SPN FIC - Angels O'er My Head
Yep, another one. This one's a coda to Houses of the Holy.
And I'm not anywhere near done.
Characters: Dean and Sam
Pairings: none
Length: 1575 words
Rating: PG, for language
Spoilers: Houses of the Holy
Disclaimer: Nope, no money changing hands here either.
It had taken some time to drag the details out of Dean: how he’d gone after the guy in the blue car, rescued the girl, followed the guy to an intersection where a pipe had rolled off a truck, bounced off the pavement in a way that defied all the laws of physics, and impaled the guy through the heart.
Accident?
Not like that. Not when the pipe should have gone in another direction. Or nowhere at all, given that it didn’t hit the street hard enough to bounce back up more than a few inches.
And it’d impaled the guy right through the heart.
God, it would seem, read Stephen King novels.
Angels O’er My Head
By Carol Davis
Something’s watching you.
Dad had taught them years ago to pay attention to that. Trust it, understand it. If your gut tells you something’s there, believe it.
So of course Sam woke up.
Squirmed, rolled over, curled his arm around his pillow and crushed it into a ball under his head. He was quiet for a minute, then he opened his eyes.
“Dude,” he said softly. “I don’t have any quarters.”
Dean didn’t say anything.
Sam squinted at the clock and moaned. “It’s four o’clock in the morning, man. If you turn on the damn Magic Fingers, I’m gonna pound you.”
When Dean still didn’t speak, Sam let out a whimper and sat up. His eyes were at half-mast; he pinched hard at the bridge of his nose and shook his head hard a couple of times. “You gonna tell me what’s going on, or do I have to drag it out of you? Seriously, man, it’s four o’clock in the morning.”
“Go back to sleep,” Dean murmured.
“You haven’t gone to sleep at all, have you?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Of course it mattered. And of course there was something going on. This wasn’t a case of I can’t sleep and I want you to watch TV with me. Or I’m addicted to the freaking Magic Fingers and I need to you go find a roll of quarters somewhere before I start having the DTs.
Or We are so seriously screwed, man. Help me figure this out.
With a sigh, Sam got out of bed, padded into the bathroom, splashed water on his face, filled the plastic cup he’d left sitting on the sink and gulped down a couple of swallows. When he returned, Dean was still lying on his side with a vaguely bewildered look on his face.
“You can let it not be a big deal,” Sam told him.
“How?” Dean said crossly.
“By having faith. It works for billions of people, Dean. Billions of people can’t be wrong.”
“Yeah, they can.”
It had taken some time to drag the details out of Dean: how he’d gone after the guy in the blue car, rescued the girl, followed the guy to an intersection where a pipe had rolled off a truck, bounced off the pavement in a way that defied all the laws of physics, and impaled the guy through the heart.
Accident?
Not like that. Not when the pipe should have gone in another direction. Or nowhere at all, given that it didn’t hit the street hard enough to bounce back up more than a few inches.
And it’d impaled the guy right through the heart.
God, it would seem, read Stephen King novels.
“I don’t know what’s going on, man,” Dean said in a small voice.
“Then just go with it.”
“Come on, Sam. What -“ Dean’s voice went hard, then trailed off. Shaking his head, he pushed himself up and sat hunched and cross-legged, digging at his forehead with the flats of his fingers. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Because if the angels didn’t protect Mom, then there can’t be any angels?”
Dean leveled a glare at his brother.
“Maybe their power isn’t limitless, Dean. Maybe, coming up against the demon, there was nothing they could do.”
“Nothing God could do?”
“People ask that question every day. ‘How could you let this happen?’ I ask it about Jess. If the demon wants me, why did Jess have to suffer?”
Providence in winter, in a cheap motel; the place was stuffy and drafty at the same time. Standing there in shorts and a t-shirt was creating huge colonies of gooseflesh on Sam’s arms, and his ankles were going numb from the cold air at floor level. With a grunt Sam hauled the blanket off his bed, wrapped it around himself, and sat down.
“If there’s a God, then he’s like some freaking civil service employee,” Dean announced. “Doesn’t want to do his goddamn job.”
Sam cracked a small smile at that.
“Shut up,” Dean told him.
“But you can’t explain the pipe.”
“It was a fluke.”
