Fic: Let there be light (11.02 episode coda)
So episode 11.02 made me think more thinky thoughts and I am very keen to see episode three because it feels very much like last season, that the opening gambit is sort of a three ep arc.
[Spoiler (click to open)]Firstly, kudos to indiachick for correctly predicting the fire solution! I may have bemused my son by shouting Ha! Indiachick picked that! at my TV screen. :\
I really enjoyed smart!Sam and I'm interested in the Crowley/demons story line, and what's going on in the cage...especially given that Sam seemed to be having cage flashbacks. I have to say though, that the angel storyline didn't interest me at all this week. And that's a shame because with the Darkness coming back into the world, there's potential for the angels to become interesting again, provided they can integrate them back into the main storyline properly. Holding out hope for that to start happening next episode.
This week's coda is shamelessly self-indulgent, in that I wanted the brotherly talk that we didn't get, and it's also a wee bit speculative, in that I throw out some wacky theories because I'm intrigued and finding it fun to speculate!
--
Title: Let there be light
Author: zara_zee
Beta: Not beta’d
Genre(s): Episode coda
Rating: PG-13, Gen
Spoilers: Episode 11.02
Word Count: ~1,550
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing in the sand box.
Summary: “In the interests of full disclosure,” Sam says, “For a while back there, I was infected.”
--
There were less than 2,000 people living in Superior before the Darkness.
Half of them are bloated corpses lying bloody in the streets now. The rest are standing clench-fisted on Superior High School’s football field, their swollen veins black and throbbing, their teeth bared.
Sam and his team of The Cured (almost, but not quite a rock band, Sam thinks with a half-smile) are standing at the field’s far end, waiting.
Eye of the Tiger is blasting from the drama department’s portable stereo, amplified by the metal-bucket speakers that Sam has jerry-rigged.
Sam taps his foot and hums along:
Risin' up, back on the street; Did my time, took my chances; Went the distance; Now I'm back on my feet; Just a man and his will to survive…
“You think that’s everyone?” he wonders out loud.
It’s Melissa who answers. The football field was her idea. She teaches here.
“Could be,” she says. “Don’t know for sure who all are dead.”
“Okay,” Sam says. He strikes a match and drops it on the ground. “Go Wildcats.”
The large thin circle of holy oil catches fire and the infected stare and frown and then collapse, shaking and shuddering and clutching at their necks.
Sam sincerely hopes that they’ve got everyone; the circle took every last drop of the holy oil.
Sam is helping to carry bodies to a make-shift morgue when he hears the tell-tale rumble of the Impala. He sighs and stands up straight.
Melissa tilts her head and looks at him with raised eyebrows and pursed lips.
“My partner,” he says.
She nods.
Nobody asked to see his ID when he told them he was Agent Sam Clapton from the CDC. Nobody asked questions when he stuttered an explanation for the events of the last couple of days that involved a twister hitting Superior at the same time that a truckload of recently delivered loaves of bread made with contaminated flour gave everyone ergot poisoning.
He’s pretty sure everybody knew he was lying. But everybody just nodded and set to cleaning up and avoided each other’s eyes.
“I have to get back to Headquarters,” Sam says to Melissa when the Impala glides to a stop. He opens the passenger-side door and slides inside before Dean has time to get out of the car.
“Let’s go,” he tells his brother.
Dean frowns. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Sam huffs out a laugh. “Just, uh, don’t really wanna stick around for the post-match, post-mortem. You know?”
Dean doesn’t say anything, just runs sharp, assessing eyes over Sam and then re-starts the engine and takes off.
There’s an ACDC album playing-Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, if Sam’s not mistaken and given how well he knows Dean’s cassette collection, he’s not-and they let it run through twice without speaking. Sam’s exhausted and his thoughts are a jumbled mess of darkness and empty voids and impure blood.
Dean punches the tape out when it starts its third re-run and puts on Houses of the Holy. It’s not until he turns onto the I-70 that he finally turns to Sam and says, “I get you not wanting to go through a play-by-play with the townsfolk, but are you at least gonna tell me how the game went?”
Sam stares down at the frayed hems of his jeans, recalls telling Dean earlier that the two of them had to change; that they had to make sure they didn’t just keep repeating the same old mistakes.
The thing is though, Dean has a history of taking decisions out of Sam’s hands and Sam needed to keep a tight rein on the life-and-death decisions this time around. He’s a man of action, just like his brother, it’s just that his actions tend to be better thought out; more carefully researched. Which doesn’t actually stop him from fucking things up as badly as Dean. Case-in-point, the release of the Darkness. Still, Sam honestly doesn’t want them repeating the same old mistakes, so he turns to face his brother.
