Rebirth -- Chapter 2: Anamnesis
(Chapter 1 here)
Chapter 2: Anamnesis
The drive through the night goes by in a blink when Dean wakes to the familiar smell of diesel fuel and rusting oxides. The gruff sight of banged-up cars stripped of their paint and mangled scrap-piles in heaps along the pebble-speckled lawn (if you can even call the brown patches of dirt a lawn) greets his weary eyes with a friendly fuck you. Must mean they made it to Singer’s Salvation.
Sam pulls the break lever and cuts the transmission, the low humming pulsing through the leather seats ceasing as the engine ends its velvety purr. He opens his door first, unbending his ginormous body from the cramped space of the driver’s seat, stretching and twisting his arms legs and back to shake his muscles loose again. He yawns, scratching at the subtle shadow of a beard on his chin and wiping at his eyes. Despite staying up all night to play the chauffer a small smile hangs on Sam’s face, he’s feeling pretty refreshed from a successful job. Opening the back door on the same side, he reaches in and slides the brown sack of items over to him, clattering the various materials inside as he slings it back over his broad shoulder.
He notices his brother’s sluggish movements as Dean wakes from his side of the car.
“Morning, ugly!” Sam chirps.
“Shut up,” Dean grumbles with a yawn, mimicking the same motions as Sam within the minimal space available to him. Dean notices the sack over Sam’s shoulder. “You count the score?”
“Not yet. I figure we’d wait for Bobby to give us the details. I honestly don’t know what half these things are. Feel expensive though.”
“Good. It’s about time we hit it big. First thing I’m gonna do with my cut is stay in a fancy hotel: five-stars, room service, the whole nine! And an actual bed, for once.”
Sam snickers, “Don’t pretend like you don’t enjoy those stupid motel beds. You have an unhealthy relationship with the magic fingers feature. “Dean smiles to himself, humming as he thinks of those pleasureful vibrations massaging his muscles as the lumpy mattress cradles his body. “Ew! Get up, dude. We need to get inside to actually talk to Bobby. And he doesn’t need to see that gross grin you’ve got on your face,” Sam chides as he leans out of the car, “Neither do I,” he adds as he slams the door shut.
Dean follows his brother out of the car and they both head up the squeaky porch steps of the blue-sided house as they go to knock on the front door. It opens quickly enough, and the Winchesters share their greetings with the grumpy faced elder as he leads them inside.
“So, how’d your little business trip go? You make good on your end?”
Sam plops the heavy sack onto Bobby’s jumbled desktop, the various materials rattling with a dull clunk. “Got ‘em all here, Bobby.”
“Glad to see you ain’t busy,” Dean mocks as he inspects a set of car keys with dust collecting on the hanger is hangs from.
“Hey! I’ve been bustin’ my ass digging up the intel – you boys are the ones limber enough to steal the goods but without me, you got squat.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dean waves him off, used to hearing the usual excuse for why he sent them out to do the dirty work while he got to sit in the comfort of his own home.
Bobby shakes his head and turns back to address Sam, “Anyway, I’m glad you both made it back here safe. I know it was a tall order I asked of you.”
“We’re good, Bobby. Most of it was easy in and out – “
“Up until the demons caught on to us turning them over,” Dean finishes for his brother.
“We made it out though,” Sam reasserts himself, “And we did the job just like we said we would.”
Bobby nods in sincerity and appreciation for their good work.
“The blade?” he asks in a gentle command.
Dean fumbles for a bit, patting at his lap and remembering that he’d left it in the car.
“Here,” Sam offers as he holds the silver dagger up from the bag.
Dean blinks, “When did you put it in the bag?”
“While you were asleep,” the unspoken duh, dipshit is implied by Sam’s pressed lips and short tone of voice. Bobby takes the blade before the two brothers can start up another idjit’s quarrel. He turns the cool metal in his hand, inspecting it reverently from the knobbed hilt to the honed tri-edged tip. He runs his fingers along the crafted grooves and divots, and carefully over the glistening edge, wincing slightly as a bead of red bubbles from one of the pads that pressed with just too much pressure.
“Ain’t this a sight,” he mumbles to himself.
“What’s up with it?” Dean asks with terse time for sidetracking, “Why is it so important that we had to wrestle a gang of demons for it?”
“Now hold your horses, Cinderella. I’ll get to the explaining without your squeaky complainin’, thank you.” Dean balks indignantly but settles himself with his arms crossed over his chest, tilting his chin for the man to get on with it. Bobby continues with his silent evaluation, rotating the blade carefully to grip it tightly in his left hand as he holds it out with one eye closed, as if it were a scope or an extension of his arm. “Incredible.”
“Bobby,” Sam interrupts with a polite cough, “That thing can kill a demon. Kill it! What kind of weapon wields that sort of power?”
Bobby huffs a sigh as he reels his arm back in, holding the dagger near himself as he begins to speak. “I told you what it was, right?”
