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sarosefics2013-06-24 04:09 pm
ramblin_rosie) wrote in sarosefics2013-06-24 04:09 pm
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All Quiet on the Western Front
Picking up after Quiet on the Set, and inspired in part by a conversation with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
immortal_jedi....
Summary: After three days in Bizarro World, Dean's ticked off at Cas and very adamantly retired. Cas is determined to keep the angelic civil war away from Cicero, not even giving the news of it directly to Dean--but as matters escalate, Sam and Lisa must decide whether to tell Dean all they know and risk ruining his friendship with Cas.
All Quiet on the Western Front
By San Antonio Rose
After the little jaunt to Bizarro World, life in Cicero gets... interesting.
Dean finds Lisa staring out the window at the front yard one morning about a week after they get back. “What?”
She turns. Angels like cats? she asks.
He blinks. “How do you mean?”
She motions him forward and points to... well, if the script for “Exile on Main Street” is any indication, a dead djinn lying on the grass in front of their house.
Dean curses under his breath and runs upstairs to grab the shotgun that’s stashed in their closet. Then he goes out the front door, Lisa hard on his heels, to examine the intruder. Rock salt won’t kill a djinn, of course, but the gun should at least keep the thing at a good distance if it isn’t already dead.
Sure enough, the dark-haired female—Brigitta, the script called her—is covered with the tattoos that are the distinguishing mark of the djinn. Dean aims the shotgun at its heart and cautiously nudges the prone form onto its back with his booted foot, and said heart has been run through with something that burned where it met monster flesh. That’s consistent enough with what he knows of angel blades to make him think Lisa’s right about who left the corpse here.
He’s still trying to figure out why when a pair of feet in pumps under black slacks appears just inside his field of vision. He looks up to see a blonde angel looking back at him with a ghost of a self-satisfied smile.
Fear not, she signs. My name is Rachel. Castiel sent me. The djinn are all dead; I will dispose of this one now.
“Rachel,” Dean replies by way of greeting. “Why were the djinn here in the first place?”
Revenge.
“Yeah, I figured that part out. But we found some stuff in TVLand that points to the Campbells’ research program being the reason the monsters got all stirred up. They’ve stopped that here.”
Raphael has found other hunters to continue.
Dean frowns as Lisa comes up behind him and puts a hand on his back. “Who?”
Roy and Walt Addersly.
Red-hot rage boils up in Dean’s chest. He’d had every intention of going after those two nincompoops as soon as he and Sam had come back to life, teach them a lesson about murdering Winchesters, but the encounter with Joshua had kind of derailed everything for a while. Then he’d had his hands full trying to find Adam and Cas, and then... well, he was deaf and Sam was in the Cage. By the time Sam came back to him, he’d forgotten all about that piece of unfinished business.
“Do me a favor,” he growls. “If those two show up within a hundred miles of Cicero? Terminate with extreme prejudice.”
Rachel’s smile grows a little as she bows her head slightly in acknowledgment. Then she and the dead djinn disappear. Lisa rubs Dean’s back but doesn’t ask, just prompts him gently to go back inside.
Two weeks later, he gets a text from Mark asking if he knows why Roy and Walt’s truck would be engulfed in a fireball upon crossing the Indiana state line. Dean smirks coldly and writes back, they had it coming.
Roy and Walt’s death doesn’t seem to solve anything. Sam knows this only because people keep dropping by the bar where he works when he’s on duty—and by people, he means Mark, Gwen, and various angels. He doesn’t usually see Cas, unfortunately, but Inias and Samandiriel seem pretty okay as far as angels go, and Rachel is at least polite to him. From what Bobby says, Balthazar has apparently been assigned to guard him, at least while he’s in Sioux Falls, and they keep busy annoying each other.
From the reports Sam gets from these varied informants throughout the summer and early fall, he gathers two things. One is that Rachel has expanded Dean’s hundred-mile-radius request to include all manner of nasties, though Sam can’t tell whether she did so on her own or whether Cas ordered it. Either way, they’re ridiculously safe in Cicero. The other is that Raphael’s recruiting more hunters to do his dirty work, in spite of the Campbells and Bobby’s network of friends all putting the word out that Raphael is untrustworthy. Most of Raphael’s hunters were on the unstable side to begin with, and not a few still blame Sam for the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t and think he’s the Antichrist. As a result, not only has monster activity continued to spike, but hunters are nearly on the brink of a civil war between those who believe they’re on a mission from God in working for Raphael and those who know better.
Sam’s really glad he decided to retire back in January.
He’s also glad Lisa suggested trying to smuggle scripts back from that alternate dimension. There had been only one hard copy in Jensen’s trailer, but Sam found four or five PDF copies when he hacked into Jared’s email (to learn more about his alter ego, of course) and managed to download them onto a flash drive that survived the jump back. Much of the events of “Exile on Main Street,” “The Third Man,” and “Weekend at Bobby’s” have already changed, but Sam is able to pass on info about the baby-snatching shifters in Michigan, the lamia in Wisconsin, and the vampires in Illinois to both Bobby and Mark and to warn Rufus to stab the okami enough times to kill it.
