Fic: Bless the Oceans
I would like to take this opportunity to wish brunettepet a very happy birthday!
brunettepet is not only an extremely insightful reader, she's also got awesome ideas, and she never fails to impress me with her thoughtful and original answers to my Supernatural questions of the day. Browse the tag here, and you'll see what I mean!
So, for brunettepet, I have written... yet another fic for which I need to apologize, and this is becoming something of a pattern, isn't it? But, for the sake of clarity, as this isn't exactly birthday-themed: the following Supernatural ficlet expresses nothing more than my appreciation for brunettepet's awesomeness and does not reflect anything else at all.
This is called Bless the Oceans, and it's gen, rated PG for slightly mature themes and contains spoilers through season two, most notably for "Simon Said" and AHBL2.
It's the story of Sam's faith, his desperation, and exactly how far he'll go to save Dean.
Beta by madame_meretrix.
Bless the Oceans
The decision is easy because Sam knows he’ll be forgiven for this-for this, if nothing else. Lives lost weigh heavy on his soul, sins of the mind, sins of the flesh, and the one thing that should have been sacred, God’s ultimate gift bestowed by a devil.
It’s all been beyond Sam’s control, self defense and demon blood and love, but none of it’s beyond God’s vision.
When it’s time, he’ll take what comes, accept with grace the penance that his death-his life- requires, but for this alone, he can already feel the warmth of forgiveness running through his veins, as though the idea carries its own benediction.
His prayer is silent, thankful, an acknowledgment that he’s been given not only everything, but an opportunity as well, a chance to not ask forgiveness for that which is unforgivable.
God couldn’t forgive him for what he’d do if Dean died.
No one could.
His mind harbors secrets, little bits of information hidden away in dark, dusty corners and he collects what he needs, piece by piece. It’s a scavenger hunt for the remnants of a dead demon’s blood and textbook science, lost bits of Latin and the righteousness of childhood.
It’s a recipe, of sorts. A deception, a trick, a necessity, and that makes it okay. Because there’s no other choice, because there’s no other way, because it’s Dean.
He brews it in his mind like a potion, like an elixir, a panacea. It’s hope and love and life, and when he finds the final ingredient, that switch in his mind that lets his voice echo soul-deep, he presents it with a heaviness of heart that turns his stomach.
He kneels at the altar, in the vestibule, in pews and in parking lots, in chapels, rectories, abbeys. He kneels his regret, his contrition, and when his knees bruise and bleed, he doesn’t bandage them. He offers wide, truthful eyes, Latin prayers of judgment and reckoning, and words that echo and embed as dogma: Bless the oceans. Tell others.
And they do. They exorcize salt and water until the oceans are holy, and Sam prays.
He prays for the few species that can’t survive milder waters, he prays for the occupants of vessels no longer buoyant, he prays for the farmers crippled by drought.
He’d known the cost of purity. It’s global. It’s ecological, it’s environmental, it’s political.
The world dries as the hydrologic cycle slows; the food chain rattles its weak links, and Sam watches the consequences of a three percent drop in salinity as they mount over weeks and months. He closes his eyes and prays for the world to hold on, to understand; it’s temporary, it’s Dean.
When the rains come, long and heavy with the burden of slowed evaporation, the earth is flooded and made holy and Sam watches as a demon and her hellhounds are washed away in a hissing cloud of smoke.
The world will heal.
The rains will cause erosion that will drag salt back to the sea; volcanoes will erupt, tectonic plates will collide, sediment and lava will help restore the balance.
Nothing is irrevocably broken.
God understands.
It’s Dean.
###
As much as the characters and events depicted here are fictional, so is the science. I do know this: decreased salinity means slower evaporation and also less density, which affects buoyancy. Erosion, lava, and sediment all contribute to the salinity of the oceans. Wikipedia has this to say about holy water: "The ritual of preparing holy water is itself in form an exorcism; the priest first exorcises the salt, and then the water itself..."
brunettepet is not only an extremely insightful reader, she's also got awesome ideas, and she never fails to impress me with her thoughtful and original answers to my Supernatural questions of the day. Browse the tag here, and you'll see what I mean!
