SPN FIC: We All Fall Down
I wrote this a couple months ago, and some of you have read it already, but for most of you it's new. Yes, it's Hope Verse, but primarily it's just Dean -- immediately following my own version of the end of the series. (Which undoubtedly isn't much like Kripke's version, because nobody croaks.) The Hope Verse revolves around het relationships, but there's no het here -- just Dean, with Sam close by, and a need for sanctuary and rest and healing.
Characters: Dean, bits of OCs
Genre: Gen (Futurefic)
Rating: PG
Length: 2172 words
Spoilers: none
Nobody asked him what he plans to do now. "Now" is wide open, according to the angel. He can go anywhere he chooses, stay there as long as he likes. He can do what he pleases. No one's making demands of him - no one's even made a request. That's never been true before, not really, and the idea of it makes his stomach cramp. Okay, maybe it's the fact that he hasn't eaten in three days and is probably dehydrated all to hell that's making his stomach cramp, but every time he tries to think about what he should do next, his hands feel cold and his head hurts.
WE ALL FALL DOWN
By Carol Davis
It's been twenty-four hours, and the memories are fading.
Twenty-four hours since a bright light unlike anything he's ever seen before - and completely beyond his ability to describe - flooded an open field in eastern Pennsylvania. Twenty-four hours since an angel told him his sentence had been commuted to time served. Twenty-four hours since the angel told him his memories would slip away.
It's been twenty-four hours since he did the last thing that was asked of him.
Twenty-four hours since he saved his brother.
He has no real idea why he chose to come here, why he picked this place out of all the options that were available to him. Really, the whole world was available to him. He's still afraid to fly, he thinks, so reaching somewhere that's on the other side of a big body of water would take a while - but that's not to say he couldn't get there.
Couldn't take Sam there.
He could have picked anywhere, anywhere at all. The trouble was - and is - that no place on earth really means very much to him. The house in Lawrence belongs to somebody else, as do Pastor Jim's church and parsonage. Bobby's place is trashed, and even if it weren't, Dean's interest in being surrounded by all those old books and charms (and that damned panic room) is way less than zero. Bobby's not there, anyway. Bobby's still in Pennsylvania, as far as Dean knows, trying to figure out what the hell happened twenty-four hours ago. Maybe, eventually, he'll find an answer. Dean can't bring himself to care much about that, either. Not now. The only thing he cares about now is sprawled out on the backseat of the Impala, twitching and breathing in a wet sort of way, like a dog dreaming about chasing a stick. Sam's head is only a few inches away from Dean's. Without looking, Dean reaches up and grabs a fistful of his brother's hair. The surprise of that is enough to make Sam snort in his sleep, but he doesn't wake.
Dean saved his brother yesterday. But not because anybody asked him to.
Nobody asked him what he plans to do now. "Now" is wide open, according to the angel. He can go anywhere he chooses, stay there as long as he likes. He can do what he pleases. No one's making demands of him - no one's even made a request. That's never been true before, not really, and the idea of it makes his stomach cramp. Okay, maybe it's the fact that he hasn't eaten in three days and is probably dehydrated all to hell that's making his stomach cramp, but every time he tries to think about what he should do next, his hands feel cold and his head hurts.
He sat there for a long time, on the scorched grass of that place in Pennsylvania, knees pulled up to his chest, arms wrapped around them. A couple of hours, maybe. There were people nearby, some of them alive and some of them not, but none of them said anything to him. He sat there on the ground, one hand resting on Sam's shoulder, and let time go by, just go by. He's shell-shocked, he thinks. Maybe Sam is too, because Sam hasn't said anything since Dean saved him. He's looked at Dean a few times with his face all scrunched up like he's really, massively sorry, but that's craziness. He doesn't need to be sorry for anything, not any more. The stuff he needed to be sorry for is over, and if that angel was on the money, neither one of them will remember much of it. With a little bit of luck neither will anybody else.
After a while, people started to wander off. Dean could see them, sort of; head lowered, eyes half-shut, he could still see a little of his surroundings. The ring of cars Bobby suggested, as if a collection of Detroit steel could protect them from anything once the shit started hitting the fan. (When Dean asked him about it for the third time, Bobby sighed and said it was a duck-and-cover maneuver, and that, at least, made some sense.) The blackened remains of trees, brush, grass. That too formed a circle, Dean supposed, if you could look at it from up above. The cars and trucks and that stupid pink minivan were all as scorched as the vegetation, all of them pocked and pitted by the crap that flew around when the wind picked up.