Then he deletes the files and wipes the drive. He thinks he might be somewhat more callous about certain things now, but the way the scripts portray him? Using Dean as bait multiple times, even letting him get turned to get inside the vamp nest because Samuel has a cure? Not caring that Dean might put Ben and Lisa at risk while he’s vamped?! Sam can’t fathom acting that way, and he can’t figure out where that level of sociopathy could have come from. He doesn’t want to believe he could be capable of such a thing, even after all the mistakes he’s made.
Inias seems to realize that Sam’s been dwelling on the problem when he shows up one evening. After giving Sam a status update, he pauses and says, “Sam, those scripts don’t portray this world. Your story is different.”
Sam sighs. “In the details, sure.”
“Any human is capable of great evil. But you have an advantage. Now that you have thrown off your addiction, you have relearned how to listen to your conscience, and the goodness of your soul can keep you from doing such terrible things.”
“The goodness of my—” Sam blinks a couple of times. “Wait, are you saying—there’s some world out there where I’m running around without my soul?”
Inias shrugs and opens his mouth to hedge, but Sam knows the answer must be yes. It’s the only thing that makes sense, if those scripts are indeed reflective of a reality that split from this one after Stull.
“How is that even possible? Wouldn’t the body without the soul be, like, a zombie? And how would my soul even get separated from my body?”
“I don’t know everything,” Inias pleads, and Sam hears the truth in it. “Humans aren’t my specialty. All I know is, you do have your soul, so... please don’t beat yourself up over things you haven’t done and won’t do.”
Sam sighs. “I’ll try.” And he spots Inias a beer.
Later that night, he gets a call from Rufus. “How the hell did you know about that okami?”
“Honestly, Rufus? You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Rufus huffs. “Guess I’ll have to get it out of Bob, then.”
Sam chuckles. “You can try—but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Because all of this information keeps coming to Sam directly, and because Lisa’s sure no one else is showing up randomly to give it to Dean, the two of them have to decide how much they’re going to tell him. It’s not fair to keep him wholly in the dark, but Dean’s determined to make civilian life work, especially after declaring to Cas that they were 100% out, and neither Sam nor Lisa wants him to feel guilty about that decision. Still, there’s not a whole lot any of them can do unless Cas asks them directly to help with something, so Sam usually just summarizes his conversations for Dean.
The choice gets harder in mid-October when Gwen and Mark walk in and plop down at the bar and Gwen orders a double Scotch neat. Sam looks a question at Mark, who shakes his head, which must mean he’s driving.
“What happened?” Sam asks as he pours. “Run into trouble?”
“Ran into weird,” Mark replies.
Sam hands Gwen her Scotch, and she tosses it back, catches her breath, and starts talking. “Those vamps in Limestone. They hadn’t set up shop until a week ago, and we’ve just now been able to get over there. But when we got there, every last vamp was already dead.”
Sam blinks. “Already dead?”
Gwen nods. “And there was this girl right in the middle of ’em, and when we spoke to her... her eyes turned.”
“Demon,” Mark supplies.
“‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘For once, we’re on the same side.’ And she smoked out!”
“Kid was traumatized. Twilight fan, thought her boyfriend was role-playing. But he was a real vamp, tried to turn her while she was possessed. Demon blocked the blood, saved her life. We got her to a hospital. She’ll be okay, but... like I said. Weird.”
That’s probably the most Sam’s ever heard Mark say at once in the year-plus he’s known the guy, but he decides not to get hung up on it. “So a demon wiped out the vampires? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Gwen nods and holds out her glass for another double. “Samuel doesn’t have a clue as to why. Doesn’t make much sense to me, either—why would they even care?”
Sam doesn’t have an answer, so he just pours her drink with a sigh and a grimace. Then he gives Mark the spare key to his apartment so Mark doesn’t have to drive another two hours to get home. Mark nods, pays, and waits just long enough for Gwen to finish the second drink before steering her back out to the car.
They’re already asleep when he gets home late that night, Gwen on the couch, Mark on the floor in front of it. Sam considers waking Mark to talk him into taking the bed in the spare room, which is nominally Dean’s even though Dean really lives with Lisa still. But he figures Mark’s probably rattled enough by what happened earlier that he’ll sleep better out here, where he can guard Gwen, even though she can take care of herself perfectly well despite being half-smashed. Mark’s kind of like Dean that way.
Sam gets a fleeting image of Dean and Mark trying to hunt together—the deaf man and the functional mute. He has to stifle a snicker. Then again, they might actually make a decent team if Mark knew ASL.
But thinking of Dean and hunting brings up the question of whether to tell him about the cousins’ latest misadventure. Sam falls asleep without figuring it out. And Mark and Gwen are gone by the time he wakes up for breakfast, which means he can’t ask their opinion.
He’s still puzzling over it as he prepares to start his next shift at the bar that evening when someone walks up to the bar and sits down just at the edge of his peripheral vision. “Sorry,” he says as he turns. “We’re not—” Then he breaks off and makes a grab for the salt-loaded shotgun he keeps under the bar.
Meg raises both hands. “I come in peace,” she says.
“Bull.”
“Sam. If I wanted to do more than talk, you’d be dead by now. Just give me a beer—minus the holy water.”
He keeps one hand on the shotgun and slides her an unopened beer with the other. “How the hell did you get in here?”
“Told your watchdogs we needed to chat. And they’re close, so I’m not gonna do anything stupid.” She pops the cap off the beer with her thumb and takes a drink.
“Chat about what?”
“What your cousins saw yesterday. There’ve been some changes lately, and I thought it was time you found out.”
