FIC & ART: (do not) forget to forget, by cupidsbow (SPN, PG-13, Dean&Castiel)
Title: (do not) forget to forget by
cupidsbow
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Length: 3070 words
Relationships: Dean & Castiel
Recipient: For kisahawklin, Dean/Castiel Secret Santa 2017.
Notes: Filling a prompt asking for an examination of Dean's grief at the start of season 13. Title from Know how to forget, by Sharon Dolin.
Summary: Grief is a twisting road.
There are only so many times Dean can bear to retread the same argument --
"He's a supernatural nuclear bomb, Sam."
"He's just a kid, Dean."
"A kid who could burp and end the world."
"Jack can learn control," Sam says earnestly, as though he thinks a monster will be less dangerous with a bit of training.
-- so when he gets to the point he's kind of hoping the kid does burp just to end it all, he says, "Beer run," and escapes the bunker before he's tempted to make a batch of world-killer tacos.
It's not like Sam doesn't know it's an excuse to get out for a while. Better than Sam's, "I need to go to the library."
He feels better as soon as he's in the car, Baby thrumming around him and the pale sun shining in through the glass, just strong enough to prickle at his skin and make the rush chilly air through the half-rolled window feel good. It doesn't solve any of their problems, but Dean's shoulders lose tension with every mile he drives.
It feels like only a few minutes before the local drive-thru slides into view him --
"You do live exciting lives," Castiel offers up, still trying to let Dean off the hook for being a giant douche.
"Yeah, that's one word for it," Dean says, because it's true enough, even if it's not the point he's trying to make. The drive-thru is coming up fast so he forces his confession out, awkward and rushed. "But you're always there, you know? You're the best friend we've ever had. You're our brother, Cas. I want you to know that. "
-- but it only has cheap beer, which isn't what Dean is hankering for right now, and there's a giant liquor barn a few towns over with fancy microbrews.
Decision made, Dean sails right on past, heading for the back roads.
The world shrinks to the bubble of Baby and the road. Dean gives the occasional half-handed salute as a local goes by in the other direction. Everything else is just background: fields, trees, cows. Led Zep lets him know that sometimes words have two meanings, and Taylor Swift wonders if she dodged a bullet.
Time passes without the weight of thought, his hands clicking the indicator by well-trained instinct. The steering wheel slowly warms beneath his palms. The tires hum. The road becomes an endless ribbon. Trees form a temporary avenue, ushering him on, shade stippling the road. Shadow. Sun. Shadow. Sun. Foliage sways in the breeze, parting to reveal a flash of man-shaped tan --
Dean falters, cranes to look back. Was that...?
No. Not possible.
Dean is not Orpheus, and no-one followed him from the underworld.
-- a raggedy, sun-bleached scarecrow grins at the road, gap-toothed, gripping a faded sign for cheap tomatoes and beets.
Dean's face is salty-wet as he rubs it on his shoulder. The music changes, and he and Bon Scott start belting out Back in Black.
A town flows by. A river. A conservation area.
After a while the sun lips the back window of the car, flirting with the rear-view mirror, and Dean starts to become aware again when he has to nudge the mirror so he's not glare-blinded. His body's discomfort makes itself known as he drives past a sign saying, Welcome to Paradise.
He rolls through the town, past a stretch of swanky shops that are clearly tourist bait, a couple of churches and the familiar white block of a Woolworths. The town hall has an art deco clock tower, and next to it is a well-kept park, roses in bloom and a wild-haired preacher shaking a fist about the lusts and humors of men. Overhead, a banner advertises a twilight vigil, but Dean's past it before he makes out the fine print. Quite a few people are walking the streets in an end-of-the-day bustle, hands full of shopping bags and dog leashes. Dean crosses the town's railway tracks and pulls in at a diner, a faded red sign pronouncing it Poppy's Place. The diner marks the start of the less posh side of town, with several trucks in the parking lot of the gas station next door. Rolling out of Baby, Dean unkinks his back, and then shoots Sam a quick proof-of-life text.
One of the truckers at the gas station is filling up a glossy black Kenworth W9, and Dean gives it an appraising once-over. It's no match for Baby, but it's a nice ride. The trucker looks up from her own appraisal of the Impala, and they give each other mutual nods. A couple of people seated in the diner's window are clearly enjoying the car porn going on as well, including a kid with their nose smushed against the window. Dean pats Baby's bonnet as he heads inside, feeling good about his choices.
The door jingles, announcing his presence.
"Nice wheels," the waitress says as she shows him to a booth at the back. "What'll it be, honey?" She looks tired and a little worried, her lipstick mostly worn off, her wheat-gold hair starting to wisp out of its French plait, but there's something alive about her beneath the skin.
The smile Dean gives her is automatic, because she's a woman with no ring on her finger and a smile smooths the way even when he has no ulterior motives. He glances at her name tag so he can call her Poppy as he orders a double-cheese Son of a Bun burger and black coffee.
Her own smile is just as practiced as she tells him it's coming right up: the smile of a pretty woman who wants a tip and half expects to be hit on to earn it. The smile turns a little more genuine as she moves on to serve two cops who have just jingled their way through the door.
