Cliche Bingo
Title: Second Verse
Author: erda_3
Rating: G
Pairing: kind of Sam/Dean preslash
Word Count: ~2400
A/N: written for the cliche bingo prompt "time travel". Slight crossover with Star Trek TOS.
The deep regular beat of an unfamiliar machine wakes him. He is lying on a warm surface, and something is clamped onto his wrist. He opens his eyes reluctantly. A man in a blue shirt is holding his wrist lightly, frowning down at it. He pulls away before closing his eyes and drifting off again.
The next time he wakes up he sits up quickly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and grabbing on to ward off a sudden surge of lightheadedness, calling, "Sammy?"
The last thing he remembers is watching Sam sprinkling around some ashy concoction he and Bobby had collected for a ritual they had cooked up together. They'd covered the windows with tar paper, shutting out the sights and smells of Lucifer's battle with the angels; the fires, the earthquakes, all the dead and dying people they didn't save. He'd watched Sam kneel over the small fire he had lit, coaxing a tiny flame to life with gentle breaths. Sam had been growing increasingly focused as their situation grew more desperate, frantic in his search for some way to stop the devastation. This spell he'd cooked up with Bobby had consumed him even as Lucifer consumed the earth around them. The planet was falling apart, and each new disaster made Sam more distant, more convinced that he could undo it all, that he had to fix it. San had tried to stand, then staggered, his limbs going slack in a way that was unpleasantly familiar, and Dean's stomach went tight with panic as his instinct drove him forward.
Sam went down, fortunately not on top of the fire, as Dean grabbed for him, and then his own legs crumpled.
The guy with the blue shirt appears again, talking to a small pin on the shirt in a dry southern accent, saying "Our guest is awake now." He turns surprisingly friendly blue eyes to Dean, pushing him back down onto the bed and asking, "How are you feeling?"
There aren't any restraints, and the door stands open, so he probably isn't in custody. The room isn't like any hospital he's ever seen before. "Where's my brother?" he demands.
"Take it easy there, son," the man says. "Your brother is fine. He'll be here in a minute and you can see for yourself. You need to give a little thought to your own self, now." He hands Dean a cup and Dean takes a sip without knowing what it is. Ice water. It goes down his dry throat soothingly. He doesn't speak again, not sure how much information he should give up.
Two other men come in with Sam, and Dean checks them out quickly while giving most of his attention over to Sam. It's a little infuriating that Sam is up and walking about, looking fine, while Dean still feels shaky and dazed. Once he's sure Sam is okay, he spares a second look at the men with him, and whoa, one of them is some kind of demon, complete with pointy ears and dark, evilly slanty eyebrows. The demon returns his gaze with the cool indifference of a superior tactical position.
It's Sam's turn to check him over for injuries, which he does carefully, ignoring the blue shirt's assurances that he is fine. Apparently blue shirt is a doctor. "This is Captain Kirk," Sam says, tilting his head toward one of the men with him, a stocky guy in a gold shirt. "And his partner, Mr. Spock." He waves a hand at Dean. "My brother, Dean. Uh, I guess you already know that."
Neither man offers to shake hands. "May I remind you, gentleman," the demon says in that fake polite voice they all use, "that delaying our plan decreases the likelihood of a successful outcome. I suggest we move along to the chamber at once."
"I think we'll have to spare the few minutes it will take to explain our plan to Mr. Winchester," the guy Sam had called a captain says smoothly. He's an oily bastard, too, just like the demon.
"You have some kind of plan to defeat Lucifer? A weapon?" Dean asks,trying to figure an angle on the situation.
"Not exactly," the Captain says. "More like a way to stop this from ever happening."
"Can I talk to my brother alone?” Sam asks. "I think he'll take this better coming from me."
Kirk and the demon exchange a look Dean doesn't understand, and then Kirk motions to the doctor to follow them, and the three of them leave the room. He turns back at the door, and gives Sam a sympathetic look. "I don't know how long we can keep the chamber running," he says.
