I'll Close Your Eyes So You Can't See
Title: I'll Close Your Eyes So You Can't See
Summary: Dean doesn't know how to go on without Sam, so Death provides him with an alternative.
Characters: Dean, OCs, Sam
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4,180
Disclaimer: All hail the CW, owner of all recognizable content herein! Or something. Whatever.
Warnings: Show-levels of gore and violence. EDIT: I am stupid and didn't warn for major character death. I SUCK AND I AM SORRY.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: I should be working on my Big Bangs. Or on my exchange fic. But then this plot bunny came to me last night and bit me HARD and would not let go until I wrote it. So, uh, here we go.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: I'm honestly not sure why I like reaper!Dean so much as an idea, but I know I'm not the only one. This is my take on it. Not sure it's going to fit in with popular opinion, mind you.
Neurotic Author's Note #3: Unbeta'd, but many thanks must go to morganoconner who did word wars with me until this thing was completely written. All mistakes, however, are mine and mine alone.
Neurotic Author's Note #4: Title is a lyric from 'Oh Death,' for those of you who didn't recognize it from the show.
The first one is a kid. It's a kid because the universe is a cruel bitch, and Dean is keenly aware of the irony, here. He's being tested, again.
"Yeah, yeah, I get it!" he snarls at the grey clouds looming overhead as he stalks along the sidewalk toward the group of kids playing street hockey. "Very fucking funny, dude!"
The name on the yellow Post-it note sticking to his fingertips reads 'Kevin Mahoney,' and it's almost impossible to tell which of these kids it is. They're all running around in seeming disorganisation, shrieking occasionally as the tennis ball they're using in lieu of a puck threatens to go out of bounds or to roll into the open sewer grate, but gets rescued at the very last second by a well-placed hockey stick. They're cute, remind him of Sam at that age, only a lot more exuberant. Sam was a quiet, studious kid when he was ten and was still only just beginning to learn about monsters and the darker corners of the world. These kids are all running and laughing, dressed in jeans and sweatshirts and running shoes that tell him their parents only want the very best for them.
"Kevin, the ball!"
One of the boys lunges to catch the ball, and that's him. He's got a shock of reddish-brown hair and a smattering of freckles across his nose and reveals a set of crooked front teeth when he grins. Dean strolls casually by the net, reaches out to brush his fingertips against the boy's shoulder. This is it, there's no turning back now, not even if he wanted to. He keeps walking to the far sidewalk, cringes when he hears the squeal of tires on asphalt, the resulting shrieks of fear and anguish, feels his shoulders creeping up toward his ears as he shoves his hands in his pockets. It's too late to change his mind, even if he could.
He turns around, goes back slowly to where the kid's soul is standing, looking around a little dazedly, like he's hit his head too hard or something. Actually, Dean sees, that's exactly what's happened. He reaches out for the boy's hand.
"Hey, Kevin. My name's Dean. You feel like coming for a walk?"
Kevin shakes his head slowly. "There was a car... you weren't here before. Am I dead?"
Kids figure some things out a lot faster than adults. Dean remembers that from the kid in Greybull, Wyoming, who had an asthma attack in his front yard and just decided to stick around and haunt his mom until she lost her mind. "Yeah, afraid so, kiddo. It's time to go."
Kevin doesn't look back at his broken body on the ground. "My parents are going to be really sad, aren't they?"
Dean nods. "Yes, they are. It's hard, losing your kid."
"They don't have any other kids, you know. They had to try for years before they had me. They call me their miracle. Mom's going to cry... can't I stay?"
Dean chews on his lip. He could always just lie, he supposes, tell the kid he's not allowed to stay, but those aren't the rules. "Yeah, if you want to, you can stay. But here's the thing, sport, you can't stay like you were before. Your body's dead, you know? You can't undo that. So you'd have to stay as a ghost, and trust me when I tell you, being a ghost really sucks. You can't do anything, nobody sees you, and at some point down the line everyone you knew and loved dies and you lose your mind and become an angry spirit and you hurt people."
"Are you a ghost?"
Dean shakes his head. "No. I used to hunt ghosts who were hurting people. Make sure they couldn't hurt anybody else."
Kevin seems to take that in stride. "So where are we going?"
"Not far. You're going to take my hand, and I'm going to walk you over to a light, and you're going to step inside."
"Will you come with me?"
"I can't. I'm just here to help you cross. Once you're there, there will be other people to help you. Way nicer people than me, for that matter."
"Okay. I guess you can't go talk to my Mom and Dad? Tell them I'm okay?"
"Sorry. They can't see me, only you can. Like an imaginary friend."
Kevin sighs, then nods and reaches out to take Dean's hand. "Okay, then."
It takes less than ten steps before the boy pauses and squints a little, as though he's staring into a bright light. Dean stops, looks down at him. "You see it?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, this is it, then. Go on ahead, I'll be here to make sure you get across."
"Bye, Dean."
He smiles in spite of himself. "You take care, Kevin."