Dean checks his phone when it buzzes with a message from Sam.
Sam: Case?
Dean glances up at the two cops, who are leaving again without having ordered anything. Poppy is holding a sheaf of flyers, "Missing," in bold across the top, and half a dozen faces underneath. Human business.
Dean: yeah, a case of beer
He slips his phone back into his pocket and heads for the restroom.
The fluorescent light in the bathroom flickers a little, but the place is clean and everything works. As he washes his hands with soap that smells like artificial pine, the door cracks open but no-one enters. He turns, wet hands open but not yet reaching for a weapon.
A small face stares up at him, wide-eyed. Dean can't tell if it's a boy or a girl, but it's the child who was pulling faces through the diner's window when he came in.
"You lost, buddy?" he asks. The kid's maybe six or seven, hair shaggy like they haven't had it cut in a while, wearing jeans and a plain red t-shirt.
"You have a black car. I saw it."
Dean grins. "Yeah, I do. Sweetest ride around." He reaches for a paper towel, one of the good kind that actually absorbs water.
The kid takes a step forward, staring at him like he's about to pull a rabbit out of the towel dispenser. "I could hear it coming down the street. Brrm, brrrm, brrrm, like that."
"Yeah, she purrs alright." Dean throws the crumpled towel into the trash. "Listen, kid, where's your mom?" Should he try to shepherd them back out to their table? Or will that get him into trouble with an hysterical parent?
Ignoring the question, the kid demands, "Are you here to kill a monster?" The last bit is said in an excited whisper-shriek that can probably be heard back in the town square.
Dean stares. "Am I here to...?"
The kid starts milling their tightly clenched fists in the air, clearly biffing an invisible monster in the face. "Is it Miss Agley? I don't like her. She smells like --"
"Korey Orcus!" Poppy appears in the doorway and scoops the child into her arms. "What have I told you about pestering strangers!"
Korey's lip pouts out. "Not to do it."
"And yet..." Looking over at Dean, Poppy says, "Sorry about that," and whisks the child away before Dean can think of a response.
Dean catches his own eye in the mirror for a moment. His freckles stand out the way they always do under fluorescents, but he otherwise just looks like he always does. Tired. A day older than yesterday. Sad.
He pulls out his phone and considers sending Sam another text, but thinks better of it.
Maybe he'll get the burger to go, though.
When Dean comes out, Poppy takes one look at him and says, "I'll just wrap this shall I?" and reverses course back to the kitchen with his order. The kid is nowhere to be seen, a coloring book abandoned at the table near the window: a half-colored cow munching on jagged purple grass.
Dean goes over to the counter and props himself next to the pie stand while he waits. The pile of flyers sits next to the till, the full headline now visible: A Vigil in Remembrance of the Missing, and then in a smaller font, Taken from Paradise and Smithville in the Great Flood of 1993.
A dozen faces stare up from the page. Halfway down on the right-hand side is Jimmy Novak's driver's license photo.
"Are you here for the vigil tonight?" Poppy asks, sliding a plastic bag across to him.
Dean shakes his head. How could Jimmy have gone missing here in Paradise twenty years ago?
"You lost someone, though." Poppy touches his hand, there and gone again. Her eyes are full of sympathy, but her touch has the slightly plasticine feel of a monster with tougher-than-human skin.
She knows who he is. The kid had been warned about his car. She's trying to make herself and her kid look harmless...
Dean crams the flyer into the back pocket of his jeans and then covertly grips the haft of the knife in his belt. He scans the diner, taking in the family eating burgers, and the teenage couple on a date.
Poppy pulls over the pie stand and cuts a giant wedge, soft apple oozing from the sides, and decants it into a take-away box. "I lost my daughter that day." For a moment she looks old. Not just human-old, but ancient: almost-invisible age lines webbed across her face, brought to the fore by grief. "It's a terrible thing, all those poor souls they never found."
Yeah, Dean doesn't want to think about lost souls. He's pretty sure it wasn't Jimmy Novak who was playing around in the flood in 1993, and Dean has no interest in trying to clean up this particular mess all over again. He lets go of the knife and pulls out his wallet. "What do I owe --"
"What did we do?" Sam demands.
"Nothing of import," Cas says. "Just the tiny matter of averting the Apocalypse and rendering Atropos obsolete. I think maybe she's a little irritated about that."
Dean sighs. "Great. So we've pissed Fate off personally."
"-- No, no. On the house, honey. Sorry again for Korey. It's a phase, you know." Poppy adds the wedge of pie to the bag.
"I'm pretty sure that phase is called childhood," Dean says, as he picks up the bag and jingles out of the diner.
Reaching the Impala feels like coming home. He dumps the food in the passenger seat and rests his head on the steering wheel. There's only a hint of light left in the sky; orange street-lights are starting to wink on. The rich smell of medium-rare meat fills the car, and he cranks the window, letting in the sharp twilight air. Outside, headlights float down Main Street. After a moment, Dean lifts his ass so he can worm out the flyer. He flattens the worst of the creases out on his knees and snaps a flash photo, sending it off to Sam.
