Fic: The Other Side of the Mystery Spot
Hey look, I finally wrote a fic! And it's het so no one will read it, woe. ;_; But Dean/Tessa is awesome and so is Mystery Spot so I wrote it anyway.
Title: The Other Side of the Mystery Spot
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre: angst and humor in roughly equal balance (much like the episode)
Pairing(s): Dean/Tessa
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~4800
Notes: Muchos gracias to tiptoe39 for the thorough beta, and to my Twitter friends for encouraging my rarepair leanings.
Summary: Dean dies over and over on that Tuesday, and every time Tessa is there. It starts to get a little annoying.
She is waiting for him when he dies.
One moment he is lying bleeding on the floor; the next, he is standing beside her, full of confusion and disbelief.
"What the hell--" he says, then he sees her.
"Hello, Dean," Tessa says.
She is wearing the same face, out of some strange kind of nostalgia, or a desire to be recognized for once in her long existence. Now that he's dead, all the memories of his time behind the veil are open to him once again, but it still takes him a moment -- not that time matters here -- to remember her.
"Tessa," he says, finally.
"I wish I could say it's good to see you again, Dean."
"No. No way am I dead again." Dean shakes his head. Tessa doesn't answer; she just turns her head to look at Sam, who is crying and cradling Dean's body. "No, fuck you. I'm not dead."
Dean walks over to Sam, tries to touch his shoulder. "Sam. I'm here. Like last time, remember? You get me help, I'll snap back in there."
Tessa would be rolling her eyes by now, but she's had thousands of years to become accustomed to human denial and stubbornness.
And anger. Dean turns on her like she's somehow responsible for this, crowding into her personal space. (If she had any. Death is as close as a lover to humanity.) "This is bullshit and you know it. I was supposed to have a year!"
"Dean, by now you should understand there's no such thing as 'supposed to'."
"No. Fuck you and your destiny crap. If I get told I have one year to live, I should fucking get that year."
Tessa feels compassion for him. She is compassion. She has comforted millions upon millions of souls who thought they were owed more time. She opens her mouth to give what comfort she can when Dean suddenly disappears with a loud "pop".
Tessa stares at the place where he was standing. Sam is gone too. The room is empty, as if nothing happened.
That was...unexpected.
Dean is alive, she can feel him. With a thought she is there in his motel room, where he is awake and getting dressed and mocking Sam. Alive, and he looks likely to remain that way.
She watches for a moment, taking pleasure in Dean's teasing joy. She hadn't been lying when they met before; he is very cute.
He doesn't spontaneously drop dead though, which makes whatever odd things that are happening here very much Not Her Problem. She shouldn't even really be here to start with -- should have let the local reaper deal with it in the first place -- but Tessa had some strange lingering fondness for Dean that made her want to shepherd him herself.
She steps away, intending to reappear in Saigon, but finds herself merely one foot to the left in that same dingy motel room. She tries again, and cannot move. She is stuck here.
Tessa doesn't feel much surprise; it is the Winchesters after all. At least being trapped by some unknown force has so far been a more pleasant experience than being possessed by a demon.
She can still control the flow of time, thankfully, so she lets it pass by quickly as she follows Dean and Sam to a diner and through their breakfast. She slows it down briefly when their food arrives; she's never really spent much time watching humans eat. Usually she only sees the few seconds before they choke to death.
After a minute she speeds it up again. Do all humans chew like that? Disgusting.
She skims over the surface of time, walking down the street with him and Sam, and then suddenly Dean is with her again.
Over the yelling and the car horns, Dean shouts, "Okay, what the hell?"
"Dean," Tessa is nothing if not a professional, so she tries again. "This is--"
"First I'm alive, then I'm dead and suddenly I remember you, then I'm alive again and I don't remember anything, now I'm dead again?" He reels back, suddenly. "Wait, am I a spirit? A death echo or something? Reliving my death over again?"
"You're a spirit until you come with me and move on," Tessa offers, trying to move this along. She's pretty sure Dean's the cause of her problems, so she'd like to just reap him and get out of here.
"Yeah, well that ain't gonna hap-- *POP*"
And Dean's gone again, and the street is empty in the early morning light.
Tessa stares. "What the hell."
She finds Dean again, making the same jokes at Sam in the same motel room as before, as if the whole day has started over. She follows along in fast-forward again. It takes forever -- humans are so slow -- and she's just trying to get to the good bit.
When the piano falls she starts to think maybe someone is fucking with her.
Dean's come to the same conclusion. "Is this you? Are you the one doing this? Because this is fucking sick."
"It isn't me, Dean."
"Really? Because whenever I'm dying it seems like you're always hanging around."
"That's because I'm a reaper, Dean," Tessa snaps. Eternal compassion has its limits. "I'm stuck here too, you know."
That surprises him. "You are?"
"Someone has to separate your sorry soul from its meatsuit every time you die doing something stupid." She turns away, tries to leave. Can't.
Dean holds up his hands. "Whoa, touchy. Okay, I'm sorry."
Tessa sits down on the curb next to the splattered remains of Dean and the Steinway. After a flinching look at the debris, Dean sits next to her.
"So," Dean says. "You're stuck too."
Tessa nods, not looking at him. It's kind of embarrassing. She's supposed to be second only to Death himself, but whenever Dean's around this kind of crap just seems to keep happening.
"So what could be powerful enough to make Sam live in a time loop, kill me over and over then bring me back, and keep a reaper as a pet?"
"I don't know," Tessa admits. A year ago she'd have said "nothing", but that was before she was a demon's hand puppet.
"Maybe it's--*POP*"
And she's alone again, and it's morning. She sighs and kicks at a pebble in the gutter.
She doesn't bother following Dean this time; she has a feeling he'll find her anyway. And it's true, because it's not long before Dean pops back to flop ungracefully onto the ground beside her.
"What--"
"You died sitting down, didn't you," Tessa says knowingly.
Dean looks shifty. "Yes."
