skidmo_fic: (Dean-sad)
[personal profile] skidmo_fic
Title: Answered Prayers
Rating: R
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Warnings: Spoilers for 4.22 – Lucifer Rising
Word Count: 909
Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me...sadly
Feedback: yes, please.
Summary: Dean doesn’t want to feel anymore.
A/N: Written for [livejournal.com profile] spn_teamfic’s round 2: Oscar Wilde quote. Um...I think I read the prompt wrong, and thought we could use any Oscar Wilde quote, so I went with this one: When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.




He doesn’t want to feel anymore. More than anything. More than taking another breath. More than never going back to hell. More than any other reward they could possibly offer him.

He just doesn’t want to feel.

He’s lived through the end. The end of everything; the fucking Apocalypse. Lucifer fucking walking the earth. And Lucifer had needed a vessel. And Sam…

Sam had been there with him in the chapel when Lucifer rose, and he’d have given anything to have switched places with his brother as the black smoke—somehow darker, thicker, more massive than any other demon they’ve seen—flowed into Sam’s body, through his eyes and nose and mouth and ears, and he’d had to watch as Sam’s eyes shifted to black and he cracked his neck slowly and fucking smiled at Dean.

“Thank you,” Sam Lucifer had whispered, words like a caress, like the sweetest of temptations, and then he was gone.

***

He’d tried.

He and Castiel and Bobby…they’d tried everything they could think of, but it was too much.

For a year they’d tracked him, always just behind him. Three times they’d caught up to him, and every time it had come down to letting him go or killing Sam, and Dean just couldn’t do it.

***

Castiel had come to him one night, when the endless research and fruitless fighting had been too much and Dean had taken the Impala up into the mountains to get away for just one night.

Dean was sprawled out over the hood, looking up at the stars and wondering how they could still look so bright, so beautiful when all the world was falling apart around them, wondering what kind of God let people die all over the world but kept the stars alight to remind them of how peaceful their lives had once been.

(And it was a bloody, exhausting year. Dean got over his fear of flying when they had to follow Lucifer to Tibet, and he hadn’t felt clean since the first time he walked into a crowded town square to see half the population, mutilated and bled dry, strewn around the cobblestones.)

Castiel showed up with a rustle of invisible wings, as he always did, and Dean closed his eyes and sighed.

He said nothing, and Dean was grateful, because he knew what Castiel had to say, and he didn’t want to hear it. He simply laid there, next to Dean for several minutes until the wind began to chill Dean’s skin and he slid off the hood and got into the Impala, trusting Castiel would follow.

Castiel kept silent all the way down the mountain and as Dean got a room at the first crappy motel they came to.

They’ve done this before, of course. So much that it’s become almost automatic. Dean falls into a fugue, and Castiel finds him, holds him, warms him and wakes him in the only way he’s found that works.

And Dean clings to him, before, during, and after, missing Sam, missing peace, missing simple hunting trips chasing wendigo and ghosts and vampires, until he’s drained, spent, deeply sated, and he passes out, twined around and between and throughout Castiel, and he knows when he wakes he’ll be alone but at peace for a few days at least.

Only when he woke the next morning, he wasn’t alone. Castiel was there, frowning, looking at him intently.

“You know what you must do,” he said quietly, and Dean nodded, because he couldn’t trust himself to speak.

“It will not be easy.”

Dean wanted to roll his eyes, as though that wasn’t the understatement of a thousand lifetimes.

“I will be with you if you wish.”

He shakes his head. He has to do this, and he has to do it alone, and it’s taken him a year to get to a point where he could even begin to contemplate what he’s known all along he’d have to do. (Known, if he’s honest with himself, since he promised his dad he’d do what was necessary.)

Castiel nodded and sat up and was gone in an instant, and Dean was left alone.

***

He’d held Sam as he died, bleeding out slowly as Dean screamed for help, for anyone, anything that could stop it, keep him from having murdered his own brother. (And his father’s voice kept echoing in his ears, “Take care of Sammy, Dean. Keep him safe. Look out for your brother.”)

Before his last breath, Sam choked out a desperate, “Thank you,” and his eyes fluttered shut as his body went limp in Dean’s arms.

***

They’d asked him what he wanted as a reward, Zachariah smiling smugly, calling him a ‘good man,’ saying they knew he could do it.

They’d offered him anything he wanted, and he knew they wouldn’t give him Sammy back, and there was only one other option.

