Serenity (3/4)
Title: Serenity (3/4)
Summary: Sam never wanted this, but he’s going to see his brother through to the end.
Word count: 1,700
Rated: pg-13 (Language)
Notes: Set S5; Spoilers through 5.10
Genre: Gen, angst, AU
Characters: Sam, Dean, Michael, Bobby, Lucifer
Beta: Once again, many thanks to greeneyes_fan
Disclaimer: Supernatural and it's characters belongs to WB/The CW, I own nothing and make no money.
***
On Bobby’s porch, Michael starts bouncing impatiently on the balls of his feet, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. When the door swings open to reveal Bobby scowling up at them from his wheelchair, the angel cries “hey, Bobby!” and swaggers in. “Just need a couple books. Sorry we didn’t call.”
“Again?” Bobby asks. “Since when’re you Mr. Research?”
“Stop it,” Sam snaps at Michael. “That’s not Dean.”
Bobby’s expression of good-natured annoyance shifts to shock and then confusion as he reaches hesitantly for the holy water in his breast pocket, glancing from not-Dean to Sam for a cue as to why the later isn’t panicking. Sam can’t force the explanation out, but he manages to twist up his face trying.
“Why do you deny him that comfort?” Sam finds his eyes drawn by force of habit to what used to be his brother. Michael’s head is tilted again, wearing an unfamiliar expression of mild concern. Sam snaps his eyes back to Bobby just in time to see understanding blossom on his face.
“Idjit,” Bobby breaths, and the wondering sorrow in his voice almost sets Sam off himself.
“May I see the library?” Michael asks. Bobby nods slowly and the angel walks off with his hands clasped behind him. It’s an incongruous image.
“What books did Dean borrow before?” Sam asks.
Bobby looks wrecked, but Sam doesn’t have the strength to offer any support. “They were right around here,” the older man mutters, wheeling over to a side table. He hands Sam a few leather-bound tomes. “Said you two were lookin’ for another way to kill the devil. After, y’know…”
Sam lets the book on top flip open to a page that’s been dog-eared. He toys with the fold, feeling the thick paper between his fingers. Dean always did insist on doing that, even though Sam told him to take better care of Bobby’s books. It only takes a moment to parse the old language and ornate font; the page is discussing ways of summoning powerful angels using their vessel as a sort of link.
The last time they were at Bobby’s was after Carthage went south. Dean was planning this weeks ago. Weeks.
It’s the best Sam can do to drop the books on the floor rather than throw them outright. He dodges Bobby’s concerned, hovering hand and storms into the library. Michael is nowhere to be seen.
A suffocating need to see the angel floods through Sam. He has to keep tabs on the bits of his brother that he still can. The kitchen is empty, as is the hallway. For all Sam knows, Michael’s broken his word and spirited Dean’s body away to fight Lucifer in some town miles out. His brother will be alone when he goes, left on some empty street like so much trash, and Sam won’t be able to find him and take care of him, and it’s so far from what he deserves…but when has heaven ever cared about that? Sam throws himself around a doorjamb to check the bathroom, and almost bumps into Michael.
The angel is sizing himself up in front of the mirror, his shirt crumpled behind him on the floor. He’s examining Dean’s stomach, twisting experimentally and flexing, testing the limits of his vessel. He glances at Sam, trailing proprietary fingers over Dean’s abs like they belong to him.
Sam grabs Michael’s wrists, wrenching the angel’s hands away from their exploratory path. Michael easily breaks his grip. The tussle quickly devolves into Sam pushing futilely at Dean’s chest and choking out half-formulated exclamations of “Don’t you…” and “Stop touching…”
Then they’re a safe foot apart again.
“I found the incantation that we need,” Michael says, unperturbed.
***
They pick a deserted field for the ritual. It’s complicated enough that Sam doesn’t fully understand- or maybe it’s only that he can’t bring himself to focus on what the angel wearing his brother is doing. He just wants it to be over. He’d have stayed in Dakota with Bobby except that his presence is necessary to summon the devil. It’s not the same spell as Dean’s-- the supernatural version of a calling card, apparently- but the vessel’s still the key. After everything, Sam’s still relegated to being a tool, letting himself be dragged here and there in some vain hope that things can improve.
Michael chants the Enochian words with confidence, more fluid than Dean ever was with foreign languages. Sam looks at his own feet and shifts in the wet grass, scuffing it to mud because he can. He only looks up at the flash of light and the sound of heavy wings that indicates the incantation has been successful.