She raises an eyebrow. "What were you doing?"
"Nothing."
Tessa looks at him with full reaper compassion. "You can't lie to Death, Dean."
"...I choked on a sausage."
She can't help it, she laughs. Dean frowns. "Aren't you supposed to be all, understanding and shit?"
"I do understand you, Dean." She reaches out, lays a hand along his cheek. He allows it, though his eyes are still narrowed in suspicion. "I know you."
He's looking at her honestly now, the way he did in that hospital room, none of his arrogance or jokes or macho posturing.
"You --" he says, and vanishes.
When he reappears, he's naked and covered in soap. "Goddammit!"
Tessa laughs again. "And there we were, having a moment."
"We could be having a moment right now," Dean offers with a leer, waggling his eyebrows. "Do you still think I'm cute?"
Human bodies all look the same to Tessa -- strange physical creations, containers for the even stranger souls within them -- but she knows enough of human men (and of Dean) to respond with a slow exaggerated look down and a shrug. "Eh."
"Hey!" Dean looks down at himself as well. "That's just not nice."
She laughs again as he wipes his hand through his hair and flicks the shampoo lather at her. She can't remember laughing this much before. Or at all. Death is comedy, but reapers aren't really the intended audience.
Dean pops away then, but she's still smiling when he reappears, clothed this time. He died sitting down again, but this time he manages not to fall over.
"You're getting better," she says.
Dean sits beside her on the curb again, but he just looks at her instead of speaking.
"What?" Tessa asks eventually.
"You should smile more," Dean touches a finger to her chin. "It suits you."
She pulls away. "Dean."
"I mean it. And it'd probably make people more likely to go with you. Do Grim Reapers have to be so grim?"
"We are what we are." Compassionate, aloof. Inhuman. But right now, sitting next to Dean, wearing this human face and body, she feels almost like one of them.
"Yeah well, try just being you. Pretty girls who smile and say they'll take me to Heaven, I'd get on that train."
"Dean."
It's too late, he's turned on the charm like he's flicking a switch. "Come to think of it, we could be playing Seven Minutes in Heaven right now."
"Dean."
"It's more like Two Minutes in Heaven, with the turnaround time we've been getting, but hey, with me you only need two minutes," he says with a wink.
"You know I don't really look like this. This is just how you like to think of me."
"Well, right now I'd like to think of you with your top off."
He's still grinning, but Tessa does know him. Knows him better than anyone alive, has held his soul in her hands. And she knows this bitter, shielding humor, this grasping reach for connection. She isn't smiling anymore. "Dean."
The grin fades. He looks down, away. "Don't."
"It's only natural--"
"Don't, okay? I know. I just -- this is just something I do. Forget it. I didn't mean anything by it."
He won't look at her.
"It's okay to be scared, Dean." It's her turn to touch his chin, turn him towards her. "There's nothing to be ashamed of."
His eyes are closed tightly but he can't hide from her. "I'm not--"
"It's a very human thing, Dean."
"I just -- it's not me, it's Sam, you know? He has to watch me die, but I get to watch him. I forget all this while I'm alive, I can't tell him I'm okay, and then I'm dead and he's falling apart on me. And what's he going to do when it happens for real? Even if we fix this I've got a few months at most, and then Sam--"
He looks at her now, tears hanging unshed. "What am I doing to him?"
"You thought you were doing the right thing, Dean."
"Yeah, well, good intentions." He wipes roughly at his eyes. "Shit. Sorry."
There is nothing to be sorry for, but Tessa knows not to say it.
Dean manages to pull up part of a smile from somewhere. "And sorry about earlier. I'm not usually that much of a dog."
"Yes, you are," Tessa says, looking at him with wry affection. "Like I said, I know you."
There's something almost like gratitude in his eyes when he answers, "Yeah. Yeah, you do."
Tessa kisses him.
She wasn't quite meaning it the way Dean takes it. Her kiss usually grants peace, helping to pull the soul further from the earth and send it on its way. It's a kiss of benediction, of solace.
Dean Winchester adds tongue.
When her lips touch his he's startled, disbelieving, then his hands come up to cup her head and he deepens the kiss, licks at her lips. She's never quite had this happen before, but she's suddenly curious. She knows humans like a zoologist knows chimps, from the outside, and she wants to know how it all feels. Especially sex. She's picked up enough souls mid-coitus to have wondered what causes all those ridiculous faces. This human body is hers, as much hers as her true form is, so she can feel like a human, and she wasn't lying when she said Dean was cute. So she lets him kiss her.
It's...pleasant. More than pleasant, it's...something is happening to her. She feels lighter, almost tingly, and she's suddenly aware of this body in a way she's never been before. She tilts her head for more, Dean follows, and she's vaguely aware of his hands stroking up her back, her hands threading into the short soft hair on the back of his head --
*POP*
"Oh, for the love of--"
Tessa sits back. This is getting ridiculous. A thought and time jumps forward.
Dean pops back into place with a grin. "So, where were we?"
She considers him for a second, then shrugs. She liked what they were doing before, she's curious for more, and how else are they going to pass the time?
"Awesome," Dean manages to say before she pulls him back in for another kiss.
He gets a hand under her shirt before he pops away again.
After five more deaths, they've got Tessa's top off. After eight more they've reached third base, with a break to relocate from the curb to the more comfortable motel room couch. For Tessa it's a very strange stop-and-go way of doing things that she finds frustrating. She can't imagine what it must be like for Dean.
If she didn't know better she'd think he was deliberately trying to die in the shower just so he'd show up to her naked.
She likes it though. Dean's good at this, and he knows it, and he wants to show her a good time while he can. There's something a little bit desperate in the way he kisses her, in the way his hands work her, like he's afraid he won't have time.
She wants to tell him it's okay, that this is for him. And it is. But it's for her too, because she's gone past curious into interested, excited, eager. Reaching for something, something just out of reach. She's almost there, panting, when Dean disappears again.
