(no subject)
Short, odd one shot. Previously posted to SNVille. Pretty dark, sort've death/future fic. AU.
(Okay, LJ cuts DO NOT FRIGGIN' WORK, and it keeps screwing up the formatting!!!! Sorry. But I've gone around and around and it just won't play nice. *sigh*)
Loose Ends.
The world looks better when you’re falling
Grace to comfort enough to crawling
Divided we must
Pray for the broken
No one could fix us
We are, we'll always be
The wronged
~ Coheed & Cambria, The Broken
:: ::
The town is empty, dust wandering where people once walked. It rings with the kind of silence that's felt more than heard, like velvet wrapped around your mind, thick and soft and settled in deep. So deep, there might never have been a sound here at all, except that someone must have pushed through the bat wing doors of the bar at the end of town and pushed a coin into the jukebox, chosen the disc that's frozen in mid-air, halfway to the turntable. Someone must have opened the doors of the small store halfway down the single street and set the little bell above them ringing, and someone must have eaten the snacks and drunk the coffee before the wrappers and cups were stuffed into the trashcan tipped over outside the bank.
But they're long gone, even the vermin that dug through the garbage looking for scraps of grease and sugar are missing. The town is empty, so hollow it could have been a stage set, abandoned decades ago for the immeasurable desert to swallow up again.
And then... it's not empty. It's not quiet. It feels like someone's watching, someone's holding their breath waiting and it's not quite sound that splits the silence, not quite mass and solidity that comes running down the street. It's more like.. .a memory of it, playing out over and over in the dust and the wind that whips it up around the tall shape and if you could only look closely enough, listen hard enough you might see his face, twisted with horror and desperation and hope, and you might hear the thin wail of the breeze shape a sound, a name, maybe. And if you could hear that and see him, you might turn to see what his hazel eyes are fixed on, so desperately, what he's running towards as if all the hounds of hell were chasing him. Turn, and see another shape-that-isn't, sunlight glinting from glass and chrome and black metal polished bright beneath the mud splattered up the doors and two figures, almost as tall as the runner except that one's on his knees and the other isn't touching the ground at all, hovering a foot above it, something vast shifting through the air at his back, an impression of movement more than sight.
And you'd know, somehow, that the name the tallest figure was shouting - screaming - belongs to the man on his knees and that the horror in his eyes was for the angel hanging in the air above him. Stand in the middle of the street, in the tall runner's path and wait, and when he runs right through you, for a second you can hear his heart hammering in his throat feel his lungs heaving and the tears stinging in the raw scrapes on his face and the way his voice cracks around another scream - DEAN! - as he watches the angel and the brother he hasn't seen in way too long.
It's just an instant, a fleeting moment but you are him, Sammy Winchester (always Sammy never Sam no matter how much he protested) carrying around memories like lead weights around your heart; women staring down at you, blond hair and flames intermingled (Jess and Mom, names flicker across his mind) a tall man, dark eyed and sad and cold to hide it (Dad I get it now I do too late I miss you). Another girl, black hair, black eyes, all mixed up with sorrow and guilt and fury and hunger burning inside your throat. And your brother turning his back on you, you just returned, walking away and leaving you behind for the first and the last and the only time. Sorry, Sammy, you remember him saying, voice hoarse and broken. I can't do this anymore, I just can't and you lose yourself in the memory for a single long stride, the way he'd looked so broken, so weary when you told him it wasn't over, the war wasn't won or lost but only just beginning, the stakes higher than ever. He'd given up then, even though you said don't, you don't get it, you have to fight, if you don't it's finished, everything's finished, man, please, I'm begging you here, tossed his own words back at him and that was when he'd smiled with tears in his eyes and turned away. It took you (two years eight months nine days and thirteen hours, but who's counting?) so long to find him and you found him here at the end of it all, on his knees in the dust before the wrath of the last angel left after the first Apocalypse and you're too late, far, far too late.
This desert town, full of people and noise and life, all of them running from the man flying, black wings of shadow beating on the air like vast thunder, like rage distilled to 100% proof and his voice shatters the windows of the big muscle car, slams your brother back against it, You Have Forsaken Me! It hurts to hear, sorrow so profound you feel your heart snap in two but you don't stop running, don't dare stop running as you see Castiel lift a clenched fist and howl at the sky, at the universe as your brother sags against the car, turns his face to find yours and through the blood streaming from his mouth and nose and eyes his lips shape Sammy and I'm sorry and you understand, at last, that it was always going to end like this, betrayal as inevitable as the sun setting and it doesn't matter who did what, killed who, died for who, this is the last chance you have and you forgive him. But I AM LOST! the angel wails, thunders and you scream until your voice tears as his fist falls -
And then he's gone, all of it's gone, just a fading echo of shape and movement and sound felt rather than heard, a scream and a cry and a blow that could shatter the world, maybe, or break something buried and locked back when Creation was new and shining bright.
But the town is empty, as if there's never been anyone anywhere at all, dust following their footsteps, and no-one watches the memory play out over and over and over again, forever in the dust that's all that's left behind of these people, these men and angels who fought and loved and died here in the desert that's slowly swallowing everything that ever was.
Thanks for reading!