There And Back

Spoiler for 5x10

2009-11-20T02:04:47Z

Earlier this afternoon, there was a post about the possibility of a kiss between John and Azazel when he made his deal. I responded back saying that a male/male kiss on Supernatural seemed unlikely, only to have one in the first three minutes of tonight's episode. Thanks, Supernatural!

ETA: Good lord, I love Jo. She's awesome. Crowley is SO from Good Omens, but he's pretty awesome as well. Just gonna toss that out there.

Because it's been a bit - MVs

2009-11-08T17:54:41Z

So it's been a bit, partially on account of me having generally been disappointed in recent SPN episodes and having not written very much as a result. (Drawn a good deal, oddly enough, but having no working scanner makes it difficult to share those.) I skipped 5x07 all together, but I watched last week's episode and was generally amused by it. Dean not so secretly watching Dr. Sexy, MD makes me grin, even though I want to write Dr. McSexy, MD, just for the sake of my Grey's continuum.

As a semi-meme though, I've a challenge for you! I've chosen my favorite fanvideos (at least for this moment in time - my favorite does tend to change from minute to minute) for three fandoms, which you can see below. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to post a comment with a favorite fanvideo of your own. Any fandom accepted, none shall be rejected. :D

Okay, mostly I was scanning MVs and generally being amused and wanting to be amused by other MVs that I might not have come across before.

In no particular order:

Supernatural: Always Keep An Edge On Your Knife

The thing about this video is that it's ridiculously catchy, even if it's not my normal preference in music, and the vidder actually managed to capture at least one scene from every episode between 1x01 and 4x14. Plus it just works out well, in a highly fun and amusing sort of way. It seems to get ABSOLUTELY NO LOVE, hence my need to promote it here.

NCIS: Hey Ya

This vid pretty accurately portrays why I like NCIS. It's quirky, fantastically timed, and does a great job of portraying all of the NCIS main characters, particularly Tony, Ziva, Gibbs, Abby, and McGee. Even if you don't watch NCIS, I recommend watching it simply for the win of some of the oneliners included.

Avatar: Fighting Dreamers

I don't watch a lot of anime these days, and while Avatar is very much not anime, it's very obviously inspired by anime and is, IMHO, the best kids show playing right now. The series itself is over, but Aang, Katara, Zuko, Toph, and Sokka are all still interesting and viable characters. Avatar also had the benefit of being the first show - cartoon, children's, or otherwise - in ages that I'd come across where the girls were just as badass and well developed as the boys. This vid makes me smile because it showcases that high level of badassery, from each of the involved characters while still maintaining the sense of glee that made Avatar so much fun to watch.

Extra special bonus mentions!

Buffy vs. Twilight:

Because it made me laugh. So very, very much.

Supernatural: Like A Boss

Same! Mix the Like A Boss video with Dean Smith and you have this vid. If you know Like A Boss, you know that it's full of wrong and this vid set to it matches every aspect of that while perfectly blending things with the Supernatural world.

[Fic] Best Served Cold, Sam, Dean, gen

2009-10-18T15:55:15Z

Title: Best Served Cold
Author: ginzai
Genre: Gen, fluff
Characters: Sam, Dean
Spoilers: None past early S1
Word Count: ~2450
Summary: Sam gets sweet, sweet revenge.

It's Dean jeering at Sam's bag of baby carrots that does it.

"Seriously, are you a rabbit now?"

His voice is full of what he probably imagines is well meant teasing, but it grates on Sam's nerves regardless. There had been plenty of times when money had been tight when they were kids and dinner went from whatever Dean could hastily make out of actually recognizable ingredients to split bowls of ramen or bags of stolen processed goods, but Stanford taught Sam to love salads and green, leafy things, and even weird fruits like kumquats and gooseberries.

Carrots are almost disappointingly normal in comparison but they're easy to find, even in the typically dubious gas stations the Winchesters are finding most of their meals these days. Sam's life has become a measure of taking what he can get, in this no more than in other areas. He's fine with carrots.

Or he was, right up until Dean started in on them. After that, it was on.

Sam doesn't even the score right away. That would be too easy. Besides, Dean had seen the flash of irritation on Sam's face and he'd be suspicious if Sam tried anything too early, too careful to accept anything that could be used as a means of revenge. True, Dean would probably be expecting coffee laced with a half cup of salt or something along those lines, but Sam doesn't want to start another prank war. He's got a subtler end game than that.

He wants the perfect comeuppance for Dean and his apparent desire to give himself a heart attack by thirty-five. Dean's sneered at Sam for choosing "yuppie cardboard" options such as turkey sandwiches over bacon cheeseburgers or selecting side salads instead of greasy fries more times than Sam can count and Sam? Well, Sam's a big proponent of letting the punishment suit the crime.

He plots it out thoroughly. The first step is in reducing his quarry's defenses. For other people, that would be easier said than done but Sam has literally studied his older brother for years and knows exactly where to push and where to pull to get the results he wants.

He sets his plan in motion carefully. Sam casually gets Dean his cup of caffeine the morning after the carrot incident and when, sure enough, Dean refuses to drink it, Sam shrugs and imbibes it himself. Dean watches him warily but relaxes when Sam finishes the whole cup without a single negative consequence. After that, Dean seems to think the matter forgotten and done with, the crisis averted.

It's not, not even in the slightest. Dean's not going to know what hit him.

Infiltration, complete.

Step two is in gathering what he needs. The issue isn't with getting the supplies. They're available at any of the larger grocery stores, not that the Winchesters have had much cause to shop at those as of late. The trick is with getting the car to himself and then having enough peace to actually concoct his experiment.

That last might actually be the most difficult part. Sam found a list of his necessary supplies online, but most of them require tools that Sam simply doesn't have and isn't likely to get. That in turn will mean the end resulting quality might be lowered and Sam can't risk that. It has to be perfect, otherwise the disguise will fail and Dean will guess what Sam's striving for and the results of that are not likely to be pretty. Sam's got one shot at this; he has to make sure it's pulled off without a hitch.

He thinks about it for a while, debating and rejecting ideas almost as soon as they come to him. He's fairly sure that a drill can't be used for a hand-blender, for instance. Even if it worked and the resulting taste wasn't somehow turned metalic, Sam's pretty certain that the drill would never be the same and then he'd have to deal with Dean bitching about that instead.

It takes the better part of a week for Sam to get his chance. Dean's out doing investigative footwork, basic level interviews that don't need both of them and while Sam could have gone along, he feigns a headache and stays home instead. Dean would have taken the car but the motel they're staying at is only a couple of blocks over from their targets and Sam doesn't hesitate to play the whiny sick younger brother card to get to keep it, "just in case I get hungry later."

Dean's not happy about it, but he heads out anyway. Sam gives him a 15 minute head start and then is out of bed, dressed, and out the door himself. He rushes the job and is back within a half hour, flushed and primed for success.

The reality of the situation hits soon after. Sam hasn't ever tried his hand at this before; he's sampled the end result and been suitably impressed, but it had always been something other people had done for him. Sam's only rarely had to cook anything with more complicated instructions than "open, pour, and heat" and it shows in his efforts quite clearly.

It's a messy, messy business. He doesn't have measuring cups, so has to estimate amounts. The lack of a blender is only poorly made up by his newly purchased potato masher and it's far from effective at mixing everything properly. Finally he has to give up on the masher and steal a ziplock gallon sized bag from the Impala's miscellaneous supplies, dumping the whole concoction in and squishing it manually until everything seems appropriately blended.

Finally though, he thinks it's prepared. The secret ingredient is hidden, completely disguised by chocolate and vanilla extract, and when he finger tests the resulting mixture, a warm touch of pride lights itself in his chest. It doesn't taste half bad. The bag gets stuffed into the motel's mini-fridge to chill and Sam does what he can to straighten up and hide the evidence.

By the time the lock jiggles, Sam's back in bed with the TV on to some nature documentary, the volume set for low. Dean tosses a new bottle of Advil onto the blankets as he makes his way past and Sam almost, almost feels guilty for lying about being sick, but really, if this works, it'll be for Dean's own good.

"Thanks," he mutters instead and glances up at Dean low from under his lashes. "I sort of had a craving when you were out."

Dean quirks an eyebrow at him and Sam very carefully resists the urge to flush. He did not mean for that to sound so dirty.

"Pudding!" He blurts out instead and swallows hard. "I made pudding."

"Pudding." Dean looks skeptical. "Any reason you felt like playing Susie Homemaker, Sammy?"

Sam can't resist the scowl and doesn't even try. Being too blase here would give the game away, anyway.

"I felt like it." His voice sounds petulant, but what the hell. He's supposed to be sick, right? Might as well play it up a bit. "I hadn't had any for ages and the store was out of the pre-made stuff."

"Uh huh." Dean says and Sam sees again that flicker of wariness in his eyes. Dean's older brother instincts have to be blaring right now; this is definitely the trickiest part of the whole deal. One wrong word will cause the whole thing to blow up in his face.

"Yeah. It should be ready by now. Check the fridge for me?"

Dean stares at him for a moment longer, searching Sam out, but Sam's no raw beginner. His face is perfectly innocent, the anticipation of being so damn close carefully hidden away under the irritation that he always shows when one of his headaches starts up.

Dean pulls the bag of pudding out from the fridge and, okay, so it's not the most tempting specimen Sam's ever seen but it doesn't look bad. There are maybe a couple of lumps here and there but hopefully Dean would take those for leftover pudding mix and not for the actual truth.

Dean pretends not to be glancing in the trash for evidence of any dire plots as he makes his way back over, but Sam's better at this than that and had carefully stashed the wrappings in the bathroom instead. He'd even gone so far as to purchase a box of instant mix and stashed that in the trash can instead to allay suspicion. Sam's efforts seem to have done the deed; Dean's returning to the bed a moment later with a spoon and a carefully poured measure of pudding in a leftover coffee mug.

Sam accepts it gracefully when its handed over, primly ignoring Dean's not so subtle attempts to suss him out. He eats instead, letting his eyes fall shut as the pudding slips down his throat. It's not as good as what Jessica used to make - she had an awesome hand in the kitchen, it was one of the reasons Sam had so loved her - but it's not half bad. It's rich and chocolatey and he doesn't hide a contented moan when he takes a second spoonful.

Dean's watching him and it's deja-vu with the coffee all over again.

"You can have some too, if you want." Sam offers and digs in yet again. Dean hesitates a moment, but Sam can practically feel him caving. He'd chosen chocolate pudding for a reason; Dean was a sucker for the stuff and if Sam hadn't had the homemade variety in years, he couldn't even imagine how long it had been since Dean had last had the chance.

"You didn't lace this with anything, did you?" Dean asks, but he's obviously tempted. He's heading back to the fridge even as he speaks.

Sam manages to look offended. "It's pudding, Dean, and I'm eating it too. If you don't want any, you don't have to have it. I'll eat it all myself."

Dean shrugs apologetically and Sam forces himself to only watch out of the corner of his eye as Dean gets his own mugful and settles down on the other bed. It's practically impossible to keep the smirk off his face when Dean actually takes the first bite, but Sam's worked too hard at this to slip up now. It's hell to not say a word when Dean goes back for more, leaning backwards on the pillows and lazily fishing for the remote with his other hand.

"Penguins, Sam?" He asks around his next spoonful. "Seriously, dude, you've got issues."

"It's about killer whales if that helps your masculinity any." Sam snipes back and takes another bite himself. "They're just a little sidetracked right now."

"Whatever." Dean says and keeps eating.

The show's all but over when Dean makes his first comment on the pudding itself. "This isn't like what I remember. The instant shit always had that funny aftertaste to it."

Which was true, come to think of it. That's why, when they were kids, Dean had always made the cooked version.

"I guess they changed the recipe. Why, you don't like it?" He shrugs and holds his breath, waiting for Dean's answer.

Dean pauses for a moment and Sam starts to get worried that he's suspicious again, but then he takes another bite. "Eh, it's okay." He says and Sam relaxes minutely. Then, irrationally, he gets irritated again. Just okay? Sam worked for hours on that!

"It's, I dunno." Dean goes on a moment later. "Rich. It's pretty good. Better than the cups you get at the store."

It's not exactly a rave review, but Sam's mollified regardless.

"So you do like it." He's taking a risk in pressing, he knows, but he's still got the "sick little brother" factor playing in his favor and sure enough that seems to enough to loosen Dean's tongue a bit.

"Yeah, Sammy," Dean says indulgently, "I like it a lot."

Sam grins so wide that his face actually hurts. The flicker of pride he'd felt before blossoms into a full blown rosy glow, warming him from the inside out. It only grows larger when Dean snags the bag of pudding from the fridge and divides the remaining amount between the two of them a few minutes later. He makes a comment about Sam making it again sometime and really, that's just the icing on the cake.

Meanwhile, it's warm and comfortable and as close to perfect as any Winchester can ask for. The Discovery Channel mumbles on in the background and Sam and Dean sit on their beds and eat their just desserts.

The facade is ripped away the next morning.

Sam wakes up when something crackly lands on his face. Pushing it aside with one heavy hand, he muzzily peers upward to where his older brother is standing over his bed, a scowl playing across his features.

"Dean?" He croaks, definitely not entirely awake and head still heavy with sleep.

"You want to tell me what that is, Sam?" Dean sounds pissed and blearily Sam tries to focus on whatever that is.

Oh.

It's playing with fire, but a snort escapes him. Dean's expression turns from angry to furious and Sam cracks up laughing, a tear actually running down his face from the force of it.

"The hell, Sam! You told me you hadn't laced it with anything!"

"I didn't!" Sam manages between chuckles, "I just followed the recipe, I didn't add anything-"

"The fuck you didn't! Tofu does not belong in pudding, Sam!"

Sam can't help smirking up at his brother. "It does when it's tofu pudding."

Dean actually gapes at him for a moment. "Please tell me you didn't just say that. Please tell me that the world isn't so cruel and terrible a place that people put tofu in their pudding voluntarily."

Flicking the empty tofu wrapper onto the floor, Sam leans back and crosses his arms behind his head.

"You said you liked it." He grins. "You ate two cups of it. You licked the spoon."

The anger slips from Dean's face all of a sudden and he falls back to sit on the other bed as though his strings have been cut, looking betrayed.

"Tofu." He spits, as if the word itself is some dirty, vile thing. "I ate tofu."

"Could have been tofurkey," Sam offers pleasantly.

"Not helping, Sam. I'm traumatized over here."

"Still want me to make more?" His tone is perfectly innocent, it's true, but really, he isn't at all surprised when two seconds later Dean tackles him off the bed.

Good lord

2009-10-18T08:00:29Z

Holy crap. I just tallied up my word count for writing this year and on this computer alone it's at just over 44,500 words. Which is, uh, much more than I'd anticipated. Only about half of that is actually polished up and in a form where anyone online has seen it, so it might not count but I'm inexplicably pleased regardless. And I've more over on my other machine, even. Not much more, under 5K in total, I'd imagine, but still! 44K! That's practically a Nanowrimo right there.

Not that I could do a Nanowrimo in a single month. I think I'd wind up killing myself.

I recognize that this isn't exactly all that impressive a tally for fandom in general, but I think I managed to write 6-7K tops between 2004-2008, so I'll take what I can get.

Random updates

2009-10-14T16:42:28Z

I need a new sketchbook. Somewhat to my bemusement, I discovered I'd used the last page on my current one yesterday, which was wicked annoying because La Bohème came on the classic movie channel and I really wanted to draw some of the people there. They're all just ridiculously pretty in that 1920's sort of way. Something about how stylized their faces all seemed to be, blurred almost and soft, and entirely too beautiful, just across the board.

I've recently discovered an extreme fondness for old, old movies. Who knew?

So, yeah. Definitely need a new sketchbook and I'm sort of inclined to start breaking out the watercolors again as well. I've no talent at all with oils (nor the patience), but I used to love messing around with watercolors.

Of course, the step after that will be to get a scanner (I've two, but neither seems to be working) and actually post some stuff on my DeviantArt account. How exciting will that be!

In fannish news, finished a story that I'm rather entirely leery about and want to poke at quite a bit before it's seen anywhere or by anyone. On the plus side, Weechesters with possessed!John and ass-kicking Sam! On the minus side, it feels gratuitous and clumsy and I don't think that my Dean voice is on target. Which is especially unfortunate, since it's in his POV. Just doesn't much work, you know?

It doesn't help that I so loathed the most recent episode of Supernatural. Sam and Dean felt out of character and whiny to me, with Sam being clueless and Dean being stupid and obnoxious. Even the reconciliation at the end felt flawed, forced, and false to me because this "new equality" started off on an incredibly unequal footing. Someone posited the idea that Dean is basically pulling a Ruby - submitting to Sam to keep him close and to keep an eye on him, and I'll admit it: I actively prefer that concept to the idea that Dean will just continue to swallow his complaints and actual resentment because "family is supposed to make you miserable".

Sam was right when he said the old dynamic didn't work, but the problem is that the bossy, jackass that Dean had morphed into coupled with the put upon, belabored Sam in 5x05 wasn't the old dynamic. Dean could be bossy and he could be a jackass and Sam sometimes was put upon and belabored, but the reverse happened quite a good deal as well and more often than we saw either, we saw the boys generally acting as equals.

The only thing that Dean really refused to give in to Sam on was when it came to the possibility of innocents suffering. Dean chose to save the people John directed him to in S1 because otherwise, they'd have died. We see Dean (and Sam, to be fair) showing up in the nick of time so often that it's practically a stock trope. Dean had plenty of reasons to believe that if he didn't work fast, more people would die. It's something we see him feel guilty over so often than the most commonly accepted fandom theory for why Dean's eyes bled in Bloody Mary wasn't because of any specific failure on Dean's part, but because he thought he should have done more. Dean refused to put up with Sam using his powers in S3, but IMHO that was primarily because Ruby (a demon) was pushing for Sam to do so and Dean had incredibly good reason to distrust Ruby. Dean refused to go with Sam's plan to kill the virgin in JiB and he refused to become a monster (as was Sam's plan) in Time Is On My Side because in both cases he couldn't understand why the sacrifice of one would have someone been worth it to save the rest if other alternatives were on the table. This is not new.

When it came to other things, Dean trusted and followed Sam's lead. Dean complained but complied with Sam's request in Faith. He did it in Mystery Spot. He did it in Hunted. He gave into Sam's demand for a promise in Playthings, even though it was painfully obvious that it was about the worst thing Sam could ever demand of him. He and Sam traded leadership positions in S1 and S2 all the time. He let Sam go in Scarecrow and in the pilot, because that was what Sam wanted and what Sam needed. It's not that Dean was ever cowed into meekly following Sam about (with the possible exception of Hunted, I'll grant you), but it's also not like the reverse has ever been true, either.

None of this is anything new. If anything, I've seen more meta than I can count on how Dean is a "natural beta" and how he "needs someone to give him orders" and how he "traded John for Sam", none of which I agree with. Dean doesn't need a leader but Dean is codependent and finds it hard to separate out his family's needs from his own. What the Winchesters need is, on the whole, far more important than what Dean the individual needed. The Winchester family creeds were "kill the supernatural" and "protect Sam", so it's no wonder that he gave his own life to save his brother's. It isn't a healthy mindset. It's NOT a good thing, or a bonus in his characterization. Supernatural is unusual as a show because it shows the ugly dark side to a love martyr, not only subverting the trope but going further and outright demonizing it.

So Sam WAS right when he said the old dynamic didn't work. I just wish that anyone on the show had recognized that what happened in 5x05 was no where near the old dynamic and for Sam to say that it was shows a much grimmer view of his psyche than I had considered for him.

See, while Dean was stupid and offensive and an ass, Sam was the most self-centered we've seen him be all season. Dean being overprotective is very much a problem, albeit one that fandom seems to go into an outrage over when he starts to draw away from, but overprotectiveness is not being controlling. Sam though has always had issues with control and seeing protectiveness AS control. See his view on John for an excellent example of just that. Now, John failed in a major way (how exactly did he intend to keep Sam safe from several thousand miles away is beyond me as is how he expected to not drive Sam away with his behavior if he knew his son at all) and Dean's made some critical failures of his own in this regard, but for Sam to read every one of Dean's actions in S4 as Dean being overly controlling is just ridiculous. For him to claim that it was Dean's bossiness that caused Sam to start going with Ruby is a blatant lie, even without the WTF that comes when you remember that Sam's dependence on Ruby started when Dean was dead.

I took that line of Sam's to be an unfortunate truth and one that I wasn't even sure he'd recognized. It speaks to a really nasty flaw in his personality, but he doesn't seem to have seen the implications of it. Sam preferred Ruby because she wasn't bossy. This is true; Ruby was fully submissive to Sam and Sam's desires, appealing to his pride and vanity to lead him astray. She used a combination of perfect faith, comfort, and sex to sway Sam to her side and, best of all, Ruby was morally worse than Sam. She had done terrible things. Sam could show her the very worst parts of himself and it wouldn't matter because no matter how far down the hole Sam slid, Ruby was still further along. She was the perfect temptress in that regard. But the most important thing, Sam says here, is that she didn't try to order him around. She didn't presume herself his equal.

