OK, so I have unilaterally extended Hanukah. Also, apparently my old AOL account was hacked. Sorry! I have changed the password and deleted all the contacts. If you get email from rivkat at AOL, that won’t be me unless you emailed me at that address.
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ladydey: SPN: Sam/Dean - Dean's quest to Underworld to find Sam's lost soul and return it to him. I wouldn't be adverse to Dean's spectral form having awesome wings! Note: as it happens, there are significant Dean/Castiel elements to this as well as Sam/Dean. PG-13 for Dean’s foul mouth (I don't let post-S3 Dean say "Hell" to curse, which makes him say other things). Thanks to giandujakiss for quick beta.
Winged Victory
“Oh, fuck you!” Dean groaned, looking over his shoulder. He wasn’t sure if he was addressing God or the universe in general, but he didn’t really care. At least his jacket hadn’t been torn to shreds, but if it still had wingholes when he got back to reality he was going to kill something.
“Actually this is a manifestation of your own internal self-representation,” Castiel said. “I believe I’m flattered.”
Dean ignored that, because what was he going to say? The wings were enormous, mostly white but edged in a black glossy enough that it could’ve come from the Impala. They didn’t feel heavy or even change his balance, but when he reached awkwardly behind himself they were solid, cool and a little prickly under his fingertips. “They’re not gonna … get in my way, are they?”
“No more than your post-traumatic stress given that you’re returning to Hell,” Castiel said. Dean winced. Someday they really needed to work on the difference between ‘not lying’ and ‘freaking your friends the fuck out.’
“Cas,” he said and stopped. “Am I—is this stupid?”
“Colossally,” Castiel said, which made Dean think that maybe that lecture about radical honesty should’ve come sooner rather than later. “And this is the first time in a very, very long while that I’ve seen the man for whom I defied Heaven.”
Dean looked away, feeling his skin heat. The world around them was undifferentiated gray—apparently Dean’s idea of ‘limbo’ was fairly literal. He could feel the tug from the ritual Cas had performed. The longer they waited, the more likely Lucifer—or, fuck, even Michael—was to figure out that someone else had a line in to Sam’s soul. That was almost enough to get him to tell Cas to open the gate.
“Dean.” When Dean brought his head up, Castiel cupped his hands around Dean’s jaw, holding him in place. Dean opened his mouth to say something, no idea what, and Castiel leaned up and kissed him. It was somewhere between the kind of kiss you could press to someone’s forehead and the kind of kiss you gave to ensure you got invited inside for the night. After a second, Dean kissed back—rude not to, and who the fuck knew what Cas even meant by it, and it was just impossibly good to be touched by somebody who knew him and wasn’t trying to hurt him.
When Cas pulled back, Dean just gaped at him. “The vial you carry,” Cas said, fast, like he didn’t want to be telling Dean this, “if you can’t get back to the gate. If you find Sam and there is no hope for him. The vial is not a key. It’s more like a spiritual grenade. It will immolate whatever it touches when you trigger the spell.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, because it was the only thing that would come out. “Cas—”
“Do not thank me,” Castiel growled.
Dean nodded.
“Go,” the angel said, and slashed his palm and slapped it onto the portal so fast that Dean didn’t have any more time to think.
Entering Hell through limbo was nothing like being dragged down by hellhounds, a fact for which Dean was profoundly grateful. But it still sucked: buffeted by winds alternating between subzero and lung-searingly hot, forced to dance between pits of acid and bushes made of razorblades, Dean made his way towards the secret pulse of his brother’s soul. He’d forgotten the sound most thoroughly, that particular din of misery and evil joy that vibrated through his bones and made the torturer in him tense with anticipation.
This really was the stupidest idea he’d had in a long and idiotic career of bad decisions. But once he’d gotten the idea in his head—he’d been thinking about their short and ugly time Upstairs, how Ash had said that soulmates shared a heaven. The hardest part had been saying the word “soulmates” out loud in front of Castiel. Once the angel had agreed that yes, it was possible that Dean might be able to use his, for fuck’s sake, soul-bond with Sam to find him in Hell, the rest had inevitably followed in short order. Even Crowley’s Bond-villain plan for limbo had been helpful, now that they knew there was a way into Hell that didn’t involve releasing thousands of demons on an unsuspecting world.
The air smelled of blood, and shit, and other, less pleasant bodily emissions. The ground was alternately squelchy and rubble-sharp under his feet. Mostly he couldn’t really tell what manner of corpse he was stepping on, so mostly he didn’t think about it.
He didn’t have much trouble. Dean didn’t know whether the demons were reacting to the wings or to the lingering stench of Alastair’s best disciple, but either way there were very few beings who’d think it was worth their while to interfere with him. One time some monstrosity shaped like a pile of scorpions that’d had acid thrown on them popped up in front of his path and gave him some grief; turned out that, in Hell, the wings were knife-edged and very, very fast on the draw.
Dean ended up with a limp, but he could mostly hide that. Couldn’t do anything about the blood leaking down his leg, marking his trail better than breadcrumbs, but nobody bled out in Hell and maybe word spread about his likely response to a challenge, so he didn’t worry too much about it.
He walked for hours, or decades. The skies dripped blood and pus, then sandstorms rose up and tried to scour the flesh from his bones; but Dean knew Hell, and Hell was not the scenery. Dean shrugged his shoulders and mantled his badass fucking wings and walked right through, skin stinging a little but not slowing down.
The cloud formations that showed him his last ten years’ greatest hits shook him for a while. Old news, though, and Sam was ahead. Too bad the link didn’t have some sort of proximity alarm, because while Dean had a sense of direction he had no idea how much longer he had left to go. Worse thought: maybe the bond did intensify as they got closer, but Dean was still so far away that he hadn’t noticed any change.
He thought about stopping to play with one of the lost souls who hung crucified from the thornbushes, for old times’ sake. Maybe it hadn’t felt good--by the time Dean had joined Hell’s home team, he hadn’t had much of a clue what feeling good would even mean any more—but it would be easy and familiar. Dean had been awesome at it. Hard to say that about anything else. Especially taking care of Sam, as witness Sam’s present situation.
Alastair had sometimes talked to him about what Sam would say if he could see Dean by Alastair’s side. Just like dear old Dad, Alastair had said. Killing in his name, torturing in mine. Following my orders just as easily, boy. Think Sammy would be just as disappointed in you?
Getting lost in some poor soul’s endless torment had been a pretty attractive alternative to that kind of lecture.
But this time around Dean could feel Sam, Sam down here with him, and that meant he couldn’t afford to let Hell back into himself.
Dean shook his head and spat—the rules say you don’t eat in the Underworld, but you sure can leave parts of yourself behind. He soldiered on.
Some minor demon had built himself a palace, pure white marble like that would let anybody pretend that this wasn’t Hell. The towers were topped with gold and blue flags fluttered in the gentle breezes that surrounded the place. No one was screaming anywhere nearby, and there was even grass, green and flowing gently over the rolling hills.
When Dean got close enough, though, he saw that the windows were made of sheets of skin, veins creating an almost stained-glass effect. “Poser,” he said and walked on by.
