and more importantly, Dean.
He’s just standing there, alone, staring into nothingness. The darkness is complete, pure inky black, nothing like nighttime at all. Sam instinctually looks up for stars, maybe a sliver of the moon, but there’s nothing around him, and his eyes can’t seem to adjust to the darkness – he holds his own hands near his face, but all he sees is black.
It makes Sam dizzy, being able to feel his body but not to see it – it’s as if he isn’t there, and he pinches his arm just in case he’s just dreaming, still sitting on the floor. If John Winchester has taught his sons something, it’s never to panic, and Sam takes large gulps of air, trying to control his erratic breathing. His eyes are still open wide, even if he can’t see anything.
He walks around, trying to find a wall, but the nothingness seems to extend forever, because everything stays the same, no matter how far he walks, hands extended, eyes fixed straight ahead like a blind man.
After a while of exploring and finding nothing, he wonders vaguely if the floor is actually there and regrets it the second he thinks it, because suddenly he’s just floating there, in the darkness, not touching anything at all. He yelps and tries to move, kicking as if he was swimming, but he just manages to turn himself upside down, or, at least, he thinks he’s upside down, and that’s what makes it all the more confusing – his sense of direction is shot to hell with no point of reference.
A wave of nausea hits him, and he presses his hands to his mouth, trying to keep himself from throwing up. There’s a floor beneath my feet, floor, floor, floor, there’s a floor, he thinks desperately, and then he’s standing on solid ground again, still feeling queasy. He sits down, willing his stomach to stop turning around.
Once his mind finally settles down, decides there’s no discernible exit, he finally starts being afraid. It’s not only the fact that there’s no way to get out of the darkness, or that he’s alone – he knows Dean will get him out of there, that’s not a question, but it’s the way the darkness seems to be alive, moving, breathing in tune with Sam. It makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
After an hour, he’s gotten used to the prickling sensation of being watched, and his brain is starting to work again. He wonders what Dean’s doing now, figures he’s probably dancing down the streets celebrating being an only child again, but it sounds hollow even in Sam’s thoughts. He feels a little bad about it, having let himself get taken, because he knows Dean’s probably going crazy by now.
He vaguely wonders if this has anything to do with Halloween. Halloween is the busiest night of the year for the Winchester family, and many legends describe how magical creatures get stronger as All Hallow’s Eve approaches – and Sam knows that most of these legends are true. Maybe that’s why this thing that took him and his father, whatever it might be, hadn’t done anything to them before, even if they’ve been living close to it for a few months already.
After three hours, he realizes his father might be trapped in the same place, and he’s furious with himself for not having thought of it before. He screams himself hoarse calling out for his father, walking around the darkness blindly, tripping every few steps because no matter how flat the floor might be, he’s not used to not being able to see his feet. He stops looking after more than an hour, and he feels more alone than ever. He sits again on the floor and hugs his knees, resting his head on top of them.
He misses Dean. Dean always makes him laugh, even when Sam’s worried or scared, and he’s sure Dean must be going nuts by himself, trying to find both Sam and Dad. He wants his father to rescue him, just like he always does.
He feels childish, wanting his family like that, and he can almost hear Dean on his head, telling him to stop being such a baby, that he can’t seriously still be afraid of the dark. “I’m not a baby,” he says out loud, just because, and his voice echoes eerily, which should be impossible in the open space. Sam shudders, and waits in the dark for something to happen.
*
He’s bored. He can’t know for sure how long it’s been since he got taken by whatever it was that got his dad first, but he knows it must’ve been at least six hours, if he counted the beeps from his cheap watch correctly. He doesn’t feel hungry. Doesn’t feel thirsty, tired or sleepy either, actually. It’s almost as if his body had stopped the moment he had disappeared from the living room, and it’s a bit odd, not feeling much of anything. He doesn’t even need to pee.
