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spn_summergen2009-08-28 08:52 pm
summergen-mod.livejournal.com) wrote in spn_summergen2009-08-28 08:52 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: Nor Iron Bars A Cage
Title: Nor Iron Bars A Cage
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Recipient:avon09
Rating: Adult (Language)
Warnings: None
Wordcount: 1,800
Prompt: Angels in chaos.
Summary: This isn’t during the apocalypse. This is what comes after.
"Stone walls do not a prison make
Nor iron bars a cage
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage
If I have freedom in my love.
And in my soul am free
Angels alone, that soar above
Enjoy such liberty." - Richard Lovelace
Dean was eating a burger when the angels started falling to earth.
He remembers it distinctly, mostly because it was a bad burger. The kind that was charcoal on the outside and raw in the middle and no amount of ketchup could disguise that fact. He'd tossed it aside in disgust and glanced out the window of the diner to see Sam fussing around the backseat of the Impala.
The sky had lit up brilliant orange, streaks of light that Dean could still see even when he closed his eyes.
There was an almighty whomp and when Dean had been able to squint outside again the Impala had been gone, a smoking crater in its place.
Dean had felt his heart in his throat as he'd run outside, sure he was going to find his car and more importantly his brother a mangled mess. "Sam!" he had screamed into the eerie silence of the day and had actually skidded to a stop in abject shock when a dirt-streaked hand had appeared at the lip of the crater.
Dean had walked forward on legs that felt about as strong as if they'd been cut out of paper when a second hand appeared, and then the shaggy and clumped mess of the top of Sam's hair. His eyes had emerged next and then the rest of his face and he had actually grinned when he'd spotted Dean. "Hey, give me a hand out, would'ja?" he had called, his teeth bright in his dirty face.
"Man, how did you survive that?" Dean had asked, relief propelling him forward and leaving good sense behind.
Mainly because good sense was telling him that Sam wouldn't have.
^0^
Sam’s right hand still itches which is kind of funny, since it hasn’t been attached to his body for four years. Dean, in his usual way, still thinks it's hilarious to ask Sam what the sound of one hand clapping actually is.
Sam doesn’t really miss it. Hell, he hardly ever uses his left hand these days either which Dean often remarks is a good thing because that’s the sinister hand anyway.
Sometimes Dean is more of a jerk than he needs to be.
Tanny runs a metal car over his foot and Sam looks down. The little boy tilts his face up and offers Sam a bright grin. It’s nice that people can still smile… given the circumstances. Sam supposes it’s probably easier to be able to let happiness in when you don’t know what you’re missing. Tanny was born after the Despair.
“Don’t go bothering him,” Andy says, emerging from the shadows. He scoops Tanny up and offers Sam a wry smirk. “Sorry, Sir.”
“It’s fine,” Sam dismisses. “Could you do me a favor and scratch my nose?”
“Sure,” Andy says agreeably and moves forward. Right at the last minute Sam’s body lunges and a deep growl starts up in his chest.
“Outside the circle!” another voice snaps, whip-crack sharp. Andy stumbles back, white-faced, almost dropping Tanny in his haste.
Sam rotates his left wrist, the shackles clanking dully. “Sorry,” he says, eyes skipping down to his feet where his ankles are also restrained to a steel chair, bolted to the floor.
“It’s fine… just, don’t do that,” Dean says, coming into the dirty yellow light cast by the single, bare bulb. “And stop calling the kids in here okay?”
“Yeah, I… yeah.”
^0^
Dean only ventures above ground maybe once a week. Check the fenceline, make sure all their defenses are holding even though it’s pretty clear there’s only one thing keeping the monsters from their door.
Sam and what he holds inside by sheer force of will.
“Hey, Dean?”
Dean looks up, pausing in front of the ancient elevator that’s still working although god only knows how. There was a virtual rabbit warren of interconnecting tunnels under this one building that was gone pretty much from the foundation up. Who knew an underground parking garage would come in so handy?
