Title: Goodbye To The Black and White
Author: Signs of Sun
Note: This was a quick fic I wrote as a post-eppie stand alone shortly after Bloodlust (Season 2 Episode 3) aired. So this is really really old. Like a decade old. I never posted it. But recently I found it while going through files I transferred from a really old computer. (I also came across some other Supernatural fic that I'll see about fixing up to post). When I re-read this piece I was reminded of how that episode and how Gordon's words in that eppie later echoed back when The Mark Of Cain story unfolded years later.
It's written from Dean's point of view.
And I didn't edit this much at all. I fixed a few words here and there. But left it as it originally was written from a Season 2 perspective. Somehow that felt like the right thing to do. I believe editing now from a Season 12 perspective would have changed the tone at its core.
Most of the dialogue was taken from the episode but the narrative is all mine.
Bloodlust (Season 2 Episode 3) – While on the hunt for vampires Sam and Dean encounter hunter Gordon Walker. Initially, Gordon and Dean get along splendidly but things rapidly go downhill when Sam proposes there may be another way to handle the vampires – one which means refraining from killing them.
Goodbye To The Black and White
I don't remember ever seeing the light waver as if with a kind of uncertainty the way it does sneaking through the blinds now. It picks its targets, illuminating dark corners and denying lost causes.
Gordon sits bound to a chair, a reflection of me I don't want to see. We're both too far gone, too inked ebony, to go back now. We've done the things we've done. Lived the life we've lived. And never embraced the other possibility, the one that cries out this might not be right. Always a way to get the job done, to not regret it, and move on.
This would have gone so differently if Sam had not been here.
Heads would have rolled and Gordon and I would be standing side by side, victory coursing through our veins. My mind high off the kill. My heart not clouded with any shred of doubt whether or not they deserved the fate I delivered upon them.
Maybe we are the ones who are bloodthirsty. Gordon said that the hole growing in me would keep me hungry. The problem is that starving people aren't always selective in what they feed on. Or even how much of it they consume. They simply keep going, true believers in the task's necessity. They go on endlessly trying to fill a need that will never be satisfied.
I feel like I've lost something else tonight, something Sam would, supposedly, be proud of me for shedding. But, honestly, I miss it already.
I miss the black and white. I miss the line between light and dark, good and evil, that just a few hours ago was so solid, so defined, and in plain sight.
None of this has even chipped away at the man seated in front of me in the slightest. His eyes are deep with hatred, purpose, and self fabricated clarity.
I don't really bother to talk to him. I can wield words as a weapon almost as well as I slice with a blade if I want to. But the taunt silence is strangely satisfying. So I let it be.
I wander the room with the cold metal of a blade clutched in my hand. Talking was never my game. People spew lies, half truths, or never to be fulfilled intentions. What people do is the truth.
We are what we do. I always believed it, but last night my brother managed to put a special Sammy spin on it.
Reality was that if it wasn't human, its evil, and therefore should be wasted. I hate to admit it, but for an instant there I didn't believe Sam when he told me those vampires just let him stroll out of there. Like he must be lying to me because the alternative meant that it could be true. And if it was true then the line was no longer so obvious and I had crossed it long ago.
Why can't he keep these ideas inside that freaky head of his?
I pass by Gordon's side. He is unmoving, but his anger squeezes the room of its air. He truly thinks he's in the right here and even in some twisted way feels like I betrayed him, crossed him.
His words from our conversation at the bar seep back in, saturating my mind.
You and me. We were born to do this. It's in our blood.
It's quiet here, Gordon and I, the only people for miles. But his words echo in my ears on a repetitive loop and make this place noisy with a kind of grating static.
You're a killer like me.
If something's in your blood can you truly ever be free, cleansed of it? Or should you embrace it? All it would take would be a simple matter of not caring. And let's face it, caring takes a lot more effort and complicates things tremendously.
I wish we had never taken this damn job.
My brother's entrance into the room spares me from stewing in any further reflection.
