nekare

I've been lazing around all day long doing pretty much nothing. It's a bit pathetic. I really feel like writing but I feel too lazy to do it. I really feel like drawing too but my inspiration seems to have flown away away away. *sigh*

I watched the pilot for Skins and I liked it even if I found it over the top. Also, damn, but it's really hard for me to understant British accents - I kept on having to review over and over again. Mmm, what else?

As requested by pink_faerie81, a commentary for Tear Me Apart!

There’s still steam coming out of the thing that isn’t Sam (can’t be Sam) when it smiles, low and pleased, and when Dean blinks again the demon inside his brother has slashed Jo’s throat and is jumping out a window.

Dean cradles Jo’s face between his hands as she dies, looking right into her fear-filled eyes, his hands coated in the blood that comes out of her mouth in clots.

This is my fault, he thinks as he closes Jo’s unseeing, glassy eyes. This is all my fault.

If I remember correctly, sasha_davidovna mentioned something along the lines of 'and what if Evil!Sam had actually killed Jo?' and I went '... omg, please let me steal that.' And she let me so I just incorporated the idea with the 'Meg didn't exactly leave Sam's body' scenario I'd already been working on and it worked like a charm, if I may say so.

----

Faith’s never been part of Dean’s vocabulary, or at least, not since he was four.

But it comes as a surprise that Dean can’t even believe in the mechanics of his own job anymore, not after Latin had come out of Sam’s mouth with all of the wrong intonations.

The thing had left him lying unconscious on the floor, bleeding steadily on the moldy carpet with a crumbled note in his right jacket pocket.

It read: Tag, you’re it.


I love that line. Loved writing the demon, actually, it was so fun in its meaniness.

----

Dean’s the one to break the news to Ellen. She yells and curses at him for more than half an hour, and Dean just takes it, sitting against the bed of his motel room (a double, because the lack of Sam’s presence is still too new for him to break long-term habits), the hand that’s gripping the cell phone shaky.

By the end of it, she’s just crying over the phone, her sobs so loud, and Dean doesn't know what to do except listen in silence. He falls asleep like that, sitting up, still nursing a mild concussion from Not-Sam’s beating, and the next morning, when he picks up the phone from the floor, the line is dead from the other side.

He tries calling again, but Ellen hangs up as soon as she recognizes his voice.

I was gonna have Dean cry too in this scene, but ultimately decided it was over doing it too much. SHOW, LEARN FROM ME. XD

----

It calls every few weeks. Mostly a couple of hours before dawn and right after a hunt, when Dean aches and hurts and is trying to get whatever sleep he can.

I think this was the first sentence I wrote of the story, and then I just couldn't stop XD

“Well hello, Dean, was wasting that werewolf as exciting as it sounded like?” Not-Sam asks through the phone.

Dean grinds his teeth and growls “fuck you,” as he runs his hand over the knife underneath his pillow, an empty gesture, but a comfort nevertheless.

Not-Sam laughs on the other side of the line. “Really, Dean, you make this way too easy.”

Dean hangs up and considers throwing the cell phone against a wall. His last three ones had suffered that fate. In the end, he figures it’s too much of an effort, so he just puts it back on the nightstand and rolls onto his back, resigning himself to a sleepless night.

After four hours, he knows for a fact that the ceiling has 8, 349 tiles.

He doesn’t know why he keeps on answering the phone.

To torture himself, probably.

----


The thing that was once Meg broke every single bone in Bobby’s body just before she left the house. A ‘souvenir’, it said, the first time it’d called Dean.

The doctors say that if the next three surgeries go well, he might be able to get out of that hospital bed and start using a wheelchair in a few months.

Dean still can’t muster the strength to look Bobby in the eye.

This was planned from the beginning. Then I kinda said 'oh, but it's Bobby and wanted to erase it. Then I wanted to kill him. Then I thought oh, whatever and returned to the original idea. I love Bobby to death, but, apparently, I love random angst even more.
----

Sometimes, he wonders if this wasn’t what his father had meant all along when he’d said that Dean might have to kill his own brother one day.

