Fic: That Second Chance (R, Het (mainly Gen) 1/2

[mellaithwen]

Title: That Second Chance
Author: mellaithwen
Movie Adapted: City of Angels
Genre: Het (Jess/Sam) majority v.gen
Characters/Pairings: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore, John Winchester, Mary Winchester. Sam/Jess, John/Mary
Rating: R
Word Count: 5, 802
Notes/Credits: beta'd by the god that is pixel_0who read and then beta'd and just...in like NO time at all it was amazing and I am forever grateful!
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended; fair use only. Not created for profit.
Summary: Written forreel_spn

~

An elevator breaks down in the middle of the city. The light blinks on and off, and in those few precious moments of fear and confusion, they stand among the waiting.

They listen to whispered prayers they aren’t to hear and reach out to those who cannot see them. Some worry that they will be there forever and tiny bouts of claustrophobia break out in the confined space. An impatient man growls under his breath and presses the numbered button repeatedly.

A moody child tells her mother, “I told you we should have taken the stairs.”

And at the back, in the corner, a teenage boy has yet to notice anything. With his nose stuck in the same book he’s been reading since he left the top floor to visit his uncaring father, he’s immersed in the writing on the page. Amidst the rising panic, they can hear his calm. His quiet passion to turn the page, his urge to keep reading, keep reading, keep reading. His fingers brush the aged paper just as the woman next to him knocks him by accident.

Scattered, it would appear she has only now grasped how small the space they’re in is. She apologises for knocking the book from his hand, and the boy sighs, having lost his page. He slips it into his back pocket and watches the present company in their varying stages of irritation, paranoia and apparent fear.

He watches.

They watch.

The lights in the elevator brighten once more, and with a clang and a loud noise that vibrates through the box, they’re moving again.

Only thanks to the man by the door, and his incessant button pressing, they’re going up again instead of down.

The moody child will become infuriated and upon the reaching the top floor will run down the stairs four at a time while her mother calls, “Be careful!” down several flights of stairs. The man will duck his head as his cheeks redden and the occupants of the elevator complain in his ear.

The woman will drop her purse as the contents spill out; the teenager will help her pick them up.

They step out together and go their separate ways. She, to find her office if she can remember where it is, and he, back to his father’s office to face the nothingness that waits for him there. He’ll find his forgotten page in his book, and he’ll read while Daddy Dearest blackmails underlings on the phone.

The elevator will ping, seemingly empty. But not so.

Not so.

On the next floor a man and woman will board. Each will duck their head and smile as the other turns away. Both do not understand their feelings are mutual until their fingers brush past one another and their eyes meet.

*-*-*

They share whatever comfort their unseen presence can possess, directed to those whose busy lives never think to look up and see hanging guardians perched upon the traffic-lights.

They lead the dying to the light and show the way to the dead.

They are guides in the darkness.

They are light.

They are perfect and calm and unfazed by all they see.

They are filled with wisdom and understanding but unable to touch; they are inferior to those they watch.

They sit and read poetry as thousands of cars whiz past them every day. They sit above highways and atop skyscrapers. They climb the un-climbable with the speed of thought.

They travel in ways no human could understand. Unless the humans weren’t always...human.

As sentient beings, they are rarely seen or heard. They speak calmly about all that they will never do. Touch. Feel. They wonder at the glory each ant below their dangling feet takes for granted.

Together they are like the growing sigh that comes with each sunrise. A chorus of voyeurs, studying each man, woman and child as they go about their daily lives.

In the City of Angels, messengers swarm in silence and breathe in the humanity all around them that they will never be able to embrace.

*-*-*

On a chair next to a child-sized bed, Dean sits. Clad in black as he always is with no need to change from uniform. He waits patiently as time passes and family comes in and out. They check on her and whisper, and Dean wishes he couldn’t hear them. He does. He does.

The room is quiet now. Each teddy-bear and bunny-rabbit is asleep on their shelves. None scatter the floor, and no toy is out of place. This child hasn’t had the energy to play for quite some time. She murmurs in her sleep, and Dean raises his palm to her forehead. She turns weakly toward the touch, and that simple movement has Dean sighing in sadness.

