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mellaithwenDamn Livejournal saying post was too long...
5, 740 words.
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5, 740 words.
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“Do you have faith?” Jessica asks him in the hospital chapel, and Sam blinks, sitting in the back pew. He begins to stutter, unaware that she could see him, but she continues before he can speak. “Sorry, it’s a personal question, you don’t have to answer.”
“I do,” he tells her. “I do have faith.”
She’d been sitting there a while. Asked to assist Mary in forcing John into a wheelchair if only for as long as it took to get to the car; she had wandered in here on their way out. In search of solace she sat, her eyes fastened on the sacred statue in front of her, standing as it was in front of the stained glass window, even as she spoke to a man she hardly knew.
But who knew her quite well.
“Me too. I try, anyway. Sometimes it’s harder than it should be.”
“Were you praying? Just now?”
“No, I...I like it here. A friend was in a hunting accident but he’s fine, nothing wrong, he’s good to go, just...”
“Memories.”
“Yeah, lots of bad memories.” She turns to smile at him. “Do I know you? You look familiar.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh...it was nice talking to you.” She smiles. “I better go.”
“You’re sad.”
“Excuse me?”
“You seem sad.”
“Who isn’t? Right?”
With that she excuses herself, trying not to think of how she indeed was. How much she missed her grandfather and her grandmother. How much time she spent thinking about them as she tried to focus on her work in class. How she busied herself and shut out others to protect herself from future pain.
She tries to keep her faith, but it’s been lacking for some time, and she’s fairly sure it’s nearly gone completely. No miracles stand before her, no reasons to believe. Nothing. Just the cold world outside with the sun glaring down at her.
In class, Sam sits at the front and watches her. Sometimes he can do it for hours, but whenever she looks up he always looks away even though he knows she can’t see him.
On the seventh day of doing this, she sees him after class. In the corridor, clad in the same clothes as always, she sees him there waiting. They speak about coincidence and learning and their lives. Sam is vague, but he says enough, and his concern touches her when he asks her again if she’s sad.
She finds it easier to talk to him than anyone else, and she thinks to herself that he reminds her a little of John.
“I knew I’d seen you before! Before the chapel at the hospital. You were talking to John, weren’t you? John Winchester? He and his wife are a friend of the family. How do you know him?”
“We used to...have the same job,” he says simply. “We’re friends.”
“Their niece is having a birthday party, you probably already know, but you should come with me. It’ll be good to have more grown-ups there.”
“I’d like that.”
“Well I’ll see you there.”
As she walks away, he wishes she’d turn and she does. She comes back. He breathes in her being as she asks him his name.
“Sam, uh, Samuel Messenger.”
“Well, hello Sam, my name’s Jessica, Jessica Moore.”
“It was nice to meet you, again.”
“Yeah, it was nice to meet you too, Sam, again.”
*-*-*
As the sunset begins, every head turns to see the man crossing the shore. He breathes deep and calls, “Hello!” to the standing Angels who tilt their head and stare.
“What’s he doing?” Sam asks while Dean shakes his head, and reds and yellows dance across the night sky.
“Ask him.”
John sees Sam alone and grins.
“You know, I can’t hear it, and I miss it, but I can do this!”
He runs into the sea, his feet splash and wet sand flies into the air with droplets of salt water and the occasional shell. Sam follows him calmly into the tide and feels nothing.
But John does.
John can’t hear the harmony of dawn, but he feels the cool water, he feels it on his skin, he feels the goose bumps rise up on his arms and he feels the shivers that abate when he starts to swim. He feels the strain in his muscles as he gets further out to shore, and he feels the weightlessness as his feet tread water with nowhere to stand.
Sam’s still standing though.
“You get points for that,” John says in something Sam assumes to be awe. “But this? This will always be better.”
“Do you ever regret it?”
“Never.”
“Why did you come here?” Sam asks, aware that his brethren have left the sandy shore.
“Jessica told us she invited you, I wanted to make sure you’d come. I remember how everyone gathers here at dusk and dawn. We want you there, Sam. And more importantly, she wants you there.”
Sam frowns.
“She likes you, kiddo. Don’t forget what I told you, Sam, free-will, we’ve all got it.”
*-*-*
Dean watches them from afar.
In this reality of feathers and forgotten dreams, John and Mary Winchester are happily married. But their sons are dead, long dead. Lost in the womb. Alone in their name, they spend their days with neighbours and Mary’s huge family. They become a doting aunt and uncle to fill the void inside of them their children left.