A supernatural war, the Yellow-Eyed Demon’s plans for all the children like Sam – it all sounds irrelevant as he’s circling, in red pen, all the articles about Not-Sam’s killings, a bloody trail left behind for Dean to follow, a Come here, kitty kitty-cat written out in gore.

He can’t really wrap his mind around the concept of something worse ever happening.

Then again, he never could have imagined things could get so bad.

----

Hunting becomes a race, a game in which he’s trying to save as many people as possible while Not-Sam tries its darnedest to kill as much as it can. He lives off of coffee and Twinkies, getting a couple of hours of sleep here and there, knees close to his chest in the Impala’s backseat. Everyone he stumbles across tell his that he looks like death warmed over.

He’s always a step behind it, arriving just a day late so all he finds are dead bodies and murder scenes plagued with Sam’s fingerprints in blood.

He’s only been able to save two of Not-Sam’s to-be victims, a five-year-old girl and one of Sam’s old college classmates. In the girl’s case, Dean came pretty close to exorcise it, but it’s learned a thing or two since the last time Dean and Sam send it back to hell, and Dean ended up empty handed and with yet another scar.

He still dreams about the way his brother’s face had looked contorted in pain through the steam of holy water hitting flesh, and the way it still had smirked afterwards, sending chills down Dean’s spine.

La-la-la random stuff to fill space. Moving on.

----

Dean’s no longer accepted in the hunting community. Everyone he ever knew turned his back on him as soon as they learned it was bad news to associate with him, after the dozens of murders Not-Sam had committed since taking over his brother’s body.

The few hunters that wanted to pass as magnanimous enough to offer him their help with putting Sam (or whoever is wearing his skin) down got their noses broken as a kind of thank you.

This is where it starts to show how obsessed I am with the whole 'hunters are a community! They all know each other!' idea. This was originally going to play a much more important role in the story, but it didn't work in the end. *sigh*
----

“You fucker!” yells Ellen when Dean finally picks up his cell, and her voice sounds raspy, as if she had been crying.

Apparently, Not-Sam had called her, all flippant cheer and leer, and had told her what Dean had not been brave enough to say.

“How dare you choose who gets to live and who dies,” she says, and Dean rubs at his forehead. “You could’ve saved her if you’d only shot it – could have saved time, anything.”

“I couldn’t do it,” Dean’s voice doesn’t come out as steady as he would like to.

“Like hell. You didn’t want to, that’s it.”

“So could you have done it, Ellen? Huh? Could you have pulled the trigger if it had been Jo the one possessed?”

“Don’t you dare talk about Jo,” Ellen hisses.

Dean doesn’t know what to say to that because he very much doesn’t feel fucking worthy of speaking about Jo either, so instead he just says, “He’s my brother, Ellen,” in a tone that sounds too much like pleading.

It’s a moment until Ellen speaks again, and when she does it’s just a whisper. “And she was my daughter. And for all intents and purposes, you killed her, Dean.” Then there’s a click as she hangs up on him.

After that, not one hunter he encounters treats him like something other than shit.

They all think he’s working for the enemy now.

This, I wanted to write as soon as I killed Jo off. To me, it's a very selfish talk, from both sides, and that's why I ended up liking this scene so much.

----

Not-Sam’s been on the news at least twice now. Dean punches the TV when he sees Henriksen’s grave face on the screen, advising people to stay of the way of Samuel Winchester, dangerous serial killer.

He leaves before anyone can notice the gaping hole on the TV’s screen and his bleeding knuckles.

And on this I wanted to expand a lot to, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.

----

Even after so many months, the caller ID keeps on saying ‘Sam’s cell’. Dean hesitates before accepting the call.

There’s screaming on the other side, a blood-curling cry of pain followed by the familiar sound of steel cutting flesh. Then there’s silence.

He drinks himself unconscious when he reads Sarah’s obituary the next morning.

It honestly surprised me how many people said 'OMG YOU KILLED SARAH, YOU BASTARD' (only, in a more polite way *g*) because this honestly came out of nowhere - it was just going to be some random chick screaming, and then I thought to myself 'hey, it can be one of the guest stars!' and I initially considered Charlie from Bloody Mary, until I remembered Sarah was much better angst-material. I like Sarah, but I've never fangirled her like the rest of the fandom seems to do. *shrug*

----

Dean knows the thing won’t put a gun to its head, because it wants Dean’s attention, his misery, and while killing Sam and wearing his dead body would be the ultimate way to hurt him, for it, it would only mean the game is over.