Gina approaches him. She's built like a linebacker and taller than Dean by at least an inch. She has a bandana tied over her mouth and nose, dust in her hair. She’s been in the vents because over the last couple of months some pretty nasty creatures have been taking refuge in their little home and it pays to keep on top of that.
“Gremlins?” Dean asks, hoping to god its not. They breed like rabbits and once you get a couple, there’s no getting rid of them. They don’t really do much, shy by nature, but they stink and Dean thinks the last thing they need is to be living underground with little light and a horrible, semi-permanent stench.
“Sprites,” Gina corrects, holding up a dirty glass bottle. Dean can see a dozen or so tiny humanoid creatures that are glowing. The light gets brighter when Gina shakes them. Sprites, unlike gremlins, are dangerous, purely because they attract much bigger things that are a whole other headache.
“I’ll take ‘em up,” Dean offers, holding his hand out. The bottle is handed over and Gina yanks the bandana down. It’s actually possible to breathe a sprite in and that’s something you definitely don’t want to be doing.
“Sam’s broadcasting again,” Gina says before Dean can retreat. Dean grimaces because he’s well aware, the nightmares hit him probably hardest of all.
“There’s not much I can-”
“You can dose him,” Gina interrupts and Dean smacks a hand against the bare wall to his right, hard.
“I’m not doing that again,” he snarls. He’s done a lot of things lately that he never thought he would but he’s got to draw the line somewhere. Keeping an angel trapped in an underground parking lot while the world gets wiped clean above them, chief amongst it. Sam keeps the lights on and the monsters at bay so he doesn’t really have a choice.
At least, that’s what he tells himself when the darkness leaks into his dreams.
^0^
Dean likes above ground.
The dust storms can strip a man bare in thirty seconds down to bleached bone, but there’s something to be said for dry air that no one else has breathed already. When he breaks surface, he looks about. The metal struts sticking up into the sky are all that’s left of the skyscraper that once resided above them and it’s a little eerie. Looks almost like cattle bones in the desert.
He can’t be away from Sam long. He can already feel the Despair pushing at the edges of him, trying to find a crack. Sam keeps the positivity flowing and isn’t that just hilarious, considering he fills their nights with blood and screams. They bare witness to a war no mortal should ever see.
Sam does more than just light up the place. He keeps them alive and breathing. He keeps the worst of the monsters, both inhuman and human outside their boundary fence. He’s their one chance at living through the Despair.
There are twelve Earth-bound angels in all, by Dean’s last count. He hasn’t been able to raise anyone on the radio in about three months but he’s not giving up hope. When the world ended and Hell was all that was left, he had a choice to make.
They’ve lost some of the others to themselves. Only nine weeks ago a forty year old man named Marty took the elevator up and walked out into one of the worst dust storms in months. Dean learnt his lesson, locked down the elevator and no one’s been topside since, except him.
He looks up at the purple bruised sky and breathes deep.
^0^
Dean hadn't been surprised when Bobby had turned up.
If anything, Dean has to admit that he'd been waiting for it to happen. Watching a modified truck trundle up to their little oasis and the man himself step down had been a relief, certainly, but no surprise.
The kids called Bobby Roach after some of the stories Dean told.
Bobby is one of the few that still travels, ranging out for ever-dwindling supplies and word on other similar settlements. To the West there's another group like theirs with a woman named Ava who's got a grip on another earthbound. She's not handling it as well as Sam, from how Bobby tells it.
"Sooner or later, we got a decision to make," Bobby says, standing at Dean's elbow in the doorway of the room that Sam is kept in. Dean has a tray of food in hand and is trying to gauge Sam's mood. Sometimes he's dealing with Sam and sometimes he's dealing with... something else.
The something else is best avoided.
"What decision would that be?" Dean asks out of the corner of his mouth and can feel Bobby's gaze settle on the side of his face, sympathetic and unwanted.
