Fic: Burn So Bright (Sam/Dean, NC-17) Chapter 4A of ?
Back to Chapter 3
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“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
The room was shaking apart.
That was how they woke up, hearts pounding with sudden adrenaline, the couch they laid on wrapped up together was moving closer to the fireplace in big jumps as the floor heaved beneath them.
Sam and Dean jumped off the couch, untangling themselves as they went. Sam stumbled towards the stairs, wanting to get to Jack as soon as possible, to stop him before the house shook apart.
“Sammy, be careful!” Dean yelled as he tried to catch up to Sam’s quick run up the stairs. But Sam couldn’t stop, he could feel the pressure of Jack’s power increasing the closer he got to the bedroom.
“Jack, hey, Jack, you gotta wake up,” Sam said from the hallway, hoping that Jack could hear him through the noise of the house coming apart around them. That orange-red of the rip into the other world was bleeding in again, coloring the edges of Sam’s vision. “Jack, please you have to stop.”
Sam pushed through the invisible shield of energy pulsing off of the bed where Jack laid asleep, his eyes still shut tight, but his whole body was tensed up as if he was fighting. Sam struggled to get close enough to touch Jack, hoping the physical contact would work since his words weren’t. “Jack, it’s just a dream, c’mon wake up,” Sam said, his hand finally able to make contact with Jack’s shoulder, he shook him gently and hoped for the best.
Jack’s eyes opened, blazing a bright yellow and the power level increased explosively, blowing Sam across the room where he crashed into the wall next to the door. Dean was in the doorway and he scooped Sam up, checking that he was okay. Jack’s power battered at both of them in a continuous assault.
“Jack, you stop this right now!” Dean said, using the command voice he’d copied from their dad.
Jack’s eyes blinked in surprise and the power cut off abruptly, making both of the brothers stumble. They grabbed onto each other’s shoulders to steady themselves.
The house settled down, dust still swirling through the morning sunbeams coming in the bedroom windows. Jack looked at them with eyes widened in surprise. “What happened?”
“I think you did a good job falling asleep, but I forgot to tell you about dreams,” Dean said as they both stepped closer towards the bed. “They’re like movies that your brain plays as you’re resting, they don’t always make a lot of sense. Sometimes they can be scary or worse.”
“Do you remember what was happening in your dream just now?” Sam asked.
“I was fighting my father, in my dream, but he was so strong, I was trying to hold him off,” Jack said, still looking scared of the power of his dream.
“Given how much power you were blasting us with, I bet you were winning,” Sam said, taking this as a hopeful sign that they’d gotten across to Jack that Lucifer wasn’t the dad-of-the-year he’d made himself out to be.
“I was fighting him because he was hurting you, Sam. In a place that had bars for walls,” Jack said in a sad voice.
“That’s probably the Cage, it’s a place in Hell, I spent a lot of time stuck in there with him,” Sam said, hoping Jack wouldn’t ask too many questions or be too detailed about what he’d seen in his dream. He knew Dean couldn’t take much of the gory details and he really didn’t want to explain it all to Jack.
“Did that happen to you, Sam? Did my father hurt you?” Jack asked.
“Yes, he did, in many ways, for a lot of time,” Sam said. “He hated me for trapping him in the Cage again, but I had to save the world from him.”
“Would he hurt you again if he came back to this world?” Jack asked, sounding so damn serious it made Sam lose any way to respond.
“Yeah, he would, and everyone else,” Dean said, speaking up when Sam couldn’t.
Jack didn’t say anything, but his eyes filled with tears. Sam and Dean looked at each other in silent conversation. They hadn’t known that the kid could cry much feel deep emotions.
Sam sat on the bed next to Jack’s hip, and touched him on the shoulder again. “Listen, Jack I know you are not your father. And what he does or did, it’s not up to you, not something you have to apologize for, okay?”
“Okay,” Jack said with a nod. He looked grateful and wiped at his eyes, staring at his now wet hand. “What is this water?”
“Those are called tears, when humans get strong emotions, sometimes they leak out of our eyes, it helps our bodies process the emotions,” Sam said.
