SPN FIC - Resurrection and the Light
As promised, here is the other Easter fic. A little bit early, but the Muse handed it to me today and I'll admit that neither one of us has any patience.
It's not like he's never been in a church before. He's been in lots of them. The only difference is, all the other times he's been in one - for the last ten years or so, anyway - he was chasing something. Or it was chasing him.
CHARACTERS: Dean, Morgan, Lizzie
GENRE: Het (Futurefic)
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2370 words
RESURRECTION AND THE LIGHT
By Carol Davis
"You don't have to go in."
Dean stands looking at the building across the road, arms folded across his chest, toes working inside the dress shoes he bought because giving in was a better choice than listening to Sam yap at him for the rest of his life about how he doesn't own any decent clothes. He could have bought five suits for what he paid for this one, but yeah, maybe you get what you pay for. This one's comfortable. Doesn't grab him anywhere. The shirt's nice and soft and its sleeves and collar are the right size.
He's even wearing brand-new underwear.
You'd think he was getting married, for crying out loud.
"Dean?" Morgan says.
She looks nice too. Most of the time, she wears jeans and sweaters, or a t-shirt. But today she's wearing a dress, and makeup.
She looks good in a dress.
Really good.
"Did you hear what I said?" she asks. "You can change your mind. Nobody's going to say anything if you don't go in."
"The hell they won't."
"And that matters?"
That building across the road is just a building. A collection of lumber and nails and wires and window glass. And pipes; it's probably got plumbing. It's just a building. No different from the building next to it, which is a…what? He has to squint to read the sign. It's a hair salon.
This one, the one right across the road, the one he keeps looking at, is a church.
It's not like he's never been in a church before. He's been in lots of them. The only difference is, all the other times he's been in one - for the last ten years or so, anyway - he was chasing something. Or it was chasing him.
Most of the times he's gone into a church in the last ten years, he's gotten knocked on his ass.
That doesn't make for good memories.
"When me and Sam were kids," he says quietly, and maybe he's talking to himself as much as to Morgan, "my dad used to take us to stay with this friend of his. Up in Minnesota. Just over the Iowa border, place called Blue Earth. Sometimes we'd stay a couple days, or a week. A couple times, we were there the whole summer."
He remembers the summer sun up there. The humid summer air.
"We'd sleep late in the morning sometimes. Lay there in bed and just listen. Stay up late at night and chase fireflies and sh-" He glances over his shoulder into the car, where Lizzie is sitting in the back seat, paging through Charlotte's Web. "Stuff," he amends. "There was a creek out back. Well, not right out back. You had to walk a ways. We used to go down there and look for frogs and tadpoles and -"
"Stuff."
"Yeah."
"That was Pastor Jim's place?"
He's pretty sure he's never mentioned Pastor Jim to her before. Maybe Sam has, and okay, that's a good thing. It's not right that nobody talks about Jim any more - although maybe they talk about him a lot up in Blue Earth. Or maybe they don't talk about him at all. It might weird them out that he was murdered in the church basement.
At least they don't know what he was murdered by.
"He wanted us to go to the services on Sunday," Dean continues. "Didn't make us. Said it was up to us. But he'd appreciate it if we went."
"Did you go?"
"Sometimes."
"And?"
"I liked the singing." He glances back over his shoulder again. Lizzie's wearing a pink and white dress with little flowers embroidered on the front. Her hair is all brushed shiny and fixed with pink barrettes. She's wearing white shoes and white socks with ruffles on them. No coat; it's warm today, warmer than it should be, maybe. "The rest of it -"
He has to stop then, and stands staring across the road at the white clapboard building with the wide front steps.
"They told me they were angels," he says after a minute. "They said there's a God."
"And you figure that's hearsay?"
"I saw some stuff."
At least, he thinks he saw it. It's not clear any more; the memory of it floats around in his mind like flotsam, popping up now and then for reasons he's never figured out. There's nothing wrong with his memory - although you'd figure all the knocks on the head he's taken over the years might have done a job on his wiring - and it all only happened a couple years ago. But that was part of the particulars of the Big Finale: they gave him his life back, let him off with time served, and he doesn't really remember a lot of what went down.
He has no memory whatsoever of Hell, although a whole collection of people have told him that yeah, he was there.
Maybe that's hearsay too.
"Do you want to believe?" Morgan asks.
He remembers one thing very clearly: that he thought everybody who claimed to be from Upstairs was a dick.