“Keep talking.”
“Raphael is getting desperate. Seems Clarence has put enough pressure on that Raphie thinks he needs to get into Purgatory pronto, and he can’t get his humans working fast enough. So who does he ask but....”
“The Queen of Hell?”
She smirks and raises the beer in salute.
“And what did you tell him?”
“No way in Hell. Crowley was crazy to think about busting the door down, and Raphael just wants to be God. Not only do I not want in there, I don’t want Raphael getting in, either.”
“So?”
“Scorched earth. He can’t find his way in without monsters, so we’ll make sure there are no monsters he can ask.”
Sam just stares for a moment while Meg drinks. “You’re serious,” he finally manages.
She nods and sets down the beer. “We’re on the same team—well, for now. Me, you, Bobby, even Castiel. Not conspiring, just cooperating. Once Raphie’s plan’s been mothballed, all bets are off.”
He lets go of the shotgun and steps toward her, holding up one finger. “You don’t possess hunters.”
She snorts. “I’m not suicidal. I’m not even working with hunters. We’re just expanding the workforce, that’s all.” And she takes another drink.
He takes another step forward. “Meg... why are you telling me this?”
She shrugs. “Old times’ sake, I guess. You’re the best enemy I ever had. Besides, I’ve been inside that skull of yours. You’d figure it out on your own soon enough. Thought you should hear the full story from me before you decide the bench is a little too hard.”
“Because you don’t want me to stop you.”
She smirks and drinks, draining the dregs of her beer. “Tell Dean I said hello,” she says then and vanishes.
He whips out his phone and calls Lisa. They get Bobby on three-way. None of them know what to tell Dean.
Lisa sits on the info about the bizarre state of play in the hunting world for two weeks. That’s when Sam gets word of a hunt that they didn’t find a script for and that could have proved disastrous. She’s not clear on the details, but evidently a recently-turned skinwalker had gone rogue and attracted the wrong parties’ attention, resulting in an innocent civilian nearly being killed or abducted (she wasn’t sure which) as a suspected werewolf before the skinwalker sleeper cell showed up and got wiped out by the angels—along with a handful of other civilians who happened to be too close when the angels smote the warehouse where the skinwalkers were meeting.
“Dean’s going to be livid,” she groans when Sam finishes telling her about it.
“I know,” Sam sighs. “If there’s one thing he hates about this job, it’s collateral damage. And in this case, I can’t say I’d blame him.”
“We need to figure out some way to stop all of this. You know he won’t want to sit idly by while the supernatural world implodes.”
“Yeah, but with his hearing gone—”
“I don’t want him to leave, either! I just... there’s got to be something we can do.”
“We can’t reason with Meg, and we can’t exactly destabilize Hell right now by taking her out. I don’t think Samuel would listen to us.”
“That leaves....”
“Cas.”
They look at each other for a long moment.
“You talk to him.”
The request startles her. “What? Why me?!”
“You’re a mom.” She opens her mouth to object, but he raises a hand. “Moms... moms just know how to deal with things, how to talk to people. Plus, Cas knows you care about Dean—and you’re not me.”
She blinks. “Why would that matter? You know him better than I do.”
He sighs more heavily this time, and she gets the sense that there’s a lot he can’t—or won’t—tell her. “Look, the history we have with Cas... it hasn’t all been good on my end. I mean, we’re friends, yeah, but he’s closer to Dean, and not just because of pulling him out of Hell. I just... I can’t assume he’ll respond as well to my calling him on this as he would if it comes from you.” And there are the Puppy Eyes of Doom.
She’s mostly immune to puppy eyes, but she doesn’t think Sam’s deliberately trying to manipulate her. “What am I supposed to say? What kind of leverage do I have?”
He shrugs. “It’s your house. You say the word, and I’ll angel-proof it from here to eternity. And you can threaten to tell Dean. I’ve got a feeling Cas doesn’t want Dean involved, either, or else he’d be showing up to talk to him in person rather than relaying messages through us.”
She frets over it for two hours after Sam leaves before deciding to go for the direct approach. Dean’s always reacting to their news updates by muttering about what a child Cas can be, and Sam seems to think Cas needs a Mom Talk. So she goes out into the backyard, takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes. “Castiel, it’s Lisa Braeden. We need to talk. Now.”
There’s a loud flutter, and Cas says, “Hello, Lisa. I hadn’t expected to hear from you until Thanksgiving. Is something wrong?”
She opens her eyes and sighs. “Cas, this scorched-earth campaign has to stop.”
He frowns and tilts his head. “I don’t understand.”
“We heard about the skinwalkers. About the innocent bystanders who died, and the poor woman who was unjustly suspected.”
“That was regrettable, but in war—”
“But nothing. Do you think Dean’s gonna buy that?”
The confused frown deepens. “Dean’s opinion is immaterial.”
“No, it is exactly material. If I tell him what’s happening and can’t tell him that you’ve stopped it, you know what he’ll do.”
“Dean shouldn’t—”
“But he will.” She knows she ought to be terrified about talking to an angel this way, to be pulling an outright Wait ’til your father gets home on the most powerful being she’s ever known, but she isn’t. In fact, she takes a step forward. “He’s going to hear about this, Castiel. He can hear it from you with the news of how it’s been fixed, or he can hear it from me and Sam, in which case you can forget Thanksgiving. In fact, you can forget ever setting foot in my house again.”
