NOTE: This story was inspired by "Genesis 4:8" by cautionzombies, and that should really, really be read first or this one will make no sense.
Emmanuel likes to go to holy places, when he is called away from his home to help someone. He goes to churches often, because they are the most common, but there are also mosques and temples and synagogues and he's even visited a few sacred groves. He doesn't go there to pray so much as to sit and listen and wait for whatever revelation may come to him, and sometimes he's successful and sometimes he's not but either way it's soothing. It has the sense of familiarity about it that means it's something he used to do in the life he doesn't remember, but he's gotten used to having no context for the feeling and it doesn't bother him.
This morning he has several hours before he'll be able to leave for home, as the man who drove him here spent the evening celebrating after Emmanuel healed his daughter and is in no condition to drive back. So Emmanuel walks through the brisk morning air to the Presbyterian church, a large attractive modern building, and arrives as the pastor is unlocking the doors. She smiles and greets him, and pulls one door open. Emmanuel returns the greeting, but his attention is caught by something lying behind the door, an envelope that had been pushed through the mail slot.
He bends and picks it up. When he turns it over, it says TO THE FIRST PERSON INSIDE THE CHURCH WHO HAPPENS TO SEE THIS in blocky capitals that make him blink for a moment.
"What's that?" the pastor asks. Emmanuel holds the envelope out to her and she grimaces. "Oh dear," she says, unlatching the other door and pushing it open. "That's never a good sign. Well, whoever it was didn't care, so you might as well open it."
"If you're sure," he says, and waits for her nod before he opens his little pocketknife and slits the top of the envelope.
There is one sheet of paper inside, covered with dense writing in the same hand as the address. Emmanuel unfolds it and is confronted with a list.
It begins: 1. I have had homosexual thoughts and relations, though not with the one person I really wanted to, and then he up and died and I never told him anything. I swore I would before the end came but it came sooner than I expected and I missed out.
The pastor stands at Emmanuel's side and cranes her neck to see. "Shit," she says softly, more of a sigh than a word. "That looks like a suicide note."
Emmanuel scans down the page, catching phrases here and there, I drink because everything hurts otherwise and I have never liked who I am and the dud he had for a first-born, and then his eyes stop on since I got back from Hell. That sense of familiarity-without-context hits him hard and sudden, but it's not comforting; he imagines that this feeling is what people mean when they tell him they feel sick.
"Are you all right?" the pastor says, looking up from the paper at his face, he eyes narrowing in concern.
"I don't think so," Emmanuel replies, but he keeps reading. He reaches the bottom of the list and turns the paper over. The back is three paragraphs, most of it in one large block. After I spent a little while in the frying pan, this angel pulled me out, he reads, and flinches. It seems like this is a story he should know, and he can't stop feeling like it's a failure that he doesn't. When he reads, I would've taken the whole goddamn package of him. I say that now because he's gone, suddenly his vision wavers with stinging tears. "Oh God," Emmanuel whispers, and wipes at his eyes angrily. It seems like it's his duty to finish this, to bear witness to it. I've saved a lot of fucking people, says the note, and Emmanuel knows somehow that that's right, even though he's never met the writer.
The last paragraph begins, My name is Dean Winchester. Emmanuel has to close his eyes against another sickening lurch, and opens them only when the pastor finally speaks. "We need to take this to the police," she says, sounding grim and sad. "They're going to have to start looking around for him...for his body. Unless he hasn't done it yet."
"I...I can go," Emmanuel manages. "You should stay here, in case you're needed."
"That's not your job," the pastor says, sounding concerned. "It's my church."
Emmanuel clutches the letter to his chest as if she's attempting to snatch it out of his hands. He has no idea why this is so important, all of a sudden, but he's reluctant to give it up. "I have the time," he says. "It won't be taking me away from anything."
She raises a skeptical eyebrow at that, and it takes several minutes of argument to convince her, but eventually Emmanuel sets out, armed with the note and directions to the nearest police station. He soon passes into a neighborhood that is not as well-kept as the one surrounding the church, but he pays little attention to his surroundings until he sees the flashing of emergency lights a block or two ahead.
The sick feeling gets stronger, but he walks faster.
The motel's parking lot is full of official vehicles, police cars and an ambulance, and there are officers trying to keep a small crowd from getting any closer to one of the room doors. Emmanuel walks up to one of the people at the rear of the group and asks quietly, "What's going on?"
The young woman glances at him as she tries to get a look over the heads of the people in front of her. "Some guy killed himself," she says. "They're gonna bring him out soon I think."
Emmanuel nods mechanically and steps back to circle the crowd. As he nears the front one of the uniformed officers says, "Sir, you need to stay back."
Emmanuel holds the letter out. "If you have a suicide in that room, I think this is his note," he says. The officer takes a moment to process the information and then calls over his shoulder, "Detective!"
After a moment a woman emerges from the motel room. She's wearing normal clothing but has a badge on a cord around her neck, and she looks tired. "What, Mehta?" she says brusquely. The officer waves one hand at Emmanuel and says, "This guy's got the note." Then he moves off to corral another wayward civilian, leaving Emmanuel to face the detective, who looks him up and down. "I'm Detective Angela Jefferson," she says, and waits.
"Emmanuel, Emmanuel Allen," he says, and holds the letter out again. "I found this." He hesitates, because what he is about to say could probably get him in quite a lot of trouble, but he cannot shake the feeling of needing to know. "I think my friend Dean has killed himself."
