Title: Of Earth
By: L. Burke
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Brotherhood AU. Mackland Ames reflects upon Sam Winchester and solid ground.
Author's Notes and Acknowledgments:
Just a quick reminder in the Brotherhood AU per "Company of Dragons", Mary's family wasn't hunters and their last name wasn't Campbell it was Conner. Sam inherited his psychic gifts from his mother's side of the family. Mary's family had been psychic to one degree or another for generations and that's why Sam was targeted by the YED.
I'm very aware if you don't know your various Native American mythologies you may not get the turtle reference. You'd probably have to be a science nerd and a devout follower of Morgan Freeman's "Through the Wormhole" to catch the joke about comparing Sam's childhood to 'Early bombardment' as tied to the geological history of our planet too.
The lyrics to "Oh How the Years Go By" used in this piece are not my property and no profit is being made. Vanessa William's version of the song just kicks butt.
Sorry if anyone gets this twice. I had to go in and fix a formatting error.
Brotherhood
Of Earth
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Mackland Ames appreciated lives were forged in earthquake like twists of fate.
The sound of the screeching of brakes.
A child's eyes.
He understood how stability could be ripped apart. Knew with potent clarity how lives could be warped, shaken and shattered in the barest flashes of moments only to be suddenly rebuilt and reborn in explosive volcanic bursts of scorching purpose.
That was the dance of Earth.
As a scientist, he grasped it was that eternal circle that made all life possible.
Mac had tracked his wily prey for days. His well trained quarry dodged him but like a wolf on a hunt Mac was a natural born tracker. This was an old dance between them.
So maybe it was fitting he found Samuel deep in Jim's oak grove under the thick canopy of trees. Sam was haggard, exhausted, and in desperate need of a good meal. But beyond all that Sam looked lost and completely terrified.
Dean Winchester once compared his brother to a giant snapping turtle. Sam's first instincts when feeling out of control were to scamper away or hide deep in his own thick, stone-hard shell. If that didn't work Sam came out snapping.
It was a very appropriate and insightful parallel.
And the reason Mac advanced cautiously.
He was too damned old to get gratuitously knocked on his ass.
Right now Samuel's telekinetic abilities were far from stable.
"Samuel."
Mac had enough time to root himself firmly and throw his telekinetic shields up. Then an invisible force with the impact of an avalanche slammed his shields head-on.
Sam's eyes got huge and horrified.
"Ground yourself, Samuel," Mac ordered bluntly. "Take a deep breath and imagine pushing your excess energy down into the earth."
For a moment Mac didn't think Sam was going to listen. Then the younger hunter took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and Mac felt the tickle of what felt to be a hair-raising electromagnetic charge being pushed towards the welcoming soil.
Mac nodded and let his shields drop cautiously. "Very good."
Sam opened his eyes and ran a hand over his mouth. It was a gesture so reminiscent of John Winchester it made Mac's heart ache. "What are you doing here?"
Mac raised an eyebrow. "What do you think?"
"I'm not going back. I can't control it and I won't hurt anyone else." Sam mumbled. Then he fell back and slid down the spine of a giant oak. Samuel needed a shave and a hair cut. To Mac he resembled one of the many ancient carvings of the Green Man, lord of the forest realm.
"Let's be sensible," Mac stated calmly. "You can either come back with me or we both can wait for your brother to wake up, not see you, and sign himself out AMA. Then Dean will stubbornly drag himself out into the woods, and set his recovery back weeks."
There was a crack in Sam's formidable crust. The younger hunter's head shot up. "Dean is…"
"Your brother will be fine," Mac assured him softly. "Right now Dean is under deep sedation to keep his blood pressure low while the damaged artery heals. That's why you probably can't sense him."
"Shit Mac," Sam took a deep ragged breath like the grind of two great continental plates. "There was so much blood everywhere. I thought…"
"I know. You thought Dean was dead. He isn't. This was not your fault, Samuel." Mac stated in his most reassuring tone.
"I did it."
"Lucifer did it." Mac corrected.
They had been lucky.
Very lucky.
Mac didn't remember much of what happened. One moment Mac was chastising Dean and Caleb for goofing off in the tomb. The next Samuel was grabbing his head and screaming. Mac had felt the ripple of the telekinetic wave, and then the world exploded in to chaos. Blood splattered the walls.
Lucifer left a bomb as his parting gift.
Unfortunately Samuel had been the bomb.
Sam had been programmed for his natural shielding to drop and at the right moment to deploy a TK wave that would kill everyone and destroy everything in a hundred foot radius.
It had been one hell of parting gift to remember Lucifer by, Mac thought bitterly.