“Do you really think you can stop me?”
“No. But Sam can.”
“Raphael is not yet defeated. I can’t—”
“Find a way to do it without risking innocent lives. Or I tell Dean the whole truth, and you’ll probably never see him again.”
They stare at each other for a long moment, but Cas flinches first. “I will... consult with Bobby.” And he’s gone.
Dean finds her on the back porch with the whiskey an hour later. She still hasn’t stopped shaking.
“Whoa, hey,” he says. “What happened?”
She shakes her head. Tell you later.
“I need to have Sam come get Ben?” She takes too long to decide on a reply, apparently, because he has his phone out and is thumbing a text to Sam before she can even lift her right hand again. Seconds later, she hears the ping of Sam’s reply arriving. Dean nods and finally looks at her. “It’s cool. Tonight’s his night off.”
She nods. She knew that, she thinks. But a moment later, she can’t remember why Sam’s coming, still too dazed by having successfully pulled rank on Dean’s angel. And, okay, maybe a little drunk, too.
Dean eases the bottle out of her left hand the way she did with him during the worst days before Sam came back. She doesn’t see what he does with it; she’s staring blankly at the space where it was. Then he sits down beside her, wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulls her close to where her head is resting on his chest and she can hear the strong steady thumpthump, thumpthump of his heartbeat.
She might be crying. She isn’t sure. She just holds on to him and closes her eyes and listens to his heart.
“We should go inside,” he says eventually. “Gonna get cold soon.”
The sun is setting when she opens her eyes, and the house is dark. Sam must have picked Ben up already, but she can’t think why or when.
“Hey. C’mon. It’s okay. I’m here.”
She doesn’t know what they’re going to do with themselves tonight, as Dean steers her into the dark quiet house. Their house, their real house, nothing fake here, no emptiness behind self-serving smiles. But he’s here. That’s... that’s the whole point, that’s why she stood up to Cas, isn’t it? Dean’s here. And she doesn’t want him to leave.
“Shh,” he breathes in her ear as they sit down on the couch. “I’m not goin’ anywhere, sweetheart.”
She clings to him and cries.
Something’s up. Dean knows because he can’t get any news out of Sam and Lisa, hasn’t been able to for weeks, and then there was Lisa’s little breakdown that she won’t explain except to tell him no, she’s not pregnant, she’s not stupid enough to get drunk over that. Bobby won’t tell him anything when he calls, either, and Cas? Hell, Cas has been avoiding him ever since Bizarro World.
It’s not that Dean minds being retired—much. It’s that he hates not knowing what the hell is going on and not having anyone who’ll bring him back into the loop.
But then, a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, Sam comes over for supper, and Dean’s internal radar alerts him just in time to look up as Cas appears.
Hello, Dean, Cas signs with the first genuinely happy smile Dean’s seen on him in a long time.
“Cas,” Dean replies warily, not missing the look that Sam and Lisa shoot at each other. “What’s new?”
The war is over. Raphael will not trouble us again for a long time.
“What?!” everyone gasps.
“Cas,” Sam continues (not signing—guess he thinks Dean’s not looking at him), “tell me you didn’t—”
He is not dead. And no one else will die.
Sam and Lisa both relax. Dean’s eyes narrow; he’s going to get an explanation for all this sooner or later, whether they want to tell him or not.
But Cas looks Dean in the eye. I had been pursuing a policy that seemed wise, but Lisa helped me see that it was making matters worse.
Dean files that away to corner her about—explains the breakdown, but he needs to know why she had to confront Cas, even if it is apparently over.
So I asked Bobby, Cas continues, and a friend of his helped me to set a trap. Raphael had lost most of his support and was becoming desperate enough to go after Purgatory himself. He believed Bobby’s friend had a spell that would open the door and let him take in the souls—but the spell she gave him transported him into Purgatory instead. His smile grows a bit. I will be very surprised if he finds his way out in your lifetime.
Dean blinks a couple of times. “You—seriously? You managed to get Raphael to lock himself in Purgatory?!”
Cas shrugs. If he wanted it that badly...
Dean laughs and then jumps to his feet and pulls Cas into a warm, back-thumping hug. “Dude. I can’t believe—that is awesome.”
Am I still invited for Thanksgiving? Cas thinks so only Dean can hear as Sam also hugs him. And it sounds a little timid, honestly.
“Hell, yes, you’re still invited,” Dean replies. “I still need a full report of what Lisa talked you out of, but it sounds like it’s fixed now.”
Cas is practically glowing as he nods. Perhaps they should tell you, he signs. I need to go—but I will see you soon. And he’s gone.
Sam and Lisa finally explain while Dean finishes eating, and he understands why they sat on the news. He would have been busting Cas’ chops and trying to do what he could to make sure no other civilians got hurt. But Lisa doing it for him? He doesn’t know what to think, what to feel, but he thinks... maybe he settles on being proud of her.
Sam doesn’t even ask whether he needs to take Ben for the night. They’re on the way out the door and waving goodbye before Dean even realizes the table’s clear.
So now you know, Lisa signs.
“Yeah. Now I know.” He doesn’t know what else to say; he’s kinda lost in her eyes.
Told you I wasn’t pregnant.
“Would you like to be?”
He doesn’t realize he’s said it out loud until her smile shifts a little. Well, we can always try.
