Fic: When In Lebanon (Sam/Dean) Part 3 of 3
Back to Part 2
****
“Not so very bad, Giant,” Rowena said, smiling down at them both.
“Thanks, Ro, we couldn’t have done this without you,” Sam said. “We owe-“
Rowena held up a hand. “Stop right there, Samuel. It seems as though I’m on the saving the world team. No point in living forever if there isn’t a world left to live in, eh?”
Sam nodded and looked down at Dean in his lap, his face finally truly relaxed after month’s of worry and stress. He stood up and hoisted Dean’s limp body up with him and staggered down the hall to their room. Dean woke up before they made it to his room. To Sam’s surprise, he seemed absolutely fine.
“He’s gone, the door in my mind is open, and he’s not there. So it really worked, huh?” Dean asked.
Sam propped Dean up against the hallway wall, and checked him over for injuries. “It did, the whole thing seems like it worked out, just like we thought it would. The bear was still glowing with angel grace, but it seems to be dimming pretty quickly.”
“I’m just gonna get changed and then we’ll celebrate, huh? Break out the special whisky since we have a guest who’ll appreciate it,” Dean said.
“Okay, I’m going to grab a quick shower, the blood…it got messy,” Sam said, pointing down at himself and the nonexistent blood spatters he could practically feel all over him.
Sam watched his brother walk down the hall and shook his head at himself, he shouldn’t worry. Dean seemed just fine, no headache or anything. He passed the bathroom, and returned to the library, to make sure the bear was secure before they started drinking.
The library was empty, but the residual glow of the archangel’s grace seemed to fill it with an almost solid light. It reminded Sam of The Cage, and the two archangels he’d spent so much time with; the grace of Gadreel inside him for months; Castiel’s eyes glowing bright so many times. All that angel grace, all that power passing through him, flashed through Sam’s mind until all he could think about was seeing the bear one last time.
They were going to drive it out to the coast with the bear sealed in the Ma’Lak box and throw the whole thing into the ocean tomorrow. This was nearly his last chance to see the poor little thing, to feel its fur one last time. The light had faded a little, so he could see the bear now, it was beautiful, bathed in the blue glow. Sam could feel the light on his skin like a soft caress, the touch of worn soft fur lit up with the light of the angels, and he wanted to hold the bear one last time. No one would ever have to know.
Sam lifted the bear as if in a trance, the remaining angel light faded like a switch being flipped. In the sudden dark, Sam held the bear up to his face, without a thought of using the special gloves, because he wanted the feeling of that fur, wanted to have it and remember it and enjoy it just for one more moment. He pressed it against his cheek for one long blissful moment-but then he couldn’t seem to let go of the thing. And the thing, the bear, it was still Michael, he was there in the bear, he had just been hiding, waiting…he took Sam in a rush of light and noise that was too familiar for Sam to even begin to resist.
“You said yes to two angels, Sam, that counts as a forever yes in my book,” Michael said with a smirk.
Sam screamed internally and shook the walls of his mind, but it wasn’t even close to enough this time, the feeling of the bear in his hands muted everything. He screamed Dean’s name and Michael just laughed and made Sam’s hands drop the bear on the table.
“Let’s go get clean now, huh? Big brother will love that won’t he?” Michael asked in a teasing sing-song that was the last thing Sam heard for a while.
****
Rowena was drinking with Dean in the kitchen, they were on their second glass of whisky when Dean noticed Sam hadn’t come back from his bathroom trip to join them yet.
“I’m just gonna…uh…go check on him,” Dean said, his voice steadier than he felt after all the whisky. It hadn’t replaced the emptiness he felt inside after having Michael ripped out. The archangel had taken up a lot of room in there, it was going to take a while to rearrange his internal furniture.
Dean could feel Rowena’s eyes on him as he walked out, he was grateful that she didn’t tease or push him the way she normally would have. It reminded him of Crowley and how he’d changed and softened over the years. These MacLeods really grew on you whether you liked it or not.
“Sammy? You still in here?” Dean called as he approached the bathroom door.
There wasn’t an answer, and the lights were off, but he could hear water sloshing in the bathtub. Dean opened the door slowly, the light from the hall fell on the bathtub, Sam was in there, his eyes glowing blue with angel grace. It had to be Michael’s grace, it was the only guess he had, it couldn’t possibly be Lucifer or even more unlikely, Gadreel. Dean had hoped he’d never see the sight of his brother’s eyes gone angel-grace blue ever again in his life, and here it was all over, worse than all the other times combined.
“Michael?” Dean asked, even though he knew the answer.
