Fic: World Enough and Time = episode 9

Author: Seraphim Grace

Fandom = Supernatural

Pairing = Castiel x Dean (god is love in all its forms) Sam x Ruby and Canon Female Character,

Rating = NC17

spoilers = season 4

AUish - set in the world of american gods and sandman but also the spn universe, I just stretched it a little

Notes - Sam Centric, title from Andrew Marvell

suggested by [info]keire_ke

betaed by [info]bellajayd who deserves more praise than me for this - she's certainly doing more work

Episode 9

In which Hell presents it's angel

Soundtrack: Marcy Playground - Sex and Candy

The air of the small town nestled beside the lake is stifling and close. Sam wakes up in a ruined hotel room and knows instantly that he is there because of the smell of old aluminium and algae. He is fully clothed and lying on top of the damp blankets. There is a mannequin in the room, at the end of the bed, wearing a pair of his boxer shorts and a vest top that says "49% pussycat 51% bitch." Wedged into the waistband of the boxers is a flash light.

The mannequin is dressed like Jessica before the fire.

The room that he's in looks like the one that they shared in Stanford but with a layer of dirt and decay that seems to be an essential par of this town. There are places where the carpet is sticky and a dark stain of mould is making a home in one corner. Yet on the dresser there are the broken glass remnants of Jessica's perfume bottles.

There is slime-rotten fruit in a bowl in the kitchen and the two of the cupboard doors hang off their hinges.

Splattered across the wall in some dark and foul liquid, buzzing about with flies, is a written message

in my restless dreams i see that town,

you promised you'd take me there again someday

but you never did

well i'm alone there now

in our special place

waiting for you.

The message has hearts on the I's and none of the letters are capitalised. It is different from the last time it appeared.

Sam knows this is a game. He just doesn't know all the rules yet.

Although it is an apartment building and not a motel, the corridors could be interchangeable. They are painted mould grey and there are covered round lights tracking along the ceiling. The black dots of desiccated flies spatter the lampshades, and greasy black fingerprints smear all along the picture rails. On the side of one door is a scrawled Devil's seal, and Sam doesn't know what it was drawn with. He doesn't really care either.

There is a pool of old blood across the top of the stairs, sticky and thick, buzzing with flies. It drips heavily onto the first stair but Sam just steps through it and continues down towards the street.

The door creaks and opens out into the dark and falling snow. There are a few light flurries around the sputtering street lamps, but the fog has cleared. The grass is frozen and crunches underfoot but its not cold at all. The darklings emerge from the darkness, wearing winter clothes is Marilyn with his wig slipping about on his head starts a verse of "We're all off to sunny Spain" before one of the others slaps him hard enough on the back that his wig falls off.

Sam's glad, he's not in the mood for their musical interludes.

He's so distracted by their antics he doesn't see the black dog that leaps through the window to the house behind him and knocks him flying.

Sam can tell from the harsh light and the white cupboards that he just woke up in a hospital. He's sprawled over the edges of a hospital cot, his feet practically on the floor and a blanket is draped over his hips. He's completely dressed but his shoes are next to the cabinet.

A blonde nurse in a red sweater sits against the door, blocking his exit. She's pretty in a bland kind of blonde way. She has her arms around her knees and she is clearly not going to move. When she sees he's awake she speaks. "You can't go out there, it's not safe." Her tone is explicit. "Dr Kaufmann said we had to wait. It's not safe out there."

Sam's seen girls in her state before, she's one step away from tears, from hysteria, but the only things holding her together is the light, the fact that she is not alone, and that she has her arms around her knees. For a second Sam wonders what Dean would do, Sam smiles to himself as he stands up, Dean would fuck her.

"I'm Sam," he says.

Her eyes are rimmed with thinned mascara when she looks at him, but her hair and uniform are clean. Apart from the mascara she is perfectly made up. She is someone's fantasy of a good nurse, but she's not Sam's. Sam knows better, not in this place. Her absolute terror is reason enough that he is still in the town of fog.

"Lisa," she snuffles. "You can't go out, Sam," she wipes angrily at her nose, "the angel is out there. Dr Kaufmann said he would be back, we have to wait for him."

"It's okay, Lisa," Sam tries to comfort her, but his heart's not really in it, "I'm here to help with the monsters."

When Sam used that word before Reigert had looked at him strangely, Lisa tilts her head with the same question. "Monsters?" she asks. "I have to help Alessa, I have to get to her, but..."

"Hello, Sam," a little girl cuts Lisa off as she steps out of the anteroom, Sam had noticed it, and through it that the door was nailed shut. He recognizes the little girl because she has been in this place before, singing about oranges and lemons. She is wearing a black school uniform with white shirt and the badge reads "Midwich Elementary" proudly. "Want to play a game with me? Lisa's no fun and I want to play."

Sam goes to say something but she cuts him off. "Lie down," she says and for some reason he does, he doesn't even know why other than that this little girl seems to have some sort of power here. "If you can guess my name I'll take you to Alessa."

Lisa goes grey, then stands up and moves to the other room, clearly taking herself out of the game.

"That's it, Sam, you just have to guess my name." She has her arms behind her back and is rocking on her feet and she almost looks innocent, in a Wednesday Addams kind of way.

