What was it like, Jesse asks, like it’s really so easy to explain.
Claire misses Ben; Ben never asked questions, never pushed. She hugs her knees. Her mind forms the words chained to a comet but her lips say, Dizzying. Like I was orbiting myself, only I was someone else, watching my body as I—
Him, Jesse reminds her. He did it.
Claire smiles, but it’s a hollow expression, straight from that place Castiel carved out in her to make room for himself. Right, she says, of course, I know that.
She closes her eyes and sees stars.
(I’m sorry that I’m not sorry. I couldn’t stop watching this video, and this happened…)
Even after he gives her back the coat, she still goes outside on the worst nights, the ones with lightning splitting the sky open and letting rain pour down on everything below. She shivers with the thunder, eyes on the clouds, because this is as close as she can get to what it felt like. It helps her feel close to her father…at least that’s what she tells herself.
Claire stands and stares until she’s soaked through, until Ben wakes up and realizes she’s missing. Even then he has to drag her back inside.
Power rushes up through him, slick and hot, starting where the tips of his toes brush the filth on the floor and winding right up to his cracked ribs; his dislocated shoulders; his wrists, skin still stinging and smoking under their silver bindings. The smell of sulfur is so strong and sudden it’s like a physical blow, and all at once Jesse can breathe again, he has strength again. What’s left of his sanity succumbs to the sheer power suddenly open to him. All he wants—all he can even think to comprehend—is to get out.
With an inhuman snarl rising in the back of his throat, the heat boiling his blood tears out of him—the whole room feels hot, too hot—flames leap to life in the once-dark corners, the blaze snaking up the walls, devouring the rotted wood like kindling. The traps break one by one, paint peeling away from the walls, wood cracking beneath the heat and the pressure. The hunters are screaming now, pleading with him, and it’s music to the demon’s ears; he bares his teeth in a brutal echo of a smile, and in one sharp movement, yanks his wrists down in front of him. The melting silver falls to pieces around him, and smoldering chunks of the roof rain down on his head.
His shoulders pop back into place. Cinders slap hot against his skin as he stumbles out, the stench of sulfur and burning flesh clinging to his skin even as the cool night air rolls over him. The hunters inside are still screaming, and Jesse feels the first faint flicker of horror. He breaks into a run, and doesn’t stop until the sound of screaming is far behind him.
![Companion pieces to [link] and [link]Read backward, the titles (sort of) read:Lightning splits the sky, and I don’t know where I am—my sanity succumbsBen Braeden crawling out of his (well-protected) grave, because you’re not a Winchester without coming back from the dead at least once.
STOCK (I had the hardest fucking time finding good stock for this, I went through five different guys. B|)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1tmvppkoB1rp8t6jo1_1280.jpg)