Amidst a screaming mother and father, and a wailing baby in another room awoken from the commotion, Dean leads the little girl away.

*-*-*

“She definitely knew what she liked,” Dean whispers as his angelic brother sits down beside him on a sign above the interstate.

“Pyjamas?”

“Flannel, with feet.”

“Pyjamas...excellent choice.”

“What else?” Dean asks, turning to Sam’s small book of illegible notes.

“In the elevator of the Bradbury building a man touched a woman’s bare skin by accident but it made her turn and look at him in such a way...”

“And they...?” Dean smirks as Sam nods. “A good day.”

“Do you ever wonder what that would be like?” Sam asks suddenly. “Touch?”

Dean remembers touch, vaguely. But he remembers being without it more.

“No.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Occasionally yes...touch.”

*-*-*

He’s staring at Jessica again. Dean can tell because it’s the only time his brother is ever distracted. Samuel, the great concentrator.

“You’re staring,” Dean smiles as he joins Sam.

“I can’t help it,” Sam answers simply, innocently, never hiding his intentions.

Below,  the crowds increase as morning continues. Bodies flood the streets, and among them all, a head of blonde hair rushes through them. Samuel likes it when Jessica thinks she’s late for class. Her curls bounce as she runs, and the sun glints and shines off each lock as she carries her books in a sprint.

He’s been watching her for a while.

The first time Sam saw her, Jessica, her grandfather’s breath had reduced to wheezing, and her whole family was weeping around his bedside.

Jessica had held one hand while Sam, unseen, had taken the other. At first he had followed her in concern—though he didn’t know that emotion from the rest—but then he had wanted to see her again. An urge, a pull. An emptiness that her being there seemed to fill.

The first time Dean had seen her, Dean, his wise brother who seemed to understand so much more than young Sam...the first time he’d caught his brother’s eyes on her, he’d stopped. Frozen, staring. His breath had caught in his throat, and he stood wondering how long it had been since last he’d seen her.

Since dimensions had intertwined and time had spun around and around and started again from the beginning. He wonders how long it must have taken for these moments to repeat themselves once more. He wonders.

He used to spend days trying to get back, trying to find those that don’t exist. He fought against it but eternity passed.

How long have they been up high? Waiting in the skies, climbing skyscrapers for a better view of a sunrise only they can hear?

Sam talks about her like he doesn’t know anything more than her name. He prefers the library when she’s there. Every book seems better when she’s the one reading them. Dean does, though. He remembers stories told by a grieving younger brother in the dark of night, on the road of a hunt. He remembers just like he remembers existence and the end of existence. The end of humanity and the success of every demon there ever was.

He remembers the end but not the beginning of the new world. He remembers flames that tore through the hearts of millions. He remembers being one of the last ones standing. He remembers facing his brother and the dark eyes...the dark, dark eyes.

He remembers being one of the last to fall.

Sometimes he thinks maybe that’s why he remembers it. To stop it from happening again. To step in, to be the hero, the world’s guardian again and again and again.

He remembers that seconds after he’d opened his eyes he’d understood, for the first time in his life, his old life, his new life, it didn’t matter. In the skies, he understood while Sam did not.

Sam was not to be reminded of the world he helped destroy.

This was their second chance, or maybe fourteenth, Dean had lost count. He’d seen the world turn over so many times now that he supposed it made sense for Jessica to appear once again.

“You could stop, stop staring. Pick someone else to follow around all day.”

“She’s a perfect example.”

“She’s a student. She socialises only when she needs to, she studies, she goes to class, she takes exams. How is she a perfect example? Pick someone whose daring. Someone who takes risks.” Just pick someone else, Sammy.

“I think she would, if she was given the choice.”

Dean thinks he must be right after all; she took a risk with Sam the first time around. Even if she didn’t know it.

*-*-*

Sam smiles at the old woman in her chair. She’s facing the window, leant back with her short white curls tussled and just visible over the back of the seat.

