[SR] The Dark Night quote
[Set in whatyou_wanted. Dean is ohgodkillme_now.]
“You die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
It wasn’t a move of desperation, or even one of stupidity.
He hated the agency. He had watched it swallow both his father and his brother whole, even though he knew they saw it for what it was. They knew that it was just a soul-sucking machine, that took from you until you didn’t have anything left to give back, and once that was over, they dumped you into the void like a piece of garbage, and hoped that you came out okay on the other side, but they still worked for them anyway. Sam had watched his father’s friends go through it over and over again over the years, that when it finally happened to his own father he knew that he shouldn’t have been surprised. He shouldn’t have been shocked when Dean came and told him that they hung his father out to dry, and they had to go find him.
But he was. He was surprised and shocked, and he was pissed. The Winchesters didn’t have a lot of family. In fact, it was just the three of them, and the agency knew it. And they still tossed their father, a loyal company man of forty years, out like the rest of them. Sam had never been an agent, but his father had trained him to be one, hoping that his sons would follow his footsteps into the agency, doing a job the man had loved for so long. Sam had done his own thing, not wanting to be sucked into the machine, but he never condemned his family for it. They loved it. Who was he to stand in the way? The day Dean told him John was gone, though, he was starting to wish he had.
Though when Dean came to him, it wasn’t as a grieving son who had to break the news to his baby brother. It was as a guy with a plan, a Time Agent who wanted to use those abilities to save someone he cared about, and Sam couldn’t blame him for that, but he knew the risks. He knew that if they did this, there was no coming back from this. If they survived, Dean would lose his commission as an agent, and Sam would go to prison, and then they would be separated even more than they were before. But Sam also knew that this was their father and there was nothing that he wouldn’t do for them. There was no reason that they couldn’t do the same.
And they did.
And it ended just like Sam had predicted it would. Upon returning to their own time period, the agency was waiting for them, armed and ready. Sam was handcuffed, and Dean was drugged, and no matter how hard he shouted and fought and tried to get back to him, he couldn’t. Dean was gone, and Sam was never going to see him again. He was going to be shoved into the deepest, darkest prison they could find, and Dean was going to be lost to the void just like his father. They had risked it all, and lost everything, but Sam knew that Dean would at least be comforted by the fact that they had at least taken the risk. Sam, not so much.
It was years before they even bothered to track him down again. Five was what they told him, but it could have been more or less. He stopped trying to count the days after the first year, and it was a long time after that before Davis Zachariah, head of the agency, actually bothered to come down and look through his cell door. He was a mess, and he knew it, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. And more to the point, he didn’t really care. Zachariah wasn’t exactly someone he made it a high priority to clean up for.
“What the hell could you possibly want?”
“Hello, Sam. Nice to see you too.” The man gave him a bit of a smug smirk. “Don’t tell me you lost all your manners cooped up in here.”
“Oh, no. I have them,” he mumbled, starting to push himself up to his feet and looking at the man with dark eyes. “I just don’t feel the need to use them with you.” He ambled over to the door, his body stiff in the joints from having been stuck in his cell for so long with no exercise. “So I repeat-what the hell do you want?”
Zachariah was quiet for a moment, regarding him carefully before responding. “We have a proposition for you.”
“That so,” Sam snorted, sliding his arms through the bars as he met the man’s stare unflinchingly. “Don’t think I’m interested.”
“It’ll get you out of here. Don’t you think that is at least worth considering?”
The thought flashed through Sam’s head for all of a millisecond before he snarled back at him. “You tossed both my father and brother into the void, and tossed me in here. Why the fuck would I be inclined to make a deal with you?”
“Your father and brother are both dead, Sam, and I’m terribly sorry for that, but we’ve decided that there’s a more-productive-way of paying your debt to us.”
“My brother isn’t dead.” Sam knew at least that much. He could feel it in his gut, in his bones but no matter what lies they told him, he knew that Dean wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. He was all that Sam had left.
Zachariah gave him a long look, before flipping the file drive in his hand sideways to slide it through the handles of the bar. “Do you really think I would say something like that to you without proof?” Sam snatched it from him, working the necessary buttons to turn it on, and squinting at first at the bright holographic screen in front of him, but the pictures themselves were clear enough. “Agents found his body around the twentieth century. They assumed that the void spit him out and he got caught off guard by a train or some other kind of large vehicle. Didn’t stand a chance.”
Sam’s hands shook as he pressed the button to turn it off, not being able to look at those pictures anymore. He knew this agency, knew that he couldn’t trust a word they said, but there was something about seeing it live and in living color that twisted that feeling in the pit of his stomach, and made him just that much more inclined to believe, and he hated that they were doing that to him. “This isn’t exactly helping your case.”
“I know. But I felt I should be honest with you, Sam. After all, we wouldn’t want you taking this deal and then running off half-cocked looking for a man who wasn’t going to be found. If you choose to do this, we need you to do your job-not waste your time looking for Dean.”
Sam grit his teeth slightly. “And how do I know you didn’t fake those, just to make me believe that Dean was dead in order to do what you want?”
