SPN FIC - Fallen Things
Yep, I did it! I wrote another one.
Kinda thinking I'll try for one a week, if you guys keep responding. 'Cause, you know: Comments are gold. (Thank you.)
CHARACTERS: Dean
SPOILERS: 14.01
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG, for a bit of language
DISCLAIMER: No money being made here.
FALLEN THINGS
By Carol Davis
What do you want?
For three weeks now, Michael has asked that question of every single person they’ve come across. Waitresses. Cab drivers. Homeless guys lying mostly passed out in the shadow of big blue Dumpsters. People of faith. People who don’t have faith in anything, let alone some higher power.
Little kids. Old ladies feeding the birds from a park bench.
Demons.
Angels.
So far, nobody’s come up with an answer that satisfies the current pilot of the body Dean still wants to think of as his, which seems to mean that Michael is going to keep on asking. So far, they’ve only roamed around the United States and a little slice of Canada, but it could well be that this is going to go on for a while: long enough for Michael to canvass South America, Europe, Asia.
Maybe Australia, which would be interesting. Even tucked somewhere deep inside what used to be entirely his own noggin, Dean has a little bit of a yen to see a kangaroo up close, jumping around the Outback.
Or a koala.
You can hold those, he thinks. That might be fun.
From there?
He supposes Michael would have no trouble venturing out into the cosmos, although-as far as Dean knows-there’s no one out there to question, except for Chuck and Amara, and it seems unlikely that Michael’s going to bother them.
Maybe not, though.
Maybe that’s the question everyone wants to ask of their parents.
What do you want?
Man, the shit people have come up with when Michael asks them.
Some of them don’t answer at all, which isn’t surprising. Now and then, Michael takes a minute to examine himself in a mirror or a store window, and damn, he’s creepy. Nobody, really, that you’d want to stand there and chat with unless you had no other choice. It’s Dean’s face, of course, a face that’s always worked pretty well attracting the ladies (and not a few guys, but that’s a whole other thing), but the eyes…
Mother of CRAP.
Dead eyes. Serial-killer eyes.
Still-and maybe it’s got something to do with angel mojo, some kind of hypnosis thing-three or four dozen people have actually answered the question.
They want a new Ferrari.
Fifty million dollars.
For a loved one to come back from the dead, or be cured, or stop being pissed off at them. A new job, a good job. Their own island. For the neighbor or co-worker or ex-husband or wife they hate to go rot in Hell.
World peace.
Better weather. For the buses to run on time.
None of that seems to be what Michael is looking for. And even though Dean’s been riding around with this dead-eyed archangel for three weeks now, even Dean has no idea what kind of answer Michael wants. It could be that he’s simply taking some enormous survey of humanity, but what he’ll do with the information… that’s a mystery too.
The whole thing is getting to be… well, dull.
You wouldn’t think that’d be true of being hijacked by an archangel and forced to ride in the back seat of your own head for almost a month now, and you certainly wouldn’t think that Dean Winchester would be unappreciative of the ride, being that there’s no pain involved. Nothing; not even a tweak or a twinge or an ache. After that 40 years in Hell, being tormented by Alastair, you’d think Dean Winchester of all people would appreciate a little non-suffering, but good sweet Christ this is dull, this floating around in here with nothing to do.
Michael doesn’t eat. Doesn’t sleep. Doesn’t watch TV or take in a movie or flirt with the ladies or take a nice long drive with the radio turned up loud.
He just roams around asking that same stupid question.
What do you want?
For a while, Dean asked it of himself, although Michael hasn’t bothered. Just so it would occupy some time, he told himself the answer was important, that it carries some weight in the grand scheme of things. And, you know, that made it tough to answer. In the short term, sure, he could do with having control of his body again. Then a good meal and a good night’s sleep, preferably back in the bunker with Sam and Cas.
A chance to chill for a few days. Catch up with what’s happening.
But that’s not a good answer. It’s not long-term.
It’s not… cosmic.