He reaches over and takes her hand. “Okay, then. Let’s try.”
As they kiss, he thinks maybe he really is in love with her after all.
immortal_jedi....Summary: After three days in Bizarro World, Dean's ticked off at Cas and very adamantly retired. Cas is determined to keep the angelic civil war away from Cicero, not even giving the news of it directly to Dean--but as matters escalate, Sam and Lisa must decide whether to tell Dean all they know and risk ruining his friendship with Cas.
By San Antonio Rose
After the little jaunt to Bizarro World, life in Cicero gets... interesting.
Dean finds Lisa staring out the window at the front yard one morning about a week after they get back. “What?”
She turns. Angels like cats? she asks.
He blinks. “How do you mean?”
She motions him forward and points to... well, if the script for “Exile on Main Street” is any indication, a dead djinn lying on the grass in front of their house.
Dean curses under his breath and runs upstairs to grab the shotgun that’s stashed in their closet. Then he goes out the front door, Lisa hard on his heels, to examine the intruder. Rock salt won’t kill a djinn, of course, but the gun should at least keep the thing at a good distance if it isn’t already dead.
Sure enough, the dark-haired female—Brigitta, the script called her—is covered with the tattoos that are the distinguishing mark of the djinn. Dean aims the shotgun at its heart and cautiously nudges the prone form onto its back with his booted foot, and said heart has been run through with something that burned where it met monster flesh. That’s consistent enough with what he knows of angel blades to make him think Lisa’s right about who left the corpse here.
He’s still trying to figure out why when a pair of feet in pumps under black slacks appears just inside his field of vision. He looks up to see a blonde angel looking back at him with a ghost of a self-satisfied smile.
Fear not, she signs. My name is Rachel. Castiel sent me. The djinn are all dead; I will dispose of this one now.
“Rachel,” Dean replies by way of greeting. “Why were the djinn here in the first place?”
Revenge.
“Yeah, I figured that part out. But we found some stuff in TVLand that points to the Campbells’ research program being the reason the monsters got all stirred up. They’ve stopped that here.”
Raphael has found other hunters to continue.
Dean frowns as Lisa comes up behind him and puts a hand on his back. “Who?”
Roy and Walt Addersly.
Red-hot rage boils up in Dean’s chest. He’d had every intention of going after those two nincompoops as soon as he and Sam had come back to life, teach them a lesson about murdering Winchesters, but the encounter with Joshua had kind of derailed everything for a while. Then he’d had his hands full trying to find Adam and Cas, and then... well, he was deaf and Sam was in the Cage. By the time Sam came back to him, he’d forgotten all about that piece of unfinished business.
“Do me a favor,” he growls. “If those two show up within a hundred miles of Cicero? Terminate with extreme prejudice.”
Rachel’s smile grows a little as she bows her head slightly in acknowledgment. Then she and the dead djinn disappear. Lisa rubs Dean’s back but doesn’t ask, just prompts him gently to go back inside.
Two weeks later, he gets a text from Mark asking if he knows why Roy and Walt’s truck would be engulfed in a fireball upon crossing the Indiana state line. Dean smirks coldly and writes back, they had it coming.
Roy and Walt’s death doesn’t seem to solve anything. Sam knows this only because people keep dropping by the bar where he works when he’s on duty—and by people, he means Mark, Gwen, and various angels. He doesn’t usually see Cas, unfortunately, but Inias and Samandiriel seem pretty okay as far as angels go, and Rachel is at least polite to him. From what Bobby says, Balthazar has apparently been assigned to guard him, at least while he’s in Sioux Falls, and they keep busy annoying each other.
From the reports Sam gets from these varied informants throughout the summer and early fall, he gathers two things. One is that Rachel has expanded Dean’s hundred-mile-radius request to include all manner of nasties, though Sam can’t tell whether she did so on her own or whether Cas ordered it. Either way, they’re ridiculously safe in Cicero. The other is that Raphael’s recruiting more hunters to do his dirty work, in spite of the Campbells and Bobby’s network of friends all putting the word out that Raphael is untrustworthy. Most of Raphael’s hunters were on the unstable side to begin with, and not a few still blame Sam for the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t and think he’s the Antichrist. As a result, not only has monster activity continued to spike, but hunters are nearly on the brink of a civil war between those who believe they’re on a mission from God in working for Raphael and those who know better.
Sam’s really glad he decided to retire back in January.
He’s also glad Lisa suggested trying to smuggle scripts back from that alternate dimension. There had been only one hard copy in Jensen’s trailer, but Sam found four or five PDF copies when he hacked into Jared’s email (to learn more about his alter ego, of course) and managed to download them onto a flash drive that survived the jump back. Much of the events of “Exile on Main Street,” “The Third Man,” and “Weekend at Bobby’s” have already changed, but Sam is able to pass on info about the baby-snatching shifters in Michigan, the lamia in Wisconsin, and the vampires in Illinois to both Bobby and Mark and to warn Rufus to stab the okami enough times to kill it.
Then he deletes the files and wipes the drive. He thinks he might be somewhat more callous about certain things now, but the way the scripts portray him? Using Dean as bait multiple times, even letting him get turned to get inside the vamp nest because Samuel has a cure? Not caring that Dean might put Ben and Lisa at risk while he’s vamped?! Sam can’t fathom acting that way, and he can’t figure out where that level of sociopathy could have come from. He doesn’t want to believe he could be capable of such a thing, even after all the mistakes he’s made.