Detective Jefferson looks at the letter, then back up at Emmanuel's face, and he does his best to look sincere. He doesn't know how he's supposed to look-worried?-but what she sees must satisfy her because she takes the paper from him, handling it carefully. She scans it and her lips thin. "That's a suicide note, all right," she says, almost to herself, and then continues, "Where did you find this?"
"It was left at the Presbyterian church on Cherry Street," Emmanuel says. "But I recognized the name." It's not even really a lie. Something about Dean Winchester lodges in his throat like a splinter.
The detective sighs, still watching him closely. "Well, Mr. Allen," she says, "I have a feeling that you're right-this probably is your friend. I'm sorry to have to say it, but...would you be willing to try to identify the body? We're not likely to find anyone else who knew them, unless you know who they were visiting?"
Emmanuel says, "His brother could identify him, I'm sure."
Detective Jefferson's expression gets, if anything, a little grimmer. "Mr. Allen, there are two bodies in there."
It takes him a moment to think through the implications, but when he does he flinches. "No," he says flatly. "Dean would never have hurt Sam." The sudden hope is so huge that he barely even notices the second name, which was not in the letter.
Detective Jefferson does not quite shrug, but her voice is certain when she replies, "If this wasn't a murder-suicide, it's the best set-up I've ever seen."
"Then let me see the bodies," Emmanuel says. "It will let you rule them out, at least."
The detective says, "I think that would be best, as long as you understand that...the odds are not in your favor here."
Emmanuel nods.
It takes a while. The bodies have to be taken to the morgue and processed, and Emmanuel has to call his client and tell him he'll be held up. The man is perfectly willing to postpone the drive until the next day, though. Emmanuel spends the wait sitting in the police station's interview room, his eyes closed, attempting to meditate. He doesn't achieve much, but his heart is a little lighter for his conviction that, whoever Dean Winchester may have been, he would not have hurt his brother; therefore, the dead men cannot be Dean and Sam.
The conviction holds through the walk to the morgue, holds until Emmanuel is standing next to the steel table with the sheet-covered form on it. It holds even as the coroner is pulling the sheet away from the dead man's face, and for a moment Emmanuel focuses on the cloth that covers the top of the corpse's head.
But then his eyes fall to the face, to the features. The eyes are closed, but he knows that they are mossy green. He knows the silent voice would be rough and warm. He knows the hands have gun calluses and are stained with motor oil. He's caught, for a long second, in a memory so clear he'd swear it's really happening, of this man telling him that he should never change, and he sways where he stands.
"Mr. Allen?" Detective Jefferson's voice pulls him back to awareness. She has placed one hand gently on his arm, and he has to fight the impulse to jerk away. He swallows, and swallows again, and finally croaks, "That's Dean."
The detective exchanges a look with the coroner that he can't interpret and says, "I think we're safe assuming that the other one's his brother, then. Come on, Mr. Allen, let's go out into the hall for some fresh air."
He thinks that's nonsensical-the morgue does not smell bad and the hallway is unlikely to be better ventilated-but he follows her blindly. By the time they're through the heavy doors he's gasping against the assault of memory. The flashes, at first isolated images devoid of context, soon begin to join themselves into a narrative; as the piece fall into place he loses his sense of the world.
He remembers Crowley, and Purgatory, and what he did to Sam; he remembers the Leviathans, free now because of his arrogance; he remembers the brothers and sisters he killed, so many in his war and more when he claimed to be God. Mostly he remembers Dean, and though he tries to keep the good memories close there is one image that overwhelms him, of Dean turning to look at him over the flames, and the betrayal clear on his face.
When he comes back to himself he's sitting in one of the uncomfortable leather-over-metal chairs against the wall near the morgue door. Detective Jefferson is sitting next to him. She looks perfectly calm, but he can feel her cautious worry.
"I'm sorry to do this," he says, raising his hand, and she doesn't have time to pull away before he touches her forehead. She will remember that Mr. Allen did not recognize the bodies, that he was thanked for his time and sent home. He goes back into the morgue and alters the coroner's memory the same way.
The Impala is easy to find, sitting in the motel parking lot where he did not know to look for it before. He sends it to Bobby's house, where it will be safe, and takes an unnecessary deep breath.
Before the Apocalypse, what he does would have been impossible, but Heaven is no longer the well-ordered, constantly guarded fortress it had always been. There's little vigilance to evade as he slips into the heaven. He keeps himself veiled from the soul's sight.
Sam is sitting in the sun beside a small swimming pool, a book in his hand. At first he seems to be alone but a moment later Dean surfaces.
If he were still in his vessel, he would go weak at the knees in relief-until he realizes that it isn't Dean at all; it is Sam's memory of Dean, smirking as it climbs out of the water to stand over Sam and shake like a dog. Sam yelps in indignation and puts his book down to launch himself from his chair; he wrestles with the memory of his brother for several seconds before they both fall back into the water, whooping with laughter.
No matter how meticulously he searches there is no trace of Dean's soul in Sam's heaven. He'd known-Dean died despairing, a suicide, there was no real question-but he'd hoped that, after everything, Dean would be granted this one mercy.
He goes to another heaven, where it is cold but the crocuses are beginning to show, purple and orange with the hope of spring, and sits on the concrete bench. There's no question, now, of what he must do; the only uncertainty is whether he will have the strength to do it. Crowley will take great joy in tormenting him, if he's caught. But he thinks of Dean outside the den of iniquity, laughing, his face bright, and he cannot bear the thought of that soul in Hell. It would be the rankest cowardice to not try. It will be like when he rescued Sam's body, he thinks; he will be stealthy and quiet and quick. And he will kill anything that stands between him and Dean. He raised the Righteous Man once; he can do it again.
Castiel calls his sword to his hand and falls towards Hell.