He didn’t know he’d arrived at the cage until his whole body seized up, like how he vaguely remembered from the rawhead. For the first time since he’d entered Hell, he staggered backwards, only keeping his feet because he knew what he’d be touching if he fell.
As he set his shoulders and waited for his head to clear, he saw the air shimmer where he’d walked into it, like a heat mirage. A curtain, or an invisible fence.
Boundaries in Hell were usually enforced in other ways; the demons who patrolled them liked transgressions.
Dean paced around the edge of the distortion, and confirmed what he already knew: the line to Sam led inside.
“Sam!” he yelled, on the theory that stealth wasn’t going to do much for him anyway. “Sammy!”
He blinked, and Lucifer was standing in front of him, Sam-suit in the lounge-lizard white outfit from Dean’s trip to the future. Sam’s hair was slicked back, which in Dean’s opinion made Sam’s face look way too sharp. Overdoing it in the Evil Douchebag department, but then probably Dean would’ve thought that about anybody wearing his brother.
Only question was, would Dean have to peel the two of them apart (without having the first clue how to do it), or was this just a projection, with the real Sam somewhere else in the cage?
“So,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets, “you gonna give me my brother back or what?”
“Come inside and find out,” Lucifer suggested. The ground shook under Dean’s feet and the sky flashed white, lightning red-veined across it like they were inside a giant’s eyeball. Dean felt his wings hunch down without his permission. Obviously Lucifer had some pull outside his prison, otherwise none of this would’ve gone down, but Dean didn’t much like the demonstration.
“Yeah, gonna have to take a rain check on that one. Where’s my brother?” You’ve got yours, he didn’t say.
“It’s so hard to keep track,” Lucifer said. “I mean, a piece here, a piece there—ever spill a bag of rice? Kind of like that, only—well, messier. Ever hack a person into—oh, right, I forgot who I was talking to.”
“Sammy!” Dean yelled again. “Sam, I’m here!”
Now Michael, standing a couple of steps back from Lucifer, on his left. Dean wanted to curse, didn’t want to show the weakness. At least Michael hadn’t dressed up like John Travolta. “Adam, man, if you’re in there I’ll get you out too.” That was a check he couldn’t necessarily cash, but the poor kid deserved whatever Dean could give him.
Michael shook his head, looking just as pissy as Dean remembered. “Adam was never down here, Dean. It’s only the three of us.”
Dean shifted, felt the ground give like rotting flesh under him. “You know what they say, three’s a crowd. How’s about you help me get Sam all the way out?”
Michael’s face twisted with contempt. “You and your brother are responsible for my imprisonment. I have no reason to help you.”
Dean didn’t see it that way, but that hardly mattered. “See, that’s the difference between you dicks and my brother: he saved the world even though it spent most of his life kicking him in the face.” That was about as much negotiation as Dean was prepared to do, so he reached back and let a wingfeather slice his hand open. He flung a palmful of blood past the barrier, drops spattering and staining the ground. He remembered that—blood tended to stick around in Hell, not drying or getting absorbed, until you had to work hard to avoid a pratfall.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Lucifer sneered.
Dean closed his eyes and felt for the link that had brought him here. He mouthed the words Cas had taught him, opening it up, and it felt like he was drilling a hole in his own stomach. He needed a pipeline big enough to bring Sam out, though, and he’d been through worse.
“Sam,” he said, and this time there was the slightest of tugs at the end. “C’mon, your ride’s here.”
And Sam came. Dean felt him, rushing through their connection and pooling inside Dean’s chest, somehow. First the fat little baby Dean had held in his arms, returning to him. Then the bouncy little kid who’d thought Dean was Superman. Then the smart, worried shrimp who’d started to notice that their lives weren’t like anybody else’s. Then the sullen teen, still before his growth spurt but full of enough resentment for six ordinary guys. Then the boy who’d left for Stanford, stiff-necked and dreaming big; Dean almost wished he could stop there, but he knew better. The vengeful young man, the one Dean had secretly thought was amazing even as he was baffled by Sam’s choices. The seasoned hunter, anger hardening to a rage so solid it was baked into his bones. The addict, so certain of what he was doing, so furious at the world. At last, the terrified hero, the one who’d been hardest for Dean to see, but who was the sum of all of them, the one who’d been trapped here for eternities. Sam, curled up inside him like the whole world in a drop of water.
Dean didn’t really understand how this worked, so he ignored Lucifer’s furious screams and Michael’s lecturing tone and turned to go. He felt swollen, off-balance. He straightened his shoulders and snapped his wings out as far as they’d go, hoping nobody’d be able to tell that he was so far out of his league he might’ve as well been on Neptune.
The way back was different. No surprise there; Hell wasn’t known for stability. He followed the trail of his own blood, and then he followed the traces of Castiel’s spell—it smelled like cinnamon, only it wasn’t a smell, and the purity of it in Hell was so distinctive that there was no mistaking it. The path was still hard to make out, tattering and fading as he moved, without the bond with Sam that had guided him forward. Once he came to the edge of a ravine and knew that if he could even find a way around he’d never catch the trail on the other side. He didn’t try to figure out how far down it went--all the way was the only answer—just backed up enough to get some momentum going and leapt, hoping those fucking wings were good for something other than drawing blood.
As it happened, they were. “I fucking hate flying,” he said as he pushed himself up from his hands and knees to walk away from the landing, and Sam’s soul sort of burbled warmly inside him.
Dean didn’t understand the precise relationship between the body back on Earth and the soul he was carrying, but (unless he was deluding himself; blow up that bridge when you come to it, Dean-O) he thought that Sam’s soul seemed all right. Not that it was talking or anything; though it felt like it was made of Sam, shaped by all his experiences and memories, it felt—almost like a battery, not an engine. That wasn’t right, but it was the closest he could get. It didn’t feel like Dean had after forty years of Hell, and that was the most important fact: whatever the angels had been doing to Sam, they hadn’t made him into a torturer, if only because there was no one else in the cage for him to practice on, and that meant that Sam could be okay.
At last, he arrived at the wall that was his way back into limbo. He knelt to put Castiel’s vial up against the barrier, then stepped back out of the blast radius and said the magic words, covering his eyes against the nuclear flash before he ran towards where the hole had better be.
Limbo was still the same useless gray. Dean wondered just how long he’d been away from Earth, and whether Castiel had lost his battle and left Dean’s body to wither and die. Maybe Sam had aged and died, still soulless, and the only thing left for Sam was release. Dean could handle that, now, knowing all the alternatives; knowing that Sam would be at peace instead of trapped with asshole angels.
Maybe they’d be stuck here forever, Dean and Sam’s soul. That wasn’t a ton better for Sam, but at least he was free of Lucifer and Michael. “Hey, Sam,” he said, his voice dying to nothing in the airless blankness surrounding them. “You saved the world. Sorry I didn’t quite get that happy ending you wanted for me, but, man, getting you out of the Pit—it’s enough, isn’t it? I missed you, Sammy.”
Sam’s soul wriggled inside him, then was still again. So was Dean.
He didn’t know how much time passed before Castiel beamed down in front of him.
“Dean,” he said with his usual intensity. “You were successful.”