Except for…
For…
"I don't know," he says.
"We could sit in the back. That way, if you feel like you want to leave, we can just go."
The only response he can come up with is a shrug. Morgan looks at him for a second, then slides an arm around his waist and leans against him. She fits there, just the right way. And she smells good.
If there's proof at all that God exists, maybe it's her. Or maybe it's that little girl in the back seat of his car.
"My mom used to -"
The words dry up before he can finish. No…finish? He barely got started. Morgan hugs him around the middle and for a second he doesn't want her there. He wants to be by himself until this feeling goes away, this need he's always had to give up everything, all of it, every last thing, if he could just have his mother back.
"She said -" he rasps.
"That there were angels watching over you."
Did Sam tell her that, too? Sam's got a big friggin' mouth.
Mom was right: there were angels watching over him. Keeping an eye on him until the time rolled around when they needed him to…
He did something.
He doesn't remember exactly what.
"If I could remember," he blurts out, scrabbling for some momentum, because that's the way he knows how to deal with things, just go at them balls to the wall, "that'd be something, huh? I could tell 'em about rising. You know? Getting resurrected. There you go. Easter Sunday. Special guest, Dean Winchester. Jesus and Lazarus, they're hard to book. But me? I work cheap."
"I imagine they have coffee," Morgan says. "And cookies."
"That's me. I work for cookies."
He waits for her to chide him, for there to be something in her expression that says Behave yourself, but there's not. Her arm's still around his waist, she's still there, right beside him, smelling of that body splash stuff he likes.
How the hell much has Sam told her, anyway? It's not like Sam remembers a whole lot more than Dean does.
And neither one of them has any solid proof of anything.
"Do you believe it?" he asks. "What happened to me?"
"I'll take it on faith," Morgan says.
Other cars are starting to arrive. The service won't start for another - Dean glances at his watch - half an hour, but some people like to be early. They want to get a good seat. The place isn't that big, only seats a couple hundred, Morgan told him, and it probably won't be anywhere near full, but still. There are always a few people who want to be right there up front. So if anything good happens, they won't miss it. Dean watches the cars for a minute, watches the people getting out, all of them dressed up. The little boys are wearing suits and ties and shiny shoes.
Maybe she dressed him like that. In a little bitty suit and shiny shoes.
Lizzie gets out of the car then. She bangs the door shut - she can slam a door pretty hard for the size of her, and it makes him grit his teeth - then moves to stand beside him and grasps his hand. She grins up at him like she's happier than a pig in…stuff.
"You can change your mind," Morgan tells him.
He shakes his head.
They cross the road together, all three of them watching for traffic, Dean in the middle, each of his hands held by someone he loves. He shudders a little as they approach the wide front steps.
"There's singing, right?" he asks. "I like that part."
"There's singing," Morgan assures him.
Of course it's just a building he's walking into; just a collection of lumber and nails and wiring and pipes. A long length of carpet running down the middle of the rows of pews. It's brighter than he expected, and there are pots of lilies all over the place. Everything's very bright, except for the dark suits he and the other men are wearing. The women and the kids are all in spring colors: pink, pale blue, yellow, light green.
It's so bright he thinks sunglasses might be a good idea.
Jim's church was always shadowy.
Lizzie pulls ahead half a step and looks around, her head swiveling back and forth, sizing everything up. She picks out the pew third from the front on the left and steers the three of them into it. A couple of people are already sitting there, so Dean ends up in the middle, Lizzie beside him, and Morgan on the aisle. With a raised eyebrow Morgan asks him if this is okay, if he's going to feel trapped here.
"I'm good," he murmurs.
It's not like anything's going to happen to him here. He's not going to get bounced off a wall.
End up with another concussion.
End up in Hell again.
A few of the people who are coming in, he knows. He's done business with them, or talked to them on the street. Thompson Lake's a small town, and pretty much, everybody knows everybody. They're nice people, mostly; the "dick" percentage here is pretty low. Some of them smile at him as they take their seats. A couple of them say hello and he moves his mouth in response. They think he's normal, he reminds himself. To them, he's just the guy who drives the old Impala.
The place is about two-thirds full when people stop coming in. A guy Dean knows from the hardware store shuts the big double doors. That makes things a little less bright. Not a lot, but some.
There's a bunch of hymnals in the rack, with dark red covers. They're in better shape than the ones in Jim's church. They look kind of new.
He has to close his eyes then.
Because it's so bright.