“In the interests of full disclosure,” he says, “For a while back there, I was infected.”
The muscles in Dean’s jaw clench and release. Sam braces himself for an explosion of anger.
“You’re cured now, though, right?” Dean says.
“Yeah. Me and everybody still alive in that town. I purified our blood with holy fire.”
“Ouch,” Dean turns to stare at him. “How the hell did you do that without ending up deep fried and crispy?”
Sam explains the process and when Dean asks what made him come up with the idea, he finds himself explaining about Billie-the-reaper and what she told him.
Dean rubs a hand across his chin. “Do you think it’s a little weird that Death can die, but Death dying doesn’t stop death dead in its tracks?” he frowns. “That sentence made sense in my head.”
Sam shrugs. “Maybe Death’s like the Dalai Lama,” he says, “and when he dies, he gets re-incarnated?”
Dean’s eyes light up. “Or he regenerates. Like, the Death I killed was David Tennant and now we get Matt Smith,” his eyes widen. “Maybe Billie is actually the New Death? There’s no reason he couldn’t regenerate into a woman, right?”
Sam snorts. And Dean says he’s a geek. “If she is, then you and I are definitely gonna be spending the afterlife in ‘the Empty’.”
“What the hell is that?” Dean says.
“What does it sound like?” Sam snarks. “Does it sound like a good thing?”
Dean raises an eyebrow and then looks away. “Touché.”
“Actually,” Sam leans back in his seat, “I wouldn’t mind spending a few decades in the Empty. I could do with a rest.”
“You should try to get some sleep,” Dean ventures. “It’s been a long-ass few days.”
Sam finds that he can’t close his eyes.
He turns and sees Dean looking at him. “I could find us a motel,” Dean says. “Get you your own room.”
That’s not the problem. Sam trusts Dean with his life. Even with the Mark of Cain on his arm and Death urging him on, Dean couldn’t take his brother’s life. Sam doubts he’s going to stab him now. It’s just that he can’t stop thinking. Was that Hell flashback a sign from God or courtesy of the Darkness in his veins? Is Death dead? Is Billie Death? Where’s Rowena? What’s going on with Cas? Why is the Darkness a woman? Where is the Empty?
“Sam? You want me to find a motel?”
“Nah, I’m good,” Sam stretches. “I’m deliriously tired, but my brain won’t shut down.”
And besides, it actually feels good to be sitting beside Dean in the car, music playing, exhausted, but high on adrenaline from their latest hunt. It’s the most normal Sam has felt in a while. He dozes for an indeterminate amount of time, neither asleep nor completely awake, his brain stumbling from thought to thought, almost dreaming.
Sam’s brain can get pretty philosophical when he’s deliriously tired and he finds himself thinking about Genesis; about Creation; about Hebrew translations. The Earth was formless and void is significantly different to the Earth became formless and void. Before God had a chance to say ‘Let there be light’ did some kind of destructive act turn the Earth into an uninhabitable ruin, which God then had to fix? And given that the verse continues with darkness was upon the face of the deep, was that act done by the Darkness?
According to Death, God imprisoned the Darkness in the Void. Is that the same as the Empty?
Sam sits up straight, his mind whirling.
“What?” Dean says, eyes wide and startled.
“Time and space,” Sam says. “Is time linear or circular? It could be either; there are philosophical arguments for both and Dean…what if it’s circular?”
Dean frowns. “Is this about Dr Who?”
Sam huffs. “No, Dean, it’s about us. The reapers or the New Death or whoever, want to send us to the Empty when we die and I just had this really fucked up thought. What if we end up like angry spirits? God knows we’ve both got enough darkness inside us already, but what if the Empty warps our souls? And what if the Empty where we go and the Void where the Darkness just came from are the same place? And if time is circular, what if…what if we are the Darkness?”
Dean inclines his head. “But the Darkness is a chick. At least she was, she’s a baby girl now,” he pulls up outside the bunker. “Not gonna put her in the garage,” he says, patting the Impala’s steering wheel, “she needs a good wash after all that mud.”
“Wait a minute,” says Sam. “The Darkness is a baby?”
Dean launches into an explanation about Crowley and altar boys and a tiny baby mark of Cain as they collect their bags and leave the car.
The bunker's a mess and Dean makes some lame-ass quip about needing a maid, because he's still mulling over what Sam said in the car and, while he'd never believe it of Sammy, it wouldn't surprise him in the slightest to learn that he was destined to become a horribly destructive amoral force.