It implies that Sam wanted not a partnership (where leadership is traded off as necessary and both parties have a veto) so much as a firmly established pecking order - with himself at the head. A lot of those same meta that posit that Dean needs a firm hand to keep him in line also suggest that Sam likes to control and to be in control. In the same way that I think they're misinterpreting Dean's codependency as a need to submit, they're confusing Sam's need for control as an innate and positive behavior. Both Dean's codependency and Sam's control issues are a result of how they were raised; Sam with no control or say in how his life was lived and Dean having the lesson slammed home again and again that his own needs were unimportant (and forget about wants) and that to be a "good son" was to put the family above himself. Furthermore, both of them had it driven in that bad things happened when Sam had no control or when Dean was selfish. These are learned behaviors. I wouldn't have nearly so many issues with them if I didn't see them as outside injuries that had been inflicted on the Winchesters and not natural personality traits. As such, they're things that can be recovered from, that should be recovered from, over the course of the series.

That Ruby's submissiveness would appeal to Sam doesn't surprise me. Sam had been out of control for so long, had had so little say in his own life for so many years, that any grasp or slip of power would have had terrific appeal. And Ruby offered Sam more than just control over herself; she gave Sam hope of control over Sam. Over his "destiny" that he so feared. Over the demons who threatened him. Who wouldn't prefer that over Dean, when by Dean's very being, he would have reminded Sam of his failures and the very worst moments of his life? Dean was there when Jess burned. Dean was tortured while Sam stood helpless in Devil's Trap. Dean was killed repeatedly in Mystery Spot. Dean was killed again by Lilith. Sam was helpless to stop any of that, helpless when it came to saving Dean from Hell. It's not fair at all for Sam to associate those times with Dean-his-brother, but the mind isn't fair.

I get all of that. I love and sympathize for Sam. But I don't at all appreciate Sam ignoring all of that in favor of "I can't do this if you're going to be bossy and btw you were bossy last year too and I liked Ruby better."

Sam is self centered, it's a major part of his characterization. That said, Sam had been growing beyond that in 5x01-5x04. He had screwed up, massively, but was willing to change and generally seemed sincere about wanting to fix things. In 5x05 though, he was fixated on what he'd done in terms of breaking the final seal and didn't look at any of his past actions at all except to think that he'd been too weak to speak up before this and make sure his point was heard, that he didn't allow Dean to bully him into submission. It doesn't fly as character progression when Sam being bullied has never been a problem (at least not as a chronic issue - Dean was a jackass in S2 when he was dealing with John's death, I won't ever deny that). I haven't found a single person yet who declared that Dean's behavior in 5x05 was anything resembling in character, not even among those who generally side with Sam. If it had been, Sam would have had a valid complaint. As it wasn't, it comes across as contrived to give Sam's argument a shadow of a leg to stand on.

Also, for all that Sam immediately said that it wasn't Dean's fault that Ruby had had greater appeal, within the context of the conversation, what other way is there to take that? Sam said that Dean was bossy and drove Sam away. For all that Sam had shown signs of recognizing his own flaws in previous episodes, when speaking about them in 5x05, he focused almost entirely on Dean's.

To further worsen thins, now Dean is keeping secrets. Or I hope he is, anyway, because the alternative is rather too depressing to consider because it would mean that Dean still isn't conscious of how messed up things were in S4. (Which itself would be quite the retcon, but I digress.) Dean has yet to really take Sam to task about his behavior in S4. He told Sam that he'd hurt him in ways that Dean couldn't even find words for, but apparently Sam needs those words because he hasn't been able to figure it out on his own. Sam lied to Dean. Strangled him. Mocked him about Hell and the guilt and trauma he suffered after his resurrection. He used Hell as a weapon to keep Dean from asking questions. He withheld information. He chose a demon over his brother, and more than once. He beat the crap out of Dean and left him on a motel room floor. Sam's words in 5x05 reminded me of nothing so much as his "just trust me" appeal in 4x21 and made about as much sense - and was just as passive aggressive and dirty a blow.

Dean has many, many reasons to be pissed off at Sam. He has even more to distrust Sam's judgment and to keep him on probation. But he's not talking about any of this. When Sam came back, Dean should have cleared the air then. Should have spelled it out that he didn't trust Sam and why. It would have hurt Sam to hear it, and Dean would have been a dick in doing so, but if Sam can't recognize it himself, than Dean should have made it clear. When Sam complained about Dean's S4 behavior, Dean should have returned the volley. Not in a pissed off, let's start another brawl sort of way, but Sam's policy of honest is a great thing (even if he seems to be deluded in what he's being honest about) and Dean should emulate him.

Instead, we see Dean swallowing his very real grievances yet again. Dean's putting the Winchesters above his own needs and while, sure, if there's any time to do that it would be during the damned apocalypse, Dean has also been putting the world above the Winchesters recently and letting Sam believe those things might keep Sam from being hurt, but it's not doing the world itself any favors.

If Dean IS pulling a Ruby and playing submissive to keep Sam around because he doesn't trust him, I'll actually be surprised and pleased. Dean would be being an ass for doing that as well, but I'd far prefer asshole!Dean who is concerned for the world itself over doormat!Dean. I've seen enough of that, thanks much.

All of which got a bit long than I was intending, but honestly, I've never been as disappointed in an episode as I was in 5x05. The only time that came close for me was when I first got into the series over the Winter 2008 hiatus, watched all four seasons in a matter of weeks, and was terribly excited about 4x11 - only for 4x11 to have turned out to be, well, 4x11.

So, we'll see. I'm feeling pretty weary of Supernatural as a whole right now and the upcoming episodes haven't done much to inspire confidence from what I've seen. At the end of the day though, it's only a show. I lived without Supernatural for 26 years of my life and somehow I think I'll manage to do so again if necessary.

And it's not even over yet!

2009-09-25T01:46:58Z

So I think this is my favorite Sam!episode ever. Sammy!

On personality responsibility and culpability

2009-09-21T14:06:28Z

Even moreso, both Sam and Dean have gone beyond in accepting their due and have claimed culpability for things beyond their control.

In my mind, this is extremely significant, especially as every other character involved is either an antagonist (such as Zachariah or Alistair) or has yet to claim responsibility for his part (such as Castiel and Chuck). Even in Zachariah and Alistair's cases, both of them neglect to consider their own actions and they both wanted the seals to break! Zachariah outright blames Sam for releasing Lucifer with that not-so-subtle little wink of his and he blames Dean for being unable to stop him, this despite the fact that he kidnapped Dean and then gave orders to prevent him from seeing Sam. Alistair likewise gives Dean full credit for breaking the first seal but neglects to mention that Dean's actions were very much done under duress and that Dean hadn't know what he was doing at the time.

Even the good guys are guilty of this. Castiel blamed Sam and Dean (and Dean in particular) for what happened, and while I don't really fault him for his anger, it's hardly a fair statement to make. He really did give up everything for Dean because he hoped that Dean could stop it, but Dean never once promised him that he could - he said that they needed to try and that it was worth dying over, two very true statements. And Dean did try and Castiel did do the right thing by freeing him; if Castiel hadn't, then Dean would still be stuck in Heaven and likely have been tortured into submission by this point, if he wasn't being tortured still. It took Hell 30 years to break him, after all, and that was when he didn't know what the consequences would be.

Point remains that Castiel has yet to come clean about the fact that he was the one who let Sam out in 4x21 or that he knew the truth when he forced Dean to make the promise to abide by the angel's will. He knew but he still put all the blame for what happened on the Winchesters. Not exactly Castiel's most shining moment, for all that he looked extremely pretty when he got up in Dean's face in 5x02.

Likewise, Chuck also knew the truth. In fact, of all the "good" characters in Supernatural poised to make a difference, Chuck was the one who had known the consequences for breaking the final seal the longest. He found out the truth in 4x18 and while his initial plan to tell Sam and Dean immediately was thwarted, he was obviously able to get a message to them in 5x01 (albeit because Zachariah was trying to sniff Dean out) and so he's considered options that he hadn't bothered to try back in S4. Despite this, not one character has called Chuck out for what he knew, including Chuck. Chuck has assumed no responsibility at all.

So what do we have in contrast? We've got Dean (who has long held himself accountable for crimes that were outside of his control - Something Wicked, anyone?) and we've got Sam (who's coming at this from the opposite angle, having never previously been forced to consider the ramifications of his actions and to his credit is now taking on more than his share).

I've read some meta about how Dean is being a hypocrite because he's pushing all the blame off on Sam, and I almost find that concept to be laughable. Dean isn't pushing the blame for anything onto Sam except for how Sam has treated him, and frankly after S4, Sam very much deserves that. Dean has spoken repeatedly in these past two episodes of the thing that he and Sam have done. Others have put the blame squarely on the Winchesters' shoulders and he's not once tried to shirk that. When Sam says he wants out, Dean doesn't once stop to say "this is your fault, you need to clean up your own mess" - instead, he offers to shoulder on alone.

What Dean hasn't done is recognize the fact that he's only out of Hell because he broke. Sam had given up on saving him. Zachariah wanted the first seal to break and likely was the force who delayed the order to save him until it was too late. The fact that Dean broke in Hell was the only factor that led to his eventual rescue. Dean quite obviously blames himself for having broken; we see how very much he loathes his own past actions in episodes like 4x10 and 4x11, and again in 4x16. Dean considered himself unworthy of being saved all the way back from 4x01, and that was before he got his memories of what had happened in Hell back. The circumstances of his rescue are ones that he's not really considered thus far, which isn't terribly surprising as he's only had all the pieces to put together since the tail end of 4x22 and, well, he's been pretty busy since then.

The fact is, Hell is Hell. Everyone breaks in Hell. There's no option that if Dean had just held out long enough, he'd have been rescued and everyone would have been fine. There was no chance for Dean to not break after being systematically and viciously torn apart every day for 30 years by a sadistic mastermind who knew Dean inside and out. Dean in 4x16 seemed to take the position that he just hadn't held out long enough, as assisted by Alistair's words on the topic. 4x16!Dean believed wholeheartedly that he was unworthy because he gave in too quickly and that it was a failing of his own that he hadn't held out long enough. The actual situation is that it wouldn't have mattered how long Dean resisted because succor only would have come after he agreed to torture others.

There's a significant difference in implication between the two concepts - the one is something of a personal failing because it indicates that Dean's resistance mattered. The other tells us that his rebellion was a futile action. As Castiel said in 4x16, it's not blame that falls on Dean, it's fate. And as he is an angel, one of the agents of fate, he really would know. Now the trick will be to convince Dean of the same.

As an aside, I frankly don't believe Alistair's words on John. For one, I don't think that John was a Righteous Man and I don't buy that the demons did either. Azazel knew that it was Dean who had the angelic friends in 4x03, not John, and it was Azazel who saved Dean's life twice so that Dean could survive long enough to make his deal. For two, John was able to escape via the Devil's Gate. Had he still been on the rack, how could he have managed that? Demons were trying to escape, true, but the implication is given that Dean was fairly deep in Hell (based on Castiel's description in 4x01 and 4x16) and that's where John would have been as well, with Alistair, the one demon who didn't want to escape, acting as his guard.

I simply don't see how it's possible for John to not have broken, especially since the demons were already trying to get Dean to make a deal as early as CRB - a mere couple of months after John's death. Measure up all of those unlikelihoods against the fact that Alistair knew Dean and wanted to fuck with his head and I've got to conclude that either John broke or John wasn't on the rack in the same fashion that Dean was. Either way, you've got Dean accepting the blame for things that are well outside of his control.

Which brings me to Sam. I spoke out (repeatedly) while S4 was airing about the fact that Sam kept getting away with things and that I felt it to be a highly negative mark against his character. Sam has long since had a habit of rejecting or not recognizing personal responsibility for his own actions. How long did it take him to realize that John might have had a point, or at least wasn't a complete ass, about the Stanford argument? Or maybe recognizing that promising to Dean that they'd figure it out together and then up and leaving him the very next episode apparently in the middle of the night might not be the best way to solve things, especially given how condescending he acted about Dean's attempts to protect him? (Especially rich, that one, because Sam would have been killed had Dean not been able to track him down - Gordon had a headshot and was seconds away from sniping him when Dean showed up.) Or how about Sam ever recognizing that he was wrong about the things he claimed in Asylum? Or recognizing how far he'd gone in S3 when he was willing to kill Nancy and take the Doc up on his offer for immortal life? Or even in S4, when he lied to himself and everyone else about his true motivations for killing Lilith?

Let's face it - being true to himself and accepting when he's at fault have never exactly been talents of his.

It's why I was so proud of him in 5x01 and 5x02. It took Sam a bit to recognize why Dean was so upset in 5x01 (itself a delightful reference to Winchester Fuckedupness, really - why be upset over starting the Apocalypse when you can be pissed that your brother picked a demon over you?), but he never once tried to get out of claiming responsibility for killing Lilith. And once he got it, he was even able to own up to the fact that Dean had a point about not being able to trust Sam in 5x02. Heck, he was able to own up to the fact that Sam couldn't trust Sam in 5x02, which is itself significant. Sam had been in denial over his cravings, had refused to admit to Dean that he still had a problem. In 5x01, he was all about making amends, but didn't want to suggest in any way that he was capable of doing anything else on top of his previous crimes. Ruby told him that it was all Sam's own doing all along, but it wasn't until that final scene in 5x02 that Sam accepted his own guilt and took the necessary steps to protect himself, Dean, and the world.

What makes this so important is that Sam isn't just accepting his own responsibility for what he did, now he's going above and beyond. Remember, there's still the issue of the voicemail to consider. Sam thinks that Dean believes him to be a monster, someone worthy of being put down. And yet, despite this, Sam was willing to open up to Dean about his ongoing struggle with his addiction - he might not have admitted it to himself right away, but after War spelled it out for him, he didn't try to hide it. He did the same thing with the angel warding hex bags in 5x01. Sam had to have known that openly displaying a talent that Ruby had taught him wasn't going to win him any favors, but he stood up and did it anyway and he didn't lie about where his knowledge came from. Sam's not keeping secrets any longer. He's going for full disclosure, no matter how much it hurts.

While we've not seen explicit confirmation of this in the text, my personal opinion is that both Sam and Dean are holding themselves responsible for each other's share of guilt in terms of the apocalypse as well. We've not had a scene where Dean tells Sam that he's not at fault for breaking the final seal because he broke the first one, but personally I think that's pretty logical from Dean's extremely skewed point of view. Logical to the point that, uh, I may have written fic about just that concept a few months ago.

We don't know if Sam is aware of the fact that Dean broke the first seal yet, though I doubt that he does. However, Sam's language in 5x01 suggests heavily that he's putting himself at full responsibility for releasing Lucifer, never mind that of the 66 seals, he only broke one and nominally at the very least, he acted to prevent a seal from being broken. Dean has openly claimed, in front of Sam no less, that he played a role in breaking the seals but whenever Sam talked about it, he's claimed responsibility in the singular. I might be misremembering something here, but the impression I got was very much that Sam considers himself solely responsible and will openly admit to it and Dean believes the same and is only playing lipservice to the concept of Sam having any blame (for the Apocalypse, at any rate - again the whole Ruby issue is something else entirely).

That Sam and Dean not only can accept their own blame but are able to go beyond that and are taking on more than their own fair share of it is important to me. That they're literally the only characters who accept this responsibility is what makes them heroes.

Good job, boys.

Some initial thoughts on S5...

2009-09-18T18:20:40Z

So, the season five. I don't normally do episode reaction posts, preferring to get my squee on in meta-post comments, but these two episodes have quite pleased me and I want to jot out a few thoughts. I thought both of them were generally tightly plotted, brilliantly acted, and that the cinematography (particularly in 5x01) was just delightful.

So just some general thoughts to follow (spoilers, of course, abound):

Bobby:

I don't think it comes as a surprise that I don't much care for Bobby. I know he's a fandom favorite and me disliking him is something akin to me liking to drown kittens and put babies on spikes (it's the American dream!) and all, but I liked Bobby as a friend and semi-avuncular figure. Daddy!Bobby rubs me in ALL the wrong ways, but particularly because much as I have issues with John, I don't like the concept of ANYONE taking John's place in the mythos - as Bobby has a tendency to do.

In 5x01, Bobby did that all over again: it was an almost exact recreation of the final scene in Devil's Trap, the only exception being that it was Sam's head being messed with, not Dean's. Bobby was able to rip himself back into control, much the same way that John did, due to the threat of Dean being killed at his own hand.

With John though, I got how difficult an act that was. He was only able to maintain control for a few precious seconds. It was a moment of extreme trauma that allowed him to take control to begin with. Bobby? The danger wasn't nearly as grave (or perhaps the drama wasn't nearly so high) and Bobby had a much easier time of it. It wasn't believable for me.

Long story short, Bobby just joined John in a camp that has all of two people in it and that takes away the specialness of one of the very few things that John has going for him in the "I was actually a decent father" category. John sucked as a dad, there's no doubt about that, but he was able to free himself and he sacrificed himself to save Dean's life. In this episode, Bobby basically did both.

What gets me is that I have issues with daddy!Bobby but I really don't have any with mommy!Ellen. In fact, I rather adore mommy!Ellen. Ellen's slap and hug to Dean in 5x02 was damn near perfect in my books. Maybe the difference there is that we never really got to see Mary acting as the boys' mother and I like them having some maternal figure in their lives. Or maybe it's that Ellen has yet to piss me off as much as Bobby did (his 4x22 speech, good Lord). Most likely though, it's because Dean hasn't really accepted Ellen as a mother figure. He seems more confused and a bit affronted by her attempts to mother him than anything else and I like that spot of conflict and strife. Ellen isn't going to easily take Mary's place. In fact, I'm pretty sure she'll never take Mary's place. I don't feel that same level of assurance regarding Bobby and John though.

And then there's the story going forward. Bobby in 5x02 was kinda bitchy, to tell the truth. I don't blame him for his ire, don't get me wrong - he was just told that he'd never walk again and he's had long enough now for that fact to sink in. He doesn't have the bravado that he demonstrated in 5x01 to act as a cold comfort. His fury and despair is very believable. It's not fair that he's taking it out on Castiel (who couldn't heal Dean in 4x16 either, leading me to think that healing really isn't one of his strong suits), but I don't really blame him there. It seems a particularly human reaction to me.

I think they sort of screwed the pooch though in terms of how they set up Bobby's disability. He stabbed himself in the stomach, with a serrated blade. As others before me have pointed out, Dean pulling that knife from his stomach should have messed him up significantly and they should have been worried about septicemia, not spinal cord injuries. In fact, I'm not sure how his spinal cord was injured. He should have been on IVs and laying flat on that bed; sitting up with a hole in his gut should have been agonizing. So production failure there, I suppose.

Someone else pointed out in a review that she thought Bobby's injury humanized him, that he'd been too powerful a force before this point and it had strained credibility. I agree with that assessment. Half the reason I started to get annoyed with Bobby was that he turned into a Gary Stu - always there just at the nick of time to save the day, no subject unknown. The only time we've received an exception to that recently was in 4x22 and, frankly, Bobby's characterization in 4x21-22 was all over the place regardless.

To me, Bobby isn't humanized because he can't walk anymore though. Bobby is humanized in my mind because this gives him, for the very first time, a major, lingering arc that will have a dramatic impact on his characterization. This will force him to evolve and change. And I like that idea. I like the concept that Bobby will have to struggle with this and overcome it. S5 is the season of self discovery and Bobby's going to have as much to do in that regard as Sam, Dean, and Castiel.

All in all, I'm interested in where Bobby's storyline takes him but I'll be far more satisfied if they back off of the daddy!Bobby concept.

Sam and Sam's addition:

I get that having Sam be sick for the first few episodes this season would delay things, but ignoring the physical side of his addiction feels like a cop-out to me. Furthermore, it means we can't be sure whether Sam's symptoms last season were really in his head or not and that's something I'd very much like confirmation on.

What I did like was that his temptation in 5x02. Sam wanted that blood. Dean walking in obviously stopped him from going there and I'd like to think he'd have resisted no matter what, but the fact that he's still emotionally and psychologically addicted does at least grant some interesting insight to Sam - and a chance for Sam to better get to know himself. Sam is being forced to confront the fact that the darkness in him wasn't all Ruby's doing. I think he knew that on an intellectual level from 4x22 onward, but he's now realizing the full implication of that fact.

And that in turn will lead to character growth. Sam's darkness has been a part of him since the very beginning. Sam has always been willing to look the other way at Bad Things Happening if it would allow him to get closer to a goal. From 1x02, he was perfectly willing to let the People In Peril die if it meant that he'd get to John that much faster. He was willing to do so again in Scarecrow. He took it up a notch and was willing to let Nancy be killed in front of him and possibly help out, for that matter. He was willing to become a shambling creature of darkness that would eternally decay and need to kill others for their body parts in 3x14. He made the call to kill the nurse in 4x22. This is nothing new.

But Sam's being forced to confront this for the very first time. And I don't think he likes what he's seeing, either. I don't want to portray Sam has a psychopath here, don't get me wrong, but Sam's determination to see the forest instead of the trees has occasionally led him to make some incredibly suspect moral judgment calls. My prediction is that Sam will emerge from this self imposed exile with a far better understanding of himself and what he can and cannot do in order to fight the good fight.

And in regards to Sam's powers, personally, I hope this means he'll get to use them again. If Sam accepts that the blame is his own and NOT because of the powers, then I want to see him use them to fight the good fight. And I want that to be a GOOD thing.

Castiel 2.0 (and his Dean):

Damn, but that boy has become badass, hasn't he? He's kicking ass and not even bothering to take names because he's got places to go and angels to kill. And he's angry. I put this in an LJ comment, but honestly I don't think I can say it better and I'm too lazy to type it out twice, but we've seen Castiel show doubt before, and righteous anger, and even affection, but we've not really seen him fully passionate about anything. Not for his own sake, anyway - he seemed coldly furious in 4x02 when he was talking about his fallen brothers.

