Deathless, for misplaced_ad

[summergen_mod]

Title: Deathless
Recipient: misplaced_ad
Genre: gen, angst, apocafic, AU from the end of 10x23
Characters: Sam (POV), Rowena, Dean, mentions of Castiel
Rating PG-13
Word Count: ~2900
Warnings: [Spoiler (click to open)]A wee bit of body horror, I suppose--witches being witches. Character death, implied eventual character death.
Notes: For the prompt, "Rowena with amnesia, on the road

Comments

[misplaced_ad]

Dear wonderful mystery writer, this story brought me to tears at the end; thank you so much for distilling the soul of the show into a beautiful lingering image of the two brothers and these words:

“Let me tell you a story,” says Sam.

I’m just shattered, in the best way.

This lovely story is so much more than anything I’d ever dreamed could be done with my prompt; it’s both unexpected and everything I wanted. I love that it is gloriously detailed without being wordy-perfectly suited to the devastating post-apocalyptic storyline-and so heartbreaking yet still dotted with perfectly in-character humorous moments.

I love everything about this but especially these lines:

Kill Death, and the universe goes T-Mobile on the supernatural?

Right. Witches Without Borders

If Dean kills him, would he die in Dean's arms? His Dean's? Or would the glimmer be so fast he'd live to see it come and go, and vanish first?

Sam imagines an atoll, and a woman with hair like lava, and skin like ash.

Sam, you're too old to be the Harold to her Maude. Don't do it.

"Keep me, then," says Sam.

The dialogue is wonderfully natural set against the vastness of the landscape. All the descriptions, whether of small real details like Dean’s collar or huge imagined visions like Castiel’s unfurled wings, stand out starkly to create beautifully vivid imagery. They makes me want to draw some illustrations for this.

Thank you, mystery writer, for this gorgeous tale of the ultimate exile and loss (of time, of memories-manuscripts, perhaps-and of Death and God). Though maybe in the end God does trump Death, for “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”?

I’ll be thinking about this story for a long, long time.

[kalliel]

(Replying to comments ten billion years late. Apologies!)

When I saw your prompt, I knew exactly what I wanted to try to do with it. It took a few tries to get the images and the tone and the feel of the thing where I wanted it to be, so I'm so, so, so glad that this works for you! <33333 I'm also unnecessarily proud of that T-Mobile, line, haha. It's true, though--TMobile's coverage through Montana is basically non-existent. And I'm thrilled that the thing with Dean's collar and then Castiel's wings stood out to you--I loved writing those lines a lot.

Thank you for your beautiful prompts. They were a treasure and a pleasure!

And, of course, thank you for reading, and for your in-depth and thoughtful comments. <3333 /smooch!

(Also, I'm friending you, if that's okay! I ADORED YOUR SUMMERGEN FIC TO PIECES.)