~*~
The second death is a little easier. It's not as hard, somehow, to find himself next to the hospice bed of an elderly woman. She looks frail and small in the bed, the pink blanket rumpled about her hips, her skin almost translucent. There's a young woman holding her hand, two little kids asleep in chairs propped against the far wall, a young man pacing the hallway anxiously. Dean notes the almost-empty IV bag, the cannula in her nose delivering oxygen that won't be needed in just a few more minutes. The young woman is crying silently, holding the older woman's hand in both of hers, carefully, as gently as if she were cradling a bird's egg.
"You need anything, Nana?"
The woman shakes her head minutely. "I'm fine." The words are a tiny whisper, barely audible above the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor, and Dean leans forward to brush his fingers against her arm. "I'm ready, now."
The young woman tries to swallow a sob, and it comes out as a hiccup. "All right, Nana. You know we're all here, right? We're going to stay right here until you go. We love you."
Dean glances down at the crisp new Post-It note in his hand, then takes a step closer to the edge of the bed. "Gloria Baker?"
The old woman looks up, and smiles. "Why, hello. Are you here to fetch me?"
"I guess you're not surprised to see me."
"Why would I be surprised, dear?" Gloria is already slipping out of her body, reaching out with one bony hand. By the time he grasps it in his, her skin is already looking pinker and healthier. He wonders if, when she crosses over, she'll look as she did in her twenties, or her thirties. Maybe she won't look like anything recognizable at all. "Although you're not quite how I envisioned you'd be."
Dean grins. "I am way better-looking than most Reapers," he agrees with a wink, offering her his arm instead of taking her hand. Gloria looks like the kind of woman who would appreciate a gentleman. "But I met this girl Reaper once, she was really pretty. We can take on whatever appearance we want."
"A Reaper?" Gloria looks confused for a moment. "I thought you'd be an angel."
Dean shakes his head. "Nope. I'm just the go-between guy. Angels in Heaven, demons in Hell, Reapers in-between. Sort of neutral territory, if you want."
Gloria pats his arm. "Well, you still seem like a sort of angel, dear, even if you do look a little like a ragamuffin. You have a kind heart, I can tell."
Ragamuffin. Dean would be indignant on behalf of his leather jacket -it was the first thing he got back when he figured out he could look like whatever he wanted to- but he's pretty sure she's teasing. "I wouldn't know about a kind heart. But you don't need to worry, you're going to go on ahead as soon as I take you, okay? Do you see a light yet?"
She nods, then takes one last look behind her at the young woman still crying next to the bed. "Poor Molly. I wish I could have comforted her one last time. But she has Jerry and the boys, and they'll be there for each other."
"I wish all the people who died had your good sense," Dean tells her. "Not everybody listens."
"What happens to them?"
"Nothing good," Dean tells her grimly, and pats her shoulder as she shivers.
When she steps ahead of him into the light, though, she's smiling, and her hair has turned deep chocolate brown.
~*~
Dean loses track of how many souls he reaps after that. Or, rather, he realizes that tracking the numbers is actually sort of beside the point. There's no rank in death, no filing everything away into tidy packets. He simply goes where the Post-It notes tell him to go, and takes the souls of the people whose names are written down in careful block letters so he'll be sure not to screw any of it up. He still thinks the Post-It notes are kind of funny, even after he's reaped more souls than he can keep track of -it's the one thing that show he watched once got right.
He'd been camping out in a motel room while Sam was curled up in the other bed, half-asleep and half-unconscious from some fever he'd picked up God knows where, and Dean had spent the day watching a marathon of this one show with a girl with a guy's name -he forgets now, it was that long ago- and he'd thought that the idea of cosmic Post-It notes was ridiculous. Turns out, that's pretty much how it goes. Then Sam got better, they found another hunt, and he forgot all about the lame cable TV show about a dead girl taking other people's souls. There's a list, he remembers Tessa telling him when he was still trying desperately to save Sam, but he's not high enough on the food chain to be privy to the list.
It's been long enough that Dean has learned his lesson. He knows not to question the list, not to question the orders. It's actually a relief, a way of slipping back into a role he'd almost forgotten -the obedient soldier. He's not really that person anymore, though. In the odd moments when he's honest with himself, he knows that he's nothing like who he used to be when he was just a kid desperate to win his father's love the only way he knew how. Sometimes, in his unguarded moments, he finds himself wishing he could see his dad one last time, talk to him as an adult, just man to man, and see him for the person he really was outside of 'Dad,' and the monster-hunter myth that Dean built around him for their entire lives. He wonders if living up to those expectations wasn't what drove John Winchester over the edge, in some ways.
Death is a full-time occupation. There are thousands of Reapers out there, Dean knows it, but he rarely ever sees any of his colleagues, as he comes to think of them for lack of a better word, except once after an earthquake in some part of the world he's quite sure he never would have heard of or paid attention to while he was still alive. He walks through the rubble without any trouble at all, and simply pulls people one by one out of their bodies. There's no discriminating here: men, women, children, old and young, fat and thin, crippled and healthy. They're all confused and afraid, and their souls cling to him a little desperately as he keeps moving, like a child might cling to their parent's sleeve in a supermarket for fear of getting lost.