And now? Now Castiel isn't righteous anything, he's flat out pissed. It's a huge step in his character development. And who else but Dean is he going to take his anger out on? Dean is the one who convinced him (with puppy dog eyes, no less!) to fight against Heaven. Dean is the one who rejected outright Castiel's gift (and it was a gift) of eternal peace and rest, things that Dean in particular should have craved. Now it's not Castiel being betrayed by his brother, Castiel is doing the betraying. Outside of Dean, who does he have to be close to? The fact that he can vent somewhat at Dean is promising, in my mind. Somewhat unfair as Dean HAD stopped Sam and Castiel went to let him out again, but Castiel's anger and fury is very understandable.

As a final thought about that, Castiel just had a very painful lesson in regards to absolute faith. He'd placed his faith in God via Zachariah, only to learn that Zachariah had been lying to them. So he put his faith in Dean instead, only to find that Dean couldn't do as he promised - he couldn't stop Sam (again). Castiel is an angel and for all that he's felt doubt for some time, the concept of being unable to have complete faith in something has to be about the most mindreeling concept he's ever stumbled across.

In a related note, Dean's amulet:

People are already saying that this is Kripke symbolically showing how he doesn't care about Sam'n'Dean anymore and how Dean giving the amulet to Castiel just proves that Kripke has a new ship. I've got to say balls to that. Fans have been demanding since S1 to know what the story of Dean's amulet is. He gave us something in AVSC and people weren't satisfied. So he's given us more. It doesn't mean that Sam isn't important and if people did want to read that Castiel having it somehow means that he's become more important than Sam, take it to the logical conclusion and say that Dean not wearing it is a symbol of how distant Dean and Sam have become and flipping remember that Dean told Castiel that he has to give it back. See, reconciliation!

I've also seen people talking about how hokey they find the concept of the amulet being some sort of God detector, but I sort of like it. IMHO, it ties back into the whole Righteous Man philosophy. Sam was supposed to give the amulet to John, just like John (per Alistair, if we can believe him) was supposed to be the Righteous Man. Sort of symbolic, I think.

Now, my problem with this is that there was NO REACTION to this! Dean obviously didn't want to give it up, but at no point did he stop and say "what, you mean this? The necklace Sam gave me when I was 13? That is your God finder? The Hell, man?" Sam didn't react. Bobby didn't say a word about it and Bobby gave the necklace to Sam to begin with! He had to have known that it was somehow special but he obviously didn't know about it's God-seeking qualities. So that begs the question of just why he gave it to Sam to give to John anyway. If he just thought it was a worthless trinket, the fact that it can apparently find God should have been noteworthy.

So all in all, I rather like the concept but there needed to be some reaction to it. Watch it turn out though that the amulet itself is worthless and it's important because of what it symbolizes. That amulet basically represents the sacrifices that Dean has made for Sam and Sam's own appreciation of Dean. The fact that Dean has willingly taken it off all of once that we've seen in nearly twenty years is something else as well. Maybe that's the only reason that it's important, because it's the tangible representation of Sam and Dean's bond. Who knows?

Dean and the separation:

Can I say how very much I've loved the fallout from S4 in these past two episodes? I've read several people grumbling because they think that Dean is going TOO FAR but really, can you blame the guy? Sam lied to him for a year. Sam beat the crap out of him, strangled him, and left with Ruby. He chose a demon over his brother. Sam told Dean flat out that he considered himself smarter, stronger, and a better hunter. He mocked Dean about his guilt for breaking in Hell. He generally treated Dean like a moron. And we're supposed to harp on Dean now for needing a break?

I think it's important that Dean didn't request the separation. He'd obviously been thinking about it because Sam didn't take him aback when he brought it up. I think he was even somewhat relieved by the concept, which is a far cry from every other time we've seen them separated. However, Dean wasn't going to be the first to suggest it and that actually caught me by surprise. I was fully expecting this to be the one time that Dean voluntarily leaves Sam, but in terms of reconciliation I suppose it's extremely important that he didn't.

I think that Dean leaving would be the sign that things really are fully broken and they'll never be able to recover. Dean leaving would mean that Dean has given up on Sam. Sam leaving, well. It's what Sam does. Sam always leaves. There's precedence. And each time Sam has left, they've been able to recover at some point thereafter.

Dean's actions towards Sam in these past two episodes were pretty much all I could have hoped for. He was obviously looking out for his brother, but he didn't trust him. And he wasn't opening up. It took Sam pushing for pretty much the entire episode (and then getting what Dean was upset about wrong) for Dean to snap at him at the end of 5x01. Dean's got his emotional walls up high and he's fortified them as best he can and is continuing to do so. Sam's going to have some work in getting through them again - if Sam can decide that he wants to. Remember, Sam doesn't trust himself right now either and that statement isn't just about power or control or the demon blood. He knows he's screwed up with Dean. He knows it's an EPIC screw up. Why should he trust himself in regards to Dean any more than he does for hunting?

It's also hugely telling how much Dean has grown as a character. He's no longer defining himself by his use towards his family. Since S3 in particular (but with shades of that long before), Dean has shown a particular dedication towards helping common people. It was hinted in S4 that he wouldn't put Sam above the world but now we've had the out and out proof of it. Sam doesn't come first. Bobby doesn't come first. Dean definitely doesn't come first, but that's been a characterization constant since day one. The world comes first.

We see that in 5x01 when Zachariah is torturing him. We see that again in 5x02 when he hears that Sam is in trouble, instantly gets his gun and is prepared to go after him, and then stops to look back and think about all the people he'd be leaving behind. And through his hesitation, he's able to figure out the truth of what's going on so that when he and Ellen stage their actual rescue attempt later on, they're able to be successful at it - and they don't wind up killing any of the innocents. He still saved Sam, but he did so while trying to save as many other people as possible and generally did a good job with that.

It's a very healthy step, I think. It shows how much Dean has grown and changed as a person and also ties into the fact that in S4, for the very first time, the demons mocked Dean. They didn't mock the fact that John didn't love him best and saw him more as a tool to be exploited than as a son. They didn't mock the fact that he was overly devoted to Sam. They didn't mock the fact that "they don't need you, not like you need them."

It was Dean himself on the plate. What Dean did. What Dean didn't do. Dean's actions - not Sam or John's actions towards him.

And personally, I think that's huge.

And so too is this meta, come to think of it. Guess I should cut myself off for now. :)

[fic] Other People (1/1)

2009-08-16T03:58:23Z

Title: Other People
Genre: Gen, set post the S4 finale.
Pairings or Characters: Sam, Dean, and some Castiel
Length: 2600 words, complete
Warnings: Salty language, references to Hell
Summary: Dean's time in Hell becomes unexpectedly useful when a new demonic threat rises.
Author's notes: Set post the finale but has no spoilers for S5! :) Information on Allocer and Stolas taken from Wikipedia and various websites on demonology. Originally posted here in response to a prompt on the spngenlove community.

Sam whipped his head to stare at Castiel. "Alistair?"

He couldn't have heard that right. Alistair was dead, Sam had seen to that.

Sure enough, Castiel shook his head and repeated the name, enunciating the word more clearly. "No, Allocer. He has been newly released from Hell and is striving to make a name for himself on Earth."

"Huh." Sam leaned back into his chair, and stared down at the coffee table before him, books stacked haphazardly across it. Bobby's place had become a source of refuge over the past few months. It was an unfortunately necessary sanctuary, given that along with Lucifer had risen several dozen major demons of the sort that the world hadn't seen since Old Testament times.

"So what has he been doing?"

"He works to entice the holy into sin," Castiel said, "He is known as a master of the skies and arts and has three dozen legions of Hell at his command."

"Three dozen." Sam repeated dryly. "So nothing to worry about then."

A door slammed open and Sam jumped slightly when he heard his brother's voice calling out from the other room. Dean appeared a moment later, taking in Castiel's presence and nodding at Sam. He dropped a heavy bag of salt on the floor with a muted thud, sat in the creaking chair across the room, and promptly started to get to work stuffing new shotgun shells.

"Castiel found the next major threat," Sam said, looking over at his brother. "Some big shot demon that does something with the stars and likes to paint."

"He's a master of the arts and skies." Castiel stated primly. Castiel needed to lighten up. There was precious little to smile at these days; they had to take what they could get. "And his name is Allocer."

Dean twitched slightly at the name, but just reached down to measure out some rock salt and transfer it to an empty shell. "What's he been up to?"

"He has been raising a force of the formerly devoted, seducing them into corruption. Already three hundred have fallen to his sway and more go to his side daily."

"How is he getting them?" Sam asked, frowning. "I mean, there can't exactly be that many people looking to sign up for the demonic newsletter."

"He is possessing a radio host. His followers listen to his words and then become entranced."

Dean snorted. "I always knew talk radio was evil."

"That's a little more technical savvy than I'd have guessed from someone who hasn't been topside for hundreds of years." Sam couldn't help feeling doubtful. A radio host? Demonic DJs? It sounded like the plot for a bad 80's B movie.

"Nah," Dean said, not looking up from his work. "A lot of demons keep up with modern developments. Sure, you get some traditionalists who haven't evolved since Gutenberg was around, but it's not that unusual. People go to Hell, they bring their own memories of what's going on in the world with them."

Sam blinked, more surprised that his brother knew who Gutenberg was than that some demons liked to be on the cutting edge.

"So what's his game plan? Mass murder? He needs more soldiers?"

"We have been unable to determine that as of yet," Castiel said. "Our spies have been unable to get close enough to discover the truth of his plan."

It was times like this that Sam almost missed Ruby. She had been a lying bitch who led him into breaking the final seal and he was exceedingly glad that she was dead, but it had been damned convenient having a demon on their side when it came to infiltration.

Across the room, Dean reached for the clamp and sealed off another shell, dropping it into a rapidly growing pile. Sam eyed his brother, debating whether or not he should offer to help, but Dean had always been better at that particular task. Instead he reached forward for a well thumbed copy of the Clavicula Salomonis, flipping through the tissue thin pages as quickly as he could without tearing them. It was untranslated - not Crowley's edition, Bobby had actually sneered when Sam had asked if he'd had a copy - but Sam had had plenty of opportunity to get used to the spidery, handwritten script.

It took him a bit to find the actual description.

"A duke," Sam said, squinting at the scrawled letters and trying to translate them into something that actually made sense. "Says he's got a horse and has a lion's face. Something about familiars as well."

"Grand Duke," Dean corrected absently, still not looking away from his efforts. "Allocer is a Grand Duke, not just a regular one."

"How do you know?" Sam asked curiously and Dean shifted slightly, hands working ever faster. "Been doing some side research?"

Dean's mouth twisted into something that he probably hoped was a smile but far more resembled a grimace.

"I met him." He finally glanced over at Sam, gaze faintly challenging.

"What? When?" Sam could have smacked himself as soon as the question escaped his mouth - of course he knew where Dean had met Allocer. Sure enough Dean laughed hollowly and went back to his work.

"Where do you think, Sam?"

"You had congress with Allocer in Hell?" Castiel's voice cut in and Sam flinched slightly at the question being put so bluntly.

Dean didn't talk about Hell. He'd never commented on the demons he'd met there or the things he had done, not beyond those couple of stolen conversations months ago. Sam felt a surge of bittersweet gratitude towards the angel at the question; Castiel could ask things that Sam had long ago forfeited the right to but desperately wanted to know. Wanted the knowledge even as it hurt to get it; the reminder that Dean had spent literally longer dead than alive was always like picking at a scab, a horribly satisfying self inflicted injury that he just couldn't leave alone.

"I wouldn't call it congress exactly." Dean said the word like it meant something dirty. "We were introduced. Bastard likes the sound of his own voice."

His tone was perfectly even but Sam knew his brother and knew what it meant when Dean got that particular tightness in his jaw. Dean didn't want to discuss this. By the tense set to his shoulders, he was hoping that someone else would say something. Sam glanced at Castiel, but the angel was just looking at Dean, blue eyes focused in that incredibly intent way he got sometimes. A part of him wanted to give Dean that out, but a stronger one had him holding his breath in anticipation, hoping that his brother would continue.

"He's proud," Dean went on eventually, after the silence had dragged on for too long and it became obvious that no one was going to step in to rescue him. "Alistair said he had delusions of rising beyond his place, sneered at him for being pretentious. I don't know how much of that was true, but the two of them didn't like each other. He liked to play with the armies and couldn't stand it when he wasn't shown proper respect."

He said those last words with a certain humorless grin, like it was some sort of private in joke. Sam bit his lip and tried his best not to wonder exactly how Dean had found that out.

Dean kept going after that, his tone growing more distant as he spoke. He looked like he was dredging up the memories, gaze flattening further as he spoke of legions and Allocer's skills at tactics, his lack of craft when it came to the traditional demonic arts, apparently the real source of Alistair's disdain.

"He didn't have a lot of those little spells, like the one Meg used to break out of the devil's trap that one time. He used soldiers instead, liked to play with assassins and used them against his rivals. Alistair found one spying on him once. Turned out not to be the best career move."

His hands slowed as he continued, until finally they stilled completely. Dean was still looking down at the empty shell he was holding, but Sam had the sense that he wasn't seeing it anymore.

"If Allocer is topside, you'll probably find Stolas around too. Probably in some pretty boy body - Stolas was always vain. Stupid, but vain. They talked shop - both of them had hard ons for astronomy. They were always together."

"Do you have any idea what they could be planning?" Castiel asked softly. Dean blinked rapidly for a few seconds then visibly came back to himself, eyes sharpening again as he looked up. He shook his head, scowled down at his stilled hands for a moment, then finished stuffing the shell he'd been working on.

"Stolas liked to throw parties, had a banquet practically every night. Allocer just liked the attention. It's all he ever really cared about. If he's gaining followers, my bet is that it's because he wants the adoring throngs. He was never really picky about how sincere they were, just how loud they cheered."

Sam frowned and hesitantly spoke up. "If all he wants is people to pay attention to him, do we even need to worry? I mean, we do, but there are other demons out there who are bleeding orphans and torching cities. Should we be focusing our attention on him when there are others that are worse out there?"

"Highlight of Stolas' parties was butchering a new soul to Allocer's honor. He liked them recently damned; said they tasted fresher that way."

"So he'd be inclined to go straight for the source then. Guess we need to be doing some gatecrashing after all." Sam grimaced and carefully began to flip pages, looking for the entry on Stolas. "Cas, do we know for certain if Stolas is out?"

Castiel launched into a monologue on the possibilities of whether or not Stolas had been released from Hell and Sam listened closely, nodding even as he continued to scan the pages, scouring the Latin for anything that might help. He asked questions from time and again, expecting Dean to break into the conversation but apparently his brother had said his piece and was content to silently continue making rocksalt shells. It wasn't even five minutes before he crimped his final one and, without a word, stood and left the room.

Sam watched him go, but he wasn't surprised that Dean hadn't stayed around. If it hurt Sam to hear about those forty years, he couldn't imagine how much worse it must be for Dean to actually talk of them. He thought again of Ruby and the insider's knowledge she had brought to the table, that look into the enemy's den. He'd never considered it before, but Dean knew just as much.

He felt guilty for even thinking it, knowing as he did exactly how much Dean didn't want to go there. That practical part of him that could coolly assess any situation piped up about how much use Dean's forty years could be, as if Dean had been undercover instead of a prisoner of war, and Sam's stomach roiled at the concept, turning over on itself.

It said something about how desperate that they were that he could even consider it. Could even think about pressing Dean for information on what was literally the worst time in both their lives.

It said something else that he knew he'd wouldn't push Dean on it, no matter how much it might help. He might contemplate it, but he wouldn't put Dean through that, not after everything else he'd done. Or maybe it was just that he couldn't bear to hear it himself, couldn't stand to have the reminder shoved in his face how thoroughly he'd failed. Dean's time in Hell was very much a dual edged sword.

Some time later, Sam gave up on scanning tomes and stood. His back twinged at him when he stretched and a least three different vertebrae snapped with alarming crackling pops. Castiel was long gone, information both delivered and received, so apparently little reason to hang around. He was a lot looser and easier to deal with than he'd once been, but the encroaching demon armies had kept them all running and there wasn't much time for pure socialization.

He walked into the kitchen, rubbing at his stomach and vaguely wondering when the last time he'd eaten was. Grilled cheese. That's what he wanted - quick to make and few ingredients required.

He'd just flipped over the second of his sandwiches when he heard a schuffling noise behind him. Out of the corner of one eye, he watched his brother slump into a seat at the table, a bottle of beer held loosely in one hand. Sam didn't say anything, just reached for the bread and cheese again.

He poked the sandwich with a spatula, irritatedly wondering exactly how one was supposed to tell when it was fully toasted when you couldn't actually see it. It started to smoke and he managed to burn his thumb while yanking it off the heat, but when he finally plopped it onto a plate with the first, it was only a little bit burnt.

He could deal with it being slightly blackened. That just meant it was grilled cheese, Cajun style.

He dropped a pat of butter onto the skillet, then followed it with the third premade sandwich. The plate with the two (mostly) golden brown grilled cheeses he carried over to the table, sliding it in front of his brother without a word. Dean raised his eyebrows at him in response.

"Didn't say I was hungry," he groused, but Sam felt a surge of satisfaction anyway when a second later Dean reached for one and started eating.

The third sandwich turned out full on burnt, but the fourth was almost perfect. He took the second plate over and sat down across from Dean, immediately starting in on the more burnt one. The good one would be savored in a minute.

Dean polished off one of his and then toyed with half of the second.

"Thanks," he said after a moment.

"No problem." Sam replied quietly and took another bite. Definitely not his best effort, but at least he hadn't set the stovetop on fire. Not that he'd done that recently or anything. What happened when he was drunk didn't count.

He was so intent on his sandwich that Dean's words a minute later caught him by surprise.

"You can ask, you know." Dean said in a low voice. "I know you want to."

Sam's mouthful suddenly tasted like ash. He had to swallow twice and clear his throat before he could speak. "But you don't want to talk about it and I'm not gonna press."

Definitely a deja vu moment - he was certain they'd had this conversation before. By the wry twist to Dean's lips, he was thinking similar. He dropped his sandwich and pushed the plate away, looking faux casually out the kitchen window.

"I can't just talk about it, but if you ask me-" Dean trailed off for a moment. 'Been there, done that, dealt with the catastrophic results' he didn't say, but some things weren't necessary to actually speak aloud. "I mean it. You can ask."

He jerkily reached for his beer again and downed the remainder. Sam looked at him through his lashes and sucked at his lower lip. Finally, he nodded.

"Maybe later," Sam said and offered what he hoped was an encouraging smile. "But not right now."

He reached over the table and nudged the plate back closer to his brother. Dean still looked perturbed, but there was a slight relaxation to his shoulders that made Sam think he'd made the right decision.

He probably would ask, eventually. It was forty years, after all. An entire lifetime. More than just the pure information that could be gathered, there had to be things that had happened - beyond the torture and torment - moments in his brother's life that were important. That Sam should know about, no matter how much it hurt that he couldn't make any changes to them now.

That would be for the future though. In the meantime, Sam finished one sandwich and reached for the second. Dean stood a couple of minutes later but didn't leave, just went to the fridge and fished out another couple of beers. He plunked one down for Sam, than notched his own against the table to pop the cap. He didn't reach for his plate again and Sam didn't go for his beer, but the thought was enough.

He ate his second sandwich and Dean drank his second beer and the thought was plenty.

Woohoo!

2009-08-14T18:10:14Z

[Fic] To His Grim Idol

2009-08-10T22:37:19Z

Title: To His Grim Idol
Genre: Hurt/comfort (entirely the aftermath) with protective!hurt!Sam and bitchy!hurt!Dean, extra emphasis on the hurt!Dean. Set roughly in S2.
Pairings or Characters: Dean and Sam, Sam's POV, gen
Length: 4750 words, complete
Warnings: Salty language, semi-graphic description of the effects of torture, mention of possible unconfirmed offscreen non-con
Summary: Following a week of captivity in the hands of a 3,000 year old cult, Sam and Dean manage to get to a motel room. Sam tries to patch his brother up, much to Dean's extreme displeasure.
Author's notes: A thousand thank yous to my betas! traciaknows, lapillus, and particularly muffaletta, who was awesome enough to go through line by line to let me know what worked, what didn't, and what desperately needed to be changed. You guys rock! Originally posted here in response to a prompt on the spnkink_meme community but the story itself is very much gen.

"And they built the high places of the Ba‘al, which are in the valley of Ben-hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire l'Molech; which I did not command them, nor did it come into my mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin." -- Jeremiah 32:35

"I swear to God, Sam, if you don't get your hand the fuck off me, I will end you."

Sam winced and pulled back obediently. His brother glared at him a moment longer, a flash of irritation that might have looked more impressive without the matching pair of black eyes. When Sam didn't reach forward to try and help again, Dean snorted and turned away.

Sam watched him go. Dean weaved a little bit on the journey from the Impala to the motel room door, footsteps heavy and awkward around the limp, but he didn't once stumble. At least Dean hadn't tried to get the bags. He might be in general denial over his current physical condition, but Sam didn't even want to consider what would have happened if Dean had attempted to carry his usual share of their baggage and then collapsed on the way to their room.

Instead, Sam popped the trunk and hauled out both of their duffels, one for each shoulder, and then snagged his laptop bag for good measure. He wasn't about to go looking for a case; Dean wasn't up for it and Sam couldn't handle it, not just yet, but there were other things to research.

Dean didn't need to be hunting. Not yet, at any rate. Sam knew down to the marrow in his bones that Dean needed to recuperate and recover and for that they'd needed a place to stay. One place, not a bevvy of motel rooms after motel rooms. There was even past precedence; Dad had occasionally shelled out for actual apartments when they were kids, if there had been reason for it. And in Dean's case, there was reason aplenty.

