Fic: Peace (episode 10.13 coda)
Feb. 13th, 2015 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zara_zeeI didn't LOVE this episode, but I did like it quite a bit.It was a filler, but it was a MOTW filler with nods to X-files, so I enjoyed that. It didn't move the plot much, but it did give us a few character tweaks, and aside from the truly horrible portrayal of the vaccuous college students, there wasn't too much that truly irked me.
I did think that the boys deserved a face full of Mace for getting out of their muscle car and stalking a grieving widow while wearing flasher coats; writers please note: women are alert to giant men stalking them!! Even beautiful men who look like they might be filming a L'Oreal commercial!
Anyway, my Head!canon Dean got very angsty after this episode, so have some fic. xx
--
Title: Peace
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zara_zee
Beta: Not beta’d
Genre(s): Episode coda
Rating: PG-13, Gen
Spoilers: Episode 10.13
Word Count: ~750
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing in the sand box.
Summary: Maybe it’s time for you to stop thinking of the Mark of Cain as a disease that needs to be cured and start thinking of it as a condition that needs to be managed.
--
She’s crying again, so after you get the iron bar out of your duffel bag you hand her the box of tissues. She takes one and you sit down on the bed and toss the box behind you. You don’t have it in you to feel sorry for her.
You sit with the bar resting across your knees and think how different you are from kids like Delilah. You don’t understand her world any more than she’d understand yours and it ain’t a Gen X vs whatever-the-Hell- she is thing, it’s just that your soul is black through and through and hers has just started to tarnish a little, around the edges.
There’s no way the two of you could ever connect.
Which is why you’re surprised, when she begins to talk. You’re pacing the room, bored out of your frigging skull and just itching for something to kill-stab-smash, when she starts to tell you how miserable she is; how she stays up studying to keep the nightmares away, how she can’t help thinking about the guy she killed, despite the fact that she never really knew him. And yeah: that, you can relate to.
You’ve made mistakes over the years. You’ve killed sentient creatures that maybe didn’t need killing; killed people who were definitely sewer-dwelling scum, but last you checked being a low life douchebag wasn’t a capital offense.
You know nightmares. You know waking up drenched in your own sweat, your heart beating a fast staccato rhythm in your chest and your knife in your hand, images of blood and violence still flashing across your retina and screams still echoing in your ears. So yeah, you can relate.
She asks you how you deal and you tell her, “Whiskey”, with a smartass smile.
It doesn’t help as much as it used to, though, because you’re genuinely scared of losing yourself these days. It’s also a bullshit macho response and she deserves better.
“Denial,” you tell her, feeling the weight of the admission deep in your bones. “And I do my best to make things right. Whatever that may be.”
You tell her to ask for forgiveness, because you’re great at giving advice, you just suck at taking it.
The shit hits the fan shortly after that, but the conversation stays with you, plays on repeat in your mind.
“Do my best to make things right.”
If you were into that Twelve Steps bullshit, you’d have to spend from now until judgement day making amends to all those you’ve wronged, but you gave up on forgiveness a long time ago; you don’t deserve it, even when it’s offered. Working jobs though—saving people, hunting things—there’s some good you can do right there and maybe it’s a step toward redemption.
You tell Andrew that the more you kill, the crazier you get, that the blood fuels the rage. And it does fuel it; but it also soothes it. Your hands are never steadier than when they’ve just executed a fresh kill. Still, you don’t want to become a monster; something you can’t even recognize, and you doubt Andrew wants that either.
He gets his peace and you envy him.
Sammy said that maybe part of the powerful force that controls the mark has to be you. You thought it was bullshit at the time, nothing but touch-feely patchouli-smelling yoga crap. But you’re re-thinking that now.
Maybe it’s time for you to stop thinking of the Mark of Cain as a disease that needs to be cured and start thinking of it as a condition that needs to be managed.
For instance, you’ve gone cold turkey on killing, so the mark is pushing you to satisfy your appetites in other ways—gluttony and lust mostly—and you’re painfully aware that some blatant age-inappropriate ogling isn’t the worst that could get, which frankly terrifies you as much as the possibility of committing another massacre.
Maybe there’ll be a miracle cure one day and maybe there won’t be. For your part, you’ve just got to focus on getting through each day, on managing the condition. Because if vampires and werewolves and kitsunes can manage their inner-monsters, then surely Dean Winchester can too.