Sam nods, "I'll be quick," and waves him off. He hitches his hip up onto the bed next to Dean. "Just listen," he says, and Dean does.
He listens to the whole outrageous story, right up to the part where they are supposed to step voluntarily into the crazy science fiction machine Sam believes these lunatics have, before he objects.
Sam leans forward earnestly. "We can fix it," he says. "Everything. We can make it like it never happened. We have to go back and what we did."
Dean scowls. "A time machine? Are you as crazycakes as they are?"
"It's not really a machine, more like a time distortion field," Sam says. "I didn't really understand all of it, but these guys definitely know what they are talking about. They're from the future. They showed it to me on this machine, like a viewer. It can zero in on important events, events that split the time line. All we have to do is go back to the important moment and redo it, and we can change everything. Avert the apocalypse completely. Lucifer never gets out. Mr. Spock has it all worked out down to the minute."
"The demon? Really, Sam? You're listening to another demon? After everything that's happened you're going to take advice from a demon again?"
Sam scowls. "He's not a demon, Dean. He's an alien, from a planet called Vulcan. He's figured out a way to go back in time, back to before I fucked everything up.if there's even a chance that we can stop this, make it like it never happened, we have to try."
"You believe them?" The blood and small tears in Sam's clothing are gone, he notices. He looks down at his own clothing, which is clean and new looking. He's only ever known angels to be able to do that, but looking closer, he sees the tears have been fixed with some material which is close but not quite a perfect match, so maybe not angels.
"They showed me, Dean. They have all kinds of stuff, advanced technology. Remember your broken arm? They fixed it with one of their machines. I watched them do it."
Dean looks down at his arms. They are both fine, cast and bruises gone from the arm he'd broken just a few days ago in one of their fruitless fights with Lucifer's minions. He'd forgotten all about it in the confusion of waking up without Sam in this strange place. All of his bruises are gone. And now that he's paying attention to his body, he realizes he hasn't felt this well in a long, long time. "I don't know, Sam," he says. "Sandover seemed completely real, too."
"I know, Dean," Sam says. He worries at his cuticles, rubbing the pad of his thumb over them and not meeting Dean's eyes. "We got nothing to lose, man," he points out. "At least take a look around."
He shows Dean around the ship. There's a window kind of thing that Sam thinks is amazing, and he insists Dean look out at what he says are stars. They don't look like stars. Dean asks about this thing on the wall, looks kind of like a microwave, and Sam was going to walk right by it without mentioning it. It makes food when you talk to it, and Sam didn't think it was worth mentioning. The meat in the bacon cheeseburger it makes him doesn't taste right, but he eats it any way. The Vulcan guy and the Captain follow them around while he eats, and the Vulcan keeps telling them how much time they have left to act, right down to the hundreds of a second, which is, wow, totally annoying. "Why would you want us to change the past anyway?" Dean asks. "Won't that like change everything in your world?"
The Captain gives him a grim smile. "That's right. If you go back and change it," he says, "ourworld won't be like this."
"Like what?"
"Like what was left of the human race after Lucifer's rise was easy prey to the Andorians, who have taken over the earth and are remaking it for themselves," the Captain says. "Like only a rogue Vulcan and a handful of humans with a stolen ship jury rigged with technology developed in Andorian slave labs are left to fight. Andorians aren't as good with technology as humans, so they've kept some of our last few scientists captive and working for them. With Spock's help we managed to escape, but without a redo it's all for nothing."
Dean finds himself believing the guy, and like Sam had pointed out, they don't have much to lose anymore. The thought of undoing all this and trying again is seductive, pretty much irresistible.
"I feel compelled to point out," the Vulcan says. "That we are almost out of time. You need to decide on your course of action now, Mr Winchester."
They're all looking t him, even Sam, waiting for his decision. "Let's do it," he says, because really, they need to do something.