Dean, either by design or by dumb luck, had been closest to Sam and he had taken the blunt of the force wave. The list of his injuries was long and vast, concussion, broken bones. Dean's injures resembled ground zero of a bomb blast. With the most life-threatening being a large piece of shrapnel that had entered where the neck and shoulder meet. The shrapnel had nicked the carotid artery but missed his spine. It had been touch and go at the hospital for a while. Surgeons fought to repair the artery and get the bleeding under control.
It had been a small wonder the boys ignored orders and left the door of the tomb open that day. Not to mention Samuel had been in the doorway of the tomb when his shields crumbled. If not, the pure concussive force from the TK blast would have ricocheted off the shielded walls of the tomb and it would have been so much worse. The insides of everyone in the tomb would have been liquefied. Mac doubted anyone inside would have survived.
'There but for the grace of God, go I' as Jim Murphy had always loved to remind him.
"I almost killed everyone." Sam's dark eyes met his. "He planted that little time bomb inside of me. Lucifer used me to do this."
"Then listen to your own argument, Son," Mac urged gently. "Lucifer used you."
"That's why I can't go back. I don't want to risk hurting anyone else." Sam tapped his head and then gestured around him. "With this."
At his best Samuel was solid, stable, grounded, persevering and levelheaded at his approach to things. Mac hoped to reach the powerful intellect buried under the guilt. Level-headed common sense was needed right now.
Ask anyone that knew him.
Mackland Ames knew how to dig and be as obstinate and as unyielding as a mountain range when he set his mind to it. That grinding-down stubbornness had been the strength he used to bury two brothers and rebuild his life from wreckage more than once.
"Then think Samuel," Mac pointed out candidly. "Lucifer watched you so long. He knew you inside and out. He knew the best way to inflict the most damage. You're doing EXACTLY what Lucifer wanted you to do."
Sam yanked at his hair. Another gesture Mac noted very reminiscent of John Winchester. "The demon blood…"
"Is immaterial to this conversation," Mac fired back. "Lucifer used your god given gifts to do this. Gifts for good or ill have been handed down on your mother's side of the family for generations. If you don't believe me go research it for yourself. That's why you were targeted."
"Mac…"
"No one is blaming you. But right now you are simply looking for another opportunity to martyr yourself." Mac's grey eyes meet Sam's dark hazel ones. "Running away is easy, Son. Holding your ground is the hard job. And more often than not enduring and rebuilding is the task handed down to us. That's where real courage kicks in. Trust me. No one understands that better than I do."
"I don't want to hurt anyone else." Sam looked like he was buckling and cracking right in front of Mac's eyes. "I couldn't stop him with any of the others. Lucifer was just too strong. I thought at least Michael kept Dean safe. Then the tomb happened. I remember the blast and seeing Dean lying there. God there was so much blood and Dean was clawing at his throat. Caleb was coated in blood as he tried to stop the bleeding."
"Then let clarity define you now. This was not your fault. It's safe. You can't hurt me." Mac felt the charge as it built again. Felt the leaves around him starting to swirl. "Now, take a deep breath and root yourself, Sam. Reach out and picture yourself like a tree." He sat down next to Sam. He made sure to rub shoulders like Dean always did. Sam leaned into the physical contact like a drowning man. Mac threw his arms around him. Walls that kept your distance from others were both protection and prisons. Mac had learned that hard lesson too.
Sam's tough outer crust just shattered.
Mac held on as the aftershocks rocked through the younger hunter.
Let the tears wash away and weather the ragged edges of the pain and regret.
Mac had been there.
Samuel always hungered for stability. He had a deep need for roots. Sam desperately longed for solid foundations. It was something John never understood. For Sam's father survival had been constant motion. Stability was one thing Dean could never give him either. Dean tried but he was too fluid and adaptable by nature. Samuel on the other hand was very slow moving and very cautious about change. Change in Sam's world had been a constant, never-ending early bombardment.
That had always been the nucleus of the issue.
Mac saw his own footprints so clearly on this path.
Sam measuring himself against standards he would never live up to.
"Look at me Samuel." Mac commanded softly when the worst of the tremors had past. "I have one very simple question I want you to answer. It's one very difficult and challenging one."
Sam looked up and met Mac's grey eyes.
"Who are you?"
Sam blinked. "Who am I?"
"At the core of his being a Scholar must always understand himself," Mac stated calmly. "He must always value both his strengths and weaknesses. Now I ask again. Who are you?"
"I'm Dean's younger…."
"Dean is irrelevant to this conversation," Mac cut him off. "Defining yourself by him or anyone else means nothing."