Jack’s stomach rumbled loudly. He looked down at it in alarm. “What was that?”
“That’s your stomach telling you it’s time to find something to eat,” Dean said. “C’mon, let’s get downstairs and rustle up some grub for breakfast.” Dean headed downstairs and Jack began to ask what he meant, but Sam interrupted him with a fond smile in Dean’s direction.
“That just means he’s going to find us something to eat,” Sam said. “One of those human phrases you’ll just have to learn.” Sam stood up and started to follow after Dean.
“You are such simple creatures, but there are so many details that are fascinating,” Jack said behind him.
Sam was instantly stopped in his tracks by Jack’s chilling statement and slowly turned to look at him. “Well, you have to try to remember you are half-human, Jack. I think it’s pretty normal to be interested in figuring yourself out.”
Jack finally began to get out of bed, finding his shoes and jeans and putting them back on as he spoke. “Father said I would need to ignore that part of myself, that humans were the reason for everything bad in the world.”
“What do you think about that now?” Sam asked, dreading Jack’s answer.
“I haven’t seen enough humans or the world to know yet,” Jack said, standing up and meeting Sam’s eyes with his yellow ones.
“That’s good, keep your mind open and decide for yourself,” Sam said, temporarily relieved by Jack’s answer, even though he knew that it could go so wrong so fast if Jack ran into the wrong sort of humans.
They sat down at the table with Dean in the small kitchen where Dean had laid the last of their meager food supplies out. Two Slim Jim’s, two stale wrapped pastries stolen from the last motel they had stayed at, and one mostly eaten bag of Funyuns.
“We’re down to the dregs, sorry guys,” Dean said. He brought them glasses of water that although a bit cloudy tasted like clean fresh lake water. Dean began dividing the food up equally, setting parts of each item in front of Sam and Jack.
“This is really good water,” Sam said, after he polished off his glass. “Better than the Bunker’s, that’s for sure.”
“This far out, I think it’s a well on the property, maybe lake-fed,” Dean said, sipping from his own glass.
Jack had eaten the food placed in front of him and was eyeing the remainders left on the table. “You can have mine, Jack,” Sam said, pushing his portion towards him, as usual all the talk of Lucifer and the Cage had taken away his appetite.
“Sammy, c’mon, you have to eat something,” Dean said.
“I did, last night,” Sam said. He tried to smile at Dean, but Dean was having none of it, luckily he didn’t push the matter any further.
“What is the Bunker?” Jack asked.
“It’s the place where we live, it’s far from here, we’ll show it to you soon,” Sam said.
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Jesse appeared at the house by the lake a little later that morning, knocking on the front door, flakes of white paint scattering in the cool breeze.
“Jesse, it’s so good to see you. It’s been a while,” Sam said, letting the young man enter the house. He had really grown up a lot, but was still recognizable as the kid they’d met all those years ago.
“Yeah, it’s uh…been, what-five years or something?” Jesse asked, shaking Sam’s hand a little tentatively.
“That angel, he’s not here, right?” Jesse asked before stepping all the way into the house. Sam could see the fear in his eyes.
“No, he’s-uh, he’s dead,” Sam said, glad Dean wasn’t there, he didn’t want to see how those words would affect him, not on top of everything else going on this morning.
Dean appeared at Sam’s side and reached a hand out across to shake Jesse’s. “Hey, Jesse, glad you’re here. You were just a little guy when we last saw you.”
“So…uh, you probably figured out we’ve got someone here you should meet,” Sam said, stepping back and letting Jesse get all the way into the house so he could shut the door behind him. The morning light was so bright on his tired eyes. They hadn’t had much sleep or rest or anything for a while now.
Dean walked Jesse towards the kitchen. “Just a little fyi, he’s the son of Lucifer, was literally born yesterday, and is the most powerful nephilim maybe ever.”
“That’s what that was, I could feel it…uh, him coming through. I got a message I guess you'd call it, to come here. I’ve tried to stay far away from this kind of stuff, but it wasn’t something I could ignore this time. Guess he’s more powerful than me?” Jesse asked.