He tries sleeping. He lies on the ground (it’s not cold or warm, hard or soft – it just is and by now Sam knows, maybe not even that) and closes his eyes and wills his mind to rest, but he’s not sleepy, no matter how many times he tells himself that it’s probably nighttime already. He opens his eyes again, even if it doesn’t make much of a difference, and starts playing with his hair out of having nothing better to do.
*
He starts singing. He gets sick of his own voice after four hundred and eighty six bottles on the wall.
*
He recites the fifty states and their capitals after that. He can’t remember either Delaware or Wyoming’s, which is lame considering he lived in Jackson, Wyoming for three months.
“This is stupid,” he says to the blackness, and he’s glad when nothing talks back.
*
He tries not thinking of what would happen if Dean gets taken as well.
An eternity in the dark sounds bad enough without the thought of not being able to see his family ever again.
*
He starts counting sheep in Latin, figures that’ll put him to sleep if nothing else does, but he ends up struggling with the way 437 should be pronounced, and spending a long time forcing his mind to remember. By the time he finally figures it out, he’s still wide awake, and he says a minor exorcism out loud, just in case, but nothing happens and he’s still there, in the darkness, bored out of his mind.
*
The nothingness starts to shudder around the time Sam thinks should be sunrise. It’s just a subtle vibration, coming from everywhere around him. It tickles a bit. It feels like a wounded animal, trying to get away from something but being unable to do so. It makes Sam feel apprehensive, after so many hours of nothing but the same.
The vibrations start getting stronger in the next half hour, turning into aggressive growling that makes Sam’s ears ache. The glow comes as a surprise, so sudden and bright that it blinds more than the darkness, after so much time of seeing nothing. He blinks, trying to get used to the light, and just as before, he’s shrouded in blackness one second and the next one he’s standing on the house’s living room inside of a circle drawn with what seems to be blood, his father a warm presence by his side.
Dean and Bobby (and just when had he gotten here, anyway?) are there, circling them slowly, and Sam’s still too shocked by the abrupt change of settings that he doesn’t react when Dean beckons them to him, after having broken the circle with a knife. His father has to carry him over the circle, and Sam clings to him, allows himself to be a scared eight year old that doesn’t know exactly what is going on.
Sam doesn’t stop clinging even when his dad starts questioning Bobby, but he turns his head around and is surprised to see that Dean looks younger than his age, pale under his freckles.
“Happy Halloween,” says Bobby, and hearing Dean laugh is like coming home.
***
Author:
nekareSummary: When Sam and Dean come home two days before Halloween, it’s to an empty house.
Rating: PG
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: None
Warnings: None
Words: 2800
Original story: Vigil by
ishafelNotes: Thanks so much to
amchara for the beta!***
Vigil (The Waiting in the Dark Remix)
When Sam and Dean come home two days before Halloween, it’s to an empty house.
It’s not like it’s never happened before – Dad has been leaving them on their own since Dean was strong enough to hold a gun between his hands, but this feels weird, out of character for their father. The door is unlocked, the same as the sad excuse for a wooden door in the back of the house, and there are no salt lines in sight. The window on Sam and Dean’s room is open, and the radio is still on, as if someone had forgotten to turn it off before leaving.
Sam can see Dean’s mouth turning into a thin line while he searches in the kitchen cabinet and realizes their father didn’t leave any money for them. It’s something that has never happened before, and that’s about the time Sam realizes Dean is actually worried. Their father might be prone to up and leave whenever there’s a mean-enough critter nearby in need to be wiped off the earth, especially now that Dean is twelve and can watch for Sam a few days in a row, but he’s never left like this, leaving nothing behind to help his boys take care of themselves.
Sam checks the wards around the house as Dean checks Dad’s room, and the sense of worry just grows when he comes back with Dad’s journal, something Sam knows he never goes hunting without. Dean sends him outside just to get him out of the way, looking pale, as if he really thinks Sam’s too small to figure out just how wrong this entire thing is.
He checks for blood on the driveway anyway. Better be safe than sorry.
