FILLED: A guest amid ruinscounteragentOctober 11 2013, 02:27:04 UTC
Dean and Ezekiel walked the streets of Sam’s mind together. The city behind the broken wall had been leveled. Gutted husks of buildings stared with empty eyes, their windows shattered. All was silent. The cars-all ’67 Impalas-were wrecked, rusted corpses. Dean had to look away.
‘Zeke was quiet, respectful of his status as guest. On this plane he was enormous, easily a story tall. His forward head reminded Dean of the Statue of Liberty. He kept his second-a massive snake head-curled away behind him out of courtesy. As if Dean hadn’t seen weirder things.
Dean had changed, too. Whenever he and ‘Zeke walked the topography of Sam’s mind, Dean shifted form slightly. To his everlasting embarrassment, he usually glowed softly, his limbs lit from within with a shifting, shimmering light. This time his hands were capped in permanently bloody claws, though, and that seemed more like it.
‘Zeke paused in front of a large pillared building, the kind you dedicate to dead presidents. It would have been stately if it weren’t veined with a leafless black vine and crumbling in random inelegant chunks.
“This was his main library,” ‘Zeke said, and his voice was low and kind. As it always was.
“The trials did all this?” Dean’s voice sounded like an old man’s. ‘Zeke told him the second time they walked that Dean’s true age showed here. Dean supposed he was pushing seventy-five if you counted Hotel Hell.
“The vines are Lucifer’s, but the structural damage, yes.”
Dean imagined how the building must have gleamed once, made strong and beautiful by a lifetime of Sam’s hardcore nerdiness. In there were Sam’s facts, his book sense, his memories. Dean’s gotten enough of a sense of how Sam’s freaky head works to guess that Sam’s computational powers were sourced elsewhere (Dean figured they’d stumble on a factory or a nursery or something one of these days) but this was a big part of Sam. It would be a good day if they could save it.
“It’s big, can you fix it?”
“I have grown stronger these past months.” It was true; ‘Zeke could fix larger and larger swaths of landscape each walk they took. “Sam is healing me as much as the other way around,” ‘Zeke acknowledged, his voice tinged with awe.
“As always, I will need your permission, as it is you Sam to whom bequeathed the keeping of his soul, mind and body.”
Dean remembered Death shoving Sam’s soul down T-1000’s throat, of how ready Sam had been to walk into the sunset with Death. Sometimes Dean felt less like he was saving Sam from death than force-feeding him life.
Dean looked at ‘Zeke, who awaited his signal.
--
The demon child hid when the two headed giant and the bright claw-handed man appeared.
He knew was ugly and small, unfit company. He had caught his broken reflection in the rusted chrome of twisted bumpers, in the fragments of store plate windows still standing in their molding like teeth in gums. Tiny skin wings flapped unhelpfully from his shoulder blades, fluttering with a sickly sound. His cheeks were unnaturally hollow and eyes sunken. His forehead was creased by a series of hard ridges. They made him look perpetually angry, even when he was doing what he loved best: coaxing fresh spongy moss over tumbled wreckage, pushing small hardy shoots up through cracked concrete, and teasing bright green vines around damaged steel struts.
His work had become harder since the giant began making everything so clean. The child wished he would leave forever, but he brought with him the glowing one. Him, the child liked. There was a familiarity about him. The child thought he might be able to say his name soon. When the time was right.
Today the giant and the man stood before the child’s favorite building. The child wanted to twine green leaves through the space, choke the black and evil vines. His plants could feed off the dust. They could rise from ruin. But not if the giant fixed it first. The demon began to tremble, thinking of the stone raised anew, polished to a cold, marble sheen. Repellent.
Carefully, the child crept forward, his nails scratching patterns in the dirt. Perhaps the time was right today.