It can’t be a multi-part answer, he tells himself. It needs to be simple, basic, something he could write on one of those little slips of paper that go inside fortune cookies. Maybe ten words or less.
That kind of eliminates laying out the future for Sam and Cas and Jack and Mom, Jody and Claire and Donna. Lisa and Ben.
It’s supposed to be an answer, after all, not a novel.
Although he’d rather not, for a while, now and then, he lets himself doze off. Take a snooze. He’s well aware that if he does that too much, he might well not wake up again-assuming you can call the state he’s been in “awake”-but at this point, that prospect doesn’t seem all that threatening. He’s not in pain, after all. Sure, he could wind up back in Hell; even though his little stint down there was a long time ago, he’s never been able to convince himself that they couldn’t find a way to rope him back in, promises from Billie notwithstanding.
And he could wind up in Heaven, but what he’s experienced of Heaven so far doesn’t make it a Must See destination.
Angels mostly being dicks, after all.
So, snoozing it is.
He’s always loved a good snooze. Curling up somewhere-someplace cozy being a plus, but not a necessity-and letting his troubles drift away for half an hour or so. A whole hour, if he’s lucky. Dreamless, if he’s luckier.
But there’s something about being in this weird void of a place that seems to amp up his dreams. They look and smell and sound and feel as real as all that stuff he experienced courtesy of the djinn way back when. That’s good, he tells himself; even though it does nothing to help Sam and Cas and the others, it’s a life of sorts, and bit by bit he discovers that he can manipulate it, that he’s more or less King of the Dream World. So he imagines himself driving his baby through New England in the fall, when the leaves are a million brilliant colors. Or sitting on the beach with half a dozen cold cans of beer lined up in the sand beside him.
Working on the car with Ben.
He imagines that he’s little again, snuggled up on the couch with Mom, Dad only a few feet away in his recliner.
That he’s shooting off fireworks with Sam.
It feels good to be in all those situations, although he’s aware that none of them is real. That he’s re-created them, that they’re nothing more than a dream in high def. Still, they’re better than drifting around in the back of wherever the hell it is that Michael has trapped him, seeing what Michael sees and hearing what Michael hears as if he’s underwater, all of it hazy and muffled but clear enough that with each day that goes by, he gets more and more frustrated.
But… is it that? Frustrated? Is that what he’s feeling?
Or is it what he ought to be feeling?
Frustrated. Angry. Betrayed.
Lonely.
He should have known this was coming, of course: that Michael would screw him over. It’s been ten years since Cas came striding into his life and he was told that angels were real, and he’s yet to find an angel who wouldn’t screw him over if they needed to. And Michael? Jesus. He’s known from the jump that Michael isn’t somebody you ought to even begin to trust. If angels are dicks, the archangels are worse.
So… what, then?
What do you want?
He wants out of this situation, of course. But what happens then? Assuming he can end up back at the bunker in something approximating one piece.
More fighting.
More getting the shit kicked out of him.
More of winning the battle (after a lot of grief and, usually, several rounds of beat-downs) only to find out that the war isn’t anywhere near over. That Chuck’s assurances of “You got this” before he sailed off with Amara are a giant almighty burn of a joke, the king of all Screw yous, even though Chuck delivered them with the kind of smile you’d give to some earnest little kid.
More… not winning.
How he’s managed to get through decades of being this kind of tired, Dean can’t figure out, and there are times when he wishes he could confront the Dean of years ago, in the middle of the Croatoan thing, the Dean who was tired enough to want to die, and tell him, “You know what, asshole? You think this is bad? Wait’ll you see what’s coming.”
But he’s still here.
And this war isn’t anywhere near over.
Quietly, wearily, he listens to Michael ask that same question of a man trying to eat a hot dog, and a woman who’s just broken the heel off her shoe. Neither of them has a good answer, and for a moment Dean thinks that Michael might have gotten near the end of his rope, that he might deliver a smackdown just for the hell of it. Because, seriously, what’s the point if you just ask and ask and ask?