When he opens them, Lizzie is grinning at him again. As if she's taking care of him, she tucks her arm through his and leans against him, like she does when they're sitting on the couch to watch a movie together.
Wings, he thinks.
He remembers wings.
And kindness.
At the end of it all, something - someone? - with wings touched his face. He closes his eyes again and remembers love and grace and…something that seemed very, very big.
He thinks the word eternity and wonders if that's right.
Sometimes he's pissed that he can't remember, and that he does remember that nobody would ever answer his questions. They kept talking about surprises, and he hates surprises. He likes to know what's ahead. So he can be prepared. So he won't get caught with his pants down.
So he can take care of his family.
He remembers people being impressed with him, once upon a time. Calling him "The" Dean. The one who was saved from the pit. Now he's just some guy who buys gas and groceries and every so often leaves town for a while. If he stood up and said he was resurrected, like Lazarus, they'd think he was goofing with them. Or that he's been drinking.
He's not "The" Dean any more. He's just some guy, here. In this bright, warm place.
He's just…Dean.
That's a gift, he understands. He's been circling around believing that for a while now. The part of him who was Dad's helper, Sammy's caretaker, the part of him that's always been a hunter and likely always will be, tries to argue that being just a guy isn't much of a help to anybody - but there's more to him than that. More to him than the Dean who had no home other than the driver's seat of an old car, and no family other than Sam, who was almost taken from him more than once.
Once in a while, someone tries to tell him that things happen for a reason, and he used to insist that that was just so much crap.
But maybe it's true.
Maybe he's here because he needs to be.
Maybe Just Dean needs him to be here. To save himself, because he's part of the world he tried so hard to protect.
Maybe he's worth a little grace.
Something touches his cheek. It's Morgan, asking him again with the eyebrow if he's okay.
Part of him wishes she'd stop doing that.
Part of him hopes she never will.
"I'm good," he says softly, because this place seems to call for speaking that way.
This bright, warm place, where he is Just Dean.
"It's okay," he says, and tries to let himself reach that thing he's been circling for so long. "It's -"
Lizzie, small feet drawn up onto the pew, is warming his side, his hip. She's beaming at him.
Her mother is smiling too. A little warily, but smiling.
"I'm good," he whispers, and maybe it's the truth. Maybe today it can be the truth. "It's okay," he says. "I'm good."
* * * * *
It's not like he's never been in a church before. He's been in lots of them. The only difference is, all the other times he's been in one - for the last ten years or so, anyway - he was chasing something. Or it was chasing him.
CHARACTERS: Dean, Morgan, Lizzie
GENRE: Het (Futurefic)
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2370 words
RESURRECTION AND THE LIGHT
By Carol Davis
"You don't have to go in."
Dean stands looking at the building across the road, arms folded across his chest, toes working inside the dress shoes he bought because giving in was a better choice than listening to Sam yap at him for the rest of his life about how he doesn't own any decent clothes. He could have bought five suits for what he paid for this one, but yeah, maybe you get what you pay for. This one's comfortable. Doesn't grab him anywhere. The shirt's nice and soft and its sleeves and collar are the right size.
He's even wearing brand-new underwear.
You'd think he was getting married, for crying out loud.
"Dean?" Morgan says.
She looks nice too. Most of the time, she wears jeans and sweaters, or a t-shirt. But today she's wearing a dress, and makeup.
She looks good in a dress.
Really good.
"Did you hear what I said?" she asks. "You can change your mind. Nobody's going to say anything if you don't go in."
"The hell they won't."
"And that matters?"
That building across the road is just a building. A collection of lumber and nails and wires and window glass. And pipes; it's probably got plumbing. It's just a building. No different from the building next to it, which is a…what? He has to squint to read the sign. It's a hair salon.
This one, the one right across the road, the one he keeps looking at, is a church.
It's not like he's never been in a church before. He's been in lots of them. The only difference is, all the other times he's been in one - for the last ten years or so, anyway - he was chasing something. Or it was chasing him.
Most of the times he's gone into a church in the last ten years, he's gotten knocked on his ass.
That doesn't make for good memories.
"When me and Sam were kids," he says quietly, and maybe he's talking to himself as much as to Morgan, "my dad used to take us to stay with this friend of his. Up in Minnesota. Just over the Iowa border, place called Blue Earth. Sometimes we'd stay a couple days, or a week. A couple times, we were there the whole summer."
He remembers the summer sun up there. The humid summer air.