He remembers the stuff hitting him. He knows he's bleeding in a bunch of places, that he's scratched and scraped and cut and bruised, and so is Sam. They're filthy, too, and reek of…what? Sweat?
Fear?
He wasn't afraid, twenty-four hours ago. They'd done what they could do to prepare. There wasn't much point in being afraid of what could happen. In being afraid of losing. He tried to tell himself that they were - all of them - going up against a kid, because that was what Lilith insisted on looking like, a little kid, and Dean Badass Winchester simply was not going to be afraid of a kid.
When the wind started to kick up, he heard Yoda voices in his head. Win or lose, you will. One or the other. Win or lose.
He didn't tell anybody about the Yoda voices, because they'd know as well as he did that it meant he was scared absolutely motherfucking shitless. Either way, the fear's gone now, and the memory of what happened is coming apart, is fraying like it was all a dream, all something his imagination cooked up so he could work out his issues between the sheets of a swaybacked bed in some nameless, ugly motel. It's all slipping away from him, so there's no point in telling anybody anything, even if he could figure out what to say or how to say it.
When he turned on the car radio somewhere between that place in Pennsylvania and here, what exploded into the car was the shriek of some nutjob going on about the Rapture. The End of Days is upon us! Be prepared, my brothers and sisters, for the Lord is about to…
The Lord already did. Wasn't "going to." Did.
And it was…quiet.
Which was weird, because he'd been expecting something seriously awesome. Seeing as how God was…well, God. But maybe God is a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt, because He dealt that smackdown and it was nothing but a light. A few seconds' worth of light - or maybe it was a lot longer than that; it's starting to be hard to remember - and that was that.
Yeah, there might have been more to it than that.
Might have.
But Dean's starting not to remember.
He also doesn't remember how, or when, or why, he and Sam got into the car. Doesn't remember walking away from Bobby and the others - some of them still alive and some of them not - and finding his keys and pointing the car away from that place, away from the burnt grass and that dumbass pink minivan. Doesn't remember making any kind of a choice about where to go, doesn't remember eliminating possibilities, doesn't remember pointing the car east and driving for…
Hours, he figures. Would've taken three or four hours to get here. Sun's coming up now, cresting the mountains, so night fell at some point. He must've driven for at least part of the night. Must have. Found this place somehow, the place that was crazy impossible to find that first time, the only other time he and Sam have been here. Found it in the darkness like it was a magnet drawing him back. He found it, and he parked the car more or less sensibly in the little parking lot. Shut the car off, got out of the driver's seat, opened the back door, and sat down on the ground with his head close to Sam's so he can hear Sam breathing like some idiot-ass dog dreaming about chasing a stick.
It's been twenty-four hours, and nobody's come for him. Nothing's come for him.
The angel said it was over.
The angel said he could rest.
He ran. That's what he did. He ran, because "rest" and "dead" are the same thing. Ask anybody. "At rest." "At peace." The angel told him he'd done what they needed him to do; he'd fulfilled his obligation. He tried to ask questions, tried to get some clarification, but she was no more on board with being quizzed than Castiel, or Uriel, or any of them. She said he could rest, and then she…wasn't there any more.
Maybe he's been sitting here for hours, listening to Sam breathe.
Hours.
And nobody's come for him.
Maybe, he thinks - maybe he's there already. Where he's supposed to rest. Maybe this place isn't what he thinks it is. Something in his gut tightens a little; in response, he tightens his grip on his fistful of Sam's hair. Again, Sam flinches in his sleep and makes a noise that sounds like "What?"
But he doesn't wake. So Dean sits there with gravel jabbing into his ass through the worn denim of jeans that are splotched with grease and mud and blood that's partly his and partly three or four other people's. Sits there with his eyes half-closed against the brilliance of the sun that's climbing up above the dark fringe of mountains at the far side of the lake, against the sight of the place that might not be what he thinks it is.
Against the sight of a small figure approaching him, padding softly into the parking lot, attention fixed on him.
He can hear the scuff of footsteps and grimaces when they stop. After a minute something presses against his chest. Through the little bit his eyes are open he can see brown and white. Fur, but not real fur.