"Damn it!" she yells in frustration.
"Did you miss me?" he grins when he reappears.
"Pants off," she says, grabbing him while he laughs.
It's probably an abuse of her reaper powers, but she was granted the ability to slow time, and by God she's going to use it. She stretches out the moment, keeping Dean here with her just long enough, long enough to ---
She's never felt anything like it. She loses her grip on time but it stops around her anyway. It's like her body is made of electricity, waves of heat and something else, something that feels almost like the peace and warmth she feels when she takes a soul, the faint echo of a Heaven that she will never be able to see.
When she opens her eyes, Dean is lying next to her, smiling and sweating.
"Was it good for you too, baby?" he grins, and disappears.
She's still lying there when he reappears. He's clothed again, but she isn't, and he sits on the edge of the couch beside her and strokes her bare stomach.
"That was..." Tessa says, once she has her breath back. She's still shuddering every time his hand traces her belly button. "I didn't know it was like that."
"They call it 'the little death', you know," Dean says, amused. "It's supposed to feel like dying."
"Is that what dying feels like to humans?" Tessa frowns thoughtfully. "Why are you all so unhappy about it, then?"
Dean laughs. "As someone who has died more times in more ways than anyone on earth, I can personally vouch for the fact that dying does not feel like an orgasm."
He suddenly laughs again and Tessa stares at him. "What?"
"No, sorry, I just had this mental image of these little tiny orgasm reapers, with little tiny scythes shaped like..." he sees the expression on her face, trails off. "Never mind."
She lies back, looking at the ceiling. She's never felt quite so corporeal before, the echoing tingles still rippling through her. She stretches languidly, feels the scrape of the couch material on her back, Dean's hand heavy and warm on her hip.
It would be pleasant to stay here forever, relaxing while Dean dies and resurrects next to her, but this isn't a vacation. She should really start doing her job.
She sighs, and reforms her thoughts. Her clothing reappears.
Dean pulls his hand back. "No round two, huh?"
She puts her hands to his cheeks, pulls him down, kisses him. "Thank you, Dean."
He grins, wide and goofy and a bit smug. "You're welcome, ma'am. I aim to please."
Then he pops away again. When he returns, Tessa is sitting on the couch, waiting.
Dean frowns. "You've got your reaper face on again."
"Dean. Don't you think we should think about how to stop this? Or do you want to keep dying forever?"
"I don't know, it's been pretty fun so far," he tries with a grin, but she is immovable and he turns serious. "Yeah. Sammy's about to lose it down there."
He sits next to her, hip to hip, staring at the dingy motel wall. "So what do we do?"
Nothing, it turns out. They work out fairly quickly that it must be a Trickster, an unusually powerful one. The ability to manipulate reality and trap a reaper like this can only come from a god, and in Dean's opinion "this seems like that dick's style," particularly the piano. But Tessa can't find any trace of a pagan presence and Dean can't find a way to warn Sam during his brief stints among the living, so they end up no closer to getting out of the loop than when they started.
So they get bored.
Dean teaches Tessa to play chess, because she's curious after being challenged to more chess matches than Kasparov by all the poor fools who think Death can be bargained with. Neither of them are convinced that Dean remembered all the rules correctly, which is fine with Tessa because she wins anyway. They also play Battleship because it makes Dean laugh for some reason. They do end up having Round 2 (and 3 and what Tessa argues should not count as 4) in between chess matches, lying idly on Dean's motel bed afterwards, talking about nothing in particular. Dean pops in and out at irregular intervals, which Tessa bears with infinite, eternal patience except when the timing is particularly inconvenient (see also: Round 4).
Tessa is contemplating her next move in their rematch game -- her knight is poised to devastate Dean's offense -- when Dean pops back with a strange look on his face.
"Dean?" she asks
"I think Sam's figured it out," he says. "Something came up about just deserts and he got that look on his face."
It's good news, but Dean still looks troubled. She stands up, puts a hand on his arm. "This is a good thing, Dean."
He shakes his head. "I'm not so sure. This thing is dangerous, Tessa -- it's been killing me for fun, what's it going to do to Sam? Dammit, I wish I could just remember, so I could help him."
"Sam has to do this alone," Tessa says. "It's his fight now."
Dean shakes her off. "Yeah, you tried that one before -- your fight's over, time to lay down and die. Screw that."
"That's not what I meant. Not everything has to fall on your shoulders. You have to trust your brother, Dean."
"I do. Sammy's a good kid, he's smart, but--"
"You want to protect him. I know. It's hard. But you have to let him fight his own battles."
"And what if he loses?"
"Then he loses."
Dean punches an insubstantial fist through the wall and sinks down onto the couch. "This sucks."
"It does," Tessa agrees, sitting next to him.
Dean gets a hint of a smile at that. "At least you get that now."
"I do." She kisses him again, and this time he lets her make it about peace. "Good luck."
He vanishes. Tessa waits. Either Dean will return as before, or the loop will be broken. Or perhaps Dean will return with Sam and she will have a much harder job on her hands.
She doesn't expect the lurch in the world.
Time skids, skips over itself, and suddenly it's a different day. The motel room has reset to morning, but she isn't watching Dean lace his boots this time. He's brushing his teeth. The loop is broken.
She feels oddly disappointed. It may have been unpleasant for Dean and Sam, but she was enjoying the change in her routine.
She should return to work, clearly, but it won't hurt anything if she stays a little longer. She watches Dean and Sam go about their morning business: packing, dressing, hugging.
She's about to leave when there's a gunshot and Dean's with her again.
"Son of a bitch!"
Tessa frowns. "I thought you fixed it."
"We did! That fucking Trickster. Great, now it's going to be Wednesday over and over again for the next thousand years." Dean kicks at a chair; his foot passes through it. "I swear I am going to gank that mother the next time I see him, amnesia or no amnesia."
Tessa sighs. "I'll re-create the chess set."