And that's just little me, trying to explain just why is Sam still alive when Meg could've just killed him ages ago and break Dean for good.

----

Not-Sam sits across from him on a shady diner in Minnesota, while Dean is trying to swallow down a mouthful of cheeseburger.

Okay, let's be honest - I'm in love with this scene. I wrote it having Meg in mind, and I've always been insanely proud of it.

“Long time no see, Dean. Miss me?” It says, smirking.

Dean chokes on his food, and once he’d done coughing his lungs out he finally forces himself to swallow, hands fisted at each side of his plate on the table.

“What do you want?” asks Dean.

It ignores him. “Quite crowded today, huh?” it looks around the room, at the family of five in the next booth. “It would be a shame if these innocents got caught in the crossfire, wouldn’t it?” it says, as if Dean didn’t know it already. The gun tucked at the small of his back feels cold against his skin.

“Are you enjoying the trails I’m leaving you?” it asks, its grin a taunt. It’s dressed all in leather and expensive fabrics, another reminder that this isn’t his brother.

“What do you want, demonic bitch,” Dean repeats.

It just laughs. “I’ve already told you, Dean Winchester, I want to torture you. You don’t get to get away with sending me back to hell as easy as that. And I’m succeeding, by the looks of it,” it says with a gesture at Dean’s gaunt-looking face, at the bags under his eyes.

Dean knows well enough that he looks worse for wear, thank you very much.

The demon keeps on talking. “Besides, it’s all your fault, Dean,” and Dean starts shaking, because suddenly, it’s Sam in front of him, his wide, sad eyes and the way of unconscious hunching he’d perfected since he’d started running into door frames at seventeen. “If you had only been strong enough to save me, Dean, I---”

“Enough!” Dean says as he hits the table, and the entire diner falls silent as thirty people turn around to look at him. Not-Sam doesn’t even flinch.

Hee, that part? Meg pretending to be the real Sam? Totally my favorite moment of the fic. It's quite short, now that I read it again, mmm...

Sam’s familiar face contorts in a pure evil grin, something Dean had never expected to see on his baby brother’s face.

They stay quiet for a moment, staring at each other. Or at least, Not-Sam stares, Dean just glares.

Not-Sam steals one of Dean’s fries, chews it slowly with a smile. Dean’s jaw hurts with the effort of keeping his mouth shut. A small kid yells to the waitress, asking for crayons to draw on his mantelpiece with, and Dean can’t do anything about the blood-thirsty monster sitting in front of him, wearing his brother’s face.

“Anyway, I should get going,” it says as it licks its fingers clean. “It’s been a pleasure as always, hunter-boy.”

“I’ll fucking kill you in the end. You know that.”

That was originally meant to say: "Fuck you." But considering what the next line says (which remained the same), well... I wanted to keep it gen, and while that response is such a Meg thing to say... it'd be really darn odd sounding with her wearing Sam's body. *cough*

“Funny, you keep on saying that, but I don’t see you doing anything about it.” Dean wants to hit it so hard it hurts, an ache in his bones.

Not-Sam steals another of his fries before it leaves, swaggering around as if it owned the place, and Dean is only vaguely aware of the fact that his palms are bleeding, his nails digging into his skin.

Hee, I love the fry stealing *g*

He throws a rumpled bill onto the table and goes out just in time to throw up his entire meal on the rosebushes across the street.

----

“Hey,” comes Sam’s voice over the phone, and it’s five in the morning and Dean’s still half-asleep so for a moment he doesn’t remember just who exactly is calling. “I just killed a mother of two, you know. I slit her throat as her children were---”

Dean hangs up.

----

Not-Sam’s trail leads Dean to a hospital in Seattle. The right wing is being reconstructed, and the floor is covered in dust, lights flickering every few minutes. It smells like whitewash. It makes Dean’s nose itch.

