TEN
It's A Secret. I Could Tell You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You
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Sam let his cold brother back to the carpet, clutching at his own broken wrist in pain and heart-break.
"He knew he'd die! He knew it!" Sam accused angrily, hot salty tears sailing over his face.
It was silent, save Sam's efforts to hush his tiny escapees of anguish, for several minutes.
Finally, Bobby could bring himself to move. He put his hand out, grabbing the younger man's shoulder and pulling him back. Sam tumbled from his heels to slam onto his backside on the carpet, his wrist cradled against his chest and his eyes staring at nothing.
"Let me see your wrist," Bobby instructed.
"Leave me alone," Sam heaved.
"Sam! There's nothing I can do for him, but I ain't leaving you with that huge swelling and broken bones. Now let me damn well see!" he shouted raggedly.
Sam let him pull his elbow, dragging his wrist from his front and into Bobby's field of vision.
"This is going to need a hospital," he observed quietly, looking around the room at the carnage.
Lilith's host, the demon presumably having left her upon its death, lay behind them on the devil's trap, her arms still out wide. A broken coffee jug and a demon knife littered the floor, the Colt taking a well deserved rest just out of reach. Bobby looked up at his bag on the far bed, thinking about the first aid kit that was in it somewhere.
"The first thing you need is painkiller," he judged, getting up to head for his bag.
Sam's eyes remained on his brother. "Don't think it's going to work," he whispered.
Bobby bit his lip, going with trademark stoicism to his bag and carrying it over. "Listen to me, Sam. I know Dean's gone, I know it's hit you hard - again. But we're gonna have the cops here soon. We made enough noise to bring down the FBI, and we got to get out of here now."
"We can't leave him here."
"We won't - he's coming with us. We should bury him. Or do you want to try saltin' and burnin' the smug bastard this time?" He flinched at his own harshness, yet he knew it was the only way to voice what he had to. He bit down on his tongue, waiting for Sam's fist to flail into his face.
But it didn't come. Sam sat, motionless, a tiny smile fighting for and winning time on his lips. He let his gaze wander up and away from his brother.
"At least he saw it," Sam whispered. "He saw Lilith dead. That's one thing."
"Yeah. This time he died winning," Bobby reassured him. He opened his bag and fished around inside for his emergency stash of morphine. "Right. Let's get you some medication before we make like the wind. This room… don't smell so good."
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Bobby clutched the steering wheel of the Impala, glancing at Sam. The youngest and only surviving Winchester was staring out of the passenger window as if he expected it to leap over and bite him.
He didn't speak. Bobby didn't break the rumble of the classic either. Even the Impala herself made neither slight rattles nor squeaks as she had once done when her favourite driver had been alive. It was as if, without him to appreciate her noises, she considered it pointless.
The two men had said nothing to each other during the three-hour wait in the hospital. Even while gesturing for Bobby to sign for the treatment and the new plaster cast on his wrist, Sam had not been able to bring himself to utter a word.
Now, as night fell around them, Sam simply held his newly-plastered wrist to his chest, his head against the glass, listening to the rumble of the engine. He sighed quietly and Bobby glanced at him. The broken young man cleared his throat slightly, quietly, as if scared to interrupt the Impala's reassuring sound.
"I wanted to show him the iPod," Sam muttered. "I had a whole playlist on there just for him. I thought… you know, if I kept it on there, then he wasn't really gone." He paused, his voice weak. "That first time."
"Yeah," Bobby managed. All day I wished to God you'd talk. Now I with you'd stop. But who the Hell am I to do that to you? My heart breaks for you, kid, it really does.
"It's got some of his favourites on it," Sam mused to himself in an innocent tone, and a tiny, shiny smile flitted over his face, touching his eyes for less than the time it took to register. "Bobby?"
"Yeah, son."
Sam's voice was young and guileless again, naiively asking why he and his brother didn't have a mother like other children: "Can you play it, please?"
Bobby swallowed a lump in his throat and put a hand out to the cassette player. He turned the knob and the light on the iPod attached to the cradle flickered into life.
"You'll have to work it, Sam."
He leaned forward with a sigh, sliding his thumb round the wheel and selecting. Finally he sat back, just as the opening dongs of AC/DC's Hell's Bells began to chime. He lifted his chin, tilting his head slightly to direct his voice toward the back of the car.
"We did it, Dean," he said, apparently to the load on the rear seat. "We killed Lilith. You, me and Bobby. Told you we needed all of us."
Then he settled into the seat, let his head lean against the glass, and began to hum along with the music.