He slammed the trunk closed and made his way towards the motel. It said something about how slowly his brother was moving because Sam managed to get their bags and make it over before Dean had even finished inserting the key into the lock.

Sam had to force himself to wait it out when it became apparent that even opening the door was causing his brother trouble. It was hard; it was already past midnight and Dean needed to be in a bed already. Before they could even get that far, Sam wanted to check on Dean's bandages and make sure that none of them had unraveled or bled through on the last three hour trek of the journey.

Which might be easier said than done. Dean had made his opinion on the matter of receiving assistance abundantly clear. If Sam wanted a ghost of a chance of checking on Dean's injuries himself rather than having his brother take off to the bathroom to lick his wounds in private, he needed to give him this much space.

Dean's hands trembled, making the key jerk in the lock, and Sam could feel the tension radiating off of his brother's form increase as the seconds ticked by. Casually, he leaned against the wall and looked away. He could almost see Dean eying him, suspicious, but Sam schooled his face into an expression of perfect neutrality and did his best to ignore the hostile figure beside him.

He couldn't hold back a slight sigh of relief when the lock finally clicked open. Next motel, he would make sure they had those modern key cards. Click and swipe, no need to worry about a sticky lock, nor his brother's prickly pride.

Dean made it in and Sam followed, fumbling to lock and bolt the door before tossing his bag on the bed nearest to him, silently laying claim to it. The other was dropped on the floor.

Dean raised eyebrow at that. Dean almost always took the bed closest to the door, but even though Sam knew it might start something he had no intention of finishing, he couldn't let Dean take point. Dean could take it back later on, if he wanted to. For now though, it was important. Sam could stand guard. Almost had to, just like he had to breathe.

Tonight, he needed to be between his brother and the rest of the world.

"Whatever." Dean mumbled and jerked his gaze away. He twisted and began to hobble towards the back of the room. "Bring me over the first aid kit, wouldya? And then why don't you go and find us something to eat?"

"Dean." Sam said irritably. He could almost feel himself pulling a face which made him feel all of two years old, but he ached and his patience had already been tried by the hours long car ride. "I'm not leaving you to go get food. Let me take a look at it."

Dean stiffened and inwardly Sam winced again. Okay, perhaps that hadn't been the best tone to take, but dammit, he was tired and although Dean had been the more fully battered between the two of them, Sam hadn't exactly gotten off lightly himself.

"I don't need your help on this, little brother." Dean's voice could have cut glass.

"No, but you're getting it anyway." Sam closed his eyes hard for a moment. At some point, he was going to learn to keep his foot out of his mouth. Twenty three years old and he still hadn't quite mastered the art of handling his brother when he was in pain.

When he opened them, Dean was watching him with a blank expression. Not a good sign. He'd looked like that before, when the cultists had come for them and it had become obvious that there was no getting out of it. Not the first time, when he'd been full of angry bluster and posturing, nor the second, when he'd moved instead onto full on insults of parentage and anatomically unlikely things that they could do with themselves. It was the look that he'd taken on more often towards the end, refusing to show any weakness, gathering his reserves.

"Fuck you, Sam." Dean said evenly. "I'll get it myself. Go find us some food."

Sam's heart sank, but he still had a card left to play.

"I just meant," he said hesitantly, "that we could check each other out. I can't get to that one on my back. Let me look you over and you can get me right afterward."

Dean didn't speak for a moment, but something in his expression cracked a touch. Sam followed it up with his trump card, the one that had worked each time when they were kids.

"I need to make sure you're okay, Dean." It was cheating and he knew it, but that didn't stop him from begging with his eyes. "I need to see it for myself."

Dean's gaze cut away and his face twisted into a scowl. It was obvious that he knew Sam was playing him, but it still felt like a weight lifted off Sam's shoulders when he shrugged jerkily, spat another "whatever" and limped on to the bathroom, leaving the door open behind him.

It didn't take long to find the first aid kit, though of course it had managed to work itself to the bottom of Sam's bag which meant scattering clothing across the bed. He didn't bother to straighten any of it back up, just found what he needed and made his way into the bathroom.

Dean was leaning over the sink when he got there, splashing water on his face. He didn't bother to look up at Sam when he came in, but that was just as well. He'd managed to shrug out of his shirt and what it revealed caused Sam's stomach to knot itself together, tight and hot.

There was a mottled mass of bruises covering his brother's skin, a map etching out days worth of pain. Sam had to suck in a deep breath at the sight and he'd been there when most of those had been delivered. Had been bound to the opposite wall, gagged into silence and forced to watch as the men of the Cult of Divine Moloch had worked his brother over to "purify" him. The cultists were working off of ancient texts stating that Moloch demanded the sacrifice of children by "passing them through the fire" but some bright individual somewhere down the line had had the brilliant idea of using scapegoats instead. Dean had just had the misfortune of being the latest lucky person selected for the "honor".

No doubt they would have done the same with Sam given enough time. They'd started to prepare him, as Sam's recently relocated shoulder and newly loosened molars could attest to. They'd just paid more attention to Dean, something Dean had done his damnedest to ensure remained the status quo. With Sam silenced and bound, there hadn't been much he could do to prevent anything.

What made the clusterfuck complete was that the bruises were far from the worst of it. Moloch was a fire god and they both sported burns as a result. Those had happened in private and out of everything that had happened, the times when they'd pulled Dean away had been the harshest, the ones where Sam had most wanted to scream. Minutes on minutes of sitting alone in the dark, waiting, straining for a sound to try and figure out what was happening, uncertain whether they'd be bringing Dean back at all, followed by the sharp, sick sense of relief when they'd dropped his brother back in place, the sick scent of cooked meat perfuming the air.

It was the same awful stench that had lingered on his own skin even after the burns faded from agonizing to mere angry throbbing.

Those were wounds he was most interested in. The ones he knew he had to trace out and find, that had to be treated. He was also pretty sure that they were the ones Dean would be most likely to try and hide away. He knew that Dean had hated Sam watching when the men had hurt him, the same as it had wrenched Sam apart to hear his brother's futile, enraged threats on the occasions when their focus had turned to him instead. The difference was that Dean hoarded his wounds like a miser with his gold, had even when they were kids.

"You going to stand there looking all day?" Dean asked idly. "Because I know I'm pretty and all, but if you're checking me out, Sammy, then I think we need to have a long-"

Sam interrupted him before he could go much further. "I got the kit."

Dean glanced up at him through the reflection on the mirror. In the light of the motel, the bruising on his face made his eyes practically glow bright green in stark contrast to the purple and black of his skin.

"Fine, but you're still going for food so do whatever you need to in order to stop acting like such a freaking girl and get moving."

Sam snorted but didn't bother to reply to the insult, nor the thought that he'd be leaving Dean alone any time soon. Assuming that either of them were still on their feet when they'd finished patching each other up, they'd be ordering delivery courtesy of a stolen card.

Instead he slapped the kit down on the counter, opened it up, and fished through it to find the gauze and antibiotic burn ointment. Last of all, he went for the pain pills: a half full prescription bottle of Vicodin, courtesy of their last ER visit.

He tipped two of the pills out into one hand, then thrust them at his brother. Dean stared at him in annoyance for several seconds, then huffed and finally reached out for them with an exaggerated roll of his eyes.

"You're a pushy little bitch," Dean complained but either he was too tired himself to belabor the point or the pain had worn down his resistance because he didn't protest the necessity. Sam watched carefully to be sure that Dean didn't try to palm either of the pills and felt a surge of satisfaction when they went down without issue.

"Where are they?" Sam asked in lieu of responding, turning to cock one hip against the counter and stare down at his brother. Dean fiddled with the faucet for a moment and Sam could sense his unease.

"Where's what?" Dean returned eventually, shoulders tightening back up again.

Sam didn't even bother to pull his look. Dean had agreed to allow (or been guilt-tripped into allowing, same difference) Sam to take care of his wounds. That meant all of them. He'd obviously intended that Sam would get caught up fussing over his back, which really was just bruising as nasty as they looked, and therefore wouldn't be concerned with anything else he might be hiding.

It would have worked, in the days before Sam had left for Stanford. He'd have taken Dean at his word that, no really, this was the worst of it and so Sam shouldn't worry about him. Things had changed though. Sam wasn't so innocent any longer.

It didn't help that this time Sam had actually been there, had watched with futile rage as those men had purposefully hurt his brother time and again. That changed everything. He'd hold Dean down and strip him naked himself if it meant ensuring that Dean wouldn't be able to hide anything from him now.

There was no point in trying to express this though. At best, Dean wouldn't believe him or wouldn't understand. At worst, he'd get his back riled up again and try to storm out and Sam really would have to force the issue.

"They burned me too," he offered, voice carefully low and without heat. "And I could smell it on you, when they brought you back sometimes."

Dean's eyes fell shut, dark lashes still wet and clumped together from the water. He frowned, looking decidedly displeased, but he was standing down again. It was like a game of tug of war, trying to pull his brother in where Sam could take care of him for once, with Dean pulling against him every step of the way, never certain which words would make Dean dig in his heels and which would allow him to yank him in an inch or two closer.

Finally, Dean cracked an eye open and turned to look at him. For the first time that evening, hell in days, the defiance in his visage was completely gone. In its place was a bone deep look of exhaustion.

"If I let you do this," he said quietly, "I don't want to hear a single word about it. Not one. We clear?"

Sam nodded. There wasn't really much of a choice and anyway, he'd broken promises to Dean before. If he had to, for Dean's sake, he'd do it again.

"Fine." Dean exhaled slowly, then his expression firmed. "But you're going first."

"Dean!" Sam protested immediately. "No, you're the one who-"

Dean interrupted him again, a mulish expression back on his face. "Once we're done with me, I'm gonna be wiped, Sam. You're going first."

Sam opened his mouth again, ready to argue in earnest, but Dean didn't look inclined to back down. Debating it wasn't helping matters. The burns on his back were generally superficial and a quick going over with ointment should serve most of them fine. And maybe Dean needed to touch and reassure himself of his brother's survival as much as Sam himself did.

It actually hurt to capitulate, a gnawing pang deep in his chest, then it really hurt like a sonavabitch when he pulled his shirt over his head. Dean commanded him to lean forward against the counter and started his exam with practiced hands the moment Sam had done so. The ointment he slathered on was unpleasantly cool and probably a couple of days too late to really do much good. Sam would be taking his fair share of scars away from this little adventure, no matter what efforts Dean made to patch him up now.

He had to shift on his feet a couple of times to keep his balance. Their captors might have given more of their attention to Dean, but they hadn't exactly treated Sam like a guest of honor either. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd eaten. Fasting, apparently, was just one more way to be purified.

Dean worked quickly and silently, cleaning and then treating each of the burns. Sam couldn't help hissing in pain occasionally; it wasn't the worst he'd ever hurt, not by far, but it felt like Dean's efforts were causing his body to recognize that they were finally someplace safe and it took that as license to start complaining.

It wasn't just the burns, though they were currently the loudest injury to deal with. Sam's shoulders began to twinge, particularly the right one because his life sucked enough that his dominant arm was the one that had been disabled. His ribs didn't hesitate to get in on the action either, the pressure from leaning forward enough to remind him of the crack to his chest he'd taken when they'd first been captured. He was tired and aching and he just wanted Dean to be done already so that he could help his brother and then the both of them could crash, long and hard. Preferably for a week.

Sam counted the burns as Dean attended each one, seven in total, one for each day they'd been held captive. In Sam's case, the burns had been smooth lines of various lengths, starting small at the top and growing longer and thicker with each passing day. The largest was at least an inch thick, perhaps seven or eight inches in length. It had been the fifth one branded into him, a searing block pressed against his skin while the cult members had held him down, ignoring his jerking and cursing.

He was pretty sure that there would have been a few more to go in order to complete the design, but they'd taken their leave before that was an option. The smallest one at the top didn't even hurt anymore and all of them had been generally thin, made by tools that were designed, one of the cultists had graciously explained at one point, to be visible without scarring too thickly or hindering mobility.

Sam hadn't had the chance to ask why it was important that his scars be for the sake of ornamentation or why limited movement might be an issue. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

It seemed to take forever before Dean finally pulled away. He was fairly sure his brother had lingered over the last one on purpose, reluctant, perhaps, to take his turn for medical treatment. Still, Sam was grateful when it was done. The sting of the worst burns was still there, muted and irritable on his skin, but he could ignore it. Had ignored it, in fact, for the last several days. He could make it another half hour or so to patch Dean up before taking some heavy duty painkillers of his own and finding his bed.

Sam couldn't hold in a groan as he straightened, muscles twanging in protest at the movement. He peered at Dean blearily, then held out his hand for the ointment. Dean wavered for a moment before dropping it into Sam's hand with a solid thunk.

"Your turn." Sam reminded him when Dean looked longingly at the door. Dean swung his gaze back over.

"Not a damn word." He reminded Sam in a mutinous voice, then leaned up against the edge of the counter. Laboriously, Dean moved his hands to his fly and unbuttoned. His jeans didn't slide off easily, sticking to something on his right hip and Dean's face actually went white as he pulled the fabric away.

Sam swallowed hard; there was a patch on the side Dean's boxers that was wet and glistening, stuck firmly to his skin and bunching up over what had to be a bandage of some sort.

"Guess it soaked through." Dean said thinly. He leaned back against the sink and didn't resist when Sam moved in closer, fingers brushing against cloth. Sam peered up at his brother questioningly, and Dean nodded. "Just do it."

He grunted when Sam began to gently shift the damp fabric away. Blood streaked plasma coated his fingers as he worked and Dean's knuckles curled white against the counter's edge. He edged the waistband down, getting at the wet, thick gauze beneath it. Dean must have slapped it on soon after their escape, or maybe it had even been done by their captors in an effort to keep their sacrifice alive until the moon was in the right position or the equinox was reached or whatever the hell it had been that they'd been waiting for.

The edges of the bandage peeled away smoothly, but Dean made a tight noise in the back of his throat when Sam actually began to remove it from the wound itself. Sam flinched at the sound but grimly kept going. Not one word, just as commanded.

His vow of silence didn't stop nausea from rising up when he actually managed to see what was underneath. The bandage had been hiding what looked like a poorly cauterized drawing, dug into the top of his brother's right hip. It oozed blood and clear fluid, large enough that Sam could make out the details of the eyes and nose and horns. Moloch stared up at him from Dean's skin and Sam wanted, in that instant, nothing more than to track down every last one of the sons of bitches who had done this and burn them all.

"Sam," Dean's voice brought Sam back to himself. "You going to get on with it already? I can still do this myself, you know."

His voice was probably as authoritative as he could make it, but Sam noticed that he wasn't reaching for the first aid kit. Wasn't even pulling away.

"I got it," Sam replied in as level a voice as he could manage and went to work.

It would have been easier if Dean could have bent his pride enough to lay down for the process, but Sam knew better than to suggest it. Instead he carefully rinsed the wound with holy water, catching the bloody trickle underneath with a clean towel pressed lightly against Dean's thigh. It didn't need to be stitched; it looked like the bastards had first sliced the design in, then had gone over it again with a hot knife, sealing the wound. It probably wouldn't have bled at all if they hadn't been forced to run on their escape. That Dean had been able to at all was nothing sort of miraculous. Sam didn't even want to contemplate how much that must have hurt.

"This the only one?" He asked hoarsely.

"Yeah," Dean's voice said from above him. "Fuckers-" He cut off for a moment gasping as Sam began to apply the ointment to the outer edges. "Fuckers kept going back to the same place."

Sam nodded but didn't trust himself to speak again, turning his full attention to the job at hand. He had to go for the tweezers eventually to fish out the bits of fabric that had been ground down into the deepest parts of the burn. The movement caused the skin to crack again and Sam flinched at the sight before hurriedly moving on.

By the time that he was done, Dean's face had turned grey under the bruising and he was swaying on his feet. The drugs had obviously cut in and Dean didn't complain when Sam began to shepherd him back towards the bed.

He propped his brother up against the wall, turned the sheets back, ignoring the hands that batted at him and the low grumbling complaints to help Dean into bed. If he had been any less exhausted, he might have felt a twinge of discomfort when he worked Dean's boxers all the way off, but he was too damned tired to give a fuck just then and they were wet with blood and fluids. He didn't want Dean sleeping in them.

Sam turned the covers back up, hiding his brother's nakedness. It only took a minute to stumble back over towards his own bed and kick off his jeans, though a sudden bout of clumsiness made him nearly fall over as he tried to toe his boots off. He sprawled out on top of the covers, not even wanting to spend the energy necessary to get underneath them and fuck the clothing that was still scattered about. The sheets would only stick to his back anyway. Better to leave the burn stripes on his back exposed to the air.

Sam was already drifting off, more than halfway asleep when Dean's spoke again.

"Sam..." He didn't sound quite right. A bit fuzzy, maybe thanks to the Vicodin. "That's all they did when they took you back, right? Those burns?"

Sam groaned aloud, not even wanting to think about it.

"Yeah," he mumbled into his pillow. "Just held me down and did them."

"Oh." Dean said and was that a hint of relief in his voice?

Sam forced his eyes back open again and pushed himself up on his elbows, ignoring the ripple of pain that ran through his back at the movement. He peered muzzily over at the other bed.

Dean was lying on his side, facing away from Sam out of necessity thanks to the burn on his hip and the bruises on his back. It meant that he couldn't see his brother's face and right at that moment, Sam really wanted to know Dean's expression.

"Why?" Sam asked slowly. "Did they do anything else to you?"

Dean had said that there was only the one burn and Sam had believed him. But Sam had only asked about other burns, not other injuries, and Dean was a master at not bringing up things he didn't feel to be pertinent information.

"You don't think that was enough?" Dean said around a yawn. "Go to sleep, Sammy. You're buying breakfast tomorrow."

It was enough. It had to be enough. Sam cautiously leaned back down again but the earlier comfort he'd had had vanished. Dean's words had sparked a new wave of suspicion in him and with it a new, fiercer rise of protectiveness that was just as energizing as being drenched by a bucket of ice water.

Lying in the dark, watching his brother's still form, he tried to piece it together. Dean had sounded normal, or as close to it as he ever got, anyway. He tried to think back to what Dean had acted like when they'd dragged him back into their mutual cell but there wasn't anything that he could remember that had been truly out of the ordinary. Not more than being kidnapped and tortured by a 3,000 year old cult with a hard on for purification rituals at any rate.

The fact that he could add qualifiers like that was somewhat less than comforting.

A few feet away, Dean's breathing evened out into slumber and Sam turned his head to watch his brother's now silent form. If there had been something else, Sam would just have to ferret it out. Dean sucked at keeping secrets, especially when Sam was on to him.

He'd find out the truth. And if necessary, they'd go back after Dean had healed up enough and finish the job they'd started when they'd shot their way out. The ritual had been interrupted and several of the priests had been killed in the process. At the time, that was all that had seemed important - stopping an ancient god from rising and getting out of dodge. In retrospect though, Sam was fairly certain that a few of them had survived. They could be found, if the situation warranted it. If necessary, there were a handful remaining that justice could be meted out on.

In the meantime, he'd keep watch over his brother.

SPNfic: Flattery On This Icy Slope

2009-08-04T18:40:26Z

Title: Flattery On This Icy Slope
Pairings or Characters: Dean's POV. Mild Alistair/Dean but nothing explicit.
Length: ~970 words
Warnings: Hell. Dark themes are a given.
Summary: It's a special day. Alistair decides to celebrate.
Notes: Title taken from Dante's Inferno.

"I've got a present for you, Dean." Alistair's voice crones into his ear. He pools against Dean, shadow slick and cool, arms twining around Dean's chest and tugging him back slightly into the embrace.

Dean doesn't answer. He lets his hand fall in response and the soul quivering in front of him makes an aborted sound of relief as its screams die into whimpering, pathetic little sobs. Dean watches it dispassionately, taking in the rent skin and hitching noises coming from what was left of its throat.

"You know how I hate to interrupt your work," Alistair continues breezily, "but I did think you'd enjoy this."

The spirit flesh is already starting to knit back together again, but he thinks he'll get more of a response if he focuses more on the tendons rather than the muscles when he got back to it. Tiny cuts, like Alistair had shown him so many, many times, enough to strain without snapping, weaken without breaking.

"After all, it is a special day." There's a hint of amusement to Alistair's tone and Dean can't help but to glance upwards at it. He can feel the rush of satisfaction the demon has at being able to provoke a response. That he'd visibly reacted causes something deep inside of him to squirm, but it's too deeply ingrained in him at this point. There have been too many years where Alistair's glee had meant something new and dire for Dean.

There's a flash of silver in front of him and Dean knows his face doesn't change expression, but he can't help the slight flinch at the glint so close to his face. Behind him, Alistair's mood falls full on into smug.

It's a knife. A pretty, shining blade stretches out from a pale handle, ivory and silver coated umber and gold by the light. The blade of it looks wickedly sharp and Dean thinks he could etch his name into bone with something like that.

"It's for you," the demon purrs contently. "It's your anniversary, after all. One year today. I thought we should celebrate."

There are things carved onto the blade. Glyphs that squirm in the firelight, making his eyes ache. If he were still human, still pure, a glimpse probably would have blinded him.

But he's not human. And it's a damned fine blade.

Dean lets the one he'd been holding drop. It sizzles out of existence before it strikes the ground. He reaches instead for this new toy and finds the bone handle warm to the touch, the feel of it melting into his skin, almost melding with him. The sensation creeps up his arm, then into his chest, spreading out even beyond that until his core is practically vibrating with it.