Inias seems to realize that Sam’s been dwelling on the problem when he shows up one evening. After giving Sam a status update, he pauses and says, “Sam, those scripts don’t portray this world. Your story is different.”
Sam sighs. “In the details, sure.”
“Any human is capable of great evil. But you have an advantage. Now that you have thrown off your addiction, you have relearned how to listen to your conscience, and the goodness of your soul can keep you from doing such terrible things.”
“The goodness of my—” Sam blinks a couple of times. “Wait, are you saying—there’s some world out there where I’m running around without my soul?”
Inias shrugs and opens his mouth to hedge, but Sam knows the answer must be yes. It’s the only thing that makes sense, if those scripts are indeed reflective of a reality that split from this one after Stull.
“How is that even possible? Wouldn’t the body without the soul be, like, a zombie? And how would my soul even get separated from my body?”
“I don’t know everything,” Inias pleads, and Sam hears the truth in it. “Humans aren’t my specialty. All I know is, you do have your soul, so... please don’t beat yourself up over things you haven’t done and won’t do.”
Sam sighs. “I’ll try.” And he spots Inias a beer.
Later that night, he gets a call from Rufus. “How the hell did you know about that okami?”
“Honestly, Rufus? You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Rufus huffs. “Guess I’ll have to get it out of Bob, then.”
Sam chuckles. “You can try—but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Because all of this information keeps coming to Sam directly, and because Lisa’s sure no one else is showing up randomly to give it to Dean, the two of them have to decide how much they’re going to tell him. It’s not fair to keep him wholly in the dark, but Dean’s determined to make civilian life work, especially after declaring to Cas that they were 100% out, and neither Sam nor Lisa wants him to feel guilty about that decision. Still, there’s not a whole lot any of them can do unless Cas asks them directly to help with something, so Sam usually just summarizes his conversations for Dean.
The choice gets harder in mid-October when Gwen and Mark walk in and plop down at the bar and Gwen orders a double Scotch neat. Sam looks a question at Mark, who shakes his head, which must mean he’s driving.
“What happened?” Sam asks as he pours. “Run into trouble?”
“Ran into weird,” Mark replies.
Sam hands Gwen her Scotch, and she tosses it back, catches her breath, and starts talking. “Those vamps in Limestone. They hadn’t set up shop until a week ago, and we’ve just now been able to get over there. But when we got there, every last vamp was already dead.”
Sam blinks. “Already dead?”
Gwen nods. “And there was this girl right in the middle of ’em, and when we spoke to her... her eyes turned.”
“Demon,” Mark supplies.
“‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘For once, we’re on the same side.’ And she smoked out!”
“Kid was traumatized. Twilight fan, thought her boyfriend was role-playing. But he was a real vamp, tried to turn her while she was possessed. Demon blocked the blood, saved her life. We got her to a hospital. She’ll be okay, but... like I said. Weird.”
That’s probably the most Sam’s ever heard Mark say at once in the year-plus he’s known the guy, but he decides not to get hung up on it. “So a demon wiped out the vampires? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Gwen nods and holds out her glass for another double. “Samuel doesn’t have a clue as to why. Doesn’t make much sense to me, either—why would they even care?”
Sam doesn’t have an answer, so he just pours her drink with a sigh and a grimace. Then he gives Mark the spare key to his apartment so Mark doesn’t have to drive another two hours to get home. Mark nods, pays, and waits just long enough for Gwen to finish the second drink before steering her back out to the car.
They’re already asleep when he gets home late that night, Gwen on the couch, Mark on the floor in front of it. Sam considers waking Mark to talk him into taking the bed in the spare room, which is nominally Dean’s even though Dean really lives with Lisa still. But he figures Mark’s probably rattled enough by what happened earlier that he’ll sleep better out here, where he can guard Gwen, even though she can take care of herself perfectly well despite being half-smashed. Mark’s kind of like Dean that way.
Sam gets a fleeting image of Dean and Mark trying to hunt together—the deaf man and the functional mute. He has to stifle a snicker. Then again, they might actually make a decent team if Mark knew ASL.
But thinking of Dean and hunting brings up the question of whether to tell him about the cousins’ latest misadventure. Sam falls asleep without figuring it out. And Mark and Gwen are gone by the time he wakes up for breakfast, which means he can’t ask their opinion.
He’s still puzzling over it as he prepares to start his next shift at the bar that evening when someone walks up to the bar and sits down just at the edge of his peripheral vision. “Sorry,” he says as he turns. “We’re not—” Then he breaks off and makes a grab for the salt-loaded shotgun he keeps under the bar.
Meg raises both hands. “I come in peace,” she says.
“Bull.”
“Sam. If I wanted to do more than talk, you’d be dead by now. Just give me a beer—minus the holy water.”
He keeps one hand on the shotgun and slides her an unopened beer with the other. “How the hell did you get in here?”
“Told your watchdogs we needed to chat. And they’re close, so I’m not gonna do anything stupid.” She pops the cap off the beer with her thumb and takes a drink.
“Chat about what?”
“What your cousins saw yesterday. There’ve been some changes lately, and I thought it was time you found out.”
“Keep talking.”