They keep looking as the day wears off, but when darkness falls their father’s still missing and they still don’t have any idea of what could have happened. Sam wishes Pastor Jim or even Bobby would call back already – Dean’s always taken care of him, but he’s still small enough to wish there was a grown-up around to make it all better.
They’re almost out of food, and they end up having frozen waffles and tuna fish with crackers for dinner. Dean’s actually a pretty good cook, but there’s only so much he can do with canned fish and waffles, so it doesn’t end up tasting so good. Sam has a hard time swallowing it; not so much for the taste but for the way his stomach’s tied in anxious knots. He knows Dad’s a good hunter, and can hold his ground against pretty much everything, but it doesn’t stop him from worrying.
They sleep in the car that night. Dean builds something that looks like a pillows and blankets fort in the backseat, probably to cheer Sam up, and Sam is surprised when it actually does work. Besides, it’s cozy. Dean reads The Stand out loud for him, squinting at the pages with his old flashlight as the only light, and it puts Sam to sleep almost immediately.
He dreams that the house is trying to eat him.
He wakes up, sweaty and scared, in the middle of the night, face pressed against the leather of the backseat. He’s tempted to climb into the front seat with Dean, but when he turns around he can see his brother leaning against the steering wheel, eyes open and alert and with their father’s Magnum pointing straight at the house. It soothes him, knowing Dean’s there to protect him, and he falls back into an uneasy sleep.
Dean shakes him awake when it’s starting to get light. He gives Sam the gun and instructions to not let his guard down. Sam’s startled by this – he’s the baby of the family, and in the Winchester world, being spoiled means running fewer laps than his older brother and not having to stand watch on hunts.
Dean falls asleep immediately, curling himself into a tight ball to keep warm and Sam suddenly feels selfish for not having even offered to help with keeping watch earlier in the night. He disentangles himself from Dean’s comforter and wraps it around his brother.
His small plastic watch says it isn’t seven yet, and the street is silent and empty. First, he rests his knees on the backseat and faces the window, both hands outstretched while holding the gun, but soon enough his legs fall asleep and begin to hurt, and he resigns himself to wait in a less imposing position.
About an hour later, someone knocks on the opposite window, and Sam turns, gun lowered like he has been taught, even if his instinct is to aim straight ahead. It turns out to be a good choice, because their neighbor, Mrs. Kayes is knocking softly on the window, eyes squinting to see the inside of the car more clearly. Sam hides the gun quickly in between the blankets, trying to make it look as inconspicuous as possible. Mrs. Kayes is an elderly lady with unruly white hair and glasses that make her eyes look too large for her face. She’s originally from Florida, and she’s always complaining about the cold. She hardly ever bothers talking to Sam and Dean, unless it is to yell at them for being too loud.
Sam rolls down the window and puts on his best smile. “Anything wrong, Mrs. Kayes?” he asks with his little boy voice, the one Dad always makes him do whenever they have to interview a female/young/elderly/dorky/crying witness. It works like a charm every time, and Sam’s been thinking about asking Dad for compensation.
Mrs. Kayes frown at him. “What are you boys doing out here at this hour of the day?”
Sam swallows. “Uh,” he says, and he wants to kick himself for sounding so dumb.
Mrs. Kayes is a no-nonsense kind of woman. “Well?” She asks, eyebrows raised.
“You see, we have this, uh, tradition in my family, where Dad lets us sleep inside the car one night every year, it’s like a, ah, an adventure!” he finishes lamely, wishing he looks cheerful enough.
Mrs. Kayes’ frown deepens.“All alone? I’ll have to have a word with your father, then. Two boys your age shouldn’t be alone for so long.”
Sam can almost taste the panic. “No, no, Dad sleeps in here too, he—” it sounds silly, even to him, and he can already hear her saying bit crowded in there, huh?. They’ve been avoiding social services for years now. Sam’s not about to screw everything up. “He just went back in, actually, said he’d gotten a horrible crick on his neck.”