As a breeze swings past the open window, she breathes deeply. A great breath of the morning air. It’s enough.

She smiles when Sam kneels in front of her, and he nods when she calls him Arthur. In a hushed voice she tells him he’s missed and that she knew he’d come back for her. That he wouldn’t leave her for long. Sam touches her palm. Smiling is the last thing she does before following him away.

In death, her clarity lets her see her saviour for who he is. She thanks him, apologises for the mix up, and disappears in a veil of light that’s never too bright for Sam’s eyes.

*-*-*

With the sand beneath their feet, they stand amongst the many on the beach. The tide rushes across the shore, crashes with white froth before being pulled back again. They’re never alone here, always comforted. Sam can stand still for hours like Dean never could.

“I was mistaken for a woman’s husband today,” Sam begins, sensing Dean’s need to speak.

“You were?”

“She called me Arthur, and I hadn’t the heart to correct her.”

“No need.”

“What about you?”

“The little girl asked me if she could be an angel.”

“Again? They all want wings.”

“I never know what to say.”

“Tell them the truth.”

“What if I just make her a little pair of wings out of paper?”

“Did you tell her the truth?”

“Not wholly. I couldn’t. I told her that we were never human—”

“—not strictly true.”

“True enough. For the most part we’re not. I always tell them that. We’re exceptions, Sam, rarities. They’ll never be like we are; I won’t give them hope to have it sullied.”

The difference between them is Sam sees Dean as his brother just as he sees all the rest of them as brothers and sisters. He knows he wasn’t created from dust and love and beauty. He was born, created by man (and woman) as was Dean. But he knows no more.

He has no memories of another life or another world.

Dean’s glad.

“Where they’re going, they won’t mind.” Sam says softly, trying to ease his brother’s conscience.

“I won’t take that risk.”

“How did she take it?”

“She said, ‘What good would wings be if you couldn’t feel the wind on your face?’”

“She has a point.”

“A little girl, Sam, she had a point. It isn’t fair.”

“Yes, it is.”

They anticipate the sunrise, smell it in the air, and hear the song that follows in stark contrast to the bustling city far, far away.

But while the others stand with heads held high towards the rays of glowing oranges and reds, Sam and Dean sit behind the lifeguard’s tower with their knees pulled up to their chests. They take too much solace in being separated from the crowd.

Like birds outcast from the flock, they separate themselves because although none of their brothers and sisters will ever cast them aside, they will never feel accepted. Dean has spent a millennia understanding that, but Sam’s mind is naïve and forgetful.

It’s not his fault; it’s his gift, while remembering is Dean’s curse.

“Speaking of the truth, have you seen her today?”

“You know I have.”

*-*-*

With stacks of bookcases that stretch upwards as the staircase entwines upward, its spine a corkscrew in the centre of the building, hands reach out. Soft bodies that glide through the air follow humans as they read. As they open their minds to worlds both real and fictional. As they follow words and expand their vocabulary as they learn.

They suspend belief and have faith that their story will have an ending and they will get there soon.

Sam stands near and likes to read over people’s shoulders at the same pace as they can do. They can hear their thoughts and hear the words ringing around in their heads. He hovers but rarely truly reaches out to embrace their understanding completely.

Dean touches them, he holds tight and feels absolutely nothing.

“When I really worry about something, I don't just fool around.  I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something.  Only, I don't go.  I'm too worried to go.  I don't want to interrupt my worrying to go—”

Sam listens to J.D Salinger’s words being spoken by a young woman as he drifts past her spot on the floor between the bookcases. She’s being watched by her sweetheart from the next aisle. With miles of genres between them, her lover sighs and continues to read his own find, distracted by her scent amongst the musty books.

“They need to worry and betray time with urgencies false,” the words pause as he takes another look. He thinks about touching her, he thinks about her skin and how soft it is and piercing her eyes can be when she’s angry, and he thinks about the wine stain on her brand new carpet and he thinks about her fury last night that ended in a night of sheer passion.