They, John and Mary’s lost babies, died before they ever saw the world. They never shot guns or hunted demons. They were killed in a fire and less than a year afterwards, the remaining Winchesters fled from Kansas to Los Angeles to escape their grief.
In this reality, so different to before, Dean is not human, not really. But he remembers everything just as it was. The explosions and the evil that poisoned the earth’s foundations. The world he tried to save. The world he died saving.
Some things are clear as day. Memories of hunting, fighting, killing. But others...his childhood is a blur, loved ones without faces. Sometimes not there at all. Gaps in the atmosphere where his father should stand.
In this reality, he is an angel. A guardian and a guide.
In this reality, Jessica Moore is alive and well, but Sam still loves her and Dean can’t help but know they’re destined for tragedy.
Dean doesn’t feel anything now, but he thinks that if he were human again, if his memory was suffice, he’d be jealous but in the way that’s supportive and kind. As he’s always been with his little brother.
He doesn’t let them see him as Sam does, but he gives his brother a nod before disappearing. It’s his blessing.
In the kitchen, grabbing junk food and supplies, Jessica quizzes Mary about him, about Samuel Messenger, but she doesn’t know that much herself. Only the same, that John and Sam worked together or worked for the same company. She’s not sure.
They watch him sit near the candle-lit birthday cake and see how calm he is amidst the screaming children, hyper on sugar and a happy atmosphere.
Mary can’t help but notice how John’s the exact same way.
That night, Sam makes his decision.
*-*-*
He stands with his eyes closed at the top of a building for the first time in his life. Every time he has ever been this high up, his eyes have been open to the wonders of the world—both natural and not so. His ears have been open to the cries of the helpless below and the happy laughter that’s there too.
He has never closed his eyes to any of it until now, and with them closed all he can think of, all he can see, is her face. Her bright shining eyes, her hair caressing her cheek. Her skin turns pink as she laughs, and her lips pull back to show her glistening white teeth. She’s radiant.
For the first time he wonders about taste. He wonders how she tastes the food she eats. He wonders how it might feel to taste her lips upon his own. To touch her skin as a lover might.
He wants this, he knows because he’s never wanted before.
“If you’re sure,” Dean’s voice repeats from earlier.
“I’m sure.” Sam shouts, “I’m sure!”
He dives down; his coat billows in the wind but he won’t open his eyes. Not yet.
Understanding disappears as he falls from grace and lights flash behind his lids. Black and white and grey and harsh light that was once covered in grain as though a camera was shielded by the lining of a lady’s tanned stocking.
When he opens his eyes, he’s barely landed that far from where he jumped, scaffolding that he could not see before has stopped him from sustaining worse injuries.
That’s when he realises the thing he’s feeling, feeling, nerve endings blasting, signals to his brain screaming pain, agony, pain, hurt, pain, pain, pain. He can feel it, he can feel it all. He can feel the blood on his palms and the deep aching of his bruising face around cracked skin that until now has always ever been flawless.
He’s human and the pain he feels now mixed with insane joy and a tiny bit of fear? Proves it.
“Jessica,” he whispers in a wondrous tone. Sound is louder, much louder and suddenly he doesn’t know where he is, or why he is, and he’s more confused than he’s been since...ever.
But he remembers the road to John’s home, and Sam knows he can help him. He remembers that much and he starts running.
“I’m proud of you, Sammy,” Dean says as he watches over his brother always. He feels the same way he did when Sam first went to college. When John was shouting—because he knows now it was John—and Dean couldn’t bear to butt in for the millionth time.
When he dropped his brother off at the bus station and told him to make something of himself as Joe College out in the world. He thinks about that now and watches him with a bemused smile on his face.
Sam charms a young man into letting him catch a ride. He hitchhikes and Dean watches him with a grin.
“My brother, the lawbreaker.”
*-*-*
She’s not at her apartment, Mary tells them as she hangs up the phone but Jessica’s voicemail says she’s taking time off at the family cottage that’s closer to the sea.
“I wish you’d let me clear those cuts up for you,” Mary says in a motherly tone, but John waves a hand and tells her to leave the boy alone.
Sam needs to understand pain a little longer first, that’s all. She hands him a tissue all the same, one that he doesn’t use but instead holds. Feels. Touch.
“I’ll drive you,” John announces, feeling the excitement from the pit of his stomach that he might be a part of reuniting two lovers destined for each other. He knows his angelic friend—now as ungraceful as the rest of them—would not have jumped if he were not in love.