"Wait, can't you take him out? Just a little tap on the shoulder from your friendly reaper. We got his name and everything, or the name of the guy he's pretending to be."
"Sorry, Dean. It doesn't work that way."
Dean sighs, blowing out the last of his anger. "I figured."
They stand there for a minute, lost in their own thoughts. Tessa, who had minutes ago been regretting the loss of her vacation, is now feeling not too pleased at the prospect of being stuck here for another endless day.
After a couple of minutes, Dean says, "Wait, shouldn't I be alive again?"
Tessa steps outside. Sam is cradling Dean's body again and time is still marching on as it should. She slides time forward; now there are police cars. There's never been time for police cars before.
She steps back into the motel room where Dean is waiting with open anxiety. "Well?"
"I don't know. Time hasn't restarted."
Dean starts pacing. "Maybe the Trickster's just rubbing it in. Making Sam suffer before the loop restarts."
"Maybe."
They wait. They keep waiting, while the cops take Dean's body away, while Sam steals it, while he salts and burns it and drives away. While he calls Bobby, but can't get the words out to tell him what happened. While he sits for hours in a motel room, staring at the empty second bed.
They stay with Sam as he goes from state to state, hunting like it's the end of the world. Dean stays with Tessa except when he's following Sam on hunts. He can't help Sam and he hates it, but he can't stay away.
Eventually, Dean says, "This is it, isn't it. This is the big one."
"I think so, Dean. I'm sorry."
And she is. She always is, for all of the souls she reaps, but this feels different.
They're with Sam at a diner, watching him eating mechanically like he can't even taste his food. Dean sits across from him in the booth, almost like he were alive except there's no coffee or pie in front of him. Tessa sits beside Dean, her hand clasping his under the table.
He doesn't look at her, just watches Sam with a sad resignation that Tessa never thought she'd see in his eyes. "I didn't think it would be like this."
"No one ever does."
"I don't want to go to Hell, Tessa."
There is nothing she can say to that.
"I know, I made my bed and I have to lie in it, and I don't regret saving Sam, not for one second. But..." he turns to her now, so lost and pleading, just like in that hospital room so long ago. "Can't you do something? Send me somewhere better?"
"I can't, Dean. I'm sorry." And she is. She would break every rule there is to help him if she could, but this isn't a rule. It's just the way things are.
"Is there even anywhere better? Or is Heaven nothing but more bullshit -- everyone really goes to Hell, and I'm just the unlucky SOB who knows it in advance?"
She doesn't answer. This is a rule that she understands, because knowing that Heaven is real will only make Hell harder for Dean to bear.
"Right. No spoiling the surprise," Dean laughs bitterly. "I guess I should have expected that."
He's angry at her, but he still doesn't release her hand. She squeezes gently. "It's time to go, Dean."
"What if I say no?" he asks, desperate now. "What if I just stay here?"
"You already made that choice, Dean," is all she says. She doesn't mention the hellhounds, equally vicious to the living and the dead.
He looks at Sam one more time, watching him eat stiffly with his eyes fixed to the grimy tabletop. "What's going to happen to Sam? Is he going to be this fucked up forever?"
"I don't know, Dean."
"If he...if something happens to him, will you...can you be the one he sees? Can you tell him I'm sorry?"
She nods. "I will."
"And...thanks, Tessa. For everything. You're not half-bad, for a reaper."
"You're not so bad yourself, Dean. For a human."
He tries to smile, but it crumbles. He clenches his eyes shut. "Shit."
"It's okay." She reaches for him, wraps him in her arms. "It's all right, Dean."
He hides his face in her hair, his breath hot against her neck. His arms come up around her, holding tight.
Then she's holding him even closer, her true form cradling his soul, giving him one last bright and warm and loving embrace before he fades, slides from her tightening grip, drops away from her into the darkness where she can never follow.
Her arms are empty.
She doesn't move on. Sam abandons his half-eaten meal, tosses money on the table, leaves. She doesn't follow him. She's granted so many souls their peace, shepherded so many to the other side, she doesn't understand why this is different, why Dean is different. Why she feels so hollow.
Dean taught her chess and sex and Battleship, and apparently grief as well.
She can tell she's free now, but she doesn't return to her duties just yet. There are other reapers. Right now all she wants is to sit here in silence.
"He's coming back, you know."
Suddenly there's someone in the booth across from her. Wearing a human form on top of a pagan god on top of blinding light and awe: the lost one, the archangel Gabriel, missing for so many long years.
He's lounging casually, one arm draped along the back of the booth, the other hand playing with the salt shaker. "This isn't the big one. And the big one isn't even the big one. He's got at least, let's see, three more deaths coming. At least."
"Gabriel. This is your idea of a joke?"
"More like a lesson. But yeah, all me. You like it?"
She can barely get the word out through her anger. "Why?"
"Because it's fun. And because sometimes it's the only way to make people listen. Things are coming to an end, for all of us."
"So you're playing at being a Trickster, teaching lessons in blood. I thought better of you than that." She tilts her head. "Actually, I thought you were dead."
He smirks. "Haven't reaped me yet, sweetheart."
"But I will." She leans forward across the table, speaking low and threatening. "Archangels aren't immortal, Gabriel. Your time is coming. I can see it. And I will be the one waiting for you in the end."
The smile falls off his face. "Got to catch me first," he says, and he disappears with a snap of his fingers.
She sits back. Gabriel, alive and on earth and actively involved in something, though she isn't sure what. There's a shadow on the horizon, a shadow deeper than she's ever seen. Things are coming to an end, he said.
Time flows oddly around her. She can see the passage of months, then a snap back and it's that Wednesday again, and she's in that same motel room where she spent so many hours with Dean.
Dean, who is alive and brushing his teeth. Alive.
For now. She can see that his time is coming, sooner than Gabriel's, sooner than Sam's, but the time is coming for all of them. For her as well, maybe. Things are all coming to an end.
None of that is her job. She doesn't know what will happen, or when, and she doesn't care to know. All she knows is that Dean will fall again, before the end, and Tessa will be there to catch him.