“and...and...and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won't be at peace unless they can latch on to an established and proven worry and having once found—”

Past Kerouac, past passion and distraction and love, Sam hears Eliot coming from the next row and he follows it in curiosity. He doesn’t want to intrude on a relationship he cannot feel for real.

Meanwhile, Dean drifts over to the children’s section. He’s not alone. Many prefer it here. Children don’t philosophise about what they read. They read and their minds brighten and that light turns to colours, and they see the words in pictures and they smile.

“Mother I can hear the mermaids cry, I hear the mermen sing, and I can hear the sailing-ships all made of sticks and string.”

If Dean closes his eyes, he sees what she sees. The little girl and her poem. A lighthouse in the distance, those ships Causley writes about. Tiny clouds on a great blue sky. The lapping waters, somewhat green and turquoise and shining so bright with each wave, each tide. Small fish dancing beneath the surface jumping up and up.

“And I can see the jumping fish, the whales that fall and rise, and swim about the waterspout that swarms up to the skies.”

Mermaids sway in the sunshine, some upon rocks combing their hair with tails scaled and colourful like the kaleidoscope the child remembers in her room. Others swim and laugh and joke.

“I taste the salt upon my tongue as sweet as sweet can be. Tell me, my dear, whose voice do you hear?”

The seagull flies into view. Grains of sand fly upward as a mermaid on the shore flaps her tail against the harsh ground. Shells spread out beside her and long lost friends swim further away. He sees the whale, giant and blue, with a kind smile and wide eyes.

“It is the sea, the sea.”

A boy sits next to his brother. The younger is bored and huffing and puffing and reciting what he would like to do as soon as he gets home. He would much like to jump under his bed and pry open his box full of toys. He’d like to rifle through them past teddy bears and blocks until he finds his toy robot and plays games until dinner time.

But for now he has to sit quietly until Mummy comes back. While his stinky older brother has his nose buried in a book and completely ignores his boredom.

He has been told twice to find a book, but he hasn’t the patience for words unless spoken by another. He won’t always feel this way. When he is fifteen, his English teacher will take him aside and put a book in his hands. She promises him he will like it, she swears it’s true, and if he can read it by the end of next week, a book report will count towards his final grade.

With the world opened up to him from this one piece of literary brilliance, he will thank her and she will always be his favourite teacher. The one who took a moment to wonder that maybe he could do better if he knew a little more. If he was shown a little more.

For now, Dean smiles at them and admires the elder boy’s concentration on his own book. He hears his sudden thought, his whispered question to himself, “Are ghosts real?” Intrigued, Dean steps forward and stares down at the page. An old woman stands in the illustrated moonlight, her face stern, with a coffee in hand. Her coat, transparent, the colour of the bricks behind her. Everything’s transparent, and at the top of the page it’s written, The Ghost Teacher by Allan Ahlberg.

For a moment Dean hesitates. He’s made a point to avoid any horrors and ghostly tales since he first remembered a life once lived. But this is a children’s tale; it surely won’t remind him of what was left behind in another world, another reality another time and place... Will it?

“The school is forgotten – children forget –

But the ghost of a teacher lingers yet.

As the night creeps up to the edge of the day,

She tidies the Plasticine away;

Counts the scissors – a shimmer of glass –

And says “Off you go!” to her absent class.

She utters the words that no one hears,

Picks up her bag...”

“‘...And disappears.’”

“What?”

“You say pardon,” the older brother reprimands. “Be polite.”

“You can’t make me.”

“I’m the older brother; of course I can make you. Say ‘pardon.’”

“Pardon?”

“There.”

In the further corner Squirdles and Werklings traipse across the Ning Nang Nong, where Monkeys say boo if they’re not silly old baboons and tea pots go Jibber Jabber Joo. A child frowns while another young girl hears the story of a dancing bear, and to another it’s a secret garden that only appears at midnight.

A father sits his son on his lap, puts his own book down and desperately tries to silence the whining of the toddler. He puts his fingers up and starts to sing quietly in the child’s ear. “Two little dicky birds, sitting on a wall. One named Peter, one named Paul. Fly away Peter! Fly away Paul! Come back Peter, come back Paul!”