Alistair hums, pleased, and Dean turns his attention back to the soul on the rack. Its gaping, eyeless face had already been partially melted away, the skin of its cheeks ripped open to show the rotting teeth within. That part hadn’t started to heal back up yet, being less crucial than the entrails currently puddled around their feet that were now slowly starting to slick their way back in place.

There are a remarkable amount of nerve endings in the jaw. It was just another thing to consider.

"You're not going to say 'thank you'?" Alistair didn't pout. He was never anywhere near so coy, not even at the beginning when he'd seen Dean's defiance as the best possible of games, back when Dean had been clueless and stupid and had thought he had known what pain was.

There’s a lingering tease in his voice though, a nasty promise that's still chilling. Dean wasn't on the rack anymore, but that didn't mean that he couldn't suffer. Alistair had been keen to disabuse him of that notion early on.

Dean gently edges the blade of the knife along the remaining skin of the soul's throat, trails it down slowly to let it feel the difference in tools. It couldn't see, but it sensed the upgrade readily enough. It began to babble at him in some language whose words Dean didn't understand, but then souls communicating directly with other souls tended to not need the middleman. The meaning of its pleas came across quite clearly.

Alistair's gaze focuses avidly as Dean makes his first incision. It took a moment for the blood to flow, rich and salty smelling over the sulfur. He didn't seem particularly disappointed by Dean's lack of verbalization. It couldn't have exactly came as a surprise; Dean didn't speak much these days.

Alistair had only ever wanted one word from him, anyway. Any others were just vapid amusements. Now that Dean had given him what he wanted, there really wasn't much point in talking.

There’s a flicker of wet heat along the slope of Dean's shoulder and a moment later heated breath brushes across his face. Dean stills his hand momentarily.

"Oh, keep going," the demon says fondly, "I'm sure you'll properly be able to express some form of gratitude eventually."

He roils his hips against Dean's back and the nip of teeth in the meat of Dean's flesh, sharp and piercing, follows a moment later. Dean swallows again and shoves the sensation away.

He'd had a year to get used to how things were now. How they were going to be for the rest of eternity. Thirty one years in total, but the first three decades didn't count. Alistair's clawed hand creeps down across his belly, stroking to find all the parts that still felt achingly vulnerable and exposed, even after so long without attack and Dean could sense the demon's excitement growing, lustful and heated.

He does his best to ignore it. When he reaches out his hand again, his new present gleaming, it doesn't even shake much at all.

So, British candy. Who knew?

2009-07-22T05:30:08Z

My local grocery has recently started to stock British candy, which is just kinda nifty. They've had some Arabic and Mexican varieties for a while and British digestives in three different flavors, but no British candy. Seeing them tonight, I had to purchase a sampling and try them out.

So, Smarties. Not just pressed bits of talcum powder and vaguely sour artificial flavor, apparently. No, instead they're chocolate covered with sugar coating and the best part is that there's no artificial colors or flavors involved. Seriously, not a one! They're colored with lemons and black carrots and radishes which can lead to interesting moments where the candy coating has a flavor that this American is not at all used to associating with chocolate. The lemon was particularly strong, but I kind of liked the hibiscus.

They also had a few other sorts that seemed interesting, but seriously, what's up with that "No Girls Allowed" one? And is that tied in somehow to the Smarties' "Girls Aloud" message on the inside of the cap?

I got a few other sorts as well, but so far have tried just the one. Publix apparently now also stocks Turkish Delight, but I've never trusted that much. Anything that's the official candy of the White Witch is probably a bit dodgy. I'm just saying.

This pointless post is brought to you by the Committee Of Folks Who Want You To Know That I Am Not Dead. Which is probably a random and stupid name for a committee, but what can you do. Also, I'm still writing and hopefully should have something new posted soon, but if anyone felt like tossing some ideas around, I'd be almost pathetically grateful. :)

General Sam meta and thoughts on S4

2009-05-27T19:48:08Z

So I think I need to rewatch S4. As in, all of it. From Lazarus to Lucifer and yes, that unfortunately includes Yellow Fever and ASS and CAIADB. There are just so many interesting themes and nuances that keep getting brought up and even each of the MOTW throwaway episodes does something to refer to the overall mytharc in some way or another, that it sort of necessitates a second run through.

I mean, just look at 4x04 for one example. It's practically Sam's entire seasonal arc right in a nutshell: Dean tries to kill Ruby, Sam saves her life, there's a confrontation about what Sam's been up to and what he's been lying about, punches are thrown and Dean almost leaves, the concept of Sam becoming a monster is brought up for the first time in the season, and so on. There's literally nothing that goes to waste in that episode; each thematic element brought up is a reference to a major overall part of the arc for S4 as a whole, especially in regards to Sam's story.

And then there's the character of Jack. Jack, the regular Joe with his wife and his nine to five job who happens to have something dark in his blood, something that causes him to turn into a creature not quite human. Jack tries to resist it, but Random Old Hunter Dude Who Isn't Bobby triggers him into actually becoming a monster, whereupon he eats ROHDWIB and goes practically orgasmic over the taste of Dean's blood. Jack, like Sam, is able to resist any temptation to become something other than human until an outside agent tips him over the edge. In both cases, it was their own choice to fall, but it can certainly be argued that they would have stood a far better chance of not doing so had ROHDWIB and Ruby/Zachariah not given their respective nudges.

Jack was a human who just wants to keep his normal life but is instead forced to become a blood drinking creature of darkness and rage and violence. It's the thought of his wife's murder that was the final straw for Jack, provoking his transformation and even learning that she's actually alive isn't enough to stop him from sliding further down that path. There's no longer any call for revenge, but Jack can't help himself and winds up doing some truly horrific things. Huh. Sound familiar, perhaps?

And that's just 4x04.

It's interesting to me, how very much of Sam's story we see in retrospect and how very little of it is directly displayed by Sam himself. I'm sure this was deliberately done and I rather like it, the more I think about it. I mean, ALL of the MOTW episodes have some sort of lesson wrapped up in them, and in almost all of those episodes, the "lesson" is related to Sam, not Dean.

MoTW episodes were 4x04, 4x05, 4x06, 4x08, 4x11, 4x12, 4x14 and 4x19. Of these, the Sam lesson episodes are 4x04 (Jack), 4x06 (we learn a lot about Dean's fears here, but Sam's behavior is of far greater interest to me especially in what he's become not only willing to do, but also with what no longer sees an issue with), 4x08 (be careful what you wish for and there are no easy solutions), 4x12 (death or brotherhood, but you can't have both), 4x13 (practically the Sam ep of the season and a grim lesson in how the road to Hell is paved with good intentions), 4x14 (oh, issues abound here), and 4x19 (family is all you can count on, but don't hesitate to use your kid brother as bait if necessary). I mean, the only Dean!centric MOTW episodes really are 4x05 and 4x11. You might could argue for 4x02 and 4x17 as well, but I'd file those under mytharc episodes because they involve the angels and the Seals. And true, we learn a lot about Dean during some of those other MOTW eps, to be certain.

I mean, we see Dean regain his memories of Hell in Yellow Fever and certainly a few of his issues are brought up in Sex & Violence and Jump the Shark, but I'd argue the "lessons", such as they were, applied far more strongly to Sam than it does Dean in both those cases. The overall theme of 4x14 is how you can love someone but no longer know them and be miserable in their company (as related to Sam by Dr. Hot Lady) and in 4x19 it's a tie between revenge leading you to do terrible things (again - common theme this season) and highlighting the (not very positively spun) concept of Sam as John 2.0, with the idea that you can't have a normal life and be a hunter and that family comes above all - except again for when you need to use your unexperienced kid brother as bait.

Dean's story is very much told up front, typically during the mytharc eps and in contrast Sam's story is hidden and cloaked. We see it in glimpses of other characters and in flashbacks, but rarely from Sam's own perspective. It's an interesting choice to make in terms of storytelling, but IMHO it's a very sophisticated one. Certainly there was nothing so subtly done in S1-S3.

I think this ties in perfectly with the repeated concept of Sam lying to himself. Over and over again we hear characters call Sam out on this, but Sam persists on hiding both what he's doing as well as his true motivations, both from others and from himself. Sam's theme this season has been one of deception and the dangers therein, for Sam alone and for those around him. I sort of love that his true motivations are so hidden away that we don't even get to see them from Sam himself, but that they have to come from third parties.

Not all of Sam's story is like that, of course. Some of it is very much out in the open and one of those themes that most interests me is Sam's general growing sense of apathy with humanity as a whole. We move from the Sam who was so desperate to save Jackin 4x04 to the 4x15!Sam, who lied with a straight face to the dead boy Cole in order to manipulate him into helping them and who honestly believed that the rules for the rest of mankind no longer apply to him (or Dean). The sheer contrast there is just startling. At the very start of the season, we have a Sam who talks about how saving people feels good and in the very end, he's willing to kill a woman who is begging and pleading for her life. That's a drastic change and it happens over the course of a mere eight months.

I think Jack and his failure to overcome his "true" nature was a huge turning point in Sam's mind. It had to be a slap in the face, given how stubbornly Sam pinned his hopes on the man and how dangerous he became when he fell. Go figure, that episode also has one of the very few moments of protective!Sam we get this season: Jack threatened Dean's life, and from that second on, Sam was willing to kill him. We get a very opoen moment of concern on Sam's part when he's locked in the closet; he looks panicked over the thought of what Jack could have done (this interestingly also on top of panic Sam displays at the concept of Dean leaving him earlier in the episode). Dean was knocked out and bleeding, sure, but he was not in immediate mortal danger when Sam set Jack ablaze. I wonder if that moment also had something to do with Sam's increased distance from Dean as the season progressed.

Or then again, maybe not. Or perhaps it's not that simple. It wasn't really until after ITGPSW that Sam became a bit more spiteful about Dean, a bit more willing to perceive his brother as "weak" and somehow reduced from his pre-Hell self. This was also the episode when Uriel broke the news about how Dean actually does remember Hell and that Dean had been lying about it. It had to hurt, the thought that Dean either didn't trust Sam enough to open up about it or couldn't talk about it, for whatever reason. I'll bet you though that he looked back on the bit where Sam had to save Dean in 4x04 and again in Monster Movie and Yellow Fever in a different mindset then he had when the events actually took place. And maybe that has a bit to do with Sam's dispassionate response in Yellow Fever as well - three times in as many episodes he had to save Dean's ass. It had to be feeling a bit overdone by that point.

Which, okay, still doesn't explain why Bobby was such an ass in YF, but still. Something to think about.

All of which is a lot of Sam thoughts from someone who is very much a Dean!girl, but what can you do? Dean's absolutely my favorite Winchester, partially because his logic typically makes such sense to me. I can follow each step he takes because it's often what I'd do myself. OTOH, trying to suss out what Sam was thinking and when is a a much more difficult exercise. Thankfully, I enjoy puzzles.

Well, there's that and also reading the beautiful Sam-centric story Wind Shear by the ever talented samidha, which is just a gloriously dark and gritty look into Sam's mind during the summer that Dean was dead. It very much makes me have thinky thoughts. Highly recommended, if you've not read it already.

So yeah, I think I am going to have to rewatch all of these episodes, if for no other reason than so that I can get properly into Sam's head space so I can write the follow up to Wisdom to the Mighty, Succour to the Brave. Even if it means rewatching Yellow Fever.

God give me strength.

For The Grace (John, Dean) Gen PG-13

2009-05-25T19:06:29Z

Title: For The Grace (1/2)
Rating: PG-13
Genre and/or Pairing: Gen. John, Dean (mentions of Sam)
Spoilers: Stanford era, no major spoilers
Word Count: ~4600
Warnings: Some language
Summary: Sam's gone and John receives a harsh lesson in listening to what isn't said when Dean gets hurt on a hunt.

Notes: Written for the perfectly awesome SPN H/C meme last month for a prompt requesting hurt!Dean and worried!John while Sam was at college.

Dean went quiet whenever he was hurt. Really quiet. But in John's defense, he also went quiet when he was worried, or upset, or thinking too much, or dreaming of some girl or some car or some gun that he couldn't have or couldn't keep. For all that he could be a mouthy kid when he felt like it, Dean went quiet a lot.

Sam in turn complained - loudly - when he was hurt or sick or was dreaming of some girl or some car or some school project that had to be left behind, but he'd always been the one to notice that Dean wasn't saying much and to pull him back out of whatever funk he'd embroiled himself in.

And John? John didn't get loud or quiet, either one. John got pissed off. It was a character flaw. He wasn't stupid, he knew anger could blind him to everything but his target and what had helped him survive in Vietnam had damn near driven Mary crazy. He knew it wasn't healthy for either of his boys. It probably (definitely) had a large part to do with why Sam had run away.

But the long and short of it was that it was easy to cotton on to things after the fact and almost impossible, especially with Sam gone, to notice them ahead of time. And also in John's defense, he'd raised a hell of a strong son, or Dean had raised himself that way more rather because John couldn't look back and think of enough things he'd done right to ensure that Dean turned out the way he had.

Dean shook off things that would have dropped other men. He walked on broken limbs or cracked ribs, he'd scowled but played off a bout of bronchitis as a mere summer cold that John still wouldn't have found the truth of if Sam hadn't been caught shoplifting Vick's Vapo-Rub and antibiotics. John had seen Dean be burnt or slashed and have the wounds clean up pretty as you please, barely leaving a whisper of a scar behind to mark their existence. His son had fired guns and loaded shot shells while bleeding, had taken down a werewolf once while concussed. Dean wasn't weak and he didn't complain. Not to John, anyway. He'd bitched to Sam when things weren't serious, but John suspected that was because it made Sam feel better more than anything else.

And anyway, Dean hadn't exactly been saying much of anything since Sam had left, three months back. Not that John had particularly been in the mood for conversation and he knew, he knew, that his own attitude had been a bitch to deal with. He knew he'd been more surly than usual, snapping at things even when they were done perfectly, and probably drinking a bit too much. He knew he was pissed off at Sam and the danger Sam was throwing himself into and since he couldn't do shit about either one, he was taking far too much of his frustration out on his eldest son. He knew all that, objectively. He just couldn't manage to pull his head out of his ass long enough to realize what he was doing, much less force himself to stop.

So it wasn't exactly surprising that John hadn't noticed when Dean went quietly off food, or when Dean had quietly started to stitch his own cuts shut instead of pestering John to do it for him, or when Dean had apparently stopped sleeping the night through. He had noticed that Dean had stopped offering rejoinders when John razzed him, but Dean's quiet acceptance of whatever criticism John offered, whether seriously meant or in jest, had nettled all the more because it was so far off from Sam's bitchy responses or even the easy snark that Dean might have previously offered in turn, all wide grins and honey to go with John's distinct salt and vinegar.

It might have continued like that for months, John's attempt (if he could be honest with himself) to drive away the last piece of Mary he had left before Dean would make up his mind to leave of his own free will. All that happened was that Dean withdrew further each time John snapped at him and John in turn grew more and more frustrated and all the hunts in the world couldn't do enough to ease the low roil of fury and fear that burned in his gut, day in and day out.

It would have continued perhaps indefinitely, John knew, except that Dean eventually took matters into his own hands. Dean being Dean, this meant nothing pretty. Dean didn't do things by half steps, not even when he did them completely accidentally. Fate was a mean son of a bitch and never seemed to have a break for anyone named Winchester.

It was November, not too long past the Bad Days and John was still recovering from them. His mood always took a drastic downturn just past Halloween and this year, the first without Sam, made it even worse than normal. It was the first hunt they'd been on since before the anniversary and John was hoping it would help get them back on an even keel.

The hunt was for a Jenny Greenteeth, a particularly vicious woman-shaped creature with a snaggled jaw and a yowling sort of cry. It had been hunting children on Lake Winnipesaukee, which was outside of their normal stomping ground to be sure, but there wasn't much further from California than the ass end of New England and that made it worth the distance, even if it meant dealing with the frigid nature of a New Hampshire winter.

Not that it was true winter yet. The air was bitterly cold at night but heat lingered in an Indian Summer that kept it still warm enough during the day to prevent the lake from freezing over. The lingering warmth wouldn't last much longer though; already John's breath steamed in the mornings far longer than he would have otherwise preferred and the cool touch of night encroached earlier and earlier into the afternoons. It meant they had to hurry; much longer and the Jenny would be gone under the ice, protected and invulnerable and free to attack again next year.

Dean hadn't wanted to be there. Even as quiet as the boy had gotten, John would have known that without so much as a glance, even under the best of circumstances. Even with the remnants of summer, it was colder than either of them preferred and the mountains and their pine forests were too far off from the warm comfort of the plains, where the Winchesters usually worked. The Yankees that they were helping were a bit stiff, not unwelcoming at all, but set in their ways as only people who'd been in the same town for four hundred years or more can really become.

He'd sent Dean off in their rented dingy, its putt-putt motor barely enough to churn the waves, while John himself kept to the woods on Rattlesnake Island. Most of the sightings had been on or around it, though the creature had no issues sneaking onto the mainland for its dinner. John spent his time crawling over rocks and boulders, trying to suss out where the damned thing could be holing up at. The Jenny came out mostly at dusk, the times when its green tinted skin could be best disguised by the red slanting sunset light. It was just past that, making it damned difficult to see, and John swore to himself, ready to write off another wasted night.

He reached into his coat pocket, pretended he couldn't see his breath puffing in the air to avoid noticing how damned cold it was getting, and tugged out the cell phone Sam had given him just a few weeks before he'd left. It was new and shiny and John was reasonably certain it had several features he had no clue how to work or even what it did. Damn thing probably would pop up toast for breakfast if he keyed in the right strokes.

Didn't matter. He just needed to call Dean and arrange a pick up. There weren't many places to catch a drink around (the locals apparently believed the world ended at eight o'clock, at least in the tiny towns they were near) but John was reasonably confident that he'd cope. If nothing else, government supplied package stores would see him through.

He dialed Dean's number, waited as the line buzzed and crackled and finally connected. It rang four times, then went to voicemail. Scowling, John hung up and tried again. Same response.

A thin knot of worry began threading itself through his belly, but he refused to acknowledge it. Dean must have left his cell phone back at the car. Or maybe at their cabin. Either way, John would ream him but good for forgetting it; for all that he'd hunted for decades without a phone at his hip, they made the job so much easier and safer that going out without one was asking for trouble.

He edged his way back to the dock, then peered out over the lake, one hand going up to squint over the water. Nothing but the waves lapping softly and the sound of the wind met him. No sounds of a motor running. No splashing of a boat near by.

Shit.

The worry in his stomach began to squirm, writhing over itself. Much harder to ignore that way. Damned inconvenient.

He tried the phone again, more for something to do than out of any belief that it would work, which went to figure because that time Dean picked up after the third ring.

"Dad?"

"Dean? Where the hell are you? Why didn't you pick up the damned phone?" The words were harder than he'd have liked, the tone angrier, but dammit, Dean /knew/ better. He knew better than to fuck around like that. He could count on Dean, always had been able to.

"Dad." This time he caught the undertone to his oldest son's voice. Dean didn't sound good. His voice was breathy, the word more exhaled than actually spoken.

"Son, where are you?" He still couldn't shake the edge from his voice, but Dean seemed to respond to it well enough, voice sharpening a bit when he responded.

"North of the island, about a quarter mile out. I got it, Dad."

"The Greentooth?" John asked sharply, seeking clarification. "With an iron rod?"

"Yeah, Dad. Iron stake to the heart. It sank under, but it was dead."

John felt a measure of relief shine through the worry and anger. "Good. Now haul ass back over here and pick me up."

"About that..." That breathy quality was back to Dean's tone again, a bit dreamy, almost. There was a shuffling sort of sound from the other end of the line and then John heard a wracking, nasty sort of cough, muffled as though Dean had put his hand over the phone.

"Dean? Dean!" It took a long minute for the line to clear.

"Sorry, Dad. I'm coming. It'll just be a few minutes. She tore out the motor, I'll have to row over."

"She tore out the motor? That was a damned rental, son." One with a cash deposit that John had been hoping to get back.

"Sorry." Dean offered again but the sound was even fainter than before. John frowned, then decision made, began tramping back through the woods heading from the west beach to the north. The island was small, it didn't take long to reach the north shore, and from there John snagged his binoculars out, scanning the horizon until he came across a small 10 foot boat some several hundred yards out. He couldn't see anyone in it at first, then caught a glimpse of movement and Dean's head showed above the rim. He looked pale and was dripping wet, arms visibly shaking as he began to laboriously slide the back up oars into place.

"Dean, you hurt?" He hoped the edge to his voice was recognizable as concern. He was almost certain it was.

In the binoculars, his son jumped slightly and dropped the phone. John heard it crack against the bottom of the boat and then the line went dead. Probably fell in some water.

Fuck.

In the dingy, Dean twisted around, squinted towards Rattlesnake Island, and must have finally caught sight of John because he raised one hand in slight wave. He held up the cell phone, shook it, shrugged, and dropped it again before slowly, terribly slowly, beginning to row back towards the island.

John watched and told himself that he wasn't worried. It had been a long day and a longer hunt. Dean was fine. They'd go back to the cabin and get a hot shower and he'd bitch at Dean for losing the motor and Dean would smile that half smile that was the only sort he'd shown in the past few months, and he'd tell John about how the Jenny Greentooth went down, and that would be that. They'd find another hunt. Somewhere south, John thought. A reward, or a respite, for good behavior.