“Raphael is getting desperate. Seems Clarence has put enough pressure on that Raphie thinks he needs to get into Purgatory pronto, and he can’t get his humans working fast enough. So who does he ask but....”
“The Queen of Hell?”
She smirks and raises the beer in salute.
“And what did you tell him?”
“No way in Hell. Crowley was crazy to think about busting the door down, and Raphael just wants to be God. Not only do I not want in there, I don’t want Raphael getting in, either.”
“So?”
“Scorched earth. He can’t find his way in without monsters, so we’ll make sure there are no monsters he can ask.”
Sam just stares for a moment while Meg drinks. “You’re serious,” he finally manages.
She nods and sets down the beer. “We’re on the same team—well, for now. Me, you, Bobby, even Castiel. Not conspiring, just cooperating. Once Raphie’s plan’s been mothballed, all bets are off.”
He lets go of the shotgun and steps toward her, holding up one finger. “You don’t possess hunters.”
She snorts. “I’m not suicidal. I’m not even working with hunters. We’re just expanding the workforce, that’s all.” And she takes another drink.
He takes another step forward. “Meg... why are you telling me this?”
She shrugs. “Old times’ sake, I guess. You’re the best enemy I ever had. Besides, I’ve been inside that skull of yours. You’d figure it out on your own soon enough. Thought you should hear the full story from me before you decide the bench is a little too hard.”
“Because you don’t want me to stop you.”
She smirks and drinks, draining the dregs of her beer. “Tell Dean I said hello,” she says then and vanishes.
He whips out his phone and calls Lisa. They get Bobby on three-way. None of them know what to tell Dean.
Lisa sits on the info about the bizarre state of play in the hunting world for two weeks. That’s when Sam gets word of a hunt that they didn’t find a script for and that could have proved disastrous. She’s not clear on the details, but evidently a recently-turned skinwalker had gone rogue and attracted the wrong parties’ attention, resulting in an innocent civilian nearly being killed or abducted (she wasn’t sure which) as a suspected werewolf before the skinwalker sleeper cell showed up and got wiped out by the angels—along with a handful of other civilians who happened to be too close when the angels smote the warehouse where the skinwalkers were meeting.
“Dean’s going to be livid,” she groans when Sam finishes telling her about it.
“I know,” Sam sighs. “If there’s one thing he hates about this job, it’s collateral damage. And in this case, I can’t say I’d blame him.”
“We need to figure out some way to stop all of this. You know he won’t want to sit idly by while the supernatural world implodes.”
“Yeah, but with his hearing gone—”
“I don’t want him to leave, either! I just... there’s got to be something we can do.”
“We can’t reason with Meg, and we can’t exactly destabilize Hell right now by taking her out. I don’t think Samuel would listen to us.”
“That leaves....”
“Cas.”
They look at each other for a long moment.
“You talk to him.”
The request startles her. “What? Why me?!”
“You’re a mom.” She opens her mouth to object, but he raises a hand. “Moms... moms just know how to deal with things, how to talk to people. Plus, Cas knows you care about Dean—and you’re not me.”
She blinks. “Why would that matter? You know him better than I do.”
He sighs more heavily this time, and she gets the sense that there’s a lot he can’t—or won’t—tell her. “Look, the history we have with Cas... it hasn’t all been good on my end. I mean, we’re friends, yeah, but he’s closer to Dean, and not just because of pulling him out of Hell. I just... I can’t assume he’ll respond as well to my calling him on this as he would if it comes from you.” And there are the Puppy Eyes of Doom.
She’s mostly immune to puppy eyes, but she doesn’t think Sam’s deliberately trying to manipulate her. “What am I supposed to say? What kind of leverage do I have?”
He shrugs. “It’s your house. You say the word, and I’ll angel-proof it from here to eternity. And you can threaten to tell Dean. I’ve got a feeling Cas doesn’t want Dean involved, either, or else he’d be showing up to talk to him in person rather than relaying messages through us.”
She frets over it for two hours after Sam leaves before deciding to go for the direct approach. Dean’s always reacting to their news updates by muttering about what a child Cas can be, and Sam seems to think Cas needs a Mom Talk. So she goes out into the backyard, takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes. “Castiel, it’s Lisa Braeden. We need to talk. Now.”
There’s a loud flutter, and Cas says, “Hello, Lisa. I hadn’t expected to hear from you until Thanksgiving. Is something wrong?”
She opens her eyes and sighs. “Cas, this scorched-earth campaign has to stop.”
He frowns and tilts his head. “I don’t understand.”
“We heard about the skinwalkers. About the innocent bystanders who died, and the poor woman who was unjustly suspected.”
“That was regrettable, but in war—”
“But nothing. Do you think Dean’s gonna buy that?”
The confused frown deepens. “Dean’s opinion is immaterial.”
“No, it is exactly material. If I tell him what’s happening and can’t tell him that you’ve stopped it, you know what he’ll do.”
“Dean shouldn’t—”
“But he will.” She knows she ought to be terrified about talking to an angel this way, to be pulling an outright Wait ’til your father gets home on the most powerful being she’s ever known, but she isn’t. In fact, she takes a step forward. “He’s going to hear about this, Castiel. He can hear it from you with the news of how it’s been fixed, or he can hear it from me and Sam, in which case you can forget Thanksgiving. In fact, you can forget ever setting foot in my house again.”
“Do you really think you can stop me?”
“No. But Sam can.”