“Well, that’s a risk we’re willing to take, but Sam-after all the time and loyalty that your family had put into the agency over the years, why would we lie about something like that?”
Sam let out a bitter laugh, pacing away from him, running a hand through the scraggly hair on top of his head. “You would lie about the sky being blue, so long as it got you what you wanted.” And that was the truth. Zachariah was the PR man, the guy they threw out there when they needed to make the agency look better and frankly, Sam was sick of it. He didn’t want the PR line, and he didn’t want whatever bullshit they managed to throw at him, he just wanted to be left alone. “Go to Hell, and take your damn deal with you.”
And yet, the man just kept talking. Talking about how Dean and John wouldn’t have wanted him to stay stuck here in this hellhole, how he had so much more potential, and all the while, Sam was letting the wheels in his head turn. It was keeping him from trying to punch through the bars of the cell. He knew that taking this deal would be selling his soul. That it would be condemning him to the same life, to the same numbing existence and abuse. But he would be out of here and he could actually look for Dean as oppose to just accepting what he was being given. Because he couldn’t. The brother he knew wouldn’t have let himself get hit by a goddamn train.
He grit his teeth slightly once Zachariah fell silent again, before looking at him with heavy eyes. “And what exactly does this deal entail?”
Zachariah just smirked, and Sam’s nails dug into the meat of his palm as the urge to punch through the bars came up again. “I knew you’d see things my way.”
That was six months ago.
In all honesty, he could agree that this assignment could have been worse. Monitoring a rift with a team was pretty easy, all things concerned, and while he was well aware that there were a few members of the team who resented the fact that he was given the head position when they had the seniority, but it seemed to have settled after a while. 2009 wasn’t a sucky year either. The technology was drastically different, but it wasn’t the Stone Ages either, so Sam could manage. He also had to check in with the mother ship every so often-they still didn’t trust him as far as they could throw him-but that in itself was more of an inconvenience than a problem.
Outside of that, however, he looked. He ran facial recognition programs, asked around, traveled as far either way into time as he could without attracting too much attention-anything he could to try and find if his brother was still out there. He knew it was a long shot, and that he didn’t know what he’d actually do when he did find Dean. Maybe he’d just disappear, maybe he’d try staying where he was and just keeping the knowledge of his brother to himself, because despite what he felt about the agency, they did do good work. He wanted to keep that up.
But in the end, he was still stuck there. He still needed to do the job he was given. He unzipped the leather jacket he was wearing, before dropping it on the back of his chair and sitting down at the desk in front of him. The picture of his brother went next along with the bottle of whiskey he kept in his desk, and he took a breath trying to figure out where he was going to look next. Because he wasn’t giving up.
Not by a long shot.
1845 words
“You die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
It wasn’t a move of desperation, or even one of stupidity.
He hated the agency. He had watched it swallow both his father and his brother whole, even though he knew they saw it for what it was. They knew that it was just a soul-sucking machine, that took from you until you didn’t have anything left to give back, and once that was over, they dumped you into the void like a piece of garbage, and hoped that you came out okay on the other side, but they still worked for them anyway. Sam had watched his father’s friends go through it over and over again over the years, that when it finally happened to his own father he knew that he shouldn’t have been surprised. He shouldn’t have been shocked when Dean came and told him that they hung his father out to dry, and they had to go find him.
But he was. He was surprised and shocked, and he was pissed. The Winchesters didn’t have a lot of family. In fact, it was just the three of them, and the agency knew it. And they still tossed their father, a loyal company man of forty years, out like the rest of them. Sam had never been an agent, but his father had trained him to be one, hoping that his sons would follow his footsteps into the agency, doing a job the man had loved for so long. Sam had done his own thing, not wanting to be sucked into the machine, but he never condemned his family for it. They loved it. Who was he to stand in the way? The day Dean told him John was gone, though, he was starting to wish he had.
Though when Dean came to him, it wasn’t as a grieving son who had to break the news to his baby brother. It was as a guy with a plan, a Time Agent who wanted to use those abilities to save someone he cared about, and Sam couldn’t blame him for that, but he knew the risks. He knew that if they did this, there was no coming back from this. If they survived, Dean would lose his commission as an agent, and Sam would go to prison, and then they would be separated even more than they were before. But Sam also knew that this was their father and there was nothing that he wouldn’t do for them. There was no reason that they couldn’t do the same.
And they did.
And it ended just like Sam had predicted it would. Upon returning to their own time period, the agency was waiting for them, armed and ready. Sam was handcuffed, and Dean was drugged, and no matter how hard he shouted and fought and tried to get back to him, he couldn’t. Dean was gone, and Sam was never going to see him again. He was going to be shoved into the deepest, darkest prison they could find, and Dean was going to be lost to the void just like his father. They had risked it all, and lost everything, but Sam knew that Dean would at least be comforted by the fact that they had at least taken the risk. Sam, not so much.
It was years before they even bothered to track him down again. Five was what they told him, but it could have been more or less. He stopped trying to count the days after the first year, and it was a long time after that before Davis Zachariah, head of the agency, actually bothered to come down and look through his cell door. He was a mess, and he knew it, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. And more to the point, he didn’t really care. Zachariah wasn’t exactly someone he made it a high priority to clean up for.
