corinth rains
New and improved Heaven may well be the Happiest Place (not) on Earth. But Dean, it turns out, is still Dean.
(also on AO3)
chapter two
Heaven is warm, bucolic, and perfect. And it gives Dean the damned heebie-jeebies.
He recalls a memorable night spent with Pamela - well, as memorable as it could be after a fifth of Macallan. Sam had said ‘So get this...’ and then fucked off to the local library, leaving Pam and Dean at the hotel bar. They’d drunk til the lights got fuzzy, and Pam had leaned back against the barstool, arching one dark eyebrow.
She’d had Dean supine across the foot of the squeaky queen, sitting astride him and working some kind of magic. She’d settled his hands on her slim waist, tugged at his hair, bitten his lips; he’d had nary a moment to want something before she gave it - the craving coming on the heels of the having.
Heaven is much the same - perceptive and generous - and it leaves Dean feeling just as he had that night with Pam. Vulnerable, flayed open. Seen.
He assumes it’s heaven’s off-brand kind of ESP that’s landed him here, seated at a teakwood dining table in a house over yonder.
There are soft sounds from the kitchen - cabinets opening, a gurgling coffee maker, a substratum of tuneless humming. Dean hunches over his plate and shovels another forkful of pie into his mouth. It’s sweet and rich, tart and crumbly, and he barely tastes it at all.
“You alright?”
Dean looks up to find Mary seated across from him. She’s a little younger than when he last saw her, but otherwise she’s just as he remembers - her yellow hair falling in waves over her shoulders, her eyes a soft Carolina blue.
She stares at him, calm and unconcerned, the bow of her lips turned up in a tiny smile.
Dean shakes his head and gives a little shrug. “Yeah, ‘course,” he says, gruffer than intended.
She notices, he’s sure, but she only tips her head in a nod. “Okay.”
A quietude stretches between them, peaceful but gravid. Mary tilts her head, face serene and mildly expectant, and she inches a pale hand forward on the table. His fingers clench around the little dessert fork, and he takes another bite.
She’s waiting, he realizes, for him to speak, to get there. Though where ‘there’ is, Dean’s got no damn idea.
“You know,” he says, to fill the silence, “Sammy asked me if I remembered anything,” he swallows, throat dry, and looks down at his plate, “‘bout bein’ a kid.”
Mary’s eyebrows pop up, and she smiles a little wider. “You remembered me,” she offers.
Dean’s eyes alight on hers, and his lips purse. There’s something something fragile in her face, a budding hope that he doesn’t want to crush. You made me sandwiches, he wants to say. You told me bedtime stories.
His stomach clenches. You burned alive, gutted on the ceiling.
Dean looks away, brow furrowed. “‘Course I did,” he grunts out, throat tight.
She gives him a look that goes right through him - compassionate, or maybe pitying. Her mouth turns down like she can hear his thoughts, and he bites his cheek, shamefaced.
“What else do you remember?” she asks, and her voice is mild and curious, lacking the censure Dean expected.
Dean reins in his surprise and dips his head, summoning a wry smile. “Well,” he says and points his fork at the plate of pie crumbs.
She rolls her eyes and nods, smiling once again. “Yes, obviously pie. What else.”
He stares at her for a moment, feeling wrong-footed and a little short-changed, then peers through the open French doors toward the mountainside. He scans his memories, steering clear of the ugly ones that present themselves first, looking for something - anything - to keep her smiling.
...Weedy grass and buzzing bees.
“Our backyard,” he murmurs, and feels his lips quirk up.
Mary’s smile grows soft, warm like the spring air. “Mm,” she hums. “Always overgrown. Your dad never wanted to mow it.”
Dean withholds a wince at the mention of John, and a muscle twitches in his jaw. “I liked it how it was.”
Mary’s eyes dart up to his, and her soft laugh lines deepen. “Yeah, you did.”
Dean’s eyes trace over her face, searching for something, though he’s not sure what. She’s still the girl who made a deal with a yellow-eyed demon. Still the woman who left, and left, and left again. She’s no more perfect now than she ever was, but...
She has laugh lines, and yellow hair, and Carolina blue eyes. And she’s looking at Dean like she’s missed him forever. Damn, if he hasn’t missed her, too.
Something loosens in his chest, and his fists unclench. He smiles, wan but sincere, and leans back in his seat, crossing his ankles under the table. “Coulda done without the bees though.”
She huffs a little laugh and shakes her head. “You loved the bees,” she counters.
Dean raises a doubtful eyebrow. “Did I?”
“Mhm,” she hums, nodding sagely. “You’d chase ‘em around, flapping your arms like little wings.”
Dean squints, searching his scattered memory. He remembers the yard, the foliage, the window into the kitchen. He remembers thunder and lightning and torrential downpour. He doesn’t remember himself.
“Huh,” he says, and folds his arms over his chest.
He stares across the table at Mary. She’s silent but smiling, her eyes far away. It’s a familiar look, one he’s seen on nearly everyone he knows in Heaven. Like they’re lost in a beautiful memory - a moment in their past lives that they didn’t regret.
Dean doesn’t think about his human life. He’d lived it, after all. That was enough.
“You drew me a map once.”
Dean eyes flick up from where they’d settled on his dirty plate, and his brow furrows. “A map?”
