Lions
Request: Could you write a songfic for the Song lions by skillet?
Word Count: ~4 000
Warnings: cursing, gore (blood, multiple stab wounds, gunshots), reference to previous gore (internal bleeding), angst/sadness all around
A/N: sorry i had exams and then writers block and yeah it’s a lame excuse but that’s all i got for you right now:/ also i didn’t really know what to write for this fic (but i managed!! I think) so i kinda just took how this made me feel and tried to write it out :)
Y/N shifted the car into reverse and pulled out of the dirt sideroad Dean had parked on only 12 hours before. The impala hummed underneath her as she backed out onto the road. The smooth road was all she could focus on as she drove straight by their motel. They had all they needed, and there was only a few clothing items that were there. She couldn’t bring herself to stop for even a moment; any second she wasn’t focused on the road blurred her vision and pushed down the gas pedal a little bit farther. She drove right out past the Come back again soon! sign that marked the town exit without much of a second thought.
There wasn’t anything she really wanted to think about anyways.
Breathe.
Somewhere along the way, she’d realized that her brothers weren’t behind her. Maybe between the gash dripping into her eyes and the way her ankle popped in and out of place every couple seconds had distracted her. Maybe she only noticed when she broke the edge of the clearing and slowed for a second to look for the sleek black car she knew so well. Maybe she just thought them invincible; the Winchesters, notoriously infamous for scaring off even Death himself. She could trust them enough that they’d overcome anything that came at them.
But you can’t defy death and live to tell the tale.
Y/N stood at the edge of the clearing for another couple minutes before trudging right back in. Even wounded, her brothers often ran ahead of her. Not too far that they couldn’t reach her in a moment’s notice, of course, but it wasn’t likely that they were ahead of her. Now, as she scanned her surroundings, something began to build up in her chest. Flashes of every hunt gone wrong sped in front of her eyes, a collage of curses and blood and shallow breathing she couldn’t hear over her own. Suddenly it was dizzying, and she was lucky to catch herself on something- she couldn’t quite see what it was- before she crumbled. Dean’s voice, bright and clear as her vision, rang through her head.
Breathe.
She swallowed. Straightening herself up only proved that the clicking noise in her back wasn’t always harmless. Gritting her teeth, she shuffled her way pack, slowly picking up the pace until she was running back to the old house she’d just managed to escape. Her breath hitched in her throat.
Fighting angels and demons and everything in between had let Y/N’s memory slip; the werewolves had been stronger than she anticipated, and something of confusion washed over the three before they realized that they couldn’t rely on prophets and lone supernatural entities for tips and tricks for each of their hunts. They were still good at what they did (“Winchesters!” one of the older ones had shouted before they attempted to break down the doors that had already been boarded up) but being out of practice began to show when they’d reduced the pack to fight one-on-one.
Until Y/N noticed one slip out through the door they’d come in through.
Obviously, her first instinct was to rush out and deal with him. Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard her brothers call out to her, telling her to stay, but it was all white noise in the back of her mind; she could do this. She had to.
It was clear that this was their first fight. Y/N had dealt with them in less than ten minutes before leaning against a tree for some support. Her brothers, she had assumed, would be there soon. It wasn’t that long of a hunt, and none of them were eager to stay any longer than they had to. She had caught her breath for a minute more before turning around.
If only she hadn’t waited.
The cabin was quiet when she came back. Of course, her brothers naturally knew not to make noise, but this… this was different. It rang through the woods and pricked up the hairs on the back of Y/N’s neck. Her footsteps thundered and echoed down the hallway like a metronome, fading into the background as she stepped over pool after pool of wetness that drew up bile in her throat. It finally led to the main room where she’d last seen her brothers. A startled sound of something between a moan and a gasp escaped her mouth like a sob of relief when she saw one of the werewolves on the floor. Her eyes wandered over to the staircase across from her, the faintest trace of a bloodied footprint imprinted on every other step. It was too small for her brothers, quite clearly.
“Someone’s in a rush,” Y/N murmured, stepping over the body and making her way up the stairs, careful to not disturb to the prints.
Y/N’s feet made no sound as she entered the upper level and checked the first three rooms. All were empty of bodies or blood, but the fourth door was opened just a crack. Lights were on inside, halting Y/N. She held her breath, waiting for some sort of sign that might lead her to her brothers. There was nothing. She nudged open the door with her boot.
There was barely any time to register the clatter of her gun on the floor before she was shoving the door open, denting the wall where the knob slammed into it as Y/N rushed over and dropped down to where she saw her brother.
Sam was on the floor, limbs splayed at uncomfortable angles that made Y/N bite down her lunch that was working its way up her throat. Her hands hovered restlessly, afraid to touch him like he’d bite her if he did. Finally she rested two of her right fingers on his neck checking for a pulse. Feeling nothing, she pushed harder.
