Dean - Personal Construct
Fandom: Supernatural
Title: Personal Construct
Author: iluvroadrunner6
Rating: FRT
Characters: Dean Winchester, Unnamed OFC
Content Warning: Character Death, Spoilers for "Skin," "In the Time of my Dying," "Hunted," "Nightshifter"
Summary: “This place-this office-this is your own personal construct of purgatory,” she explained, running a hand through her hair, “Its how your subconscious views this place to be.”
Author's Note: AU. Written for shay_renoylds's From Ashes... Supernatural Ficathon. She gave me the prompt of "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC. This is a bit--weird. I happen to like it though.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of Supernatural. They're owned by the CW. However, any and all original characters are mine, so please don't use them without my permission.
It didn’t feel like he had expected it to feel. For the most part he still felt-human, for lack of a better word. His body still felt the same, and his mind still felt the same. He wasn’t sure exactly what he had expected, but he had a good idea that included some kind of eternal calm and loss of worries. But he was still worried. He was thinking about Sam, and his promise to protect him, and was worrying about what was going to happen, now that he was no longer there. But the worry wasn’t as heavy on his shoulders as it was when he was alive. It didn’t weigh him down like a safe on his back. It was just-there.
He also was expecting more of an old, wrinkled Saint Peter to meet him at the pearly gates, everyone’s usual picture of the gates of the afterlife, not a much younger woman in a business suit, with glasses that reminded him of a professor or teacher.
“You know, you’re more than welcome to get up, walk around-all that fun stuff.” She tilted her head and looked at him, slightly amused, “Just because you’re here, doesn’t mean you lose all that. In fact it actually gets better. You usually gain a bit of grace.”
Dean had been staring at the glass of water she placed in front of him earlier, and hadn’t said a word. He wasn’t thirsty, and he probably would never be again, but the glass of water was there for image, he assumed. Keeping him comfortable by keeping it as much like the world as possible. The place had looked like a shrink’s office-well, at least what he considered a shrink’s office to look like from TV. He’d never actually been in one, so he wouldn’t know, but if he had to think of a way a shrink’s office was to look, this would be it. He looked up at her at this point, and smirked.
“Are you saying I was a klutz?” It was the first words he had said to her since he arrived, and she relaxed a bit. She hated being in a one-sided conversation. She didn’t know if she was actually being heard. She smiled at him before responding.
“Not at all,” she replied, shaking her head, “Not at all.”
“So-” Dean began shifting in his chair before leaning back to face her, “-I’m dead.”
“Yes,” she smirked, “You are dead.”
He held out his hands in the universal ‘I don’t know’ expression, “What am I doing here?”
“This is where we decide where you get to spend the afterlife,” she sighed, pulling her glasses off her face and crossing her legs, “Which place would be the best-fit.”
“Oh,” he nodded, “So it’s not just an automatic thing-heaven or hell?”
“It can be,” she said, “But sometimes cases fall into shades of gray.”
“I guess I’m one of those cases, huh?”
“Yes,” she nodded, “You are.”
“Why?”
“Well-” she sighed, “You’ve broken quite a few of the big rules.” He frowned at that, and she glanced down at the legal pad in front of her, “Your entire life has been one self destructive moment after the other, and you’ve left a trail of-less than favorable behavior in your wake.”
He smirked slightly, “What can I say, the ladies love me.”
She arched an eyebrow and returned the smirk, “It wasn’t just the behavior I’m referring to. You’re also a liar and a murderer.”
“The lying, alright, I’ll cop to that,” he said, “But every single thing I’ve killed has been evil and deserved what they got.”
“What about the man you shot when you impersonated firefighters and pulled your father out of that building? What evil had he done?”
Dean frowned for a minute thinking, and the realization came over him, “That guy was possessed.”
“And that gave you the right to shoot him in the head? There are ways of ridding a person of possession without killing them. What about the good the person at the mercy of this evil might have done before they were possessed?”
“He was going to kill Sammy, what the hell was I supposed to do, just sit there and watch?” he said, his voice starting to rise, “Just sit there and let them beat the shit out of my baby brother?”
He watched her flinch at the word, and shook his head, “Sorry.”
“It’s alright,” she nodded.