Unfortunately the high pitched giggles are just as loud—if not louder—than the indignant cries of the little boy. The father sighs and really doesn’t care anymore, he just listens to the laughing, and starts to sing again.

Smiling, Dean walks away in search of his brother.

Already Sam has accompanied avid readers to Lilliput and across the Mississippi river with a boy named Jim. He has listened to the hesitant whispers of a child at war and felt the sadness of a reader as Steinbeck’s Mice and Men came to a bitter end. Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter is read differently by each man and woman there sits. From others he has heard whispers of time and body and soul.

“When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake.  But don't make a production of it.  Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.” He hears a southern accent quote Atticus Finch and can’t help but think of Dean

But just when his brother decides to appear, Sam is silent. He frowns, turns, and looks down.

He sees a flash of gold and races after a girl he hardly knows while every angel in the library stares after him.

Dean looks away.

*-*-*

Jessica Moore is standing in the doorway to the library when her phone rings, and suddenly she’s hurrying to the local hospital. She doesn’t know she’s being followed.

Racing past reception, pausing for mere seconds to get a room number, she makes her way up the floors. Running up stairs rather than take the time in an elevator she reaches her destination.

“Mary!” she calls upon seeing the older woman pacing in the corridor. “Mom called, what happened?”

Her worry is clear. She has known this family since their move to LA coincided with her own. A kind old couple, willing to take her under their wing.

“Oh, your mother didn’t have to do that, everything’s fine...he just...he’s fine. He insists on going up to that damn cabin and then this happens.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’ll be fine but they’re waiting for more tests to see if they can risk surgery to remove the bullet or not.”

“Oh god, how’d it even happen?”

“A ricochet or a backfire or something... I don’t know. He’s embarrassed so he won’t tell me anything. Thinks he’s some kind of seasoned hunter, damn fool.”

“Sounds about right.” Jessica smiles.

“Oh honey, what am I doing keeping you here? Don’t you have studying to do? You shouldn’t have to be here.”

“You’re friends of the family, of course I had to come. I wanted to.”

Sam stands staring at the both of them, seemingly alike but not related. Jessica and Mary by each other’s presence. As they continue to talk, Sam tilts his head to the side and stares into the ward. At the far end, on the bed by the window a man lies. His leg is propped up on a stack of pillows, and he seems annoyed.

As soon as Sam steps into the room, the man’s head turns. He doesn’t look at Sam, but he’s listening carefully. Breathing slowly.

“Is someone there?” he asks in a low voice, a gruff voice, and Sam frowns considerably.

“It’s Jessica, honey,” Mary responds stepping into the room. “Her mom called, I said she could go, but you know her, stubborn as the rest of us!”

John smiles and greets the young woman, but Sam knows he was talking to him and not his wife. On his way out Sam catches Jessica’s eye and she smiles at him kindly before stepping into the room and out of view.

*-*-*

“He saw you?” Dean asks, surprised to hear his brother’s recount.

“Well, no, he didn’t really see me, he just sort of knew I was there.” Sam explains, still frowning as always.

“It happens.”

“When? When does it happen?”

“It happens, it’s just...some people are more susceptible. The dying, the—”

“He’s not dying. He’s fine.” Sam cuts off his brother.

“He didn’t see you without you wanting him to though, so what’s the big deal?”

“I have spent days in that hospital and not one person has seen me unless they were supposed to.”

“Did Jessica see you?”

“I have to go.”

“Sam...”

“Never mind.”

“Come on, Sammy.”

“Have you ever been seen, Dean? You’d tell me right? And I don’t mean by the dying...”

“They can only see us if we want them too. Why? Why did you want her to see you?”

“To help her.”

“She didn’t need help, Sam, she was fine.”

“She’s hurting still, I can feel it. The panic as soon as she stepped into that hospital. I felt it. I think. I knew it. ”

“They don’t need to see us, Sammy. Not really, we don’t give them enough credit. They can handle themselves pretty well.”