Dean had made it roughly half the distance when the other shoe fell. His son paused, one hand going up to his forehead, the oar he'd been holding sliding dangerously far in its socket, and then with a half glance back at his father, Dean slid down back out of sight.

John immediately was at the water's edge, hands curled around his mouth.

"DEAN!"

There was no response. He looked through the binoculars again, but there was no sign of his son at all. Nothing but the two oars and the boat, gently rocking on the water.

Shitfuckdamn.

John forced himself to wait twenty seconds, calling his son's name the entire time. There was no response, nothing but the soft splash of waves and the faint call of birds.

Swearing under his breath, John shoved off his boots and jacket, dropped his pack to the ground and set his hat on top of the pile. Then, sand cold under his bare feet, he tested the water, grimaced, and dove in.

Objectively he knew that the water wasn't frozen, wasn't anywhere near freezing, but the feel of it arching over his skin was like a knife through his ribs, threatening to stop his limbs, or his heart. John was a good swimmer and normally enjoyed it, but this experience was making him reconsider his previous satisfaction with the sport. He grit his teeth and continued, the water shockingly clear and cold, splashing his face, the only part of him not almost immediately numb. He kept his eyes on the dingy and kept moving, the world focusing down to Dean and cold and Dean and wet and Dean.

It was almost a surprise when he finally hit the edge of the boat. Shuddering, he reached shaking hands up to the edge, testing it to see if he could clamber aboard without capsizing the whole thing. Once satisfied that it was safe, he grasped it tight with both hands and hauled himself inside.

Shivering all over, dripping and frigid, he had to take a minute to catch his breath once finally safely in. It was only then that he noticed the limp, damp form he was lying against and, swearing again, forced himself to sit back up and take in his son's condition.

Dean was out cold but that didn't stop the low level tremors shaking his entire body. His eyelashes were charcoal smudges against his cheeks, all the more apparent by how terribly wan he looked. His lips were almost colorless, tinged more towards blue than red. John reached a hand out for Dean's neck, felt for a pulse, and was surprised by how Dean's skin didn't feel either overly warm or cold, as though his temperature and John's were the same. Which, given how cold John was, didn't bode well for Dean.

His fingers eventually found the pulse (slow, but steady) and they found something else as well. John pulled his hand back, held his fingers to the dying light and the worry that had snaked through his belly for the past half hour flared and exploded into full life at the sight of the blood coating them.

He reached down, hauled Dean's head to one side, searching for the source. It didn't take long to find; there was a jagged cut down the back of his son's neck, a wound that looked raw and nasty and John could only be grateful that whatever had given it to Dean had caught the back of him, not the front. He did a more complete sweep then, cataloging injuries and determining proper method of triage.

There was another cut (bite?) on Dean's left shoulder, a third on his right arm. His hands were scraped up, one fingernail half missing. His head seemed fine, no bumps or gashes, but he still hadn't regained consciousness and his breathing was far more shallow than John would have liked. He was still breathing though, chest still slowly rising and falling, and that meant everything else could be dealt with.

After making sure Dean's neck was raised up out of the couple of inches of water at the bottom of the boat, John declared it good enough for the moment. He would gladly have hauled Dean out of bottom of the boat entirely, but there was simply no place dry enough and stable enough to do so.
Instead, he reached for the oars. The right one had been about to slip out of the handle and wouldn't that have been just perfect to fuck them over. He caught it before it could completely slide out and then, back aching and shaking with cold, began to row them back to shore.

The trip back to the actual shore was farther than John would have liked. It was a couple of miles to the beach where the Impala sat, patiently awaiting their return, and each stroke of the oars was enough to make his arms and chest ache. He bypassed the island out of necessity. There weren't enough supplies in his pack and they could always go back tomorrow for his boots. Dean could row that time. Dean owed him for this.

Within ten strokes, his shoulders were burning. Easy enough to focus past the pain though. Easy enough to be more pissed off that the motor had fallen off, or had been ripped off, or whatever the hell had happened. Easier to be angry at Dean for being in this condition to start with, or the damned Jenny for killing folk. Easier to take refuge in that low thrum of anger that had been present ever since his youngest had made his plans known.

Anger gave his limbs strength and worry focused his gaze until the only thing he could see was the darkening sky, barely lit with the edge of sunset over the tops of the trees, and up ahead the dock and the Impala behind it. Through out it all, Dean didn't stir.

He had to stop and catch his breath twice on the way, each time shuffling to Dean's side to check on his pulse and breathing, to make sure the bleeding wasn't too bad or worsening. His vision was tunneling and his arms shaking so much it was countermanding his efforts at rowing by the time they finally made it. The dingy clipped the edge of the dock, thankfully a low water level one, and it was all John could to do toss the anchor over the side and rope the boat to the safety.

He shook Dean's shoulder, hoping for a response but was completely unsurprised when he didn't get one. Their luck wasn't that good. John didn't even have the energy to swear anymore, just concentrated on snagging his son first by the arms, then pulling him into a fireman's carry that made his shoulders threaten rebellion and the boat threaten to turn over. The walk down the dock wasn't much fun either, the wooden planks under his feet swaying with each step and it was God alone that knew whether that was the water causing it or John's own unsteady footing.

He finally leaned Dean against the side of the Impala, then popped the trunk for the first aid kit and a towel and the thick woolen blanket kept there for emergencies. He made a quick return back to Dean, then working swiftly, stripped what he could of his son's outer clothing: jacket and over shirt and boots and jeans, all of which had been soaked through at least once during their excursion and all of which had recently been sitting in barely melted lake water at the bottom of the dingy during the trip back. He looked over those bite marks as he worked; they looked nasty but all of them had stopped bleeding and merely sat sullenly against his son's skin. They could wait to be treated.

Dean started to rouse as John finished tugging off his pants, gaze bleary and entirely unfocused. John didn't bother to stop, merely grabbed the towel and roughly ran it over his son's limbs, across his chest and back to sop up any remaining moisture there, and then finally across his hair.

For a brief moment it was 1986 again and Dean was just a kid, submitting with rolled eyes to his father's touch as he dried him off. Then Dean's face screwed up, the blankness receding under a look far too familiar for comfort, and John barely was able to move out of the way before Dean leaned over and vomited. A thin volume of water was expelled, splashing on the rear wheel of the Impala and John would have made a crack about how that wasn't treating a lady right, but he didn't think Dean was much in the mind to hear it.

Instead he waited until he was sure Dean was done, then wiped the towel across his face and mouth, before dropping it in favor of the blanket. That one he wrapped snuggly around the boy's shoulders before hauling himself back to his feet, ignoring the crack in his back that twinged with the movement. He reached back down, snagged the first aid kit, opened the rear door and tossed it in, then reached down again for his son and repeated the process.

Dean might have mumbled something as John manhandled him into place, he certainly stumbled on the way, but nothing he might have said was even audible, really, much less sensible, and John ignored that as well in favor of shredding ass out of there and back to their cabin.

He turned the heat on all the way, still far, far too cold himself to enjoy it as the engine puttering into blazing life. The warmth on his skin felt like needles, nothing like comfort. Dean was protected from the worst of that, being in the back seat but that might be worse than the alternative because it would take longer to warm up. John debated stopping and pulling Dean into the front, but no, that would take too long. This entire damn trip was taking too long.

He adjusted the rearview, found his son's reflection in the back. Dean's eyes had listed half shut again, face slack, but his hands had come up to clutch at the blankets edges and were holding them together. Satisfied that Dean was conscious enough, John opened his mouth and began to speak. Criticisms mostly, undeserved sure, but he was trying to pry a reaction here, not give Dean any more incentive to go into the light or any crazy shit like that and being pissed off had always worked well for John (and Sam) in that regard.

When that failed to garner a response, he tried asking how the hunt had gone, wheedling for information. Nothing for that either and finally John tried snapping, demanding an answer, but all that got him was the final slide of Dean's hands from the blanket and his mind back fully into unconsciousness.

Shit.

The ride back to the cabin couldn't have taken more than fifteen minutes tops but it was the longest damned quarter hour of John's life, he was sure. It was full dark by the time he finally pulled in and he had to hope he'd left the door unlocked because fuck if he knew where the key was. John hobbled back to Dean, muscles stiffening now, sore and decidedly unappreciative of his efforts. Dean was out like a lamp still, not even responding to a somewhat gentle slap or his father's most urgent commands.

Afterward, John wasn't entirely certain how exactly he got Dean out of the car and into the cabin. He was cold, exhausted, and the tunnel vision he suffered was no longer of a psychological bent: the room was dim and black around the edges, stars sparking in his sight. But he was in and Dean was collapsed on one of the beds when he looked up, the heater whining high pitched and casting out far too little warmth for his comfort.

He'd killed the Jenny Greentooth, Dean had said. John wondered whether he'd be above or beneath the water when he'd done so.

Dean was still shivering and the blanket had fallen open when John had toppled him down on top of the bedspread, exposing the rise of ribs even through his t-shirt, far more prominent than John had last noticed. One hand had slipped out of the blanket's protection. A reddened mark encircled the skin, sure to bruise by morning. Maybe how he'd been pulled out to begin with. Dean wasn't foolish enough to jump in the water voluntarily. The knobs of his wrist jutted out horribly, looked almost skeletal.

John blinked and ran a hand over his eyes, pawed at his own month. When was the last time he'd seen Dean eat? He cast his mind back, drew up nothing but a blank. Christ.

John got angry and Sam got loud, but Dean? Dean got quiet. And John had been so wrapped up in his anger that he hadn't even noticed.

He reached out before he knew what he was doing, stroked a hand down the side of Dean's face while his mind filled again with little boy images and memories. Dean's skin was warmer now, if still overly pale, freckles standing out against his skin in shocking display. His lips tinging closer to pink though, that was good. His breathing sounded better, stronger. John knew he needed to dress those bites, antibiotics and hot water bottles, if he could find them. A warm bath would be best but his own strength didn't seem enough to stand for that right now.

He needed to do all those things, but for the moment all he could do was sit on his son's bed and struggle to breathe.

Ever So Humble (Sam, Dean) - Gen

2009-05-20T16:31:13Z

Title: Ever So Humble
Rating: G
Genre and/or Pairing: Gen. Sam, Dean.
Spoilers: TWT, (probably sometime in S2)
Word Count: ~1100
Warnings: Schmoop. One extremely minor swear word.
Summary: Sam's sick after a hunt. Dean grudgingly makes him soup.

Notes: This was written for another SPN kink request, this time for "Sam/Dean: Sam loves Dean's cooking". I wrote the bit about Sam loving Dean's cooking, but not the Wincest - this is a gen piece in my mind, but readers are welcome to take it however they'd like.

My love of Dean's cooking was partially inspired by the epically wonderful Red Beans and Rice series by the amazingly talented janissa11, a pair of stories that if you haven't read, I recommend dropping everything to read now. They're simply perfect.

It was probably a tribute to exactly how twisted their lives were, but there were few things Sam loved more than when Dean cooked for him. It made him remember the times in their childhood when the motels they'd stayed at had been equipped with mini-kitchenettes and his older brother had had the opportunity to indulge. Other people his age felt nostalgia for childhood pets, or favorite places to hang out, or television shows they had to watch every afternoon. For Sam, it was Dean's cooking.

He was actually pretty good at it. Dean specialized in quick foods: eggs and bacon and pancakes for breakfast, spaghetti and sloppy joes and random weird casseroles that were made up of everything left over in the mini-fridge for dinner. He’d make the world’s best mac and cheese, or meatloaf and mashed potatoes and when they could swing them, they'd be real, too, not the crap out of a box. He made things that would keep for a while and could be eaten the next day (and the day after that, and usually the day after that as well). It was pretty simple fare - no coq au vin or anything fancy - but it was all tasty.

Dean didn't really do a lot of cooking these days. It wasn't something they’d ever talked about, but Sam wondered if something had gone down between him and dad while he had been at Stanford. Dean had still cooked before Sam had left but after they joined back up, he didn't do it at all. No explanations or even a twitch to show he didn't like the request, just a smooth side step and a "We don't have the time, Sammy, let's just grab something on the way" and a sea of Dean-chosen motel rooms that had two beds, a bathroom, and little else.

Eventually Sam stopped asking. Had just shrugged and gotten on with it. So Dean didn't like to cook anymore, no big. It didn't mean much. Just because Sam had always felt like a normal kid when eating a fresh cooked meal, just because it turned whatever stranger's room they were staying at into home, it didn't matter. Dean didn't want to cook and in the long run, there were other things that were more important.

Which was why Sam was sort of surprised to wake up to a rich, warm smell and the sounds of muffled curses after an unfortunately wet and cold hunt.

He felt hot, almost sticky, and when he swallowed, his throat was rough as sandpaper and just as dry. Sam's head pounded and he shifted against his pillows, struggling to free his legs from the blanket that had managed to tangle itself around them. It made his head hurt more to move, but he felt like he was about to burn up and the air on his face was so much cooler that he had to get free.

"Aw, Christ, Sam,” Dean’s voice said from across the room. "Hold on a minute, would you?"

Sam made a small noise of discontent but ignored the request. Sure, it was rude, but if Dean knew how close he was to losing his only brother to spontaneous combustion, he'd forgive him.

There was a sound of footsteps and then cool hands caught at his shoulders, eased him back down.

"Too hot," Sam told him and Dean's blurry face nodded at him before unwinding the sheets from Sam's body.

"That's a good thing." Dean said and grinned at him when Sam frowned. "It means your fever's breaking. You kept complaining about being cold for hours."

Sam might have responded but his head chose that minute to start up with the pounding again, in triple time, and instead he moaned and flinched back.

Dean curled one hand over Sam's hair, stroking it away from Sam's sweaty forehead. It felt good and Sam arched into the touch, letting it sooth away the headache. Without the blankets, it was cooler, easier to breathe. It was nice, almost, having Dean's bulk beside him on the bed, his hand gently petting Sam's hair. He had done this too, when they were kids.

After a moment, Dean scritched his fingers along Sam's scalp a couple of times and then stood up. "You think you could eat something?"

Sam groaned at the concept but the warm, salty smell was still lingering in the air and, for what felt like the first time in days, his stomach gave a gurgle of interest.

"I made you soup." Dean said and Sam peered up at him in vague interest. Dean had made soup. And not just a can of Campbell's by the smell of it, actual Dean soup. The good stuff.

As he struggled into something resembling an upright position, Dean went across the room again and returned a couple of minutes later with a steaming mug in hand. He put it down on the bedside table to help Sam up and shove some pillows behind his back. It wasn't until he'd leaned Sam up against them and seemed satisfied that he was going to stay there that he reached for the mug and passed it over.

Sam stared down at it, sniffling slightly thanks to a newly running nose. He could see bits of diced chicken, carrots, celery, and thick egg noodles. It smelled heavenly and when he carefully took a sip, it tasted even better.

Dean walked around to the other side of the bed and climbed in, feet bare, a warm presence at Sam's right side. The TV was on and Dean was looking at it, but Sam didn't think he was paying it much attention. He snuffled and poked his brother in the side.

"You'll get sick if you stay in my bed." He said. Not that he particularly wanted Dean to leave; like cooking, Dean simply being there, that close, was something warm and cherished from childhood and also something he hadn't much been able to experience much of recently. He had had Dean close before, but it was often like trying to hold a half tame cat - he might put up with it for a few minutes, but was soon struggling to get free. Dean Winchester, he would tell you, did not cuddle.

Dean shrugged in response, eyes still focused half-heartedly on the screen. "Like I could catch any of your lame-ass bacteria anyway. Not all of us have your weak constitution, princess."

Sam ignored the insult. The soup told the truth. It took him close to an hour to manage the one cup, but it was worth it.

Later, when Dean was slightly more than half asleep and pretending to ignore how heavily he was leaning on Sam's side, Sam tilted his mouth close to Dean's ear and whispered "Thanks." Dean didn't say anything in response, just made a grumbling sort of noise, but his ears pinked lightly and Sam was sure he'd heard.

______________

As a final author's note on this, in my mind this scenario is followed two days later by Dean getting sick with Sam's cold, Sam going "Hahahaha, I TOLD YOU SO" and Dean responding with a "I'm fine, shut up before I hurt you *coughhackweeze*" and being rather mulish about the whole thing. Thankfully, there are leftovers. And Sam is more than happy to return the favor. *g*

Dirges in the Dark (Dean, Sam) - Gen

2009-05-18T14:49:57Z

Title: Dirges In The Dark
Rating: PG-13
Genre and/or Pairing: Gen. Dean, Sam
Spoilers: TWT, mid S4
Word Count: ~1750
Warnings: A bit of language and a dash of violence
Summary: A hunt catches Dean off guard when he and Sam try to save a Seal. Written for a bondage & H/C prompt on the May 2009 SPN Kink Meme (for which I wrote gen, because I am lame.)

It was stupid, really. A year of battles with angels and demons and cataclysmic nightmare creatures and you'd think that would mean the beings of this world wouldn't be able to touch them anymore. Wouldn't be that big of a threat.

Staring into darkness, arms twined over with something rough like vines that cut into his skin and bound up them above his head, Dean had had plenty of time to rethink that philosophy. To change his mind about the dangers presented by the ordinary, the normal.

He still didn't know what the thing had been. He and Sam hadn't even been looking for a hunt, had focused instead on what could have been a seal in jeopardy, their attention on the grand scale and not on the fine print. That had been a mistake, one that had cost Dean a blow to the head that had knocked him down and a bite to his neck that had injected some sort of venom that made it impossible to move. He'd been hauled up over the creature's shoulder, vision blacking out as the thing had jostled and ran back towards its lair before he'd even known what hit him.

Sam was never going to let him hear the end of this. This meant teasing rights for years.

Dean was starting to come to the conclusion that he might not mind that so much if Sam would just show up already. His arms and shoulders ached from supporting his weight, forced apart so that the tension between his shoulder blades had begun to feel like a slow burning ball of fire, licking down his back and up his neck. There were other vines too, ones that looped down over his legs, across his chest, one even resting loosely against his neck, and he had to almost be grateful for them for taking some of the pressure off his arms and keeping that from turning from pure pain into outright agony.

They kept him from suffocating. Dean had been crucified before, in Hell. They'd used the traditional way so that blood loss wouldn't end things too quickly, so that instead he could feel the pressure build like a band across his chest as it became harder and harder to breathe, until there was no air left at all and his shoulders slipped from their sockets. This was nothing like that. This was much easier to deal with.

But it was dark and the venom hadn't fully worn off yet, leaving him unable to move more than his head and the tips of his fingers.

And Dean was alone. He'd rarely been alone in Hell, had always had some jeering face that he could focus on, something he could spit rage and defiance against. Here, there was nothing to distract him from the dark and what could be hiding in it. Nothing to distract him from his own thoughts.

He was pretty sure it had been at least a few hours since he'd woken up. Maybe more, but Dean's internal clock was running askew and the pain made it difficult to concentrate. The clock to his head might have been harder than he'd originally given it credit for as well, or maybe that was another effect of a the venom because everything felt a bit too hazy. It made his mind numb, made it harder to think.

Every so often, he could hear something skittering in the darkness. The creature, maybe, or something else entirely, who the fuck knew, and the worst part about it was that he knew it wasn't anything he actually wanted to see, but there was a twisted sort of comfort in the reminder that he wasn't alone. He hadn't been forgotten about.

He'd tried yelling, tried threatening and posturing, and when that had netted him zero response, had moved on to singing Zeppelin and the Stones and anything else that popped into his head.

Eventually, his voice had run down, throat worn out and mouth dry, and he'd had to quiet, straining for any sounds in the dark or for any glimmer of light.

Sam was going to laugh his fool head off when he came and Dean might just have to smack him one for it. When he came. Which had better be soon, if Sam knew what was good for him.

Dean rolled his neck, tried to release some of the tension in it, but it just sent another lick of fire up his muscles. He let his eyes fall shut, tired and aching and ready for this damn day to be over already.

He must have fallen into a troubled sleep because when he next opened his eyes, it was with the jerky realization that he wasn't alone anymore. There was something touching him, cold needle sharp claws pricking into his skin and trailing over his body and he yelled, twisted as best he could to dislodge it.

The creature made a chittering sort of noise at him that sounded disapproving.

"Yeah well, fuck you too, sweetheart," Dean hissed at it, trying to buck the thing off. It curled in tight around him and Christ, how many legs did the damn thing have? Something thin and narrow flicked out across his face and then there was the sharp press of teeth pressing into his shoulder, a white hot flash of pain that throbbed out from the bite.

Numbness pulsed out from the spot, stealing away the little ability he had regained to move, leaving him limp and breathless in his bindings. It stole away his ability to process events as well, made his mind fuzzy and restless, and even when the thing began to cut through his jacket and shirts to get at the skin underneath, he couldn't quite manage to care.

It hurt, the thing was slicing at his skin, pulling it up in what felt like neat, narrow strips, but he couldn't move, couldn't react to anything but the pain of it, until the world was made up entirely of the solid weight of the thing against him, its dry dusty smell overwhelming, the press of its sharp claws into his stomach and thighs and back, and the clatter of its teeth as it fed.

Light flared, brilliant and hot and Dean couldn't help but to wince at the burn of it. The creature didn't like it either, it screamed, a horrific, inhuman sound, and before launching itself from Dean, claws scrapping away at him as a final parting gift.

There were sounds, a struggle maybe, but Dean couldn't concentrate on them, couldn't even lift his head to see what it was. There was light in the lair for the first time, but darkness had begun to pool around the corners of his vision, a heat sweeping over his face that usually meant he was about to be down completely.

Something thudded to the ground and a few seconds later, a warm hand pressed against his cheek. A voice was calling to him, worried and anxious, and he tried to answer it in return but instead slipped completely away.