"It's okay, I won't let anything happen to you until you're ready," he assures them. "Just stick with me, okay? You're going to be just fine."
It might be a lie. In some cases, these people may have just been bad enough or evil enough or desperate enough to pass the mystery qualifications that will sentence them to an eternity in Hell, even though those will be few and far-between. Dean remembers that the addition of any soul to the racks was a reason for celebration -humanity is simply not all that bad, as a whole, contrary to popular belief. It's why the demons work overtime to recruit new souls.
"Where are we going?" a little girl asks. "Where's my mama?"
He's quite sure she's not speaking English, but it seems that he has no trouble at all understanding what she's saying. "You're coming with me, sweetheart, and then you're going to go into the light. I don't know where your mother is. She might not be able to come with you," he tells her, and she sticks out her bottom lip.
"But I want Mama!"
He sighs. "I know, but sometimes we can't get exactly what we want, and there's nothing wrong with that either. Do you know anyone who's with us now?"
She looks around, sucking idly on one finger, then points to the soul of a middle-aged man with a beard and a paunch hanging over his belt. "That's my uncle."
"Okay, then. So why don't you go and walk with your uncle? Your mother would want you to be with someone you know, right?"
Her mother might be with any one of the other Reapers, but he has no way of knowing. He has a list of names that's longer than his arm, and there are at least twenty other Reapers here that he's seen. He doesn't talk to any of them, thinks he might recognize Tessa at a distance, but it's too far for him to see her clearly, and they're all too busy to socialize anyway.
It's barely a few minutes after the last of the souls has stepped into the light, each of them holding onto the hands of the ones before and after them, like a long chain of souls, when he feels the familiar pull again, and goes to answer another call.
~*~
They're all different, the dying. For all that they seem the same: always a little bewildered at first, always asking if they can see their loved ones one last time, or pass on a message, they're all different, too. He sits beside a dying soldier as the kid -barely a day over twenty-two, the same age as Sam when he lost everything in the fire- holds in his own entrails with both hands and coughs up blood and cries because he's never going to see his mother again, and Dean puts a hand on his forehead and soothes him and tells him it's going to be fine, even if it's a lie.
He takes the soul of a banker who lost all his money and thought eating his own gun was the solution to his problems. "It's a waste," Dean tells him. "Who do you think this is going to help?"
The banker shakes his head. "I don't know, but at least it doesn't hurt anymore, right?"
Dean keeps the thought to himself that the guy is a selfish asshole, because the wrong words to a spirit can tether them here, and he doesn't want that. So far his record is spotless, and he wants to keep it that way. No way is Dean Winchester going to let any ghosts with unfinished business wander around hurting people and forcing hunters to track them down in order to salt and burn their remains.
A mother of three nearly ruins his streak, sitting alone in her living room, cross-legged next to her own body and rocking back and forth and wailing because she should have known better, she should have left her husband long before he accidentally killed her.
"I'm going to make him regret this for the rest of his existence!" she rails, ignoring Dean while he tries to pull her to her feet. "I'll be damned before he lifts a hand to one of our babies!"
"Come on, don't be stupid," Dean pleads, even though this one is far beyond reason. "You can't stay here. Don't you think you've made enough dumb decisions for one lifetime? He beat you, you stayed, and now you're dead. As much as I'm not usually a fan of the cops, I say this time you let them sort it out. It's pretty obvious what happened, and your kids will go live with a relative. You have relatives, right?"
She nods through her tears. "My sister and her husband. She's been begging me for years to come live with her."
"Okay, then. You don't want to stay here, I promise. Sure, you might make your husband miserable for all of his existence. You might even kill him, but then what? You'll be stuck here forever, and there's going to be no one left. Or, worse, you'll end up hurting your kids because you won't be you anymore. Is that what you want?"
Her eyes widen. "No. No, I would never hurt my babies. Never!"
"So come on, then. Come with me, and I promise they'll be safe." Safe from you, he amends inside his head, because he can't really promise that her kids are going to be safe. Still, sometimes a white lie is better than the truth, he thinks as he all but shoves her over the threshold into the light.
He thinks Tessa might be disappointed, thinks of her softer approach to making the dead cross over. But Tessa is Tessa, and most of the other Reapers aren't like her. Most of the other Reapers aren't like Dean, either, come to think of it, but it's not like it makes any difference these days. There's a new, more customer service-friendly approach to reaping, and even if Dean's sales pitch is a little different, he figures it doesn't matter as long as it's effective. The other Reapers are starting to follow suit, fewer of them adopting the terrifying-old-guy-in-a-suit guise in favour of looking a little more human, a little more approachable. As far as Dean's concerned, that's all to the good, since it means fewer people are too afraid to cross over at all and stay behind.
