fic: transfixed but not transformed
Title: transfixed but not transformed
Author: i_speak_tongue
Rating: R (language)
Pairing: mild Dean/Anna
Spoilers: SPN 4.16
Disc: If I owned Dean I would not have been so frightfully cruel to him.
Summary: Ignoring the Apocalypse is about as easy as ignoring a Siberian tiger in your living room. And if you succeed at doing so? You’re bound to be mauled to death and eaten.
-
-transfixed but not transformed-
It smells like gravy and rice pudding and disinfectant when you wake up. The blinds are drawn, but you think it might be daytime. Lunch. It sits on a little tray next to your bed, and eating has never seemed so stupid. Shoving all kinds of things down your throat, things flown across continents, things ripped from the earth, things ripped from dead animals to keep other animals alive. Humanity.
Who decided it was worth saving anyway?
A nurse comes in. Old and practiced frown lines mar her cheeks. Cheap, sparkly dollar-store clips hold back her fried blond hair like they might fool someone into believing she remembers how to smile, or what it feels like to be 7 years old. But you aren’t fooled.
She checks the machine next to your bed-the one sending oxygen through a thin clear tube up into your nose. From the moment they hooked the thing onto your face you’ve had the frustrating sensation of being constantly on the edge of a sneeze that never comes. Part of you wants to rip the thing off, fling back the sheets, sign yourself out and go find your brother.
Another part secretly hopes they’ll keep you there just one more day for observation. And maybe another. And maybe they’ll need to run more tests. And maybe you’ll have some kind of brain aneurysm and fall into a coma, where no one can blame you for not saving the world.
You’ll need a really good excuse like that.
She touches you--the nurse. Touches the metal thing on your finger that tells them you still have a pulse. Touches your hand, and your instinct is to grunt at her like some kind of fucking caveman and pull your hand away from her.
She doesn’t seem fazed by it though-has probably dealt with hundreds of bitter old men; the kind who live alone in apartments filled with stacks and stacks of newspapers, who go out once a week for groceries and eat a tuna sandwich for lunch every day, with lots of mayo, and then wonder why they end up in the hospital with heart problems. They don’t like being touched either. ‘Cause they can’t remember the last time they were. Can’t remember how it’s supposed to make them feel.
Just the doctor and nurses--no one else has touched you since you woke up in here, a tube down your throat and your brother standing over you, watching calmly, like he’s immune now.
He’s seen you die a few times already. What’s one more intubation? One more concussion. One more suffocation. It’s all so routine.
“You gonna eat?” the nurse asks and you shake your head.
She picks up the tray without an argument, but adds “Make sure you don’t turn dinner down too, or we’ll hafta hook you back up to the IV.”
You nod, thank her for the heads up, and she leaves, taking with her the moribund smell of mushy, bland hospital food.
Your head still hurts too much to move it around. Not that you really feel like watching TV. It’s hard to concentrate on anything except, well, the Apocalypse. About as hard as trying to ignore a Siberian tiger in your living room. And if you succeed at doing so? You’re bound to be mauled to death and eaten.
You almost wish Castiel would come back. Just sit there and reassure you with his meaningful looks.
He’s much more reassuring than Sam these days. For whatever that’s worth. You won’t be following his orders all of a sudden or anything, but after his short but dramatic visit, you get the feeling he might not be giving that many.
You expect pep talks. Many, many pep talks. You can do it Dean! Team Humanity is counting on you! Just get in there and show ‘em what you’re made of!
You’re the Tom Brady of the End of Days. Fantastic.
You wish you knew where the switch was. The one that turns on all that energy and strength and bullshit cocky attitude that you used to have in fucking spades. It used to be so easy. So easy to pump yourself up for a fight, a tough hunt that you knew was dangerous as shit. Like a jack-in-the box, you could just wind yourself up and… BAM! Presenting Dean Fucking Winchester, hunter extraordinaire!
Yeah. Hunting you could be cocky about. But this…?
If you just knew why, what made you the one, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe you could accept it. Maybe then you would understand how.
With your eyes closed, you take stock of your strength. Try to will away the dizziness. Wonder if you could even stand up if you tried. You just want to know how. How can you do this, when clearly you’re the second choice? When it was Dad who was supposed to be the one to break the seal, be brought back to life and subsequently save the world. You can totally picture him doing something like that. Saver of the World, Stopper of the Apocalypse; sounds like John Winchester to you.