Dean bit down on the snarky Angel Obvious remark he wanted to make. “Is it—can you take me to Sam, Sam’s body?”
Castiel nodded and grabbed Dean’s wrist.
The transition back to reality was even worse than the ordinary angel express. Dean was coughing—vomiting blood, not good at all--before he could even tell where they were. He had to fight to hang on to Sam’s soul, which felt like it wanted to come up just like his insides.
“What did you do to him?” Sam’s voice asked, sharp and annoyed.
Dean raised his head and managed to wipe his mouth. Sam looked just the same, huge and pissed, and the soul inside Dean jittered like it knew where it was supposed to be. It hurt, like it was cutting him up inside now that they were back in the world; like the space he’d made for Sam was a weird psychic manifestation like the wings, and now he was out of room.
“Sam,” he managed, and then he had to stop and grin.
“Castiel!” Sam roared, already kneeling to pull Dean to his feet. Sam was close, but he was all fuzzy. Warm blood was pouring over and out of Dean’s mouth, like putting his face up to a tap, but he wasn’t thirsty. He wasn’t really anything.
“’sokay,” he tried to say. Sam wasn’t going back down. Dean was done.
Cas was squawking in the background. He felt Sam freeze up, but he wasn’t able to pull away, Sam’s hands like manacles around his biceps.
After one last furious look in Castiel’s direction, Sam turned to Dean and bent him over like a girl in a fifties movie, kissing him--kissing him, heedless of Dean’s blood smeared all over the both of them.
As they kissed, Sam’s soul unspooled out of him, zero to sixty in two seconds, heading back where it belonged. Dean felt like a just-fired gun, vibrating with the recoil. They sagged to the floor, Dean feeling the familiar scrape of cheap motel carpet under his hands, while Sam wrapped his gigantic arms around Dean and just kept kissing him.
Dean lost a little time then.
When he blinked himself awake, he was staring at one of those godawful popcorn ceilings. So, same motel, or a different one.
“Sam?” His voice was hoarse and he felt like somebody’d sliced out all his bones and then shoved them right back in, not being careful about the fit.
“Dean!” Sam was at his side instantly, cupping his head and helping him sit up enough to drink a glass of water, even though it made his head spin. “You, uh, you lost a lot of blood.”
“Yeah, and?” Dean was trying to see it, Sam’s soul, even though that was stupid because he hadn’t been able to tell that it had been missing in the first place.
Sam shook his head, and the smile that softened his mouth looked so right, but Dean reminded himself that Sam could be faking. “I’m—Dean. You brought back my soul.”
“It’s okay? You’re okay?” He managed to get his hand up, fingers clutching at Sam’s arm.
Sam looked down and brought his free hand up to cover Dean’s. His skin was warm and Dean could feel his pulse, steady and strong. “I’m better than okay. I’m whole.”
“What they did in the cage—”
Sam leaned further into Dean, then shocked Dean by shoving him over on the bed and curling up beside him, like they’d never done since their ages added to twenty. “Crowley took the, uh, non-soul part of me out pretty early, before Lucifer had time to do too much.” There was a story in those words, but Dean probably didn’t need to hear it right now. “And I don’t think he knew what to do with the soul all on its own, because after that everything’s just a blur, but not a painful blur. Cross my heart,” he said, smiling so that Dean had to believe him, so close that every warm breath puffed across Dean’s cheek.
Dean let his eyes drift closed for a while, but when he woke up, Sam was still wrapped around him.
Staring down at him, actually. “Dude, you have a soul now, you’re not supposed to watch me sleep any more.”
Sam’s mouth quirked. “Yeah, about that.” He leaned down, and before Dean could figure it out he was kissing Dean again, this time slow and thorough and eyes-open, and when Dean closed his own eyes in self-defense Sam moved his hand so that it was covering a huge stretch of Dean’s jaw and neck, fingers trailing against Dean’s earlobe and his cheek and the edges of his hair.
“What,” Dean said, meaning something like ‘what is it with all the fucking kissing!’ and Sam grinned down like he knew.
“So, yeah, RoboSam knew he wanted to do that—he was pretty clear about a lot of things that confused me, and I’m not saying it was a good place to be, but I know some things now. About myself. And I still—if you want.” Sam watched him, not like this was a test (Sam had always expected Dean to fail his tests, once he started giving them) but like he’d deal with any answer Dean had to give.
And maybe it was the certainty in Sam’s eyes, or maybe it was Dean’s way of giving God one last fuck you, but whatever Sam was offering, Dean was sure as shit going to take it all. He’d fought through Heaven, Hell, and the spaces in between for Sam. To the victor go the spoils, he’d read that somewhere.
Sam must’ve felt the decision, because he was already smiling, so fond that Dean just knew he was about to get coddled, maybe even snuggled. “Shut up,” Dean said, and pulled him down to show him how kissing was really done.
END
norwich36: more of the SPN/Firefly crossover.
"I'm impressed, really," the man with the rotting face said, gesturing behind himself. "We shut down Hell, and you go and create something even worse all on your own. It truly makes me wonder what our father saw in you."
Mal had never reckoned there to be any sight more likely to make a man break down with fear than thirty Reavers slavering for his flesh. Come to find out, thirty Reavers standing nice and quiet, lined up as neat as if they'd just graduated boot camp, was a mite more terrifying. He could feel sensitive parts of his body trying to crawl back inside. Beside him, Zoe's breath came fast and shallow, nearly inaudible.
"There's nothing here for you," Sam said. Dean's hand was tight on his brother's arm, not holding him back, just hanging on. Dean had stepped forward just enough to get between River and the strangely sickened man--Lucifer, according to their newest passenger.
"To the contrary, Sam," Lucifer said. "There's an entire universe, devoid of leadership. Free of those pathetic revenants you called demons, so that's half the cleanup done already. Once you say yes, I can finish the job, and then all will be as it was in Heaven. Well, from my perspective, at least."
"You've got no leverage," Sam said, implacable.
"Why yes, Sam, I'd be delighted to tell you all my plans," Lucifer sneered. "It's not that easy, boy. But I'm happy to give you—and your charming little seer friend there--a preview."
River screamed, clawing at her face in a way Mal’d thought was years past. Sam was on her in an instant, pulling her arms tight as he clutched her against his chest, and she was too caught up in her vision to break free. Instead she only wailed, until Lucifer waved a hand and she sagged down like an empty sack.
“Fight me and I’ll take her first, Sam. Then I’ll take all your crew, and I’ll take them slow, and then I’ll come for Dean, and I’ll only come for you once Dean’s regained his confidence as my lead torturer. You want leverage? I can apply pressure anywhere I want.”
In the same instant that he winked out of existence, the Reavers charged.
The room exploded into gunfire, Zoe and Mal and Jayne, Sam and Dean and even Simon with the gentlefolk's pistol Dean had finally convinced him to carry. But this wasn't a regular Reaver battle, firepower and nerve against unflinching bloodlust. They were thinking, working together, and Mal heard Jayne curse and Simon cry out in pain. River, awake again, flashed by in his peripheral vision, working that huge knife she'd taken off of Sam the first week he was aboard.