Bobby looked up at the rear view mirror, eyeing the corpse covered in the brown blanket, taking up the entire rear seat. He swallowed, looked back at the road, and concentrated on only the song as if his life depended on it.
.
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The Impala pulled up at the rather lonely roadside motel, Bobby glancing at the clock to find it already nearly midnight. He looked over at Sam, out for the count, his head against his jacket between the corner of the seat and the window. He thought for a long moment, then turned in the seat and got out of the car, making every effort not to look at the rear seat.
He crossed the car park and took himself into Reception, stopping by the desk. He rang the bell and a good two minutes went by unchecked, being careful not to disturb him as he refused to think about the day so far. At last an elderly man appeared and it took less than ten minutes to get a room with two beds paid for. Bobby mumbled a passable reply to the man's friendly remark about the weather before retreating to the familiarity of Dean's car.
Sam's car, now. Again. He huffed as he opened the driver's door, getting in and sitting heavily. He leaned over and nudged a dosing Sam. "Hey, come on, boy."
"Another minute, Dean," Sam muttered.
Bobby wet his lips, looking at the stereo for help. When it didn't immediately give him advice on what to do next, he looked back at Sam and shook his shoulder.
"If that don't work," yawned Dean, putting two forearms to the back of the front seat to lean on them as he rubbed his eye, "just stick your finger in his ear."
Bobby froze. He felt something moving behind him, knew something alive was in the car. He made himself turn in a painfully slow manoeuvre that would have put an elderly Tai Chi master to shame. He stared at the man now sitting up on the rear seat, leaning his weight on his arms, moving his hand from his eye to his nose, rubbing in complete obliviousness.
"Dean?" Bobby asked quietly.
"Hmm? You ok, Bobby, you look like--" Dean asked blearily, obviously drowsy. He let his hand drop. "My God, am I hungry!" he gasped suddenly. His right elbow left the seat and he put his hand to his stomach. "I feel like I haven't eaten in--. Oh. Hey! I'm hungry!" he grinned. "Holy crap! I'm alive! I'm actually alive!"
Bobby just stared. And stared.
Dean grinned back.
Bobby stared.
Dean's grin shrank to a smile.
Bobby stared.
Dean's smile turned worried.
Bobby stared.
Dean's worry morphed into dismay.
"What?" he dared, leaning back away from the seat, fearing the older Singer's next move.
But Bobby stretched a hand out and clapped it to the side of Dean's neck. The Winchester jumped at the harshness of the contact but then smiled in relief.
"It's me again. See? A pulse!" he nodded, Bobby's hand moving with him. Dean put a hand to his left wrist, squeezing. "I got a pulse again! I got a heartbeat! And - man am I friggin' hungry."
"Yeah," Bobby whispered. "Oh, holy Hellfire and buckets of blood!" he crowed suddenly. "We thought you were dead, boy! Like, really dead!"
Dean chuckled until Bobby removed his hand. "I don't know what happened, man - one minute I was feeling the most tired I've ever been in my life, the next I woke up on this seat. What'd I miss?"
Bobby put a hand out and punched Sam in the shoulder. Dean's face registered surprise until Sam shot upright, looking around.
"What? What is it?" he demanded, reaching for the glovebox.
"Whoa whoa whoa," Dean said quickly, rightly judging the Colt to be in there. "Calm down, Sammy. Just hold on a second."
Sam froze. Bobby put a hand on his shoulder. Sam appeared to steel himself before he looked round slowly. He looked at Dean. His brother grinned and tilted his head, his tongue sticking out slightly from beyond his teeth as he waggled his eyebrows.
Sam blinked. His entire face sagged. The eyebrows melted at the sides, spilling woe and heartbreak down the sides of his face with devastating effectiveness. His mouth opened. Then it closed.
"Huh? Huh?" Dean prompted as he grinned delightedly, lifting his hand and waving a finger at his face. "Captain friggin' Scarlet, I'm telling you. --Oooh, eyes," he added quickly, looking at Bobby. "How are my eyes?"
Bobby just shook his head, reaching back and grabbing Dean's shoulder. He squeezed and shook it heartily, making Dean's head wobble a little and Sam stop staring quite so piteously.
"Well they look normal to me," the older man grinned.
"So come on, where's the food? I could eat a whole cow if there was enough ketchup," Dean grinned, his mouth wider than the Amazon river during the wet season. "And I need my jacket. It's chilly back here," he added, pulling at the collar of his borrowed checked shirt.
"I think…" Bobby began. Then he gave up, and shook his head. His brain regrouped and he put a hand on a shoulder of each Winchester. "I think we need to get in that room and check everyone for brain fever."