“You’re in no state to drive my car, John Winchester, so you can think again,” Mary tells them, grabbing the Impala’s keys. “I’ll drive.”
*-*-*
“You ready for this, kid?” John asks as Sam leaves with a borrowed pair of shoes and fresh cuts still across his skin. As they reach their destination and Mary’s smiling at the romance of it all.
“I think so,” Sam says and thanks them for everything. He shakes John hand, he grips it tight and he thanks him, truly. As the rumbling Chevy drives away, Sam finds her at the small cottage where he knew she’d be.
From the back patio he can see through the porch window; the small home overlooks the sea. The same sea Sam used to stand by to watch the sun rise and set each day. If he closes his eyes, he can smell the salt of the sea past the woodland by the road. He can smell pine and asphalt as he rings her doorbell and waits for love.
“Sam? What are you doing here? How did you even know I was here?” Her questions are surprised but grateful. She sees the blood and bids him inside, already in search of the first aid kit.
He stands dazed in the porch and tells her that Mary and John helped him get there.
“Well I’m glad.” She smiles.
Perched outside of the window, Dean watches the two of them sit. She dabs the cut on Sam’s forehead gently and asks him questions Dean can’t hear. Sam takes her hand, staring so intently and tells her everything. Everything he was, everything he gave up to be there with her.
Everything he hopes for now that he understands what hope is.
He tells her everything, and she nods and she hears and she accepts it all when the unexplained is explained to her so clearly and so sincerely.
“Does Jessica know the truth about you? Does Jessica know the things that you’ve done?”
“No, and she’s not ever going to know!”
“Oh, that’s healthy.”
“Do-over.” Dean whispers at the window and leaves them be.
*-*-*
Left alone to his own devices, unable to watch history repeat itself, Dean strays back to the library. He finds it amusing that he feels solace in a place he once despised.
He doesn’t listen to the children today. Instead he hears soft reading interrupted by too many voices and too many people, and in sympathy he strays to the girl who’s forced to close her beloved book.
He finds her at the top end of a long table, now fully occupied where it wasn’t before. Young teens have gathered to discuss this month’s edition of their school’s paper. The editor, the girl, is listening but...her mind is somewhere else. She’s staring at a dark haired boy with thick eyebrows and an apparent scowl. She’s the only one he’s ever smiled at. The only one he makes an effort for.
When her name is called and they discuss topics and debate deadlines; she feels his dark chocolate brown eyes staring. She can see from the corners of her vision that he’s staring. Or at least, his head is in the right position should it be staring. Is he staring? Maybe he’s staring at the clock? God how long have they been sitting here?
But the clock’s behind his head. She knows because should she be caught staring, she will look at its hands, its numbers and she will sigh dramatically.
But she has yet to be caught.
From her thoughts, Dean has worked out that this editor, this head of the group did not call this get together. She had been here alone, when a small woman had come bouncing in exclaiming what luck, what joy, now they’re all present.
It’s my job to call meetings, and there’s already one scheduled for Tuesday, there’s no reason to be here now. Stupid usurper wants my job, she can’t write to save—
Her fingers brush the book’s bindings. Her fingernails are draped across the gold lettering of the title. It is her favourite book, and it is her own copy. She has read it a thousand times and fully intends on reading it a thousand more. She takes it with her wherever she goes and has embraced the words so rightly that she finds its characters in her daily life.
She sees travellers skulking as men and women lost in time. She sees a man undecided about what direction to walk in and imagines a woman waiting at the end of each road. She passes the rubbish, stares at the apple cores, and for a split second wonders that if she waits there long enough she might see them grow until they’re full and ripe and glistening with dew.
“Next,” she mutters as she hears the dulcet tones deepen until she’s forced to ward off a yawn. She is a good editor, a good writer. She is distracted because it is a Sunday and she came here to read a book and nothing more.
Another topic is discarded and the boy, with his dark hair and his scowl, grunts in response. No one else understands why he’s even here, and the editor is more than aware of the rumours and mutterings of those who work under her.
She’s also well aware of his talent. His graceful prose that she’s seen in his short stories, and his dependable facts in whatever article he’s handed in that month.
She wonders if with all of his hidden intelligence, whether he has noticed her watching him?
She turns away just as he turns to her.
Dean smiles as he looks between them. He reaches out to her forehead and places his palm on the book in her hand.
“It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.”
“I think we’re done here,” the editor announces with a tired sigh. The bouncing short woman is intent on staying longer, but the rest of the paper’s writers are more than happy to be excused.