When it was all over, weren't none of them hadn't spilled some of their own blood along with the Reavers'. Dean made Simon sit still long enough to get his own leg sewn up before attending to Jayne and Zoe; the rest of them didn't need immediate doctoring.
Mal looked to where River and Sam were talking softly, and he was man enough to admit he was near solid with fear.
"Back to Serenity," he announced. "Mayhap your angel friend's found something to help." Having seen Lucifer, he wasn't inclined to believe that, but he'd think better on his ship.
****
“River,” Dean said, all careful-like. Mal knew the look of a man hating himself for what he was asking. But he was asking, and Mal wasn't going to say Dean had the wrong of it.
“I don't know,” she said. “I can't see.”
“Okay, okay,” Dean hurried, hesitating a second before putting his hand on her arm. “It's okay, baby girl, we'll figure it out.”
“I know when you're lying,” she said, fond like she was when Mal tried to tell her how to navigate.
“Yeah, yeah, my mouth is moving.” Dean’s grin was as fragile as the icing on Kaylee’s favorite pastries.
River frowned. “No, sometimes you're not talking at all when you do that.”
Dean flushed, and then Mal did when he figured it out. Mal didn’t want to know if River’s knowledge was direct or only from her powers of mind; for one thing, he didn’t want to have to string Dean up, needed the crew strength. “Anyhow,” Dean said on a cough, “we've beaten this ass--this guy before. We won't let him have you.”
“I know,” she said. Mal wished he could be reassured by that, but he'd seen too many of River's words come true in just the wrong ways.
“River, you should get some rest,” Mal said as he stepped forward, deciding that it was time for the captain to enter the conversation.
River turned her head gracefully, like Serenity when she was at the helm. “You talk to Simon too much.”
“Don’t I know it,” Mal said.
River snorted and glided past him. “Be gentle,” she said as she went. “Nobody else is.”
They both watched her go.
“So, how bad is it?” Mal asked when she was far enough gone that they could pretend she couldn’t hear.
The way Dean looked down and scratched his neck was a strong answer. “Sorry, cap’n,” he said.
Mal shook his head. “Way you tell it, you hadn’t run here, nobody ever would’ve made it off Earth-that-Was.”
“I don’t think we can run any more,” Dean said. His mouth twitched, and Mal looked away so that Dean could fight off the tears without anybody watching. Mal thought he might need to know, someday soon, what that business about Dean being a torturer had been about, but he could leave it be just for now.
“I’ve lost battles before,” he told Dean. “Hell, I’ve lost wars. But I’m still flying. Win or lose, this crew’ll fight. That’s all a man can ask.”
Dean nodded, straightening his shoulders with what looked like painful effort. “I’d better go pick the lock on Sam’s door before he broods himself into a coma.”
“You tell him from me, I don’t tolerate malingering.”
Dean smiled, or tried to anyhow, which was as close as Mal was going to get to a victory today. “Yessir,” he said.
“Now how come when you say that, it never sounds like you’re really fixing to obey me?” Mal wondered.
“Maybe because you’re a distrustful bastard who’d be miserable without some reason to yell at his crew?” Dean suggested, perking up for true this time.
“Ah, go on with you.” Mal waved at him, and Dean lumbered to his feet, favoring his left leg. He tromped up to the crew hallway, and shortly Mal heard the rhythm of Sam-and-Dean, a rise and fall of voices as familiar to him now as the sound of Serenity’s engines.
Got to stop taking on pairs of strays, he thought. Next set’s liable to start by blowing up the ‘verse.
Well, nothing to be done for that now. He sighed and headed towards the cockpit. Maybe Castiel would have some thoughts about how in the seven frozen hells they were going to deal with a man who could make Reavers dance to his tune. And if not, at least there’d be some entertainment in doubting the existence of God to the face of a celestial being.
Inara always said Mal could drive a saint to intemperance. He was looking forward to seeing if he could prove it on an angel.
theatervine: Fringe: Peter knows Bolivia isn't Olivia, but he wants to hold on just a little longer because he thinks his Olivia is dead. Note: reflects most recent developments; thus the prompt has been … tinkered with.
A sharp pinch on his ear brought him awake, reflexively tugging against the plastic cuffs binding him to the chair. Peter blinked and saw Olivia in front of him.
Peter blinked and saw Olivia falling, blood pouring out between her fingers, her face terrified--not for herself but for Peter, and for the world Peter's father wanted to destroy.
“You dyed your hair again,” he said.
“You like?” she asked. She was smiling, like she was glad to see him. And he bet that she was. He was going to help her boss eliminate his universe, after all.
“I think you know what I like,” he said, smiling back. In all the scams he'd pulled, he'd never once wanted to kill someone. Honestly, he'd never cared that much. But right now it felt like a lifetime's worth of rage was pouring into him. He wanted to explode there and then, like he was supposed to in the Machine, as long as it would take her with him.
Olivia died thinking that Peter didn't know her well enough to identify the fake. She was right, or anyway Peter had wanted to believe in their romance enough to ignore sign after sign, and so she had died with Peter unredeemed.
“You got your answers, I take it,” she said, still smiling. If Peter hadn't known better he would have called it a shy smile.
Maybe she hadn't gotten a detailed report about what had gone down in the other universe. Otherwise she was seriously delusional, and he didn't think any version of Olivia could be delusional.
“What I don't get,” he said, “is how you got this way. My Olivia”--(he claimed her because he could, because she wasn't around to contest it, because he needed her memory now if he ended up in a position to choose which world to end)--“was experimented on, she shot her stepfather to stop him abusing her mother, she lost her lover to a secret conspiracy, and still she'd never have done what you did.”
“You think sleeping with the enemy is the worst thing a covert agent can do? I have to admit, that's more traditionalist than I thought you were.” She'd lost the smile, at least. “And I'm sorry about your Olivia's personal tragedies, but over here we've spent decades losing whole communities, never knowing when an assault from your universe is going to begin. If you don't understand how a person could love her country, her world, enough to do whatever it takes to protect that world, then you're simply foolish.”
He shook his head. “And still you don’t get it. Olivia—Olivia wouldn’t ever accept that one world has to die for the other to live. What happened to you, that all you can see is zero sum?”
Her face hardened. He was disgusted to think that he could ever have mistaken her for Olivia. “When your survival depends on absolute teamwork, when even the air can turn into poison with only a moment’s notice and you rely every minute of every day on other people doing their jobs precisely, you learn pretty quickly to follow orders. The Secretary of Defense gave me mine, and I will follow them. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you, Peter.”
The worst thing was, he thought she probably meant it.
“Olivia,” he said, and he wasn’t talking to her, but she leaned forward nonetheless. Olivia’s compassion had always had limits; he was pretty sure she’d have supported him in his resolve to kill this version, if she’d been in any position to have thoughts on the subject. “I’m guessing that there’s gonna be a time pretty soon when I’ll have to choose whether I act like you would, or whether I do what Olivia would’ve done. For the sake of the universe you love so much, you’d better hope I choose Olivia.”
“I’m Olivia,” she said, lips tight, and he almost smiled at the small victory.
“Nah,” he said, as casual as he could make himself. “You’re just a shapeshifter with an extremely limited repertoire.”