The chamber is about the size of a telephone booth, but it's round and transparent. There doesn't seem to be anything at all inside it. "How does this work again?" he asks.
"We will transport you back in time to the last critical juncture at which your actions could still avert the apocalypse. You will be able to change your actions based on what you now know about their consequences," the Vulcan explains.
"So we'll remember everything?"
"You will," Kirk asserts. "But we need to act now."
Dean nods, but he's uneasy. It all seems too simple. Sam grabs his arm and leads him to the chamber. He goes willingly, steps inside, but Sam suddenly pulls him back, wraps an arm around him, and kisses him. On the lips, without any hesitation, and Dean has to push him off. "What the fuck, Sam?" he asks. He can feel his whole face heating up.
Sam looks completely unembarrassed. "I've watched a lot of different time lines," he says. "In every one where I've kissed you, you ended up admitting you want me as much as I want you." He kisses Dean again, softer this time, and Dean lets him for a moment mostly because he's bewildered.
"Eh," he says stupidly when Sam lets him go. He shakes his head, trying to take it in. This was never supposed to happen outside of his imagination. "We'll deal with this later," he says.
"Right," Sam answers. He sounds sad, and strange. "Later," he says, and then he pushes Dean into the chamber alone, closing the door before Dean can react.
He barely has time to raise his arm to try to smash through the glass and get back to Sam when the chamber, and everything around it, vanishes.
Dean knows where he is the instant the scene changes. He knows this abandoned house, knows it in every intimate space in his body, knows it as if he's never left it, akin to this aloneness like no other abandonment or betrayal or loss he's felt before or since, this place that is literally worse than hell to him. He closes his eyes briefly to shut it out, but he can still smell the dust and the grime, can still hear the cicadas buzzing in the barren night, the worst night of a life full of loss and grief. The night he had failed to keep Sam safe. The night he started them on the path that led to the raising of Lucifer.
He shakes his head wearily, opens his eyes, because he has no other choice, and steps into the next room, where he sinks down on his knees and leans into Sam's lifeless body, both hands cupping Sam's face, remembering the desperate, pleading way Sam had kissed him goodbye just moments ago. His chest hurts so that he can barely breathe. Bobby has gone, shoved away by the violence of his grief, and his need to be alone with it, to face the isolation he has spent his whole life trying to avoid, because without Sam, there is no one who can ever understand. "Sam," he says aloud, and this time his voice doesn't break. It's already too far past any possibility of repair, and he is too dead inside to cry anymore. But still he says it again. "What am I supposed to do now?" He knows what Sam's answer to that question is now, it was all there in that kiss. He knows that Sam doesn't want to live if it means raising Lucifer and bringing the apocalypse down on humanity.
Ahead of him he sees the years of work stretching out, sees himself fighting alone, saving people, hunting things alone, knowing he'd made the right decision this time, spared Sam from all the horrors their future together portended. No descent to a literal hell for him this time around, he could enjoy all that right on earth, alive and well. There would be no need for Castiel to save him from himself, either.
He doesn't have to slam his foot to the gas or wrench the steering wheel wildly when he leaves the abandoned house this time. There is no need for panic. He can drive carefully, treating the Impala with the gentleness she deserves. He can go on now with the knowledge that leaving Sam dead is the only reasonable course of action. He drives through the darkness alone for a long time, thinking it all through, letting all the possibilities play out in his imagination until he can be at peace with his decision, before finally pulling over to the side of the empty road and getting out of the car. It's still hours until dawn, and the stars are bright here, away from any town. He imagines the future, with mankind whole and teeming, building starships and journeying out on great adventures, meeting aliens, exploring other worlds, learning and thriving in a universe where Lucifer never walks free.
He doesn't scrabble tearfully in the dirt of the crossroads. He digs the shallow hole methodically, drops in the box with his picture, stands slowly and deliberately to wait for the demon who will bring Sammy back to him.
