SPN FIC - The Past Is a Foreign Country
Missing scene from And Then There Were None: goodbye to family. And what might have been.
"I killed our grandfather," Sam says.
CHARACTERS: Sam and Dean
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 1165 words
THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY
By Carol Davis
"Sammy, don't."
They've gone through this before. With Madison, certainly. With others. The blame. The goddamn blame.
"Sammy."
"Leave it," Sam says. "Just leave it."
The pyre is still burning, some fifty or sixty feet away, a heap of old, hastily-gathered wood with two wrapped bodies at the core of it. It's taking forever to burn; the wood wasn't the best choice, a little too damp, too dense, a little rotted, not oily enough.
Dad taught them how to pick the right kind of wood.
God knows who taught him.
This fire's going to take hours to burn down, to reduce those bodies to bone and ash, at the rate it's going, and he and Sam ought to be long gone, ought to be helping Bobby make the arrangements for Rufus, though Bobby says he neither wants nor needs any help. He put a button on that statement by waving his gun, the way he said goodbye to Dad what seems like a million years ago.
They'll be here the whole damn day.
But they owe it to Gwen, Dean thinks, to stay until it's done. They owe her that much. He owes her that much, even though she was basically a stranger, someone he'd never laid eyes on until a few months ago. As for the rest of it…
"I killed our grandfather," Sam says.
He hasn't looked at Dean for a good five minutes.
"We don't know that," Dean says, and (certainly not as welcome as it might be) Sam's head pivots toward him. Here it comes, Dean thinks, and sure enough, a deep furrow forms between Sam's eyebrows. His lips all but disappear, pressed into a thin, bloodless line. "We don't know he was… Samuel," Dean persists. "All we've got to go on is -"
What?
They've got nothing, is what they've got.
"Then what does that make me?" Sam asks. "If Samuel was just something Crowley whipped up like a damn chocolate cake to serve his cause, what does that make me? He brought us back at the same time."
"You're you," Dean replies. "After all this? You're you."
"Am I?" Sam murmurs.
And he strides away. Down the road, away from the pyre. He doesn't go far - just to a little copse of trees, all of which look as blasted as Dean feels. Sam leans against one of them, with that same slump to his shoulders he always get when something disappoints him monumentally, though why any of this should be disappointing, Dean isn't sure.
It's a million things. Disappointing isn't one of them.
But maybe it is.
Disappointing not because of what they lost, what they had to do, but because of what might have been. Family. A grandfather. Cousins. Not a Norman Rockwell situation, for sure, but family. Hunting together. Pursuing the family business. There's an attraction to that. A certain draw. They could have been a clan, the bunch of them: building relationships, maybe a home base, something like Bobby has, like the Harvelles had. They could have worked together, depended on each other, trusted each other.
Maybe there's no doing that, in this life. The Harvelles are all gone. Bobby's got nothing but an empty house and a junkyard.
They built one pyre.
Family goes up in a single blaze.
"He wasn't some sweet, white-haired old guy who took us fishing and told us crazy stories about the war," Dean says when he reaches that little cluster of stunted, sickly-pale trees. "He was a miserable son of a bitch. Even without a soul, you were more human than he was. And let me remind you: he was all set to chuck us overboard. He was gonna sacrifice us, Sam."
"For Mom. To get Mom back."
"That's a load of crap."
"He wanted his daughter back, Dean."
God knows, the two of them have done everything for each other. Would do anything for each other. But there's a line. You have to draw a goddamn line.
"If he said he wanted his family back," Dean grinds out. "His family. Mom and our grandmother. Us, maybe. If he wanted it to be like it was, or… or… to build something good. With all of us. But she's in a good place. Mom. And Deanna. He had to know that. Get her back?" He can hear his voice break. He knows how wrong he sounds, how much he's pleading a case he doesn't believe in. "Why would anybody do that? They -"
Sam looks at him steadily. Unblinking.
"Shit," is all Dean can say.