"We can't always save everyone," Bobby says and Dean sighs when Sam looks up and offers him a tired smile.
"Only interested in saving one," Dean throws over his shoulder as he enters the room and hunkers in front of his brother.
^0^
Thank whatever it is people still pray to for Andy.
Andy who could, for very short bursts, hold onto the angel that lived inside Sam most of the time. He could usually only hold it for a few hours and needed a few weeks after that to recover but he was a willing volunteer and for some reason it always sounded like a really fantastic idea when he proposed having another turn.
To Dean, if not to Sam himself.
The rare times that Sam is set free, he and Dean leave.
They usually time it right after a bad dust storm because that means there won't be another one for a few days at least. Before Bobby had appeared, they'd just walked until they were both exhausted and didn't feel trapped anymore. After Bobby, they borrow the truck and drive.
Even without the angel, Sam's presence seems to keep the Despair at the very edges, not able to get a good grip.
Sam watches Dean now, pawing through shelves that they both know have been picked clean long ago but it's habit. Sam doesn't really want to waste the precious little time they have together scavenging but it's better than the alternative.
Dean arguing that maybe this time they just keep on going.
"You don't mean that," Sam says, time and again.
"You think I don't?" Dean always asks and then watches Sam until Sam looks away, swallows hard and pretends to change the subject.
"Oh my god," Dean breathes, breaking Sam out of his internal reflection and Sam looks at him, raising his eyebrows when Dean holds a dented and dusty can aloft. "Dude, pie filling," Dean says in an awed voice.
"It's probably bad," Sam points out and Dean hugs the can to his chest.
"Shut your mouth!" Dean gasps, looking comically scandalized.
"Only one way to find out," Sam says, patting down his pockets one armed until he unearths an old pocket knife that he knows Dean will divest him of before he sits back in the chair.
He'd been handed the thing on the way out, Dean's silent I trust you're you, implicit in the action.
"No way man, I'm saving this for a special occasion," Dean dismisses and tucks the can into an inner jacket pocket.
He smiles brightly and Sam can't help but return the smile.
Author:
kellifer_ficRecipient:
avon09Rating: Adult (Language)
Warnings: None
Wordcount: 1,800
Prompt: Angels in chaos.
Summary: This isn’t during the apocalypse. This is what comes after.
Nor iron bars a cage
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage
If I have freedom in my love.
And in my soul am free
Angels alone, that soar above
Enjoy such liberty." - Richard Lovelace
Dean was eating a burger when the angels started falling to earth.
He remembers it distinctly, mostly because it was a bad burger. The kind that was charcoal on the outside and raw in the middle and no amount of ketchup could disguise that fact. He'd tossed it aside in disgust and glanced out the window of the diner to see Sam fussing around the backseat of the Impala.
The sky had lit up brilliant orange, streaks of light that Dean could still see even when he closed his eyes.
There was an almighty whomp and when Dean had been able to squint outside again the Impala had been gone, a smoking crater in its place.
Dean had felt his heart in his throat as he'd run outside, sure he was going to find his car and more importantly his brother a mangled mess. "Sam!" he had screamed into the eerie silence of the day and had actually skidded to a stop in abject shock when a dirt-streaked hand had appeared at the lip of the crater.
Dean had walked forward on legs that felt about as strong as if they'd been cut out of paper when a second hand appeared, and then the shaggy and clumped mess of the top of Sam's hair. His eyes had emerged next and then the rest of his face and he had actually grinned when he'd spotted Dean. "Hey, give me a hand out, would'ja?" he had called, his teeth bright in his dirty face.
"Man, how did you survive that?" Dean had asked, relief propelling him forward and leaving good sense behind.
Mainly because good sense was telling him that Sam wouldn't have.
Sam’s right hand still itches which is kind of funny, since it hasn’t been attached to his body for four years. Dean, in his usual way, still thinks it's hilarious to ask Sam what the sound of one hand clapping actually is.
