Contains dialogue from the episode The Song Remains The Same, it belongs to Eric Kripke and Sera Gamble.
Part of my Deleted Scenes series. Full list of fics in reading order available on my profile page. They will make more sense if read in order. :)
I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries.
Leviticus 26:31
"Sam. Sammy."
The voice is far away and fuzzy but the hands on Sam's chest are solid and real and they shake him gently back to consciousness. He opens his eyes, inhaling sharply when his lungs scream at him for air like he's forgotten to breathe for a week, and finds Dean's green eyes staring down at him – worried, like always lately.
"Dean?" he croaks.
"Are you okay?" Dean asks sharply.
Sam lets Dean help him sit up, and he blinks a few times to clear the fog from his vision. "I … yeah, I think so. What happened?"
"Angels," Dean grumbles. "How much do you remember?"
"Everything, I think." Sam struggles to pull the memories to the surface. Dean is still bent over him like the mother-hen he refuses to admit that he is. "We were at that cabin, Anna showed up. Did I die?"
Dean clenches his jaw and finally stands back upright, pacing a few steps away from Sam. "For a few minutes, yeah. Michael brought you back."
Sam blinks again. "Michael? Like … Michael?"
"Yeah. Showed up after you kicked it. In Dad. Or, in John, I guess. He wasn't Dad yet."
"What did he say?" Sam asks warily. He's terrified to find out. They've been hearing about Michael for months but this is the first time he's shown himself to either of them. It can't mean anything good.
"Oh, he gave me a nice little pep talk. All about how free will doesn't exist and we're both going to say yes because it's in our blood, our … destiny." He spits the word out. Sam knows how much Dean hates that word. "Remember that conversation we had a few weeks back, after the Trickster stuffed us into TV land? About how maybe none of the choices we've ever made, ever, were really ours? If the angels were pullin' the strings all along?"
A pit forms in Sam's stomach. He'd been so pissed off at the idea, and now it makes him queasy because he knows where Dean's going with this. "They were?"
"Apparently." Dean turns around and laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Michael said … he said nothing has been random. Nothing. That you'n'me have been the vessels since the beginning, since before humans even existed, and everything that's happened to us has just been leading us right here."
"That's what Gabriel said."
"Yeah. I know. I was just hoping he was lying."
"Me too." Sam shakes his head a little and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. There's a headache building slowly behind his forehead but he can't tell if it's more than the dull ache that's nearly constantly in his head these days. "What are we supposed to do? With any of this?"
"I don't fuckin' know," Dean mumbles. "Nothing. Doesn't seem to matter what we do anyway, right? We should just go to Vegas or something. Rent a suite. Start doing blow. It's not like it would change anything."
He's right about that, and it's way too much for Sam to wrap his head around. He feels violated, controlled, like there hasn't been a single moment of his entire life that was truly his. Every breath he's ever taken has belonged to someone else. He gets up slowly, feeling for the spot on his chest where he remembers the blade going in. He doesn't find a mark. Michael must've taken care of that too. Snapped his angel fingers and made it all like it never happened. Except for the part where he and Dean both remember every second of it, and Sam might never not be haunted by the look in his mother's eyes when she admitted she was already pregnant with Dean. That it was too late.
"You want a drink?" Sam moves over to the dresser and unwraps a water glass for something to do, because Dean's just standing there refusing to look at him. When he glances into the mirror, Cas appears behind him, bruised and unsteady on his feet.
Sam's heart leaps into his throat. "Castiel!" He turns around to catch the angel as he stumbles. "Hey. Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa."
"Cas!" Dean cries, lunging forward to help Sam just as he's about to lose his grip on Cas' dead weight.
"We got you," Sam says.
"You son of a bitch, you made it," Dean adds.
"I did," Cas mumbles. He wipes blood from under his nose and stares at it on his fingertips. "I'm very surprised."
He turns to Sam, regarding him for a moment with sad eyes, like wants to say something, and then he collapses.
"Whoa, you're okay!" Sam tightens his hold on Cas' arm.
"Bed?" Dean asks.
"Yep."
They drag him together the few feet to the nearest bed and drop him down onto it; he's out cold by the time he hits the mattress.
"Well, I could use that drink now," Dean says.
"Yeah."
Dean gets the bottle and Sam gets the glasses, holding them out as Dean pours.
"Well, this is it."
Sam frowns. "This is what?"
"Team Free Will. One ex-blood junkie, one drop-out with six bucks to his name, and Mr. Comatose over there. Awesome."
"It's not funny," Sam says quietly.
"I'm not laughin'."
Sam sighs. "They all say we'll say yes."
"I know, it's getting annoying." Dean takes another sip of whiskey.
"What if they're right?"
"They're not."
Sam rolls his eyes a little. Sometimes everything is so simple in Dean's eyes, even when nothing is simple at all. "I mean, why would we, either of us, but … I've been weak before."
"Sam," Dean cuts in, but Sam keeps going.
"Michael got Dad to say yes."
"That was different," Dean tells him, a hard look in his eyes. "Anna was about to kill Mom."
"And if you could save Mom? What would you say?"