“But he knew I was there, how could he have known?”

“You’re not gonna let this go, are you?”

“No, Dean, I’m not.”

“Bitch,” he swears uncharacteristically as the being he is now.

“Jerk,” Sam replies, surprising his naïve self.

*-*-*

Where others gather beneath planes at lift off and landing, Dean refuses. He stares at machines in the air and is wary. He doesn’t know fear, or pain, or suffering, but he is wary. He has earned the right to be wary, as a watcher of men.

He much prefers the mornings.

The breeze that he cannot feel spreads tiny grains of sand across the shore. Raised bubbles and waves that crash against the shore as the sun rises in the distance. The silhouette of a tiny boat drifts across the steady sea. He can hear the crackle of shells that bounce off of one another before laying, stuck in the wet sand until children’s hands fish them out past lunchtime.

Sam’s distraction has only increased since meeting that man, and Dean decides to see him for himself. At the hospital, he’s barely in the room before a voice speaks up.

“Back again?”

Dean stares. He can’t help but stare. He feels nothing but calm and confusion. This man...with brown eyes and dark hair. He knows him, god he knows him. He shouldn’t, but he does.  He’s even more familiar draped across a hospital bed, he’s not as scarred as Dean’s memories would have him but he’s got his fair share and his stubble is just as Dean remembers. Unshaven and scruffy, but smiling.

That last part seems wrong. It doesn’t fit in his head. He hears a voice whisper, “Don’t be scared, Dean.” Just as the man decides to speak.

“I can’t see you but I know you’re there.” His voice is not that of a man who’s mentally unstable. He’s not making it up. “Look, I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not getting any surgery, so you can shove whatever orders you’ve been given, kid. I don’t know why they sent you, I’m going home soon, so they’re wrong.”

“You sure know something,” Dean whispers to himself, unheard, as he leans in the doorway. Orders. The man thinks his time is up. He doesn’t know Dean’s just looking out for his little brother’s safety.

“I’m fine, I’m healthy and happy and I’m staying put. You’re not taking me anywhere.”

He is happy. Dean can feel it. In this world the only hunting this man does is deer. And his wife hates it. He has a wife. A happy smiling wife with long blonde hair. A happy smiling wife named Mary.

“Who are you?” Dean asks so the man can hear him, now sitting in the chair beside the bed, his face in shadows away from the moonlight and the bedside lamp.

“Jeez!” He tries to catch his breath. “Forgot how quick you can move.”

Dean doesn’t answer.

“You’re young. Real young. What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?”

“John, John Winchester. Like the rifle.”

“Violent.”

“First thing that came to mind.”

“When?”

“When I jumped.”

Dean’s eyes shoot up.

The words aren’t lost on him, nor are their impact. Jumped. That would make him one of the fallen. Dean prides himself on a good memory, but he doesn’t remember that. He leaves without a word, and John sighs in his wake.

He won’t tell Sam to stay away, but he won’t convince him to come back here either.

*-*-*

Samuel steps into the small room, and his presence is recognised immediately. John asks his wife to fetch him more water, and she obliges while grumbling that he shouldn’t get used to this treatment. He holds her hand for as long as he can before their fingertips part.

Sam stares, unaware that he has made himself visible now that they’re alone.

“You’re different,” the man says from the bed. He leans over to find the remote and decides to switch off the black and white film he’d been half watching despite being unable to understand the German there.

“What?”

“You wanna watch anything on TV?” he asks

“You’re not the one...never mind. What’s your name, son?”

“Samuel,” he says with a curious gaze.

“Hello Sam, I’m John, now what brings you here?”

“How...? How do you know when I’m here? How do you know what I am?”

“How do you think?”

*-*-*

By John’s request, Sam takes him to the tallest building in the city. They stare up at the stars and down at the tiny lights of the world below. Sam makes sure John doesn’t fall as he takes him there. They travel by the speed of thought and once there John’s lost for words.