Deep down, Dean has always suspected that there was nothing inside him but darkness.
--
[Spoiler (click to open)]Firstly, kudos to indiachick for correctly predicting the fire solution! I may have bemused my son by shouting Ha! Indiachick picked that! at my TV screen. :\
I really enjoyed smart!Sam and I'm interested in the Crowley/demons story line, and what's going on in the cage...especially given that Sam seemed to be having cage flashbacks. I have to say though, that the angel storyline didn't interest me at all this week. And that's a shame because with the Darkness coming back into the world, there's potential for the angels to become interesting again, provided they can integrate them back into the main storyline properly. Holding out hope for that to start happening next episode.
This week's coda is shamelessly self-indulgent, in that I wanted the brotherly talk that we didn't get, and it's also a wee bit speculative, in that I throw out some wacky theories because I'm intrigued and finding it fun to speculate!
--
Title: Let there be light
Author: zara_zee
Beta: Not beta’d
Genre(s): Episode coda
Rating: PG-13, Gen
Spoilers: Episode 11.02
Word Count: ~1,550
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing in the sand box.
Summary: “In the interests of full disclosure,” Sam says, “For a while back there, I was infected.”
--
There were less than 2,000 people living in Superior before the Darkness.
Half of them are bloated corpses lying bloody in the streets now. The rest are standing clench-fisted on Superior High School’s football field, their swollen veins black and throbbing, their teeth bared.
Sam and his team of The Cured (almost, but not quite a rock band, Sam thinks with a half-smile) are standing at the field’s far end, waiting.
Eye of the Tiger is blasting from the drama department’s portable stereo, amplified by the metal-bucket speakers that Sam has jerry-rigged.
Sam taps his foot and hums along:
Risin' up, back on the street; Did my time, took my chances; Went the distance; Now I'm back on my feet; Just a man and his will to survive…
“You think that’s everyone?” he wonders out loud.
It’s Melissa who answers. The football field was her idea. She teaches here.
“Could be,” she says. “Don’t know for sure who all are dead.”
“Okay,” Sam says. He strikes a match and drops it on the ground. “Go Wildcats.”
The large thin circle of holy oil catches fire and the infected stare and frown and then collapse, shaking and shuddering and clutching at their necks.
Sam sincerely hopes that they’ve got everyone; the circle took every last drop of the holy oil.
Sam is helping to carry bodies to a make-shift morgue when he hears the tell-tale rumble of the Impala. He sighs and stands up straight.
Melissa tilts her head and looks at him with raised eyebrows and pursed lips.
“My partner,” he says.
She nods.
Nobody asked to see his ID when he told them he was Agent Sam Clapton from the CDC. Nobody asked questions when he stuttered an explanation for the events of the last couple of days that involved a twister hitting Superior at the same time that a truckload of recently delivered loaves of bread made with contaminated flour gave everyone ergot poisoning.
He’s pretty sure everybody knew he was lying. But everybody just nodded and set to cleaning up and avoided each other’s eyes.
“I have to get back to Headquarters,” Sam says to Melissa when the Impala glides to a stop. He opens the passenger-side door and slides inside before Dean has time to get out of the car.
“Let’s go,” he tells his brother.
Dean frowns. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Sam huffs out a laugh. “Just, uh, don’t really wanna stick around for the post-match, post-mortem. You know?”
Dean doesn’t say anything, just runs sharp, assessing eyes over Sam and then re-starts the engine and takes off.
There’s an ACDC album playing-Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, if Sam’s not mistaken and given how well he knows Dean’s cassette collection, he’s not-and they let it run through twice without speaking. Sam’s exhausted and his thoughts are a jumbled mess of darkness and empty voids and impure blood.
Dean punches the tape out when it starts its third re-run and puts on Houses of the Holy. It’s not until he turns onto the I-70 that he finally turns to Sam and says, “I get you not wanting to go through a play-by-play with the townsfolk, but are you at least gonna tell me how the game went?”
Sam stares down at the frayed hems of his jeans, recalls telling Dean earlier that the two of them had to change; that they had to make sure they didn’t just keep repeating the same old mistakes.
The thing is though, Dean has a history of taking decisions out of Sam’s hands and Sam needed to keep a tight rein on the life-and-death decisions this time around. He’s a man of action, just like his brother, it’s just that his actions tend to be better thought out; more carefully researched. Which doesn’t actually stop him from fucking things up as badly as Dean. Case-in-point, the release of the Darkness. Still, Sam honestly doesn’t want them repeating the same old mistakes, so he turns to face his brother.