Dean shakes his head and turns away from Sam again. "Don't do that. It's not the same, and you know it. Dad wasn't saying yes to the same thing you and I are supposed to. Hell, he didn't know what he was saying yes to."
"Yeah. And you do. So what would you say?" Sam pushes.
"Can we not do this?" Dean asks, his voice thin and pleading.
"I … I don't …" Sam swallows and looks around. He doesn't know how to voice the millions of thoughts that are swirling around in his head. There aren't words that would express how confused he is, how completely overwhelmed. It would be pointless to try. "Today was …"
"It's a trip, right?" Dean says dryly. "I keep forgetting it's the first time you've been time-traveled."
Sam shakes his head. He can't understand how Dean can be so casual about this. The whole thing is way too much for him to handle, and it's like Dean is barely affected at all. "Those were our parents. Before they had us, before Dad even knew about demons or hunting or any of it. And Mom …"
"Yeah. I know."
"No, you don't." Sam stares at him, desperate to make Dean understand even though he doesn't understand it himself. "I didn't know her, Dean. You have memories of her. I don't. And there she was, just standing there, alive and beautiful and real."
"That wasn't the first time you've seen her," Dean points out. "She saved us once, remember, from that thing in our old house?"
"But that was her … I don't know. Her ghost, or her spirit, or whatever. This was different. This was really her." He blows out a breath and pushes the hair off his face. He can't look at his brother. "And I had this whole conversation with Dad. When you were out of the room. About hunting and our life and … he kept going on and on about how horrible our childhood was, and what kind of person would do that to their own kids. Condemning himself for things that he's gonna do in like five years, and he didn't even know it. It was like watching an earthquake before it happens, and not being able to do anything about it."
"That sucks."
Anger courses through Sam's veins suddenly and he finally does turn to look at his brother. "Are you serious? That sucks? That's all you got?"
Dean blinks a few times and stares at Sam with empty, exhausted eyes. "I don't know what you want me to say. I had pretty much the same conversation with Mom, and yeah, it sucks. M'not happy about any of this, Sammy. I haven't been happy about anything that's happened to us in freakin' years. But it still keeps happening. It doesn't matter."
"Yeah. Okay," Sam mutters. He sits slowly down on the vacant bed and tries to do what Dean always does – push his emotions down to a place where he can't feel them anymore. He's never been as good at it as Dean is. Probably, Dean isn't that good at it either. He just pretends to be.
"I saw you die today," Dean says softly. "Don't say 'yeah, okay' like you think I don't care. Because I do care. I'm just so fuckin' sick of talking about this shit. It doesn't change anything. It never does. And according to the angels, it never will."
"So we just give up?" Sam asks. He looks up at Dean, wishing like hell he could still see a flicker of the big brother who could make everything okay again by just promising it would be. Sam wishes he'd known how good he had it when he was fifteen. He would have cherished every single day, if he'd known how quickly he was going to lose almost everything.
Dean shakes his head slowly and opens his mouth a few times, like he doesn't know what to say. What to think. Sam doesn't want Dean to hurt but it makes him feel just a shade better, to know Dean's struggling too. "Let's go outside, alright?" Dean says finally, nodding at Cas. "In case he wakes up."
He doesn't wait for Sam to answer before he's setting his almost-empty glass down on the table and leaving the room. Sam follows him, because he doesn't know how not to. Dean's leaning against the brick wall next to the small window, and Sam shuts the door behind himself and leans next to his brother.
"When Michael was givin' me his whole speech?" Dean starts tiredly. "You know what I took away from it the most?"
"Tell me."
"He kept talking about how much he loved his brother. Took care of him. But was still going to kill him, because it was all part of the plan."
Sam presses his lips together. "Sounds like a dick."
"They're all dicks. And they're wrong, Sammy."
"About what?"
"About what they think they know about family. I don't care if they've been around for billions of years. Nobody knows more about what family means than you'n'me. If Michael loves his brother like he said he does, he would die before killing him. Like I would. That's what family means. Not turning on each other because it's in the tarot cards that you're supposed to."
Sam nods, and the grip that's been squeezing in his chest since Cas sent them back in time loosens just a little bit. "Okay. So we fight, then?"
Dean shrugs. "That's always been the plan. Don't see why we should change it now."
"The angels all say it won't matter."
"So then it won't matter. At least we'll go down swingin'. Dad would be pissed at us if we didn't."
Sam nods again. It still hurts to think about Dad, and Mom, so young and happy and unaware of everything that's coming their way. Sam remembers when he was that innocent. He'd give anything to go back there. "I'm gonna check on Cas," he says reluctantly – wanting their angel friend to be alright, but at the same time wishing he wasn't here. He could really use a night in his brother's arms right now.
"Hey."
Dean's voice stops him, and Sam turns around. Dean glances around them, making sure they're alone, and then grabs Sam by the elbow and pulls him into a brief kiss. "If we can shake Cas later …"
Sam manages to smile a little. He squeezes Dean's hips and kisses him back. "Yeah. Sounds good."
"Makes everything seem a little more bearable, y'know?" Dean admits softly; like he's ashamed of it. "Stupid as that is."
"Not stupid," Sam promises in a whisper. "I love you. It's not stupid at all."
"Me too, Sammy."
