AN: Something tells me I've been reading too much Terry Pratchett lately.
I may have taken some liberties with ideas from Greek mythology (the title is another name for the Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux), Greek and American cuisine, and Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's characterization of Death (THE WAY HE SPEAKS, for instance, is similar in format to the way Death speaks in Good Omens and in the Discworld series by Pratchett, and I also might have stolen/borrowed the idea for a certain Rite performed in the third section) in this story.
This idea has sort of haunted me (pun!) since Dean went to Hell at the end of Season 3, but I decided to set this after Season 5 because I wanted to have Dean go up against Death. They're just too much fun to play with!
This was mostly angsty when I originally imagined it. Somehow, it turned into a half-dark-crack!fic on me, just like most of my other stories. What the heck is wrong with me?
Oh, and warning: This is a death!fic, as well as a Death!fic. (I love puns, in case you hadn't noticed…)
Summary: In Greek myth, when the human hero Castor died, Pollux gave his twin half of his own immortality - because brothers should always share. Dean plays a game of metaphorical chess with Death to get Sam back. AU set after 5.22 "Swan Song." Crack!fic.
Dioscuri
He's seated at a dark back table in a tiny family-owned Greek café, eating gyros sandwiches with Death. The table's draped with a slightly sticky plastic tablecloth patterned with blue-and-white checks.
THE RINGS, the Horseman says, GIVE THEM TO ME.
Dean swallows his mouthful of seasoned meat and pita bread slowly, carefully contemplating his answer. He licks his lips, finding a tangy spot of tzatziki sauce at the corner of his mouth.
"No," he finally says with an infuriatingly flippant smirk. "I'd rather keep them. They're shiny."
There's a slight flicker of something that might be an emotion behind the ancient eyes under the smooth, wide expanse of pale skin stretched tight across Death's skull, although it passes too quickly for Dean to guess at what it is. Anger, frustration, amusement—who knows, but Dean's not really counting on the last.
DEAN, GIVE ME THE RINGS, Death commands again, in that dry, cultured voice that makes the hunter think of crypts, death-rattles, and grave-dust. IT ISN'T A REQUEST.
Dean sits forward, elbows digging into the table, hands clenched into fists on the blue-and-white chessboard. Playing chess with Death.
"How bad do you want them?" he asks. "'Cause I want something, too. Something only someone like you can give me."
YOU WANT YOUR BROTHER BACK, I SUPPOSE, Death sighs, wiping his thin lips daintily with a white paper napkin that seems to wilt as he uses it. I'M AFRAID I CAN'T DO THAT.
Dean doesn't let that deter him. He just leans back in his chair and shakes his head. "I guess that means neither of us is getting what we want today. I'm not getting my brother back, and you're not getting the rings. Or even your ring, for that matter." He crosses his arms and shakes his head again. "Shame."
The antediluvian eyes bore into him, seeing deep, deep inside him, into his very soul. Two can play this game; the Horseman has, in fact, played it many times before, always against Mankind's cockiest, the most self-confident, the most foolish. This mortal is no different, yet unique at the same time.
He feels a stirring of interest in him, this mere human, who carries his narrow brushes (and one or two pretty hefty shoves) with fatality like notches on his belt. This man, to whom he'd entrusted the stopping of the Apocalypse, has intrigued him from the beginning. The man who had, with his allies, succeeded and fulfilled the prophesy.
The Righteous Man, indeed. Prophesies are always tricky and have a way of turning on the hand that ushers them along. Such as Zachariah, the pompous twit. Infernal angels and their childish plans.
This man, who has no respect for all creatures more powerful than he, is perhaps worth consideration, although compared to Death, he is nothing more than a babe, a mere speck. Actually, anything compared to Death carries as much weight as a dust mote.
Death's face shows no sign of these thoughts as he gazes at Dean, into Dean.
WOULD YOU TAKE HIS PLACE? he queries, already knowing the answer.
Dean starts, eyes widening in shock. His throat works. "Yes," he whispers, "Yes. In a heartbeat."
Somehow, the Horseman manages to smile without moving a muscle. It sends a shudder up the hunter's spine. VERY WELL. FOR MY RING, I WILL EXCHANGE YOU FOR YOUR BROTHER IN THE ARCHANGELS' CAGE IN HELL.
Dean swallows. "One ring," he says softly, steel running through his voice, "What would you do for all four?"