“Billions of people -“
“Oh, would you cram the billions of people? All these years, and we’ve never seen evidence of anything but spirits. We can explain spirits. Father Gregory was a spirit, not an angel. All this crap about the hand of God - it’s just crap.”
Sam waited a while, but Dean simply sat there with his jaw clenched.
“You want to tell me what’s really bugging you?” Sam asked finally.
“Go back to sleep.”
“Dean.”
“Bite me, Sam.”
There was a lot to be said for reverse psychology, particularly where Dean was concerned. And a lot more to be said for simply not staring at him, not putting him under the high-wattage interrogation lamp. Nodding, Sam flipped his blanket out across his bed, crawled back under the covers, and stretched out facing the door, looking away from Dean.
“She was all alone,” Dean said after several minutes had crawled by.
Sam, very deliberately, said nothing.
“Almost twenty-three years. She was there in our house, all by herself. Stuck there. None of us went back.”
Sam’s hand found the edge of his pillow and gripped it like he was biting on a bullet.
“Why didn’t we go back and make sure? Why didn’t Dad go back?”
“We didn’t know, Dean,” Sam said softly.
“It’s our fucking business! Why didn’t we make sure? Why didn’t we go there and make sure she was gone? Why didn’t we tell her it was okay to move on? She was there all alone.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“She was in the house.”
Sam sat up again and tried for an expression that wouldn’t set Dean off in the wrong direction. “She may have been in the house because we were in the house. She didn’t manifest until the poltergeist tried to hurt us. She may not have been there all along. We don’t know that.” When Dean’s face tightened back into a scowl, Sam said, “Maybe she’s been with us.”
Dean’s head jerked, tried for a “no way.”
“You’ve never felt like she was with you? Like if you turned around, she’d be there?”
“That’s a bunch of crap, Sam.”
“Why? Because it’s you? Because it’s us? People all over the world, all throughout time, have said they feel the presence of their loved ones close by.” Sam hesitated, then told his brother, “I feel Jess near me. Sometimes. And I’ve -“
“What?”
“Seen her. A couple of times.”
“The fuck, Sam. You didn’t tell me that.”
“Because I knew what kind of reaction I’d get. Dean - maybe that’s what a guardian angel is. You know all the lore about people being nudged away from accidents. There’s too much of it for it to be coincidence. Maybe Mom stayed with us until we really needed her. We would have died in that house if she hadn’t been there.”
Dean fell silent again. After a moment, he said with a wry edge in his voice, “Could’ve used her help when I electrocuted myself.”
“Maybe the house gave her more of an ability to manifest.”
“And maybe you’re stacking up explanations to suit yourself. What do you mean, you saw Jessica?”
“Thought I saw her. When I looked again, she was gone.”
“So you imagined it.”
“Maybe.”
“So why don’t you tell her to move on?”
“I’ve tried.” Gazing off into one of the room’s dark corners, where nothing lingered but dust bunnies and a thin cloud of stale smoke and old sweat, Sam said quietly, “I haven’t tried all that hard. It pretty much makes me a selfish bastard, but sometimes I like feeling that she’s close to me. It doesn’t seem like she’s suffering. Just that she’s…there.” With a small, humorless smile, he added, “Or I’m feeling what I want to feel and seeing what I want to see, and she moved on when she died.”
Dean thought that over for so long that Sam began to wonder if he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open. Finally, almost absently, Dean mumbled, “So what do you pray for?”
“A lot of things. For her to be at peace. For us to be able to find a way to help Dad. To be strong enough to fight the demon, when the time comes.”
“You get an answer?”
“Not so far.”
“You’d be better off writing to Dear Abby.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Bunch of crap, Sam. It’s all just a bunch of crap.”
“Or maybe that’s not the way it works. Maybe it all comes down to us. The devil - if there is such a thing - tries to lead us toward darkness. And God tries to lead us toward the light. Maybe we ought to at least consider the possibility.”
Dean’s fingers worked at the blanket covering his leg. Then he said, “Fucking pipe bounced off the pavement, Sam.”
He intended that to be his final word on the subject, because he slid down under the covers, turned away from Sam, and bunched the pillow around his head. After a minute of watching him, Sam did much the same thing, knowing Dean no more believed what he’d just said any more than he had several hours ago.
When he was sure Dean had fallen asleep, Sam sat up one more time, folded his hands together, and lowered his head.