And if you can’t, if it turns out that you’re less human than the monsters you once thought deserved to die simply for existing, then you have Death’s number on speed dial. Heaven won’t want you and Hell (or its King, anyway) is genuinely afraid you’ll take over, but you’re pretty sure that Death will be willing to obliterate you at a cosmic level. And maybe that’s the only sort of peace a Winchester can ever have.
--
I did think that the boys deserved a face full of Mace for getting out of their muscle car and stalking a grieving widow while wearing flasher coats; writers please note: women are alert to giant men stalking them!! Even beautiful men who look like they might be filming a L'Oreal commercial!
Anyway, my Head!canon Dean got very angsty after this episode, so have some fic. xx
--
Title: Peace
Author:
zara_zeeBeta: Not beta’d
Genre(s): Episode coda
Rating: PG-13, Gen
Spoilers: Episode 10.13
Word Count: ~750
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing in the sand box.
Summary: Maybe it’s time for you to stop thinking of the Mark of Cain as a disease that needs to be cured and start thinking of it as a condition that needs to be managed.
--
She’s crying again, so after you get the iron bar out of your duffel bag you hand her the box of tissues. She takes one and you sit down on the bed and toss the box behind you. You don’t have it in you to feel sorry for her.
You sit with the bar resting across your knees and think how different you are from kids like Delilah. You don’t understand her world any more than she’d understand yours and it ain’t a Gen X vs whatever-the-Hell- she is thing, it’s just that your soul is black through and through and hers has just started to tarnish a little, around the edges.
There’s no way the two of you could ever connect.
Which is why you’re surprised, when she begins to talk. You’re pacing the room, bored out of your frigging skull and just itching for something to kill-stab-smash, when she starts to tell you how miserable she is; how she stays up studying to keep the nightmares away, how she can’t help thinking about the guy she killed, despite the fact that she never really knew him. And yeah: that, you can relate to.
You’ve made mistakes over the years. You’ve killed sentient creatures that maybe didn’t need killing; killed people who were definitely sewer-dwelling scum, but last you checked being a low life douchebag wasn’t a capital offense.
You know nightmares. You know waking up drenched in your own sweat, your heart beating a fast staccato rhythm in your chest and your knife in your hand, images of blood and violence still flashing across your retina and screams still echoing in your ears. So yeah, you can relate.
She asks you how you deal and you tell her, “Whiskey”, with a smartass smile.
It doesn’t help as much as it used to, though, because you’re genuinely scared of losing yourself these days. It’s also a bullshit macho response and she deserves better.
“Denial,” you tell her, feeling the weight of the admission deep in your bones. “And I do my best to make things right. Whatever that may be.”
You tell her to ask for forgiveness, because you’re great at giving advice, you just suck at taking it.
The shit hits the fan shortly after that, but the conversation stays with you, plays on repeat in your mind.
“Do my best to make things right.”
If you were into that Twelve Steps bullshit, you’d have to spend from now until judgement day making amends to all those you’ve wronged, but you gave up on forgiveness a long time ago; you don’t deserve it, even when it’s offered. Working jobs though—saving people, hunting things—there’s some good you can do right there and maybe it’s a step toward redemption.
You tell Andrew that the more you kill, the crazier you get, that the blood fuels the rage. And it does fuel it; but it also soothes it. Your hands are never steadier than when they’ve just executed a fresh kill. Still, you don’t want to become a monster; something you can’t even recognize, and you doubt Andrew wants that either.
He gets his peace and you envy him.
Sammy said that maybe part of the powerful force that controls the mark has to be you. You thought it was bullshit at the time, nothing but touch-feely patchouli-smelling yoga crap. But you’re re-thinking that now.
Maybe it’s time for you to stop thinking of the Mark of Cain as a disease that needs to be cured and start thinking of it as a condition that needs to be managed.
For instance, you’ve gone cold turkey on killing, so the mark is pushing you to satisfy your appetites in other ways—gluttony and lust mostly—and you’re painfully aware that some blatant age-inappropriate ogling isn’t the worst that could get, which frankly terrifies you as much as the possibility of committing another massacre.
Maybe there’ll be a miracle cure one day and maybe there won’t be. For your part, you’ve just got to focus on getting through each day, on managing the condition. Because if vampires and werewolves and kitsunes can manage their inner-monsters, then surely Dean Winchester can too.
And if you can’t, if it turns out that you’re less human than the monsters you once thought deserved to die simply for existing, then you have Death’s number on speed dial. Heaven won’t want you and Hell (or its King, anyway) is genuinely afraid you’ll take over, but you’re pretty sure that Death will be willing to obliterate you at a cosmic level. And maybe that’s the only sort of peace a Winchester can ever have.
--
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}