Sam: ????
Sam: Holy shit.
Sam: We're on our way.
Dean decides it's definitely time to go and get that fancy beer.
The liquor barn is in a long, low-slung building next to the town's Woolworths, and it has just as much variety as the ads had promised. There's a whole aisle devoted to whiskey, including Glen Craig; not that Dean needs to replace the bunker's supply of whiskey with Crowley gone.
He passes rows and rows of stout, IPA and pilsner before finding the lagers and ales. He's tossing up between Sam Adams and Saison Rue, and wondering if he can really justify both without incurring Sam's Face of Judgement when someone in a tan trenchcoat walks past the far end of his aisle.
Dean knows it's not Cas. He knows it's just a trick his own mind is playing on him; it happens all the time after someone dies -- Dad, Bobby, Charlie. And now with the whole Jimmy Novak mystery sighting, of course he's seeing Cas in every tan-covered back. He knows it's trick of the light, but it doesn't matter. He follows after the coat like a fish on a line.
Except he can't find it again. At the end of the aisle he turns, but there's no-one there. When he hits the front of the store all the cash registers are busy with queues of checked shirts and sweaters. He drops the six-pack in his hand on the nearest shelf, and darts outside.
The street is now closed to traffic and full of people, all heading towards the town hall. Dean turns this way and that, gaze raking over the crowd as it jostles him along in its wake. The breeze picks up for a moment, bringing a snatch of the preacher rasping that "the wrath of God is infinitely more terrible than any peril that can befall us in our temporal life!"
A dog barks, and there's a squeal of feedback from a PA system, and across the street is Castiel, haloed in the light from one of the street lamps. Not ten feet away from him is a woman giving out more of the Missing flyers with Jimmy Novak's face on them.
"Cas," he calls, just as someone else calls, "Cassie."
Balthazar joins Castiel and they confer for a moment, Balthazar gesturing at the town hall clock.
People brush against Dean from all sides, as they stream towards the park. So many people.
The hair on the back of Dean's neck prickles. He fumbles for his phone...
Dean: STAY OUT OF TOWN
He's barely hit send when he hears the first scream. Barreling towards the flimsy trestles that are blocking off the road is the gorgeous black Kenworth W9 that was filling up with gas an hour ago. There's a light on inside the cab, and he can see the wild grin on the driver's face as people start running.
Someone grabs his arm and he's swinging his fist before he realizes its Cas.
"What are you doing here?" Cas demands.
Dean thinks he's going to break his hand on Cas's stupid face right up until he's hugging the stuffing out of him. It's like hugging a tree. A warm, Cas-smelling tree that doesn't hug back. "You stupid son of a bitch."
When Dean opens his eyes and unwillingly lets go he already knows they've zapped somewhere. It turns out to be the Welcome sign for the town.
"Cassie, we don't have time for this," Balthazar says.
"Shut up, Balty." Dean flicks a dismissive finger at him. "Go play Marty McFly and finish off your little soul reaping experiment or whatever. It won't make any difference to the fate of the world, and Cas owes me five minutes of chewing-out time."
Balthazar narrows his eyes in dislike but obviously recognizes a waste of time when he sees one, because he flutters off without another word.
"Dick," Dean mutters.
"Dean," Castiel says. He has that impatient look he always used to wear during Apocalypse 2: The Even Shittier Sequel, and he's clearly gearing up to spew out a giant helping of bullshit.
"Shut up! I remember what you were like back when you were doing this, so I'm not going to waste my breath on telling you not to. I got another bone to pick with you." Dean slaps his open palm against Cas' chest and fists up a bunch of his coat. "You lied to me! And I'm not talking about this stupid Back to the Future stunt you and Balthazar are pulling. I've already yelled at you about that. You lied when you said you loved us; it came right out of your mouth like you meant it but it was a load of crap. You said you fucking loved us, Cas, and then you picked that kid over me and Sam, and went and sacrificed yourself like the selfish piece of shit you are. What did you think would happen after that? We'd just pick up the pieces for you yet again? Lucifer's still alive, and where the fuck are you? Dead, that's where, and you've left me and Sam holding the freaking baby. I didn't sign up for this, and I don't want it. You once said you and I had a more profound bond, well where the fuck is it, huh? Nowhere as far as I can see. You keep doing this. You keep leaving, and I hate it. I hate it. You're not fucking here, and I don't forgive you for leaving, Cas. I hate you. Except I don't. And I just want you to come home."
Dean swallows hard, no more words welling up to spew out of him.
Castiel is like a statue beneath his hands, eyes wide open and tragic.
The fwooomp of an explosion echoes up to them from the town. Dean turns to look, but they're too far away to see anything. He expects Cas to be gone when he turns back, but he's still there.
"I don't want to leave," Cas says.
Dean already knows he's going to. "Then don't."
"You have to understand, Dean... if there's even a small chance that I can save you, I'm always going to act."
Between heartbeats, the clutch of fabric disappears from Dean's fist. "But Cas," he says to empty space, "you already saved me."
This entry was originally posted at https://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/429128.html.