“Look, I’m sorry for the lying that I did. But I’m not going to apologize for a single evil thing I killed. I was doing a lot of good.”
“Now you see our dilemma,” she said, “You’ve broken some rules-but you’ve also saved a lot of lives in the process. As I said-shades of gray.”
He started to feel a bit restless, and got up. There was a window in this office, and he walked over looking out into the outside world, whatever it was. There was nothing really. Nothing at the eye level anyway. He angled his eyes upward a bit, and saw the clouds and light above him. Heaven.
“So what do you want me to do? What do you want me to say?” he said turning around to face her, “I’m not sorry for what I’ve killed. I did what I had to do to protect good people and protect my family.”
“You mean Sam?”
“Yes-I did what I had to do to protect Sam.”
“Your father said the same thing,” she replied.
“My father went through you?” he asked, turning around in surprise, “I thought because he made the deal-”
“He did-he did go straight to hell, as per the agreement,” she nodded, placing the pad down and resting her forearms on her thighs, leaning forward, “But while that deal was being processed I got to-chat with him for a bit.”
“And-and what did he say?”
“Said he did all that he did for you and your brother. Because he wanted to keep you two safe and alive.”
“He probably didn’t take well to all this shrink stuff, huh?” he smirked, and she shook her head.
“To your father, I wasn’t a shrink.”
He frowned, confused, “I don’t get it-”
“This place-this office-this is your own personal construct of purgatory,” she explained, running a hand through her hair, “Its how your subconscious views this place to be.”
“So it’s different for everyone?” he asked, and she nodded.
“For your father, I was a fellow Marine swapping old war stories,” she replied, “For you, I’m a shrink.”
“Oh,” he nodded. He turned back to the window again, and this time he looked down. Stretching out under him was a highway, heading down to a dark tunnel that didn’t exactly look promising to enter. He laughed slightly before turning around.
“Is that-”
“The highway to hell?” she smirked, before getting up and standing next to him, “Yes.”
“Is that a-personal construct too?”
“Yes,” she laughed, “Apparently, you think AC/DC had the right idea.”
He turned around again and faced her, “Can I ask you a question?”
“What kind of question?”
“About Sam.”
“What about him?”
“What’s going to happen to him now that I’m-you know-”
“Dead?” she asked, giving him a look.
“Yeah. Now that I’m dead.”
“I don’t know.”
“Aren’t you guys supposed to be all-seeing and all-knowing?” he asked.
“Well, in a sense we are, but if we knew what was going to happen before it even happened, it wouldn’t necessarily be free will then would it? He-God, I mean-could only choose to create those who would make the right choices, and then humans wouldn’t have the one quality that makes them human.”
“The ability to screw things up?”
“More or less,” she nodded, “Our all-seeing and all-knowing is more rooted in the ability to know everything in your past-even the things you keep a secret.”
“So Sammy-he could go either way, good or bad, and you don’t know?”
“Right,” she nodded, “It depends on the choices he makes.”
“What if he doesn’t have a choice? What if the Demon, he just takes over Sam-possesses him or something?”
“That’s taken into account,” she replied, walking back towards her chair, “But-if he does make the wrong choices-on his own-he has to be aware of the consequences.”
“Can I ask you something else?” he said, looking down at his hands, and playing with his ring.
“You can ask me anything you want.”
“Did I make a difference?” he asked, “Did I stop him from going dark side sooner or something?”
She tilted her head to the side slightly, frowning as she picked up her glasses again, “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I promised that I would save him, and I tried my damnedest to do it too.” He looked up at her, and paused for a minute before continuing, “I want to know if I just shouldn’t have bothered.”
“The need to protect your family is in your nature, Dean,” she replied. She paused slightly, chewing on the ends of her glasses, “You would have tried to protect Sam whether you knew it would make a difference or not.”
“I would have?”
She quirked an eyebrow, “You don’t think you would?”
“Yeah, well-that’s human nature, isn’t it?” he sighed walking back over to the couch, “If you know it’s not going to make a difference, you don’t even bother to try.”
“You would,” she replied, “You don’t give up on your family.”
“But I let them down well enough,” he replied.
“You never let Sam down.”