He tries, for a moment, to ask the archangel: What do you want?
But it doesn’t get through. Michael either doesn’t hear him or simply won’t acknowledge hearing him. Dean’s got less power here than he did as a fetus, when he could jab out with an elbow or a knee and get his mother’s attention.
Good Jesus, this is dull.
But it’s… better.
Isn’t it?
Better than the fighting. The getting the shit kicked out of him over and over again. Being pummeled and shot and stabbed. Not being able to sleep because every inch of him, every muscle and joint, won’t stop screaming at him.
Better than the fear. For Sam, for Cas, for himself, for everyone in the world.
It’s better than that.
This… nothingness. This needing to do nothing.
There is no fight he needs to join. No one he needs to protect. He’s entirely Michael’s now, and whatever the reason is, Michael is keeping not only Dean’s body safe, but Dean himself: this wisp of consciousness, this wisp of a soul that calls itself Dean Winchester. So there’s nothing to worry about, not now, not anytime in the foreseeable future.
There’s no need to do anything other than simply to be.
So, once more, he lets himself drift. He’ll let the dreams come as they will, and maybe this time there’ll be something he’ll enjoy.
Mom and Dad together.
Christmastime.
Yes, maybe that. Mom and Dad, Dean and Sammy. They never experienced a Christmas together, but nothing says Dean can’t create one. A nice one, with a big tree and lots of presents. The smell of turkey roasting in the oven.
And pie, of course. Lots of pie.
He’s drifting into that imagined place, that place that never was, when the answer finally comes to him.
He tries to resist it, because he’s sure it’s not what Michael is looking for.
It’s also not something he can bear to think too much about.
But for a moment, he thinks of a line of teenage girls on a stage in a high school in Flint, Michigan, singing high and sweet the words of a song he was all too familiar with but had never let himself truly listen to. He looked at his brother as those young girls sang, and without saying a single word to each other, they each understood what the other was thinking.
I want a happy ending, Dean Winchester thinks in the privacy of whatever this place is.
But he can’t bring himself to believe it will ever happen.
* * *
Kinda thinking I'll try for one a week, if you guys keep responding. 'Cause, you know: Comments are gold. (Thank you.)
CHARACTERS: Dean
SPOILERS: 14.01
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG, for a bit of language
DISCLAIMER: No money being made here.
FALLEN THINGS
By Carol Davis
What do you want?
For three weeks now, Michael has asked that question of every single person they’ve come across. Waitresses. Cab drivers. Homeless guys lying mostly passed out in the shadow of big blue Dumpsters. People of faith. People who don’t have faith in anything, let alone some higher power.
Little kids. Old ladies feeding the birds from a park bench.
Demons.
Angels.
So far, nobody’s come up with an answer that satisfies the current pilot of the body Dean still wants to think of as his, which seems to mean that Michael is going to keep on asking. So far, they’ve only roamed around the United States and a little slice of Canada, but it could well be that this is going to go on for a while: long enough for Michael to canvass South America, Europe, Asia.
Maybe Australia, which would be interesting. Even tucked somewhere deep inside what used to be entirely his own noggin, Dean has a little bit of a yen to see a kangaroo up close, jumping around the Outback.
Or a koala.
You can hold those, he thinks. That might be fun.
From there?
He supposes Michael would have no trouble venturing out into the cosmos, although-as far as Dean knows-there’s no one out there to question, except for Chuck and Amara, and it seems unlikely that Michael’s going to bother them.
Maybe not, though.
Maybe that’s the question everyone wants to ask of their parents.
What do you want?
Man, the shit people have come up with when Michael asks them.
Some of them don’t answer at all, which isn’t surprising. Now and then, Michael takes a minute to examine himself in a mirror or a store window, and damn, he’s creepy. Nobody, really, that you’d want to stand there and chat with unless you had no other choice. It’s Dean’s face, of course, a face that’s always worked pretty well attracting the ladies (and not a few guys, but that’s a whole other thing), but the eyes…
Mother of CRAP.