And if, after she slammed her way out of his cell, he turned his head as far away from the door as he could manage, to mourn Olivia in as much privacy as he could get, that was a weakness Olivia would have forgiven without hesitation.
ladydey: SPN: Sam/Dean - Dean's quest to Underworld to find Sam's lost soul and return it to him. I wouldn't be adverse to Dean's spectral form having awesome wings! Note: as it happens, there are significant Dean/Castiel elements to this as well as Sam/Dean. PG-13 for Dean’s foul mouth (I don't let post-S3 Dean say "Hell" to curse, which makes him say other things). Thanks to giandujakiss for quick beta.Winged Victory
“Oh, fuck you!” Dean groaned, looking over his shoulder. He wasn’t sure if he was addressing God or the universe in general, but he didn’t really care. At least his jacket hadn’t been torn to shreds, but if it still had wingholes when he got back to reality he was going to kill something.
“Actually this is a manifestation of your own internal self-representation,” Castiel said. “I believe I’m flattered.”
Dean ignored that, because what was he going to say? The wings were enormous, mostly white but edged in a black glossy enough that it could’ve come from the Impala. They didn’t feel heavy or even change his balance, but when he reached awkwardly behind himself they were solid, cool and a little prickly under his fingertips. “They’re not gonna … get in my way, are they?”
“No more than your post-traumatic stress given that you’re returning to Hell,” Castiel said. Dean winced. Someday they really needed to work on the difference between ‘not lying’ and ‘freaking your friends the fuck out.’
“Cas,” he said and stopped. “Am I—is this stupid?”
“Colossally,” Castiel said, which made Dean think that maybe that lecture about radical honesty should’ve come sooner rather than later. “And this is the first time in a very, very long while that I’ve seen the man for whom I defied Heaven.”
Dean looked away, feeling his skin heat. The world around them was undifferentiated gray—apparently Dean’s idea of ‘limbo’ was fairly literal. He could feel the tug from the ritual Cas had performed. The longer they waited, the more likely Lucifer—or, fuck, even Michael—was to figure out that someone else had a line in to Sam’s soul. That was almost enough to get him to tell Cas to open the gate.
“Dean.” When Dean brought his head up, Castiel cupped his hands around Dean’s jaw, holding him in place. Dean opened his mouth to say something, no idea what, and Castiel leaned up and kissed him. It was somewhere between the kind of kiss you could press to someone’s forehead and the kind of kiss you gave to ensure you got invited inside for the night. After a second, Dean kissed back—rude not to, and who the fuck knew what Cas even meant by it, and it was just impossibly good to be touched by somebody who knew him and wasn’t trying to hurt him.
When Cas pulled back, Dean just gaped at him. “The vial you carry,” Cas said, fast, like he didn’t want to be telling Dean this, “if you can’t get back to the gate. If you find Sam and there is no hope for him. The vial is not a key. It’s more like a spiritual grenade. It will immolate whatever it touches when you trigger the spell.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, because it was the only thing that would come out. “Cas—”
“Do not thank me,” Castiel growled.
Dean nodded.
“Go,” the angel said, and slashed his palm and slapped it onto the portal so fast that Dean didn’t have any more time to think.
Entering Hell through limbo was nothing like being dragged down by hellhounds, a fact for which Dean was profoundly grateful. But it still sucked: buffeted by winds alternating between subzero and lung-searingly hot, forced to dance between pits of acid and bushes made of razorblades, Dean made his way towards the secret pulse of his brother’s soul. He’d forgotten the sound most thoroughly, that particular din of misery and evil joy that vibrated through his bones and made the torturer in him tense with anticipation.
This really was the stupidest idea he’d had in a long and idiotic career of bad decisions. But once he’d gotten the idea in his head—he’d been thinking about their short and ugly time Upstairs, how Ash had said that soulmates shared a heaven. The hardest part had been saying the word “soulmates” out loud in front of Castiel. Once the angel had agreed that yes, it was possible that Dean might be able to use his, for fuck’s sake, soul-bond with Sam to find him in Hell, the rest had inevitably followed in short order. Even Crowley’s Bond-villain plan for limbo had been helpful, now that they knew there was a way into Hell that didn’t involve releasing thousands of demons on an unsuspecting world.
The air smelled of blood, and shit, and other, less pleasant bodily emissions. The ground was alternately squelchy and rubble-sharp under his feet. Mostly he couldn’t really tell what manner of corpse he was stepping on, so mostly he didn’t think about it.
He didn’t have much trouble. Dean didn’t know whether the demons were reacting to the wings or to the lingering stench of Alastair’s best disciple, but either way there were very few beings who’d think it was worth their while to interfere with him. One time some monstrosity shaped like a pile of scorpions that’d had acid thrown on them popped up in front of his path and gave him some grief; turned out that, in Hell, the wings were knife-edged and very, very fast on the draw.
Dean ended up with a limp, but he could mostly hide that. Couldn’t do anything about the blood leaking down his leg, marking his trail better than breadcrumbs, but nobody bled out in Hell and maybe word spread about his likely response to a challenge, so he didn’t worry too much about it.
He walked for hours, or decades. The skies dripped blood and pus, then sandstorms rose up and tried to scour the flesh from his bones; but Dean knew Hell, and Hell was not the scenery. Dean shrugged his shoulders and mantled his badass fucking wings and walked right through, skin stinging a little but not slowing down.
The cloud formations that showed him his last ten years’ greatest hits shook him for a while. Old news, though, and Sam was ahead. Too bad the link didn’t have some sort of proximity alarm, because while Dean had a sense of direction he had no idea how much longer he had left to go. Worse thought: maybe the bond did intensify as they got closer, but Dean was still so far away that he hadn’t noticed any change.
He thought about stopping to play with one of the lost souls who hung crucified from the thornbushes, for old times’ sake. Maybe it hadn’t felt good--by the time Dean had joined Hell’s home team, he hadn’t had much of a clue what feeling good would even mean any more—but it would be easy and familiar. Dean had been awesome at it. Hard to say that about anything else. Especially taking care of Sam, as witness Sam’s present situation.
Alastair had sometimes talked to him about what Sam would say if he could see Dean by Alastair’s side. Just like dear old Dad, Alastair had said. Killing in his name, torturing in mine. Following my orders just as easily, boy. Think Sammy would be just as disappointed in you?
Getting lost in some poor soul’s endless torment had been a pretty attractive alternative to that kind of lecture.
But this time around Dean could feel Sam, Sam down here with him, and that meant he couldn’t afford to let Hell back into himself.
Dean shook his head and spat—the rules say you don’t eat in the Underworld, but you sure can leave parts of yourself behind. He soldiered on.
Some minor demon had built himself a palace, pure white marble like that would let anybody pretend that this wasn’t Hell. The towers were topped with gold and blue flags fluttered in the gentle breezes that surrounded the place. No one was screaming anywhere nearby, and there was even grass, green and flowing gently over the rolling hills.
When Dean got close enough, though, he saw that the windows were made of sheets of skin, veins creating an almost stained-glass effect. “Poser,” he said and walked on by.
He didn’t know he’d arrived at the cage until his whole body seized up, like how he vaguely remembered from the rawhead. For the first time since he’d entered Hell, he staggered backwards, only keeping his feet because he knew what he’d be touching if he fell.