“Did you miss me, Dean-o?” Michael asked in a sibilant teasing voice that made Dean’s skin crawl. He’d gotten used to hearing that voice in his mind, not with his ears. It was a thousand times worse, especially coming out of Sam’s mouth.
“Rowena! Sammy, you gotta-” Dean yelled just as his air was cut off by the power of Michael’s invisible hold.
“Silence!” Michael roared, standing up in the tub, one hand held up towards Dean, closing hard into a fist.
****
Rowena heard Dean’s panicked cry and then Sam’s voice shouting for silence. And then nothing-she knew what that meant. They’d screwed it up somehow, the transfer of Michael’s grace hadn’t been permanent. Maybe they should have used the Ma’Lak box as the spell closer after all.
“It’s up to you now, giant. We talked about this possibility,” Rowena said, backing up in the hallway away from the voices. She found the bear where they’d left it on the library table. All the ingredients were still laid out, so she did the spell again in a rush, knowing Michael could stop her at any moment.
She said the final words, plunged the stiletto into the bear, poor wee thing, the grace was ripped right out of Sam. She could hear him scream in pain, and Dean’s shouts as well. The grace rushed down the hallway in a terrible glowing river of blue light and instantly filled the bear, making it glow again with that sickly blue. She grabbed the thing up in her skirt, making sure not to touch its fur. She ran to the storeroom where the Ma’lak box stood open and waiting. Rowena tossed the bear inside and slammed the lid down, quickly sliding the locks shut. She could hear Michael’s scream from deep inside the box, could see the angel’s dying light echoing, trying to escape the box, but failing and fading to a small glow.
“Boys, I’ve got him locked in the box,” she shouted down the hallway as she ran towards them. Who was she now, this idiot woman running towards danger instead of hiding, instead of going the other way round, marshaling her powers only to protect herself? “Sam, Dean?”
She came into the bathroom and stopped in the doorway. Dean was holding Sam’s naked, wet body in his lap, bent over, shoulders shaking with grief. Rowena could see that Sam wasn’t breathing. “Dean, what happened?”
Dean looked up at her, wordless grief changing his face into a mask of endless pain. She stepped forward and put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. She could feel that Sam was still there, he hadn’t gone quite yet. “Samuel, y’er not getting out of this so easily, come back to us. It’s not the time. Reaper begone, you can’t have him yet!”
Dean glanced around the room, ready to fight the reaper he couldn’t see. Sam’s body seemed to become heavier all at once, his brother took in an enormous breath, then let out a small moan of pain.
Rowena took her hand off Sam’s shoulder, now heaving with life and pain. She stepped out of the room, letting the boys have a moment.
“Thank you, Rowena. I owe you, we owe you, everything,” Dean said in a voice choked with so much emotion it made her almost sick to hear.
“So you do, don’t ye worry, I’ll collect on it some day,” Rowena said, making her way back to the library. She gathered her things up along with a few extra books they likely wouldn’t miss for a bit, and left through the bunker’s main door. She didn’t want to be there when Sam really came back to himself. Dean should be the one to handle that. She’d done enough today, more than enough.
***
The door slammed and they were alone again. Really alone this time. No archangel on board anyone’s brain, no dad or mom brought back from the dead, no nephilim quasi-son, no angel friend or foe, no hunters from another world. Sam quivered and quaked in Dean’s arms, shaking from the pain and the cold, but still alive. Dean held him and murmured nonsense words of comfort, old and pat but they always always worked, the comfortable familiarity of repetition. But it didn’t make sense, he was gone, he had gone with her this time.
“I d…do…don’t want to go,” Sam said.
“You’re not going anywhere, you heard her,” Dean said.
Sam blinked, left his eyes shut for five full shuddering breaths and then blinked them open again. He searched the room wildly for her, the reaper who’d been insisting he go with her. His eyes kept coming back to find just Dean again and again. Thank god, only Dean, not her. “Dean?”
“Yeah, Sammy, I got you,” Dean said, one warm hand cupping the side of Sam’s face. “No reapers allowed.”
“Where’s Rowena?” Sam asked, pressing his face into Dean’s hand, soaking up the warmth and then shivering uncontrollably.
“She left us to get reacquainted with our unpossessed selves,” Dean said, waggling his eyebrows ridiculously. “C’mon, let’s get you warmed up, huh?”
Dean stood up and helped Sam get vertical. He started the showers up and removed all his clothes, hustling Sam in under the spray. Sam felt useless, his hands didn’t feel like his own, he couldn’t hold anything, much less wash himself, so he stood there and let Dean do it for him. A sudden rush of fond nostalgia flooded through him for the two little boys in all those dingy motel showers. Dean had always made sure he had gotten cleaned up when he’d needed it. Even when he hadn’t wanted to.
