Note: This is flashfic. Written in just over an hour about a week ago, and largely unedited.

Spoilers for 5.22, slightly for 6.1

Wonderful

Some of them died.
Some of them were not allowed to.

-Bruce Weigl

It's light these days, a kind of brightness that seems to get into everything, even the air. Inside the air, in the space between the walls, where people walk. Like dust motes and breathlessness. He sits at the table and watches Lisa and Ben move around in the pristine radiance, their voices muffled and distant, though he doesn't know why. He's happy just to watch them.

Lisa shoots a glance at him and he lets himself grin. Can't help it, really. He feels good, in a giddy kind of way. Probably the coffee. Damn caffeine.

"You sleep?" She queries, and he gives her a half-shrug, shakes his head. She plops a plate of eggs and toast on the table in front of him and he shuts his eyes in brief rapture. Lisa Hmm's briefly and moves away.

She hasn't really figured out that Dean just doesn't need that much sleep anymore.

Ben and Lisa chatter about school, and Dean enjoys his eggs and contributes to the conversation where he can, waving his toast around at one point and trying not to let his volume wander too far into "outdoor voice" territory. The coffee's good and Ben laughs when Dean offers to show him all the best dirty fighting moves for dealing with some brat giving him trouble at school. Lisa looks a little less amused but Ben knows it's a joke. Cleans his plate and goes upstairs to get ready for school. Lisa rests a hand on Dean's wrist and says, " You're really very good with him."

Dean smiles, and when he leans across the table to grab a quick kiss, she closes her eyes.

The light's got under his skin. His innards are gone, his guts are hollow. He feels good.

He can see it in the shapes of trees and in the people outside. At the grocery, at the park. Everywhere. The whole world knows. It knows, somehow, what didn't happen. The apocalypse-that-wasn't and everything—literally everything—shows it. Not just, like, the faces of little children or some shit like that. Dean can actually feel it, in the air when he breathes. This electric charge that just sits on his chest, bright and happy. Sometimes he pushes his hand against his chest, or against the window of Lisa's SUV, because he can feel it, the whole world burning with it. Alive. Everything's alive.

He's alive. He can't fight it anymore.

He comes back with the milk and Lisa says, "I talked to Greg."

Greg?

"With the truck. Remember? He's still looking to sell, so if you want…"

Right. Greg. Greg with the truck. Because the Impala's in dry-dock and Dean needs some suburban wheels. Made for the short haul. Less conspicuous.

Lisa's trailed off. Is looking at him. Waiting. He's still holding the milk. There's a truck. She wants him to buy a truck.

"Lisa, I'm, uh—I'm going to—" he waves a hand vaguely toward the back door. "I mean I—"

"Dean?"

Her voice has a soft edge to it. It's weird.

"My head kinda—wow." It's really sort of sudden. "Little bit of a—of a headache. Just gonna…."

He thinks maybe Advil. Something. It's what he means to do. But instead he pushes through the back door, and he catches the shape of it in pieces, flat and white and a pane of glass and blue curtains. It's like pushing through a barrier, something he can't see but that flares hot and dense over every inch of his body. Skin and skeleton. And he's standing outside on the back patio looking at Lisa's yard and it's late in the season and his eyes feel huge and dry, and he's having a hard time seeing anything at all.

He'd dropped the bottle of beer Lisa had handed him, the second night at her place. It just slipped right out of his hand and foamed all over the floor and Dean stared down at it and couldn't move his hands. Couldn't do anything.

He's more careful now. Rests glasses and bottles on tables and solid surfaces. Pays attention to his hands, to the bones and tendons. To breathing. Air comes in, his hands open and close. Strings and pulleys.

People's bodies make shapes, in the street when they pass by. The light shines on them and they make the shape of a world that went on turning. That goes on.

That night, Lisa nicked herself shaving in the shower and didn't notice. Blood ran right down her shin and Dean said, "Lisa. Lisa, it's gonna get on the floor. Lisa."

She went and put a bandage on it. And that was fine.

His eyes open in the dark. It's dark. It's dark.

His eyes can't be this wide. It hurts and staring up into the weight of the black gives him nothing, shows nothing. He can't see the ceiling or the walls. Something's pushing at the backs of his eyes, squeezing, pulling down. Back down. Inside. In the dark.

Bones in hands. Tendons and pulleys. Fingers. His gut, his throat, his whole body. He can still see their faces. Hear their voices. Hear the way they laughed. Hear Sam's laugh. His voice.

"Dean," he'd called, and laughed.

His skin is cold, his neck and spine. His ribs shudder. He rolls over, off the couch. Away from the blanket, body-warm and sweat-stinking. He can hear them. Sam. Sam.

Cold crawls up his skin from his belly to his throat and he pushes his knees and elbows into the floor and retches. Vomit spatters the wood between his clenched fists and he can't close his eyes because then he'll see.

There might be blood in his vomit. It's on his hands, he knows. All over his fingers.

"Dean," Sam calls, and laughs.

In the morning, Lisa sets a bowl of oatmeal in front of him, and kisses the top of his head.

"You sleep?" she murmurs into his hair, and Dean gives a little half shrug, and a smile.

"I did okay," he tells her.

There's a light coming in the window.

It's gonna be an amazing day.

-End

Notes: Lines at the beginning are from Bruce Weigl's "Elegy," which is from a collection of poems about Vietnam, "Song of Napalm". I highly recommend it.