He’s worried for a minute that she won’t buy it, that she’ll see right through it, but lying has been the family’s livelihood for as long as he remembers, and he can tell that she’s bought it the minute her jaw unclenches.
“Very well. I’ll still like to a word with your father, boy. Making forts with pillows is all fine and dandy when it’s done inside a warm house, but cars are cold and he shouldn’t go around risking his boys freezing to death.”
Sam nods eagerly. “Of course, Mrs. Kayes, I’ll tell him.”
He doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath until Mrs. Kayes door closes behind her. He slumps down the seat, feeling tired. He suddenly remembers what he’s supposed to be doing, and hopes nothing happened in the house while he hadn’t been paying attention. He wonders if he can get away with not telling Dean.
He keeps his eyes fixed on the house for a couple of hours, occasionally remembering his dream and narrowing his eyes at the windows. It had felt awfully real, or, as real as a house eating you can feel.
Dean is up the moment Sam says his name. They piss against the abandoned flower bed in their backyard and drink cold water from the tap. The water moves around in Sam’s stomach, making him realize how empty it actually is. Dean gives Sam a knife just before going back in the house and claims the Magnum for himself.
Everything looks the same inside, including the lack of Dad. Dean sends him to go watch television while he checks the messages in the answering machine.
Sam would very much rather help Dean with something, but Dean looks pale and scared, something that Sam doesn’t remember having seen in his brother’s face before, so for once he does what he’s told without complaining. He doesn’t pay attention to the TV screen, though. Instead, he tries to listen as Dean talks to Bobby over the phone, but he’s too far away and the infomercial’s music is too loud.
He blinks. When he opens his eyes again, the living room has vanished, along with the rough rug he had been sitting on, the sunshine and more importantly, Dean.
He’s just standing there, alone, staring into nothingness. The darkness is complete, pure inky black, nothing like nighttime at all. Sam instinctually looks up for stars, maybe a sliver of the moon, but there’s nothing around him, and his eyes can’t seem to adjust to the darkness – he holds his own hands near his face, but all he sees is black.
It makes Sam dizzy, being able to feel his body but not to see it – it’s as if he isn’t there, and he pinches his arm just in case he’s just dreaming, still sitting on the floor. If John Winchester has taught his sons something, it’s never to panic, and Sam takes large gulps of air, trying to control his erratic breathing. His eyes are still open wide, even if he can’t see anything.
He walks around, trying to find a wall, but the nothingness seems to extend forever, because everything stays the same, no matter how far he walks, hands extended, eyes fixed straight ahead like a blind man.
After a while of exploring and finding nothing, he wonders vaguely if the floor is actually there and regrets it the second he thinks it, because suddenly he’s just floating there, in the darkness, not touching anything at all. He yelps and tries to move, kicking as if he was swimming, but he just manages to turn himself upside down, or, at least, he thinks he’s upside down, and that’s what makes it all the more confusing – his sense of direction is shot to hell with no point of reference.
A wave of nausea hits him, and he presses his hands to his mouth, trying to keep himself from throwing up. There’s a floor beneath my feet, floor, floor, floor, there’s a floor, he thinks desperately, and then he’s standing on solid ground again, still feeling queasy. He sits down, willing his stomach to stop turning around.
Once his mind finally settles down, decides there’s no discernible exit, he finally starts being afraid. It’s not only the fact that there’s no way to get out of the darkness, or that he’s alone – he knows Dean will get him out of there, that’s not a question, but it’s the way the darkness seems to be alive, moving, breathing in tune with Sam. It makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
After an hour, he’s gotten used to the prickling sensation of being watched, and his brain is starting to work again. He wonders what Dean’s doing now, figures he’s probably dancing down the streets celebrating being an only child again, but it sounds hollow even in Sam’s thoughts. He feels a little bad about it, having let himself get taken, because he knows Dean’s probably going crazy by now.
He vaguely wonders if this has anything to do with Halloween. Halloween is the busiest night of the year for the Winchester family, and many legends describe how magical creatures get stronger as All Hallow’s Eve approaches – and Sam knows that most of these legends are true. Maybe that’s why this thing that took him and his father, whatever it might be, hadn’t done anything to them before, even if they’ve been living close to it for a few months already.