As he set his shoulders and waited for his head to clear, he saw the air shimmer where he’d walked into it, like a heat mirage. A curtain, or an invisible fence.
Boundaries in Hell were usually enforced in other ways; the demons who patrolled them liked transgressions.
Dean paced around the edge of the distortion, and confirmed what he already knew: the line to Sam led inside.
“Sam!” he yelled, on the theory that stealth wasn’t going to do much for him anyway. “Sammy!”
He blinked, and Lucifer was standing in front of him, Sam-suit in the lounge-lizard white outfit from Dean’s trip to the future. Sam’s hair was slicked back, which in Dean’s opinion made Sam’s face look way too sharp. Overdoing it in the Evil Douchebag department, but then probably Dean would’ve thought that about anybody wearing his brother.
Only question was, would Dean have to peel the two of them apart (without having the first clue how to do it), or was this just a projection, with the real Sam somewhere else in the cage?
“So,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets, “you gonna give me my brother back or what?”
“Come inside and find out,” Lucifer suggested. The ground shook under Dean’s feet and the sky flashed white, lightning red-veined across it like they were inside a giant’s eyeball. Dean felt his wings hunch down without his permission. Obviously Lucifer had some pull outside his prison, otherwise none of this would’ve gone down, but Dean didn’t much like the demonstration.
“Yeah, gonna have to take a rain check on that one. Where’s my brother?” You’ve got yours, he didn’t say.
“It’s so hard to keep track,” Lucifer said. “I mean, a piece here, a piece there—ever spill a bag of rice? Kind of like that, only—well, messier. Ever hack a person into—oh, right, I forgot who I was talking to.”
“Sammy!” Dean yelled again. “Sam, I’m here!”
Now Michael, standing a couple of steps back from Lucifer, on his left. Dean wanted to curse, didn’t want to show the weakness. At least Michael hadn’t dressed up like John Travolta. “Adam, man, if you’re in there I’ll get you out too.” That was a check he couldn’t necessarily cash, but the poor kid deserved whatever Dean could give him.
Michael shook his head, looking just as pissy as Dean remembered. “Adam was never down here, Dean. It’s only the three of us.”
Dean shifted, felt the ground give like rotting flesh under him. “You know what they say, three’s a crowd. How’s about you help me get Sam all the way out?”
Michael’s face twisted with contempt. “You and your brother are responsible for my imprisonment. I have no reason to help you.”
Dean didn’t see it that way, but that hardly mattered. “See, that’s the difference between you dicks and my brother: he saved the world even though it spent most of his life kicking him in the face.” That was about as much negotiation as Dean was prepared to do, so he reached back and let a wingfeather slice his hand open. He flung a palmful of blood past the barrier, drops spattering and staining the ground. He remembered that—blood tended to stick around in Hell, not drying or getting absorbed, until you had to work hard to avoid a pratfall.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Lucifer sneered.
Dean closed his eyes and felt for the link that had brought him here. He mouthed the words Cas had taught him, opening it up, and it felt like he was drilling a hole in his own stomach. He needed a pipeline big enough to bring Sam out, though, and he’d been through worse.
“Sam,” he said, and this time there was the slightest of tugs at the end. “C’mon, your ride’s here.”
And Sam came. Dean felt him, rushing through their connection and pooling inside Dean’s chest, somehow. First the fat little baby Dean had held in his arms, returning to him. Then the bouncy little kid who’d thought Dean was Superman. Then the smart, worried shrimp who’d started to notice that their lives weren’t like anybody else’s. Then the sullen teen, still before his growth spurt but full of enough resentment for six ordinary guys. Then the boy who’d left for Stanford, stiff-necked and dreaming big; Dean almost wished he could stop there, but he knew better. The vengeful young man, the one Dean had secretly thought was amazing even as he was baffled by Sam’s choices. The seasoned hunter, anger hardening to a rage so solid it was baked into his bones. The addict, so certain of what he was doing, so furious at the world. At last, the terrified hero, the one who’d been hardest for Dean to see, but who was the sum of all of them, the one who’d been trapped here for eternities. Sam, curled up inside him like the whole world in a drop of water.
Dean didn’t really understand how this worked, so he ignored Lucifer’s furious screams and Michael’s lecturing tone and turned to go. He felt swollen, off-balance. He straightened his shoulders and snapped his wings out as far as they’d go, hoping nobody’d be able to tell that he was so far out of his league he might’ve as well been on Neptune.
The way back was different. No surprise there; Hell wasn’t known for stability. He followed the trail of his own blood, and then he followed the traces of Castiel’s spell—it smelled like cinnamon, only it wasn’t a smell, and the purity of it in Hell was so distinctive that there was no mistaking it. The path was still hard to make out, tattering and fading as he moved, without the bond with Sam that had guided him forward. Once he came to the edge of a ravine and knew that if he could even find a way around he’d never catch the trail on the other side. He didn’t try to figure out how far down it went--all the way was the only answer—just backed up enough to get some momentum going and leapt, hoping those fucking wings were good for something other than drawing blood.
As it happened, they were. “I fucking hate flying,” he said as he pushed himself up from his hands and knees to walk away from the landing, and Sam’s soul sort of burbled warmly inside him.
Dean didn’t understand the precise relationship between the body back on Earth and the soul he was carrying, but (unless he was deluding himself; blow up that bridge when you come to it, Dean-O) he thought that Sam’s soul seemed all right. Not that it was talking or anything; though it felt like it was made of Sam, shaped by all his experiences and memories, it felt—almost like a battery, not an engine. That wasn’t right, but it was the closest he could get. It didn’t feel like Dean had after forty years of Hell, and that was the most important fact: whatever the angels had been doing to Sam, they hadn’t made him into a torturer, if only because there was no one else in the cage for him to practice on, and that meant that Sam could be okay.
At last, he arrived at the wall that was his way back into limbo. He knelt to put Castiel’s vial up against the barrier, then stepped back out of the blast radius and said the magic words, covering his eyes against the nuclear flash before he ran towards where the hole had better be.
Limbo was still the same useless gray. Dean wondered just how long he’d been away from Earth, and whether Castiel had lost his battle and left Dean’s body to wither and die. Maybe Sam had aged and died, still soulless, and the only thing left for Sam was release. Dean could handle that, now, knowing all the alternatives; knowing that Sam would be at peace instead of trapped with asshole angels.
Maybe they’d be stuck here forever, Dean and Sam’s soul. That wasn’t a ton better for Sam, but at least he was free of Lucifer and Michael. “Hey, Sam,” he said, his voice dying to nothing in the airless blankness surrounding them. “You saved the world. Sorry I didn’t quite get that happy ending you wanted for me, but, man, getting you out of the Pit—it’s enough, isn’t it? I missed you, Sammy.”
Sam’s soul wriggled inside him, then was still again. So was Dean.
He didn’t know how much time passed before Castiel beamed down in front of him.
“Dean,” he said with his usual intensity. “You were successful.”
Dean bit down on the snarky Angel Obvious remark he wanted to make. “Is it—can you take me to Sam, Sam’s body?”
Castiel nodded and grabbed Dean’s wrist.
