Do-Over (SPN)
Title: Do-Over
Author: borgmama1of5
Summary: What would it take to get to a happy ending?
Genre/pairing: wishful crack
Spoilers: through 5.22
Rating: PG3
Wordcount: 1350
Beta: sandymg
Disclaimer: Not mine, or this story wouldn't have been necessary.
So there was still a fire when Dean was four years old and his mama died on the ceiling and his daddy said “Take your brother outside!” Yeah, I know the Winchester story should technically get a rewrite from earlier than that, probably fix it so that Mary didn’t make a deal with the YED - but then there’d really be no story to tell, because John Winchester would be dead and Dean and Sam would never have been born.
Although, if Dean was never born then he wouldn’t have gone back in time and introduced, so to speak, the YED to his mother, and then John and Mary could’ve gotten married and Dean and Sam would have grown up with a nice white-picket-fence life, and Sam could have gone to Stanford and married Jess, except if the YED hadn’t been after him then Brady wouldn’t have introduced the two of them and …
Yeah, I hate playing with time paradoxes. So we’re gonna do the rewrite from where it went south later. Which still leaves too many options, so we need to narrow them down. Because we still want to end with the world saved from the Apocalypse and all. Look, I don’t want to get into a long discussion about whether that would’ve still happened. Suffice it to say that if, by some miracle, it hadn’t been Dean and Sam getting screwed over by the Devil and the angels, it would have been a couple of other poor schmucks. And I’m just plain skipping the whole free-will-destiny-God-works-in-mysterious-ways debate or we’ll be here forever.
The whole point of this is to give the boys their happy ending, okay?
Let’s look at the moment John made his deal with the YED. Suppose he hadn’t. Dean would’ve gone with Tessa then, and his troubles would have been over. Maybe he wouldn’t have been thrilled with heaven but I’m betting he could have coped with reliving his favorite memories.
Of course that leaves John and Sam hanging out together, and we’re probably in agreement that that wouldn’t be a particularly happy ending for the two of them. Probably be a dead heat whether they killed the YED or each other first …
So, let’s take a look at the whole Cold Oaks fiasco. If Dean had never stopped and sent Sam in to get some food … but really, Sam could have been snatched from anywhere they stopped so that’s really not the key point. Sam could have killed Jake at the end of their fight, but Sam wasn’t hardened enough then and there’s just no way he would have killed Jake in cold blood at that time. Could we get Dean and Bobby there just three minutes sooner? Of course, that opens a new can of worms because sure as heck Jake’s knife would’ve ended up in someone. I have to be honest, time manipulation of that finesse is something only a few beings have, and I’m not one of them, okay? Well, maybe I am. But all that work for a few lousy minutes that would end up just screwing things in a different way? So not worth the effort.
Oh, you think you can do better? Go ahead then.
Not so easy, huh?
Well, I don’t see any way to stop Sam from being killed in Cold Oak. We could make it impossible for Dean to make a deal, though. Send all the Crossroad Demons on a little vacation for that time frame.
What do the boys get if we do that? Well, Sam gets Heaven, and Dean gets … well, yeah, Dean is still screwed.
This re-do would be a whole lot easier if Sam and Dean just weren’t so damned co-dependent. Or at least if Dean didn’t rip our hearts out when he’s mourning his brother.
I guess we have to let Dean make his deal and see if we can fix things from there. The easiest fix would be to have Sam figure out a way to break the deal, but honestly, after everything he researched - well, there was a reason he couldn’t find a way out. There isn’t one. Those crossroads deals are pretty ironclad when the contract is held by someone up (down?) the chain like Lilith.
Give me a break, I’m doing my best here!
For the sake of argument, though, let’s take a look at what would’ve happened if Sam had managed to keep Dean from going to Hell. He was already involved with Ruby, for one thing, and that wasn’t gonna end pretty no matter what Dean did. Oh, it might have been dragged out a little longer, Sam wouldn’t have been nearly so desperate to gank Lilith that he completely disregarded Dean’s warnings. But the idea that Sam could take out a nasty Big Bad as payback for all the crap the Winchesters have had to deal with - that would have eventually been impossible for Sam to ignore. See, the thing is, Sam’s psyche had a huge need-to-prove-himself thing going on and he just darn thinks too much. That’s why he would’ve been a good lawyer, parsing words to get a jury to view things from his side. About the only one who ever gave Sam a run for his money in being able to cut through the doubletalk was Dean … and even when he called Sam on bullshit, Dean was still liable to let his brother slide because they were, y’know, brothers …
Okay, moving on, we get to the part where Dean’s back and kind of, well, pretty much damaged. Don’t see a damn thing to do about that messed-up year. They were being played by experts on both sides, Heaven and Hell, and no hope in finding a loophole in that mess.
So then Luci’s back and Michael’s got his hooks out for Dean’s body and the boys? Well, they’re dealing with the fallout from Ruby and Hell and being point men for the Apocalypse, and it’s not pretty. Lot of people would have just liked to smack them both upside the head to make them get over their issues … makes me wonder if they’d pulled together sooner if that final ending could have been averted. Seems like Gabriel could have been the key, pardon the pun, if he’d only told the boys about the key to Lucifer’s cage sooner. If they’d had more time to plan a better strategy than Sam jumping into the pit while he’s holding on to Luci.
Although, you have to hand it to those boys, they were both pretty damn heroic in their efforts to save the world and in their devotion to each other. And it boiled down to Dean letting go of his need to keep Sam protected and at the same time standing by Sam no matter what, and Sam surrendering his rightful anger at all the messed-up circumstances that pushed the Winchesters to the showdown in Stull Cemetery and accepting his brother’s love for what it was.
‘Cause that’s what saved the world, really. That they loved each other and knew it. Luci and Michael didn’t stand a chance against that.
But. That doesn’t provide that happy ending for Sam and Dean we were trying to get to, does it? It’s really frickin’ annoying, but all the little adjustments added up together aren’t gonna derail what had to happen to save the world.
So what are we left with? Well, there’s potential to still get to a happy ending, if the boys play it right, but seeing as how the Winchesters never do anything the easy way, I’m sure it’s going to take a while and be painful as Hell to watch them reconcile. I’m pretty worried about Dean, myself, and how he’s gonna take to finding out his brother’s been back for a while and didn’t tell him.
So much for trying to re-write this story for happily-ever-after. Not completely throwing in the towel, mind you. Best thing to hope for right now, though, is a reunion hug before a whole ‘nother year passes.
It is September 24th yet?