"He'll makes it better," a voice says softly.
It's a kid. A little girl. His mind hurls the word Lilith and he stops breathing for an hour or six or ten.
Then there are more footsteps. And another voice. "Come back in the house," it says.
"It's Dean. 'N' Sam."
"Yes, I know. Go back in the house. It's too cold to be out here in your pajamas." A pause, then a firm: "Go."
The pressure holding the fake-fur thing to his chest drops away but the fake fur remains. He lifts his lids a little, enough to see big ears and a grinning face. It's a rabbit. A stuffed rabbit. "Bunny," its owner explains. "You can has him. Till you gets better."
The owner of the second voice moves closer and crouches in front of him, blocking some of the sunlight of this day that isn't yesterday. "What happened?" When he doesn't answer, there's "Dean? What happened? Are you all right?"
He's starting not to remember what happened.
But he does remember why. His fingers knot into Sam's hair, and his other arm curls around the stuffed rabbit, pinning it to his chest.
He's filthy. Cut, bruised, muzzy-headed. Hasn't eaten in days. Hasn't done anything, really, except take his car and his brother away from that place in eastern Pennsylvania and bring them to the one place he thinks he might be able to rest. If it's real. If that angel wasn't…
Was there an angel?
"Come inside," Morgan says. "We'll get you cleaned up. Get you something to eat."
She tries to help him up, but there's no strength in his legs. He's scared, too, of letting go of Sam.
"Mama?" Lizzie says in a puzzled voice.
"Go get Grandpa and Aidan," Morgan tells her. "Hurry."
He can rest now, the angel told him. He can. Because he's done everything anyone ever asked him to do. He did that, and now he can rest.
This is a good place to rest - the beds are soft, and if the window is open he'll be able to hear the soft slap of the water against the shore. The food is good here.
And Sam is here.
For the first time since he left the place in Pennsylvania, there are a lot of people around him, people with a purpose, people talking among themselves, lifting him to his feet, holding him upright when his legs threaten to fail. Their grasp is solid, and as they begin to move him away from the car he tries to stop thinking he should just fall down, just drop to the ground and stay there because he has no idea what else to do.
"What happened?" he hears them ask, but whether they're asking him or each other, he doesn't know.
He doesn't know what happened. Not really. And maybe that doesn't matter. What happened, happened twenty-four hours ago.
He can rest now.
And this is the first day of the rest of his life.
* * * * *
Characters: Dean, bits of OCs
Genre: Gen (Futurefic)
Rating: PG
Length: 2172 words
Spoilers: none
Nobody asked him what he plans to do now. "Now" is wide open, according to the angel. He can go anywhere he chooses, stay there as long as he likes. He can do what he pleases. No one's making demands of him - no one's even made a request. That's never been true before, not really, and the idea of it makes his stomach cramp. Okay, maybe it's the fact that he hasn't eaten in three days and is probably dehydrated all to hell that's making his stomach cramp, but every time he tries to think about what he should do next, his hands feel cold and his head hurts.
WE ALL FALL DOWN
By Carol Davis
It's been twenty-four hours, and the memories are fading.
Twenty-four hours since a bright light unlike anything he's ever seen before - and completely beyond his ability to describe - flooded an open field in eastern Pennsylvania. Twenty-four hours since an angel told him his sentence had been commuted to time served. Twenty-four hours since the angel told him his memories would slip away.
It's been twenty-four hours since he did the last thing that was asked of him.
Twenty-four hours since he saved his brother.
He has no real idea why he chose to come here, why he picked this place out of all the options that were available to him. Really, the whole world was available to him. He's still afraid to fly, he thinks, so reaching somewhere that's on the other side of a big body of water would take a while - but that's not to say he couldn't get there.
Couldn't take Sam there.
He could have picked anywhere, anywhere at all. The trouble was - and is - that no place on earth really means very much to him. The house in Lawrence belongs to somebody else, as do Pastor Jim's church and parsonage. Bobby's place is trashed, and even if it weren't, Dean's interest in being surrounded by all those old books and charms (and that damned panic room) is way less than zero. Bobby's not there, anyway. Bobby's still in Pennsylvania, as far as Dean knows, trying to figure out what the hell happened twenty-four hours ago. Maybe, eventually, he'll find an answer. Dean can't bring himself to care much about that, either. Not now. The only thing he cares about now is sprawled out on the backseat of the Impala, twitching and breathing in a wet sort of way, like a dog dreaming about chasing a stick. Sam's head is only a few inches away from Dean's. Without looking, Dean reaches up and grabs a fistful of his brother's hair. The surprise of that is enough to make Sam snort in his sleep, but he doesn't wake.
