Part V
Epilogue
Now that the clerk is gone, there seems to be no need to hurry. Sam stands beside his hotel bed and stuffs his dirty laundry in a thick plastic bag he keeps for this purpose. He's wearing clean clothes now, and shoes and socks for the first time since this ordeal began. It feels good. He's trying to concentrate on that good feeling, because there's so much inside him that hurts like a mother fucker. The sense memory of Dean's fevered touches can't overcome the scalding remembrance of the rape … the bludgeoning to death of all he's thought inviolate. The shocking intensity of the pain that surrounds the memory surprises him.
Dean comes in from the car, where he's already stowed his duffel, and stands in the room's center looking around as if he can't remember where he's left some precious possession.
"What are you looking for?" Sam asks, voice cracking from disuse.
"I don't know," Dean admits. But Sam already knows.
Your innocence. Yourself, before the clerk's violation.
Too bad he can't find that here. Too bad neither of them can.
"Let's go," he says instead.
They turn to leave. The clerk is standing in the doorway.
Sam's knees go weak. He sits on the bed in shock, heart thudding painfully in his chest. Dean's entire body goes tense, and he takes two determined steps toward her. Sam recognizes his posture as the one his brother gets when he's about to wreak violence. But he stops himself, and just looks at the clerk.
It takes Sam a moment to see what he sees.
She's changed from the stained blue smock she was wearing earlier to a white, baggy t-shirt, and clean black slacks. Her hair is combed and pinned to the sides of her head like the schoolgirl she must have been once. She looks … harmless. Is harmless, he realizes abruptly.
"I want to be angry with you," she says in a thick voice. "You've taken everything from me."
They watch her. Sam can't quite believe the changes he's seeing, the air of normality and helpfulness that surrounds her now.
"I can't be angry, though. I can't hate. The things I did …" She trails off, and Sam swears the expression on her face is regretful. "My power has changed now. I can't do the things I could before. The things I did to you."
The silence between he and Dean is like a black, yawning hole. She ventures into it.
"But I can do one thing to make it right."
She comes forward. Sam forces himself not to pull away, but to stand strong. Dean watches them both like he doesn't know whether to attack her or grab Sam and tug him out the door. Sam's kind of surprised he isn't doing one or the other.
When she reaches out and touches Sam's cheek, though, the world recedes and he can no longer think about his headstrong brother. A tingling warmth is spreading out all over his head, sinking deep into his skull, saturating his brain. It's wrapping around the memories of everything that has gone on – the horror of their imprisonment, the pain, guilt, and trauma of the rape, and the sucking away of their strength. But instead of letting those memories continue to flare and burn, she pats them down with a bucket of metaphorical water, and quenches them. Their stabbing agony drains away into a muted throbbing sting, then drains further until he can't feel them at all. They still exist, but they've faded into the distance like a wound that is scabbed over and healed, vaguely unpleasant but no longer sickening. As though he's over it … past the horror and into the future, with a necessary stopover in the miraculously painless present.
When she turns to touch Dean's cheek as well, he flinches, emotions warring on his face: hate and anger and the desire to kill, torch, burn.
"Let her," Sam urges.
He swallows, locks eyes with his brother, but stills himself. Sam's heart aches at Dean's trust.
In the next moment, Sam literally sees the agony drain from Dean's eyes, sees the way his body releases the pent-up tension and rage. His head falls back and his eyes flutter closed. When he raises his head and opens his eyes, it's like a black shroud has been torn from his body.
---
Afterward, Sam asks her, "Your name. Your human name. What is it?" His voice is steady, his tone curious.
The clerk thinks about her human father. He raised her; loved her as best he could. It wasn't his fault that she could only think of becoming like her mother. The name, though. That had seemed like adding insult to injury. Her mouth twists in irony. "Angel."
"Yes, it would be," he says wryly, and turns those deep green eyes on her. "Go, then. Leave this place." He smiles suddenly, a little sadly. "Be one. You've been a devil long enough."
She knows he's right. She has to leave this place and act in accordance with her new power. Her power is different now. Transformed into something good and pure.
She has to use it. She has a lot of choices, now. But that is something she's never had a choice about.
---
They stand outside by the Impala, watching the last colors of the brilliant red sunset die away. They both know it's time to move on, but Dean seems to need to say something first. Sam gives him time.
"So," Dean says finally. He's using the voice that he thinks sounds casual. "Where do we go now?" He won't meet Sam's eyes.
Sam regards him, thinking at first that his brother is talking about the road they should take. Then he realizes what Dean's really asking: Can they go back to being 'just brothers,' after what had been done to them? After what they did voluntarily? It's a good question; luckily it's one he doesn't have to think about too much.
"Anywhere we want," Sam says confidently. He means it. "Anywhere."
Dean finally meets his eyes. He takes a deep breath, looking less tense than he has for days.
"Okay," he says. He doesn't go on with, I believe you.
But Sam knows he means it. And he knows that Dean's comment is right as rain.
They don't have to wait any more to be okay.
They already are.
End