The transition back to reality was even worse than the ordinary angel express. Dean was coughing—vomiting blood, not good at all--before he could even tell where they were. He had to fight to hang on to Sam’s soul, which felt like it wanted to come up just like his insides.
“What did you do to him?” Sam’s voice asked, sharp and annoyed.
Dean raised his head and managed to wipe his mouth. Sam looked just the same, huge and pissed, and the soul inside Dean jittered like it knew where it was supposed to be. It hurt, like it was cutting him up inside now that they were back in the world; like the space he’d made for Sam was a weird psychic manifestation like the wings, and now he was out of room.
“Sam,” he managed, and then he had to stop and grin.
“Castiel!” Sam roared, already kneeling to pull Dean to his feet. Sam was close, but he was all fuzzy. Warm blood was pouring over and out of Dean’s mouth, like putting his face up to a tap, but he wasn’t thirsty. He wasn’t really anything.
“’sokay,” he tried to say. Sam wasn’t going back down. Dean was done.
Cas was squawking in the background. He felt Sam freeze up, but he wasn’t able to pull away, Sam’s hands like manacles around his biceps.
After one last furious look in Castiel’s direction, Sam turned to Dean and bent him over like a girl in a fifties movie, kissing him--kissing him, heedless of Dean’s blood smeared all over the both of them.
As they kissed, Sam’s soul unspooled out of him, zero to sixty in two seconds, heading back where it belonged. Dean felt like a just-fired gun, vibrating with the recoil. They sagged to the floor, Dean feeling the familiar scrape of cheap motel carpet under his hands, while Sam wrapped his gigantic arms around Dean and just kept kissing him.
Dean lost a little time then.
When he blinked himself awake, he was staring at one of those godawful popcorn ceilings. So, same motel, or a different one.
“Sam?” His voice was hoarse and he felt like somebody’d sliced out all his bones and then shoved them right back in, not being careful about the fit.
“Dean!” Sam was at his side instantly, cupping his head and helping him sit up enough to drink a glass of water, even though it made his head spin. “You, uh, you lost a lot of blood.”
“Yeah, and?” Dean was trying to see it, Sam’s soul, even though that was stupid because he hadn’t been able to tell that it had been missing in the first place.
Sam shook his head, and the smile that softened his mouth looked so right, but Dean reminded himself that Sam could be faking. “I’m—Dean. You brought back my soul.”
“It’s okay? You’re okay?” He managed to get his hand up, fingers clutching at Sam’s arm.
Sam looked down and brought his free hand up to cover Dean’s. His skin was warm and Dean could feel his pulse, steady and strong. “I’m better than okay. I’m whole.”
“What they did in the cage—”
Sam leaned further into Dean, then shocked Dean by shoving him over on the bed and curling up beside him, like they’d never done since their ages added to twenty. “Crowley took the, uh, non-soul part of me out pretty early, before Lucifer had time to do too much.” There was a story in those words, but Dean probably didn’t need to hear it right now. “And I don’t think he knew what to do with the soul all on its own, because after that everything’s just a blur, but not a painful blur. Cross my heart,” he said, smiling so that Dean had to believe him, so close that every warm breath puffed across Dean’s cheek.
Dean let his eyes drift closed for a while, but when he woke up, Sam was still wrapped around him.
Staring down at him, actually. “Dude, you have a soul now, you’re not supposed to watch me sleep any more.”
Sam’s mouth quirked. “Yeah, about that.” He leaned down, and before Dean could figure it out he was kissing Dean again, this time slow and thorough and eyes-open, and when Dean closed his own eyes in self-defense Sam moved his hand so that it was covering a huge stretch of Dean’s jaw and neck, fingers trailing against Dean’s earlobe and his cheek and the edges of his hair.
“What,” Dean said, meaning something like ‘what is it with all the fucking kissing!’ and Sam grinned down like he knew.
“So, yeah, RoboSam knew he wanted to do that—he was pretty clear about a lot of things that confused me, and I’m not saying it was a good place to be, but I know some things now. About myself. And I still—if you want.” Sam watched him, not like this was a test (Sam had always expected Dean to fail his tests, once he started giving them) but like he’d deal with any answer Dean had to give.
And maybe it was the certainty in Sam’s eyes, or maybe it was Dean’s way of giving God one last fuck you, but whatever Sam was offering, Dean was sure as shit going to take it all. He’d fought through Heaven, Hell, and the spaces in between for Sam. To the victor go the spoils, he’d read that somewhere.
Sam must’ve felt the decision, because he was already smiling, so fond that Dean just knew he was about to get coddled, maybe even snuggled. “Shut up,” Dean said, and pulled him down to show him how kissing was really done.
END
norwich36: more of the SPN/Firefly crossover."I'm impressed, really," the man with the rotting face said, gesturing behind himself. "We shut down Hell, and you go and create something even worse all on your own. It truly makes me wonder what our father saw in you."
Mal had never reckoned there to be any sight more likely to make a man break down with fear than thirty Reavers slavering for his flesh. Come to find out, thirty Reavers standing nice and quiet, lined up as neat as if they'd just graduated boot camp, was a mite more terrifying. He could feel sensitive parts of his body trying to crawl back inside. Beside him, Zoe's breath came fast and shallow, nearly inaudible.
"There's nothing here for you," Sam said. Dean's hand was tight on his brother's arm, not holding him back, just hanging on. Dean had stepped forward just enough to get between River and the strangely sickened man--Lucifer, according to their newest passenger.
"To the contrary, Sam," Lucifer said. "There's an entire universe, devoid of leadership. Free of those pathetic revenants you called demons, so that's half the cleanup done already. Once you say yes, I can finish the job, and then all will be as it was in Heaven. Well, from my perspective, at least."
"You've got no leverage," Sam said, implacable.
"Why yes, Sam, I'd be delighted to tell you all my plans," Lucifer sneered. "It's not that easy, boy. But I'm happy to give you—and your charming little seer friend there--a preview."
River screamed, clawing at her face in a way Mal’d thought was years past. Sam was on her in an instant, pulling her arms tight as he clutched her against his chest, and she was too caught up in her vision to break free. Instead she only wailed, until Lucifer waved a hand and she sagged down like an empty sack.
“Fight me and I’ll take her first, Sam. Then I’ll take all your crew, and I’ll take them slow, and then I’ll come for Dean, and I’ll only come for you once Dean’s regained his confidence as my lead torturer. You want leverage? I can apply pressure anywhere I want.”
In the same instant that he winked out of existence, the Reavers charged.
The room exploded into gunfire, Zoe and Mal and Jayne, Sam and Dean and even Simon with the gentlefolk's pistol Dean had finally convinced him to carry. But this wasn't a regular Reaver battle, firepower and nerve against unflinching bloodlust. They were thinking, working together, and Mal heard Jayne curse and Simon cry out in pain. River, awake again, flashed by in his peripheral vision, working that huge knife she'd taken off of Sam the first week he was aboard.
When it was all over, weren't none of them hadn't spilled some of their own blood along with the Reavers'. Dean made Simon sit still long enough to get his own leg sewn up before attending to Jayne and Zoe; the rest of them didn't need immediate doctoring.