Sometimes Reapers get sent after the souls of people who chose not to go. Dean thinks of it as a kind of due diligence, figures that there must be a list of lost souls somewhere up there where he doesn't have the clearance to go, and he's kind of perversely pleased to know that it's not only hunters who seem to care about making sure these people go to rest. They never go easily, though, and often enough they won't go at all. He spends the better part of three days chasing after one woman who gets her kicks drowning adulterous men in their swimming pools. She's a gibbering loony, spends the entire time screeching about faithless men and how worthless they all are and even goes so far as to throw herself at him and try to scratch him. She fights him every inch of the way, until in the end Dean has to give it up when he's called away to another death. He stops for a moment to look back, and allows himself the luxury of wishing, just for a moment, that he was still corporeal and could just dig up the bitch's remains and burn the living fuck out of them.
~*~
Time has no meaning when you're the messenger of Death. Dean doesn't remember when he stopped keeping track at all, but it hardly seems to matter. He doesn't talk to anyone except the dead and dying, and for the most part he finds it strangely soothing. It's a role he knows well, and he doesn't mind not having all the answers for this one. It's not given to him to know which way a soul will go, and he's happier not knowing, especially knowing what he does about what lies on either side. He supposes that, if you don't know any better, Heaven must be a pretty nice place to be for all of eternity, and he hopes that even the assholes he helps across end up there, because there is no way he'd wish Hell on anyone, not even the worst of the people he comes across.
Time has no meaning, so Dean just keeps going. It's easier to keep busy than to let himself stop and think about why he's here, about that empty spot inside himself that he keeps wanting to push at the way you test a loose tooth when you're a kid -just to see if it's still there.
I'll give you a choice, Death told him the last time they spoke. Eternities ago. I can't have you upsetting the balance again, but I can make this easier for you. So you can stay behind, the way you're doing now, and end up doing all the terrible things you know you'll do sooner or later, or you can come work for me. You've been me once. This time, it won't be nearly as hard, and you'll still be yourself.
Dean has lost count of all the decisions he's come to regret over the years, but this isn't one of them. When the last Post-It note comes, he smiles when he sees the name printed on it. He's there in the blink of an eye -he doesn't know how the travel works, only that it's not how the angels do it and not how the demons do it, only that he's always exactly where he needs to be when he needs to be there- and finds himself standing next to the prone form of a dying man.
Dean kneels next to him, puts a hand carefully on his shoulder. "Hey, Sammy. You ready to go, or what?"
Sam's still drawing breath. Terrible, laboured, rattling breaths, but breaths nonetheless. He opens his eyes, and blood froths at the corners of his mouth, pink bubbles bursting as they come into contact with the air. Dean glances down at the crushed ruin of his chest, the gleaming jut of bone. There's a pile of slime and gristle and claws off to the side, and Dean squeezes his shoulder.
"You did good, Sammy. It's dead, everybody's safe. You can let go now."
Sam's throat and mouth work, but there's no air left with which to form words. He stares at Dean as though he can't quite believe what he's seeing, until his eyes slowly drift shut and his last breath escapes in a long, rattling exhalation. Dean pets his hair, even though Sam can't feel it, waits until his brother -the real one that no longer has any use for his body- appears, standing next to him. Sam understands about being a spirit, about not being limited by the body's normal range of motion.
"Hey," Sam says, one corner of his mouth quirking into a shy smile. He rubs the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish. "I thought you'd moved on. If I'd known you were still here..."
That's when Dean realizes that his brother has misapprehended the whole situation. "Oh, dude, no. It's not what you think. I'm here for you, Sammy. See?" he holds up the Post-It note.
"So you're..." Sam gestures vaguely, and Dean nods, grinning from ear to ear. Sam looks terrible, he thinks, and not just because he's older. He looks -worn, somehow, like life has been grinding at him. He's lost weight, and his hair has grey streaks in it. Sam worries at his lower lip with his teeth, and looks down at his body. "Shit."
"You coming, or what?"
Sam shakes his head, but Dean can tell it's more a gesture of bewilderment than refusal. "I don't-" his voice breaks, even though technically it shouldn't be able to, not now. "Am I going to Hell after all?" he asks quietly, and if Dean ever wondered if Reapers kept their hearts, his question is answered now when he feels his own breaking.
"Fuck, no. Sam, why would you think that?"
Sam shrugs. "I never finished my time, did I? And you're a Reaper, I can't stay with you..."
That's it. Dean takes one step, another. The third step brings him right to his brother, and he hauls Sam into his arms, trying to ignore how his eyes burn a little when Sam just folds into his embrace, one hand fisted in Dean's shirt, hidden under his leather jacket.
"Aw, Sammy," he breathes. "You moron. Why do you think I'm here? This was always a temporary gig, you know. Didn't you learn anything over the last few years? You and me, it's non-negotiable."
"You mean it?" Sam asks, and Dean hates the tiny note of hope he can hear in his voice, like Sam still expects his spirit to be crushed underfoot after all this. "You were-"
Dean interrupts him, pulling him closer so that it's obvious that he plans on never letting go.
"I was waiting for you, bitch."