Re: FILLED: A guest amid ruinsash48October 11 2013, 04:05:53 UTC
Oh honey - I adore this landscape. What a fabulous idea that Dean's true age showed for what it was in this place. It's devastating that so much damage is there. The image of the library is heartbreaking. Worse, of course, that Sam finally asked Dean to stop - just when things could be fixed. Agh...I understood that right yeah? The demon child won. Sam's spoke and no doubt Dean will now have to listen.
This is exactly the reason why I think I'm going to love the season (though too early to tell I suppose), because the idea opens up such brilliant narrative opportunities. If not on the show, then definitely in fanfic. Thank you for this!! <333
Re: FILLED: A guest amid ruinscounteragentOctober 11 2013, 12:43:28 UTC
Yay! Glad you liked the imagery. I really wanted to get across a sense of damage without getting super medical about it.
I actually was trying to say that Sam wanted them to stop fixing him Ezekiel's way--that Ezekiel was perhaps repairing him in a way that Sam found repellent, but your reading is certainly a valid reaction to what I have here! And an interesting but even sadder direction.
Re: FILLED: A guest amid ruinsash48October 11 2013, 15:00:08 UTC
And an interesting but even sadder direction.
ha! that probably has a lot to do with my Sam head space at the moment (blame that vid. I've been working on it all day! - hoping you might be up for a rewatch?) I sunk into a very bleak interpretation of all things Sam...
And I loved the fic! Don't change it...(I'm all for expanding if you want to though...;D)
Re: FILLED: A guest amid ruinsscarletscarletOctober 11 2013, 09:49:08 UTC
awr, Sam, that's a sad self image. I'm left with the idea that Dean - and Ezekiel - wanted to fix Sam's mind to what he thought Sam should be, used to be, rather than letting him rebuild himself in his own way? A huge marble monolith might be impressive, but it's a little rigid, vs green growing supports n stuff that Sam was choosing to repair himself with, slowly...
Re: FILLED: A guest amid ruinscounteragentOctober 11 2013, 12:29:02 UTC
Yup, you got it! I realize reading the other comments that I wasn't clear enough, so it's nice that it came through for someone. :)
I actually was insinuating that Ezekiel was perhaps making the landscape cold and repellent like an angel's mind or something even more sinister. (He has a snake for a head after all.) But I was not clear enough about that.
Re: FILLED: A guest amid ruinsscarletscarletOctober 11 2013, 16:31:11 UTC
Ah, no, I actually got that impression too! The way li'l Sam thought about Ezekiel cleaning everything, while he was trying to grow stuff - it spoke to a kind of destructive sterility. When Sam, the actual owner of the consciousness (and one so vulnerable), was trying to encourage his organic growth, wrapping all the damage in a blanket of living things that'll hold it together and keep growing, and the alien presence was blasting it back into a cold, inorganic and unchanging rigidity, the latter is the one that feels wrong to me.
But then, I'm firmly in the camp of Ezekiel-is-sinister, so perhaps I'm already primed to eye him sideways :).
Re: FILLED: A guest amid ruinsash48October 12 2013, 09:38:33 UTC
Pigging-backing on these comments - but yes, now that my head space is less Ezekeil and Dean are there to do "good" I can see this. Also, and this is probably a bit weird, I was also not trusting that Sam knew what he was doing. Ack! I feel so disloyal to Sam. I gotta start trusting that he is actually capable of sorting himself out. ;)
‘Zeke was quiet, respectful of his status as guest. On this plane he was enormous, easily a story tall. His forward head reminded Dean of the Statue of Liberty. He kept his second-a massive snake head-curled away behind him out of courtesy. As if Dean hadn’t seen weirder things.
Dean had changed, too. Whenever he and ‘Zeke walked the topography of Sam’s mind, Dean shifted form slightly. To his everlasting embarrassment, he usually glowed softly, his limbs lit from within with a shifting, shimmering light. This time his hands were capped in permanently bloody claws, though, and that seemed more like it.