And for now, she has a job to do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Title: The Other Side of the Mystery Spot
Fandom: Supernatural
Genre: angst and humor in roughly equal balance (much like the episode)
Pairing(s): Dean/Tessa
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~4800
Notes: Muchos gracias to tiptoe39 for the thorough beta, and to my Twitter friends for encouraging my rarepair leanings.
Summary: Dean dies over and over on that Tuesday, and every time Tessa is there. It starts to get a little annoying.
She is waiting for him when he dies.
One moment he is lying bleeding on the floor; the next, he is standing beside her, full of confusion and disbelief.
"What the hell--" he says, then he sees her.
"Hello, Dean," Tessa says.
She is wearing the same face, out of some strange kind of nostalgia, or a desire to be recognized for once in her long existence. Now that he's dead, all the memories of his time behind the veil are open to him once again, but it still takes him a moment -- not that time matters here -- to remember her.
"Tessa," he says, finally.
"I wish I could say it's good to see you again, Dean."
"No. No way am I dead again." Dean shakes his head. Tessa doesn't answer; she just turns her head to look at Sam, who is crying and cradling Dean's body. "No, fuck you. I'm not dead."
Dean walks over to Sam, tries to touch his shoulder. "Sam. I'm here. Like last time, remember? You get me help, I'll snap back in there."
Tessa would be rolling her eyes by now, but she's had thousands of years to become accustomed to human denial and stubbornness.
And anger. Dean turns on her like she's somehow responsible for this, crowding into her personal space. (If she had any. Death is as close as a lover to humanity.) "This is bullshit and you know it. I was supposed to have a year!"
"Dean, by now you should understand there's no such thing as 'supposed to'."
"No. Fuck you and your destiny crap. If I get told I have one year to live, I should fucking get that year."
Tessa feels compassion for him. She is compassion. She has comforted millions upon millions of souls who thought they were owed more time. She opens her mouth to give what comfort she can when Dean suddenly disappears with a loud "pop".
Tessa stares at the place where he was standing. Sam is gone too. The room is empty, as if nothing happened.
That was...unexpected.
Dean is alive, she can feel him. With a thought she is there in his motel room, where he is awake and getting dressed and mocking Sam. Alive, and he looks likely to remain that way.
She watches for a moment, taking pleasure in Dean's teasing joy. She hadn't been lying when they met before; he is very cute.
He doesn't spontaneously drop dead though, which makes whatever odd things that are happening here very much Not Her Problem. She shouldn't even really be here to start with -- should have let the local reaper deal with it in the first place -- but Tessa had some strange lingering fondness for Dean that made her want to shepherd him herself.
She steps away, intending to reappear in Saigon, but finds herself merely one foot to the left in that same dingy motel room. She tries again, and cannot move. She is stuck here.
Tessa doesn't feel much surprise; it is the Winchesters after all. At least being trapped by some unknown force has so far been a more pleasant experience than being possessed by a demon.
She can still control the flow of time, thankfully, so she lets it pass by quickly as she follows Dean and Sam to a diner and through their breakfast. She slows it down briefly when their food arrives; she's never really spent much time watching humans eat. Usually she only sees the few seconds before they choke to death.
After a minute she speeds it up again. Do all humans chew like that? Disgusting.
She skims over the surface of time, walking down the street with him and Sam, and then suddenly Dean is with her again.
Over the yelling and the car horns, Dean shouts, "Okay, what the hell?"
"Dean," Tessa is nothing if not a professional, so she tries again. "This is--"
"First I'm alive, then I'm dead and suddenly I remember you, then I'm alive again and I don't remember anything, now I'm dead again?" He reels back, suddenly. "Wait, am I a spirit? A death echo or something? Reliving my death over again?"
"You're a spirit until you come with me and move on," Tessa offers, trying to move this along. She's pretty sure Dean's the cause of her problems, so she'd like to just reap him and get out of here.
"Yeah, well that ain't gonna hap-- *POP*"
And Dean's gone again, and the street is empty in the early morning light.
Tessa stares. "What the hell."
She finds Dean again, making the same jokes at Sam in the same motel room as before, as if the whole day has started over. She follows along in fast-forward again. It takes forever -- humans are so slow -- and she's just trying to get to the good bit.
When the piano falls she starts to think maybe someone is fucking with her.
Dean's come to the same conclusion. "Is this you? Are you the one doing this? Because this is fucking sick."
"It isn't me, Dean."
"Really? Because whenever I'm dying it seems like you're always hanging around."
"That's because I'm a reaper, Dean," Tessa snaps. Eternal compassion has its limits. "I'm stuck here too, you know."
That surprises him. "You are?"
"Someone has to separate your sorry soul from its meatsuit every time you die doing something stupid." She turns away, tries to leave. Can't.
Dean holds up his hands. "Whoa, touchy. Okay, I'm sorry."
Tessa sits down on the curb next to the splattered remains of Dean and the Steinway. After a flinching look at the debris, Dean sits next to her.
"So," Dean says. "You're stuck too."
Tessa nods, not looking at him. It's kind of embarrassing. She's supposed to be second only to Death himself, but whenever Dean's around this kind of crap just seems to keep happening.
"So what could be powerful enough to make Sam live in a time loop, kill me over and over then bring me back, and keep a reaper as a pet?"
"I don't know," Tessa admits. A year ago she'd have said "nothing", but that was before she was a demon's hand puppet.
"Maybe it's--*POP*"
And she's alone again, and it's morning. She sighs and kicks at a pebble in the gutter.
She doesn't bother following Dean this time; she has a feeling he'll find her anyway. And it's true, because it's not long before Dean pops back to flop ungracefully onto the ground beside her.
"What--"
"You died sitting down, didn't you," Tessa says knowingly.
Dean looks shifty. "Yes."
She raises an eyebrow. "What were you doing?"
"Nothing."