Death clasps his hands together, brings them slowly up to his face to rest against his lips. FOR ALL FOUR, he replies, YOU WILL SPEND HALF THE TIME IN HELL, THE OTHER HALF IN YOUR OWN RIGHTFUL PLACE.
Dean frowns, working out the deal. "That sounds too good to be true. What's the catch? Where's Sam gonna be while I'm up here?"
HELL.
Dean shakes his head. "Then no deal. Give me the other. Your ring for Sam living up here all year round and going to Heaven when he dies after a good long life." He takes the heavy ring out of his pocket. The silver gleams with a dull shine and the white stone swirls sickly in its square setting. It clatters as it hits the table.
Death reaches out long, thin fingers and takes the ring. Fitting it back on his skeletal right hand, he says, MIDNIGHT. YOU HAVE UNTIL THEN TO SETTLE YOUR AFFAIRS. THEN I SHALL COME TO TAKE YOU TO THE CAGE.
"And bring Sam back up to Earth," Dean finishes firmly, standing up.
Death merely nods and picks up his gyros sandwich. Then he calls the waiter over to order a piece of baklava. He'd heard that it's to die for.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dean is ready when Death comes for him.
He'd packed up another box of personal artifacts and sent it off to Bobby's in the afternoon mail. He'd even shelled out extra money for overnight delivery. There were two letters in the box: One addressed to Bobby, explaining what he'd done and to hide the rest of the Horsemen's rings carefully; the other was to Sam, the gist of it saying, "Dammit, you try being happy and living a normal life. It's harder than it looks, bitch!"
Death arrives without so much as a dramatic gust of wind. As it turns out, he has as much regard for personal space as Cas—none. One minute Dean's waiting in the rickety old chair at the bare wooden table in the motel room, jumping at every little noise, then the next, he's startles so hard that he bumps his knees on the underside of the table.
DEAN, the dry, crackling, blue-bottle fly voice buzzes from right over his left shoulder, straight into his ear, WE SHOULD GET GOING. WE WOULDN'T WANT TO BE ANY LATER AND LET SAM ENDURE HELL A MOMENT LONGER THAN NECESSARY, WOULD WE?
Death sounds strangely chipper for…Death.
Dean glares at the Horseman, who seems to be enjoying this a little too much. Must be nice to mix it up after eons of simply killing people. And he'll be getting a revenge of sorts on Lucifer, who'd thought as a little toddler archangel that it would be a good idea to chain the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to himself. When Dean gets there, Lucifer'll find his sparkly new boy toy vessel replaced with said vessel's big brother with the gutter soul. Far from an upgrade.
"Alright," Dean says, pushing his chair back and standing. "Let's get this switcheroo started. It'll be like that movie with the Three Musketeers and DiCaprio in lace ruffles."
INDEED, Death says, and they're suddenly not in the motel room. They're not on earth either; the décor is much too hellish for that, even taking into account the eccentric and sometimes questionable decorating tastes of certain motel owners on earth.
They're in Hell. The smells, the sounds, the heat of the stifling air around him—it's all Hell.
BRINGS BACK SOME LOVELY MEMORIES, DOESN'T IT, DEAN?
Death's enjoying this way too much.
"Just get it over with," Dean growls. "Get Sammy out of here." He can't stand the screams. His little brother's screams. He'd know that voice anywhere, wailing as a hungry baby, giggling as a small child, teasing as an adult—he'd know Sam's voice anywhere. Even here, in Hell, scraped raw from screaming, Dean knows it.
At least it looks like Adam isn't anywhere in the place. Dean hopes he's finally found his way back to his mom, poor kid.
Death glides over to the gibbering mess of flesh and blood in the corner of the cage, and then they're gone. Gone, safe.
The two towering beings of harsh light and steel turn slowly around to face the tiny human left in their jail cell. They stare.
Dean levels his best smirk at them. "Bring it on, assbutts!"
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It's been a month. A month since he'd come to in the middle of Stull Cemetery, lying on the grass right where he'd fallen into the Pit, taking Lucifer with him.
It had been raining, a light spring drizzle that had awakened him from his unconscious state with the sheer gentleness of its touch. Rain. Water. There had been no water in Hell. There had been no tenderness either. Sam had opened his eyes and stared up at the sky. He hadn't thought he'd ever see it again.