“Damn it, Sam,” she whispered. Her voice cracked on her brother’s name, swallowing thickly when she shuffled back hurriedly to flip him over.
His front was covered in blood, red and staunchy and dried at the edges. Where Y/N dared to look, she saw multiple stab wounds. Her hands were suddenly climbing his, like they could coax life back into them. She noticed bruises around his wrists, matching the ones on his neck. He had been bound. And stabbed. Six times.
Y/N threw up against the far wall. Her instinct threw her away from her brother’s body, as though Sam would magically get up and reprimand her for getting his jacket dirty.
But he wouldn’t wake up. He’d never wake up. Because Sam was dead and he was gone and there was no way she could bring him back because Dean wouldn’t let her-
Dean.
Her eyes flew around the room, throat burning from the upheaval that suddenly didn’t even matter anymore. She was vaguely aware that her eyes strayed as far as possible from Sam’s body, but paid it no mind. Dean could help her. Dean would solve this problem. He always did.
But Dean wasn’t there.
“Dean.” She stood up, shaking legs and shuddering breaths hiding themselves behind a strong voice that Y/N didn’t know she had. It echoed in the room, the only noise in an otherwise silent house. She began to make her way out of the room. “Dean, where are you?”
About halfway through the door, her body froze. Sam was still there. He was still in the room, cold and alone and bleeding out on the rug so intensely that Y/N couldn’t tell what colour it was. She fought another wave of bile.
She would come back. It killed her and she wanted to slump on the wall and let the tears and snot run down her face and have Sam wake her up from the nightmare this surely was and tell her that it’d be okay, that he was still alive.
But he wasn’t. So she couldn’t.
Y/N walked down the hall.
There were no other floors. Y/N vaguely remembered seeing a widows walk on the roof, but doubted either Winchester would venture up there. Dean would piss himself. She smirked at the thought before remembering her situation.
Dean hadn’t responded to her calls earlier. Obviously, there were multiple explanations for that, but Y/N didn’t really like any of them. Best case scenario, he was being held captive for some sort of ransom or whatever. Worst case….
Didn’t matter. She’d find him. She always did.
The second floor was made up of a hallway that circled around the walls, with rooms on the outside, with the first floor visible from anywhere Y/N had walked. It was a simple rectangle, meaning that she had a view of every space in the main room on the first floor. It was a mess, to say the least; fighting monsters wasn’t exactly a clean fight, in any sense of the word. By now, Y/N had circled the top landing, checking in rooms and calling out her brother’s name every few minutes. Dean would scold her. Sam would take her side, but give her that look that said you should know better, please be safe, don’t you ever do that again. She risked it, but it didn’t really feel like she was taking a chance with anything. She had nothing to lose.
Her brother was dead. Her other sibling was missing. She wanted to throw up- again.
She jutted her jaw out to the side, sucking her cheeks into her mouth in that way Dean always made fun of her for. If he could see her right now, he’d laugh, shoving her gently as he taunted her with things like nice duckface and if that’s how your first kiss is gonna be then I’m not sure you’ll get a second one and all those things that never failed to make her roll her eyes.
“Move y’r jaw any farther over an’ it’ll unhinge,” a voice called from behind Y/N. Her gun was trained on the source before her eyes focused on it. They laughed.
Oh no.
Oh no.
No.
“Dean?” her voice shook almost as hard as her hands, body tensing as she heard his rumbling laughter.
“You’re gonna drop th’ gun if y’don’t stop shakin,’” he chuckled. She was by his side in a second, gun haphazardly dropped somewhere along the way. The room was dark, but her eyes quickly adjusted when she saw the deep stain in his chest. Her hands hovered uncertainly, for the second time today, as she tried to slow her thoughts and breathing and just take a second to pull herself together.
“Gun, gauze, get outta there,” she whispered; her mantra after years of training coming forward compulsively after her father had drilled it there. “Gun gauze, get outta there. Gun, gauze, get outta there. Gun, gauze-”
“Hey.” Dean’s hands came up to hers where one had reached out for her gun while the other reached in one of her jacket pockets for one of the bandages Y/N had used to save her brothers’ lives more than she cared to count (they still made fun of her, saying she was overprotective; she still kept them in her pocket). “Y/N, s’alright. M’fine. Really.”
“Bitch, you’ve been stabbed.” She looked at him in exasperation, peeling away the layer of his outer jacket. “Let me get you out of here.”
“You know I’m not going anywhere.”
Y/N froze. Her body began to shake; not like before, vibrating like she was feeling the aftershocks of an earthquake. She was trembling like the moments before the ground would open up and swallow her whole. It was the shakey tremor of an untrained hand like the first time she stitched herself up- the minute quivers that seized up her body, her mind, her everything she relied on and she couldn’t bring herself to do anything but look at her brother and will herself to speak.