"Do you like green eggs and ham?" the girl asks him, then she laughs. "I always wanted to ask a Sam that, I bet you don't, I bet you don't like them, I bet you don't like green eggs and ham?" She laughs as if it's the very best joke ever. Then she climbs up onto the counter. "Sam, can you guess my name."

"Rumplestiltskin," Sam answers.

She jumps down with a patent leather slap against the tiles. "No, silly," she says, "That's not my name."

"Lisa?" He asks. It's the nurse's name and the first thing that pops into his head.

"No, I'm not Lisa."

"And you're not Alessa."

"No, I'm not Alessa."

From under the cot the girl lifts a pillow, toying with it as if was a plush animal, gathering it in her arms. "Are you Jessica?"

"I'm not Jessica, she's waiting for you. You're not really trying are you? I have a special name."

"Mary?" He asks, giving her his mother's name.

She rocks for a moment and tugs on the pillow. "I'm not Mary," she says, "but Mary was here," Sam balks at that information. "She was sick, she was really sick but it's okay, because James made her well again, like this." She moving fast enough that Sam doesn't really expect it when she presses the pillow down over his face and bears down, and no matter how much he struggles he can't pry her off because she's too small to grab.

Sam wakes up in the motel room when Dean places an ice cold can of Mountain Dew to the back of his neck. He jumps and knows that the little girl's name is Laura, but not how he knows it. The darklings are about his feet, under the table he's sitting at, chattering away to themselves.

"You were miles away dude," Dean tells him. "Interesting fantasy? Angelina Jolie? Brad Pitt? Together?"

"Nurses," Sam tells him, knowing it's the truth, of a sort. "Nurses."

He thinks of Lisa sitting there, rocking back and forth with her terror and whispering, "The angel is out there," That is why she's scared, an angel. If only he could get Dean to meet her, but that would mean finding out where the town is, but he has more information now. The hospital is called Alchemilla and the school is Midwich Elementary. It shouldn't be long now before he finds something.

Dean is wrong, that town was Hell, and he can't imagine a fate worse than eternity in Pottery Barn. Breughel is wrong, Hell is not "a garden of unearthly delights." Sartre was wrong, "Hell is not other people. "Hell is an eternity of banality in a lakeside town.

"Earth to Sam," Dean breaks off the thought before it finishes, "I got a line on a hunt, three men in Bedford, Iowa, beat their wives to death after visiting a strip club." He sprawls down in one of the wooden chairs opposite, and Jessica is behind him in her dress of creeping darkness, "think about it Sammy, finally a mission with strippers."

"Looks like one of us gets our wishes to come true," Sam drawls as Jessica's hands linger over Dean's hair, almost close enough to scratch his scalp. Sam knows how good her hands feel over his own scalp. Jess is teasing him. She is showing Sam how Dean could be his, how Dean could be theirs. "And one day you'll think with your big brain."

Dean pulls a face, one that he'd refer to as "Bitchface number five" if he could see it, but at the same time he admits the blow. "So Iowa, that's somewhere in middle America."

"That's Omaha idiot," Sam continues, knowing that Dean wouldn't tolerate that kind of comment about his taste in music, but it shows that at least Dean was listening to it on the rare occasions that his own rule, driver chooses tunes, means Sam controls the radio. Sam, however, doesn't get to drive nearly enough, he knows every beat and guitar chord for all of Dean's tapes, but Dean can't even get the title of the song right.

"Distracted by strippers, Sammy, distracted by strippers." And Dean gloats, flashes his million gigawatt smile and Sam wants to be annoyed with him, but instead he's just attracted.

***

When the dust of a truly disastrous hunt, saved only by Dean's need for other people and thus calling Bobby, the rift between them is wider than ever. But what Sam keeps to himself, what he keeps deep inside, is that the Siren appeared to him differently than it did to Dean. Dean describes a man to Bobby, with blue eyes and an abiding love for Led Zepplin.

Sam saw a girl, and she looked like Dean but with an Agent Scully vibe. The only reason he didn't make a pass at her was that she did look so much like Dean and there was no point in aiming for the facsimile when Dean slept on the couch, crashed out drunk, and Sam could breathe him in and that wonderful new smell of burning churches, of cheeseburgers, bacon, coffee and cordite.

The Siren smelled of hyacinths.

"You know what," Sam says as Dean scratches irritably at the place where Bobby stabbed him. "The Siren, she got all her names from Disney movies."

Dean thinks about it for a moment and normally he laughs, "Typical," he grates out, "finally the chance to fuck a Disney princess and who do I get, Nick the man?"

Sam bites off his response, instead he reacts with the usual barbs, the ones that they've traded since they were children, the ones that have long since lost their severity. "Is there something I should know?" He waggles his eyebrows lasciviously.

Dean's eyes narrow for a minute, then his lips tighten. "Do you know what, Sammy, I'm gonna go for a walk."

"Your angel hovering nearby?" Sam can't quite keep the vitriol out of his voice.

"I haven't seen him in weeksmonths," Dean answers calmly. "I just thought you and your succubitic whore might need some time."

"Dean," Sam starts but Dean is pulling on his coat and doesn't listen.

Dean comes back near dawn, and as they are driving from Bedford, Dean with his jaw set and Sam with his head against the passenger side window, sees a plume of black smoke suggesting somewhere in the town there is a fire.