When Bobby had arrived several hours later, Sam was still on his back, cold and shivering from his shower earlier, but alive and in shock at finding himself in that state. The grizzled hunter had bundled the unresisting younger man into the beat-up sedan and driven him back home.
Sam had spent the majority of the month asleep, twitching from nightmares of Hell, but when he awoke, the first word out of his mouth had been his brother's name.
"Dean," he'd said, voice cracking from disuse (rather than from screaming—oh god, help me, Dean!), "Bobby, what did he do?"
And Bobby had solemnly handed him the letter beginning, "Dear emo bitch, when you read this, I'll be sitting in the sauna with Luci and Mike…"
Reading his brother's joking most recent last words had woken Sam right up, sobered him straight into wrath, bypassing annoyance and anger. Sam's brother had to be the stupidest man to ever live on the planet. After all Sam had done, after all Dean had said about not letting Sam make his choice, that it was his choice to begin with—after all that, he'd done this. Idiot.
And that is why he's standing here, performing the ancient Rite of AshkEnte, summoning Death, of all creatures, to have a talking-to with him.
Death arrives with the stillness of a tomb. YES? YOU CALLED. He sounds annoyed. MAKE IT QUICK; I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING.
"I want my brother back."
Death sighs in what could almost be exasperation. OH FOR GOODNESS' SAKE. DON'T YOU WINCHESTERS KNOW ANY OTHER WORDS? He strides closer, practically gliding across the floor. I DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER TO YOU, YOU INSIGNIFICANT GERM. YOUR LIFE IS ONLY AS LONG AS I MAKE IT, REMEMBER THAT. The walking stick clacks down against the ground, punctuating his last words.
Sam's taller than most everyone he's ever met, and he's very easily a foot taller than the corporeal form Death has taken, but the Horseman somehow towers over him, threatening him with, well, death.
Still, Sam sets his lips in a hard line and stands firm. Stubbornness radiates from his tensed hulking mountain of a body. "I want my brother back," he repeats.
Death stares into Sam Winchester's soul. It's as scarred and pitted as his brother's, but it's just as bright, pure. OR WHAT?
Sam holds up a ring with a putrid green stone. "Or I'll put this ring on and give you food poisoning! You'll never be able to eat without remembering what came up the last time you did."
It's rare that Death's amused twice in one century, but these Winchester brothers are really remarkable. Remarkably stupid, but intriguing.
Besides, Sam has just threatened to do something that even Death's brother Pestilence has never even dreamed of attempting.
YOU ARE THREATENING ME WITH A TUMMYACHE TO PUT YOU BACK IN HELL, WHERE YOU WERE A PLAYTHING TO TWO VERY ANGRY ARCHANGELS? he asks to make sure he has Sam's meaning right.
"Exactly."
DOESN'T SEEM LIKE A VERY GOOD DEAL, the Horseman observes.
"Put me back!"
VERY WELL, Death sighs. I'LL GIVE YOU THE DEAL I OFFERED YOUR BROTHER BEFORE HE TURNED IT DOWN IN FAVOR OF THE CURRENT DEAL. FOR ALL THE RINGS, I WILL PUT YOU IN HELL FOR HALF THE YEAR AND YOUR BROTHER WILL BE ON EARTH DURING THAT TIME. FOR THE OTHER HALF OF THE YEAR, YOU WILL BE ON EARTH AND HE WILL SUFFER IN HELL.
Sam hesitates. "Six months? How about nine months? I spend nine months in Hell and he spends three months there."
NO. SIX MONTHS, Death says decisively. Then he adds, YOU CAN HAVE THE EXTRA ODD DAY IN NON-LEAP YEARS.
Sam considers. "Okay. Can we go now?"
MIDNIGHT.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Bobby's waiting for him when he arrives at the cemetery, still hollering and fighting against the two angelic bullies. The long-suffering hunter (the one with the baseball cap, not the one with the spiky hair) uncrosses his arms and gruffly (yet gently) hauls the flailing other man up and into the back seat of the awaiting car.
"You two idjits trying to out-moron each other or something?" is what he says, as soon as Dean is coherent enough to mumble "Bobby?" blearily at his scruffy nurse.
Dean is just about ready to call Death again when Bobby puts his foot down (strategically, on top of the summoning bowl) and tells him to "suck it up, Winchester and share Hell-time with your brother."
Dean grumbles and moans and threatens and begs, but the old man stands stiff and unyielding as a twelve-hour-old corpse.