“What the hell could you possibly want?”
“Hello, Sam. Nice to see you too.” The man gave him a bit of a smug smirk. “Don’t tell me you lost all your manners cooped up in here.”
“Oh, no. I have them,” he mumbled, starting to push himself up to his feet and looking at the man with dark eyes. “I just don’t feel the need to use them with you.” He ambled over to the door, his body stiff in the joints from having been stuck in his cell for so long with no exercise. “So I repeat-what the hell do you want?”
Zachariah was quiet for a moment, regarding him carefully before responding. “We have a proposition for you.”
“That so,” Sam snorted, sliding his arms through the bars as he met the man’s stare unflinchingly. “Don’t think I’m interested.”
“It’ll get you out of here. Don’t you think that is at least worth considering?”
The thought flashed through Sam’s head for all of a millisecond before he snarled back at him. “You tossed both my father and brother into the void, and tossed me in here. Why the fuck would I be inclined to make a deal with you?”
“Your father and brother are both dead, Sam, and I’m terribly sorry for that, but we’ve decided that there’s a more-productive-way of paying your debt to us.”
“My brother isn’t dead.” Sam knew at least that much. He could feel it in his gut, in his bones but no matter what lies they told him, he knew that Dean wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. He was all that Sam had left.
Zachariah gave him a long look, before flipping the file drive in his hand sideways to slide it through the handles of the bar. “Do you really think I would say something like that to you without proof?” Sam snatched it from him, working the necessary buttons to turn it on, and squinting at first at the bright holographic screen in front of him, but the pictures themselves were clear enough. “Agents found his body around the twentieth century. They assumed that the void spit him out and he got caught off guard by a train or some other kind of large vehicle. Didn’t stand a chance.”
Sam’s hands shook as he pressed the button to turn it off, not being able to look at those pictures anymore. He knew this agency, knew that he couldn’t trust a word they said, but there was something about seeing it live and in living color that twisted that feeling in the pit of his stomach, and made him just that much more inclined to believe, and he hated that they were doing that to him. “This isn’t exactly helping your case.”
“I know. But I felt I should be honest with you, Sam. After all, we wouldn’t want you taking this deal and then running off half-cocked looking for a man who wasn’t going to be found. If you choose to do this, we need you to do your job-not waste your time looking for Dean.”
Sam grit his teeth slightly. “And how do I know you didn’t fake those, just to make me believe that Dean was dead in order to do what you want?”
“Well, that’s a risk we’re willing to take, but Sam-after all the time and loyalty that your family had put into the agency over the years, why would we lie about something like that?”
Sam let out a bitter laugh, pacing away from him, running a hand through the scraggly hair on top of his head. “You would lie about the sky being blue, so long as it got you what you wanted.” And that was the truth. Zachariah was the PR man, the guy they threw out there when they needed to make the agency look better and frankly, Sam was sick of it. He didn’t want the PR line, and he didn’t want whatever bullshit they managed to throw at him, he just wanted to be left alone. “Go to Hell, and take your damn deal with you.”
And yet, the man just kept talking. Talking about how Dean and John wouldn’t have wanted him to stay stuck here in this hellhole, how he had so much more potential, and all the while, Sam was letting the wheels in his head turn. It was keeping him from trying to punch through the bars of the cell. He knew that taking this deal would be selling his soul. That it would be condemning him to the same life, to the same numbing existence and abuse. But he would be out of here and he could actually look for Dean as oppose to just accepting what he was being given. Because he couldn’t. The brother he knew wouldn’t have let himself get hit by a goddamn train.
He grit his teeth slightly once Zachariah fell silent again, before looking at him with heavy eyes. “And what exactly does this deal entail?”
Zachariah just smirked, and Sam’s nails dug into the meat of his palm as the urge to punch through the bars came up again. “I knew you’d see things my way.”
That was six months ago.
In all honesty, he could agree that this assignment could have been worse. Monitoring a rift with a team was pretty easy, all things concerned, and while he was well aware that there were a few members of the team who resented the fact that he was given the head position when they had the seniority, but it seemed to have settled after a while. 2009 wasn’t a sucky year either. The technology was drastically different, but it wasn’t the Stone Ages either, so Sam could manage. He also had to check in with the mother ship every so often-they still didn’t trust him as far as they could throw him-but that in itself was more of an inconvenience than a problem.
Outside of that, however, he looked. He ran facial recognition programs, asked around, traveled as far either way into time as he could without attracting too much attention-anything he could to try and find if his brother was still out there. He knew it was a long shot, and that he didn’t know what he’d actually do when he did find Dean. Maybe he’d just disappear, maybe he’d try staying where he was and just keeping the knowledge of his brother to himself, because despite what he felt about the agency, they did do good work. He wanted to keep that up.
But in the end, he was still stuck there. He still needed to do the job he was given. He unzipped the leather jacket he was wearing, before dropping it on the back of his chair and sitting down at the desk in front of him. The picture of his brother went next along with the bottle of whiskey he kept in his desk, and he took a breath trying to figure out where he was going to look next. Because he wasn’t giving up.
Not by a long shot.
1845 words