“Don’t you say that,” she finally whispered. “Not you. You don’t get to leave me.”
“Y/N,” he tried softly.
“No,” she tried again, harder. “You can’t. I- I can’t- Dean, not you too. I can’t lose you, too.”
Dean stilled his movements.
“Too?”
Her eyes moved to his hairline, counting every strand like they weren’t starting to blur together. She moved her hands towards the gauze, moving her hand to sit Dean up when he grabbed it.
“Y/N.” His voice was low, wary; Y/N hated it, hated that nothing good ever came when he used it. “Tell me-” It broke off before he could finish. He cleared his throat. “Tell me. Is- is Sammy…?”
Y/N didn’t even realize she was crying until her lips tasted salty. Dean’s face matched hers.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I wasn’t there and- and by the time I got there… Dean, he was- he already-” Y/N hurriedly moved her hand to wipe away at her face. “I’m sorry. I tried. I couldn’t do... I couldn’t do anything.”
Dean didn’t say anything. He just looked at her. She couldn’t handle it.
“You gotta sit up, Dean,” she said. Her voice wobbled as she spoke, but it was better than breaking and whispering and all those things. “I gotta bandage you, Dean. Then we can….”
In all honestly, she wasn’t really sure what they could do. Her brother was dead, and by the looks of it her other sibling would join him soon. Y/N pushed the thought out of her mind.
“Y/N-” Dean started, coughing into his shoulder.
She couldn’t tell if the blood had already been there before.
“Take it easy.” Her hands hovered over his body, unsure of what to do. He was only shot; she’d dealt with worse.
But she’d had both of her brothers then.
Y/N rocked back onto her knees, taking in a shuddering breath. She tried swallowing down the lump in her throat, but eventually she had to open up her eyes and look at Dean and realize that he wasn’t looking back.
Dean wasn’t looking back.
“Dean-” her hands shook his shoulders. “Dean, stay awake. I’m here. Stay- stay with me.”
Dean mmed at her, eyes fluttering at random intervals as his gaze slowly hooded over. A twitch passed his lips, barely enough for Y/N to catch- but still enough.
“What is it?” she pressed. Another time she would smack him around a bit, get him to move, but he looked as though anything resembling an attack would-
No. Y/N wasn’t going to go there.
“Y’re always so w’rried,” Dean mumbled, eyes sliding shut. “I nev’r knew why you’d bring s’much extra. Guess there wasn’t ‘nuff this time, huh?”
“Don’t joke about that,” Y/N whispered sharply.
“S’rry,” he slurred. “Jus’ tryna lighten th’mood.”
“We’ll joke once you’re outta here, okay?” Y/N smiled at him, knowing but refusing to acknowledge that he couldn’t see it. “Then you can make fun of me all you want. Promise I won’t retaliate.”
“Then what’s th’ point?” He tried to let out a laugh, but it sounded more like a choke that sent icy sparks up Y/N’s spine.
“Currently,” she tried for humour,” to get you out of here. Can you get up? Just need to carry you-”
“Both know m’not goin’ anywhere,” he muttered. Y/N froze.
“Dean-”
“Can you do something for me?” Dean cut her off. She pursed her lips.
“Anything,” she ventured, “but leave you here.”
“Then…” he trailed off, scaring up her heartbeat for a moment until he continued. “stay with me. Until-”
“Yeah.” She smiled, plastic and fake and everything that was wrong in this moment wrapped up in one brief moment. “Anything you need.”
“R’member th’ song….” His brow flickered into a frown for a moment. “Was ‘bout cats. You liked it.”
“The cat song?” Somehow, in the midst of all the shit going down, she managed to sound incredulous.
“Big cat or somth’n,” he grinned. “Lions?”
“Son of a-” she laughed, wet and false but somehow comforting. “You mean that Skillet song?”
“Yeah,” he chuckled- or, tried to- at her voice. “Always liked it.”
“I’m pretty sure I distinctly remember you yelling at me to shut the hell up, as you oh-so poetically put it,” she grinned.
“You should sing it t’me,” he smiled softly. Y/N blinked.
“I-”
“I’m dyin’ here,” he huffed. She winced. “Least you could do ‘s sing f’r me.”
Y/N pursed her lips, flattening them quickly as she remembered Dean was still there (not for long, a nagging voice in the back of her head told her) and worrying her bottom lip.
Well, it was the least she could do.
It was all she could do.
Her voice shook as she sang; wobbled with uncertainty and quietly as she tried to keep her voice low enough to still hear Dean’s shallow breaths. It took a few verse before she began to let her voice carry. It was soft and deep and a little creaky after a few months- or rather, years- of disuse, but fine all the same.