“Yeah. An angel blade or whatever,” Dean supplies, “But what’s so great about a prissy knife?”
Bobby blinks at the boy, “Are you stupid? What do you think is so important about something with ‘angel’ in its title?”
Sam furrows his brow, “You’re not implying…”
“Oh, I’m doing more than just implying. I’m saying: this is an authentic angel’s sword.”
Dean scoffs, “Yeah, right! You expect me to believe angels are real just because we have a silver stick with its name written all over it?”
“You got a better interpretation?”
“Well, yeah! ‘Angel blade?’ That’s the same marketing crap they pull to make something sound mystical ‘n shit to sell you something – like the ‘God particle’ or ‘The Great Pumpkin’. I’m not buying it.”
Sam turns to his brother, “Dean, you saw what that blade did. You were the one that threw it! That demon was gonna pounce and you killed it with barely a second thought of whether the stunt would work or not.”
“How did you know?” Bobby begs the question.
“I don’t know. Just had a feeling, I guess,” he answers lamely, “Call it a hunch?”
Bobby squints at him, “Well, call it a hunch, but I think you’ve already figured out the punchline.”
“And that is?” Sam probes for clarity.
“That I sent you boys out to fetch me an angel blade from a legitimate fallen angel.”
The room’s musty atmosphere weighs down on the tartan clad brothers as they process the man’s words. Sam’s features seem to brighten while Dean’s dwindle into dubious anger. Before the former outshines the sun and the latter suffers from self-induced dyspepsia, Bobby sets the blade down as he sits behind his paper-strewn desk and pulls up a book – it’s faded title hanging from the loose leather binding, worn and tattered with the abuses earned with age. He flips through the yellowed pages, carefully leafing through the unattached segments as he searches for a particular passage. He finds it with a resolute finger to the page.
“And lo the agents of God, magnificent servants of the Heavenly Host, embarked with the task begotten to them by their Father. Many a battle would they fight, those warriors of light, but prevail they shall; for He has blessed them with the strength of the Most-High as He bequeathed to them what terrible wrath lives in creation; a fearsome weapon that smites all that is wicked and spares none.”
He picks up another script, this one fresher-looking and already opened to the correct page:
“..for gripped tightly in his righteous intent was the shimmering blade from heaven. The weapon that would smite the Devil and all his children born of darkness, turned from light. ‘Lay down, morning star, son of dawn!’ spoke the angel thusly, ‘Yield now to the justice that befalls you or perish in the misdoings of your treacherous sins.’”
The old bookkeeper cards through a few more passages, all of which cover the same gist of the existence of angels as warriors of God and special weapons that they possess to aid in their offensive against the Devil – nameless instruments that, upon vague descriptions, the boys assume to be the angel blade that lay coyly on Bobby’s lackadaisically organized desktop.
“And so on and so forth. You get the picture,” Bobby finishes with a prosaic drawl and a firm thud as the leather-bound book is clapped shut. Sam and Dean share a look, but it’s clear that they have different emotions behind what they’ve just heard about the ancient artifact they stole.
Sam speaks first, “So, this is the real deal?”
“Seems like it,” Bobby affirms.
“What about the part about the ‘fallen angel’? How can you be sure that it’s not..” he trails off, trying to collect his thoughts, “I mean, we found it with a group of demons protecting it. How can you be sure it’s not hell’s weapon?”
“You mean Lucifer’s?” Sam winces upon hearing the name but nods all the same. Bobby gestures to the papers strewn about his desk, “Collectin’ the lore certainly wasn’t a cakewalk, but I managed to piece together a plausible tale. Mind you, it isn’t perfect, and the translations aren’t exact—”
“Just cut to it,” Dean demands impatiently.
Bobby grumbles a disgruntled comment aimed at the freckled heckler under his breath before summarizing the good bits: “As far as I can tell, Lucifer wasn’t the only angel to fall and be hunted by heaven. In fact, there was some kind of catastrophe that sent all the angels sprawling to earth. Something called ‘The Fall.’ Apparently, it was caused by a renegade angel sometime within the last ten centuries – not exactly clear on when, or if that really matters relative to the clocks upstairs – but after The Fall, all of the angels were seriously pissed at the bastard that locked the gates. They spent the next however many decades hunting down the sorry son of a bitch to the ends of the earth – ‘a righteous vendetta’ as some of the texts call it. Loads of angels died in the fighting, if not originally from the plummet to bedrock. The angels that survived eventually captured the ‘fallen one’ who they held responsible.”
“Did they kill him? The ‘fallen one’?” Sam asks when Bobby lulls in his retelling of the story.
Bobby shrugs his shoulders, “Can’t say for sure. I’m assuming so ‘cause this is supposed to be his sword here,” he points to the angel blade present, “Don’t suppose he’d just give it up without a helluva fight, though. Must have been one badass angel to have avoided capture for so long.”