Tessa looks at him with full reaper compassion. "You can't lie to Death, Dean."
"...I choked on a sausage."
She can't help it, she laughs. Dean frowns. "Aren't you supposed to be all, understanding and shit?"
"I do understand you, Dean." She reaches out, lays a hand along his cheek. He allows it, though his eyes are still narrowed in suspicion. "I know you."
He's looking at her honestly now, the way he did in that hospital room, none of his arrogance or jokes or macho posturing.
"You --" he says, and vanishes.
When he reappears, he's naked and covered in soap. "Goddammit!"
Tessa laughs again. "And there we were, having a moment."
"We could be having a moment right now," Dean offers with a leer, waggling his eyebrows. "Do you still think I'm cute?"
Human bodies all look the same to Tessa -- strange physical creations, containers for the even stranger souls within them -- but she knows enough of human men (and of Dean) to respond with a slow exaggerated look down and a shrug. "Eh."
"Hey!" Dean looks down at himself as well. "That's just not nice."
She laughs again as he wipes his hand through his hair and flicks the shampoo lather at her. She can't remember laughing this much before. Or at all. Death is comedy, but reapers aren't really the intended audience.
Dean pops away then, but she's still smiling when he reappears, clothed this time. He died sitting down again, but this time he manages not to fall over.
"You're getting better," she says.
Dean sits beside her on the curb again, but he just looks at her instead of speaking.
"What?" Tessa asks eventually.
"You should smile more," Dean touches a finger to her chin. "It suits you."
She pulls away. "Dean."
"I mean it. And it'd probably make people more likely to go with you. Do Grim Reapers have to be so grim?"
"We are what we are." Compassionate, aloof. Inhuman. But right now, sitting next to Dean, wearing this human face and body, she feels almost like one of them.
"Yeah well, try just being you. Pretty girls who smile and say they'll take me to Heaven, I'd get on that train."
"Dean."
It's too late, he's turned on the charm like he's flicking a switch. "Come to think of it, we could be playing Seven Minutes in Heaven right now."
"Dean."
"It's more like Two Minutes in Heaven, with the turnaround time we've been getting, but hey, with me you only need two minutes," he says with a wink.
"You know I don't really look like this. This is just how you like to think of me."
"Well, right now I'd like to think of you with your top off."
He's still grinning, but Tessa does know him. Knows him better than anyone alive, has held his soul in her hands. And she knows this bitter, shielding humor, this grasping reach for connection. She isn't smiling anymore. "Dean."
The grin fades. He looks down, away. "Don't."
"It's only natural--"
"Don't, okay? I know. I just -- this is just something I do. Forget it. I didn't mean anything by it."
He won't look at her.
"It's okay to be scared, Dean." It's her turn to touch his chin, turn him towards her. "There's nothing to be ashamed of."
His eyes are closed tightly but he can't hide from her. "I'm not--"
"It's a very human thing, Dean."
"I just -- it's not me, it's Sam, you know? He has to watch me die, but I get to watch him. I forget all this while I'm alive, I can't tell him I'm okay, and then I'm dead and he's falling apart on me. And what's he going to do when it happens for real? Even if we fix this I've got a few months at most, and then Sam--"
He looks at her now, tears hanging unshed. "What am I doing to him?"
"You thought you were doing the right thing, Dean."
"Yeah, well, good intentions." He wipes roughly at his eyes. "Shit. Sorry."
There is nothing to be sorry for, but Tessa knows not to say it.
Dean manages to pull up part of a smile from somewhere. "And sorry about earlier. I'm not usually that much of a dog."
"Yes, you are," Tessa says, looking at him with wry affection. "Like I said, I know you."
There's something almost like gratitude in his eyes when he answers, "Yeah. Yeah, you do."
Tessa kisses him.
She wasn't quite meaning it the way Dean takes it. Her kiss usually grants peace, helping to pull the soul further from the earth and send it on its way. It's a kiss of benediction, of solace.
Dean Winchester adds tongue.
When her lips touch his he's startled, disbelieving, then his hands come up to cup her head and he deepens the kiss, licks at her lips. She's never quite had this happen before, but she's suddenly curious. She knows humans like a zoologist knows chimps, from the outside, and she wants to know how it all feels. Especially sex. She's picked up enough souls mid-coitus to have wondered what causes all those ridiculous faces. This human body is hers, as much hers as her true form is, so she can feel like a human, and she wasn't lying when she said Dean was cute. So she lets him kiss her.
It's...pleasant. More than pleasant, it's...something is happening to her. She feels lighter, almost tingly, and she's suddenly aware of this body in a way she's never been before. She tilts her head for more, Dean follows, and she's vaguely aware of his hands stroking up her back, her hands threading into the short soft hair on the back of his head --
*POP*
"Oh, for the love of--"
Tessa sits back. This is getting ridiculous. A thought and time jumps forward.
Dean pops back into place with a grin. "So, where were we?"
She considers him for a second, then shrugs. She liked what they were doing before, she's curious for more, and how else are they going to pass the time?
"Awesome," Dean manages to say before she pulls him back in for another kiss.
He gets a hand under her shirt before he pops away again.
After five more deaths, they've got Tessa's top off. After eight more they've reached third base, with a break to relocate from the curb to the more comfortable motel room couch. For Tessa it's a very strange stop-and-go way of doing things that she finds frustrating. She can't imagine what it must be like for Dean.
If she didn't know better she'd think he was deliberately trying to die in the shower just so he'd show up to her naked.
She likes it though. Dean's good at this, and he knows it, and he wants to show her a good time while he can. There's something a little bit desperate in the way he kisses her, in the way his hands work her, like he's afraid he won't have time.
She wants to tell him it's okay, that this is for him. And it is. But it's for her too, because she's gone past curious into interested, excited, eager. Reaching for something, something just out of reach. She's almost there, panting, when Dean disappears again.
"Damn it!" she yells in frustration.
"Did you miss me?" he grins when he reappears.