"We'd sleep late in the morning sometimes. Lay there in bed and just listen. Stay up late at night and chase fireflies and sh-" He glances over his shoulder into the car, where Lizzie is sitting in the back seat, paging through Charlotte's Web. "Stuff," he amends. "There was a creek out back. Well, not right out back. You had to walk a ways. We used to go down there and look for frogs and tadpoles and -"
"Stuff."
"Yeah."
"That was Pastor Jim's place?"
He's pretty sure he's never mentioned Pastor Jim to her before. Maybe Sam has, and okay, that's a good thing. It's not right that nobody talks about Jim any more - although maybe they talk about him a lot up in Blue Earth. Or maybe they don't talk about him at all. It might weird them out that he was murdered in the church basement.
At least they don't know what he was murdered by.
"He wanted us to go to the services on Sunday," Dean continues. "Didn't make us. Said it was up to us. But he'd appreciate it if we went."
"Did you go?"
"Sometimes."
"And?"
"I liked the singing." He glances back over his shoulder again. Lizzie's wearing a pink and white dress with little flowers embroidered on the front. Her hair is all brushed shiny and fixed with pink barrettes. She's wearing white shoes and white socks with ruffles on them. No coat; it's warm today, warmer than it should be, maybe. "The rest of it -"
He has to stop then, and stands staring across the road at the white clapboard building with the wide front steps.
"They told me they were angels," he says after a minute. "They said there's a God."
"And you figure that's hearsay?"
"I saw some stuff."
At least, he thinks he saw it. It's not clear any more; the memory of it floats around in his mind like flotsam, popping up now and then for reasons he's never figured out. There's nothing wrong with his memory - although you'd figure all the knocks on the head he's taken over the years might have done a job on his wiring - and it all only happened a couple years ago. But that was part of the particulars of the Big Finale: they gave him his life back, let him off with time served, and he doesn't really remember a lot of what went down.
He has no memory whatsoever of Hell, although a whole collection of people have told him that yeah, he was there.
Maybe that's hearsay too.
"Do you want to believe?" Morgan asks.
He remembers one thing very clearly: that he thought everybody who claimed to be from Upstairs was a dick.
Except for…
For…
"I don't know," he says.
"We could sit in the back. That way, if you feel like you want to leave, we can just go."
The only response he can come up with is a shrug. Morgan looks at him for a second, then slides an arm around his waist and leans against him. She fits there, just the right way. And she smells good.
If there's proof at all that God exists, maybe it's her. Or maybe it's that little girl in the back seat of his car.
"My mom used to -"
The words dry up before he can finish. No…finish? He barely got started. Morgan hugs him around the middle and for a second he doesn't want her there. He wants to be by himself until this feeling goes away, this need he's always had to give up everything, all of it, every last thing, if he could just have his mother back.
"She said -" he rasps.
"That there were angels watching over you."
Did Sam tell her that, too? Sam's got a big friggin' mouth.
Mom was right: there were angels watching over him. Keeping an eye on him until the time rolled around when they needed him to…
He did something.
He doesn't remember exactly what.
"If I could remember," he blurts out, scrabbling for some momentum, because that's the way he knows how to deal with things, just go at them balls to the wall, "that'd be something, huh? I could tell 'em about rising. You know? Getting resurrected. There you go. Easter Sunday. Special guest, Dean Winchester. Jesus and Lazarus, they're hard to book. But me? I work cheap."
"I imagine they have coffee," Morgan says. "And cookies."
"That's me. I work for cookies."
He waits for her to chide him, for there to be something in her expression that says Behave yourself, but there's not. Her arm's still around his waist, she's still there, right beside him, smelling of that body splash stuff he likes.
How the hell much has Sam told her, anyway? It's not like Sam remembers a whole lot more than Dean does.
And neither one of them has any solid proof of anything.
"Do you believe it?" he asks. "What happened to me?"
"I'll take it on faith," Morgan says.
Other cars are starting to arrive. The service won't start for another - Dean glances at his watch - half an hour, but some people like to be early. They want to get a good seat. The place isn't that big, only seats a couple hundred, Morgan told him, and it probably won't be anywhere near full, but still. There are always a few people who want to be right there up front. So if anything good happens, they won't miss it. Dean watches the cars for a minute, watches the people getting out, all of them dressed up. The little boys are wearing suits and ties and shiny shoes.
Maybe she dressed him like that. In a little bitty suit and shiny shoes.
