Gretel (no_breadcrumbs) wrote in incompletedata, @ 2017-10-17 14:52:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | hansel & gretel: gretel, supernatural: sam winchester |
Who: Sam and Gretel
What: More bad dreams
Where: Gretel's room, Delta
When: BACKDATED to the night after the 'dead' tributes were returned
Rating: Some language, violent imagery, hints of death (HG triggers)
Status: Log, complete
It took a minute to sink in. They'd been in there so long it felt almost impossible that it could actually be over. But sure enough the doors to the hospital block were open and no one was preventing the ‘dead’ from leaving. Sam weighed it up, not altogether trusting the pseudo freedom that was being offered to him while at the same time not willing to risk that it wasn't for real. In the end desperation made the decision for him - desperation to see his brother, to see Gretel.
It didn't take long for him to find himself heading towards Romeo block, almost on autopilot. He still felt on edge, his nerves totally frayed after the arena and then being locked away in Alfa with no idea what was happening in the institute. He needed to see them, he wouldn't believe this was real until he did.
He found her around the corner of the doorway that lead to the main common area, where they had first met and nearly collided into each other, and nearly in the same manner. Gretel blinked, her face fixed in a stare that mixed several vivid emotions; shock, disbelief, hope, to name a few.
“...Sam?”
His expression mirrored hers, almost reflecting each emotion at exactly the same moment it crossed her face. He didn't say anything in reply, barely even responding to his name when she spoke it. Instead he reached out, brushing fingers against her shoulder, needing to feel that she wasn't some kind of hallucination.
The spark of tactile memory of the last time he'd touched her flashed across his mind and his resolve crumbled. It hardly mattered to him now whether she was real or not, he wanted this to be her so badly.
“Gretel, I…..” he wanted to say so many things - that he'd missed her, that he was sorry, that she should never have had to watch him in there like that. But the words wouldn't come.
It had only been seconds- fractions of seconds- between the sharp intake of breath at seeing him there, in the flesh, and the spark of tactile reality brushed from his fingers, but to her it felt like minutes or hours before the dam of shock finally broke.
He’d barely gotten her name out before she crashed into him, her hands on his face bringing him down to her on her flexed toes, kissing him like if she stopped, he’d disappear.
Sam tensed at first, still not really believing that this wasn't all some kind of trick, that it wouldn't just crumble away like ash the minute he let himself believe it. But it felt real - familiar and frenzied and so much more than he'd dreamt about for the last two weeks.
His arms wrapped around her, holding her so tightly to him as if that would make it impossible for it not to be real.
When they finally pulled apart from the kiss, and they both still seemed to be there, Sam's face broke into a relieved smile. He felt like a weight had been lifted from him. He opened his mouth to suggest taking this somewhere a little more private but instead his breath caught in his throat. His eyes grew wide and panicked as he felt a familiar tightness beneath his ribcage, followed by a rushing sensation and the sticky warmth of blood spreading from his chest.
He looked down to where the knife had gone in and when he looked back up to Gretel's face she was somehow further away - despite the fact Sam didn't remember letting her go. He felt lightheaded, dropping to his knees as the blood pooled around him. He tried to reach out for her but she seemed to be even further now than she'd been a moment ago.
She was further away and saying his name- calling for him, screaming for him, but the louder she cried out, the further away she was-
When in reality, she was as close to him as humanly possible; not in Romeo like in the dream, but in the warm glow of her bedroom in Delta, wearing the tangled sheet around them, the heavy drape of her hair, and nothing else. She hadn’t been asleep, though they’d been there for at least four hours after finding him back from the dead; after assuring each other that they were, in fact, real and alive, Sam succumbed to his exhaustion not long afterward. Gretel didn’t disturb him, but stayed close, occasionally combing her fingers through his hair and listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing.