Author: erda_3
Rating: G
Pairing: kind of Sam/Dean preslash
Word Count: ~2400
A/N: written for the cliche bingo prompt "time travel". Slight crossover with Star Trek TOS.
The deep regular beat of an unfamiliar machine wakes him. He is lying on a warm surface, and something is clamped onto his wrist. He opens his eyes reluctantly. A man in a blue shirt is holding his wrist lightly, frowning down at it. He pulls away before closing his eyes and drifting off again.
The next time he wakes up he sits up quickly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and grabbing on to ward off a sudden surge of lightheadedness, calling, "Sammy?"
The last thing he remembers is watching Sam sprinkling around some ashy concoction he and Bobby had collected for a ritual they had cooked up together. They'd covered the windows with tar paper, shutting out the sights and smells of Lucifer's battle with the angels; the fires, the earthquakes, all the dead and dying people they didn't save. He'd watched Sam kneel over the small fire he had lit, coaxing a tiny flame to life with gentle breaths. Sam had been growing increasingly focused as their situation grew more desperate, frantic in his search for some way to stop the devastation. This spell he'd cooked up with Bobby had consumed him even as Lucifer consumed the earth around them. The planet was falling apart, and each new disaster made Sam more distant, more convinced that he could undo it all, that he had to fix it. San had tried to stand, then staggered, his limbs going slack in a way that was unpleasantly familiar, and Dean's stomach went tight with panic as his instinct drove him forward.
Sam went down, fortunately not on top of the fire, as Dean grabbed for him, and then his own legs crumpled.
The guy with the blue shirt appears again, talking to a small pin on the shirt in a dry southern accent, saying "Our guest is awake now." He turns surprisingly friendly blue eyes to Dean, pushing him back down onto the bed and asking, "How are you feeling?"
There aren't any restraints, and the door stands open, so he probably isn't in custody. The room isn't like any hospital he's ever seen before. "Where's my brother?" he demands.
"Take it easy there, son," the man says. "Your brother is fine. He'll be here in a minute and you can see for yourself. You need to give a little thought to your own self, now." He hands Dean a cup and Dean takes a sip without knowing what it is. Ice water. It goes down his dry throat soothingly. He doesn't speak again, not sure how much information he should give up.
Two other men come in with Sam, and Dean checks them out quickly while giving most of his attention over to Sam. It's a little infuriating that Sam is up and walking about, looking fine, while Dean still feels shaky and dazed. Once he's sure Sam is okay, he spares a second look at the men with him, and whoa, one of them is some kind of demon, complete with pointy ears and dark, evilly slanty eyebrows. The demon returns his gaze with the cool indifference of a superior tactical position.
It's Sam's turn to check him over for injuries, which he does carefully, ignoring the blue shirt's assurances that he is fine. Apparently blue shirt is a doctor. "This is Captain Kirk," Sam says, tilting his head toward one of the men with him, a stocky guy in a gold shirt. "And his partner, Mr. Spock." He waves a hand at Dean. "My brother, Dean. Uh, I guess you already know that."
Neither man offers to shake hands. "May I remind you, gentleman," the demon says in that fake polite voice they all use, "that delaying our plan decreases the likelihood of a successful outcome. I suggest we move along to the chamber at once."
"I think we'll have to spare the few minutes it will take to explain our plan to Mr. Winchester," the guy Sam had called a captain says smoothly. He's an oily bastard, too, just like the demon.
"You have some kind of plan to defeat Lucifer? A weapon?" Dean asks,trying to figure an angle on the situation.
"Not exactly," the Captain says. "More like a way to stop this from ever happening."
"Can I talk to my brother alone?” Sam asks. "I think he'll take this better coming from me."
Kirk and the demon exchange a look Dean doesn't understand, and then Kirk motions to the doctor to follow them, and the three of them leave the room. He turns back at the door, and gives Sam a sympathetic look. "I don't know how long we can keep the chamber running," he says.