Shown the view he thought he’d never see again short of bungee jumping, he feels the air on his face and appreciates it in so many more ways than Sam ever could. He tells the boy everything he knows, everything he was told once by another when he fell in love with a pretty young blonde.

“You jump. Jump off a bridge, out a window, down, down, down, you decide to do it and you do it, and you fall and you land and you wake up and you’re one of them.”

“One of them,” Sam repeats.

“One of them. He gave these bozos the greatest gift he could ever give. You think he didn’t give it to us as well?”

“Gift...?”

“Free will, son, free will.”

“Free will,” he repeats as the magnitude of the revelation comes crashing down around him. “Free will.”

“The glorious right to choose.”

Sam looks down, and John understands.

“No one likes to think about what they give up when they’re faced with a decision like this. No one, trust me I know.”

“Does Mary know, did you tell her?”

“I tried. But I left it too late; I don’t think she’d believe me now anyway.”

He stares out at the distance at the beauty of the bustling city and its people like ants in their daily lives.

“It’s pretty good down there too,” John says, watching the young man stare from above. “You wake up human. You can smell, you can test. Bleed. You lie, you feed the dog, and you touch her hair and share her breakfast. And she’ll smack your hand away but the most important thing is you’ll feel it. That’s what it’s about, kiddo. And you’ll protect that with your life, I swear to god you will.”

He sees indecision melt away.

“If you want this Sam, it’s yours for the taking.”

*-*-*

 

When the film across Sam’s eyes has been lifted, the veil of complacency torn away...Sam finds Dean in the children’s ward. A part of him is desperate to share all that he’s learnt but surrounded by the dying he stays his words for later on.

There in the ward, they all see him. He and Dean. They smile at him and sleep soundly while Dean reads the writing all around the painted rainbow on the wall. He reads the cards and the messages to get well soon. He knows they won’t.

Around the room Angels sit by children’s bedsides while Dean sits down on the ground, cross-legged and reads one of their books. He wants to re-tell it to them later. Much later.

“Having fun?” Sam asks, gesturing to the colourful pictures on the page.

“It’s happier than the other books,” he explains. “Did you see him?”

“I saw him.”

“And he saw you.”

“I had to talk to him, Dean.”

“I know.”

“He told me things. So many things.”

“I bet he did.”

On their way out, Sam stops, and when he leaves for the maternity ward, Dean follows him without a sound. He knows who Sam’s following, and he’s tired of fighting it. What will be, will be. Instead, he stares fondly at the gurgling newborns while Sam stares at Jessica.

She’s with John’s wife, and they’re watching the children as happily as Dean. 

“Great sense of inspiration,” Mary says. “Calm. Plus it’s nice to get some time to think.”

Dean turns and stares at Mary. Her voice...he stares.

“Didn’t know you had a thing for older women,” Sam jokes.

“You’ve had your Jessica fix for the day, can we go now?”

“I like standing in the rain,” Jessica tells her friend. “In the middle of a field or in the city. Just, standing in the rain. That’s when I feel calm, that’s when I feel...whole.”

Jessica and Mary sit themselves down on the chairs overlooking the babies. Their thoughts are bittersweet, surrounded by life, haunted by death. Jessica thinks to all that she’s lost that year, all of it in this hospital, and always with Sam by her side.

Mary thinks of the children she lost before they were even born. She feels as though she let them down, and Dean desperately wants to comfort her for a millisecond. To show himself to her and to prove things would be all right. That here, where she lived, life was better and just.

They leave them to their moment.

*-*-*

“You’d be falling from grace.”

“That’s the gist of it.”

“You know who else did that? Lucifer and look where it got him.”

“It’s not the same, Dean; you know it isn’t the same.”

“Yeah, yeah, but I can gripe all I want, okay, Sammy? My brother trusts the crazy ex-Marine more than me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“What if he’s lying?”

“You know he’s not. We both know it’s true. Should I do it?”

“You’re asking me?”

“I trust you.”

“You’ve already made your decision, Sammy, don’t act like you haven’t.”

“I’m asking you.”

Dean sighs.

“If you’re sure, if you know, then do it.”

On to Part two 

.