“I’m dead, aren’t I?” he said, standing up and starting to pace like he was stuck in a cage, “And it’s not because I was trying to save him, or protect him, but because some evil sonuvabitch with my face killed and tortured those people.”
“He doesn’t see it that way.”
“Don’t tell me shit like that to try and make me feel better.”
“I’m not,” she sighed, and he turned on her giving her a look. She swallowed briefly, but continued, “But believe what you will. It’s your choice.”
He walked back to the couch to sit down, and started staring at the water glass again, thinking. “I didn’t do what they killed me for.”
“We know,” she nodded, “Those murders weren’t factored in here.”
“I shouldn’t have died for that.”
“Father, forgive them,” she quoted, “For they do not know what they do.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Of course not. It would take the heart of a saint to give that kind of forgiveness so easily, and a ‘saint’ is not a word I would use to describe you.”
“Sorry I don’t fit the mold.”
“I wasn’t asking you to. Most people don’t.”
“So, what’s the verdict?” he asked, leaning forward so that he was mimicking her earlier position, “Heaven or hell?”
She bit her lips slightly, “Well-where do you think you should go?”
“Excuse me?”
The walls of the shrink’s office evaporated around them, and they were suddenly standing on a two-lane highway, kind of like the one he had seen earlier, below her window. In one direction were the clouds and pearly gates that he would usually associate with heaven, and in the opposite direction was the dark tunnel he had seen earlier.
“What are you saying?” he asked, “I get to choose?”
“Not exactly. I’m just asking you which you feel you deserve.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Look at your life, Dean. Look at what you’ve done and accomplished. Do you feel that you, after completing a penance for your sins, deserve admittance to heaven? Or do you think that for all you done, you deserve to be sent to hell?”
There was a slight rumble, and Dean turned to see a car almost identical to his own Impala, idling next to him. He smiled slightly, before she walked over to him and placed a set of keys in his hand.
“You’re kidding me, right?” he asked, looking at her in confusion, “I really get to choose whether I go to heaven or hell?”
“So long as the decision is based on what you feel you deserve, and not what you want, yes,” she sighed, crossing her arms in front of her chest, “The keys are in your hand, aren’t they?”
“Yeah,” he said with a smile, “I guess they are.”
Title: Personal Construct
Author: iluvroadrunner6
Rating: FRT
Characters: Dean Winchester, Unnamed OFC
Content Warning: Character Death, Spoilers for "Skin," "In the Time of my Dying," "Hunted," "Nightshifter"
Summary: “This place-this office-this is your own personal construct of purgatory,” she explained, running a hand through her hair, “Its how your subconscious views this place to be.”
Author's Note: AU. Written for shay_renoylds's From Ashes... Supernatural Ficathon. She gave me the prompt of "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC. This is a bit--weird. I happen to like it though.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of Supernatural. They're owned by the CW. However, any and all original characters are mine, so please don't use them without my permission.
It didn’t feel like he had expected it to feel. For the most part he still felt-human, for lack of a better word. His body still felt the same, and his mind still felt the same. He wasn’t sure exactly what he had expected, but he had a good idea that included some kind of eternal calm and loss of worries. But he was still worried. He was thinking about Sam, and his promise to protect him, and was worrying about what was going to happen, now that he was no longer there. But the worry wasn’t as heavy on his shoulders as it was when he was alive. It didn’t weigh him down like a safe on his back. It was just-there.
He also was expecting more of an old, wrinkled Saint Peter to meet him at the pearly gates, everyone’s usual picture of the gates of the afterlife, not a much younger woman in a business suit, with glasses that reminded him of a professor or teacher.
“You know, you’re more than welcome to get up, walk around-all that fun stuff.” She tilted her head and looked at him, slightly amused, “Just because you’re here, doesn’t mean you lose all that. In fact it actually gets better. You usually gain a bit of grace.”
Dean had been staring at the glass of water she placed in front of him earlier, and hadn’t said a word. He wasn’t thirsty, and he probably would never be again, but the glass of water was there for image, he assumed. Keeping him comfortable by keeping it as much like the world as possible. The place had looked like a shrink’s office-well, at least what he considered a shrink’s office to look like from TV. He’d never actually been in one, so he wouldn’t know, but if he had to think of a way a shrink’s office was to look, this would be it. He looked up at her at this point, and smirked.
