Wherein Gadreel Gets A Promotion (And Overidentifies With His Job)
Been meaning to cross-post this here for a while.
Also this story (term loosely applied) makes no sense, so.
Warnings: SPOILERS till 9.18: Meta Fiction. Nothing makes sense.
Wherein Gadreel Gets A Promotion (And Overidentifies With His Job)
One day (month, year, century), Metatron asks Gadreel to write a story.
Editing the Winchester gospel, he says, rolling the words around in his tongue like marbles, embellishing it, if you will. It’s seriously lacking in perspective-specifically, it’s almost entirely told through the eyes of one protagonist. But you, Gadreel-you practically lived as the other protagonist. He licks his lips. Fill in the gaps. Enrich it. Balance it.
And what do we stand to gain from this?
Everything, Metatron says.
-
Dean watched Sam pick up a shotgun from the trunk, a little terrified, but also perversely satisfied. Sam cocked the gun with a loud click, and though his eyes shone with tears, his voice was steady.
“We got work to do,” he said, and closed the trunk.
Gadreel frowns, picks up a pen, and starts writing.
fire, then, separated by twenty two years.
because of him. because of HIM.
there were no words. he deserved no words. he knew what was going to happen, and he let evil into his heaven, anyway.
he could smell her in the smoke, a smell like a snake slithering down his throat and coiling in his stomach.
dean put a hand on his shoulder, and all sam wanted to do was vomit, but he closed the trunk, and spoke the words that returned him to the prison he thought he’d once escaped.
-
he saw her from the cage car, and she looked at him with such sorrow, such disappointment, that it was all he could do to wrench the door open and RUN-
-
the third time he felt a soft hand over his wounds-hands so familiar, hands that didn’t exist-he called caleb, and asked for a favour. dean was sleeping off the aftermath of the shapeshifter, but sam ached too much to get any rest himself.
a couple of nights later, the motel room lights stopped flickering ever-so-slightly, and there were no more soft touches. sam stopped disturbing salt lines everywhere they went.
that night, he mourned all over again.
-
all sam had wanted to do was reunite with his father, but now he was BURNING AGAIN
but now he was angry and he couldn’t even tell why. every look his brother and his father gave him told him his anger was useless, but wasn’t he justified in-wasn’t he justified?
and every time this inexplicable feeling of shame; like he was the freak both without and within his family. it was hanging around his neck like a boulder and it hurts, and every time dad looked at him he would hear LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE WROUGHT
[oh for goodness’ sake, gadreel. -ed.]
-
he stopped.
he did not know where, or when; but at some point the anger and shame had eaten each other, leaving behind only fear.
he hunted because-
there was no other way to save himself.
he prayed, still----------------------------
-
Gadreel crumples the paper in his hand. Thinks about some of the prayer that sometimes used to flit even into his prison, and wonders if some of it had been Sam’s.
Wonders if they had meant to be Sam’s.
-
he’d failed.
dean was worse than dead; he was burning in hell.
he’d done far worse than break a promise; he’d broken several more for nothing.
he’d betrayed his brother; he’d betrayed his dead parents; he’d betrayed himself.
all that was left was the rest of the universe. so why not?
-
Gadreel shuts the book, closes his eyes, takes a long, deep breath. Then he throws the book into the fire, and walks out of the room.
Finis