“I remember when you used to do this for me, when I was little,” Sam said, not able to keep the fondness out of his voice, but not caring after what they’d just gone through. They both needed to hear as much love and caring as possible at this point. “I was such a little shit, fighting you when I got in the mud and you wanted to get me clean before dad came back and had a fit about it. You’ve always been so good to me, Dean.”
“You were a hell of a lot wigglier back then,” Dean said with a small chuckle, his hands scritched and scratched Sam’s scalp as he washed his hair. The scent of sandalwood enveloped them, Sam breathed in deeply, grounding himself with the familiar smell of his very own shampoo, his very own Dean.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m your very own Dean. You’re acting pretty punch-drunk, dude, you really okay?” Dean asked.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said.
“What for?” Dean asked.
“That it didn’t work,” Sam said.
“It did though, he’s out, he’s locked up tight now. No more Michael, no more Lucifer,” Dean said. “It’s over and done.”
“No…not that, the pearl thing, I wish it had worked. That you’d gotten your wish for real,” Sam said. “Just want you to be happy, Dean. I know I’m not enough.”
“You are though, Sammy. That’s what I was tellin’ you before you big dummy. I think my wish was for me to be able to show Dad how happy we are together. That we made it all this way, in spite of what he did to us as well as because of what he did for us.”
“You mean it?” Sam asked, suddenly feeling like that wiggly excited five year old.
Dean pulled him down so he could kiss the answer into mouth, leaving the words on his lips, the sentences on his tongue. Sam didn’t mind it so much when Dean communicated this way, sometimes words didn’t say enough, couldn’t contain what they needed to get across.
“What would your wish be if we had another one of those pearls?” Dean asked, once they parted and shut off the water. Dean handed him one of their fluffy new towels and Sam reveled in the feeling of the gloriously soft fabric.
“This,” Sam said, stopping his drying off routine, because he couldn’t move after that thought. This was all he wanted, them together, alive, safe, in their own home. What else could he ever want more than this?
“Really? Not law school, two point five kids, a big slobbery dog and a white picket fence?”
“Hell yes really, hell to the no, we already have one and that’s enough, yes please, and maybe.”
Dean ticked off all the answers on his fingers. “Where do you want to put the fence?”
“Somewhere the dog will like it?” Sam answered with a laugh.
The End
****
“Not so very bad, Giant,” Rowena said, smiling down at them both.
“Thanks, Ro, we couldn’t have done this without you,” Sam said. “We owe-“
Rowena held up a hand. “Stop right there, Samuel. It seems as though I’m on the saving the world team. No point in living forever if there isn’t a world left to live in, eh?”
Sam nodded and looked down at Dean in his lap, his face finally truly relaxed after month’s of worry and stress. He stood up and hoisted Dean’s limp body up with him and staggered down the hall to their room. Dean woke up before they made it to his room. To Sam’s surprise, he seemed absolutely fine.
“He’s gone, the door in my mind is open, and he’s not there. So it really worked, huh?” Dean asked.
Sam propped Dean up against the hallway wall, and checked him over for injuries. “It did, the whole thing seems like it worked out, just like we thought it would. The bear was still glowing with angel grace, but it seems to be dimming pretty quickly.”
“I’m just gonna get changed and then we’ll celebrate, huh? Break out the special whisky since we have a guest who’ll appreciate it,” Dean said.
“Okay, I’m going to grab a quick shower, the blood…it got messy,” Sam said, pointing down at himself and the nonexistent blood spatters he could practically feel all over him.
Sam watched his brother walk down the hall and shook his head at himself, he shouldn’t worry. Dean seemed just fine, no headache or anything. He passed the bathroom, and returned to the library, to make sure the bear was secure before they started drinking.
The library was empty, but the residual glow of the archangel’s grace seemed to fill it with an almost solid light. It reminded Sam of The Cage, and the two archangels he’d spent so much time with; the grace of Gadreel inside him for months; Castiel’s eyes glowing bright so many times. All that angel grace, all that power passing through him, flashed through Sam’s mind until all he could think about was seeing the bear one last time.
They were going to drive it out to the coast with the bear sealed in the Ma’Lak box and throw the whole thing into the ocean tomorrow. This was nearly his last chance to see the poor little thing, to feel its fur one last time. The light had faded a little, so he could see the bear now, it was beautiful, bathed in the blue glow. Sam could feel the light on his skin like a soft caress, the touch of worn soft fur lit up with the light of the angels, and he wanted to hold the bear one last time. No one would ever have to know.