"Pants off," she says, grabbing him while he laughs.
It's probably an abuse of her reaper powers, but she was granted the ability to slow time, and by God she's going to use it. She stretches out the moment, keeping Dean here with her just long enough, long enough to ---
She's never felt anything like it. She loses her grip on time but it stops around her anyway. It's like her body is made of electricity, waves of heat and something else, something that feels almost like the peace and warmth she feels when she takes a soul, the faint echo of a Heaven that she will never be able to see.
When she opens her eyes, Dean is lying next to her, smiling and sweating.
"Was it good for you too, baby?" he grins, and disappears.
She's still lying there when he reappears. He's clothed again, but she isn't, and he sits on the edge of the couch beside her and strokes her bare stomach.
"That was..." Tessa says, once she has her breath back. She's still shuddering every time his hand traces her belly button. "I didn't know it was like that."
"They call it 'the little death', you know," Dean says, amused. "It's supposed to feel like dying."
"Is that what dying feels like to humans?" Tessa frowns thoughtfully. "Why are you all so unhappy about it, then?"
Dean laughs. "As someone who has died more times in more ways than anyone on earth, I can personally vouch for the fact that dying does not feel like an orgasm."
He suddenly laughs again and Tessa stares at him. "What?"
"No, sorry, I just had this mental image of these little tiny orgasm reapers, with little tiny scythes shaped like..." he sees the expression on her face, trails off. "Never mind."
She lies back, looking at the ceiling. She's never felt quite so corporeal before, the echoing tingles still rippling through her. She stretches languidly, feels the scrape of the couch material on her back, Dean's hand heavy and warm on her hip.
It would be pleasant to stay here forever, relaxing while Dean dies and resurrects next to her, but this isn't a vacation. She should really start doing her job.
She sighs, and reforms her thoughts. Her clothing reappears.
Dean pulls his hand back. "No round two, huh?"
She puts her hands to his cheeks, pulls him down, kisses him. "Thank you, Dean."
He grins, wide and goofy and a bit smug. "You're welcome, ma'am. I aim to please."
Then he pops away again. When he returns, Tessa is sitting on the couch, waiting.
Dean frowns. "You've got your reaper face on again."
"Dean. Don't you think we should think about how to stop this? Or do you want to keep dying forever?"
"I don't know, it's been pretty fun so far," he tries with a grin, but she is immovable and he turns serious. "Yeah. Sammy's about to lose it down there."
He sits next to her, hip to hip, staring at the dingy motel wall. "So what do we do?"
Nothing, it turns out. They work out fairly quickly that it must be a Trickster, an unusually powerful one. The ability to manipulate reality and trap a reaper like this can only come from a god, and in Dean's opinion "this seems like that dick's style," particularly the piano. But Tessa can't find any trace of a pagan presence and Dean can't find a way to warn Sam during his brief stints among the living, so they end up no closer to getting out of the loop than when they started.
So they get bored.
Dean teaches Tessa to play chess, because she's curious after being challenged to more chess matches than Kasparov by all the poor fools who think Death can be bargained with. Neither of them are convinced that Dean remembered all the rules correctly, which is fine with Tessa because she wins anyway. They also play Battleship because it makes Dean laugh for some reason. They do end up having Round 2 (and 3 and what Tessa argues should not count as 4) in between chess matches, lying idly on Dean's motel bed afterwards, talking about nothing in particular. Dean pops in and out at irregular intervals, which Tessa bears with infinite, eternal patience except when the timing is particularly inconvenient (see also: Round 4).
Tessa is contemplating her next move in their rematch game -- her knight is poised to devastate Dean's offense -- when Dean pops back with a strange look on his face.
"Dean?" she asks
"I think Sam's figured it out," he says. "Something came up about just deserts and he got that look on his face."
It's good news, but Dean still looks troubled. She stands up, puts a hand on his arm. "This is a good thing, Dean."
He shakes his head. "I'm not so sure. This thing is dangerous, Tessa -- it's been killing me for fun, what's it going to do to Sam? Dammit, I wish I could just remember, so I could help him."
"Sam has to do this alone," Tessa says. "It's his fight now."
Dean shakes her off. "Yeah, you tried that one before -- your fight's over, time to lay down and die. Screw that."
"That's not what I meant. Not everything has to fall on your shoulders. You have to trust your brother, Dean."
"I do. Sammy's a good kid, he's smart, but--"
"You want to protect him. I know. It's hard. But you have to let him fight his own battles."
"And what if he loses?"
"Then he loses."
Dean punches an insubstantial fist through the wall and sinks down onto the couch. "This sucks."
"It does," Tessa agrees, sitting next to him.
Dean gets a hint of a smile at that. "At least you get that now."
"I do." She kisses him again, and this time he lets her make it about peace. "Good luck."
He vanishes. Tessa waits. Either Dean will return as before, or the loop will be broken. Or perhaps Dean will return with Sam and she will have a much harder job on her hands.
She doesn't expect the lurch in the world.
Time skids, skips over itself, and suddenly it's a different day. The motel room has reset to morning, but she isn't watching Dean lace his boots this time. He's brushing his teeth. The loop is broken.
She feels oddly disappointed. It may have been unpleasant for Dean and Sam, but she was enjoying the change in her routine.
She should return to work, clearly, but it won't hurt anything if she stays a little longer. She watches Dean and Sam go about their morning business: packing, dressing, hugging.
She's about to leave when there's a gunshot and Dean's with her again.
"Son of a bitch!"
Tessa frowns. "I thought you fixed it."
"We did! That fucking Trickster. Great, now it's going to be Wednesday over and over again for the next thousand years." Dean kicks at a chair; his foot passes through it. "I swear I am going to gank that mother the next time I see him, amnesia or no amnesia."
Tessa sighs. "I'll re-create the chess set."
"Wait, can't you take him out? Just a little tap on the shoulder from your friendly reaper. We got his name and everything, or the name of the guy he's pretending to be."