Mal looked to where River and Sam were talking softly, and he was man enough to admit he was near solid with fear.
"Back to Serenity," he announced. "Mayhap your angel friend's found something to help." Having seen Lucifer, he wasn't inclined to believe that, but he'd think better on his ship.
****
“River,” Dean said, all careful-like. Mal knew the look of a man hating himself for what he was asking. But he was asking, and Mal wasn't going to say Dean had the wrong of it.
“I don't know,” she said. “I can't see.”
“Okay, okay,” Dean hurried, hesitating a second before putting his hand on her arm. “It's okay, baby girl, we'll figure it out.”
“I know when you're lying,” she said, fond like she was when Mal tried to tell her how to navigate.
“Yeah, yeah, my mouth is moving.” Dean’s grin was as fragile as the icing on Kaylee’s favorite pastries.
River frowned. “No, sometimes you're not talking at all when you do that.”
Dean flushed, and then Mal did when he figured it out. Mal didn’t want to know if River’s knowledge was direct or only from her powers of mind; for one thing, he didn’t want to have to string Dean up, needed the crew strength. “Anyhow,” Dean said on a cough, “we've beaten this ass--this guy before. We won't let him have you.”
“I know,” she said. Mal wished he could be reassured by that, but he'd seen too many of River's words come true in just the wrong ways.
“River, you should get some rest,” Mal said as he stepped forward, deciding that it was time for the captain to enter the conversation.
River turned her head gracefully, like Serenity when she was at the helm. “You talk to Simon too much.”
“Don’t I know it,” Mal said.
River snorted and glided past him. “Be gentle,” she said as she went. “Nobody else is.”
They both watched her go.
“So, how bad is it?” Mal asked when she was far enough gone that they could pretend she couldn’t hear.
The way Dean looked down and scratched his neck was a strong answer. “Sorry, cap’n,” he said.
Mal shook his head. “Way you tell it, you hadn’t run here, nobody ever would’ve made it off Earth-that-Was.”
“I don’t think we can run any more,” Dean said. His mouth twitched, and Mal looked away so that Dean could fight off the tears without anybody watching. Mal thought he might need to know, someday soon, what that business about Dean being a torturer had been about, but he could leave it be just for now.
“I’ve lost battles before,” he told Dean. “Hell, I’ve lost wars. But I’m still flying. Win or lose, this crew’ll fight. That’s all a man can ask.”
Dean nodded, straightening his shoulders with what looked like painful effort. “I’d better go pick the lock on Sam’s door before he broods himself into a coma.”
“You tell him from me, I don’t tolerate malingering.”
Dean smiled, or tried to anyhow, which was as close as Mal was going to get to a victory today. “Yessir,” he said.
“Now how come when you say that, it never sounds like you’re really fixing to obey me?” Mal wondered.
“Maybe because you’re a distrustful bastard who’d be miserable without some reason to yell at his crew?” Dean suggested, perking up for true this time.
“Ah, go on with you.” Mal waved at him, and Dean lumbered to his feet, favoring his left leg. He tromped up to the crew hallway, and shortly Mal heard the rhythm of Sam-and-Dean, a rise and fall of voices as familiar to him now as the sound of Serenity’s engines.
Got to stop taking on pairs of strays, he thought. Next set’s liable to start by blowing up the ‘verse.
Well, nothing to be done for that now. He sighed and headed towards the cockpit. Maybe Castiel would have some thoughts about how in the seven frozen hells they were going to deal with a man who could make Reavers dance to his tune. And if not, at least there’d be some entertainment in doubting the existence of God to the face of a celestial being.
Inara always said Mal could drive a saint to intemperance. He was looking forward to seeing if he could prove it on an angel.
theatervine: Fringe: Peter knows Bolivia isn't Olivia, but he wants to hold on just a little longer because he thinks his Olivia is dead. Note: reflects most recent developments; thus the prompt has been … tinkered with.A sharp pinch on his ear brought him awake, reflexively tugging against the plastic cuffs binding him to the chair. Peter blinked and saw Olivia in front of him.
Peter blinked and saw Olivia falling, blood pouring out between her fingers, her face terrified--not for herself but for Peter, and for the world Peter's father wanted to destroy.
“You dyed your hair again,” he said.
“You like?” she asked. She was smiling, like she was glad to see him. And he bet that she was. He was going to help her boss eliminate his universe, after all.
“I think you know what I like,” he said, smiling back. In all the scams he'd pulled, he'd never once wanted to kill someone. Honestly, he'd never cared that much. But right now it felt like a lifetime's worth of rage was pouring into him. He wanted to explode there and then, like he was supposed to in the Machine, as long as it would take her with him.
Olivia died thinking that Peter didn't know her well enough to identify the fake. She was right, or anyway Peter had wanted to believe in their romance enough to ignore sign after sign, and so she had died with Peter unredeemed.
“You got your answers, I take it,” she said, still smiling. If Peter hadn't known better he would have called it a shy smile.
Maybe she hadn't gotten a detailed report about what had gone down in the other universe. Otherwise she was seriously delusional, and he didn't think any version of Olivia could be delusional.
“What I don't get,” he said, “is how you got this way. My Olivia”--(he claimed her because he could, because she wasn't around to contest it, because he needed her memory now if he ended up in a position to choose which world to end)--“was experimented on, she shot her stepfather to stop him abusing her mother, she lost her lover to a secret conspiracy, and still she'd never have done what you did.”
“You think sleeping with the enemy is the worst thing a covert agent can do? I have to admit, that's more traditionalist than I thought you were.” She'd lost the smile, at least. “And I'm sorry about your Olivia's personal tragedies, but over here we've spent decades losing whole communities, never knowing when an assault from your universe is going to begin. If you don't understand how a person could love her country, her world, enough to do whatever it takes to protect that world, then you're simply foolish.”
He shook his head. “And still you don’t get it. Olivia—Olivia wouldn’t ever accept that one world has to die for the other to live. What happened to you, that all you can see is zero sum?”
Her face hardened. He was disgusted to think that he could ever have mistaken her for Olivia. “When your survival depends on absolute teamwork, when even the air can turn into poison with only a moment’s notice and you rely every minute of every day on other people doing their jobs precisely, you learn pretty quickly to follow orders. The Secretary of Defense gave me mine, and I will follow them. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you, Peter.”
The worst thing was, he thought she probably meant it.
“Olivia,” he said, and he wasn’t talking to her, but she leaned forward nonetheless. Olivia’s compassion had always had limits; he was pretty sure she’d have supported him in his resolve to kill this version, if she’d been in any position to have thoughts on the subject. “I’m guessing that there’s gonna be a time pretty soon when I’ll have to choose whether I act like you would, or whether I do what Olivia would’ve done. For the sake of the universe you love so much, you’d better hope I choose Olivia.”
“I’m Olivia,” she said, lips tight, and he almost smiled at the small victory.
“Nah,” he said, as casual as he could make himself. “You’re just a shapeshifter with an extremely limited repertoire.”
And if, after she slammed her way out of his cell, he turned his head as far away from the door as he could manage, to mourn Olivia in as much privacy as he could get, that was a weakness Olivia would have forgiven without hesitation.
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