"I miss anything?" he asks, sounding like he doesn't really want to know the answer. So I spare him the details of the barrel of laughs Gordon and I have been having while he was gone.
"Not much. Lenore get out okay?" I reply. When Sam answers it is Gordon he looks in the eye.
"Yeah. All of them did."
There's a razor sharp edge to his tone. It's a tone that usually tugs at me with a strange mixture of pride and concern. But this time I'm simply satisfied that all this has come to an end. So I turn from my brother to Gordon where he sits bound to a chair.
I speak as I make my way slowly around behind him.
"Then I guess our work here is done. How ya doin', Gordy? Gotta tinkle yet? Alright. Well, get comfy. We ll call someone in two or three days. Have 'em come out and untie you."
As my final word arrives I raise up the blade I have been carrying this entire time. And slam it with bitter force into the table.
"You ready to go Dean?" Sam asks. His tone now more hopeful than sharp.
"Not yet." I state and meander my way back around to stand in front of Gordon. Once there I address him again.
"I guess this is goodbye. Well. It's been real."
My words are followed swiftly by me planting my fist in his face. A blow he has more than earned.
The force sends Gordon and the chair crashing over onto the floor.
And now my work here is truly done.
"Okay, I'm good now. We can go." I toss over to my brother.
With that we head outside. The sun in on the rise and the light is painful to my eyes after so long in the darkness of the house.
Before we climb into the Impala I have to set things square.
"Sam, clock me one," I tell him.
"What?"
"Come on. I won't even hit you back. Let's go!" I state with a crystal clear insistence to my voice. The message that this has to go down for things to be right plain as day.
"No."
"Let's go. You get a freebie. Hit me! Come on."
This time my tone makes it more of a taunt or challenge than a request or offering. His posture remains the same and I know I'm not getting the blow I deserve. His verbal response confirms it.
"You look like you just went twelve rounds with a block of cement, Dean. I'll take a rain check."
"I wish we never took this job. It's jacked everything up!" I state as I resign myself to the fact that Sam will never call in his rain check.
"What do you mean?" Sam questions, looking like he is sincerely at a loss for understanding my meaning.
"Think about all the hunts we went on Sammy. I mean our whole lives."
"Okay."
"What if we killed things that didn't deserve killing? Ya know, the way Dad raised us..." I manage to force out despite how hard the words are to get out. Sam quickly replies.
"Dean, after what happened to Mom. Dad did the best he could."
The words seem hollow almost like it's all he can conjure up in the way of an answer. It does little to settle the tug of war going on inside my skull.
"I know he did. But the man wasn't perfect. And the way he raised us to hate those things and, man, I hate 'em. I do. When I killed that vampire at the mill I didn't even think about it. Hell I even enjoyed it."
I swallow down hard on the last piece of what I've just said. But I needed to say it, to get it out before it gnaws away at me anymore.
"You didn't kill Lenore," Sam offers in rebuttal.
"No, but every instinct told me to. I was going to kill her. I was going to kill them all."
"Yeah Dean, but you didn't. And that's what matters."
"Yeah. Because you're a pain in my ass."
"Guess I might have to stick around to be a pain in the ass then."
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it," he tosses back.
For a moment I look off into the sunrise. Its light, its warmth, seems so far off – in some unreachable surreal place. But, ultimately, my gaze is drawn back towards the darkened house in which Gordon sits and where I left something of myself behind – something that was stolen from me – something ripped away that will never be returned.
I'm halfway between here and there. Balancing precariously on the very edge of the sunrise's reach.
And I'm not so sure I won't be pulled back away from it someday, but for now I'll give it a go and hop in the car and chase after the light.
Maybe if I drive fast enough, tear up enough miles between here and there, I won't thirst for those words anymore.
You and me we were born to do this. It's in our blood.
I'm just not sure I can move fast enough to escape the truth.
And I'm not completely sure I want to.
But I'm not about to let Sammy down.
Or to say goodbye to a chance at staying just this side of the light.
The End