Dean saved his brother yesterday. But not because anybody asked him to.
Nobody asked him what he plans to do now. "Now" is wide open, according to the angel. He can go anywhere he chooses, stay there as long as he likes. He can do what he pleases. No one's making demands of him - no one's even made a request. That's never been true before, not really, and the idea of it makes his stomach cramp. Okay, maybe it's the fact that he hasn't eaten in three days and is probably dehydrated all to hell that's making his stomach cramp, but every time he tries to think about what he should do next, his hands feel cold and his head hurts.
He sat there for a long time, on the scorched grass of that place in Pennsylvania, knees pulled up to his chest, arms wrapped around them. A couple of hours, maybe. There were people nearby, some of them alive and some of them not, but none of them said anything to him. He sat there on the ground, one hand resting on Sam's shoulder, and let time go by, just go by. He's shell-shocked, he thinks. Maybe Sam is too, because Sam hasn't said anything since Dean saved him. He's looked at Dean a few times with his face all scrunched up like he's really, massively sorry, but that's craziness. He doesn't need to be sorry for anything, not any more. The stuff he needed to be sorry for is over, and if that angel was on the money, neither one of them will remember much of it. With a little bit of luck neither will anybody else.
After a while, people started to wander off. Dean could see them, sort of; head lowered, eyes half-shut, he could still see a little of his surroundings. The ring of cars Bobby suggested, as if a collection of Detroit steel could protect them from anything once the shit started hitting the fan. (When Dean asked him about it for the third time, Bobby sighed and said it was a duck-and-cover maneuver, and that, at least, made some sense.) The blackened remains of trees, brush, grass. That too formed a circle, Dean supposed, if you could look at it from up above. The cars and trucks and that stupid pink minivan were all as scorched as the vegetation, all of them pocked and pitted by the crap that flew around when the wind picked up.
He remembers the stuff hitting him. He knows he's bleeding in a bunch of places, that he's scratched and scraped and cut and bruised, and so is Sam. They're filthy, too, and reek of…what? Sweat?
Fear?
He wasn't afraid, twenty-four hours ago. They'd done what they could do to prepare. There wasn't much point in being afraid of what could happen. In being afraid of losing. He tried to tell himself that they were - all of them - going up against a kid, because that was what Lilith insisted on looking like, a little kid, and Dean Badass Winchester simply was not going to be afraid of a kid.
When the wind started to kick up, he heard Yoda voices in his head. Win or lose, you will. One or the other. Win or lose.
He didn't tell anybody about the Yoda voices, because they'd know as well as he did that it meant he was scared absolutely motherfucking shitless. Either way, the fear's gone now, and the memory of what happened is coming apart, is fraying like it was all a dream, all something his imagination cooked up so he could work out his issues between the sheets of a swaybacked bed in some nameless, ugly motel. It's all slipping away from him, so there's no point in telling anybody anything, even if he could figure out what to say or how to say it.
When he turned on the car radio somewhere between that place in Pennsylvania and here, what exploded into the car was the shriek of some nutjob going on about the Rapture. The End of Days is upon us! Be prepared, my brothers and sisters, for the Lord is about to…
The Lord already did. Wasn't "going to." Did.
And it was…quiet.
Which was weird, because he'd been expecting something seriously awesome. Seeing as how God was…well, God. But maybe God is a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt, because He dealt that smackdown and it was nothing but a light. A few seconds' worth of light - or maybe it was a lot longer than that; it's starting to be hard to remember - and that was that.
Yeah, there might have been more to it than that.
Might have.
But Dean's starting not to remember.