"But…" Sam stumbled.
"Now answer my question," the former Scholar commanded.
"After Jess…After everything with Ruby…" Sam was quiet for a while. Then he whispered softly, "I just don't know anymore."
"That's why you're seeing all this outer chaos. And why Lucifer could use your own gifts so proficiently against you like he did." Mac gestured to the forest around them. "You're a Scholar of the Brotherhood and your external world is a direct reflection of your internal thoughts." He pointed at Sam's heart. "You need to understand your core before you control how it reflects outwards in to the space of the outer world. That is the bedrock that Scholars draw their power from."
"That is much easier said than done," Sam whispered in to his shoulder.
"It's the toughest task you'll ever be given," Mac informed him matter-of fact.
Sam pushed away and wiped his eyes. "I don't know if I can do this."
"Of course you can," Mac replied. "You're a Scholar of the Brotherhood. There's nothing you can't accomplish if you put your mind to it. Now are you ready to stop running?"
Sam set his jaw and nodded.
Sam took a deep breath and walked in to his brother's hospital room.
Mac stayed in the doorway and studied Dean with a clinical eye. Dean looked awful. He was covered in bandages and tubes. His right arm was tightly secured to his rib cage. And despite the blood he had been given Dean was still practically translucent. Mac shook his head. The two stunning black eyes didn't help either. He looked small and fragile in that hospital bed.
Caleb sat in the chair next to the bed and didn't look much better. His feet were on Dean's bed with one side of his face a colorful display of swollen purple. A white bandage was on his forehead highlighting the dark circles under his eyes. On his left forearm was a black colored cast. Which Mac noted as Caleb had been picking at it. Mac would yell at him later. Caleb did not do hospital rooms well.
Caleb shot them a grin that didn't meet his eyes. "About time you showed up Prue."
Mac groaned inwardly.
If the Charmed references were coming out already, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon wouldn't be that far behind.
He would never understand Dean and Caleb's taste in television.
Sam blanched. "Don't call me that." Then he looked down at Dean. "How is he?"
Caleb didn't answer but shot Mac a questioning look.
"Sam's telekinesis is stable right now," Mac reassured. "Don't worry. I'm monitoring him. We have a lot of work to do. I thought it would be beneficial for both of them if Sam came to see Dean."
"I figured." Caleb looked at Sam. "They yanked the vent yesterday. Dean's been in and out. The doctor said he'd probably need more surgery on that shoulder. Josh only needed stitches. Eli and Ethan got kicked out of here today."
"Caleb, I'm sorry…" Sam began softly.
"Don't," Caleb cut him off. "This isn't your fault. Okay, Runt? No one is blaming you. This was Lucifer's final kiss-my-ass to the Brotherhood. We should have guessed he was a pissy sore loser."
"Such a shocking revelation," Mac threw out sarcastically from the doorway.
Caleb shot him a genuine grin this time. "Yeah, who would have guessed with him being the Devil and all?"
"Sssmmmyy?" Dean muttered with a flutter of eyes.
Caleb patted his friend's knee. It was probably one of the few spots Dean wasn't battered. "Yeah man, he's here. Sam's okay. Mac finally tracked him down."
Dean reached his hand out weakly like the Moon's gravity reaches for the Earth. Sam latched on to it like the stabilizing influence it was. It made Mac feel better to see Sam reach out from his shell. "You kay? Nose was bleeding."
"I will be," Sam stated softly as he gripped Dean's hand a little harder. "Looks like I came out of it better than you.
"Lucifer's a bitch. I should have let Michael kick his ass." Dean slurred, "You need a hair cut."
"I'll take your fashion advice under advisement like always." Sam rolled his eyes good naturedly. Then he ran a gentle hand through his brother's short hair. "Considering you never need to worry about your hair becoming an untamable mass when it gets too short."
"Just sun poisoning," Dean muttered as he fought to keep his eyes open. "Got Dad's coloring."
"Yes, there are some advantages of taking after Dad," Sam smiled as he sat down.
"I'm stepping out to find some coffee, Boys" Mac announced. He wanted to grant all three of them a small moment of privacy to work things out among themselves. "I will be monitoring you from a distance, Samuel. I'll be back."
As Mac walked back out in the hallway he smiled at the song that played at the nurse's station.
"There were times we stumbled
They thought they had us down
We came around yeah
How we rode and rambled
We got lost, we got found
Now we're back on solid ground "
Not yet.
But they would get there.
Mac still remembered what Jim Murphy told him after the car accident had changed his life forever.
The spring rains would come and life would take root once more.
Renewal was the way of Earth.