Dean Winchester? He’s lying in a hospital bed with a bruised trachea and a concussion feeling sorry for himself, thinking about all the souls he’s tortured. Trying to forget how much willpower it took to keep his hand from trembling uncontrollably when he picked up that knife and held it to Alastair’s chest. Some freakin’ Hero.
“It’s not about being a hero, Dean.”
Your eyes open to find Anna sitting at the end of your bed. Under the dimmed lights, her pale skin glows like fresh snow under a sunset sky. She lays a hand on your leg and smiles a little.
“I thought…” you start, trying to push yourself up a little, hundreds of nerve endings punishing you for even contemplating it. Anna leans closer, presses on your shoulder to still you. “Thought I’d never see you again.” Your voice is ragged and hoarse and it still hurts to talk. Like back in high school when Laurie Davidson gave you strep throat. Or back in Hell when Alastair shoved hot lava rocks down your throat.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” she says, and she’s talking about the Devil’s Trap, but you know she means everything. All of it. She’s sorry your life happened to you.
“Thanks,” you say, because for once it feels like sympathy, not pity.
“I won’t ask you how you’re doing, ‘cause I feel like that would be a pretty dumb question,” she says softly, cupping your jaw and looking deep into your eyes, doing so as naturally as a worried wife or mother. Like she’s entitled to your body.
It’s comforting somehow.
“Cas was here,” you say as you resist the urge to grab onto her outstretched arm and never let go.
She slides her thumb back and forth over your cheek like a windshield wiper. “I know. I’ve been talking with him.”
You wonder what their conversations must sound like: epic and philosophical and completely void of pop-culture references. “He tell you? That I know about the first seal?”
“Yes.”
As her hand slides off your face you reach for it without thinking, watch your fingers find hers as they rest on your chest. “I can’t do this alone,” you say, tightening your grip.
Anna shakes her head. “You have Sam…” But even she hears the uncertainty in her own voice, and frowns a little as you sigh and blink back tears. God, you are so sick of crying.
“No I don’t. Not really.”
“He’s your brother.”
You pull your hand away, tuck it under your armpit.
“Like Uriel was yours?” You try, but it doesn’t come out sounding as bitter as you’d hoped.
“That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”
“I believe you,” you say. And suddenly you’re together again. Starring at the same eclipse, jumping the same ditches, standing on the same bridge and waiting for it to collapse underneath you.
Anna goes to the window and pulls the blinds open, sunshine streaming into the room that makes your migraine pound on the back of your eyes like an angry mob of villagers with torches and pitchforks, ready and rearing to behead the monarchy.
“Where is Sam, anyway?” she asks, glancing out the window as if she might find him out there, standing in the middle of the parking lot, waving up at her.
“I asked him to leave,” you tell her.
“Dean…” she scolds softly, looking back at you. Why does she understand you so easily? It makes you angry and relieved all at once. “I’m sure he’s worried about you.”
“I just… need some space,” you stumble. You don’t tell her that-despite the fact that he’s your little brother, despite the fact that he’s been your best friend since the day he was born, despite the fact that you’ve never cared about anyone more-having him here now will not make you feel safer or stronger. It will make you feel nervous and uncomfortable and even more claustrophobic than you did with a tube down your throat.
“Does Sam?” Anna asks, and you feel sick to your stomach. It’s always about what Sam needs.
You don’t answer her for a moment. And then you confess, “I used to be afraid he’d leave, go back to school. Quit hunting after we killed Azazel.”
“And now?”
“He’s not the same person he was then.”
“Change is inevitable.”
“Not this kind of change.”
“Don’t give up on him, Dean. Sam still has choices ahead of him. He can still make the right ones.”
“And I can’t make them for him.”
“Nope,” Anna says, settling next to you on the bed again. “But you’re a good person Dean. After everything you’ve been thorough, everything you’ve done, you still know what’s right and what’s wrong.” She sounds amazed. “That’s something even Angels have trouble with.” Anna smiles a little, but her eyes look sad and distant, and you can tell she’s thinking about Uriel and maybe even Lucifer himself.
“I’m scared, Anna. Scared of screwing this all up.”
Maybe she’ll stay with you. God, you want her next to you for this. Don’t think you’ll be able to move an inch without her, because before she got here you couldn’t even see straight and now at least you feel like listening-feel like someone is listening to you.
“I know. It’s okay for you to feel like that,” Anna says, desperately sincere.
“I don’t know how to do this.”
She kisses you then, like she’s imparting some miraculous secret through her lips and saliva. And she might just be.
Her hand, in the process, has found its way onto your chest, and she presses down firmly.
“If you let your heart lead you, you won’t make one wrong turn. I promise.”