This entry was originally posted at http://ratherastory.dreamwidth.org/212747.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Summary: Dean doesn't know how to go on without Sam, so Death provides him with an alternative.
Characters: Dean, OCs, Sam
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4,180
Disclaimer: All hail the CW, owner of all recognizable content herein! Or something. Whatever.
Warnings: Show-levels of gore and violence. EDIT: I am stupid and didn't warn for major character death. I SUCK AND I AM SORRY.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: I should be working on my Big Bangs. Or on my exchange fic. But then this plot bunny came to me last night and bit me HARD and would not let go until I wrote it. So, uh, here we go.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: I'm honestly not sure why I like reaper!Dean so much as an idea, but I know I'm not the only one. This is my take on it. Not sure it's going to fit in with popular opinion, mind you.
Neurotic Author's Note #3: Unbeta'd, but many thanks must go to morganoconner who did word wars with me until this thing was completely written. All mistakes, however, are mine and mine alone.
Neurotic Author's Note #4: Title is a lyric from 'Oh Death,' for those of you who didn't recognize it from the show.
The first one is a kid. It's a kid because the universe is a cruel bitch, and Dean is keenly aware of the irony, here. He's being tested, again.
"Yeah, yeah, I get it!" he snarls at the grey clouds looming overhead as he stalks along the sidewalk toward the group of kids playing street hockey. "Very fucking funny, dude!"
The name on the yellow Post-it note sticking to his fingertips reads 'Kevin Mahoney,' and it's almost impossible to tell which of these kids it is. They're all running around in seeming disorganisation, shrieking occasionally as the tennis ball they're using in lieu of a puck threatens to go out of bounds or to roll into the open sewer grate, but gets rescued at the very last second by a well-placed hockey stick. They're cute, remind him of Sam at that age, only a lot more exuberant. Sam was a quiet, studious kid when he was ten and was still only just beginning to learn about monsters and the darker corners of the world. These kids are all running and laughing, dressed in jeans and sweatshirts and running shoes that tell him their parents only want the very best for them.
"Kevin, the ball!"
One of the boys lunges to catch the ball, and that's him. He's got a shock of reddish-brown hair and a smattering of freckles across his nose and reveals a set of crooked front teeth when he grins. Dean strolls casually by the net, reaches out to brush his fingertips against the boy's shoulder. This is it, there's no turning back now, not even if he wanted to. He keeps walking to the far sidewalk, cringes when he hears the squeal of tires on asphalt, the resulting shrieks of fear and anguish, feels his shoulders creeping up toward his ears as he shoves his hands in his pockets. It's too late to change his mind, even if he could.
He turns around, goes back slowly to where the kid's soul is standing, looking around a little dazedly, like he's hit his head too hard or something. Actually, Dean sees, that's exactly what's happened. He reaches out for the boy's hand.
"Hey, Kevin. My name's Dean. You feel like coming for a walk?"
Kevin shakes his head slowly. "There was a car... you weren't here before. Am I dead?"
Kids figure some things out a lot faster than adults. Dean remembers that from the kid in Greybull, Wyoming, who had an asthma attack in his front yard and just decided to stick around and haunt his mom until she lost her mind. "Yeah, afraid so, kiddo. It's time to go."
Kevin doesn't look back at his broken body on the ground. "My parents are going to be really sad, aren't they?"
Dean nods. "Yes, they are. It's hard, losing your kid."
"They don't have any other kids, you know. They had to try for years before they had me. They call me their miracle. Mom's going to cry... can't I stay?"
Dean chews on his lip. He could always just lie, he supposes, tell the kid he's not allowed to stay, but those aren't the rules. "Yeah, if you want to, you can stay. But here's the thing, sport, you can't stay like you were before. Your body's dead, you know? You can't undo that. So you'd have to stay as a ghost, and trust me when I tell you, being a ghost really sucks. You can't do anything, nobody sees you, and at some point down the line everyone you knew and loved dies and you lose your mind and become an angry spirit and you hurt people."
"Are you a ghost?"
Dean shakes his head. "No. I used to hunt ghosts who were hurting people. Make sure they couldn't hurt anybody else."
Kevin seems to take that in stride. "So where are we going?"
"Not far. You're going to take my hand, and I'm going to walk you over to a light, and you're going to step inside."
"Will you come with me?"
"I can't. I'm just here to help you cross. Once you're there, there will be other people to help you. Way nicer people than me, for that matter."
"Okay. I guess you can't go talk to my Mom and Dad? Tell them I'm okay?"
"Sorry. They can't see me, only you can. Like an imaginary friend."
Kevin sighs, then nods and reaches out to take Dean's hand. "Okay, then."
It takes less than ten steps before the boy pauses and squints a little, as though he's staring into a bright light. Dean stops, looks down at him. "You see it?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, this is it, then. Go on ahead, I'll be here to make sure you get across."
"Bye, Dean."
He smiles in spite of himself. "You take care, Kevin."