"Good thinking, Batman," Dean nodded. "Sammy? Give me your phone. I have got to call for pizza. Right. Now."
.
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Outside the window, their invisible noses inches from the glass, stood two ordinary looking gentlemen. One was taller, wider, imposing in his stance and his appearance. His close-cropped midnight hair stole over his black velvet features as he watched the commotion inside the motel room.
His companion stood to one side, more fascinated than he over the antics of the three men inside the room. His windswept black hair was either fashionably styled to deliberately look like bedhair, or he had in fact been dragged through a hedge backwards some time in the very recent past. His dark accountant's suit and rumpled beige raincoat gave him a shabby appearance, to be sure, but his eager eyes sparkled in the light thrown from the motel room.
"He is restored," the man in the mac observed.
"Hmm. Back to just a mud-monkey." The taller, darker man considered for a long moment. "The original seal in intact. And she is dead; the other sixty-five seals can never be opened in order. Our work here is done."
"Should we not visit him? He must be told why he had to be dead to take on the power and face Lilith, why we gave his transferred power the option to grow as it did." He paused. "It was fortunate he chose to smite demons, therefore triggering his power to develop, and not give up or choose another target."
"It was not fortuitous. Our Father chose him for a reason. We did not know he needed the other two. Perhaps his capability, his worth, was… over-estimated."
"Our Father created families for a reason. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps his role was to bring the three of them together as a unit," he offered, his hands going into the pockets of his mac.
"Perhaps. If you recall, he failed to do this when we gave him back his father. Look what happened there."
The man in the raincoat considered for a long moment. "But everything he did led up to this moment. Perhaps what he did was not meant to come to fruition until now."
"Perhaps."
"It would be… agreeable to admit I led him back to his family after he found the exit from Hell. Do we visit him, explain to him? He must have questions."
"No. He must never know he was a servant of God."
"Why?"
"You question our orders?"
"I seek… clarity."
"He must never know we angels exist. He must never know we enabled him to carry out the Lord's work - using our power to do it."
"Because he is mortal again?"
"Because those are our orders."
Silence.
"So this is over?" the man in the raincoat dared.
The two of them stared in through the window, watching the two younger men hug for a moment, one of them patting at his brother's back with a white cast on his wrist. The older man broke them up with a slice of pizza aimed straight at the mouth of the short-haired man, and a lot of laughter ensued as he attempted to ram the entire slice in his mouth at once. Dark brown glass bottles were raised, words were said, beer was drunk.
"It is indeed over," said the larger man. "All things have been settled here today. We will rejoin the garrison. To tell them we have been victorious."
The man in the raincoat acknowledged his colleague leaving. He stepped back to go, to return to his garrison of angels.
But something made him pause. He drew closer to the window once again, his nose barely millimetres from the divide, safe in the knowledge that the obviously celebrating humans could not see or perceive him. His head tilted as he let himself be drawn into their raucous laughter, their loud opening of more beer bottles, their good-natured argument over who rightfully owned the last surviving piece of pizza.
Is this what it is to have human family? the angel asked himself, at once awed and intrigued.
As he watched, transfixed, the sandy-haired angels' champion - who had secured the remaining piece of pizza and was now crowing about it as if he had won an Olympic medal - happened to swing away from the tallest man in the room, as if to protect his prize. In doing so he looked out of the window. For a heartbeat - barely that - it was as if the angel and the human shared a look.
But that could not be. It was not possible that a human could perceive an angel's countenance while on invisible reconnaissance. It was not possible that the human who had been used, abused and restored by Heaven could have known the angel was standing outside the window, wanting to be on the inside.
The man smiled in a way that told the angel they two were the only ones in existence who understood.
The angel took a step back. He continued to stare, but the man was now teasing the others and arguing with them over the beer bottles in the corner of the room, as if the sliver of a moment had never happened.
The being in the raincoat, angel of the Lord and very recent convert as far as believing in the human power of families went, permitted himself a small smile.
He turned with a swish of his long beige mac, and walked away.
FIN
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I know the end with Dean coming back may seem like a cop-out, but I've been totally stove-piped by fandom deaths in 2009. We lost Pamela [other SPN season 5 names censored for spoiler reasons], and across the divide there was Ka D'Argo and Jool, and, devastatingly, Ianto Jones. Crowning Moment of Grief and Despair: the end of Doctor Ten (alright, technically that was 1st January, 2010). I was all set to leave Dean at rest until I realised that I just refused to lose any more characters - from any fandom.
It's always the good who die because of someone else's problems. Well tonight, ladies and gents, I hope I redressed the balance just a little.
Thanks for reading!