“Raphael is not yet defeated. I can’t—”
“Find a way to do it without risking innocent lives. Or I tell Dean the whole truth, and you’ll probably never see him again.”
They stare at each other for a long moment, but Cas flinches first. “I will... consult with Bobby.” And he’s gone.
Dean finds her on the back porch with the whiskey an hour later. She still hasn’t stopped shaking.
“Whoa, hey,” he says. “What happened?”
She shakes her head. Tell you later.
“I need to have Sam come get Ben?” She takes too long to decide on a reply, apparently, because he has his phone out and is thumbing a text to Sam before she can even lift her right hand again. Seconds later, she hears the ping of Sam’s reply arriving. Dean nods and finally looks at her. “It’s cool. Tonight’s his night off.”
She nods. She knew that, she thinks. But a moment later, she can’t remember why Sam’s coming, still too dazed by having successfully pulled rank on Dean’s angel. And, okay, maybe a little drunk, too.
Dean eases the bottle out of her left hand the way she did with him during the worst days before Sam came back. She doesn’t see what he does with it; she’s staring blankly at the space where it was. Then he sits down beside her, wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulls her close to where her head is resting on his chest and she can hear the strong steady thumpthump, thumpthump of his heartbeat.
She might be crying. She isn’t sure. She just holds on to him and closes her eyes and listens to his heart.
“We should go inside,” he says eventually. “Gonna get cold soon.”
The sun is setting when she opens her eyes, and the house is dark. Sam must have picked Ben up already, but she can’t think why or when.
“Hey. C’mon. It’s okay. I’m here.”
She doesn’t know what they’re going to do with themselves tonight, as Dean steers her into the dark quiet house. Their house, their real house, nothing fake here, no emptiness behind self-serving smiles. But he’s here. That’s... that’s the whole point, that’s why she stood up to Cas, isn’t it? Dean’s here. And she doesn’t want him to leave.
“Shh,” he breathes in her ear as they sit down on the couch. “I’m not goin’ anywhere, sweetheart.”
She clings to him and cries.
Something’s up. Dean knows because he can’t get any news out of Sam and Lisa, hasn’t been able to for weeks, and then there was Lisa’s little breakdown that she won’t explain except to tell him no, she’s not pregnant, she’s not stupid enough to get drunk over that. Bobby won’t tell him anything when he calls, either, and Cas? Hell, Cas has been avoiding him ever since Bizarro World.
It’s not that Dean minds being retired—much. It’s that he hates not knowing what the hell is going on and not having anyone who’ll bring him back into the loop.
But then, a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, Sam comes over for supper, and Dean’s internal radar alerts him just in time to look up as Cas appears.
Hello, Dean, Cas signs with the first genuinely happy smile Dean’s seen on him in a long time.
“Cas,” Dean replies warily, not missing the look that Sam and Lisa shoot at each other. “What’s new?”
The war is over. Raphael will not trouble us again for a long time.
“What?!” everyone gasps.
“Cas,” Sam continues (not signing—guess he thinks Dean’s not looking at him), “tell me you didn’t—”
He is not dead. And no one else will die.
Sam and Lisa both relax. Dean’s eyes narrow; he’s going to get an explanation for all this sooner or later, whether they want to tell him or not.
But Cas looks Dean in the eye. I had been pursuing a policy that seemed wise, but Lisa helped me see that it was making matters worse.
Dean files that away to corner her about—explains the breakdown, but he needs to know why she had to confront Cas, even if it is apparently over.
So I asked Bobby, Cas continues, and a friend of his helped me to set a trap. Raphael had lost most of his support and was becoming desperate enough to go after Purgatory himself. He believed Bobby’s friend had a spell that would open the door and let him take in the souls—but the spell she gave him transported him into Purgatory instead. His smile grows a bit. I will be very surprised if he finds his way out in your lifetime.
Dean blinks a couple of times. “You—seriously? You managed to get Raphael to lock himself in Purgatory?!”
Cas shrugs. If he wanted it that badly...
Dean laughs and then jumps to his feet and pulls Cas into a warm, back-thumping hug. “Dude. I can’t believe—that is awesome.”
Am I still invited for Thanksgiving? Cas thinks so only Dean can hear as Sam also hugs him. And it sounds a little timid, honestly.
“Hell, yes, you’re still invited,” Dean replies. “I still need a full report of what Lisa talked you out of, but it sounds like it’s fixed now.”
Cas is practically glowing as he nods. Perhaps they should tell you, he signs. I need to go—but I will see you soon. And he’s gone.
Sam and Lisa finally explain while Dean finishes eating, and he understands why they sat on the news. He would have been busting Cas’ chops and trying to do what he could to make sure no other civilians got hurt. But Lisa doing it for him? He doesn’t know what to think, what to feel, but he thinks... maybe he settles on being proud of her.
Sam doesn’t even ask whether he needs to take Ben for the night. They’re on the way out the door and waving goodbye before Dean even realizes the table’s clear.
So now you know, Lisa signs.
“Yeah. Now I know.” He doesn’t know what else to say; he’s kinda lost in her eyes.
Told you I wasn’t pregnant.
“Would you like to be?”
He doesn’t realize he’s said it out loud until her smile shifts a little. Well, we can always try.
He reaches over and takes her hand. “Okay, then. Let’s try.”
As they kiss, he thinks maybe he really is in love with her after all.