He also doesn't remember how, or when, or why, he and Sam got into the car. Doesn't remember walking away from Bobby and the others - some of them still alive and some of them not - and finding his keys and pointing the car away from that place, away from the burnt grass and that dumbass pink minivan. Doesn't remember making any kind of a choice about where to go, doesn't remember eliminating possibilities, doesn't remember pointing the car east and driving for…
Hours, he figures. Would've taken three or four hours to get here. Sun's coming up now, cresting the mountains, so night fell at some point. He must've driven for at least part of the night. Must have. Found this place somehow, the place that was crazy impossible to find that first time, the only other time he and Sam have been here. Found it in the darkness like it was a magnet drawing him back. He found it, and he parked the car more or less sensibly in the little parking lot. Shut the car off, got out of the driver's seat, opened the back door, and sat down on the ground with his head close to Sam's so he can hear Sam breathing like some idiot-ass dog dreaming about chasing a stick.
It's been twenty-four hours, and nobody's come for him. Nothing's come for him.
The angel said it was over.
The angel said he could rest.
He ran. That's what he did. He ran, because "rest" and "dead" are the same thing. Ask anybody. "At rest." "At peace." The angel told him he'd done what they needed him to do; he'd fulfilled his obligation. He tried to ask questions, tried to get some clarification, but she was no more on board with being quizzed than Castiel, or Uriel, or any of them. She said he could rest, and then she…wasn't there any more.
Maybe he's been sitting here for hours, listening to Sam breathe.
Hours.
And nobody's come for him.
Maybe, he thinks - maybe he's there already. Where he's supposed to rest. Maybe this place isn't what he thinks it is. Something in his gut tightens a little; in response, he tightens his grip on his fistful of Sam's hair. Again, Sam flinches in his sleep and makes a noise that sounds like "What?"
But he doesn't wake. So Dean sits there with gravel jabbing into his ass through the worn denim of jeans that are splotched with grease and mud and blood that's partly his and partly three or four other people's. Sits there with his eyes half-closed against the brilliance of the sun that's climbing up above the dark fringe of mountains at the far side of the lake, against the sight of the place that might not be what he thinks it is.
Against the sight of a small figure approaching him, padding softly into the parking lot, attention fixed on him.
He can hear the scuff of footsteps and grimaces when they stop. After a minute something presses against his chest. Through the little bit his eyes are open he can see brown and white. Fur, but not real fur.
"He'll makes it better," a voice says softly.
It's a kid. A little girl. His mind hurls the word Lilith and he stops breathing for an hour or six or ten.
Then there are more footsteps. And another voice. "Come back in the house," it says.
"It's Dean. 'N' Sam."
"Yes, I know. Go back in the house. It's too cold to be out here in your pajamas." A pause, then a firm: "Go."
The pressure holding the fake-fur thing to his chest drops away but the fake fur remains. He lifts his lids a little, enough to see big ears and a grinning face. It's a rabbit. A stuffed rabbit. "Bunny," its owner explains. "You can has him. Till you gets better."
The owner of the second voice moves closer and crouches in front of him, blocking some of the sunlight of this day that isn't yesterday. "What happened?" When he doesn't answer, there's "Dean? What happened? Are you all right?"
He's starting not to remember what happened.
But he does remember why. His fingers knot into Sam's hair, and his other arm curls around the stuffed rabbit, pinning it to his chest.
He's filthy. Cut, bruised, muzzy-headed. Hasn't eaten in days. Hasn't done anything, really, except take his car and his brother away from that place in eastern Pennsylvania and bring them to the one place he thinks he might be able to rest. If it's real. If that angel wasn't…
Was there an angel?
"Come inside," Morgan says. "We'll get you cleaned up. Get you something to eat."
She tries to help him up, but there's no strength in his legs. He's scared, too, of letting go of Sam.
"Mama?" Lizzie says in a puzzled voice.
"Go get Grandpa and Aidan," Morgan tells her. "Hurry."
He can rest now, the angel told him. He can. Because he's done everything anyone ever asked him to do. He did that, and now he can rest.
This is a good place to rest - the beds are soft, and if the window is open he'll be able to hear the soft slap of the water against the shore. The food is good here.
And Sam is here.
For the first time since he left the place in Pennsylvania, there are a lot of people around him, people with a purpose, people talking among themselves, lifting him to his feet, holding him upright when his legs threaten to fail. Their grasp is solid, and as they begin to move him away from the car he tries to stop thinking he should just fall down, just drop to the ground and stay there because he has no idea what else to do.
"What happened?" he hears them ask, but whether they're asking him or each other, he doesn't know.
He doesn't know what happened. Not really. And maybe that doesn't matter. What happened, happened twenty-four hours ago.
He can rest now.
And this is the first day of the rest of his life.
* * * * *