Sam nods, "I'll be quick," and waves him off. He hitches his hip up onto the bed next to Dean. "Just listen," he says, and Dean does.
He listens to the whole outrageous story, right up to the part where they are supposed to step voluntarily into the crazy science fiction machine Sam believes these lunatics have, before he objects.
Sam leans forward earnestly. "We can fix it," he says. "Everything. We can make it like it never happened. We have to go back and what we did."
Dean scowls. "A time machine? Are you as crazycakes as they are?"
"It's not really a machine, more like a time distortion field," Sam says. "I didn't really understand all of it, but these guys definitely know what they are talking about. They're from the future. They showed it to me on this machine, like a viewer. It can zero in on important events, events that split the time line. All we have to do is go back to the important moment and redo it, and we can change everything. Avert the apocalypse completely. Lucifer never gets out. Mr. Spock has it all worked out down to the minute."
"The demon? Really, Sam? You're listening to another demon? After everything that's happened you're going to take advice from a demon again?"
Sam scowls. "He's not a demon, Dean. He's an alien, from a planet called Vulcan. He's figured out a way to go back in time, back to before I fucked everything up.if there's even a chance that we can stop this, make it like it never happened, we have to try."
"You believe them?" The blood and small tears in Sam's clothing are gone, he notices. He looks down at his own clothing, which is clean and new looking. He's only ever known angels to be able to do that, but looking closer, he sees the tears have been fixed with some material which is close but not quite a perfect match, so maybe not angels.
"They showed me, Dean. They have all kinds of stuff, advanced technology. Remember your broken arm? They fixed it with one of their machines. I watched them do it."
Dean looks down at his arms. They are both fine, cast and bruises gone from the arm he'd broken just a few days ago in one of their fruitless fights with Lucifer's minions. He'd forgotten all about it in the confusion of waking up without Sam in this strange place. All of his bruises are gone. And now that he's paying attention to his body, he realizes he hasn't felt this well in a long, long time. "I don't know, Sam," he says. "Sandover seemed completely real, too."
"I know, Dean," Sam says. He worries at his cuticles, rubbing the pad of his thumb over them and not meeting Dean's eyes. "We got nothing to lose, man," he points out. "At least take a look around."
He shows Dean around the ship. There's a window kind of thing that Sam thinks is amazing, and he insists Dean look out at what he says are stars. They don't look like stars. Dean asks about this thing on the wall, looks kind of like a microwave, and Sam was going to walk right by it without mentioning it. It makes food when you talk to it, and Sam didn't think it was worth mentioning. The meat in the bacon cheeseburger it makes him doesn't taste right, but he eats it any way. The Vulcan guy and the Captain follow them around while he eats, and the Vulcan keeps telling them how much time they have left to act, right down to the hundreds of a second, which is, wow, totally annoying. "Why would you want us to change the past anyway?" Dean asks. "Won't that like change everything in your world?"
The Captain gives him a grim smile. "That's right. If you go back and change it," he says, "ourworld won't be like this."
"Like what?"
"Like what was left of the human race after Lucifer's rise was easy prey to the Andorians, who have taken over the earth and are remaking it for themselves," the Captain says. "Like only a rogue Vulcan and a handful of humans with a stolen ship jury rigged with technology developed in Andorian slave labs are left to fight. Andorians aren't as good with technology as humans, so they've kept some of our last few scientists captive and working for them. With Spock's help we managed to escape, but without a redo it's all for nothing."
Dean finds himself believing the guy, and like Sam had pointed out, they don't have much to lose anymore. The thought of undoing all this and trying again is seductive, pretty much irresistible.
"I feel compelled to point out," the Vulcan says. "That we are almost out of time. You need to decide on your course of action now, Mr Winchester."
They're all looking t him, even Sam, waiting for his decision. "Let's do it," he says, because really, they need to do something.
