Work Text:
The house looks like the type to be haunted.
It’s rotted from the inside out — the staircase crumbling, the roof sliding. Newspaper clippings spread out on the table of a motel room, say anyone who goes inside ends up dead. The stories they’ve managed to put together point to a boy who died after months of sickness, now suffocating the visitors, just like he did years before.
Sam finds him first.
He’s huddled in the corner of the biggest bedroom, knees to his chest, arms wrapped tight around them, his face half buried. He stares at Sam — and Sam’s gun — with wide eyes, terror etched into his face. His raspy breaths echo in the midnight quiet, pain-filled, but steady. He doesn’t move.
They couldn’t find a birth certificate, but the boy can’t be any older than ten, only a few years younger than Sam himself, and there’s a sharp pull in his chest, soul-deep, that makes him lower the barrel.
The boy still isn’t moving, not even twitching, but soft words sneak out from behind his arms. “Who are you?”
Sam swallows. It’s almost like he’s just spun in circles; it’s almost like he can feel the world turning in space, tilting beneath his feet, leaving him struggling to balance. Some nights, it sinks in that he’s really talking to someone who’s dead — someone who’s been dead longer than he’s been alive — and he feels that line between the two states stretching and thinning right in front of him. “Sam.” Some nights, he tells a dead kid his name and hopes he won’t accidentally kill him next.
The boy coughs once, twice, body shuddering and elbows knocking against the wall. Sam winces at the harsh sound and squeezes his eyes shut until the boy’s breaths even out again.
Quieter than before, in-between gasps for air, the boy asks, “Are you here to help? Mama said that — said they found someone who was finally going to fix me.”
Sam thinks the ones that don’t know they’re dead are the hardest, the way they can’t help replaying their lives over and over, unknowingly stuck. There’s always the moment where they look at him, confused, before they burn up, forced to let go.
They’re scarier, too, in some ways — they’re unpredictable, you never know what they’ll do and they — they don’t either. Sometimes they’re just as scared as Sam is.
He keeps those thoughts far away from Dad and Dean, though. If they found out, best case, they’d laugh him off; worst case, Dad’d make him go on every hunt for a month, or ’til he learned to stop caring so damn much.
There’s a thud from downstairs, the obvious sound of something toppling from a shelf, and Sam freezes, fear chilling him as the boy’s head snaps up, staring out the open doorway.
“Yes,” Sam nearly yells, stepping forward and capturing the ghost’s attention. He’s getting desperate quick — it’ll be easier for everybody if it just stays here, with Sam, while Dad and Dean work on finding what’s keeping it here. “We’re here to help. Or — or my dad is. At least.”
The tightness is Sam’s chest slowly loosens as the ghost’s body does the same, its legs stretching out, childlike. “Oh,” the boy breathes, a light shining in his eyes. Sam tries to smile, but all he can see in them is Dad’s zippo, the flame dancing and the silver glinting. “Oh, Mama was right.” The ghost pushes itself to its feet, inching closer, and Sam forces himself to stay still, makes his gun stay tucked behind his thigh.
“Yeah.” He’s still trying to smile. “Yeah, she was.”
The ghost is only a few feet away, now, close enough that Sam can feel the cold it leaks into the air around it. “Do you want to see?”
It feels like something drops out beneath him, his stomach swooping. “See?” His head is spinning — ghosts like this are unpredictable, they loop and loop and they can’t ever pull away, stuck around the sun that is their death.
The ghost laughs, not minding. “How we pray! We should thank Him. For your Dad.”
When Sam was ten, Dean wasn’t around a whole lot. Dad figured Sam’d adjusted enough and started taking Dean with him for longer and longer. Dean didn’t seem to mind, so Sam tried not to either, but whenever he was with him, Sam would show him every new bug he caught, desperately caught in tiny hands. Dean used to make fun of him for it, ask him how he was ever gonna kill monsters if he couldn’t kill a damn bug, but he’d still open the door so Sam could slip them outside, which Sam decided mattered more, in the end.
It’s what’s happening here, too — a lonely child that’s a ghost is still a lonely child, waiting for someone who will listen, and he’s given Sam a chance. Sam can’t do much, but maybe he can do this.
“Yeah.” The word sticks in his throat, almost too heavy to force out. If it was up to Dad, Sam would’ve shot it by now. Would’ve watched it scream and hiss and disappear. Dad’s not here though; it’s just Sam. Just Sam and the ghost. “Yeah. We should.”