~*~
The second death is a little easier. It's not as hard, somehow, to find himself next to the hospice bed of an elderly woman. She looks frail and small in the bed, the pink blanket rumpled about her hips, her skin almost translucent. There's a young woman holding her hand, two little kids asleep in chairs propped against the far wall, a young man pacing the hallway anxiously. Dean notes the almost-empty IV bag, the cannula in her nose delivering oxygen that won't be needed in just a few more minutes. The young woman is crying silently, holding the older woman's hand in both of hers, carefully, as gently as if she were cradling a bird's egg.
"You need anything, Nana?"
The woman shakes her head minutely. "I'm fine." The words are a tiny whisper, barely audible above the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor, and Dean leans forward to brush his fingers against her arm. "I'm ready, now."
The young woman tries to swallow a sob, and it comes out as a hiccup. "All right, Nana. You know we're all here, right? We're going to stay right here until you go. We love you."
Dean glances down at the crisp new Post-It note in his hand, then takes a step closer to the edge of the bed. "Gloria Baker?"
The old woman looks up, and smiles. "Why, hello. Are you here to fetch me?"
"I guess you're not surprised to see me."
"Why would I be surprised, dear?" Gloria is already slipping out of her body, reaching out with one bony hand. By the time he grasps it in his, her skin is already looking pinker and healthier. He wonders if, when she crosses over, she'll look as she did in her twenties, or her thirties. Maybe she won't look like anything recognizable at all. "Although you're not quite how I envisioned you'd be."
Dean grins. "I am way better-looking than most Reapers," he agrees with a wink, offering her his arm instead of taking her hand. Gloria looks like the kind of woman who would appreciate a gentleman. "But I met this girl Reaper once, she was really pretty. We can take on whatever appearance we want."
"A Reaper?" Gloria looks confused for a moment. "I thought you'd be an angel."
Dean shakes his head. "Nope. I'm just the go-between guy. Angels in Heaven, demons in Hell, Reapers in-between. Sort of neutral territory, if you want."
Gloria pats his arm. "Well, you still seem like a sort of angel, dear, even if you do look a little like a ragamuffin. You have a kind heart, I can tell."
Ragamuffin. Dean would be indignant on behalf of his leather jacket -it was the first thing he got back when he figured out he could look like whatever he wanted to- but he's pretty sure she's teasing. "I wouldn't know about a kind heart. But you don't need to worry, you're going to go on ahead as soon as I take you, okay? Do you see a light yet?"
She nods, then takes one last look behind her at the young woman still crying next to the bed. "Poor Molly. I wish I could have comforted her one last time. But she has Jerry and the boys, and they'll be there for each other."
"I wish all the people who died had your good sense," Dean tells her. "Not everybody listens."
"What happens to them?"
"Nothing good," Dean tells her grimly, and pats her shoulder as she shivers.
When she steps ahead of him into the light, though, she's smiling, and her hair has turned deep chocolate brown.
~*~
Dean loses track of how many souls he reaps after that. Or, rather, he realizes that tracking the numbers is actually sort of beside the point. There's no rank in death, no filing everything away into tidy packets. He simply goes where the Post-It notes tell him to go, and takes the souls of the people whose names are written down in careful block letters so he'll be sure not to screw any of it up. He still thinks the Post-It notes are kind of funny, even after he's reaped more souls than he can keep track of -it's the one thing that show he watched once got right.
He'd been camping out in a motel room while Sam was curled up in the other bed, half-asleep and half-unconscious from some fever he'd picked up God knows where, and Dean had spent the day watching a marathon of this one show with a girl with a guy's name -he forgets now, it was that long ago- and he'd thought that the idea of cosmic Post-It notes was ridiculous. Turns out, that's pretty much how it goes. Then Sam got better, they found another hunt, and he forgot all about the lame cable TV show about a dead girl taking other people's souls. There's a list, he remembers Tessa telling him when he was still trying desperately to save Sam, but he's not high enough on the food chain to be privy to the list.
It's been long enough that Dean has learned his lesson. He knows not to question the list, not to question the orders. It's actually a relief, a way of slipping back into a role he'd almost forgotten -the obedient soldier. He's not really that person anymore, though. In the odd moments when he's honest with himself, he knows that he's nothing like who he used to be when he was just a kid desperate to win his father's love the only way he knew how. Sometimes, in his unguarded moments, he finds himself wishing he could see his dad one last time, talk to him as an adult, just man to man, and see him for the person he really was outside of 'Dad,' and the monster-hunter myth that Dean built around him for their entire lives. He wonders if living up to those expectations wasn't what drove John Winchester over the edge, in some ways.
Death is a full-time occupation. There are thousands of Reapers out there, Dean knows it, but he rarely ever sees any of his colleagues, as he comes to think of them for lack of a better word, except once after an earthquake in some part of the world he's quite sure he never would have heard of or paid attention to while he was still alive. He walks through the rubble without any trouble at all, and simply pulls people one by one out of their bodies. There's no discriminating here: men, women, children, old and young, fat and thin, crippled and healthy. They're all confused and afraid, and their souls cling to him a little desperately as he keeps moving, like a child might cling to their parent's sleeve in a supermarket for fear of getting lost.
