Title: Wrong

Author: Still Waters

Fandom: Supernatural

Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.

Summary: The sky had been falling since they were children, yet they still loved the stars. Gen three-shot: Dean/Sam/Impala.

Notes: A stream of consciousness look at all the wrongs the brothers and the Impala have lived through, and the impact of even the smallest moment off that traumatic path. I've always loved the brief scene at the end of the fifth season with Sam and Dean sitting on the hood of the Impala, drinking and watching the stars. I wanted to explore a moment like that around a reflection of everything they've been through, using their own hell-influenced minds - a disjointed, rambling, loosely connected rush of words and images, a crescendo of traumatic history only broken by a rare peace off that road. I hope I did them all justice. Thank you for reading and thank you to those reviewers I am unable to respond to personally via private message. I truly appreciate your support.

Dean

Sometimes, it was all wrong.

The fires, demonic deals, revelatory prophecies…..the Horsemen, rings, cages, and that one damn word – Apocalypse – defining, smothering their lives….lives gone, lives cruelly reset, lives that would never be the same, lives crying "why" over and over into an endlessly laughing silence…..a silence like death, so many deaths, feeling like all he saw was death….blood, so much blood, he should've been dead….had been dead…..Sam was dead….Sammy…..but they were back, back in black, always blackness. Unseen hands in the dark manipulating everything he could have been. His hands….creating a darkness that couldn't have been him….was it him? The burning, the emptiness, Mom gone, Dad gone, Sam gone – you failed, you failed – so many times, so many hands trying to take what little he had, what little he needed. Pain, pain without end, pain that lodged in his chest so he'd never breathe again…..choking on dirt, digging and clawing from another grave, another day….watching his brother disappear in his own body, violated by a white-suited fallen angel who forced Sam to fall….fall into darkness and fire and hell….into flames and cold and burning and fear and evil and things that still had no names even after millennia of horrific existence. Never-ending hell, hell underground, hell on earth, hell above earth….just hell and darkness and himself, alone…..until it began again, a continuously exploding cycle – his life.

Sometimes it was just too much.

It was all wrong.

Until it was right.

Like now.

Sam

Sometimes, it was all wrong.

The fires, demonic deals, revelatory prophecies…..the raw, choked demands - "why me, why us?" screamed into a cruelly silent void. Angels and demons and plans, so many plans, and hands and voices, too many voices….voices he could see and voices he couldn't, voices in his head, echoing in his ears, stealing his breath, throwing his heart from the only rhythm it had ever known - away from Dean…so many voices he couldn't hear Dean, couldn't see him right at his side, couldn't hear himself….so many words that weren't his own scaring Dean, losing Dean….Dean dying….Sam dying?...dogs….why'd it have to be dogs?...invisible dogs and crimson spray, flayed arterial vessels…..he hated vessels…..vessels broken and bleeding and filled to bursting….empty green and so much red and loops and loops of death and alone, so alone and empty and more voices and a world that hated him demanding he save it – it's your fault, your fault – of possession and submission and fighting himself with his own hands and screaming in his own head and saving Dean….hurting Dean….saving….something…..and falling, always falling, and hell, so much hell – Dean's hell, Sam's hell, Lucifer's hell, Michael's hell….drowning in levels of hell Dante never even imagined. Cutting, burning, eviscerating, freezing, ripping….pains beyond pain and not even a tear to drink.

Sometimes it was just too much.

It was all wrong.

Until it was right.

Like now.

Impala

Sometimes, it was all wrong.

The desperate accelerations, the screeching tires, the whiplash jerks of the wheel, the unbalanced seats and silent radio, the stiff tension around the sound of pills against plastic and liquid against glass, the squelch of sodden bandages under muddy boots…. leather seats drowning in blood and tears and pain, so much pain….. black eyes manipulating murderous trucks and lying alone and frightened and in pieces….pieces reassembled by shaking hands and a shakier future until the road was under her again, a long, uncertain road she feared to tread. Feared for them to tread.

Sometimes it was just too much.

It was all wrong.

Until it was right.

Like now.

Parked in a remote rural field, slick black melting into the dark of night, feeling the muted heartbeat of classic rock thrumming through her frame, the familiar weight of family on her hood. The dull sound of bottle caps hitting packed dirt, the clink of glass, the creaking of her shocks as they lay on their backs, heads pillowed on her windshield. A crescent moon, an endless blanket of stars and the silent comfort of the sky – of an unexplored road, an infinite highway, soothing because it was one that hadn't yet hurt them….the expansive black backdrop mirroring the familiar color of home, the sparkling stars reflections of her rain-slicked silver rims…..a myriad of worlds where, maybe, they could have found peace.

The sky had been falling since they were children, yet they still loved the stars.

It brought out the comfort of their voices, voices as familiar as the rumble of her own engine, dragging names of constellations from years of interrupted education and stolen library books…..reflecting on the enormity of all they couldn't see, the possibilities outside the suffocating grip of destiny and apocalyptic inevitability. Voices that, after a few more bottles and existential musings, reverted to brighter tones, tones she missed, ones that belonged to smaller hands that had still held Legos and plastic army men even as they grew skilled in holding guns and knives. Voices that picked out increasingly ridiculous images from that infinite celestial game of connect the dots…their laughter, all too rare now behind a lifetime of desperation, grief, loss, and pain….that youthful, joyful laughter renewing her spirit, mixing with the music – a perfect harmony.

They were home. She was their walls, their roof. They were her heart, her soul. And as they grieved to see her hurt, so she grieved to see them suffer amidst wrongs she couldn't control.

There had been a lot of wrong on the road so far. And she knew there would be more on the road ahead. But this moment, just off that highway, was blessedly right.

So she offered her steady presence, and absorbed their laughter, their togetherness, their love…..storing it as a balm for later hurts, while purposefully dulling proudly gleaming paint against the sparkling stars, using her darkness to its fullest advantage, not wanting even the smallest reflection to alert the world to their presence. She melted into the night, to hold it, and her heart, as close as possible….

…..a night, a moment, a right, stretched into wishful eternity, a protective embrace against the finite reality of time. Defying any challenge to this oasis, this moment of peaceful brotherhood, this reminder that, in a sea of wrongs, rightness still existed.

Like now.