Sam lifted the bear as if in a trance, the remaining angel light faded like a switch being flipped. In the sudden dark, Sam held the bear up to his face, without a thought of using the special gloves, because he wanted the feeling of that fur, wanted to have it and remember it and enjoy it just for one more moment. He pressed it against his cheek for one long blissful moment-but then he couldn’t seem to let go of the thing. And the thing, the bear, it was still Michael, he was there in the bear, he had just been hiding, waiting…he took Sam in a rush of light and noise that was too familiar for Sam to even begin to resist.
“You said yes to two angels, Sam, that counts as a forever yes in my book,” Michael said with a smirk.
Sam screamed internally and shook the walls of his mind, but it wasn’t even close to enough this time, the feeling of the bear in his hands muted everything. He screamed Dean’s name and Michael just laughed and made Sam’s hands drop the bear on the table.
“Let’s go get clean now, huh? Big brother will love that won’t he?” Michael asked in a teasing sing-song that was the last thing Sam heard for a while.
****
Rowena was drinking with Dean in the kitchen, they were on their second glass of whisky when Dean noticed Sam hadn’t come back from his bathroom trip to join them yet.
“I’m just gonna…uh…go check on him,” Dean said, his voice steadier than he felt after all the whisky. It hadn’t replaced the emptiness he felt inside after having Michael ripped out. The archangel had taken up a lot of room in there, it was going to take a while to rearrange his internal furniture.
Dean could feel Rowena’s eyes on him as he walked out, he was grateful that she didn’t tease or push him the way she normally would have. It reminded him of Crowley and how he’d changed and softened over the years. These MacLeods really grew on you whether you liked it or not.
“Sammy? You still in here?” Dean called as he approached the bathroom door.
There wasn’t an answer, and the lights were off, but he could hear water sloshing in the bathtub. Dean opened the door slowly, the light from the hall fell on the bathtub, Sam was in there, his eyes glowing blue with angel grace. It had to be Michael’s grace, it was the only guess he had, it couldn’t possibly be Lucifer or even more unlikely, Gadreel. Dean had hoped he’d never see the sight of his brother’s eyes gone angel-grace blue ever again in his life, and here it was all over, worse than all the other times combined.
“Michael?” Dean asked, even though he knew the answer.
“Did you miss me, Dean-o?” Michael asked in a sibilant teasing voice that made Dean’s skin crawl. He’d gotten used to hearing that voice in his mind, not with his ears. It was a thousand times worse, especially coming out of Sam’s mouth.
“Rowena! Sammy, you gotta-” Dean yelled just as his air was cut off by the power of Michael’s invisible hold.
“Silence!” Michael roared, standing up in the tub, one hand held up towards Dean, closing hard into a fist.
****
Rowena heard Dean’s panicked cry and then Sam’s voice shouting for silence. And then nothing-she knew what that meant. They’d screwed it up somehow, the transfer of Michael’s grace hadn’t been permanent. Maybe they should have used the Ma’Lak box as the spell closer after all.
“It’s up to you now, giant. We talked about this possibility,” Rowena said, backing up in the hallway away from the voices. She found the bear where they’d left it on the library table. All the ingredients were still laid out, so she did the spell again in a rush, knowing Michael could stop her at any moment.
She said the final words, plunged the stiletto into the bear, poor wee thing, the grace was ripped right out of Sam. She could hear him scream in pain, and Dean’s shouts as well. The grace rushed down the hallway in a terrible glowing river of blue light and instantly filled the bear, making it glow again with that sickly blue. She grabbed the thing up in her skirt, making sure not to touch its fur. She ran to the storeroom where the Ma’lak box stood open and waiting. Rowena tossed the bear inside and slammed the lid down, quickly sliding the locks shut. She could hear Michael’s scream from deep inside the box, could see the angel’s dying light echoing, trying to escape the box, but failing and fading to a small glow.
“Boys, I’ve got him locked in the box,” she shouted down the hallway as she ran towards them. Who was she now, this idiot woman running towards danger instead of hiding, instead of going the other way round, marshaling her powers only to protect herself? “Sam, Dean?”
She came into the bathroom and stopped in the doorway. Dean was holding Sam’s naked, wet body in his lap, bent over, shoulders shaking with grief. Rowena could see that Sam wasn’t breathing. “Dean, what happened?”
Dean looked up at her, wordless grief changing his face into a mask of endless pain. She stepped forward and put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. She could feel that Sam was still there, he hadn’t gone quite yet. “Samuel, y’er not getting out of this so easily, come back to us. It’s not the time. Reaper begone, you can’t have him yet!”