He finds Not-Sam at the end of a long, half-lit hallway, sitting in an office chair, turning itself around like a little kid. Dean points his gun at it as soon as it’s within his reach.

“You got here just in time, Dean,” it says, Sam’s long legs outstretched parallel to the floor so its feet won’t hit the cheap linoleum as it turns around.

Dean tenses up immediately. Not-Sam notices. “Wait, you didn’t think you’d actually surprised me, had you?”

Dean had. A trap. Great. “Shut up, bitch, you don’t get to do the talking.”

It laughs. “Yeah, right, because you’ll shoot me. Don’t kid yourself, Dean.”

Touché.

It looks down at its - Sam’s - watch. “Anyway, it’s almost time. You’re in for a surprise, big brother.”

Dean is about to growl Don’t you fucking call me that just when the sound of broken glass interrupts him. His grip on the gun doesn’t waver, though. Not-Sam grins as if Christmas had come early.

“You know, Dean, I find you hunters incredibly interesting. You’re all so… well, fucked up is only one way of putting it. But you see, I like your kind so much that I’ve been letting this pathetic specimen follow me around for some months now. And tonight, tonight he’s come to erase your brother off the map, Dean.”

So far in this scene, I like it loads. The rest... well. But that speech about hunters ended up real nice, in my opinion.

Dean’s blood runs cold. Shit.

“And you, my dear host’s brother, are here to stop him.”

As if on cue, one of the hallway’s doors bursts open, and a middle-aged man stumbles into view, looking haggard and out of breath. “This is your end, you vile demon!” he yells, pointing with the hand that’s not holding a shotgun.

What. The. Fuck. Is this guy for real?

I wrote the end of this scene first, and it shows, because fro here on, it all sounds so rushed and sketchy. At my first draft, the hunter was called Jeremiah (his last name I've forgotten, though), and Dean started remembering that summer he spent in the Nevada desert leaving under Jermiah's roof, while he and Sam were still kids. Anyway, it was all stiff between them and it started sounded too much like a soap opera so I decided to change it all. I came up with an amateur hunter because I figured only a newby would be stupid enough to charge against a demon like that, so I made him clumsy but determined.

The man finally seems to notice Dean. “Oh, you must be the other Winchester boy. Good, good, I’ve come to help you kill it,” he says, and Dean curses yet again.

Fuck. An amateur. He must’ve started hunting late in life, considering that Dean has met him for all of two seconds and it’s already obvious the guy doesn’t know the first thing about demons. Dean’s only alive because Not-Sam won’t kill him. The other guy’s fair play to the thing.

“Get out of here,” Dean says from between his teeth, hoping he’s can entertain Not-Sam for long enough for the man to escape. His gaze returns to Not-Sam, gun aiming at its heart even when he knows he won’t shoot. “This is dangerous, get out now.”

The man shakes his head. He has a look of determination about him, the same one most hunters carry, the one that says 'won’t rest until my prey is dead.' Dean’s seen that expression in the mirror.

“Aw, well isn’t this sweet,” Not-Sam says, still sitting in the chair, arms crossed as if enjoying the show.

And as I bet you can guess by now, this was meant for the little 'family' reunion Dean and the Jermiah guy were having.

“I’m sorry about your brother, kid, but this has to stop now,” the guy says, eyes fixed on Not-Sam.

Uh, I think this was when I started writing this scene, right after I wrote that bit about Not-Sam calling Dean all the time. Which means that this scene was written over and over again, because the story kept on changing.

“Well. You’re going to stand there and watch him kill your brother, Dean?” It says, hands tucked under his chin in an imitation of the face Sam makes whenever he’s thinking hard about something. “That’s low, even for you.”

“Shut up!”

“You don’t listen to it, boy, it only wants to mess with your head.”

Like that’s news. Dean grits his teeth, and then he’s turning around in one smooth movement, letting Not-Sam out of his aim to stand between it and the guy, arms outstretched on each sides of his body.

“Let’s not rush into anything, okay?”

The man blinks. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“My brother’s inside it, you know that. We can’t just--”

“It has to die, kid,” the guy says, jaw set. He’s just the right age to be old friends with Jo’s father, even if it doesn’t look like he’s been doing this for long. Figures.