Dead eyes. Serial-killer eyes.
Still-and maybe it’s got something to do with angel mojo, some kind of hypnosis thing-three or four dozen people have actually answered the question.
They want a new Ferrari.
Fifty million dollars.
For a loved one to come back from the dead, or be cured, or stop being pissed off at them. A new job, a good job. Their own island. For the neighbor or co-worker or ex-husband or wife they hate to go rot in Hell.
World peace.
Better weather. For the buses to run on time.
None of that seems to be what Michael is looking for. And even though Dean’s been riding around with this dead-eyed archangel for three weeks now, even Dean has no idea what kind of answer Michael wants. It could be that he’s simply taking some enormous survey of humanity, but what he’ll do with the information… that’s a mystery too.
The whole thing is getting to be… well, dull.
You wouldn’t think that’d be true of being hijacked by an archangel and forced to ride in the back seat of your own head for almost a month now, and you certainly wouldn’t think that Dean Winchester would be unappreciative of the ride, being that there’s no pain involved. Nothing; not even a tweak or a twinge or an ache. After that 40 years in Hell, being tormented by Alastair, you’d think Dean Winchester of all people would appreciate a little non-suffering, but good sweet Christ this is dull, this floating around in here with nothing to do.
Michael doesn’t eat. Doesn’t sleep. Doesn’t watch TV or take in a movie or flirt with the ladies or take a nice long drive with the radio turned up loud.
He just roams around asking that same stupid question.
What do you want?
For a while, Dean asked it of himself, although Michael hasn’t bothered. Just so it would occupy some time, he told himself the answer was important, that it carries some weight in the grand scheme of things. And, you know, that made it tough to answer. In the short term, sure, he could do with having control of his body again. Then a good meal and a good night’s sleep, preferably back in the bunker with Sam and Cas.
A chance to chill for a few days. Catch up with what’s happening.
But that’s not a good answer. It’s not long-term.
It’s not… cosmic.
It can’t be a multi-part answer, he tells himself. It needs to be simple, basic, something he could write on one of those little slips of paper that go inside fortune cookies. Maybe ten words or less.
That kind of eliminates laying out the future for Sam and Cas and Jack and Mom, Jody and Claire and Donna. Lisa and Ben.
It’s supposed to be an answer, after all, not a novel.
Although he’d rather not, for a while, now and then, he lets himself doze off. Take a snooze. He’s well aware that if he does that too much, he might well not wake up again-assuming you can call the state he’s been in “awake”-but at this point, that prospect doesn’t seem all that threatening. He’s not in pain, after all. Sure, he could wind up back in Hell; even though his little stint down there was a long time ago, he’s never been able to convince himself that they couldn’t find a way to rope him back in, promises from Billie notwithstanding.
And he could wind up in Heaven, but what he’s experienced of Heaven so far doesn’t make it a Must See destination.
Angels mostly being dicks, after all.
So, snoozing it is.
He’s always loved a good snooze. Curling up somewhere-someplace cozy being a plus, but not a necessity-and letting his troubles drift away for half an hour or so. A whole hour, if he’s lucky. Dreamless, if he’s luckier.
But there’s something about being in this weird void of a place that seems to amp up his dreams. They look and smell and sound and feel as real as all that stuff he experienced courtesy of the djinn way back when. That’s good, he tells himself; even though it does nothing to help Sam and Cas and the others, it’s a life of sorts, and bit by bit he discovers that he can manipulate it, that he’s more or less King of the Dream World. So he imagines himself driving his baby through New England in the fall, when the leaves are a million brilliant colors. Or sitting on the beach with half a dozen cold cans of beer lined up in the sand beside him.
Working on the car with Ben.
He imagines that he’s little again, snuggled up on the couch with Mom, Dad only a few feet away in his recliner.
That he’s shooting off fireworks with Sam.