The rest of the six months pass in sulky silence and Dean is happily returned to Hell.
Sam is plopped down in Stull without ceremony ("Ow.") and gets half a year of scolding from Bobby for his trouble before he's whisked back to the Cage to spend the rest of the year enduring unimaginable torture by the now completely bewildered archangels in the Unholy Jail Cell.
After the first two or three cycles of living and non-living, they settle into a sort of routine. When topside, they go on hunts and leave notes to each other in Bobby's safekeeping.
"Hey bro. I met a nice girl the other week. I think you'd dig her. Here's her picture and her number. Call her."
"That's a guy, you dick."
"At least I know mine still works."
"Jerk. I hope it falls off."
The schedule is slightly disrupted when, two-and-a-half months into Dean's turn on Earth, he happens to look down at the gaping hole where his abdomen should be, says, "Ow. That can't be good," and falls over.
He immediately ends up sitting in his car listening to Bob Dylan and calling the long-haired memory of his brother a bitch. Heaven really isn't all it's hyped up to be. Not without his brother actually being there to make things bearable. Besides, he died before he could finish that last hunt! He hates leaving things unfinished.
Anyway, imagine the surprise Sam gets when he lands in the middle of the magnificent library at Stanford instead of the now-familiar cemetery in Kansas three-and-a-half months later.
"Dammit, Dean! You died?"
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Three hundred and twenty-two years and three months (thirty-nine thousand, eight hundred and seventy hell-years) later…
They make an odd couple, the emaciated old man with the walking stick, dignified and terrible, and the youngish and awkward man with the scruffy beard. They're sitting in a turn of the century-style fast food joint, being served their meal of old-style hamburgers and fries.
THEY'RE DRIVING ME MAD, Death says to Chuck-the-Prophet-who-is-also-God. I NEVER KNEW I COULD BE DRIVEN MAD, BUT HERE I AM, BEING TAKEN THERE AGAINST MY WILL.
"Who's driving you mad?"Chuck asks, dipping a French fry in a puddle of ketchup and cramming it into his mouth.
YOU KNOW VERY WELL WHO, the Horseman answers testily. YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY, DON'T YOU?
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Chuck replies. "Unless you mean the Winchesters." He slurps soda up his straw.
Death scoffs. YES, THEM. TWO TIMES A YEAR, I HAVE TO FERRY THEM ACROSS FROM HEAVEN TO HELL, HELL TO HEAVEN, AND BACK AGAIN IN ANOTHER SIX MONTHS. AND EVERY TIME, THEY EACH HAVE A SNARKY COMMENT FOR ME. IF I HEAR ANOTHER "Don't sneak up on me like that, dude, you almost scared me to death…again" JOKE, I WILL SCREAM.
Chuck's giggle is barely hidden, as he says, "Why don't you just, you know, dump them both in Heaven and leave them there. Then everybody's happy, and you've got a lot less work to do."
Death stares at the Creator aghast. BUT THE IMBALANCE IT WOULD CAUSE IF I JUST DID THAT.
Chuck shrugs. "What if I ordered you to do it? Because seriously, it seems better at this point to face the shake-up than to watch the masochistic Winchester brothers keep on going like this."
BUT…
Chuck grins. "One of the perks of the job, Mort. Got to show compassion sometimes. They say, omnibenevolence is one trait of God, and I gotta keep up appearances." He wipes his greasy hands on a paper napkin and stands up. "Well, so long, nice seeing you again. Maybe in another millennium, we'll catch up again over lunch?"
Death blinks. YES. LUNCH.
Perhaps meddling in the Winchesters' business to begin with was not the way to resolve his problem. No one could ever say that he, Death is infallible. They only say that about God, and Death has certain reservations about it being the truth.
He sighs. TO HELL AND BACK AGAIN, I SUPPOSE. ONE MORE TRIP. GOOD RIDDANCE.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"You know, in my heaven, I could change the music anytime I wanted," Sam pouts from his seat on the right side of the car.
"Whose car is this?" Dean asks, gunning the motor. "My car, my rules. And the rules say…"
"Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole," Sam grumbles under his breath. "You suck."
"You suck."
"No, you suck."
"No, you suck."
"No, you suck, to infinity." Ha!
"Hey, that's not fair. Cheater."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
AN: I am guilty of the deus ex machina device! Shame on me! And shame again for putting poor Death through the ordeal of multiple Winchester encounters.