It reminded them both of another time; Dean had, again, been seriously hurt. Sam and Y/N tried to persuade him to go to the hospital (“Y/N is good, but she can’t do anything about internal bleeding, Dean,” Sam had half-shouted at him.) but he only said he needed to rest. Obviously, it was bull. Dean was hurt. Dean was bloody. Dean was almost fucking crying.
But Dean still wanted to hear her sing.
Y/N only ever sang when she was safe. Singing was Y/N’s way of soothing herself; focusing on the melody, the words, the beat and the tune. Sam and Dean, on the very rare occasion they could catch her off-guard, would stand motionlessly and simply listen. Y/N wasn’t phenomenal, they all knew that, but her singing was just one way that they could all remember they were okay. Maybe that was why Dean asked her to do it when he was scared (not that he would admit that, of course); because he needed to know that she was safe, they were safe, everything would be okay.
Slowly, she felt as Dean’s chest began to rise a bit less every time; she watched as his eyelids opened less frequently, his grip slacken a bit more every few seconds. Her face was a mixture of tears and snot and blood coating her grimy cheeks, but it didn’t even occur to her for a damn second to focus on anything other than Dean.
Her vision was blurred, so she wasn’t quite sure which rise and fall of Dean’s chest was his last. She wasn’t certain when his hand no longer gripped onto hers, only held to her chest because she gripped it so hard Dean would’ve complained that she’d break his fingers. She didn’t care about that. She didn’t care about anything.
Sam was dead. Dean was dead.
Y/N was dead.
The sun filtered in through the window she hadn’t noticed earlier by the time she could regain the basics of her surroundings. Her hand was numb from where her fingers had clutched at her brother’s arm, like letting go of Dean would mean letting go of Dean. She couldn’t do it. She could never. But Y/N had to.
It was day. The hunt was over. Sam probably still had matches in his pocket- Y/N’s next breath caught when she thought of him- and Dean definitely still had a lighter of some sort on him. The Winchesters were not supposed to still be here, not like this. They were supposed to be two towns over from the place that “mysterious fire” had cropped up from; new names using old alibis, fresh scars and worn out flannels the smelled of leather seats and cheap beer and diner fast-food and home. Y/N refused to linger on the word. It held nothing. It meant nothing.
She wasn’t quite sure what home was anymore.
The house was up in flames in less than an hour. It had to be burned down anyways, and Y/N couldn’t bring herself to move her brothers out of the cabin, anyways. All she could do was carry them into the front room, laying beside each other. Y/N had carried her brothers more than once after a hunt, and she was by no means weak, but somehow their bodies seemed to weigh more after the light left their eyes. She tried not to think about that. Her mind tried to take itself somewhere light, recollecting memories as she carried Sam down the stairs, sitting for a minute before climbing up to get Dean.
Even in death, they’d be together.
It was probably sometime around midday when Y/N watched the last few flames die down. The house wasn’t a fire hazard, as Sam would have made sure, so she felt safe enough knowing that anybody who came by would just see a recently burned house with nothing but ashes inside. The bodies would be cremated; Dean found some spell that ensured it, so it was quickly memorized and often utilized. Her way back to the impala was short and did not register in her mind, but she paid no notice. Nothing caught her attention.
Like clockwork, Y/N fell onto the back seat. She sat expectantly for half a moment before realizing that her brothers weren’t going to sit in the front seat. Sam wouldn’t ask how she was holding up while Dean teased him for asking her while he looked like that, before giving her that look that asked the same damn thing. She couldn’t tell them that she was fine, that she desperately needed whatever fast food she was craving to survive, that at least she wasn’t on her period (often followed by groans and a fake ‘blech!’ sound from Dean that cracked them all up). Y/N could never say those things to them.
She slid into the front seat. Part of her expected to hear Dean’s gruff voice ask her what the hell d’you think you’re doing, but none came. There were no sounds other than her shallow breaths and the occasional car from the road they had driven off of. Shakily, her hands pulled the clinking keys out of her pocket and started the ignition. The engine rumbled, soft and familiar and coaxing her to tears that refused to spill.
There was so much grief, so much anger, so much whatever the fuck this is that Y/N felt that it overwhelmed her and nulled every emotion that brought itself up in her. She wanted to cry; she wanted to cry and scream and pull out her hair and beat her hands against the steering wheel until they bled and scream out to whoever would listen and ask why them, why them when they only helped people and didn’t deserve this in a thousand years. Nothing came out.
Y/N shifted the car into reverse and pulled out of the dirt side road Dean had parked on only 12 hours before.
@zeusmyster @mogaruke @assbutt-still-in-hell @spn67-sister @sammysbeanie @thyotakukimkim @lemonadegazeelle @obsessivecompulsivespn @peteyparkerson