all duct tape and safety pins inside

Title: Idumea - Part I of III
Author: hopeintheashes
Rating: PG-13 for language and content; see warnings
Genre/pairing: Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean; also featuring John, Pastor Jim, the little girl, and the woman.
Word count: 2,500 out of 8,000
Summary: Blood has a gravity that’s stronger than the sun’s; a tether that keeps pulling him back. Set very early in Season 2 and Pre-Series. Featuring Sam with visions and Dean in mourning. On the whole, it's best classified as hurt!Sam, but they're both in pretty rough shape.
Warning: In later parts; highlight to read. (skip) Suicidal ideation, including in a child.
Disclaimer: These boys? Definitely not mine.
A/N: This one is a long time coming. I wrote the first few words in the middle of the night 18 months ago, without any idea of where it was going, and I ended up getting to write some scenes that I've been thinking about for a long time, like Sam leaving for Stanford. Many thanks to kat_of_rafters for her beta skills and encouragement, and for applying logic (sometimes of the grammatical variety) to the proceedings.
Music Note: Idumea is the name of one of my favorite hymns. Here's the shape-note version that Sam hears, and here's a choral arrangement. Words under the cut.

Also available on AO3.

(These days it’s a little girl, all haunted eyes and dark hair falling across her face. He has to save her, but he doesn't know how.)