Author: i_speak_tongue
Rating: R (language)
Pairing: mild Dean/Anna
Spoilers: SPN 4.16
Disc: If I owned Dean I would not have been so frightfully cruel to him.
Summary: Ignoring the Apocalypse is about as easy as ignoring a Siberian tiger in your living room. And if you succeed at doing so? You’re bound to be mauled to death and eaten.
-
-transfixed but not transformed-
It smells like gravy and rice pudding and disinfectant when you wake up. The blinds are drawn, but you think it might be daytime. Lunch. It sits on a little tray next to your bed, and eating has never seemed so stupid. Shoving all kinds of things down your throat, things flown across continents, things ripped from the earth, things ripped from dead animals to keep other animals alive. Humanity.
Who decided it was worth saving anyway?
A nurse comes in. Old and practiced frown lines mar her cheeks. Cheap, sparkly dollar-store clips hold back her fried blond hair like they might fool someone into believing she remembers how to smile, or what it feels like to be 7 years old. But you aren’t fooled.
She checks the machine next to your bed-the one sending oxygen through a thin clear tube up into your nose. From the moment they hooked the thing onto your face you’ve had the frustrating sensation of being constantly on the edge of a sneeze that never comes. Part of you wants to rip the thing off, fling back the sheets, sign yourself out and go find your brother.
Another part secretly hopes they’ll keep you there just one more day for observation. And maybe another. And maybe they’ll need to run more tests. And maybe you’ll have some kind of brain aneurysm and fall into a coma, where no one can blame you for not saving the world.
You’ll need a really good excuse like that.
She touches you--the nurse. Touches the metal thing on your finger that tells them you still have a pulse. Touches your hand, and your instinct is to grunt at her like some kind of fucking caveman and pull your hand away from her.
She doesn’t seem fazed by it though-has probably dealt with hundreds of bitter old men; the kind who live alone in apartments filled with stacks and stacks of newspapers, who go out once a week for groceries and eat a tuna sandwich for lunch every day, with lots of mayo, and then wonder why they end up in the hospital with heart problems. They don’t like being touched either. ‘Cause they can’t remember the last time they were. Can’t remember how it’s supposed to make them feel.
Just the doctor and nurses--no one else has touched you since you woke up in here, a tube down your throat and your brother standing over you, watching calmly, like he’s immune now.
He’s seen you die a few times already. What’s one more intubation? One more concussion. One more suffocation. It’s all so routine.
“You gonna eat?” the nurse asks and you shake your head.
She picks up the tray without an argument, but adds “Make sure you don’t turn dinner down too, or we’ll hafta hook you back up to the IV.”
You nod, thank her for the heads up, and she leaves, taking with her the moribund smell of mushy, bland hospital food.
Your head still hurts too much to move it around. Not that you really feel like watching TV. It’s hard to concentrate on anything except, well, the Apocalypse. About as hard as trying to ignore a Siberian tiger in your living room. And if you succeed at doing so? You’re bound to be mauled to death and eaten.
You almost wish Castiel would come back. Just sit there and reassure you with his meaningful looks.
He’s much more reassuring than Sam these days. For whatever that’s worth. You won’t be following his orders all of a sudden or anything, but after his short but dramatic visit, you get the feeling he might not be giving that many.
You expect pep talks. Many, many pep talks. You can do it Dean! Team Humanity is counting on you! Just get in there and show ‘em what you’re made of!
You’re the Tom Brady of the End of Days. Fantastic.
You wish you knew where the switch was. The one that turns on all that energy and strength and bullshit cocky attitude that you used to have in fucking spades. It used to be so easy. So easy to pump yourself up for a fight, a tough hunt that you knew was dangerous as shit. Like a jack-in-the box, you could just wind yourself up and… BAM! Presenting Dean Fucking Winchester, hunter extraordinaire!
Yeah. Hunting you could be cocky about. But this…?
If you just knew why, what made you the one, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe you could accept it. Maybe then you would understand how.
With your eyes closed, you take stock of your strength. Try to will away the dizziness. Wonder if you could even stand up if you tried. You just want to know how. How can you do this, when clearly you’re the second choice? When it was Dad who was supposed to be the one to break the seal, be brought back to life and subsequently save the world. You can totally picture him doing something like that. Saver of the World, Stopper of the Apocalypse; sounds like John Winchester to you.
Dean Winchester? He’s lying in a hospital bed with a bruised trachea and a concussion feeling sorry for himself, thinking about all the souls he’s tortured. Trying to forget how much willpower it took to keep his hand from trembling uncontrollably when he picked up that knife and held it to Alastair’s chest. Some freakin’ Hero.