***

It was warm when he woke up. Dean blinked up at the ceiling, white and uneven, and tried to get his bearings.

“You with me?” Sam’s voice came from somewhere to his right and Dean craned his neck to try and see. A shock of white fire flashed like lightning with the attempt, made him grimace, and then Sam was there, close enough for Dean to see the worry in his eyes, one hand slipping under him to help support the motion. “Dude, just hold still, okay? You were suspended all night long, it’ll take some time for it to stop hurting.”

Dean licked dry lips. “You get it?”

Sam nodded, beginning to kneed his fingers into Dean’s skin and ow, fuck, that hurt, but heat was rising into his muscles with the touch, soothing the pain away.

“I think we’ll be holed up here for a few days though. You’ll need time to recover.”

Dean shook his head at that, ignoring the fiery twinge that resulted and dislodging Sam’s hand. “Places to go and people to see, Sammy,” he said gruffly. “I’m fine, I can rest in the car.”

Something dark flared in Sam’s eyes for a moment before flicking out again. Sam didn’t approve, that much was obvious, but there was something else there as well. Dean felt far too fucked up to even begin to try and figure it out.

His brother moved away for a moment, came back holding a syringe filled with a clear fluid. Dean groaned at the sight, but Sam didn’t hesitate, just slipped it into Dean’s neck before he could jerk away and dispatched it.

“The hell, Sam?” Dean asked through gritted teeth. Sam just shrugged.

“It’s just a muscle relaxant, Dean. If you want to get going that quickly, you’re going to need something to keep your shoulders from freezing up.”

Dean glowered at him, still not amused. “Yeah, well, next time ask, got it?”

Sam set the syringe down, offered Dean a small, half smile. “You had me worried, man. When I looked up and you were gone, I freaked. And then when I finally managed to find you and that … that thing was feeding off you, I just... Christ, Dean, you looked like you were dead. I thought… You weren’t even breathing when I cut you down and you wouldn’t wake up for hours.”

He trailed off, flushed and looked away. Dean felt a rush of guilt cut through his annoyance. Yeah, he could imagine what Sam might be feeling like right now. Had felt it himself on more than one occasion. He glanced away from his little brother, turned to look at the wall as quickly as his neck would allow. Which was much faster than it had been a few minutes ago, the relaxant that Sam had given him taking quick effect.

“I just want to make sure you’re going to be okay.” Sam said from his other side.

Dean scowled but he’d never been able to resist that particular tone. “All right, we can stay a bit longer if it'll keep you from whining about it. But no more than a day, Sammy, I swear.”

He couldn’t see it, but he knew Sam was grinning. “Three days. I’ve already paid for them.”

Cheeky little bastard. He’d pay for that once Dean could move again.

“Go back to sleep already, okay?” Sam said, and there was again the warm press of fingers on his skin, massaging away what tension the relaxant hadn’t quite managed to relieve. It hurt and felt good and Dean wanted to bitch about the presumption, but it was warm and light and Sam was there.

He slept instead.

So maybe I've been writing again

2009-05-16T05:35:40Z

I think I haven't updated this particular journal in nigh on two and a half years. Maybe more, at this point. It's been a long time, anyway. But this has always sort of been my writing and fandom journal and lately, well, I've been having more writing and fandom type thoughts. So in that vein, SPN finale coda fic, anyone?

Title: Wisdom to the Mighty, Succour to the Brave
Rating: PG-13
Genre and/or Pairing: Sam, Dean
Spoilers: Post 4.22 (spoilers for the finale)
Warnings: A bit of language
Summary: It's the end of the world as they know it, but Sam's not feeling fine. (Post the finale, the Brothers Winchester have a needed conversation and probably would do better with some alcohol.)

Dean kept peering out the windows. Every few minutes he would return back in the same spot, glancing down and out at the highway as if expecting to see the armies of Hell - or perhaps Heaven - there and at the ready. His face was tight, shadowed, lips pursed and eyes dark, and even as he kept being drawn back to the glass to stare out at the night, Sam couldn't quite help but to watch his older brother. He couldn't look for long though, had to keep shifting his focus away because it was all just too damned much.

The final Seal had been broken. Lucifer was free.

On the bed furthest from the door, Sam sat with his fingers twisted together in his lap as he struggled not to throw up. He still had blood caked under his nails and he picked at it, unable to work up the energy to go shower while nausea roiled in his gut at the sight. Truthfully, it had been there ever since Ruby had turned to him with wide, exultant eyes and he'd suddenly realized that something was very, very wrong.

Dean drummed his fingers against the window pane. He didn't look angry, just pensive and watchful. Nervous, maybe. He hadn't said much of anything since they'd escaped, but then there hadn't been much to say.

He'd said it all before, anyway. The memory of his recorded voice slipped through Sam's mind, harsh and unyielding.

Monster. Vampire.

The truth always hurt. He'd swallowed so many simple, eager lies that he'd forgotten just how much it did.

Sam wasn't even sure why Dean was even still there, why he hadn't turned Ruby's knife on him as soon as her body had hit the floor like he'd promised he would. Sam deserved it. Right now, he wouldn't even fight back.

He had a headache and the room was too cold and he felt twitchy, energy thrumming and pent up and if he could stand, he'd be pacing, or running. Sitting this still was torture, just like it had become recently when coming down off a high. It had been close to six hours since his last hit (since Ruby had smiled up at him, fingers curled around a goblet that held nothing but blood, the steady drip-drip of the remnants in the background thudding against the dirt) and the it was wearing off. The sensation would grow worse soon, would start digging through his veins like spiders crawling up his skin from the inside, but that was okay. That was fine.

He deserved that too.

He looked up at his brother's profile again, watched him tilt his chin up to better scout out the land and the flash of his throat, shockingly pale against the dim light, caught Sam by surprise.

It was pure masochism that made him look for them. They were almost lost from sight, slender slightly darkened marks against Dean's skin, now only barely visible. Almost gone, but Sam knew that even if the bruises were long healed, he would have been able to state exactly where they had been, would see them just as clear and bright as if they were painted across Dean's throat. Would have been able to find them again in the dark, the places where his hands had gripped and just squeezed.

Sensory memory caught him off guard for a second and he quickly looked away again. Sam's right hand twitched and he curled it into a fist, tight enough so that his nails cut into the flesh.

Out of sight, he heard Dean heave a small sigh and finally step away from the window again, back into the motel room proper. There was a whisper as the curtain fell shut, followed by the sounds of footsteps muffled by cheap carpet and the squeak of bedsprings as Dean fell down on the other bed.

They should turn on the news, Sam thought. The end would be starting soon. This was his fault, God, it was all his fault and he should at least have the decency to look at the mess he'd made. To watch it all fall apart. To watch the world burn.

He felt his brother's skin giving way against his fingers again, felt the pulse of a heartbeat fluttering under his thumb. Sam swiped his palm down his pant leg roughly, trying to erase the phantom sensation.

His stomach turned over again and he wanted to be sick. Wanted it desperately, so much that he could almost taste it on the back of his tongue. He forced it down regardless. What right did he have, to feel like this now? What had he said to Dean back then? Boo hoo.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dean pull out his cell phone, flip it open. Sam couldn't help but feel a frisson of discomfort at that, a searing strike of pain that stabs right through the abject misery he's drenched in. He didn't want the reminder of what his brother really thought of him. He could never make that right either. God only knew how much more he'd fuck things up by trying.

"Eight missed calls," Dean said. He had a touched of forced amusement to his voice, the tone he got when he was trying to be clever in a situation that didn't usually deserve it. "Bobby is going to kill me."

Sam glanced over at him briefly at that, curious despite himself. He didn't know how Dean had gotten to the church. The Impala had been nowhere to be seen when they'd ran, so they'd been forced to cramp themselves down into Ruby's stolen car to make their break. Dean hadn't bothered to explain anything at the time, completely caught up in just driving, white lipped and eyes wild, and looking in the rear view almost more than the road ahead.

He must have caught the question in Sam's eyes because the tips of his ears flushed a bit like it always did when he was about to broach a topic he didn't really want to get into and then he coughed and looked away. "We, uh. We had a bit of a falling out."

Sam cleared his throat. "About what?"

There was a slight pause before his brother spoke, a half hesitation that told him exactly what the fight had been about even before the words came out of Dean's mouth.

"About what we had to do next. About what we needed to do."

About Sam is what Dean meant. He fought with Bobby about what he needed to do about his demon brother and how best to take care of him. He could almost picture it in his mind, crystal clear, as though it were a vision like years ago: Dean sitting, head bowed and shoulders shaking in anger as he tried to convince Bobby of the creature Sam had become, Bobby trying in turn to convince him that it couldn't possibly be so bad.

Bobby would have refused to believe it, Sam knew. The older hunter was gruff and had little patience, but family didn't end with blood and even though Sam had his blood on his hands as well, he never would have imagined what Sam had become. He might have accused Sam of doing some warped things before, but he wouldn't have believed this.

(Memory teased at the back of his mind, of a day that wouldn't end over a year ago now, and Bobby's shocked, horrified face demanding that if it had to be anyone, it should be him. How easy it had been to accept the proffered sacrifice, if it meant that he'd get Dean back. How nothing mattered except for that.)

If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, Dean would never have believed it either. He hadn't believed it when Sam had lied to him, over and over again. When he'd raised a tired face to him and just asked that Sam respected him enough to not treat him like an idiot and Sam had looked back and pretended not to know what he was talking about. Not even when Sam had accused him of holding him back, of being weak.

Dean hadn't believed it until Sam had tried to kill him.

Sam cut his eyes away again and swallowed hard against the lump in his throat and the pricks in his eyes that he didn't deserve to feel.

"He didn't go with you?" He had to force himself to speak. Sam didn't particularly want to force the conversation along to its inevitable conclusion, wanted instead to let the accusing silence keep hold because at least he only had to imagine the recriminations and didn't have to hear them. But these were the first words Dean had spoken to him since they ran from the convent (almost the first since he had called out, voice broken from the floor, that if Sam left, he should never come back) and he couldn't quite give up on hearing his brother's voice just for a bit longer, the dumb marvel that came because Dean's tone so far held no hint of accusation or I told you so jeers.

"Didn't get the chance, more like. I turned around and I wasn't there anymore. Got touched by an angel again, or beamed up by Scottie, and let me tell you, there was no Uhura there to greet me."

"What?"

The false levity was gone from Dean's voice and he sounded far more strained than he had before when he next spoke. "The angels, man. Zachariah. He wanted me to-"

He cut off but again Sam's mind filled in the rest of the words. Zachariah had wanted Dean to stop Sam. Save the Seal. The angels had been right all along and it wasn't Sam, had never been Sam. So many months of work and effort and strife, all because Sam had been so damned lost in his own delusions of grandeur that he'd gladly believed a demon's words.

The idea came unbidden to him, morbidly curious, of whether Dean had spoken to Zachariah before he'd tried to call. If Sam'd had any hope left of fixing this before the angels had condemned him and explained to Dean what exactly would happen if he succeeded in killing Lilith or if Dean had given up even before that. If it had been when they'd told Dean about what he was destined to accomplish.

There was a flicker of fury in his gut all of a sudden, a wrenching knot of anger that knotted itself neatly into place. An old friend, one that had been near constant with him these past several weeks. It snaked up through his blood, heated his face, until his jaw clenched from the rush of it. He wanted to blame the blood on this, but oh, this one had been a companion long before he'd ever met Ruby.

Sam had just ended the world. He had no right to be angry just because the angels had chosen Dean (when Sam had believed, when he had prayed every day, when Dean had scoffed at the concept of "good" and had seen nothing but chaos and violence and lies and nothing worthy of faith at all) but that didn't stop the sensation from sliding under his skin, raw and empty and powerful, leaving him aching.

It was hard to breathe. He had to press his eyes shut, the pulse of his own heartbeat suddenly throbbing against his temple, the full measure of what he had done, how greatly he had failed, how very much he'd done in this past year sliding onto his shoulders once more, causing self loathing to mingle with fury until the one was the other and he didn't know what he felt.

Losing Dean had felt like this.

That nurse had screamed. No voluntary sacrifice like Bobby had been, she had begged for her life the entire way to the convent. Her hoarse cries had slowly died off into sobs, broken and abandoned and alone, just whimpers of "Why are you doing this?" that had rattled through the car. He'd so wanted her to shut up, hadn't been able to stand listening to her tears.

He didn't even know her name. He'd let Ruby kill her, slice her throat open, had just moaned about the noise she was making and he didn't even know her name. She had said it, he thought. He was almost certain she had told him who she was, had said many things besides, but Sam hadn't listened. He hadn't wanted to hear. Instead, he'd tried to block out as much of it as possible, because she had to be a sacrifice for the greater good and if Sam had allowed her to become real he never could have managed it.

One woman against the lives of six billion and only ten hours ago, that deal had seemed worth it.

The need to be sick rose up again, stronger, and he took several fast quick breaths to try and keep his stomach under control.

He didn't notice that Dean had moved until he felt the hand touch down cautiously against his shoulder, fingers falling lightly against the fabric of his jacket but the heat of them burning his skin.

"Hey. Hey, Sammy, look at me."

God, he couldn't take this. Couldn't bear to have Dean sound like that, false concern in his voice, and the idea that it could possible be real, that Dean might could still care, was even worse. That Dean could somehow accept this, this fucking atrocity that Sam had committed and God, oh, God, what had he done?

"Sam, it's not your fault."

The words froze in Sam's ears, echoing there. Not his fault. Not- What?

"Sam, look at me. It wasn't you, okay? It wasn't your fault."

Something cracked inside him. Knocking Dean's hand from his shoulder, Sam surged to his feet, stumbling forward a couple of steps before spinning around to face his brother again. Rage and loathing coated every fiber of his being, blocked out the sick hot wrong that had blanketed his every thought and caused the words he'd tried so hard to block out for so long to tumble out from him like so many stones, each one hot and terrible and fiery, loud in his throat and impossible to hold back.

"Not my fault? Dean, what the hell-" he almost choked, the word catching for a moment,"-are you talking about? Of course this is my fault! I don't know where you've been, but I just doomed the entire world. I just broke the last Seal. Lucifer is running free and it's all me. I did this. All of it. It was all my damn choices. How can you possibly say this isn't my fault?"

He stared down at Dean but he didn't really see him, his vision darkening at the corners. Sam's fists clenched tight again, shoulders heaving to try and get enough air. The room felt too hot and too cold, all at once, ice running down his arms while his chest felt like it was on fire, burning like Mom had. Like Jess. There wasn't enough air in the room, he couldn't breathe, couldn't catch his breath.

"You can put this one off on a demon this time, okay? I wasn't possessed and it's the whole planet this time, not just Steve Wandell. You can't just stomp on a hard drive and wipe our prints down and expect that this will go away."

He trailed off for a moment, voice thickening, quieter. "Ruby said. She told me, right before you came in, that the demon blood, it didn't mean anything. That it was me all along." A laugh escaped, he couldn't hold it back. "She fooled me, man. Made me think that Lilith was going to break the Seal and I thought that I could stop her, but God, Dean, I was wrong. I did this. Exactly what Lilith and Azazel wanted me to do, what they've planned since before I was born to do, and I fell right into it. It's all my fault."

Sam had more to say. It bubbled up against his lips, straining for an escape, but then his brain realized what his eyes were seeing and all words froze.

Dean watched him, hand pulled back again to rest with the other on his lap, pose defensive, and his face tight and expressionless and tense. His eyes were more black than green, like stone, with nothing showing through. He looked wary.

Sam knew that look, had seen it before, God, countless times. Dean wore it when he didn't know what to expect aside from a blow, when he was preparing himself to get smacked down.

The anger sizzled out again and its sudden absence left Sam reeling. His ass hit the other bed, Dean's bed, knees suddenly too watery to hold himself up and he cradled his face in his hands, needing to block out the sight.

This time, Dean didn't touch him when he spoke.

"Look. I'm not going to argue that you've done some stupid things, Sammy. Really fucking stupid things. I mean, this is big. But I meant it when I said it wasn't your fault."

"How can you say that?" His voice was barely more than a whisper but Dean must heard him just fine because he went on, voice flat and toneless.

"I know it's not your fault because you would never have broken the last Seal if I hadn't broken the first one."

Sam's breath really did freeze at that. He raised his eyes to stare incredulously at his brother, but this time it was Dean who couldn't match his gaze, who was looking away, fingers tapping out a steady tattoo against one thigh.

"What? How?"

Dean's eyes flickered shut, eyelashes dark against his skin. "When I was in Hell, Sam. When I first got off the rack. I didn't know until that clusterfuck with Alistair a couple of months back. He told me what I had done."

The image of Dean right after that flickered through Sam's mind, how he hadn't even been able to get Dean to talk to him, how utterly crushed he'd seemed. How broken Dean had looked in that hospital bed, refusing even to look at him. He'd thought that was just the shock of meeting Alistair, at failing to get the information needed, or maybe even just being physically smashed down again, but this? It seemed impossible.

"You're lying. Or he was." There was no possible way that-

"'And so it is written,'" Dean recited, eyes still tightly closed, "'That the first Seal shall fall when a Righteous Man sheds blood in Hell.' That's what he told me. I asked Cas and he confirmed it." He swallowed visibly. "So it wasn't you, Sam. It was never you. That's why the angels were after me, okay? It's not because I deserved to be saved or any bull like that. It's because I fucked this up and I needed to set it right. What I did... There's no forgiving that. But Lilith - that one's not your fault, okay?"

"Why didn't you tell me?" He couldn't quite keep the hurt from tinging his voice. It wasn't something Dean should ever have had to bear alone. He could have trusted Sam to help, to wear that yoke with him.

Dean's fingers slipped down to worry at the cheap bedspread, tugging at threads. He shrugged but didn't answer. Thinking back to that time, Sam thought he might be able to hazard a guess. He hadn't exactly been the world's best confidant. Boo hoo.

Even if it were true though, it didn't really matter. If Dean had broken the first Seal (something Sam couldn't help but reject, the repercussions of it were too huge, even if Dean seemed to believe it), it had only been after thirty years of torture. The concept of that span still seemed too large to be contained in Sam's mind, outside of comprehension. Thirty years. Sam had just fallen to his own damned pride and to a demon's silver tongue and it had only taken him a few months.

He must have said it aloud because Dean snorted suddenly and shook his head once, decisive and hard.

"Anyway, you were set up."

Sam couldn't help but to huff at that. "What, by Ruby, you mean? You were right about her all along, but I didn't listen, I just-"

Dean cut him off before he could say anything else. "No. The angels, Sam. Zachariah. They wanted you to do it. They wanted the world to burn."

Sam wrenched his eyes back up to Dean's face, searching for any sign of falsehood, any clue that this was just an attempt to absolve Sam of his sins, but Dean was looking back by then, green gaze open enough to be tired and heavy but without a hint of deceit within them.

"God, why?" Sam whispered. "Are they all like Uriel?"

Dean shook his head. "No. They wanted Lucifer free so that he could be killed, I guess. Or bound more tightly. Something, hell if I know what. They didn't exactly keep me in the loop. It was the full on Revelation deal, you know? Mine eyes have seen the glory. We have broken every rule, so sound the freaking horn and release the grapes of wrath."

"I don't think that's how the song goes." Sam couldn't help but to point out and was rewarded by a something that might have, on a very good day, resembled a glare. "So how did you get there?"

"I talked to Castiel. He came to see things from my point of view and sprung us both." Dean shrugged, as though convincing an angel to go against the will of Heaven was nothing unusual. "We found out where you were and he teleported me there, used his angel mojo. And that was that. You know the rest."

Silence fell again for a moment, but it felt far less oppressive than it had before. Again, it was Sam to break it, unable to let this end too soon. Dean hadn't actually said he'd changed his mind or that the angels had a plan, but Sam hadn't always needed the actual words and this sounded like something that could possibly be salvageable. Undeserved, certainly, and more a ghost of a chance than anything solid, but maybe there was a chance and he had to scout the land out, find out more.

"So what do we do now?"

"What we always do, Sam." Dean's lips quirked up slightly, a shadow of a grin peeking through. "We fix things. We put things back to rights. I know I screwed up, but we're still here, aren't we? That means we've still got a chance."

"It's still my fault." Sam said quietly. He couldn't give himself the out that Dean was offering, just as Dean had offered time and time again when they were kids to cover for whatever mistakes Sam had made. For the first time, he didn't want to, wanted to clutch his responsibility for this tight to his chest, wanted to shout it out for the whole damned world to see. He couldn't let Dean hold the blame for this one all on his shoulders, even if it might take some time to convince his brother of that.

He couldn't stop hearing Ruby's voice crowing about how awesome she was, how proud she had been. Couldn't stop feeling the cool touch of her fingers or remembering the excited, hopeful look to her eyes as she whispered about rewards and how he'd be so grateful and how Sam had done it, how it could only have been Sam.

"You did what you could, Sam. We'll figure the rest out." Dean's smile faded until he just looked a bit uncomfortable, shoulders still hunched over and folded in on himself. The realization hit that this was the first major thing Dean had shared with him in nearly half a year, the first secret he'd spilled since before the debacle with the Siren. Dean hadn't been able to tell him about the first Seal when he found out, but he was trusting Sam with it now. He swallowed hard.

"We kind of owe it to the world to try, don't you think?" Dean fell quiet again, looking over towards the window, and it wasn't more than a few seconds before he was up and restlessly moving back towards it, pulling the curtain aside to stare out again.