Sam doesn’t really miss it. Hell, he hardly ever uses his left hand these days either which Dean often remarks is a good thing because that’s the sinister hand anyway.
Sometimes Dean is more of a jerk than he needs to be.
Tanny runs a metal car over his foot and Sam looks down. The little boy tilts his face up and offers Sam a bright grin. It’s nice that people can still smile… given the circumstances. Sam supposes it’s probably easier to be able to let happiness in when you don’t know what you’re missing. Tanny was born after the Despair.
“Don’t go bothering him,” Andy says, emerging from the shadows. He scoops Tanny up and offers Sam a wry smirk. “Sorry, Sir.”
“It’s fine,” Sam dismisses. “Could you do me a favor and scratch my nose?”
“Sure,” Andy says agreeably and moves forward. Right at the last minute Sam’s body lunges and a deep growl starts up in his chest.
“Outside the circle!” another voice snaps, whip-crack sharp. Andy stumbles back, white-faced, almost dropping Tanny in his haste.
Sam rotates his left wrist, the shackles clanking dully. “Sorry,” he says, eyes skipping down to his feet where his ankles are also restrained to a steel chair, bolted to the floor.
“It’s fine… just, don’t do that,” Dean says, coming into the dirty yellow light cast by the single, bare bulb. “And stop calling the kids in here okay?”
“Yeah, I… yeah.”
^0^
Dean only ventures above ground maybe once a week. Check the fenceline, make sure all their defenses are holding even though it’s pretty clear there’s only one thing keeping the monsters from their door.
Sam and what he holds inside by sheer force of will.
“Hey, Dean?”
Dean looks up, pausing in front of the ancient elevator that’s still working although god only knows how. There was a virtual rabbit warren of interconnecting tunnels under this one building that was gone pretty much from the foundation up. Who knew an underground parking garage would come in so handy?
Gina approaches him. She's built like a linebacker and taller than Dean by at least an inch. She has a bandana tied over her mouth and nose, dust in her hair. She’s been in the vents because over the last couple of months some pretty nasty creatures have been taking refuge in their little home and it pays to keep on top of that.
“Gremlins?” Dean asks, hoping to god its not. They breed like rabbits and once you get a couple, there’s no getting rid of them. They don’t really do much, shy by nature, but they stink and Dean thinks the last thing they need is to be living underground with little light and a horrible, semi-permanent stench.
“Sprites,” Gina corrects, holding up a dirty glass bottle. Dean can see a dozen or so tiny humanoid creatures that are glowing. The light gets brighter when Gina shakes them. Sprites, unlike gremlins, are dangerous, purely because they attract much bigger things that are a whole other headache.
“I’ll take ‘em up,” Dean offers, holding his hand out. The bottle is handed over and Gina yanks the bandana down. It’s actually possible to breathe a sprite in and that’s something you definitely don’t want to be doing.
“Sam’s broadcasting again,” Gina says before Dean can retreat. Dean grimaces because he’s well aware, the nightmares hit him probably hardest of all.
“There’s not much I can-”
“You can dose him,” Gina interrupts and Dean smacks a hand against the bare wall to his right, hard.
“I’m not doing that again,” he snarls. He’s done a lot of things lately that he never thought he would but he’s got to draw the line somewhere. Keeping an angel trapped in an underground parking lot while the world gets wiped clean above them, chief amongst it. Sam keeps the lights on and the monsters at bay so he doesn’t really have a choice.
At least, that’s what he tells himself when the darkness leaks into his dreams.
Dean likes above ground.
The dust storms can strip a man bare in thirty seconds down to bleached bone, but there’s something to be said for dry air that no one else has breathed already. When he breaks surface, he looks about. The metal struts sticking up into the sky are all that’s left of the skyscraper that once resided above them and it’s a little eerie. Looks almost like cattle bones in the desert.
