There were a lot of things I loved about this episode.[Spoiler (click to open)]Competent, lethal Dean was one of them. So hot. I know, I know, shallow. Jared's brilliant performance was another. That man gives everything he's got to his performances and to this fandom and when you meet him he's so lovely and giving. I was so sorry to hear that he's struggling right now, but it honestly doesn't surprise me, given how much of himself he gives, so much of the time. It takes a toll.
Also, if you haven't read it yet, frozen_delight wrote an awesome coda to this episode, No matter how bad it gets which they kindly gifted to me. It's a brilliant and inspired missing scene (and has become my personal head-canon...this happened...it did) with the added bonus of also being a voicemail fix-it fic! I'm not gonna lie, I teared up a little reading it. So if you haven't read it yet, run, don't walk! :)
Here be my fic.
Title: Deliverance Author: zara_zee Beta: Not beta’d Genre(s): Episode coda Rating: PG-13, Gen Spoilers: Episode 10.22 Word Count: ~650 Warnings: Violence Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing in the sand box.
Summary: Without your brother, you would’ve gone over the edge years ago.
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You thought you could just put it on, like you used to put on your dad’s jacket and his self-confident swagger.
You didn’t give much thought to how you’d take it off again.
And now, you’re not entirely sure you want to.
Sometimes, like when you look at Sammy’s big, scared eyes, you’re sure that you want the mark gone.
Other times it helps you do what needs doing; makes you strong. Focused. Lethal. You like that. You like being the scariest thing in any room.
When the cops pull you over you feel a frisson of the old fear, before realizing that you don’t need to feel it anymore.
You try not to sneer.
It’s not that you hate cops.
They get in the way when you’re trying to do your job, but only because they don’t know what’s really out there. Jodie Mills is good people. Donna too. So was that cop down in Hibbing who helped you when those crazy hillbillies kidnapped Sam. And that homicide detective in Baltimore, the one with the crooked partner, she was a stand up cop too. Even Victor Henriksen turned out to be alright. For a Fed.
Of course, not a single one of those cops was a douchebag good ol’ boy with aviator sunglasses and an accent like something out of Deliverance.
We talkin', like, misdemeanor kind of trouble or, uh, squeal like a pig trouble?
There’s a reason you asked that question way back when.
You don’t need to ask it now though, because you know who’s in real trouble here and it ain’t you.
You best settle or you’re gonna get an ass-whoppin’ instead of a phone call.
You’d really like to see them try.
You don’t have time for this shit and you have zero tolerance for guys who bust Baby’s taillights. These guys, though, they ain’t shot callers. They’re working for someone and you’re pretty sure you know who. So you bide your time and you get what you need and you barely even work up a sweat. Hell, you don’t even have to get out of your chair to take out the first cop.
You think it’s somehow fitting that he’s going to come to grief between your legs.
You don’t shoot the old cop between his piggy eyes like you want to, but only because you’ve got a lot more justice to deliver today and you don’t want the heat.
You once said to Sammy…or he once said to you…or, hell, maybe you’ve even said it to each other…point is, you keep each other human. He keeps you human. Without your brother, you would’ve gone over the edge years ago.
But the mark? It’s part of a curse aimed specifically at fratricide. It whispers to the dark recesses of your mind. It pulls at your brotherly bond with Sam, stretches it taut; tries to break it.
There was a time you would’ve cared about that, which you suppose means it must be winning the tug o’ war.
You remember Pastor Jim teaching you the Our Father; you would’ve been twelve, maybe. You’d helped out with a couple hunts by then, in any case. The only line that really stuck was ‘deliver us from evil’, because that’s what Hunters did; what your dad did.
The line is running through your mind on a loop as you stalk the Stynes like the relentless predator you are, delivering the world from their evil.
You corner a woman in an upstairs bedroom and almost laugh when you hear the prayer she’s reciting.
Almost. But something occurs to you and you turn and look in the mirror that’s hanging over the woman’s dressing table.
Green eyes stare back at you.
You weren’t expecting that.
It shakes you and for one brief, clear moment you wonder if you’d be more or less of a monster if your eyes were black.
And then you shrug and slit the woman’s throat. --