"It's okay, I won't let anything happen to you until you're ready," he assures them. "Just stick with me, okay? You're going to be just fine."
It might be a lie. In some cases, these people may have just been bad enough or evil enough or desperate enough to pass the mystery qualifications that will sentence them to an eternity in Hell, even though those will be few and far-between. Dean remembers that the addition of any soul to the racks was a reason for celebration -humanity is simply not all that bad, as a whole, contrary to popular belief. It's why the demons work overtime to recruit new souls.
"Where are we going?" a little girl asks. "Where's my mama?"
He's quite sure she's not speaking English, but it seems that he has no trouble at all understanding what she's saying. "You're coming with me, sweetheart, and then you're going to go into the light. I don't know where your mother is. She might not be able to come with you," he tells her, and she sticks out her bottom lip.
"But I want Mama!"
He sighs. "I know, but sometimes we can't get exactly what we want, and there's nothing wrong with that either. Do you know anyone who's with us now?"
She looks around, sucking idly on one finger, then points to the soul of a middle-aged man with a beard and a paunch hanging over his belt. "That's my uncle."
"Okay, then. So why don't you go and walk with your uncle? Your mother would want you to be with someone you know, right?"
Her mother might be with any one of the other Reapers, but he has no way of knowing. He has a list of names that's longer than his arm, and there are at least twenty other Reapers here that he's seen. He doesn't talk to any of them, thinks he might recognize Tessa at a distance, but it's too far for him to see her clearly, and they're all too busy to socialize anyway.
It's barely a few minutes after the last of the souls has stepped into the light, each of them holding onto the hands of the ones before and after them, like a long chain of souls, when he feels the familiar pull again, and goes to answer another call.
~*~
They're all different, the dying. For all that they seem the same: always a little bewildered at first, always asking if they can see their loved ones one last time, or pass on a message, they're all different, too. He sits beside a dying soldier as the kid -barely a day over twenty-two, the same age as Sam when he lost everything in the fire- holds in his own entrails with both hands and coughs up blood and cries because he's never going to see his mother again, and Dean puts a hand on his forehead and soothes him and tells him it's going to be fine, even if it's a lie.
He takes the soul of a banker who lost all his money and thought eating his own gun was the solution to his problems. "It's a waste," Dean tells him. "Who do you think this is going to help?"
The banker shakes his head. "I don't know, but at least it doesn't hurt anymore, right?"
Dean keeps the thought to himself that the guy is a selfish asshole, because the wrong words to a spirit can tether them here, and he doesn't want that. So far his record is spotless, and he wants to keep it that way. No way is Dean Winchester going to let any ghosts with unfinished business wander around hurting people and forcing hunters to track them down in order to salt and burn their remains.
A mother of three nearly ruins his streak, sitting alone in her living room, cross-legged next to her own body and rocking back and forth and wailing because she should have known better, she should have left her husband long before he accidentally killed her.
"I'm going to make him regret this for the rest of his existence!" she rails, ignoring Dean while he tries to pull her to her feet. "I'll be damned before he lifts a hand to one of our babies!"
"Come on, don't be stupid," Dean pleads, even though this one is far beyond reason. "You can't stay here. Don't you think you've made enough dumb decisions for one lifetime? He beat you, you stayed, and now you're dead. As much as I'm not usually a fan of the cops, I say this time you let them sort it out. It's pretty obvious what happened, and your kids will go live with a relative. You have relatives, right?"
She nods through her tears. "My sister and her husband. She's been begging me for years to come live with her."
"Okay, then. You don't want to stay here, I promise. Sure, you might make your husband miserable for all of his existence. You might even kill him, but then what? You'll be stuck here forever, and there's going to be no one left. Or, worse, you'll end up hurting your kids because you won't be you anymore. Is that what you want?"
Her eyes widen. "No. No, I would never hurt my babies. Never!"
"So come on, then. Come with me, and I promise they'll be safe." Safe from you, he amends inside his head, because he can't really promise that her kids are going to be safe. Still, sometimes a white lie is better than the truth, he thinks as he all but shoves her over the threshold into the light.
He thinks Tessa might be disappointed, thinks of her softer approach to making the dead cross over. But Tessa is Tessa, and most of the other Reapers aren't like her. Most of the other Reapers aren't like Dean, either, come to think of it, but it's not like it makes any difference these days. There's a new, more customer service-friendly approach to reaping, and even if Dean's sales pitch is a little different, he figures it doesn't matter as long as it's effective. The other Reapers are starting to follow suit, fewer of them adopting the terrifying-old-guy-in-a-suit guise in favour of looking a little more human, a little more approachable. As far as Dean's concerned, that's all to the good, since it means fewer people are too afraid to cross over at all and stay behind.