Lucifer looks stunned, even more so when he sees Michael in Dean. Then he laughs. It’s a mild laugh on the surface, but the tone makes Sam suddenly wish that he’d started running the other way the second Michael was done with the incantation.
“Big brother,” Lucifer croons with the hint of a sneer contorting his mouth at the end. His vessel is rotting from the inside out, his face sallow and caving in at the cheeks.
“Lucifer,” Michael replies.
“I see you wormed your way into your vessel there. What exactly did Heaven promise him? Or should I ask what threats you used?”
“There was nothing,” Michael says, and with all that angry determination in his voice he actually sounds a little like Dean. “You have lost yourself, brother. You corrupt what you touch and your disobedience threatens all creation.”
The Devil’s animalistic grimace stretches the sores on his ruined cheeks. “Don’t sound so righteous,” he snarls. “We both know you always wanted to be an only child. You’ve never been as happy as the moment when our Father told you to destroy me. And now you’re just itching to do it again.”
“Corruption and lies,” Michael responds in a voice thick with disgust. Sam is jolted back to the memory of Dean, the real Dean, using the same tone. Telling him he was a monster.
The devil turns to Sam. “And I suppose you still won’t accept me. You’ll still side with these things that convinced your brother he wasn’t enough, that burned up everything he was for their own revenge?”
“Go to hell,” Sam says.
Lucifer backs up with his hands held out in surrender, and a mocking smile on his peeling lips. Then, he disappears.
And that’s it, he’s gone, they’ve messed up again. But Michael’s gone too, Sam notices. And then there’s an explosion somewhere to his left, large enough that the ground shakes and his eardrums pop. When he looks, there’s a cloud of ash-grey smoke rising into the sky some miles away. The second explosion rips through the air as he’s taking in exactly how many people might have been killed in the first. By nightfall, the entire north-eastern sky is a lurid red. Even though Michael’s kept the fighting well away from the field where Sam is hiding, the air is rank with burning.
***
A little before sunrise, Michael returns. He looks unharmed, upon a quick examination, but Sam supposes that’s angel possession for you. They drag you around and burn your mind, but they clean up your skinned knees with that handy healing mojo. For a long time, the two of them just stand in the mud, Sam alternating between examining the grass at Michael’s feet and the air just to the right of his ear.
“You won,” Sam says finally.
“Lucifer didn’t have his true vessel.”
“You’re welcome.”
Michael inclines his head graciously. “Perhaps we underestimated you, Sam Winchester.”
“Yeah, maybe you underestimated us both,” Sam snaps. But there’s no real bite to it. Whether or not Dean and he could have done it another way, the apocalypse is over. One life, no matter how treasured, can’t make the balance of Lucifer walking free.
“When you leave Dean is he going to…will I need to…”
Michael shakes his head. “His body is undamaged. But he will not be your brother.”
“He’ll always be my brother,” Sam corrects softly.
Michael nods, and Sam notices for the first time how tired the angel looks, the broken curve of his shoulders. Sympathy, or something like it, lets him look into the angel’s face for the first time since the diner.
Michael looks back, straight into Sam’s eyes. “Dean valued this world above his own life. He made this sacrifice for my Father’s creation…but he never turned from you, refused time and again to destroy you. And you turned back to him, because he had faith. You did not fulfill your destiny, even when the brightest of angels pleaded with you to do so.”
“You make it sound so simple. It wasn’t,” Sam admits. “I just…owed Dean more than that. Loved him more.”
“Love,” Michael says slowly. “I never truly understood why my Father favored humanity, but no angel could have made your choice.”
Sam shrugs. “He’s my brother.”
“Lucifer was my brother.” Michael is neither apologizing nor bragging, nor asking for pity. Or maybe he’s doing all of these things. Sam hadn’t believed Gabriel when the angel insisted that Heaven was a family. It had seemed too small. But with Michael in front of him, with all the things unsaid in his statement, he can see it. How the angel is torn by the same love and duty, fears and pettiness that he knows so well. And maybe it’s not even so small, this idea of family.
Sam nods slowly at Michael. He wants to offer some comfort, tell Michael that he had to kill Lucifer, that there was no other way. He keeps his peace, though. Lucifer was Michael’s brother. He loved him, and he killed him. There’s really nothing to be said.
And nothing needs to be. As if that nod was all he was expecting or waiting for, Michael flows out of Dean, bright light spilling out of his mouth and eyes just as the sun’s first rays shoot over the destruction left behind.
Sam’s close enough to catch Dean before he falls.