“It’s not about being a hero, Dean.”
Your eyes open to find Anna sitting at the end of your bed. Under the dimmed lights, her pale skin glows like fresh snow under a sunset sky. She lays a hand on your leg and smiles a little.
“I thought…” you start, trying to push yourself up a little, hundreds of nerve endings punishing you for even contemplating it. Anna leans closer, presses on your shoulder to still you. “Thought I’d never see you again.” Your voice is ragged and hoarse and it still hurts to talk. Like back in high school when Laurie Davidson gave you strep throat. Or back in Hell when Alastair shoved hot lava rocks down your throat.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” she says, and she’s talking about the Devil’s Trap, but you know she means everything. All of it. She’s sorry your life happened to you.
“Thanks,” you say, because for once it feels like sympathy, not pity.
“I won’t ask you how you’re doing, ‘cause I feel like that would be a pretty dumb question,” she says softly, cupping your jaw and looking deep into your eyes, doing so as naturally as a worried wife or mother. Like she’s entitled to your body.
It’s comforting somehow.
“Cas was here,” you say as you resist the urge to grab onto her outstretched arm and never let go.
She slides her thumb back and forth over your cheek like a windshield wiper. “I know. I’ve been talking with him.”
You wonder what their conversations must sound like: epic and philosophical and completely void of pop-culture references. “He tell you? That I know about the first seal?”
“Yes.”
As her hand slides off your face you reach for it without thinking, watch your fingers find hers as they rest on your chest. “I can’t do this alone,” you say, tightening your grip.
Anna shakes her head. “You have Sam…” But even she hears the uncertainty in her own voice, and frowns a little as you sigh and blink back tears. God, you are so sick of crying.
“No I don’t. Not really.”
“He’s your brother.”
You pull your hand away, tuck it under your armpit.
“Like Uriel was yours?” You try, but it doesn’t come out sounding as bitter as you’d hoped.
“That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”
“I believe you,” you say. And suddenly you’re together again. Starring at the same eclipse, jumping the same ditches, standing on the same bridge and waiting for it to collapse underneath you.
Anna goes to the window and pulls the blinds open, sunshine streaming into the room that makes your migraine pound on the back of your eyes like an angry mob of villagers with torches and pitchforks, ready and rearing to behead the monarchy.
“Where is Sam, anyway?” she asks, glancing out the window as if she might find him out there, standing in the middle of the parking lot, waving up at her.
“I asked him to leave,” you tell her.
“Dean…” she scolds softly, looking back at you. Why does she understand you so easily? It makes you angry and relieved all at once. “I’m sure he’s worried about you.”
“I just… need some space,” you stumble. You don’t tell her that-despite the fact that he’s your little brother, despite the fact that he’s been your best friend since the day he was born, despite the fact that you’ve never cared about anyone more-having him here now will not make you feel safer or stronger. It will make you feel nervous and uncomfortable and even more claustrophobic than you did with a tube down your throat.
“Does Sam?” Anna asks, and you feel sick to your stomach. It’s always about what Sam needs.
You don’t answer her for a moment. And then you confess, “I used to be afraid he’d leave, go back to school. Quit hunting after we killed Azazel.”
“And now?”
“He’s not the same person he was then.”
“Change is inevitable.”
“Not this kind of change.”
“Don’t give up on him, Dean. Sam still has choices ahead of him. He can still make the right ones.”
“And I can’t make them for him.”
“Nope,” Anna says, settling next to you on the bed again. “But you’re a good person Dean. After everything you’ve been thorough, everything you’ve done, you still know what’s right and what’s wrong.” She sounds amazed. “That’s something even Angels have trouble with.” Anna smiles a little, but her eyes look sad and distant, and you can tell she’s thinking about Uriel and maybe even Lucifer himself.
“I’m scared, Anna. Scared of screwing this all up.”
Maybe she’ll stay with you. God, you want her next to you for this. Don’t think you’ll be able to move an inch without her, because before she got here you couldn’t even see straight and now at least you feel like listening-feel like someone is listening to you.
“I know. It’s okay for you to feel like that,” Anna says, desperately sincere.
“I don’t know how to do this.”
She kisses you then, like she’s imparting some miraculous secret through her lips and saliva. And she might just be.
Her hand, in the process, has found its way onto your chest, and she presses down firmly.
“If you let your heart lead you, you won’t make one wrong turn. I promise.”