Then it changed; the twitching, the tense jaw and small panicked sounds in his breath, she recognized intimately as a nightmare. A gentle touch didn’t work, neither did whispering his name or giving his shoulder a light squeeze. When the intensity of his dream obviously jumped, she abandoned gentleness in favor of pulling him back from whatever Hell he was in with a hard shake and sharp, quick “-Sam!”
It was never ending. Instead of being enveloped by oblivion his death seemed to stretch out - instead of mere minutes it felt like hours dragging on. All of them agonising and all of them spent trying to reach her, but to no avail. He could hear her screaming, calling his name but it felt like she was miles away. Then suddenly it wasn't, and instead of the cold and darkness seeping in there was warmth and a kind of pink glow. And hands on his shoulders shaking him out of whatever hell that was.
His own hands reached out to take hold of her arms, partly to stop the shaking but mainly to anchor him to reality. His eyes met hers and grew more certain, that was the dream, this was real. He worked to steady his breathing and once it was somewhat under control he let go of her.
“I'm okay.” He said eventually, his voice still clearly shaken.
She wasn’t surprised at the grip, at the reflex born from a life of constant danger, made powerful and fast by adrenaline surging through his blood because of a dream- a nightmare- Gretel didn’t fight it, only kept the hitch in her breath quiet until lucidity softened the edge in his eyes.
“I know,” she murmured through the sigh released when his grip did. She pushed one hand brushed through his hair, bracing herself on an elbow near Sam’s shoulder- their brows together, curtained by her hair when it fell from her back. This close, she could feel the tickticktick of his heart, still hurried despite his best efforts. She had a good idea of the images in his dreams that caused it, because she’d seen them herself.
What could she say that he hadn’t already known, or thought of? How could she help, beyond the small reprieve she hoped her presence gave? Gretel kissed him, gentle and assuring; he was tense, but calming down- that was the best she could do, for now.
Being forced to watch him suffer and die in those caves had given her far more than a taste of helplessness. She hadn’t handled it well.
“What can I do?” she whispered so close to his lips that they shared breath, ended the question with another short, soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, then leaned back on her elbow only far enough so they could see each other without straining. Her hand at rest on his chest, near the sun-wreathed star etched in black on his skin, which she had idly traced with her fingers more than once.
Sam inhaled a slow, deep breath. Tentatively he allowed his eyes to close for a moment against the touch of her hand through his hair, willing the anxiety to fade. It ebbed a little more with every touch, every whispered reassurance that she was with him.
He opened his eyes again to look at her as she lay next to him. The rise and fall of his chest slowing to a steady rhythm beneath her fingers, mere inches away from the phantom stab wound that he could still feel even though there was barely even a scratch left to betray its position. He brought his hand to cover hers on his chest and he ground out a sigh. “I don't know that there's anything you can do, besides what you're already doing.” He told her honestly, giving her a small smile.
The shift in their relationship had been his saving grace since coming out of the arena. There was no skirting around issues, or thinking like he had to hide how he was feeling - like he still sometimes did with his brother even now. Gretel understood him on a level that even he had trouble explaining considering how quickly it had happened. She also seemed to understand what he needed without him having to ask - seeming somehow to know almost telepathically when he craved physical contact or when to back off and give him space.
Watching the tension slowly fade from his eyes and feeling it in his touch helped lull her own spike of adrenaline back down to normal levels- her nerves had been easily triggered as of late, for obvious reasons- even though she hadn’t been the one in the caves, or the one having the nightmare, her stomach still tried to twist itself in a knot just thinking about it all.
In the darker corners of her mind, Gretel knew it would be like that here, for the indefinite future. While she was here, with Hansel, with Sam, and everyone else that might share or build a bond, and they were all made to dance on these horrible, nonsensical strings…
She said nothing, though- only returned his low smile with one of her own, shifting down from her elbow to lay under his arm, her cheek on the inside of his shoulder. She laced her fingers between his, momentarily focusing her thoughts on how warm his palm felt on the back of her hand. His lips were the same, and anywhere their skin touched; he always seemed to be a little warmer than expected.