Lizzie gets out of the car then. She bangs the door shut - she can slam a door pretty hard for the size of her, and it makes him grit his teeth - then moves to stand beside him and grasps his hand. She grins up at him like she's happier than a pig in…stuff.
"You can change your mind," Morgan tells him.
He shakes his head.
They cross the road together, all three of them watching for traffic, Dean in the middle, each of his hands held by someone he loves. He shudders a little as they approach the wide front steps.
"There's singing, right?" he asks. "I like that part."
"There's singing," Morgan assures him.
Of course it's just a building he's walking into; just a collection of lumber and nails and wiring and pipes. A long length of carpet running down the middle of the rows of pews. It's brighter than he expected, and there are pots of lilies all over the place. Everything's very bright, except for the dark suits he and the other men are wearing. The women and the kids are all in spring colors: pink, pale blue, yellow, light green.
It's so bright he thinks sunglasses might be a good idea.
Jim's church was always shadowy.
Lizzie pulls ahead half a step and looks around, her head swiveling back and forth, sizing everything up. She picks out the pew third from the front on the left and steers the three of them into it. A couple of people are already sitting there, so Dean ends up in the middle, Lizzie beside him, and Morgan on the aisle. With a raised eyebrow Morgan asks him if this is okay, if he's going to feel trapped here.
"I'm good," he murmurs.
It's not like anything's going to happen to him here. He's not going to get bounced off a wall.
End up with another concussion.
End up in Hell again.
A few of the people who are coming in, he knows. He's done business with them, or talked to them on the street. Thompson Lake's a small town, and pretty much, everybody knows everybody. They're nice people, mostly; the "dick" percentage here is pretty low. Some of them smile at him as they take their seats. A couple of them say hello and he moves his mouth in response. They think he's normal, he reminds himself. To them, he's just the guy who drives the old Impala.
The place is about two-thirds full when people stop coming in. A guy Dean knows from the hardware store shuts the big double doors. That makes things a little less bright. Not a lot, but some.
There's a bunch of hymnals in the rack, with dark red covers. They're in better shape than the ones in Jim's church. They look kind of new.
He has to close his eyes then.
Because it's so bright.
When he opens them, Lizzie is grinning at him again. As if she's taking care of him, she tucks her arm through his and leans against him, like she does when they're sitting on the couch to watch a movie together.
Wings, he thinks.
He remembers wings.
And kindness.
At the end of it all, something - someone? - with wings touched his face. He closes his eyes again and remembers love and grace and…something that seemed very, very big.
He thinks the word eternity and wonders if that's right.
Sometimes he's pissed that he can't remember, and that he does remember that nobody would ever answer his questions. They kept talking about surprises, and he hates surprises. He likes to know what's ahead. So he can be prepared. So he won't get caught with his pants down.
So he can take care of his family.
He remembers people being impressed with him, once upon a time. Calling him "The" Dean. The one who was saved from the pit. Now he's just some guy who buys gas and groceries and every so often leaves town for a while. If he stood up and said he was resurrected, like Lazarus, they'd think he was goofing with them. Or that he's been drinking.
He's not "The" Dean any more. He's just some guy, here. In this bright, warm place.
He's just…Dean.
That's a gift, he understands. He's been circling around believing that for a while now. The part of him who was Dad's helper, Sammy's caretaker, the part of him that's always been a hunter and likely always will be, tries to argue that being just a guy isn't much of a help to anybody - but there's more to him than that. More to him than the Dean who had no home other than the driver's seat of an old car, and no family other than Sam, who was almost taken from him more than once.
Once in a while, someone tries to tell him that things happen for a reason, and he used to insist that that was just so much crap.
But maybe it's true.
Maybe he's here because he needs to be.
Maybe Just Dean needs him to be here. To save himself, because he's part of the world he tried so hard to protect.
Maybe he's worth a little grace.
Something touches his cheek. It's Morgan, asking him again with the eyebrow if he's okay.
Part of him wishes she'd stop doing that.
Part of him hopes she never will.
"I'm good," he says softly, because this place seems to call for speaking that way.
This bright, warm place, where he is Just Dean.
"It's okay," he says, and tries to let himself reach that thing he's been circling for so long. "It's -"
Lizzie, small feet drawn up onto the pew, is warming his side, his hip. She's beaming at him.
Her mother is smiling too. A little warily, but smiling.
"I'm good," he whispers, and maybe it's the truth. Maybe today it can be the truth. "It's okay," he says. "I'm good."
* * * * *