( Epilogue)
Summary: Sam never wanted this, but he’s going to see his brother through to the end.
Word count: 1,700
Rated: pg-13 (Language)
Notes: Set S5; Spoilers through 5.10
Genre: Gen, angst, AU
Characters: Sam, Dean, Michael, Bobby, Lucifer
Beta: Once again, many thanks to greeneyes_fan
Disclaimer: Supernatural and it's characters belongs to WB/The CW, I own nothing and make no money.
***
On Bobby’s porch, Michael starts bouncing impatiently on the balls of his feet, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. When the door swings open to reveal Bobby scowling up at them from his wheelchair, the angel cries “hey, Bobby!” and swaggers in. “Just need a couple books. Sorry we didn’t call.”
“Again?” Bobby asks. “Since when’re you Mr. Research?”
“Stop it,” Sam snaps at Michael. “That’s not Dean.”
Bobby’s expression of good-natured annoyance shifts to shock and then confusion as he reaches hesitantly for the holy water in his breast pocket, glancing from not-Dean to Sam for a cue as to why the later isn’t panicking. Sam can’t force the explanation out, but he manages to twist up his face trying.
“Why do you deny him that comfort?” Sam finds his eyes drawn by force of habit to what used to be his brother. Michael’s head is tilted again, wearing an unfamiliar expression of mild concern. Sam snaps his eyes back to Bobby just in time to see understanding blossom on his face.
“Idjit,” Bobby breaths, and the wondering sorrow in his voice almost sets Sam off himself.
“May I see the library?” Michael asks. Bobby nods slowly and the angel walks off with his hands clasped behind him. It’s an incongruous image.
“What books did Dean borrow before?” Sam asks.
Bobby looks wrecked, but Sam doesn’t have the strength to offer any support. “They were right around here,” the older man mutters, wheeling over to a side table. He hands Sam a few leather-bound tomes. “Said you two were lookin’ for another way to kill the devil. After, y’know…”
Sam lets the book on top flip open to a page that’s been dog-eared. He toys with the fold, feeling the thick paper between his fingers. Dean always did insist on doing that, even though Sam told him to take better care of Bobby’s books. It only takes a moment to parse the old language and ornate font; the page is discussing ways of summoning powerful angels using their vessel as a sort of link.
The last time they were at Bobby’s was after Carthage went south. Dean was planning this weeks ago. Weeks.
It’s the best Sam can do to drop the books on the floor rather than throw them outright. He dodges Bobby’s concerned, hovering hand and storms into the library. Michael is nowhere to be seen.
A suffocating need to see the angel floods through Sam. He has to keep tabs on the bits of his brother that he still can. The kitchen is empty, as is the hallway. For all Sam knows, Michael’s broken his word and spirited Dean’s body away to fight Lucifer in some town miles out. His brother will be alone when he goes, left on some empty street like so much trash, and Sam won’t be able to find him and take care of him, and it’s so far from what he deserves…but when has heaven ever cared about that? Sam throws himself around a doorjamb to check the bathroom, and almost bumps into Michael.
The angel is sizing himself up in front of the mirror, his shirt crumpled behind him on the floor. He’s examining Dean’s stomach, twisting experimentally and flexing, testing the limits of his vessel. He glances at Sam, trailing proprietary fingers over Dean’s abs like they belong to him.
Sam grabs Michael’s wrists, wrenching the angel’s hands away from their exploratory path. Michael easily breaks his grip. The tussle quickly devolves into Sam pushing futilely at Dean’s chest and choking out half-formulated exclamations of “Don’t you…” and “Stop touching…”
Then they’re a safe foot apart again.
“I found the incantation that we need,” Michael says, unperturbed.
***
They pick a deserted field for the ritual. It’s complicated enough that Sam doesn’t fully understand- or maybe it’s only that he can’t bring himself to focus on what the angel wearing his brother is doing. He just wants it to be over. He’d have stayed in Dakota with Bobby except that his presence is necessary to summon the devil. It’s not the same spell as Dean’s-- the supernatural version of a calling card, apparently- but the vessel’s still the key. After everything, Sam’s still relegated to being a tool, letting himself be dragged here and there in some vain hope that things can improve.
Michael chants the Enochian words with confidence, more fluid than Dean ever was with foreign languages. Sam looks at his own feet and shifts in the wet grass, scuffing it to mud because he can. He only looks up at the flash of light and the sound of heavy wings that indicates the incantation has been successful.