So, for brunettepet, I have written... yet another fic for which I need to apologize, and this is becoming something of a pattern, isn't it? But, for the sake of clarity, as this isn't exactly birthday-themed: the following Supernatural ficlet expresses nothing more than my appreciation for brunettepet's awesomeness and does not reflect anything else at all.
This is called Bless the Oceans, and it's gen, rated PG for slightly mature themes and contains spoilers through season two, most notably for "Simon Said" and AHBL2.
It's the story of Sam's faith, his desperation, and exactly how far he'll go to save Dean.
Beta by madame_meretrix.
Bless the Oceans
The decision is easy because Sam knows he’ll be forgiven for this-for this, if nothing else. Lives lost weigh heavy on his soul, sins of the mind, sins of the flesh, and the one thing that should have been sacred, God’s ultimate gift bestowed by a devil.
It’s all been beyond Sam’s control, self defense and demon blood and love, but none of it’s beyond God’s vision.
When it’s time, he’ll take what comes, accept with grace the penance that his death-his life- requires, but for this alone, he can already feel the warmth of forgiveness running through his veins, as though the idea carries its own benediction.
His prayer is silent, thankful, an acknowledgment that he’s been given not only everything, but an opportunity as well, a chance to not ask forgiveness for that which is unforgivable.
God couldn’t forgive him for what he’d do if Dean died.
No one could.
His mind harbors secrets, little bits of information hidden away in dark, dusty corners and he collects what he needs, piece by piece. It’s a scavenger hunt for the remnants of a dead demon’s blood and textbook science, lost bits of Latin and the righteousness of childhood.
It’s a recipe, of sorts. A deception, a trick, a necessity, and that makes it okay. Because there’s no other choice, because there’s no other way, because it’s Dean.
He brews it in his mind like a potion, like an elixir, a panacea. It’s hope and love and life, and when he finds the final ingredient, that switch in his mind that lets his voice echo soul-deep, he presents it with a heaviness of heart that turns his stomach.
He kneels at the altar, in the vestibule, in pews and in parking lots, in chapels, rectories, abbeys. He kneels his regret, his contrition, and when his knees bruise and bleed, he doesn’t bandage them. He offers wide, truthful eyes, Latin prayers of judgment and reckoning, and words that echo and embed as dogma: Bless the oceans. Tell others.
And they do. They exorcize salt and water until the oceans are holy, and Sam prays.
He prays for the few species that can’t survive milder waters, he prays for the occupants of vessels no longer buoyant, he prays for the farmers crippled by drought.
He’d known the cost of purity. It’s global. It’s ecological, it’s environmental, it’s political.
The world dries as the hydrologic cycle slows; the food chain rattles its weak links, and Sam watches the consequences of a three percent drop in salinity as they mount over weeks and months. He closes his eyes and prays for the world to hold on, to understand; it’s temporary, it’s Dean.
When the rains come, long and heavy with the burden of slowed evaporation, the earth is flooded and made holy and Sam watches as a demon and her hellhounds are washed away in a hissing cloud of smoke.
The world will heal.
The rains will cause erosion that will drag salt back to the sea; volcanoes will erupt, tectonic plates will collide, sediment and lava will help restore the balance.
Nothing is irrevocably broken.
God understands.
It’s Dean.
###
As much as the characters and events depicted here are fictional, so is the science. I do know this: decreased salinity means slower evaporation and also less density, which affects buoyancy. Erosion, lava, and sediment all contribute to the salinity of the oceans. Wikipedia has this to say about holy water: "The ritual of preparing holy water is itself in form an exorcism; the priest first exorcises the salt, and then the water itself..."