"Sorry, Dean. It doesn't work that way."
Dean sighs, blowing out the last of his anger. "I figured."
They stand there for a minute, lost in their own thoughts. Tessa, who had minutes ago been regretting the loss of her vacation, is now feeling not too pleased at the prospect of being stuck here for another endless day.
After a couple of minutes, Dean says, "Wait, shouldn't I be alive again?"
Tessa steps outside. Sam is cradling Dean's body again and time is still marching on as it should. She slides time forward; now there are police cars. There's never been time for police cars before.
She steps back into the motel room where Dean is waiting with open anxiety. "Well?"
"I don't know. Time hasn't restarted."
Dean starts pacing. "Maybe the Trickster's just rubbing it in. Making Sam suffer before the loop restarts."
"Maybe."
They wait. They keep waiting, while the cops take Dean's body away, while Sam steals it, while he salts and burns it and drives away. While he calls Bobby, but can't get the words out to tell him what happened. While he sits for hours in a motel room, staring at the empty second bed.
They stay with Sam as he goes from state to state, hunting like it's the end of the world. Dean stays with Tessa except when he's following Sam on hunts. He can't help Sam and he hates it, but he can't stay away.
Eventually, Dean says, "This is it, isn't it. This is the big one."
"I think so, Dean. I'm sorry."
And she is. She always is, for all of the souls she reaps, but this feels different.
They're with Sam at a diner, watching him eating mechanically like he can't even taste his food. Dean sits across from him in the booth, almost like he were alive except there's no coffee or pie in front of him. Tessa sits beside Dean, her hand clasping his under the table.
He doesn't look at her, just watches Sam with a sad resignation that Tessa never thought she'd see in his eyes. "I didn't think it would be like this."
"No one ever does."
"I don't want to go to Hell, Tessa."
There is nothing she can say to that.
"I know, I made my bed and I have to lie in it, and I don't regret saving Sam, not for one second. But..." he turns to her now, so lost and pleading, just like in that hospital room so long ago. "Can't you do something? Send me somewhere better?"
"I can't, Dean. I'm sorry." And she is. She would break every rule there is to help him if she could, but this isn't a rule. It's just the way things are.
"Is there even anywhere better? Or is Heaven nothing but more bullshit -- everyone really goes to Hell, and I'm just the unlucky SOB who knows it in advance?"
She doesn't answer. This is a rule that she understands, because knowing that Heaven is real will only make Hell harder for Dean to bear.
"Right. No spoiling the surprise," Dean laughs bitterly. "I guess I should have expected that."
He's angry at her, but he still doesn't release her hand. She squeezes gently. "It's time to go, Dean."
"What if I say no?" he asks, desperate now. "What if I just stay here?"
"You already made that choice, Dean," is all she says. She doesn't mention the hellhounds, equally vicious to the living and the dead.
He looks at Sam one more time, watching him eat stiffly with his eyes fixed to the grimy tabletop. "What's going to happen to Sam? Is he going to be this fucked up forever?"
"I don't know, Dean."
"If he...if something happens to him, will you...can you be the one he sees? Can you tell him I'm sorry?"
She nods. "I will."
"And...thanks, Tessa. For everything. You're not half-bad, for a reaper."
"You're not so bad yourself, Dean. For a human."
He tries to smile, but it crumbles. He clenches his eyes shut. "Shit."
"It's okay." She reaches for him, wraps him in her arms. "It's all right, Dean."
He hides his face in her hair, his breath hot against her neck. His arms come up around her, holding tight.
Then she's holding him even closer, her true form cradling his soul, giving him one last bright and warm and loving embrace before he fades, slides from her tightening grip, drops away from her into the darkness where she can never follow.
Her arms are empty.
She doesn't move on. Sam abandons his half-eaten meal, tosses money on the table, leaves. She doesn't follow him. She's granted so many souls their peace, shepherded so many to the other side, she doesn't understand why this is different, why Dean is different. Why she feels so hollow.
Dean taught her chess and sex and Battleship, and apparently grief as well.
She can tell she's free now, but she doesn't return to her duties just yet. There are other reapers. Right now all she wants is to sit here in silence.
"He's coming back, you know."
Suddenly there's someone in the booth across from her. Wearing a human form on top of a pagan god on top of blinding light and awe: the lost one, the archangel Gabriel, missing for so many long years.
He's lounging casually, one arm draped along the back of the booth, the other hand playing with the salt shaker. "This isn't the big one. And the big one isn't even the big one. He's got at least, let's see, three more deaths coming. At least."
"Gabriel. This is your idea of a joke?"
"More like a lesson. But yeah, all me. You like it?"
She can barely get the word out through her anger. "Why?"
"Because it's fun. And because sometimes it's the only way to make people listen. Things are coming to an end, for all of us."
"So you're playing at being a Trickster, teaching lessons in blood. I thought better of you than that." She tilts her head. "Actually, I thought you were dead."
He smirks. "Haven't reaped me yet, sweetheart."
"But I will." She leans forward across the table, speaking low and threatening. "Archangels aren't immortal, Gabriel. Your time is coming. I can see it. And I will be the one waiting for you in the end."
The smile falls off his face. "Got to catch me first," he says, and he disappears with a snap of his fingers.
She sits back. Gabriel, alive and on earth and actively involved in something, though she isn't sure what. There's a shadow on the horizon, a shadow deeper than she's ever seen. Things are coming to an end, he said.
Time flows oddly around her. She can see the passage of months, then a snap back and it's that Wednesday again, and she's in that same motel room where she spent so many hours with Dean.
Dean, who is alive and brushing his teeth. Alive.
For now. She can see that his time is coming, sooner than Gabriel's, sooner than Sam's, but the time is coming for all of them. For her as well, maybe. Things are all coming to an end.
None of that is her job. She doesn't know what will happen, or when, and she doesn't care to know. All she knows is that Dean will fall again, before the end, and Tessa will be there to catch him.
And for now, she has a job to do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~