Lucifer looks stunned, even more so when he sees Michael in Dean. Then he laughs. It’s a mild laugh on the surface, but the tone makes Sam suddenly wish that he’d started running the other way the second Michael was done with the incantation.
“Big brother,” Lucifer croons with the hint of a sneer contorting his mouth at the end. His vessel is rotting from the inside out, his face sallow and caving in at the cheeks.
“Lucifer,” Michael replies.
“I see you wormed your way into your vessel there. What exactly did Heaven promise him? Or should I ask what threats you used?”
“There was nothing,” Michael says, and with all that angry determination in his voice he actually sounds a little like Dean. “You have lost yourself, brother. You corrupt what you touch and your disobedience threatens all creation.”
The Devil’s animalistic grimace stretches the sores on his ruined cheeks. “Don’t sound so righteous,” he snarls. “We both know you always wanted to be an only child. You’ve never been as happy as the moment when our Father told you to destroy me. And now you’re just itching to do it again.”
“Corruption and lies,” Michael responds in a voice thick with disgust. Sam is jolted back to the memory of Dean, the real Dean, using the same tone. Telling him he was a monster.
The devil turns to Sam. “And I suppose you still won’t accept me. You’ll still side with these things that convinced your brother he wasn’t enough, that burned up everything he was for their own revenge?”
“Go to hell,” Sam says.
Lucifer backs up with his hands held out in surrender, and a mocking smile on his peeling lips. Then, he disappears.
And that’s it, he’s gone, they’ve messed up again. But Michael’s gone too, Sam notices. And then there’s an explosion somewhere to his left, large enough that the ground shakes and his eardrums pop. When he looks, there’s a cloud of ash-grey smoke rising into the sky some miles away. The second explosion rips through the air as he’s taking in exactly how many people might have been killed in the first. By nightfall, the entire north-eastern sky is a lurid red. Even though Michael’s kept the fighting well away from the field where Sam is hiding, the air is rank with burning.
***
A little before sunrise, Michael returns. He looks unharmed, upon a quick examination, but Sam supposes that’s angel possession for you. They drag you around and burn your mind, but they clean up your skinned knees with that handy healing mojo. For a long time, the two of them just stand in the mud, Sam alternating between examining the grass at Michael’s feet and the air just to the right of his ear.
“You won,” Sam says finally.
“Lucifer didn’t have his true vessel.”
“You’re welcome.”
Michael inclines his head graciously. “Perhaps we underestimated you, Sam Winchester.”
“Yeah, maybe you underestimated us both,” Sam snaps. But there’s no real bite to it. Whether or not Dean and he could have done it another way, the apocalypse is over. One life, no matter how treasured, can’t make the balance of Lucifer walking free.
“When you leave Dean is he going to…will I need to…”
Michael shakes his head. “His body is undamaged. But he will not be your brother.”
“He’ll always be my brother,” Sam corrects softly.
Michael nods, and Sam notices for the first time how tired the angel looks, the broken curve of his shoulders. Sympathy, or something like it, lets him look into the angel’s face for the first time since the diner.
Michael looks back, straight into Sam’s eyes. “Dean valued this world above his own life. He made this sacrifice for my Father’s creation…but he never turned from you, refused time and again to destroy you. And you turned back to him, because he had faith. You did not fulfill your destiny, even when the brightest of angels pleaded with you to do so.”
“You make it sound so simple. It wasn’t,” Sam admits. “I just…owed Dean more than that. Loved him more.”
“Love,” Michael says slowly. “I never truly understood why my Father favored humanity, but no angel could have made your choice.”
Sam shrugs. “He’s my brother.”
“Lucifer was my brother.” Michael is neither apologizing nor bragging, nor asking for pity. Or maybe he’s doing all of these things. Sam hadn’t believed Gabriel when the angel insisted that Heaven was a family. It had seemed too small. But with Michael in front of him, with all the things unsaid in his statement, he can see it. How the angel is torn by the same love and duty, fears and pettiness that he knows so well. And maybe it’s not even so small, this idea of family.
Sam nods slowly at Michael. He wants to offer some comfort, tell Michael that he had to kill Lucifer, that there was no other way. He keeps his peace, though. Lucifer was Michael’s brother. He loved him, and he killed him. There’s really nothing to be said.
And nothing needs to be. As if that nod was all he was expecting or waiting for, Michael flows out of Dean, bright light spilling out of his mouth and eyes just as the sun’s first rays shoot over the destruction left behind.
Sam’s close enough to catch Dean before he falls.
( Epilogue)