Maybe it was because he couldn't look at Sam or maybe it was because he really was just keeping watch, but that didn't change the truth of what he had said. Sam did owe it to the world to at least try. Maybe there was still a chance to make things right, in more than one way.

The air between them was thick with secrets kept over the past year and change. They sat heavy, unavoidable and unforgettable.

Unforgivable.

But that was okay. Even if Dean believed Sam was a monster (and he must, the voicemail didn't exactly hold anything back and no matter what hope Sam had read into this conversation, Dean still hadn't even been able to touch him since they left the church nor look at him for longer than a few seconds at a time) and things Weren't Right between them, Sam needed to make sure it would be okay again, someday.

The fury and despair he'd been feeling had faded. Still there, in the back of his mind, lurking and threatening to volley forth at any time. Sam didn't think they would ever leave, but what Dean was offering was enough to allow a tiny flickering feel of something else to light up in his chest. He needed to believe that maybe that chance wasn't as dead as he'd thought this morning. He hadn't thought he'd have the opportunity, hadn't even believed that he'd be alive to even consider it, and so he was at an utter loss for what to do next.

But if Dean was willing to keep him around, then maybe he could get a chance to make things better. Even if he had to save the world in the process.

Still not dead...

2006-11-11T06:51:19Z

And shockingly twenty-four today. I don't know how I feel about that, so I do believe that I'll ignore it. Twenty-three was easy to ignore, after all. It prolly won't get painful until closer to thirty.

Also v. amused as it turns out that my understanding French comes in handy for unexpected reasons. I'd a hit of nostolgia tonight, so went looking for Seiji fic. Didn't find any that I haven't read before, and it seems all the image archives are dead and gone (and I will never ever get another copy of the song "Midnight Party", which is truly a woeful thing, as nothing else on this earth is quite of the crack as much as that song), but it does appear that there's a small French fandom still surviving. Or maybe it's actually been dead for years and the webpages are maintained on Google like bones in the Sahara, but as my French remains better than my Japanese, I can still gleefully chortle over what I find.

Like 90% of the movies I watch, it might be old, but it's still new to me.

ginzai @ 2006-02-16T00:18:00

2006-02-16T05:24:14Z

Have lost all respect for myself as a writer. Cannot speak using pronouns. Have located google-cached chapter of Mary Sue fic written at 14.

...

Words do not describe. Had entirely forgotten shameful first ever published fic. Every cliche ever incorporated into a Mary Sue fic is present in that fic. Original OC. From America. Mysterious connection to canon characters. Talking cat.

Must go bleach brain now.

Because I was tagged and it beats doing work

2005-10-19T18:47:01Z

10 things you like: I think I just did this meme. XD But my 10 likes of today are as follows: getting an A on my French test, getting an A on my Arabic test, the internet, the NHC and their reports on Wilma, PL Nunn's Bastard!! fic arcs, fics containing IC characters, Advent Children, my latest green chocobo from last night's continued FFVII replay (128 km! So much better than his sister, who topped out at 108.) coffee, and Thai coffee.

3 things that make you happy: The second cup of coffee of the morning, because I'm always too sleepy to pay attention to the first. Good stories, particularly on thundering nights, but good stories over all. The kind that sweep you away into that world until you forget everything else and you almost feel the pain of needing to know what happens next while at the same time, dreading the end. That sleepy feeling on mornings when you don't have to get up, when you're only half awake and everything is perfectly content.

3 things that anger you: Stupid people, poor characterization, when gravity wins

10 things that you hate: Morons, people who hurt kids, my stupid right foot, cleaning up after my cat, failure, car accidents, being unable to communicate with someone due to a language barrier, mixing up the emphatics of the Arabic alphabet, when my laptop dies on me unexpectedly, burnt coffee (such a waste!)

3 facts about your name: I go by my middle name, Lynn, in most of RL because my family is adopting a girl who shares my first. My favorite part of my name is the one I wasn't born with. I was given the name Lynn after my aunt, who with her twin sister died right after they were born.

5 facts about yourself: I'm left handed, but mostly ambidextrious. My hair is just long enough to whap myself in the eye with when it's in a ponytail and I turn my head too fast. I'm a Scorpio. I'm a bit of a wannabe overachiever but I'm also quite lazy, which is a proper conflict of interests.

2 things you expect (at least for now): To clean my room this weekend and hopefully find the rest of my (currently lost) manga and doujinshi and to get a B on my Arabic exam this afternoon.

4 random thoughts:

"I really should be doing work right now..."
"If Kall-Su and Fai D. Flowright walked into a bar, would they kill each other or commiserate over what it's like to have an overbearing figure in their lives who thinks that they own them?"
"I owe several people fic and I should probably work on that. Poor Kage-chan has waited over a year for one!"
"I could stand more coffee."

A song you're listening to (give singer): Does having Carla Bruni stuck in my head count? Because I think Quelqu'un M'a Dit has now taken up permenant residence there.

time: 2:39 EST, October the 19th, two thousand and five.

10 People you'll tag this to: cosmicastaway, karma_aster, shadow_arashi, berne, yami_no_kaiba, katarik, zara_the_pirate, sexyferret, teneshi, ms_kinnikufan

FYI, tout le monde...

2005-10-18T18:19:45Z

_rp_zeal_ rocks. Utterly. She is amazing and wonderful and lovely and to her I wish to say thank you ever so much for the six months of paid lj account bliss.

As a side note, I just now learned how to do that little username link thingie. I've been on lj over three years now, and hadn't learned it previously.

One more thing that's awesome about today.

Totally stolen from like everyone, really

2005-09-23T01:31:36Z

LJ Interests meme results

bastard!!:
Bastard!! is your basic 90s fantasy manga, but I adored it because it had Kall-Su. Kall-Su is utterly fab, even if they did cut 90% of his storyline out of the anime. He's like angst on a stick though, so this needs to be taken into account.
draco:
Dude, it's Draco. What more needs be said?
final fantasy vii:
Mwahahaha. This has EATEN MY BRAIN. Mostly because of Advent Children and how much it utterly rocks. That whole movie is just sweet. November 29th's release of my preordered copy is too far away indeed.

Cloud was hit on liek whoa, but less so than in the game. Because in the game, everyone wanted them some of him, and it's no wonder really that the poor woobie went insane. I'd go mad too if I'd Mukki slavering over me.
gundam wing:
Not so much an interest anymore, sadly. But I did like Duo, because hey, dark personalitied-smiling-jester/thieves who openly defy the laws of physics (and get commented on it in canon) are always to the good. Otherwise this series might only be notable for me because it's what introduced me to yaoi/slash. I still read the fic on occasion though, because most of what's written these days has moved into an almost cyber-punk sort of feel that doesn't really follow canon but is still rather cool.
kings quest:
I've liked KQ since I first played KQ6 as a wee ickle thing. It might not be my favorite RPG, but it's the first I ever played and so I remain fond of it. Like Oregon Trail, but with magic. And less dysentry.
nadia:
Nadia, from Nadia of the Mysterious Seas. That's the show that introduced me to anime to begin with and it's one that I still quite enjoy. Atlantis, politics leading up to WWI, mysteries and ~~not so~~ magic jewels and NEMO. Nemo is a fantastic man. Nadia herself is quite keen as well, but was unfortunately a quite in character fourteen year old girl. Now that I am no longer a fourteen year old girl, I can see how she'd get on some people's nerves.
robin:
Any Robin, no matter which Robin, rocks hardcore. It comes with the territory. And then it lasts after the whole Robin-ness is done with, so Dick, Jason, Tim (you know, before he got over it) and the rest are all utterly wonderful. Steph too, but unfortunately, we didn't get to see much of her after she stopped being Robin.

DKSA!Dick was kinda scary though. But that's prolly just because Frank Miller wrote it and he's a scary sort of guy.
shounen ai:
Boy + boy = fun? Most of my pairings tend to be guy/guy and I suck utterly at writing anything more intense than SA? I dunno. I forgot I'd this one in here, to be honest.
the legendary lymond chronicles:
Lymond is my literary hero. I want to grow up and have fantastico adventures and speak 12 different languages and be able to drop obscure medieval poetry into conversations as well. Only, you know, without insane guys stealing my babies and the whole slave for two years and life being a generally torturous mass of angst.
yami no matsuei:
Like GW, not something I'm into as much these days. But I'm always up for a spot of TatsTsu, and someday, honest, I'd love to get more answers as to just what the fuck was up with Tsuzuki's powers and where Muraki went. Because, come on, so not dead.

Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.

HBP ahoy!

2005-07-18T16:39:40Z

In the grand tradition of the Harry Potter fandom, I shall now make a rambling post about the latest book. And trust me, it's rambly. This thing last clocked in at 2600 words, and while I want to cut that down some, it's still bound to be quite long.

Wow.

Two years ago, I finished reading order with a definite sense of disappointment. I didn't like Order. I didn't like Harry in Order. My dislike of Dumbledore (hardly a surprise to anyone, I'd imagine) swelled to such size that it wasn't until Gabriel graced the pages of the Lymond Chronicles that I discovered a literary figure that I loathed more. Draco was a weak character, who did nothing save remind the reader that there are secondary characters who are still children. The new grrrlpower Ginny disgusted me. Hermione overshadowed Ron in every possible way, and became in essence a Mary Sue. Luna, I had liked. Tonks, I could have grown to like, if I could have stood to reread the book.

I didn't. I've read Order all of once and, until I read the series again as a whole, I doubt I will again. I hated Order.

But I've been brought back into the whole mess with HBP. And since this as become so long, I'm going to cut it up and hope that, somehow, it will still make sense.

I liked that Hagrid played a minor role and if I was annoyed that Grawp didn't belt him one upside the head and trot back to his family, at least he was barely mentioned. I liked that Hermione was once more the bookish, intelligent girl I'd adored in Goblet and before, and I even grew a touch fonder of Ginny, now that her "She's so kewl!!1!" characterization was lessened. She wasn't so abrasive here, a fact for which I am quite grateful. I adored Fleur, and did from the moment she entered the book again. Molly, as Molly has been prone to do over the past four books, annoyed me.

I liked reading about the interaction of the Muggle world with the Magical one. Seeing the references to Sirius Black's Muggle Most Wanted posters? Awesome. And I *really* like the concept that, somewhere behind the scenes, wizards and witches are working on events happening in the Muggle community. There's such a ridiculous amount that could be done with that information alone that I can't even begin to start with the love for it.

Such love for Narcissa, even if on the tapes she sounds bizarrely like a French-Hungarian man with a bad case of the flu. I find myself intrigued by Bellatrix and really wanting to know more about her. She seemed at least a touch saner here, than I remember her being from my once-over of Order. Narcissa's begging Severus for aid to help her son was, I thought, particularly powerful, especially since she, like everyone else, thought that Draco would fail. More on that later.

There certainly seems to be more than meets the eye between the Snape and Malfoy families, and I'm rather interested by it. It's one thing to know that Lucius and Severus are "old friends," however one wishes to take that. It's something else entirely to know that Narcissa was well aware of it, and close enough to Severus to request his assistance in the manner that she did. Her desperation came across quite strongly; here was a woman who had lost her husband and who was terrified that she'd loose her son as well. I like this desperate Narcissa, and I adored how she threatened Bellatrix. Her actions over the next book, especially with Draco now in the hands of the Death Eaters and not protected at school, will be quite fascinating. Somehow, I don't see her making it.

As a side note on that chapter, does anyone else get the impression that Snape had no real idea what he was swearing to assist with? Not once does he give any specifics of the plan; everything he says can be twisted about in a manner consistent with someone getting another to admit to something by pretending that they know more than they do. It's interesting to me, especially in light of Draco's refusal to trust Snape at Christmas.

But moving onwards.

I adored Harry in this, and I haven't rhonestly liked Harry for ages. Harry was brilliant here - not the spoiled, whingy kid he was in Order, but the stronger, more jaded character we saw in Goblet. Less naive, I'd say, and certainly darker and more mature, but Harry here made me feel the same sense of love that I had in the earlier books and that I'd lost entirely by the time I picked this one up. Here was Harry, brave but never stupid, occasionally wrong, but with valid instincts. It was as though the last book had been a bad phase he'd gone through, one that Sirius' death had shocked him out of. And wasn't that a surprise? I was expecting far more mourning, but Harry seemed to have shut Sirius out of his mind almost entirely.

Harry's slow easing into admitting to being the Chosen One was well done to me, a title I can't imagine he feels comfortable with, but one that he now accepts. It's a silly title, don't get me wrong, but Harry no longer has any problems with the idea of killing Voldemort, and he knows it. The wibbling of Order has given way to the determination of HBP, and I was quite glad to see this change.

Of course, I was also quite glad to see his being quite, quite obsessive over the actions of M. Malfoy, but that's just me.

Harry's growing ability to see things in shades of grey is a huge boon to his character. His previous determination to view the world as Good or Evil, with nothing in between frustrated me greatly. But for the first time, we see him feeling something aside from dislike for a Slytherin, just as for the first time, Harry really had to get his hands dirty regarding Dumbledore. I'd imagine that particular bit will come back to bite him - Snape might have cast the killing blow, but Harry is the one who forced poison onto the lips of a man begging succor. It's a hint to Harry (and to us readers) that things are not always clear cut and dry, and I really enjoyed it.

So, for the first time in ages, I'm feeling the Harrylove. It's a somewhat weird feeling, but I don't think I mind it.

I liked Snape here. And yes, I'm subscribing to the theory that Dumbledore was dying, he knew he was dying, and there wasn't much point in dragging it out for longer. Someone somewhere posited the thought that Dumbledore, by drinking the potion, might himself then turn into an Infernius (and please forgive me if I've the spelling wrong on the new words. Sadly, I did not bring the book into the office today). Obviously, this is something to avoid at all costs. Snape, out of all the Order-esque characters, is the only one who has the moral ambiguity to kill Dumbledore, to end it before anything awful occurred. If Dumbledore lived but had been affected, the results would have been horrific.

And so, we have Reason Un Pour La Tombe De Dumbledore. Except in better French, as mine, frankly, sucks much. Reason Deux, je pense, would be that Snape is rapidly out living his usefulness to the Order as a spy. Snape has to give so much back to Voldemort that he's putting the Order in danger. By taking the route that he did, Severus cuts off a significant information source to the Death Eaters and does so in a way that none of them could possibly fault him. He relieves Dumbledore of his misery (and seems rather upset by it, given his reaction to Harry a chapter on) and at the same time deals the Death Eaters a blow which, we can hope, they will be unable to recover from.

A point that I found of interest with Snape was that Draco was not relying on him in the slightest. This is the first time we've ever seen Draco so detached from Snape, so much so that he didn't even let on to Snape that he was attempting to kill Dumbledore. Remember, when Snape was hounding him about the necklace, Draco denied it utterly. This fact is one I find quite interesting, and I wonder if it will come up again later. For Narcissa's sake (and more probably, for Draco's) Severus took the Vow to assist, and if needed, take over, Draco's Voldemort-given task. This is the most we've ever seen him give a student, and to me seems canon confirmation that Severus loves Draco as a son.

I find interactions between the two absolutely fascinating and think it will become more so as the summer progresses. Severus and Draco are now on their own; one character we know is at least a double agent, and the other one who seemed likely to cross that line. Somehow, with Draco at his wit's end and Severus pushed beyond all reason, any confrontations between the two is bound to be traumatic. Whether Severus will be as inclined to protect Draco now that the task is complete and Severus has been forced to do something which I cannot imagine he will ever feel anything but eternal regret for, I can't say. But I desperately want to find out, especially with the two of them alone together, almost certainly heading for Death Eater HQ.

There's been a mixed sense of reaction online, it feels. I've seen references (if not actual posts) to people seeing Draco's refusal to kill Dumbledore as cowardice and I find that somewhat silly. We now have between the lines confirmation that Draco attempted to refuse his task: to Dumbledore he states that he had to do it or Voldemort would kill Draco and his parents. If Draco had been afraid for his own life at the sign of failure, well, to me that would mean he wasn't stupid. But he was scared for his parents, and from the outside at least, he's always seen them as being somewhat undefeatable. Certainly Draco's faith in Narcissa and Lucius especially is bound to have been shaken, but without direct threat to them, I don't see Draco drawing the connection between his failure and their deaths, unless it was directly pointed out to him.

Even Harry seems to get that Draco acted as he did in part, at least, because his parents had been threatened. He even felt pity along with dislike for this, because that Damaclus sword is still being held directly over Draco's neck. And this could actually be a dangerous thing for the members of Light; Draco, for the first time, has directly proven himself a threat. He pieced together a quite intelligent plan, used sophisticated magic to make it work, and did what no one else, not even Voldemort, had been able to do before: he opened Hogwarts to the Death Eaters.

It could be said that Hogwarts had been breached before, but fake!Moody (or Snape, depending on your views) could never have caused so much damage as the Death Eaters roaming Hogwarts could have (but interestingly, seem to not have) done. And Draco pulled it off under the noses of professors and Aurors alike. While Dumbledore appears to have known about the schemes to off himself, the opening of Hogwarts seems to have caught him, like the rest of them, by surprise. I've said for ages that Draco is smart (perhaps not wise, but definitely intelligent). This, I feel, proves it.

And oddly enough, it proves it in one of the ongoing themes of the HP universe: that there is a world bigger than school, and it's your actions in that world which are important. Through out the books, we've seen this resonate. In PS, Hermione comments that she has "books and cleverness" but that Harry has the Real Stuff which will allow success. Draco, here, proved that he has that too - even if no one could enjoy the outcome of it.

And I really do wonder what will happen, now that Draco is among the Death Eaters. He has to feel completely alone at the moment. His unease with the Death Eaters was palatable - Fenrir, in particular, he seems to have disliked and perhaps (with good reason, all those "I like kids" being tossed about) feared. At Christmas, he seemed to think that accomplishing this scheme would oust Snape as Voldemort's favorite, but I'd argue he doesn't seem all that keen on the idea at all. Draco came across as somewhat shrill in that scene, covering his tracks, and while he's apparently gotten better at it, he's not yet mastered the technique. Lying to Severus was not easy, and that showed in his tone and in his wording.

So now there's Draco, who we know is having a major case of second thoughts and who was prepared to swap sides once the safety of his parents was assured, with a bunch of murderers and Snape. Snape, who Draco just saw kill the man who, for a moment, offered a glimmer of hope for a way out. This scenario is a much darker one than I'd anticipated, especially since Draco is still, by Dumbledore's own admission, an innocent. He might be an innocent with the ability to cast at least one of the three Unforgivables, but murder is still beyond him. And I do wonder about what role Voldemort will want Draco to play; everyone, from Dumbledore to Snape to Voldemort to Narcissa, everyone thought that Draco would fail. He didn't - Draco's goal, whether it was meant to be releasing Death Eaters into Hogwarts, ensuring Dumbledore's death, or both, has been accomplished. It shakes things up a bit, and it makes me worry that Draco will therefore be given a larger role than he might otherwise have had.

Draco seems a better match for Harry here. Whereas in Order, Draco was always easily defeated, here he more than holds his own. The bit in the bathroom more than demonstrates this to me; Draco has been caught crying, is emotionally unstable, but unlike in Order where Harry was able to outhex him in a moment, here Draco's faster at pulling his wand (makes me wonder if he'd been practicing over the summer) and he matches Harry blow for blow until Harry pulls out some serious Dark Magic. As a side note, I can't believe though that Draco was about to let loose an Unforgiveable in the Hogwarts boys' bathroom. It might have sounded like Cruciatus, but I'm sure that it was something else.

I liked the bit on the train. It makes me wince to think about, but there's something poetic about Draco's victory being so radically different from Harry's previous two. In both of the confrontations that Harry bested Draco, Draco was outnumbered and the attacks were magic based. Here, Draco used cunning to make Harry defenseless, waited until they were alone, and then used a brutal physical attack to make his point. The whole "leave him on the train until he gets back to London" bit harkened back to when Harry and co. did the same to Draco and his, another point I enjoyed. That his revenge was not for himself, but rather for his father? Even better. And best of all, it marked the third occasion which Draco has passed information on to Harry.

Which is another point of interest to me. Why on earth would Draco let Harry know that he was working on something for Voldemort? He admitted to not being a Death Eater in that scene, and he flat out told Harry that there was something major happening. The bit with Goblet where he warned H&R about getting Hermione away can be attributed to sheer wanting to show off - he wasn't in any danger, but they certainly were. In Order, he offered a warning about Sirius being targeted, and that can be written off as his simply repeating something his father had told him.

But this? This was him noticing from the beginning of the scene (and how nicely this contrasts with the bit in Chamber!) that Harry was there, and proceeding to pass information on regardless. If I start to write in the HP universe again, this point will definitely come up.

And actually, now I think about it, Draco's role as a harbinger of information has been fairly well set since the beginning. He’s the first wizardling child Harry meets in PS, and he overloads Harry with so many new concepts that Harry is left lost. He unknowingly lets Harry and Ron in on secrets in Chamber. He’s the one who first hints at Sirius “killing” James and Lily in PoA (and here’s to wondering whether his words in that particular scene will come true!) and he does so in a way that Harry, here in HBP, seems to copy when he tells Draco about friends and lookouts. In both cases, the boys offer advice coached on what they themselves would do, and in both cases, there’s a suspicious lack of animosity. It really makes me wonder how important the ideas of friends being of import and going after the murderer of one’s parents will become.

All in all, I find the whole thing to be quite fascinating. And, unlike in the summer of 2003, I can’t wait for more.

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2005-06-27T17:19:24Z

Your Slanguage Profile

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So according to this, I'm a convict from Canada?

Wow. The things one discovers on lj. XD