‘Zeke paused in front of a large pillared building, the kind you dedicate to dead presidents. It would have been stately if it weren’t veined with a leafless black vine and crumbling in random inelegant chunks.
“This was his main library,” ‘Zeke said, and his voice was low and kind. As it always was.
“The trials did all this?” Dean’s voice sounded like an old man’s. ‘Zeke told him the second time they walked that Dean’s true age showed here. Dean supposed he was pushing seventy-five if you counted Hotel Hell.
“The vines are Lucifer’s, but the structural damage, yes.”
Dean imagined how the building must have gleamed once, made strong and beautiful by a lifetime of Sam’s hardcore nerdiness. In there were Sam’s facts, his book sense, his memories. Dean’s gotten enough of a sense of how Sam’s freaky head works to guess that Sam’s computational powers were sourced elsewhere (Dean figured they’d stumble on a factory or a nursery or something one of these days) but this was a big part of Sam. It would be a good day if they could save it.
“It’s big, can you fix it?”
“I have grown stronger these past months.” It was true; ‘Zeke could fix larger and larger swaths of landscape each walk they took. “Sam is healing me as much as the other way around,” ‘Zeke acknowledged, his voice tinged with awe.
“As always, I will need your permission, as it is you Sam to whom bequeathed the keeping of his soul, mind and body.”
Dean remembered Death shoving Sam’s soul down T-1000’s throat, of how ready Sam had been to walk into the sunset with Death. Sometimes Dean felt less like he was saving Sam from death than force-feeding him life.
Dean looked at ‘Zeke, who awaited his signal.
--
The demon child hid when the two headed giant and the bright claw-handed man appeared.
He knew was ugly and small, unfit company. He had caught his broken reflection in the rusted chrome of twisted bumpers, in the fragments of store plate windows still standing in their molding like teeth in gums. Tiny skin wings flapped unhelpfully from his shoulder blades, fluttering with a sickly sound. His cheeks were unnaturally hollow and eyes sunken. His forehead was creased by a series of hard ridges. They made him look perpetually angry, even when he was doing what he loved best: coaxing fresh spongy moss over tumbled wreckage, pushing small hardy shoots up through cracked concrete, and teasing bright green vines around damaged steel struts.
His work had become harder since the giant began making everything so clean. The child wished he would leave forever, but he brought with him the glowing one. Him, the child liked. There was a familiarity about him. The child thought he might be able to say his name soon. When the time was right.
Today the giant and the man stood before the child’s favorite building. The child wanted to twine green leaves through the space, choke the black and evil vines. His plants could feed off the dust. They could rise from ruin. But not if the giant fixed it first. The demon began to tremble, thinking of the stone raised anew, polished to a cold, marble sheen. Repellent.
Carefully, the child crept forward, his nails scratching patterns in the dirt. Perhaps the time was right today.
“Dean, stop,” Sam said.
END
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This is exactly the reason why I think I'm going to love the season (though too early to tell I suppose), because the idea opens up such brilliant narrative opportunities. If not on the show, then definitely in fanfic. Thank you for this!! <333
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I actually was trying to say that Sam wanted them to stop fixing him Ezekiel's way--that Ezekiel was perhaps repairing him in a way that Sam found repellent, but your reading is certainly a valid reaction to what I have here! And an interesting but even sadder direction.
Maybe I'll improve and expand this later... :)
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ha! that probably has a lot to do with my Sam head space at the moment (blame that vid. I've been working on it all day! - hoping you might be up for a rewatch?) I sunk into a very bleak interpretation of all things Sam...
And I loved the fic! Don't change it...(I'm all for expanding if you want to though...;D)
xoxo
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I actually was insinuating that Ezekiel was perhaps making the landscape cold and repellent like an angel's mind or something even more sinister. (He has a snake for a head after all.) But I was not clear enough about that.
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But then, I'm firmly in the camp of Ezekiel-is-sinister, so perhaps I'm already primed to eye him sideways :).
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xx
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