Dean glanced around the room, ready to fight the reaper he couldn’t see. Sam’s body seemed to become heavier all at once, his brother took in an enormous breath, then let out a small moan of pain.
Rowena took her hand off Sam’s shoulder, now heaving with life and pain. She stepped out of the room, letting the boys have a moment.
“Thank you, Rowena. I owe you, we owe you, everything,” Dean said in a voice choked with so much emotion it made her almost sick to hear.
“So you do, don’t ye worry, I’ll collect on it some day,” Rowena said, making her way back to the library. She gathered her things up along with a few extra books they likely wouldn’t miss for a bit, and left through the bunker’s main door. She didn’t want to be there when Sam really came back to himself. Dean should be the one to handle that. She’d done enough today, more than enough.
***
The door slammed and they were alone again. Really alone this time. No archangel on board anyone’s brain, no dad or mom brought back from the dead, no nephilim quasi-son, no angel friend or foe, no hunters from another world. Sam quivered and quaked in Dean’s arms, shaking from the pain and the cold, but still alive. Dean held him and murmured nonsense words of comfort, old and pat but they always always worked, the comfortable familiarity of repetition. But it didn’t make sense, he was gone, he had gone with her this time.
“I d…do…don’t want to go,” Sam said.
“You’re not going anywhere, you heard her,” Dean said.
Sam blinked, left his eyes shut for five full shuddering breaths and then blinked them open again. He searched the room wildly for her, the reaper who’d been insisting he go with her. His eyes kept coming back to find just Dean again and again. Thank god, only Dean, not her. “Dean?”
“Yeah, Sammy, I got you,” Dean said, one warm hand cupping the side of Sam’s face. “No reapers allowed.”
“Where’s Rowena?” Sam asked, pressing his face into Dean’s hand, soaking up the warmth and then shivering uncontrollably.
“She left us to get reacquainted with our unpossessed selves,” Dean said, waggling his eyebrows ridiculously. “C’mon, let’s get you warmed up, huh?”
Dean stood up and helped Sam get vertical. He started the showers up and removed all his clothes, hustling Sam in under the spray. Sam felt useless, his hands didn’t feel like his own, he couldn’t hold anything, much less wash himself, so he stood there and let Dean do it for him. A sudden rush of fond nostalgia flooded through him for the two little boys in all those dingy motel showers. Dean had always made sure he had gotten cleaned up when he’d needed it. Even when he hadn’t wanted to.
“I remember when you used to do this for me, when I was little,” Sam said, not able to keep the fondness out of his voice, but not caring after what they’d just gone through. They both needed to hear as much love and caring as possible at this point. “I was such a little shit, fighting you when I got in the mud and you wanted to get me clean before dad came back and had a fit about it. You’ve always been so good to me, Dean.”
“You were a hell of a lot wigglier back then,” Dean said with a small chuckle, his hands scritched and scratched Sam’s scalp as he washed his hair. The scent of sandalwood enveloped them, Sam breathed in deeply, grounding himself with the familiar smell of his very own shampoo, his very own Dean.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m your very own Dean. You’re acting pretty punch-drunk, dude, you really okay?” Dean asked.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said.
“What for?” Dean asked.
“That it didn’t work,” Sam said.
“It did though, he’s out, he’s locked up tight now. No more Michael, no more Lucifer,” Dean said. “It’s over and done.”
“No…not that, the pearl thing, I wish it had worked. That you’d gotten your wish for real,” Sam said. “Just want you to be happy, Dean. I know I’m not enough.”
“You are though, Sammy. That’s what I was tellin’ you before you big dummy. I think my wish was for me to be able to show Dad how happy we are together. That we made it all this way, in spite of what he did to us as well as because of what he did for us.”
“You mean it?” Sam asked, suddenly feeling like that wiggly excited five year old.
Dean pulled him down so he could kiss the answer into mouth, leaving the words on his lips, the sentences on his tongue. Sam didn’t mind it so much when Dean communicated this way, sometimes words didn’t say enough, couldn’t contain what they needed to get across.
“What would your wish be if we had another one of those pearls?” Dean asked, once they parted and shut off the water. Dean handed him one of their fluffy new towels and Sam reveled in the feeling of the gloriously soft fabric.
“This,” Sam said, stopping his drying off routine, because he couldn’t move after that thought. This was all he wanted, them together, alive, safe, in their own home. What else could he ever want more than this?
“Really? Not law school, two point five kids, a big slobbery dog and a white picket fence?”
“Hell yes really, hell to the no, we already have one and that’s enough, yes please, and maybe.”
Dean ticked off all the answers on his fingers. “Where do you want to put the fence?”
“Somewhere the dog will like it?” Sam answered with a laugh.
The End