And another thing to show the hunter's such an amateur - he clearly doesn't know about exorcises. Or, at least, that's supposed to mean because honestly, I was running out of posibilites why anyone would think shooting the guy would solve the problem but I was too lazy to change the scene yet again. *shifty eyes*

“No.”

“It’s what your brother would have wanted.”

“You don’t know shit about my brother,” Dean says, lips curled.

“Move away!”

From behind him, Not-Sam speaks. “Well, what’s it going to be, Dean? I don’t mind getting shot that much, but your baby brother inside me might, you know.”

Dean can feel his arms shaking, his gun unsteady with the sweat on his hands. He closes his eyes for a second.

“For the last time, son, move away. That thing ain’t your brother anymore.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Dean says, barely louder than a whisper, and it almost feels like admitting defeat.

The man sighs. He cocks his shotgun in one smooth move, aiming for Not-Sam’s head over Dean’s shoulder, and Dean snaps, moving faster than his mind can follow. A blink and the man has fallen to the ground, a gaping hole on his forehead. Another blink and Dean’s eyes are open as wide as they can be, and he’s staring down at the still-smoking barrel of his gun. He drops it as if it had burnt him.

fast paced much? *shakes head at self*

Not-Sam laughs. “Well will you look at that.” It drawls, amused. “You always manage to surprise me, Dean Winchester.”

Dean crouches in front of the man he just killed, heels on the air and elbows on his knees. He hunches up, head down, trying to fight the urge to throw up. The floor’s tiles are slightly titled to the right, and the man’s (God, he doesn’t even know his name) blood slides down from under his body until it’s almost touching the tips of Dean’s shoes.

Aaaand that's when Dean went into 'omg I killed one of my dad's friends, omg, omg, omg, omg' mode in the original draft. Like I said, it got to much like a soap.

“You’d really do anything to keep your brother safe, wouldn’t you?” Not-Sam’s chuckling, low on its throat. “I do have to tell you, though, Sam’s really shocked. He’s trying so hard to get me out of him, ain’t it cute?”

Dean’s too shell-shocked to say anything in response. He’s just killed for the other side. Not-Sam finally stands up and walks closer.

“See, Dean?” Not-Sam says as it stands behind him and puts its hands on his shoulders, mocking a massage before it adds, “I told you we’d have fun, you and I.” Dean can see the burn mark on its forearm out of the corner of his eyes.

“Go to hell,” Dean mutters, and his voice comes out as unsteady as he feels.

“Already been there. Ashes are a bitch to get off from good clothes.” Not-Sam is still patting his head, as if he were a child. Dean remembers countless of times he did the exact thing to little Sammy as they were growing up.

Hee. I love Meg. She's so fantastically bitchy *g*

“No, I think I like it in here,” it continues. “It’s quite cozy, inside your brother. All of this raw power, his abilities,” it sighs, as if impressed. “They’re really quite something, pretty boy. Especially when they’re focused on doing nefarious acts.” Dean doesn’t quite dare to turn his head and see the grin that he can hear on its voice. “Besides, you’ll protect me, won’t you? You won’t let anything bad happen to me,” it says in the exact tone Sam used to talk with when he was twelve.

It leans down, until it’s whispering into Dean’s ear. “By the way, Dean, my daddy says ‘hi’.”

Oh man, I loved writing that sentence.

Dean closes his eyes; let’s himself fall onto his knees. He wants to reach out for his flask of holy water, to start saying the exorcism he knows by heart by now, but he can’t quite muster the energy.

He hears it leave, pieces of plaster cracking underneath its feet, and Dean just stays kneeling there, knees soaked in blood, wishing it hadn’t left so he wouldn’t have to stay behind, alone with a dead body of his own making.

He hates himself for it.

----

He knows he won’t ever get his brother back unless he’s willing to hurt him..

Dean wonders if that will ever happen.

*sniffle* Oh Dean, really, I do love you. You're just too pretty when you hurt, sorry.

----

He has to admire the determination of the demon inside Sam – it’s managed to break him into such fine, little pieces.

This last sentence took a bit of rephrasing to end up right, but I do love the idea, and I very much liked it as an ending.