“Are you saying I was a klutz?” It was the first words he had said to her since he arrived, and she relaxed a bit. She hated being in a one-sided conversation. She didn’t know if she was actually being heard. She smiled at him before responding.
“Not at all,” she replied, shaking her head, “Not at all.”
“So-” Dean began shifting in his chair before leaning back to face her, “-I’m dead.”
“Yes,” she smirked, “You are dead.”
He held out his hands in the universal ‘I don’t know’ expression, “What am I doing here?”
“This is where we decide where you get to spend the afterlife,” she sighed, pulling her glasses off her face and crossing her legs, “Which place would be the best-fit.”
“Oh,” he nodded, “So it’s not just an automatic thing-heaven or hell?”
“It can be,” she said, “But sometimes cases fall into shades of gray.”
“I guess I’m one of those cases, huh?”
“Yes,” she nodded, “You are.”
“Why?”
“Well-” she sighed, “You’ve broken quite a few of the big rules.” He frowned at that, and she glanced down at the legal pad in front of her, “Your entire life has been one self destructive moment after the other, and you’ve left a trail of-less than favorable behavior in your wake.”
He smirked slightly, “What can I say, the ladies love me.”
She arched an eyebrow and returned the smirk, “It wasn’t just the behavior I’m referring to. You’re also a liar and a murderer.”
“The lying, alright, I’ll cop to that,” he said, “But every single thing I’ve killed has been evil and deserved what they got.”
“What about the man you shot when you impersonated firefighters and pulled your father out of that building? What evil had he done?”
Dean frowned for a minute thinking, and the realization came over him, “That guy was possessed.”
“And that gave you the right to shoot him in the head? There are ways of ridding a person of possession without killing them. What about the good the person at the mercy of this evil might have done before they were possessed?”
“He was going to kill Sammy, what the hell was I supposed to do, just sit there and watch?” he said, his voice starting to rise, “Just sit there and let them beat the shit out of my baby brother?”
He watched her flinch at the word, and shook his head, “Sorry.”
“It’s alright,” she nodded.
“Look, I’m sorry for the lying that I did. But I’m not going to apologize for a single evil thing I killed. I was doing a lot of good.”
“Now you see our dilemma,” she said, “You’ve broken some rules-but you’ve also saved a lot of lives in the process. As I said-shades of gray.”
He started to feel a bit restless, and got up. There was a window in this office, and he walked over looking out into the outside world, whatever it was. There was nothing really. Nothing at the eye level anyway. He angled his eyes upward a bit, and saw the clouds and light above him. Heaven.
“So what do you want me to do? What do you want me to say?” he said turning around to face her, “I’m not sorry for what I’ve killed. I did what I had to do to protect good people and protect my family.”
“You mean Sam?”
“Yes-I did what I had to do to protect Sam.”
“Your father said the same thing,” she replied.
“My father went through you?” he asked, turning around in surprise, “I thought because he made the deal-”
“He did-he did go straight to hell, as per the agreement,” she nodded, placing the pad down and resting her forearms on her thighs, leaning forward, “But while that deal was being processed I got to-chat with him for a bit.”
“And-and what did he say?”
“Said he did all that he did for you and your brother. Because he wanted to keep you two safe and alive.”
“He probably didn’t take well to all this shrink stuff, huh?” he smirked, and she shook her head.
“To your father, I wasn’t a shrink.”
He frowned, confused, “I don’t get it-”
“This place-this office-this is your own personal construct of purgatory,” she explained, running a hand through her hair, “Its how your subconscious views this place to be.”
“So it’s different for everyone?” he asked, and she nodded.
“For your father, I was a fellow Marine swapping old war stories,” she replied, “For you, I’m a shrink.”
“Oh,” he nodded. He turned back to the window again, and this time he looked down. Stretching out under him was a highway, heading down to a dark tunnel that didn’t exactly look promising to enter. He laughed slightly before turning around.
“Is that-”
“The highway to hell?” she smirked, before getting up and standing next to him, “Yes.”
“Is that a-personal construct too?”
“Yes,” she laughed, “Apparently, you think AC/DC had the right idea.”
He turned around again and faced her, “Can I ask you a question?”
“What kind of question?”
“About Sam.”