It feels good to be in all those situations, although he’s aware that none of them is real. That he’s re-created them, that they’re nothing more than a dream in high def. Still, they’re better than drifting around in the back of wherever the hell it is that Michael has trapped him, seeing what Michael sees and hearing what Michael hears as if he’s underwater, all of it hazy and muffled but clear enough that with each day that goes by, he gets more and more frustrated.
But… is it that? Frustrated? Is that what he’s feeling?
Or is it what he ought to be feeling?
Frustrated. Angry. Betrayed.
Lonely.
He should have known this was coming, of course: that Michael would screw him over. It’s been ten years since Cas came striding into his life and he was told that angels were real, and he’s yet to find an angel who wouldn’t screw him over if they needed to. And Michael? Jesus. He’s known from the jump that Michael isn’t somebody you ought to even begin to trust. If angels are dicks, the archangels are worse.
So… what, then?
What do you want?
He wants out of this situation, of course. But what happens then? Assuming he can end up back at the bunker in something approximating one piece.
More fighting.
More getting the shit kicked out of him.
More of winning the battle (after a lot of grief and, usually, several rounds of beat-downs) only to find out that the war isn’t anywhere near over. That Chuck’s assurances of “You got this” before he sailed off with Amara are a giant almighty burn of a joke, the king of all Screw yous, even though Chuck delivered them with the kind of smile you’d give to some earnest little kid.
More… not winning.
How he’s managed to get through decades of being this kind of tired, Dean can’t figure out, and there are times when he wishes he could confront the Dean of years ago, in the middle of the Croatoan thing, the Dean who was tired enough to want to die, and tell him, “You know what, asshole? You think this is bad? Wait’ll you see what’s coming.”
But he’s still here.
And this war isn’t anywhere near over.
Quietly, wearily, he listens to Michael ask that same question of a man trying to eat a hot dog, and a woman who’s just broken the heel off her shoe. Neither of them has a good answer, and for a moment Dean thinks that Michael might have gotten near the end of his rope, that he might deliver a smackdown just for the hell of it. Because, seriously, what’s the point if you just ask and ask and ask?
He tries, for a moment, to ask the archangel: What do you want?
But it doesn’t get through. Michael either doesn’t hear him or simply won’t acknowledge hearing him. Dean’s got less power here than he did as a fetus, when he could jab out with an elbow or a knee and get his mother’s attention.
Good Jesus, this is dull.
But it’s… better.
Isn’t it?
Better than the fighting. The getting the shit kicked out of him over and over again. Being pummeled and shot and stabbed. Not being able to sleep because every inch of him, every muscle and joint, won’t stop screaming at him.
Better than the fear. For Sam, for Cas, for himself, for everyone in the world.
It’s better than that.
This… nothingness. This needing to do nothing.
There is no fight he needs to join. No one he needs to protect. He’s entirely Michael’s now, and whatever the reason is, Michael is keeping not only Dean’s body safe, but Dean himself: this wisp of consciousness, this wisp of a soul that calls itself Dean Winchester. So there’s nothing to worry about, not now, not anytime in the foreseeable future.
There’s no need to do anything other than simply to be.
So, once more, he lets himself drift. He’ll let the dreams come as they will, and maybe this time there’ll be something he’ll enjoy.
Mom and Dad together.
Christmastime.
Yes, maybe that. Mom and Dad, Dean and Sammy. They never experienced a Christmas together, but nothing says Dean can’t create one. A nice one, with a big tree and lots of presents. The smell of turkey roasting in the oven.
And pie, of course. Lots of pie.
He’s drifting into that imagined place, that place that never was, when the answer finally comes to him.
He tries to resist it, because he’s sure it’s not what Michael is looking for.
It’s also not something he can bear to think too much about.
But for a moment, he thinks of a line of teenage girls on a stage in a high school in Flint, Michigan, singing high and sweet the words of a song he was all too familiar with but had never let himself truly listen to. He looked at his brother as those young girls sang, and without saying a single word to each other, they each understood what the other was thinking.
I want a happy ending, Dean Winchester thinks in the privacy of whatever this place is.
But he can’t bring himself to believe it will ever happen.
* * *