The boy grins and Sam crouches slowly, his eyes locked on the ghost that rushes past him, cold air streaming off. He sets his gun down, the barrel barely making a sound, and straightens. The boy is kneeling next to the old bed frame, crooked and broken and mattress-less, staring at him with bright eyes — waiting. Waiting for him.
Sam’s no stranger to prayer. Sam and prayer kneel next to the tub in motel bathrooms together, sleep restlessly when Dean and Dad are gone and don’t call for days, sit in warm church pews when Sam can’t stand to be alone any longer. So Sam’s prepared, but he isn’t — he isn’t ready.
Each step closer feels like the wood might dissolve beneath him, burst into dust that clings to the folds in his clothes and skin, but it just keeps on holding and the boy just keeps on waiting. When he looks hard enough, he thinks he can see right through it, straight to the peeling wallpaper behind him. When he glances away, he think he can hear the echo of Dean’s boots, bouncing off the walls.
Sam settles down next to the bed, knees digging into the hard floor, not quite touching the ghost next to him. His breath is tight in his chest, his hands trembling as he looks to the side. The ghost is — it’s right there, close enough that Sam could reach out and put his hand right through him, close enough to the thing that can explode his lungs with a touch.
He looks at the ghost, though — the boy — and he looks at the gun and he — he can’t. Dad can burn whatever he wants and Dean can watch but Sam can’t shoot it, won't hurt it any more than he has to.
Clasping his hands together, the boy lifts his arms and rests his elbows on air, where the mattress must’ve been, when he was alive. Sam copies him, and tries to imagine the room as it used to be, before death creeped in and it fell apart with the family.
The boy closes his eyes, but Sam keeps staring at his face, unridged and peaceful. It’s slightly upturned, pointed towards the ceiling, and so are his lips and — for a moment — he is so blindingly young — young and dead and praying.
Sam’s stomach twists, nausea sweeping through him, rising in his throat, but he doesn’t turn away, just makes himself keep watching. Hands folded, elbows up, eyes on the ghost.
“Our Father,” he says, and Sam’s hands tighten, bones grounding against each other, “who art in Heaven. Hallowed by Thy Name.” Sam thinks he might start screaming, something in his chest keeps building and building, squeezing out all the air, but he knows if he starts he might not ever stop. Dad’ll find it soon, he thinks. “Thy Kingdom come.” He doesn’t — is it hope or dread? — “Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” This is the job — this is his job; keep the ghost distracted, save people. This is his job. “Give us this day —” Its voice drops out, its eyes flying open, and there’s something in Sam that’s a little too close to relief. “I-I don’t —” Their eyes meet. “Sam?”
Then the ghost is burning and Sam is falling backwards, his hands catching him, and he’s scrambling away and it’s still screaming —
And then he’s gone. There’s nothing left but Sam and the cracked bed frame and the ripped curtains.
Sam breathes out, harsh and shaky, before he pushes himself to his feet, stumbling slightly. Standing, he can see new patches on the wood, dark and charred, and it’s — it’s where the boy’s knees have burned into the wood, from his last moments. From the fire that Dad started. His eyes start to sting, his vision blurring, but he blinks back the tears as he memorizes the shapes, the last remnants of the boy.
“Sammy? Sam?” It’s not loud, but it’s undeniably Dean, accompanied by his pounding footsteps, as he sprints closer. Sam tears his gaze away and grabs his gun, straightening just as Dean appears in the doorway, eyes darting everywhere. “Sammy,” he says, with notes of relief and fear, and Sam doesn’t correct him. “We heard screaming — you good?”
“The ghost,” Sam replies, his voice rusty and crackling. He’s distant — he can still feel the wood under his fingertips as he crawled backwards, he can still see the brightness of the fire. “It was the ghost burning up. Going away.”
The lingering tension drains out of Dean and he strides towards Sam, grinning wide, victorious. Sam tries, but it feels wrong — wrong to be happy, wrong to be here — all he can see is the boy’s face when he asked him to pray. Unaware. Hopeful. And Sam can’t shoot it but he can’t help it either. It leaves him wondering — thinking, what’s he really for then?
“We should go tell Dad we got it.”
“We got it,” Sam says, ‘cause that’s what he’s supposed to. Dean knocks him on the shoulder, playful in the way he is after they kill something, and Sam sways, feels like he might tip over and fall straight through the floor.
Dean is still smiling. “Good job, Sammy.” And despite himself — despite it all — warmth still creeps into his bones at the words, praise from his brother making it a little bit easier to breathe. “Let’s go.”
Sam looks back at the boy’s knees, digs his palms into his eyes, and follows his brother.