Never Look Back 21/21 Part 2
Amy had been in college when Meg had found her and forced her to drop out. She’d been studying to become a teacher. She was using the three years of classes she’d been able to take to educate the children in the town, playing teacher for the rag-tag group of all ages.
Obviously, she had lived. And, obviously, Dean had found a way to spread the love, breaking into a near-by hospital and stealing syringes, offering up life to anyone who wanted it.
Sam had pointed out that the demons wouldn’t be lining up to abandon their hosts, but that hadn’t been a problem. All he’d had to do was announce the plan, and order the demons that weren’t welcome to leave the bodies. They had hung around, of course, sticking close to their leader, assuming corporeal forms if they were powerful enough.
Ruby had gotten back about a week after he had, cooing her congratulations and again referring to him as the Anti-Christ. He had been about to argue with her when she suddenly hit her knees before him, bowing her head. She’d been running small errands for him and Dean ever since.
Meg was still MIA. Ruby believed she’d been scared enough to go to Lawrence and through the open Gate. Dean hadn’t taken that news well, and sent a group out to close the doors to Hell, once and for all. They all agreed that they never should have been opened in the first place.
The psychic started and turned as footsteps pounded down the hallway outside of his room. He’d been lost in thought, lost in the past. He smiled as Dean walked in. “Hey.”
“Hey.” The older man walked up beside him, staring out the window at the town that lay beyond the salvage yard, smirking as a black cloud of smoke rose above the houses and darted overhead. “Hard to believe, huh?”
Sam shook his head. “Still can’t get over it.” Something tickled at the back of his mind, an urgent need, a request. He sighed. “What’s wrong now?”
“Remember that storm that blew through yesterday?”
“How could I forget?” Lightning had split the sky, the wind had blown over almost half the trees near the house, and the grocery store had caught fire.
“Well, the lightning might have knocked something down, ‘cause half the town doesn’t have power.”
The younger man rolled his eyes. “Man. What else could go wrong?”
“Hey, I told Mark not to complain about the lights going out. I mean, there are worse things that could happen, right? But does he listen? No. He wants someone on it as soon as freakin’ possible.” Dean shook his head. “Told him he was lucky we even have power in the first place.”
Sam grinned. “I’ll get on it later today.”
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Dean sighed, staring up at the darkened light fixture. “We need to find some way to get the power back on,” he said for the hundredth time since they’d returned from war.
“Get the power back on,” Sam mocked, “save the hosts. You know, you could do some of this.”
“Hey, I lugged your heavy ass upstairs when you passed out from blood loss.”
“Which was your fault in the first place,” Sam reminded him. “Besides, I don’t know what you want me to do about it. Not like I’m an electrician.”
Dean sighed again and laid his head on the kitchen table. They’d been back for a couple of weeks, long enough for Amy to fully recover, and there was still a lot to do. Mostly, Sam just wanted to focus on getting the tents out of his front yard. Dean wanted to make sure the houses in the near-by town could sustain life before sending the general public away.
More than anything, though, Sam just wanted a little time alone, a chance to sneak away and play around. The door was off the hinges, power flooding every part of his brain, coursing with his healing blood through his veins.
Dean had been right. He wasn’t evil. He could feel that now. The demon, his father, and even his brother had spent years putting ideas into his head, and now that he had discovered their initial beliefs about him to have been false, he wanted to see what he could do.
He gazed up at the lamp that hung over the table, his mind wandering. He wasn’t an electrician, but maybe he didn’t have to be. He grinned as an idea hit him. “Where’s the fuse box?”
“Basement. Why?”
“Come with me,” Sam said, jumping from his seat.
“Ok. Why?”
“Want someone to be there in case I electrocute myself.”
“Oh,” Dean rolled his eyes, “well, then, I’m already liking this idea.”
The brothers stumbled down the stairs and into the darkened basement, their hands brushing the walls as they searched the blackness for the fuse box.
“Mind filling me in, here, Sammy?”
Sam shrugged, not that his brother could see it. “Got an idea.”
“You know flipping a few switches down here won’t work if the main power’s off in the town, right?”
The younger man didn’t bother to respond. He’d found what he was looking for. He stretched out a hand, placing his palm against the front of the box, not even bothering to pull back the cover. He ducked is head and closed his eyes, concentrating on what he needed to do.