“So, he wanted to be caught?”
Bobby shrugs again. “That or he got sloppy somewhere.”
Dean leans idly against the doorway leading to the kitchen, tuning out the conversation between his brother and father by proxy. He means to pay attention, but their voices grow distant as his mind wanders to a faraway place. A place where a carnage lay waste to farmlands – village houses burnt to the ground and piles of bloodied corpses rotting the salted earth. The horrible stench of roasted carcass and the iron-like tang of blood pervade his mouth and nose. His ears ringing with the piercing screams of a woman, of her crying children, as she shields them with her battered body, crowding them against a toppled brick wall as she waves an arm out to hold off a domineering shadow – Dean’s shadow! Or, whatever shadow he casts with his body as he watches the horrific scene unfold. Crimson moisture, hot and thick, clings to his palms when he looks down at his hands; in his grip lay the angel blade, the shining metal glistening just as brightly as ever, despite the slickened scarlet edge.
Dean’s stomach lurches as a sense of queasiness overtakes him, his body tensing as the scene abruptly changes from a land of suffering to a fast-paced scenario in which he is the star player in the midst of a full-out brawl. The clang of metal on metal echoes from the blade at his hand as it is used to deflect his vicious attacker, pushing the scornful face of the young man away. Dexterously, he spins the blade in his grip as he turns, striking it downward to be sheathed deep in the chest of an older woman who failed to sneak up behind him. Dean winces as a bright, piercing white light erupts from her body as she screams – the high-pitched shriek rising into a deafening crescendo. The blazing white heat consumes Dean’s field of vision, forcing him to shut his eyes as his mind turns to another event. This one even more confusing than the last as he’s tumbling bodily from the sky. His body is spinning and flailing in vain as he can’t find his bearings from the high velocity at which he’s careening through the scorching atmosphere – the very atoms of his being feeling like they’re being ripped apart and mangled to shredded tatters in the scalding cocoon of fire. His lungs burn with the soundless screams that are drowned out by the sound of something like branches snapping from beyond his shoulders. His spine arches violently, wracking his body with electrifying pain that dulls the rest of his senses until the only thing he can register is absolute agony!
He’s burning up!
“Dean!”
Dean opens his eyes abruptly, focusing slowly from the double vision of his brother’s worried face as he’s shaken into the present. Beyond his brother is Bobby: his face painted with the same concerned expression as Sam’s.
“Dean? Dean, what’s going on with you?” Sam implores, helping Dean into a chair when he wobbles on his feet.
Dean groans with his head in his hands, “What the fuck was that?”
“What was what?” Bobby pitches in.
“I- I don’t know. One minute, I’m standing here listening to you guys talking and the next thing I know, I’m flashing though some goddamn horror show!”
“What does that mean?” Sam asks.
“You think I know?!”
Bobby clicks his tongue, “Calm down there, boy. We’re just trying to help-“
“MIND YOUR BUSINESS, OLD MAN! YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WHAT I’VE BEEN THROUGH!”
Sam and Bobby stare scandalized by Dean’s outburst. Dean himself gawks at his own behavior once the seething anger dies down enough for him to register just what he blurted out. A pinkish heat rises to his cheeks. But instead of dealing with the situation like a responsible person should, Dean fleas like a coward, standing abruptly from his chair and darting out the backdoor towards the car lot with little but a hurried “I need some air” thrown bitingly over his shoulder. He can’t explain why, but he just needs to get away from their prying eyes – their questioning stares probing his psyche the wrong way in the moment, making him feel immensely vulnerable and irrationally defensive.
His head is still reeling from the jarring reverie he was pulled out of, feeling like his skull is stuffed to the seams with swabs of cotton and held together with butterfly bandages. What is up with him recently? Ever since their last heist, he’s been feeling less and less like himself – like something else is trying to take control of his body!
He clutches at his shoulder, the raw flesh of the burn-mark pulsing slightly below the surface of his skin, aching with a mystifying sense of…of… Dean can’t quite put his finger on it. Pain? No, it doesn’t hurt; more so it itches like a bitch! But there’s something else. Something that translates more to the hollow ache in his gut and the twisted throbbing in his chest; the steady flow of guilt and remorse mixing in his veins as if in response to the conversation from before.
The Fall.
Something about The Fall keeps repeating itself in his runaway brain, whispering to him over and over in a maddened rambling, on and on in a language he can’t understand! That is, if you can even call it a language – a barrage of colors and smells and tastes thread through his mind and soak the fabric of his being with an essence that just screams regret!
But why? Why is all this happening to him? What does it even mean? Dean lets out a frustrated growl as he kicks a pile of bald tires. He’s about as close to figuring this out as a one-legged man’s chance at winning an ass-kicking contest. Irritated, he plods on amidst the other totaled cars in the rust garden, hoping that a little walk in the fresh air really will help to clear his head.
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