The editor doesn’t leave. She finds the passage, reads it again and again, and with a deep breath she runs after him. The boy with the scowl and the dark, dark hair. She turns him around, plants a kiss on his lips and walks away at a brisk pace.
It is not a kiss of immediacy, though she knew she had to act immediately. As she turns she sees his surprised look followed by a timid smile. The one he saves for her.
She thinks her kiss will have a future.
She knows it will.
*-*-*
That night, Sam kisses Jessica. And he touches her and his fingers caress her hip and he moves like it’s a second nature to him. Like he’s taken a bite out of the forbidden fruit and he understands so much, so much.
He’s hungry for her; it’s the only way he can describe it.
He thinks maybe it’s a distant memory that guides his fingers across her collarbone as he plants kisses along her neck and down her chest. She moans in delight as her fingers creep up through his dirty hair.
*-*-*
Dean does as the passage from the editor’s book commanded. He considers a world in which cause and effect are erratic.
He thinks about Sam. He thinks about his fallen brother, lost to humanity once more. He wonders if finally his little brother can be happy. He wonders that if time is the circle he thinks it to be or simply repetitive and unoriginal...will Sam see her again in another generation. Will he wake up to her by his side, or will she be torn away?
He wonders if Sam would have been content as a voyeur until she reached old age more so than the grief that will follow. He wonders if his brother had stayed above with Dean, whether he might have found another that fate was not so hell bent on destroying.
Burdened by the knowledge he can never share, Dean waits to help his brother.
*-*-*
Sam wakes up alone, and he knows something’s wrong. He doesn’t see his brother sitting on the chair beside the balcony with a sad look in his eyes.
He doesn’t see Jessica either. She isn’t the kitchen, she isn’t in the bathroom, but then he finds a note that says she’ll be back soon and they can have their life together. Of truth and honesty and perfection until they die together when they’re old as Sam imagines it should be.
It’s next to candles she’s lit and plates set out ready for her to cook him the best meal of his life. His first meal. His first food. She knows that much.
In the shower, beneath the bursting hot water, he raises his head to the spray. It assaults his closed eyes and nose. It’s very nearly burning, but he can feel the heat and that’s what matters most. His hands aloft, he feels like falling.
The candles in the living room burn out on their own. Their flames disappear at the tiny draft that runs through the room. A sliver of a breeze as clouds thicken and the rainfall starts.
He doesn’t know it, but at that exact moment Jessica’s looking up at the rain that’s falling as she rides her bike to the market. Breathing in the haze that comes with it, the ozone in the air from the pellets of water. Her hands aloft, she feels like flying.
There isn’t a demon, there’s no evil attacker. There’s no one to blame. There’s just a car. There’s a car and the road’s wet and on the bike she rarely uses, Jessica’s attention is to the sky.
Maybe if the sun was shining, maybe if her eyes were on the road, maybe if the road was dry, maybe if she’d decided to walk, maybe if she’d not gone at all...
Maybe if the man in the car had kissed his wife a third time instead of settling for the usual two that morning, he might have given Jessica the seconds she needed to look a little earlier.
To see headlights and hear a horn and swerve to safety.
Instead, she hears them disjointed when it’s already too late, and the car loses control and skids across the asphalt.
There is no pain; the angels make sure of that much at least.
Sam switches off the shower and feels a sudden pull in his chest that’s nothing like the tiny scrapes he got from his fall. It’s a deep ache that steals his breath away, and he has to lean against the wall because his knees are weak and his legs are shaking.
As the steam that covers the mirror starts to disappear, Sam sees sad eyes waiting there that aren’t his own.
“No.”
Before he can think, he’s dressed and he’s running barefoot down the road to where she waits.
*-*-*
When he finds her, there’s a blanket wrapped around her, though he knows she won’t feel the cold. Not the kind that a blanket can take away. Her head is propped up by the coat of the driver who, without a phone signal, has run for help. His car is still there.
Sam can see blood on the broken lights. The rain starts to ease as he kneels by her side and takes her hands in his.
“Sam...” she whispers as he runs fingers through her wet curls. There’s blood there too that he pretends he can’t see.
“You’re okay,” he tells her with a smile. “I’m here now.”
“Sam.” She smiles.
“Stay with me,” he begs her, finally understanding why she used to cry.
“I wanted to show you everything,” she tells him. “You came all this way. Fell so far. I’m sorry.”
“No, Jess.” He touches her face, he feels her. He feels her beneath his fingertips. Her skin’s cold. Cold. “No.”