He felt it again, that power, strong, but timid with lack of use. He reigned it in, gathered it up, forced it out in a single blast that tingled from his head to his chest to his arm to his fingertips, spreading out as it hit the fuse box and sparked the electricity in the house back into bright life.
Sam jumped away as the box shocked him back, a small jolt to tell him that he was done. He looked at Dean, trying to keep the smile off his face as he gauged the older man’s reaction.
“I take it back,” Dean said, giving Sam permission to grin with his own expression of happiness. “Guess you can.”
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Dean nodded, still staring out at the town. “We did the right thing, right? All of this, it’s good?”
“Yeah. I think it is.”
“Good.” The older man turned to leave.
“Hey, Dean?”
He didn’t turned back around, simply stopped in his tracks. “Yeah?”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s still something I need to see.”
“What?” He started to spin back around as Sam reached out and wrapped a hand around his arm. Both boys stilled instantly, Dean’s eyes going wide as Sam’s closed in concentration.
The world around them seemed to stop, the breeze no longer rustling through the leaves in the trees, the far-off noises of cars, of humans, of civilization dying down to nothing as two bodies fell lifelessly to the floor.
Dean watched himself fall to the side before turning still-shocked eyes to his brother. “What the hell, dude? You gotta stop this. It can’t be good for us.”
Sam smiled. “Dean, look.”
“Yeah, I saw. What gives you the right to rip my freakin’ soul out of my freakin’ body whenever the spirit moves you? Huh?”
“Look,” Sam urged again, pointing this time.
Dean rolled his eyes and glanced down at himself. “Wha-? Oh.” He looked back up at Sam, a nervous smile creeping across his face. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
The phrase elicited a laugh from the younger man. That seemed to be the farthest thing from what Dean was. He was no longer bleeding, the wounds that Hell had inflicted having healed over sometime in the two years that they’d spent running the new world together.
Dean looked whole, his body clean, clothing no longer shredded. His bones had mended, popping back into flesh that didn’t even appear to be scarred. There was only one indication that any damage had ever been done to the older man’s soul.
Still grinning, Dean reached up with an unmarred hand and wiped the last of the blood from his mouth. “Suppose you want me to thank you now?”
“A little gratitude would be nice,” Sam said, still unable to believe his brother’s condition. “What do you want to do? Bow before me? Kiss my feet? Perhaps wallow in my glory?”
Dean raised a hand and showed off a gesture that was definitely not a form of praise.
“Oh, thank you, my adoring public,” the younger man said. “Just what I always wanted.”
His brother smirked. “You gonna stand here soul-searching all day, or are you gonna fix this?”
Sam smiled. “Nothing left to fix. We did it.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Spare me the chick-flick.”
The psychic ignored his brother and stepped away from his fallen body, wrapping warm arms around the older man, who stiffened in the embrace. It took him a moment to relax, to let his guard down, to let everything wash over the younger man with the return of the gesture.
The same sorrow from before was still present in the older man’s touch, but it was masked now. It was fading, fading because of two years of close quarters, of life, of happiness, of family. There was a goodness there Sam hadn’t been able to see before through the blood and sweat and tears. He was glad to finally find it.
He’d opened a door in his mind, had let out things that he’d once deemed unspeakably evil. He’d tried to lock them back up, but been unable to find the key. He’d finally realized that was a good thing.
Without the power brought by a demonic bloodline, he never would have been able to save his brother, to save the world. Hope would have been lost and Lilith would have risen to true power. Dean was right. A world ruled by something not-quite-yet-still-completely human was better. It was safer. It was warmer.
Sam had blown the door away, knocked it clean off its hinges, and nearly lost his life because of it. He’d nearly rendered his brother unfixable.
Time had a way of healing wounds, though, and Dean was living, breathing proof of that. Sam supposed he was, too.
Maybe he couldn’t close the door. Maybe he could never have normal. Maybe that didn’t matter anymore. He had done right, done good, and he wouldn’t change a thing. He was willing to step up and embrace his destiny, to walk down that long road, the road less traveled by, and he would never-
“Uh, Sammy?”
“Yeah, Dean?”
“You can let go of me now.”
“Oh.”
Never look back.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, that was it. I'd love to know what people think :)