You are somebody's fault - SN/Terminator Salvation - PG
Title: You are somebody's fault
Fandom: “Supernatural”/Terminator: Salvation
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Anne Sexton.
Warnings: spoilers for season four and movie
Pairings: none stated
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 585
Point of view: third
Turns out, the demonic powers of Hell work on machines.
Who knew.
--
They stay ahead of the machines because Sam utterly destroys any that get close.
After Azazel and Ruby, Lilith and Lucifer, chunks of metal and electricity are nothing.
--
In the early days, just after the first attacks, Dean kept expecting to wake up.
He never did.
--
They saved the world from Satan himself, from the Prince of Darkness and his army, but they were unable to stop humanity from damning themselves with their own arrogance.
Until the first bomb fell, Dean and Sam didn't even know the danger existed.
--
Dean finds the kid five years after. He's desperate and starving, staggering through LA carrying a little girl. The minute he sees Dean, he freezes, turning in place to shield the girl as best he can.
"Hey," Dean says, holding his hands out, calling to Sam. "Hey, kid. It's okay."
--
His name is Kyle Reese; her name is Star. They're wild and wary, shying away from Dean and Sam's touch. Star never talks, but Kyle answers direct questions and follows orders, so long as he stays within sight of Star.
They’re the first humans Dean and Sam have come across in months, and they’re just kids.
--
Kyle and Star stay with them for a few months, until they’re all separated in an attack. Dean and Sam meet up afterwards because they can always find each other now, but the kids are somewhere on the other side of the city.
“They’ll be fine, Dean,” Sam assures him, one hand wrapped around his forearm, holding him in place. “They’re survivors.”
--
They listen to John Connor’s broadcasts just to know there are others out there. “We could join up with him, and the Resistance,” Dean suggests one day, picking through the rubble of a house, salvaging what he can. “I bet they could use our help.”
Sam stares at the horizon, eyes distant. Dean can’t imagine what he sees, what he’s thinking. “No,” Sam says. “We won’t.”
--
They wander, same as they always have. Dean misses the purpose he felt, those last few years before Hell. He even misses the mission he had in that year just after. He has no point, in this new world of machines. Sam doesn’t need him. Sam hasn’t needed him in a long time.
He watches Sam obliterate one of the flying kind, over a hundred meters away with his mind. Why is he even here? What use can he possibly be to Hell’s chosen king, Lucifer’s vessel? Sam destroyed Lucifer-Dean is just a frail, fragile human. He’s nothing.
--
“Dean,” Sam says one day. “Dean, if you could go back in time and change something, what would it be?” He’s staring at the horizon again, gaze towards the west. They’re in the husk of a city, all its bones laid bare. Buzzards circle in the sky; Dean can hear small animals scurrying in the ruins. The survivors.
He thinks, watching Sam. What would he fix, given the chance? He’s already tried that and failed spectacularly. “Nothing,” he answers. He hasn’t seen or heard a demon since the bombs, after all. No vampires or werewolves or spirits. Nothing supernatural. Just the machines.
--
Days and weeks and months and years, different variations of the same machines, sunrises and sunsets, walking through a dying land. Dean’s tired, but Sam just keeps going. He recharges in the moonlight, wakes bright and eager every day, grins at Dean and says, “Another chance.”
Dean can only follow him.