“I can see them,” she says, and Sam feels the dread run down his spine. Her eyes drift across his shoulder as she stares at them. The Waiting. The Watchers.
“Don’t, don’t look at them, don’t, don’t look at them, please.”
Her eyes are wide and amazed. Sam sees them like a candle burning in a dark room. The light there is fading, flickering in and out of existence.
“Don’t look at them.”
He doesn’t ask them to leave. He doesn’t want to turn around and know that he’s alone. He wants to keep his eyes fastened on her for as long as he can. For as long as she can see and breathe and stay with there with him, he wants to be looking at her.
He wants her to be looking at him, not them.
“Please.”
“Is this it?”
“Yes, Jessica, this is what happens.”
“I’m not afraid. If they ask me what I liked best...If...If...I’ll tell them it was you.”
The sun peeks out from behind the dark rain clouds.
Bathed in sunlight, they take her away and leave Sam weeping by the side of the road, clutching her body desperately, fully aware that she’s gone forever.
*-*-*
At the funeral that can’t be avoided, her parents are introduced to him by other students, by Jessica’s friends, as the one she loved dearly. The one she was with when she died. The one she would speak about in hushed tones and giggles before she even knew his name.
Her soul mate.
They smile weakly and nod. They pay their respects and weep as silently as they can for their young daughter.
Sam doesn’t speak. He doesn’t say a word. He lays a pink carnation on the coffin amidst the blood red roses of everyone else there.
With John by his side, a strong hand on his shoulder, he tries to see past the rain that’s falling and find closure or understanding.
When the procession is over, only Mary stands with the two men.
John wonders if he’d kept his mouth shut whether or not he’d even be here. He hates that he’s subjected the boy to the agony of loss so soon. He hates that he can’t tell Sam how to make it better because only experience and time and years going by as a human being can help you ever even begin to contemplate loss.
Angels don’t understand it and right now, Sam’s as helpless as a child.
He’s waiting for the warmth he had up there, but he feels nothing. No comfort. There’s nothing they can do for him to ease any of it. They’re as lost as he is, they just don’t know it.
“Come on, kiddo,” John says as his wife leads them to the car. Sam stays with them for as long as he needs, and he spends his mornings locked away in the bathroom staring at the mirror for the sad eyes that might give him hope.
He sees nothing.
*-*-*
In grief, he climbs as high as he can. He finds a mountain, and scales it in the rain. The rain that stole her from him. His palms are scraped to hell and there are thousands of little cuts and bruises across his skin from unsteady feet. Ungraceful and human.
When he gets to the top, he wants to scream, but all he can do is sit and watch the world below in silence. Alone.
Much like he used to with Dean by his side.
“Hang in there, Sammy.”
Sam can’t hear him, but he knows his brother’s there.
*-*-*
“Was it you?” Sam asks the darkness of his living room. You have a living room.
“No, Sammy.” The darkness replies, “It wasn’t me.”
Sam looks to the right of the sofa. His heart heavy, his eyes sunken and his soul in pieces. This is loss, a voice murmurs in the back of his head. This is anguish and grief.
“Go away.”
“No.”
“I said, ‘go away!’”
“And I said ‘no.’”
“Is this punishment? Is that it? Is she dead because of me?”
“Stop it, Sam.”
“It’s my fault! You should have warned me, why the hell didn’t you?”
“I said ‘stop it!’”
“What are you doing here, Dean?”
“Checking up on you, kiddo.”
“I don’t need—”
“I wanted to, Sam.” The silence could stretch on until eternity. Dean knows that. “What’s it like?” He decides to break it.
“Wonderful,” Sam whispers, blinking at tears he can’t be rid of.
Their old lives never had that description. Dean wonders why he remembers it so much more than Sam does. He wonders why he’s always looking over his shoulders for demons to be creeping up on them, but Sam—Sam was at peace.
“If you could do it all over again, would you? If you’d known, would you still have done it?”
Would you have fallen? Would you have risked it? Would you still leave me here?
Sam thinks for a moment. Remembers his greedy senses. Remembers her perfume and shampoo. The smell of her cooking and her footsteps across the kitchen floor. He remembers how her hair curled and how it bounced on her shoulder blades when she was jogging in the morning. Her smile, her glittering eyes so innocent and blue before they were glazed and broken. Dead and cold.
One breath, one kiss, one touch...he’d rather that than an eternity without it.
One.
“Yeah,” Sam whispers to the dark. “I would.”
