SPN FIC - Through a Glass Darkly
Of course they kept the glasses -- you don't discard something like that. But maybe they should have.
CHARACTERS: Dean (with background Sam)
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: 8.14
LENGTH: 300 words
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
By Carol Davis
The glasses (both pairs of them, his and Sam's) go into a bag of fragile-ish things in the trunk, because you don't throw out something like that. You don't leave it behind, as if it's got no value - even though, to the untrained eye, they're worth very little. Two beat-up pairs of glasses, each with a very mild prescription, not much more potent than window glass.
But to his eyes, and Sam's? They're a window to another world.
One he'd just as soon forget he endured for forty years.
They remain in that bag in the trunk for almost a month, rattling around with other odds and ends that prove useful, now and then.
Then, on a Thursday afternoon, after he's listened to a night's worth of his brother's rattling, distressed breathing, he plucks from the bag the pair he wore at the Cassity ranch, the ones that make him look like Clark Kent, or somebody from Mad Men.
Or a Man of Letters, maybe.
He slides them into place, blinking at the mild distortion of the room around him. A few yards away, Sam is sitting in his usual place at the table, a hand thrust into his hair, frowning down at the pages of an old book. Oblivious, mostly, to what's going on around him. He doesn't look up when Dean moves across the room to the mirror above the sink; doesn't see his brother stare down at the battered porcelain, then, slowly, lift his gaze to the mirror.
They've been burned with holy oil, these simple lenses in their cheap black frames.
They're a window into Hell. A way to see what the unaided eye cannot.
Making no sound, Dean gazes at his reflection in the mirror for a long while, his breath slow, deliberate, and even.
* * * * *
CHARACTERS: Dean (with background Sam)
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: 8.14
LENGTH: 300 words
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
By Carol Davis
The glasses (both pairs of them, his and Sam's) go into a bag of fragile-ish things in the trunk, because you don't throw out something like that. You don't leave it behind, as if it's got no value - even though, to the untrained eye, they're worth very little. Two beat-up pairs of glasses, each with a very mild prescription, not much more potent than window glass.
But to his eyes, and Sam's? They're a window to another world.
One he'd just as soon forget he endured for forty years.
They remain in that bag in the trunk for almost a month, rattling around with other odds and ends that prove useful, now and then.
Then, on a Thursday afternoon, after he's listened to a night's worth of his brother's rattling, distressed breathing, he plucks from the bag the pair he wore at the Cassity ranch, the ones that make him look like Clark Kent, or somebody from Mad Men.
Or a Man of Letters, maybe.
He slides them into place, blinking at the mild distortion of the room around him. A few yards away, Sam is sitting in his usual place at the table, a hand thrust into his hair, frowning down at the pages of an old book. Oblivious, mostly, to what's going on around him. He doesn't look up when Dean moves across the room to the mirror above the sink; doesn't see his brother stare down at the battered porcelain, then, slowly, lift his gaze to the mirror.
They've been burned with holy oil, these simple lenses in their cheap black frames.
They're a window into Hell. A way to see what the unaided eye cannot.
Making no sound, Dean gazes at his reflection in the mirror for a long while, his breath slow, deliberate, and even.
* * * * *