“What about him?”
“What’s going to happen to him now that I’m-you know-”
“Dead?” she asked, giving him a look.
“Yeah. Now that I’m dead.”
“I don’t know.”
“Aren’t you guys supposed to be all-seeing and all-knowing?” he asked.
“Well, in a sense we are, but if we knew what was going to happen before it even happened, it wouldn’t necessarily be free will then would it? He-God, I mean-could only choose to create those who would make the right choices, and then humans wouldn’t have the one quality that makes them human.”
“The ability to screw things up?”
“More or less,” she nodded, “Our all-seeing and all-knowing is more rooted in the ability to know everything in your past-even the things you keep a secret.”
“So Sammy-he could go either way, good or bad, and you don’t know?”
“Right,” she nodded, “It depends on the choices he makes.”
“What if he doesn’t have a choice? What if the Demon, he just takes over Sam-possesses him or something?”
“That’s taken into account,” she replied, walking back towards her chair, “But-if he does make the wrong choices-on his own-he has to be aware of the consequences.”
“Can I ask you something else?” he said, looking down at his hands, and playing with his ring.
“You can ask me anything you want.”
“Did I make a difference?” he asked, “Did I stop him from going dark side sooner or something?”
She tilted her head to the side slightly, frowning as she picked up her glasses again, “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I promised that I would save him, and I tried my damnedest to do it too.” He looked up at her, and paused for a minute before continuing, “I want to know if I just shouldn’t have bothered.”
“The need to protect your family is in your nature, Dean,” she replied. She paused slightly, chewing on the ends of her glasses, “You would have tried to protect Sam whether you knew it would make a difference or not.”
“I would have?”
She quirked an eyebrow, “You don’t think you would?”
“Yeah, well-that’s human nature, isn’t it?” he sighed walking back over to the couch, “If you know it’s not going to make a difference, you don’t even bother to try.”
“You would,” she replied, “You don’t give up on your family.”
“But I let them down well enough,” he replied.
“You never let Sam down.”
“I’m dead, aren’t I?” he said, standing up and starting to pace like he was stuck in a cage, “And it’s not because I was trying to save him, or protect him, but because some evil sonuvabitch with my face killed and tortured those people.”
“He doesn’t see it that way.”
“Don’t tell me shit like that to try and make me feel better.”
“I’m not,” she sighed, and he turned on her giving her a look. She swallowed briefly, but continued, “But believe what you will. It’s your choice.”
He walked back to the couch to sit down, and started staring at the water glass again, thinking. “I didn’t do what they killed me for.”
“We know,” she nodded, “Those murders weren’t factored in here.”
“I shouldn’t have died for that.”
“Father, forgive them,” she quoted, “For they do not know what they do.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Of course not. It would take the heart of a saint to give that kind of forgiveness so easily, and a ‘saint’ is not a word I would use to describe you.”
“Sorry I don’t fit the mold.”
“I wasn’t asking you to. Most people don’t.”
“So, what’s the verdict?” he asked, leaning forward so that he was mimicking her earlier position, “Heaven or hell?”
She bit her lips slightly, “Well-where do you think you should go?”
“Excuse me?”
The walls of the shrink’s office evaporated around them, and they were suddenly standing on a two-lane highway, kind of like the one he had seen earlier, below her window. In one direction were the clouds and pearly gates that he would usually associate with heaven, and in the opposite direction was the dark tunnel he had seen earlier.
“What are you saying?” he asked, “I get to choose?”
“Not exactly. I’m just asking you which you feel you deserve.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Look at your life, Dean. Look at what you’ve done and accomplished. Do you feel that you, after completing a penance for your sins, deserve admittance to heaven? Or do you think that for all you done, you deserve to be sent to hell?”
There was a slight rumble, and Dean turned to see a car almost identical to his own Impala, idling next to him. He smiled slightly, before she walked over to him and placed a set of keys in his hand.
“You’re kidding me, right?” he asked, looking at her in confusion, “I really get to choose whether I go to heaven or hell?”
“So long as the decision is based on what you feel you deserve, and not what you want, yes,” she sighed, crossing her arms in front of her chest, “The keys are in your hand, aren’t they?”
“Yeah,” he said with a smile, “I guess they are.”