That night he reads a book because he thinks Dean would like it, he thinks Dean would enjoy it and he knows his brother’s there with him still.
*-*-*
The street is bustling, people swarm towards him. Panic rises in his gut as he walks one step, two steps, three steps forward. A young man, no older than him, bangs into Sam. Their shoulders collide and knock one another back.
They stare at each other and feel familiarity like no other. As estranged brothers with nothing more than an inkling at relation. Both imagine wings unseen and falling from a great height as they stare into weathered faces and wise eyes.
“Sorry,” Sam says earnestly.
The man stares at him. “Yeah, me too.” He says sadly before walking away in the direction he was headed.
*-*-*
John tells him he’s sorry. He’s sorry that they both jumped, but only one of them got the girl. That only one of them succeeded.
“No,” Sam stops him. “I had her. I did. Don’t be sorry. I’m not.”
John nods, still upset himself and in the Winchester’s garden they have their own little get together as they watch the sunrise while grieving and hear nothing but the cries of the birds as night falls.
*-*-*
This is worry. Dean realises as his throat clenches and stomach cramps whenever he thinks of Sam and his grief. Sam and his never ending hurt.
“Are you an angel?” the little girl asks as she sits up in bed and peeks behind him in search of feathers.
“Yes, I am.”
“Where are your wings?”
“Hidden,” he says with a smile as the girl’s eyes light up.
“Will I get wings too?”
There’s a tiny cross hanging on a small gold chain around her neck.
“No,” he says carefully and gently. “But you’ll be going home, and that’s much better.”
“Why do you have wings?”
Dean thinks of his old life, of war and pain and never ending fighting and a quest that didn’t stop in death. They call it a reward, to stand guard over the world, unable to feel. Numb.
“We were never like you,” he tells her, and for the most part, it’s the truth.
“Do I have to go with you?”
“We can wait a little while if you like.”
She hears footsteps on the landing, dim voices. She looks back at the bed, her bed, with her body on top of it. She beckons for her angel to bend down, and when he does, she whispers in his ear.
“I don’t want Mommy to cry.”
She stands back, biting her lip.
“I know,” Dean whispers back, holding out his hand for her to take. “Ready?” he asks, like they’re starting a race and it’s sports day at school not...this. She nods and takes his outstretched palm in hers. She doesn’t look back, not even when her bedroom door creaks open and her mother rushes forward with tears.
Her angel guides her home.
*-*-*
When Dean blinks and finds himself on the beach as the sun sets with a great big sigh, Sam stands next to him. Dean wonders if he can even be seen, and if not, wonders how Sam could know where to stand. Dean stares at Sam, while Sam stares ahead.
He turns, smirks, and runs towards the water. Dean steps after him out of habit but stops himself. Sam jumps into the sea with a huge splash. He writhes in the water, tussled and turned by the tide. Diving down and racing up, gulping for air, before plunging back into the blue.
Sam swims in the same erratic way that John Winchester had done upon deciding to rub this in their faces.
Sam’s laughing at the water that stings his sinuses. He’s nearly choking, but he doesn’t care.
“You’re insane!” Dean cries from the shore and when Sam turns the many he imagined are nowhere. Only Dean stands alone in black.
“I know!” Sam calls back, but when he lifts his head from the second tide, the beach is bare and his brother is gone.
He won’t see him again until the end and though old and aged as Sam will be, Dean will look no different.
“Will I get wings?” Sam will ask before coughing harshly and bringing his shaking palm to his bloody lips. Crimson spills on wrinkled hands.
Dean won’t speak, but he’ll hand his brother a pair made from paper with a hidden smirk.
“Origami skills? Jeez you think you know someone...” His voice will be tinged with pleasant sarcasm, and his words carry an accent he never had before. Things Dean never thought he’d hear again from Sam.
He’ll ask Sam what he liked the most, and after Sam lists everything he’s felt and done and thought and experienced, Sam will say with a tiny voice, “Her.”
With an outstretched palm and a knowing smile, Dean will lead his brother home.
-Fin.
Further Disclaimer: I tried to include the author next to the quote as much as possible but sometimes it just made it too much, soooo, the editor’s book “It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.” is Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman. Don’t own it, or any other literary quotes included. Nor do I own City of Angels, the film this fic was based on for reel_spn, or the original Der Himmel über Berlin that Hollywood stepped on. Thank you and goodnight.
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Date: 2007-08-25 06:55 am (UTC)Wow when you put it like that...! Poor Dean! hehe :) thank you so much again for reading this!