“In the interests of full disclosure,” he says, “For a while back there, I was infected.”
The muscles in Dean’s jaw clench and release. Sam braces himself for an explosion of anger.
“You’re cured now, though, right?” Dean says.
“Yeah. Me and everybody still alive in that town. I purified our blood with holy fire.”
“Ouch,” Dean turns to stare at him. “How the hell did you do that without ending up deep fried and crispy?”
Sam explains the process and when Dean asks what made him come up with the idea, he finds himself explaining about Billie-the-reaper and what she told him.
Dean rubs a hand across his chin. “Do you think it’s a little weird that Death can die, but Death dying doesn’t stop death dead in its tracks?” he frowns. “That sentence made sense in my head.”
Sam shrugs. “Maybe Death’s like the Dalai Lama,” he says, “and when he dies, he gets re-incarnated?”
Dean’s eyes light up. “Or he regenerates. Like, the Death I killed was David Tennant and now we get Matt Smith,” his eyes widen. “Maybe Billie is actually the New Death? There’s no reason he couldn’t regenerate into a woman, right?”
Sam snorts. And Dean says he’s a geek. “If she is, then you and I are definitely gonna be spending the afterlife in ‘the Empty’.”
“What the hell is that?” Dean says.
“What does it sound like?” Sam snarks. “Does it sound like a good thing?”
Dean raises an eyebrow and then looks away. “Touché.”
“Actually,” Sam leans back in his seat, “I wouldn’t mind spending a few decades in the Empty. I could do with a rest.”
“You should try to get some sleep,” Dean ventures. “It’s been a long-ass few days.”
Sam finds that he can’t close his eyes.
He turns and sees Dean looking at him. “I could find us a motel,” Dean says. “Get you your own room.”
That’s not the problem. Sam trusts Dean with his life. Even with the Mark of Cain on his arm and Death urging him on, Dean couldn’t take his brother’s life. Sam doubts he’s going to stab him now. It’s just that he can’t stop thinking. Was that Hell flashback a sign from God or courtesy of the Darkness in his veins? Is Death dead? Is Billie Death? Where’s Rowena? What’s going on with Cas? Why is the Darkness a woman? Where is the Empty?
“Sam? You want me to find a motel?”
“Nah, I’m good,” Sam stretches. “I’m deliriously tired, but my brain won’t shut down.”
And besides, it actually feels good to be sitting beside Dean in the car, music playing, exhausted, but high on adrenaline from their latest hunt. It’s the most normal Sam has felt in a while. He dozes for an indeterminate amount of time, neither asleep nor completely awake, his brain stumbling from thought to thought, almost dreaming.
Sam’s brain can get pretty philosophical when he’s deliriously tired and he finds himself thinking about Genesis; about Creation; about Hebrew translations. The Earth was formless and void is significantly different to the Earth became formless and void. Before God had a chance to say ‘Let there be light’ did some kind of destructive act turn the Earth into an uninhabitable ruin, which God then had to fix? And given that the verse continues with darkness was upon the face of the deep, was that act done by the Darkness?
According to Death, God imprisoned the Darkness in the Void. Is that the same as the Empty?
Sam sits up straight, his mind whirling.
“What?” Dean says, eyes wide and startled.
“Time and space,” Sam says. “Is time linear or circular? It could be either; there are philosophical arguments for both and Dean…what if it’s circular?”
Dean frowns. “Is this about Dr Who?”
Sam huffs. “No, Dean, it’s about us. The reapers or the New Death or whoever, want to send us to the Empty when we die and I just had this really fucked up thought. What if we end up like angry spirits? God knows we’ve both got enough darkness inside us already, but what if the Empty warps our souls? And what if the Empty where we go and the Void where the Darkness just came from are the same place? And if time is circular, what if…what if we are the Darkness?”
Dean inclines his head. “But the Darkness is a chick. At least she was, she’s a baby girl now,” he pulls up outside the bunker. “Not gonna put her in the garage,” he says, patting the Impala’s steering wheel, “she needs a good wash after all that mud.”
“Wait a minute,” says Sam. “The Darkness is a baby?”
Dean launches into an explanation about Crowley and altar boys and a tiny baby mark of Cain as they collect their bags and leave the car.
The bunker's a mess and Dean makes some lame-ass quip about needing a maid, because he's still mulling over what Sam said in the car and, while he'd never believe it of Sammy, it wouldn't surprise him in the slightest to learn that he was destined to become a horribly destructive amoral force.
Deep down, Dean has always suspected that there was nothing inside him but darkness.
--