Sometimes Reapers get sent after the souls of people who chose not to go. Dean thinks of it as a kind of due diligence, figures that there must be a list of lost souls somewhere up there where he doesn't have the clearance to go, and he's kind of perversely pleased to know that it's not only hunters who seem to care about making sure these people go to rest. They never go easily, though, and often enough they won't go at all. He spends the better part of three days chasing after one woman who gets her kicks drowning adulterous men in their swimming pools. She's a gibbering loony, spends the entire time screeching about faithless men and how worthless they all are and even goes so far as to throw herself at him and try to scratch him. She fights him every inch of the way, until in the end Dean has to give it up when he's called away to another death. He stops for a moment to look back, and allows himself the luxury of wishing, just for a moment, that he was still corporeal and could just dig up the bitch's remains and burn the living fuck out of them.
~*~
Time has no meaning when you're the messenger of Death. Dean doesn't remember when he stopped keeping track at all, but it hardly seems to matter. He doesn't talk to anyone except the dead and dying, and for the most part he finds it strangely soothing. It's a role he knows well, and he doesn't mind not having all the answers for this one. It's not given to him to know which way a soul will go, and he's happier not knowing, especially knowing what he does about what lies on either side. He supposes that, if you don't know any better, Heaven must be a pretty nice place to be for all of eternity, and he hopes that even the assholes he helps across end up there, because there is no way he'd wish Hell on anyone, not even the worst of the people he comes across.
Time has no meaning, so Dean just keeps going. It's easier to keep busy than to let himself stop and think about why he's here, about that empty spot inside himself that he keeps wanting to push at the way you test a loose tooth when you're a kid -just to see if it's still there.
I'll give you a choice, Death told him the last time they spoke. Eternities ago. I can't have you upsetting the balance again, but I can make this easier for you. So you can stay behind, the way you're doing now, and end up doing all the terrible things you know you'll do sooner or later, or you can come work for me. You've been me once. This time, it won't be nearly as hard, and you'll still be yourself.
Dean has lost count of all the decisions he's come to regret over the years, but this isn't one of them. When the last Post-It note comes, he smiles when he sees the name printed on it. He's there in the blink of an eye -he doesn't know how the travel works, only that it's not how the angels do it and not how the demons do it, only that he's always exactly where he needs to be when he needs to be there- and finds himself standing next to the prone form of a dying man.
Dean kneels next to him, puts a hand carefully on his shoulder. "Hey, Sammy. You ready to go, or what?"
Sam's still drawing breath. Terrible, laboured, rattling breaths, but breaths nonetheless. He opens his eyes, and blood froths at the corners of his mouth, pink bubbles bursting as they come into contact with the air. Dean glances down at the crushed ruin of his chest, the gleaming jut of bone. There's a pile of slime and gristle and claws off to the side, and Dean squeezes his shoulder.
"You did good, Sammy. It's dead, everybody's safe. You can let go now."
Sam's throat and mouth work, but there's no air left with which to form words. He stares at Dean as though he can't quite believe what he's seeing, until his eyes slowly drift shut and his last breath escapes in a long, rattling exhalation. Dean pets his hair, even though Sam can't feel it, waits until his brother -the real one that no longer has any use for his body- appears, standing next to him. Sam understands about being a spirit, about not being limited by the body's normal range of motion.
"Hey," Sam says, one corner of his mouth quirking into a shy smile. He rubs the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish. "I thought you'd moved on. If I'd known you were still here..."
That's when Dean realizes that his brother has misapprehended the whole situation. "Oh, dude, no. It's not what you think. I'm here for you, Sammy. See?" he holds up the Post-It note.
"So you're..." Sam gestures vaguely, and Dean nods, grinning from ear to ear. Sam looks terrible, he thinks, and not just because he's older. He looks -worn, somehow, like life has been grinding at him. He's lost weight, and his hair has grey streaks in it. Sam worries at his lower lip with his teeth, and looks down at his body. "Shit."
"You coming, or what?"
Sam shakes his head, but Dean can tell it's more a gesture of bewilderment than refusal. "I don't-" his voice breaks, even though technically it shouldn't be able to, not now. "Am I going to Hell after all?" he asks quietly, and if Dean ever wondered if Reapers kept their hearts, his question is answered now when he feels his own breaking.
"Fuck, no. Sam, why would you think that?"
Sam shrugs. "I never finished my time, did I? And you're a Reaper, I can't stay with you..."
That's it. Dean takes one step, another. The third step brings him right to his brother, and he hauls Sam into his arms, trying to ignore how his eyes burn a little when Sam just folds into his embrace, one hand fisted in Dean's shirt, hidden under his leather jacket.
"Aw, Sammy," he breathes. "You moron. Why do you think I'm here? This was always a temporary gig, you know. Didn't you learn anything over the last few years? You and me, it's non-negotiable."
"You mean it?" Sam asks, and Dean hates the tiny note of hope he can hear in his voice, like Sam still expects his spirit to be crushed underfoot after all this. "You were-"
Dean interrupts him, pulling him closer so that it's obvious that he plans on never letting go.
"I was waiting for you, bitch."
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