“I don’t want to feel.”

***

They don’t walk the earth in vessels anymore. They don’t need to. Earth has been remade, a perfect paradise, and there is no sin and no pain and no loss and no hearbreak. People go about their daily business feeling, if less pleasure than before, also less suffering. Desire and desperation and intense emotion of any kind are a distant memory, and humanity is content because it does not know how to be anything else.

And Dean Winchester, full of his Father’s Grace, watches and feels nothing.


fin

Date: 2009-06-17 11:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kitchensexslave.livejournal.com
Oh, that was so hurty, but in a good way. Poor Sam! Poor Dean!

Date: 2009-06-18 01:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skidmo-fic.livejournal.com
Thank you!
(deleted comment)

Date: 2009-06-18 01:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skidmo-fic.livejournal.com
Thanks!

Heh. Yeah, I could get behind that. :)

Date: 2009-06-18 12:29 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] adictd2life.livejournal.com
wow that was painful... :(
I still loved it. Not all stories have a 'happy' ending. Nicely done.

Date: 2009-06-18 01:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skidmo-fic.livejournal.com
Thank you.

Date: 2009-06-18 12:32 am (UTC)
misslucyjane: poetry by hafiz (Default)
From: [personal profile] misslucyjane
Oh, wow. That's bleak. Lovely, but bleak.

Date: 2009-06-18 01:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skidmo-fic.livejournal.com
Thank you.

I...uh...suppose I could probably warn for angst...

Date: 2009-06-18 04:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] luminare-ardua.livejournal.com
*sigh* It's so...cold! I knew as soon as I saw the summary that this wouldn't be anything happy, but still? OWWWWW.

Date: 2009-06-18 05:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skidmo-fic.livejournal.com
Yeah, I know. :)

Date: 2009-06-18 04:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kira-bouviea.livejournal.com
Holy f**K that was good.

Date: 2009-06-18 05:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skidmo-fic.livejournal.com
Thank you!

Date: 2009-06-18 04:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] horusguard76.livejournal.com
*cries* That was very sad but also very beautiful. Koreover, it would even make sense and be IC and I so could envision such an ending.

Thank you for sharing.

Date: 2009-06-18 05:44 pm (UTC)

Date: 2009-06-18 06:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] watermaline.livejournal.com
Ow. I was expecting whump and this is like...damn. I'm going to go write something happy now 'cause I will be totally sad otherwise.

Date: 2009-06-18 05:47 pm (UTC)

Date: 2009-06-18 07:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rogueslayer452.livejournal.com
That was amazing in such an angsty, depressing manner. I really liked how you made it not much of a happy ending, and Earth being this utopian paradise which that, in itself, is absolutely frightening. And Dean being emotionless, feeling nothing after everything, is so painful yet beautifully written that it hurts.

Date: 2009-06-18 05:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skidmo-fic.livejournal.com
Thank you!

Date: 2009-06-18 11:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] altranymph.livejournal.com
Oh, ouch and wow! Guh, this was wonderfully written...and just, um...yeah. The closing paragraphs are perfection.

Date: 2009-06-18 05:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skidmo-fic.livejournal.com
Thank you!

Date: 2009-06-18 12:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] drowningcass.livejournal.com
Wow, heartbreaking. The end reminded me of the line Dean once said. About how much he didnt wanna feel a thing.

Poor Dean, so broken. However, the whole idea was brilliant and matched the prompt quite well! Great job.

Date: 2009-06-18 05:45 pm (UTC)

Date: 2009-06-18 03:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] love-jackianto.livejournal.com
Oh very angsty. I loved it.

Date: 2009-06-18 05:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skidmo-fic.livejournal.com
Thank you!

Date: 2009-06-18 07:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] faceted-mind.livejournal.com
How is this more painful than evil triumphing? I have a full on lump in my throat. :( Ouch. Just... ouch.

Date: 2009-06-19 06:22 am (UTC)

Date: 2009-06-18 07:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] invisiblelove.livejournal.com
Oh my gosh, this made my heart hurt :( Beautiful job.

Date: 2009-06-19 06:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skidmo-fic.livejournal.com
Thank you!

Date: 2009-06-30 04:01 pm (UTC)
ext_3277: I made this (Default)
From: [identity profile] laura-trekkie.livejournal.com
How sad! Poor Sam, poor Dean. Saving the world should have a happier ending than that for Dean :(.

Laura.

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