Flashfic: Long Train Running

Jan 24, 2022 20:51

[13x05 & 11x01]

Two years. Two years from now. Whenever time starts clicking off like that he always thinks deals--really thinks that one deal--but this time it's two years, a time and a place that hasn't happened yet. Two years from now, Sam will be hunched over the refuse of his brother's insane risk to take and Dean, taken, will look Death in the eyes. (Death, the one he hasn't killed yet.)

Why do you think pain is punishment? she'll ask, and it will be attended by some scathing estimation of Dean's capacity for philosophy.

"Well, there's Hell. Kinda their whole thing," he'll point out. He will ignore the scathing estimation. He will confirm it.

Not my thing, Death will say. Never has been.

It will almost make sense then--philosophically. Bodily, it changes nothing. It changes nothing about how untethered Dean feels, the way he'd forget his body--his entire life--in a gas stop bathroom, if only the universe were one hair different. If only it were more literal or more figurative; either will do, probably. In this universe Dean can only feel uncoupled, living his life or maybe watching it, wishing he were doing neither. (And it will be three years from now when that wish is granted. But even in the universes without archangels, wishes are always tricksome things. This wish has no such handicap.)

But sure. Maybe pain is not a punishment. Maybe it's only pain. It's hard not to feel punished but easy to not want to feel victimized, so at least there's that; and maybe the philosophy is really like Purgatory lite. Purgatory LaCroix. Dean cannot imagine not being in pain but he can imagine not giving a damn about it. It's daring and optimistic and also Sam is begging, begging, Dean's heart not to stop. So here's to pain, uncut. Here's to pain without damnation.

Dean will cough the death out of his body and he and Sam will be together again, surrounded by a houseful of ghosts.

Today, though: Dean is alone.

I'm not here, says the Darkness, though Dean will rightly assume she very much is. The Darkness is here and it's their fault, as usual. This is stupid, but there was a splinter of a hangnail of a second where Dean thought what if--? Because he'd just killed Death and the only thing he's ever been afraid of--really afraid of--is Sam dying. The rest of Dean's fears are really only inevitabilities; the fear is just for flavor. Sam, though.

For that fraction of a splinter of a hangnail of a second, Dean thought--no. Dean's not gonna waste words on that.

Why is that something you have to deserve? asks the Darkness, which is a lot of words for an absence. For a thing not here, not released, not their problem. Dean sighs.

Happiness, she finishes, testing the word with her tongue, like a snake. It's a new concept--perhaps unproven to her. Not quite real.

You and me both, sister, thinks Dean.

But then she is gone, and Dean and Sam are together again. Still, it will not be now, not philosophically and not bodily, that Dean will come to believe that happiness does not have to be earned. Like pain, it does not have to be earned. It could never have been now.

But it won't be in Heaven, either. You can't wait for Heaven for shit like this, not when Heaven is all just deserts and due salvation. You can't wait for this at all. Try, and you'll go without. So seven years ago, eighteen, thirty, or five from now, or six: Get in the car and don't look back. Take your brother. Take your brother and don't look back.

Keep looking.



"Big pretzel" bun (4x05), ghost pepper (15x05), smoked gruyere to simulate bacon (because what is more Winchester than "this is not the thing, but it's close"), and all my love (1x01-15x20). Happy birthday. <33333333

infamati et obliterati, fandom: spn, fic: spn

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