There's a fallen tree close to the road. A decent seat, even with its skim-coat of moss and slime. Dean sinks down onto it with a long exhale, dropping his head into his hands, letting the tears slide down his palms into the cuffs of his shirt.
"What was he like?" Sam asks after a minute. "Before. When you met him in the past."
Rude, Dean thinks. Arrogant.
"He was a son of a bitch," he mutters.
But people say that about Dad.
For all he knows, people could be saying that about him.
"Crowley's got no authority to yank people down from upstairs," he says to the ground between his boots. "King of Hell? Screw that. If he could drag people out of Heaven, then he could… Anybody. He'd have access to -"
Sam doesn't say anything when Dean peers up at him, looking for help. Agreement. Something. His face is almost blank.
Then, finally, he says quietly, "If Crowley had full access - if he could summon any hunter from the history of the world to help him collect the Alphas - "
"Wouldn't he want the best one?"
"Of course."
"He'd want the one who could get the job done."
"And everybody's got a price."
Neither of them says what they're thinking. What Sam says instead, after a minute of silence, is, "He got the best one he did have access to. The only one he could tweak us with."
He sounds like he's a thousand miles away.
"Seems like," Dean replies.
And there are way too many implications in that situation. Too many questions.
Where was Samuel, when Crowley latched onto him? If not upstairs, a place that - if it isn't out of bounds to the King of Hell, damn well ought to be - then where?
And how?
Why?
You find comfort where you can in this life. Fifty yards away, the pyre burns sluggishly but stubbornly. It'll do the job. Eventually. Then they can move on. Find Bobby, and say goodbye to Rufus. There'll be no fire there; Rufus's faith won't allow it. He'll be laid to rest the usual way. The customary way.
Sort of.
"He was never gonna be that," Dean tells his brother. "He was never going to be our grandfather."
Sam looks off down the road.
Toward the pyre.
"Good riddance, then," he says after a minute, head drawn down toward his shoulders.
Disappointed.
"Yeah," Dean says quietly.
* * * * *
"I killed our grandfather," Sam says.
CHARACTERS: Sam and Dean
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 1165 words
THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY
By Carol Davis
"Sammy, don't."
They've gone through this before. With Madison, certainly. With others. The blame. The goddamn blame.
"Sammy."
"Leave it," Sam says. "Just leave it."
The pyre is still burning, some fifty or sixty feet away, a heap of old, hastily-gathered wood with two wrapped bodies at the core of it. It's taking forever to burn; the wood wasn't the best choice, a little too damp, too dense, a little rotted, not oily enough.
Dad taught them how to pick the right kind of wood.
God knows who taught him.
This fire's going to take hours to burn down, to reduce those bodies to bone and ash, at the rate it's going, and he and Sam ought to be long gone, ought to be helping Bobby make the arrangements for Rufus, though Bobby says he neither wants nor needs any help. He put a button on that statement by waving his gun, the way he said goodbye to Dad what seems like a million years ago.
They'll be here the whole damn day.
But they owe it to Gwen, Dean thinks, to stay until it's done. They owe her that much. He owes her that much, even though she was basically a stranger, someone he'd never laid eyes on until a few months ago. As for the rest of it…
"I killed our grandfather," Sam says.
He hasn't looked at Dean for a good five minutes.
"We don't know that," Dean says, and (certainly not as welcome as it might be) Sam's head pivots toward him. Here it comes, Dean thinks, and sure enough, a deep furrow forms between Sam's eyebrows. His lips all but disappear, pressed into a thin, bloodless line. "We don't know he was… Samuel," Dean persists. "All we've got to go on is -"
What?
They've got nothing, is what they've got.
"Then what does that make me?" Sam asks. "If Samuel was just something Crowley whipped up like a damn chocolate cake to serve his cause, what does that make me? He brought us back at the same time."
"You're you," Dean replies. "After all this? You're you."
"Am I?" Sam murmurs.