He can’t be away from Sam long. He can already feel the Despair pushing at the edges of him, trying to find a crack. Sam keeps the positivity flowing and isn’t that just hilarious, considering he fills their nights with blood and screams. They bare witness to a war no mortal should ever see.
Sam does more than just light up the place. He keeps them alive and breathing. He keeps the worst of the monsters, both inhuman and human outside their boundary fence. He’s their one chance at living through the Despair.
There are twelve Earth-bound angels in all, by Dean’s last count. He hasn’t been able to raise anyone on the radio in about three months but he’s not giving up hope. When the world ended and Hell was all that was left, he had a choice to make.
They’ve lost some of the others to themselves. Only nine weeks ago a forty year old man named Marty took the elevator up and walked out into one of the worst dust storms in months. Dean learnt his lesson, locked down the elevator and no one’s been topside since, except him.
He looks up at the purple bruised sky and breathes deep.
^0^
Dean hadn't been surprised when Bobby had turned up.
If anything, Dean has to admit that he'd been waiting for it to happen. Watching a modified truck trundle up to their little oasis and the man himself step down had been a relief, certainly, but no surprise.
The kids called Bobby Roach after some of the stories Dean told.
Bobby is one of the few that still travels, ranging out for ever-dwindling supplies and word on other similar settlements. To the West there's another group like theirs with a woman named Ava who's got a grip on another earthbound. She's not handling it as well as Sam, from how Bobby tells it.
"Sooner or later, we got a decision to make," Bobby says, standing at Dean's elbow in the doorway of the room that Sam is kept in. Dean has a tray of food in hand and is trying to gauge Sam's mood. Sometimes he's dealing with Sam and sometimes he's dealing with... something else.
The something else is best avoided.
"What decision would that be?" Dean asks out of the corner of his mouth and can feel Bobby's gaze settle on the side of his face, sympathetic and unwanted.
"We can't always save everyone," Bobby says and Dean sighs when Sam looks up and offers him a tired smile.
"Only interested in saving one," Dean throws over his shoulder as he enters the room and hunkers in front of his brother.
^0^
Thank whatever it is people still pray to for Andy.
Andy who could, for very short bursts, hold onto the angel that lived inside Sam most of the time. He could usually only hold it for a few hours and needed a few weeks after that to recover but he was a willing volunteer and for some reason it always sounded like a really fantastic idea when he proposed having another turn.
To Dean, if not to Sam himself.
The rare times that Sam is set free, he and Dean leave.
They usually time it right after a bad dust storm because that means there won't be another one for a few days at least. Before Bobby had appeared, they'd just walked until they were both exhausted and didn't feel trapped anymore. After Bobby, they borrow the truck and drive.
Even without the angel, Sam's presence seems to keep the Despair at the very edges, not able to get a good grip.
Sam watches Dean now, pawing through shelves that they both know have been picked clean long ago but it's habit. Sam doesn't really want to waste the precious little time they have together scavenging but it's better than the alternative.
Dean arguing that maybe this time they just keep on going.
"You don't mean that," Sam says, time and again.
"You think I don't?" Dean always asks and then watches Sam until Sam looks away, swallows hard and pretends to change the subject.
"Oh my god," Dean breathes, breaking Sam out of his internal reflection and Sam looks at him, raising his eyebrows when Dean holds a dented and dusty can aloft. "Dude, pie filling," Dean says in an awed voice.
"It's probably bad," Sam points out and Dean hugs the can to his chest.
"Shut your mouth!" Dean gasps, looking comically scandalized.
"Only one way to find out," Sam says, patting down his pockets one armed until he unearths an old pocket knife that he knows Dean will divest him of before he sits back in the chair.
He'd been handed the thing on the way out, Dean's silent I trust you're you, implicit in the action.
"No way man, I'm saving this for a special occasion," Dean dismisses and tucks the can into an inner jacket pocket.
He smiles brightly and Sam can't help but return the smile.