After three hours, he realizes his father might be trapped in the same place, and he’s furious with himself for not having thought of it before. He screams himself hoarse calling out for his father, walking around the darkness blindly, tripping every few steps because no matter how flat the floor might be, he’s not used to not being able to see his feet. He stops looking after more than an hour, and he feels more alone than ever. He sits again on the floor and hugs his knees, resting his head on top of them.
He misses Dean. Dean always makes him laugh, even when Sam’s worried or scared, and he’s sure Dean must be going nuts by himself, trying to find both Sam and Dad. He wants his father to rescue him, just like he always does.
He feels childish, wanting his family like that, and he can almost hear Dean on his head, telling him to stop being such a baby, that he can’t seriously still be afraid of the dark. “I’m not a baby,” he says out loud, just because, and his voice echoes eerily, which should be impossible in the open space. Sam shudders, and waits in the dark for something to happen.
*
He’s bored. He can’t know for sure how long it’s been since he got taken by whatever it was that got his dad first, but he knows it must’ve been at least six hours, if he counted the beeps from his cheap watch correctly. He doesn’t feel hungry. Doesn’t feel thirsty, tired or sleepy either, actually. It’s almost as if his body had stopped the moment he had disappeared from the living room, and it’s a bit odd, not feeling much of anything. He doesn’t even need to pee.
He tries sleeping. He lies on the ground (it’s not cold or warm, hard or soft – it just is and by now Sam knows, maybe not even that) and closes his eyes and wills his mind to rest, but he’s not sleepy, no matter how many times he tells himself that it’s probably nighttime already. He opens his eyes again, even if it doesn’t make much of a difference, and starts playing with his hair out of having nothing better to do.
*
He starts singing. He gets sick of his own voice after four hundred and eighty six bottles on the wall.
*
He recites the fifty states and their capitals after that. He can’t remember either Delaware or Wyoming’s, which is lame considering he lived in Jackson, Wyoming for three months.
“This is stupid,” he says to the blackness, and he’s glad when nothing talks back.
*
He tries not thinking of what would happen if Dean gets taken as well.
An eternity in the dark sounds bad enough without the thought of not being able to see his family ever again.
*
He starts counting sheep in Latin, figures that’ll put him to sleep if nothing else does, but he ends up struggling with the way 437 should be pronounced, and spending a long time forcing his mind to remember. By the time he finally figures it out, he’s still wide awake, and he says a minor exorcism out loud, just in case, but nothing happens and he’s still there, in the darkness, bored out of his mind.
*
The nothingness starts to shudder around the time Sam thinks should be sunrise. It’s just a subtle vibration, coming from everywhere around him. It tickles a bit. It feels like a wounded animal, trying to get away from something but being unable to do so. It makes Sam feel apprehensive, after so many hours of nothing but the same.
The vibrations start getting stronger in the next half hour, turning into aggressive growling that makes Sam’s ears ache. The glow comes as a surprise, so sudden and bright that it blinds more than the darkness, after so much time of seeing nothing. He blinks, trying to get used to the light, and just as before, he’s shrouded in blackness one second and the next one he’s standing on the house’s living room inside of a circle drawn with what seems to be blood, his father a warm presence by his side.
Dean and Bobby (and just when had he gotten here, anyway?) are there, circling them slowly, and Sam’s still too shocked by the abrupt change of settings that he doesn’t react when Dean beckons them to him, after having broken the circle with a knife. His father has to carry him over the circle, and Sam clings to him, allows himself to be a scared eight year old that doesn’t know exactly what is going on.
Sam doesn’t stop clinging even when his dad starts questioning Bobby, but he turns his head around and is surprised to see that Dean looks younger than his age, pale under his freckles.
“Happy Halloween,” says Bobby, and hearing Dean laugh is like coming home.
***
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