“No idea,” Sam said from behind them. “But we thought you two might have something in common. Since being born last night he’s physically matured I’d say twenty years at least. So he’s on a whole different time table than you.”
Jack was sitting at the kitchen table, finishing the remains of the breakfast Dean had made out of the minimal food supplies they’d had in the car. The wrappers from the Slim Jim's were now braided neatly and melted into a shape that resembled one of the enochian symbols for sword.
“Jack, this is Jesse Turner, the guy we told you about and that I guess you contacted somehow,” Sam said.
Jack stood up and examined Jesse from head to toe and back again. “You are not what I expected.”
“Nice to meet you too,” Jesse said with a shy smile, reaching forward to shake hands.
When Jack took Jesse’s outstretched hand in his, an instant burst of percussive force blew the brothers backward out of the kitchen. The entire house began to shake violently, the floor heaving, the windows flexed and blew out with an enormous crash. The walls began to buckle around them as Sam and Dean stumbled out the front door. The brothers barely escaped before the roof fell in, the second story crushing down onto the one below it. They hid behind the protection of the Impala and watched the house blow apart completely. The remnants of it were now in tiny pieces whirling around in a confusing rush of noise and shimmering power. It was hard to make out what was happening at the center of it all.
“Guess there was something about the energies of the two of them being combined?” Sam said, panting with the adrenaline rush of near death.
“Some people just aren’t good together I guess,” Dean joked.
Sam elbowed him in the ribs. They stopped talking when they heard the whirlwind cease, all the pieces of the house abruptly hitting the ground at the same time with an enormous whoosh that pressed at their eardrums.
The dust cleared and the brothers could see that Jesse and Jack’s hands looked like they were melded together into one thing. They didn’t appear to be in any pain, but it was clear they were both confused, even scared about what was happening. It was so bright and the power coming off of their union was insane, rippling through the air. Sam got up from his spot next to Dean and ran towards them. He struggled and pushed through the physical barrier of their combined power to get nearer to them, to try to help them stop.
“It’s going to be okay, you guys try and calm down, maybe it will stop!” Sam yelled.
“Take a deep breath or something!” Dean yelled as he tugged Sam away, bringing them both down into a heap on the ground away from the swirl of energy that had begun again.
The brothers watched as both Jack and Jesse inhaled and the power waves died down a bit.
The two men held their breath and locked eyes, each searching the other’s face for explanations that neither of them had.
Jesse shrugged and smiled, releasing the breath he’d been holding, and copying him, Jack did too. The power waves died down further and then stopped completely. The bright light slowly faded and their hands finally separated. Both stretched and flexed their fingers looking at them in wonder that they weren’t injured.
“You guys okay?” Sam asked in the suddenly quiet morning.
“I guess so,” Jesse said, looking intently at Jack.
“Yes, we are,” Jack said, staring right back at Jesse.
“So..no more handshakes until we get this figured out, huh?” Dean asked.
“Either of you know what the hell that was?” Sam asked.
“It felt like magnets, you know when you get them switched around the wrong way, and they’re attracted but they repel at the same time?” Jesse said.
“It is due to our origin, the forces that created us are in total opposition, so too our physical manifestations must also be. The balance can only be maintained this way,” Jack said.
“What balance?” Dean and Sam asked in unison.
“The Balance, with a capital B,” Jesse said. “I’m pretty sure he means the balance of everything, I guess of the whole world. That’s usually how I think of it.”
“Think much bigger, my brother,” Jack said with a smile.
Jesse tilted his head and seemed to consider what Jack had just called him. “Bigger, like, the whole universe bigger?” Jesse asked.
Jack nodded and continued smiling. He turned to face Sam and Dean. “You have met my grandfather, and my great-aunt, correct?”
“Chuck and Amara, yeah, why?” Dean asked.
“They’re another example of this, they invented the Balance, back in the beginning, when time began,” Jack said.
“So what does that mean for us, now?” Sam asked.
“It means Jesse and I have some work to do,” Jack said. “If you’ll excuse us for a moment. We shall return.” He turned towards Jesse and took his hand, the two of them blinked out of existence, leaving the brothers standing in a pile of house rubble.
To Chapter 4B
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