And he strides away. Down the road, away from the pyre. He doesn't go far - just to a little copse of trees, all of which look as blasted as Dean feels. Sam leans against one of them, with that same slump to his shoulders he always get when something disappoints him monumentally, though why any of this should be disappointing, Dean isn't sure.
It's a million things. Disappointing isn't one of them.
But maybe it is.
Disappointing not because of what they lost, what they had to do, but because of what might have been. Family. A grandfather. Cousins. Not a Norman Rockwell situation, for sure, but family. Hunting together. Pursuing the family business. There's an attraction to that. A certain draw. They could have been a clan, the bunch of them: building relationships, maybe a home base, something like Bobby has, like the Harvelles had. They could have worked together, depended on each other, trusted each other.
Maybe there's no doing that, in this life. The Harvelles are all gone. Bobby's got nothing but an empty house and a junkyard.
They built one pyre.
Family goes up in a single blaze.
"He wasn't some sweet, white-haired old guy who took us fishing and told us crazy stories about the war," Dean says when he reaches that little cluster of stunted, sickly-pale trees. "He was a miserable son of a bitch. Even without a soul, you were more human than he was. And let me remind you: he was all set to chuck us overboard. He was gonna sacrifice us, Sam."
"For Mom. To get Mom back."
"That's a load of crap."
"He wanted his daughter back, Dean."
God knows, the two of them have done everything for each other. Would do anything for each other. But there's a line. You have to draw a goddamn line.
"If he said he wanted his family back," Dean grinds out. "His family. Mom and our grandmother. Us, maybe. If he wanted it to be like it was, or… or… to build something good. With all of us. But she's in a good place. Mom. And Deanna. He had to know that. Get her back?" He can hear his voice break. He knows how wrong he sounds, how much he's pleading a case he doesn't believe in. "Why would anybody do that? They -"
Sam looks at him steadily. Unblinking.
"Shit," is all Dean can say.
There's a fallen tree close to the road. A decent seat, even with its skim-coat of moss and slime. Dean sinks down onto it with a long exhale, dropping his head into his hands, letting the tears slide down his palms into the cuffs of his shirt.
"What was he like?" Sam asks after a minute. "Before. When you met him in the past."
Rude, Dean thinks. Arrogant.
"He was a son of a bitch," he mutters.
But people say that about Dad.
For all he knows, people could be saying that about him.
"Crowley's got no authority to yank people down from upstairs," he says to the ground between his boots. "King of Hell? Screw that. If he could drag people out of Heaven, then he could… Anybody. He'd have access to -"
Sam doesn't say anything when Dean peers up at him, looking for help. Agreement. Something. His face is almost blank.
Then, finally, he says quietly, "If Crowley had full access - if he could summon any hunter from the history of the world to help him collect the Alphas - "
"Wouldn't he want the best one?"
"Of course."
"He'd want the one who could get the job done."
"And everybody's got a price."
Neither of them says what they're thinking. What Sam says instead, after a minute of silence, is, "He got the best one he did have access to. The only one he could tweak us with."
He sounds like he's a thousand miles away.
"Seems like," Dean replies.
And there are way too many implications in that situation. Too many questions.
Where was Samuel, when Crowley latched onto him? If not upstairs, a place that - if it isn't out of bounds to the King of Hell, damn well ought to be - then where?
And how?
Why?
You find comfort where you can in this life. Fifty yards away, the pyre burns sluggishly but stubbornly. It'll do the job. Eventually. Then they can move on. Find Bobby, and say goodbye to Rufus. There'll be no fire there; Rufus's faith won't allow it. He'll be laid to rest the usual way. The customary way.
Sort of.
"He was never gonna be that," Dean tells his brother. "He was never going to be our grandfather."
Sam looks off down the road.
Toward the pyre.
"Good riddance, then," he says after a minute, head drawn down toward his shoulders.
Disappointed.
"Yeah," Dean says quietly.
* * * * *