The chamber is about the size of a telephone booth, but it's round and transparent. There doesn't seem to be anything at all inside it. "How does this work again?" he asks.
"We will transport you back in time to the last critical juncture at which your actions could still avert the apocalypse. You will be able to change your actions based on what you now know about their consequences," the Vulcan explains.
"So we'll remember everything?"
"You will," Kirk asserts. "But we need to act now."
Dean nods, but he's uneasy. It all seems too simple. Sam grabs his arm and leads him to the chamber. He goes willingly, steps inside, but Sam suddenly pulls him back, wraps an arm around him, and kisses him. On the lips, without any hesitation, and Dean has to push him off. "What the fuck, Sam?" he asks. He can feel his whole face heating up.
Sam looks completely unembarrassed. "I've watched a lot of different time lines," he says. "In every one where I've kissed you, you ended up admitting you want me as much as I want you." He kisses Dean again, softer this time, and Dean lets him for a moment mostly because he's bewildered.
"Eh," he says stupidly when Sam lets him go. He shakes his head, trying to take it in. This was never supposed to happen outside of his imagination. "We'll deal with this later," he says.
"Right," Sam answers. He sounds sad, and strange. "Later," he says, and then he pushes Dean into the chamber alone, closing the door before Dean can react.
He barely has time to raise his arm to try to smash through the glass and get back to Sam when the chamber, and everything around it, vanishes.
Dean knows where he is the instant the scene changes. He knows this abandoned house, knows it in every intimate space in his body, knows it as if he's never left it, akin to this aloneness like no other abandonment or betrayal or loss he's felt before or since, this place that is literally worse than hell to him. He closes his eyes briefly to shut it out, but he can still smell the dust and the grime, can still hear the cicadas buzzing in the barren night, the worst night of a life full of loss and grief. The night he had failed to keep Sam safe. The night he started them on the path that led to the raising of Lucifer.
He shakes his head wearily, opens his eyes, because he has no other choice, and steps into the next room, where he sinks down on his knees and leans into Sam's lifeless body, both hands cupping Sam's face, remembering the desperate, pleading way Sam had kissed him goodbye just moments ago. His chest hurts so that he can barely breathe. Bobby has gone, shoved away by the violence of his grief, and his need to be alone with it, to face the isolation he has spent his whole life trying to avoid, because without Sam, there is no one who can ever understand. "Sam," he says aloud, and this time his voice doesn't break. It's already too far past any possibility of repair, and he is too dead inside to cry anymore. But still he says it again. "What am I supposed to do now?" He knows what Sam's answer to that question is now, it was all there in that kiss. He knows that Sam doesn't want to live if it means raising Lucifer and bringing the apocalypse down on humanity.
Ahead of him he sees the years of work stretching out, sees himself fighting alone, saving people, hunting things alone, knowing he'd made the right decision this time, spared Sam from all the horrors their future together portended. No descent to a literal hell for him this time around, he could enjoy all that right on earth, alive and well. There would be no need for Castiel to save him from himself, either.
He doesn't have to slam his foot to the gas or wrench the steering wheel wildly when he leaves the abandoned house this time. There is no need for panic. He can drive carefully, treating the Impala with the gentleness she deserves. He can go on now with the knowledge that leaving Sam dead is the only reasonable course of action. He drives through the darkness alone for a long time, thinking it all through, letting all the possibilities play out in his imagination until he can be at peace with his decision, before finally pulling over to the side of the empty road and getting out of the car. It's still hours until dawn, and the stars are bright here, away from any town. He imagines the future, with mankind whole and teeming, building starships and journeying out on great adventures, meeting aliens, exploring other worlds, learning and thriving in a universe where Lucifer never walks free.
He doesn't scrabble tearfully in the dirt of the crossroads. He digs the shallow hole methodically, drops in the box with his picture, stands slowly and deliberately to wait for the demon who will bring Sammy back to him.