She nods, still staring glassy-eyed into the middle distance. “You followed one little bee all day long,” she murmurs. “Counted all the flowers she landed on. Then you,” she swallows, and her eyes go shiny, “you raced inside and scribbled it all out on the back of a—” a startled huff of laughter, “—a takeout menu.”
Dean watches her, the way her eyes flick back and forth, like she’s watching the scene unfold before her. There’s an ache near the center of his chest like a bruise. “I don’t remember that,” he says, voiced pitched low.
Her head tilts up, absent eyes meeting his as she pulls herself from reverie. “You were... three? Maybe four?” She looks down and brings a hand to settle over her heart. “It was beautiful,” she whispers, and tilts her head. “Wish I still had it.”
Dean nods at her, though she’s still looking away, and he feels a hot coil of guilt in his stomach. Mary had adored him, he knows that much, and she’d lost him as surely as he’d lost her. He remembers the expectant way he’d looked at her in the bunker, wanting something she couldn’t remember how to give. Something he barely even remembers himself.
There’s movement behind Mary’s head, and Dean’s eyes snap to it.
Something is... growing on the wall.
Dean’s fists clench up, and he watches with hawk eyes as the thing manifests, forming itself into a vaguely rectangular shape. He feels his lips purse tight and his spine straighten like a rod.
Mary senses his sudden tension and looks up, following his eyes over her shoulder.
“Oh my god,” she whispers in awe.
She unfolds herself from her chair and stands up slowly, as if in a dream. She walks the four paces to the wood-paneled wall, reaching out a cautious hand. Her fingers close around the frame of the thing, and she gives a soft sigh.
Dean stares at her back where the knobs of her spine meet her neck, her shoulder blades distorting the periwinkle plaid of her blouse. She turns around, her eyes fixed on her prize, thumbs smoothing over the simple wood frame.
She comes around the table, sliding into the chair at Dean’s side, and when she finally looks up at him, her eyes are bright and red-rimmed. She takes Dean’s hand in hers, her skin smooth and cool, and slips the little framed drawing into his palm.
He peers down at it and gives a startled bark of laughter.
The drawing is entirely ridiculous - an indecipherable riot of squiggly pen lines and waxy crayon color. There’s a messy bed of green near the bottom, which Dean assumes is grass, and it’s speckled with tiny blobs of vibrant pink and deep red - flowers, Dean thinks. Near the center of the page is a single white daisy with a bright yellow bumblebee hovering over it. A swirling purple line trails behind its black-striped body, making loop-de-loops around every flower. The sky is a strip of electric blue at the top, just above an empty field of white - the landscape drawn as children often do, with the heavens separated from the earth.
His fingers hover over a grease-stained corner, illegible text bleeding through. “Jeez,” he breathes out. “Clearly I missed my calling.”
He hears the broad smile in Mary’s voice. “Coulda been the next Da Vinci,” she says, nudging his shoulder.
Dean huffs and raises an eyebrow. “More like Picasso.”
She laughs at that, as he knew she would, and it sounds like Corinthian bells, chiming in harmony on the breeze.
Dean smiles to himself, eyes roving over his apparent masterpiece before alighting on a strange scribble in the corner.
“What’s this?” he murmurs, pointing a finger at the tiny black and blue squiggle.
“Hm?” Mary leans closer to him, and Dean’s nose twitches with the scent of tart apples clinging to her hair. She looks at the little scribble, frowning for a moment, before her eyebrows pop up. “Oh, wow,” she sighs out, leaning closer. “I forgot about that.”
She reaches out a hand to grasp the side of the frame opposite Dean’s, the small weight of the silly little drawing shared between them. She’s got that look again, like there’s an old Super 8 projection playing in her head. Dean wonders what’s on the reel.
She chews her lip for a moment, then tips her head toward Dean. “You remember what I used to tell you before bed?” she asks, peering up at his face.
Dean frowns. “Brush your teeth or they’ll turn green?”
She gives him a look. “That was Dad.”
Dean tips his head back in a nod. “Right. Uh...” Dean trails off for a moment, unsure. Nearly all of his childhood memories are of Mary, but they’re weathered and vague, filtered through the consciousness of a toddler. He barely remembers the words she said, only the lilting strains of her voice as she calmed him, soothed him, protected him—
An image flits across his mind, and he sucks in a breath: a tiny figurine that sat on the mantel, with fluffy little wings and a crown of white roses.
Dean blinks and shakes his head. “Angels are watching over me,” he intones.
He sees Mary nod in his peripheral vision, and her finger taps on the little scribble near his thumb.
“It’s—” Dean starts and frowns, askance, “...an angel?” he guesses.
“Mhm,” she hums, giving another slow nod. Her finger slides across the two tiny black scrawls, vaguely triangular and joined at the middle. “Wings,” she says, then taps the blue oval just above, “halo.” He sees her smile out of the corner of his eye. “You drew it all the time.”
Dean stares at the squiggle, a frown etching across his forehead. The figurine he remembers was nearly solid white, the only deviations its pink skin and dark eyes. There’s not a speck of white in the little scribble, no cherubic cloud-seeder to be found. Just messy black shapes and a faded blue circle. Black wings, blue halo.
Black wings. Blue halo.
Black wings.
... Blue—
The painting slips from his fingers as Mary takes it back in her hands. She holds it gently, reverently, as she stands and walks around the table. Dean shakes his head to clear it, and watches as she replaces the little picture on the center of the wall. It looks, at once, as if it has always hung there, and like he’d drawn it but a moment ago.
A shiver climbs up the back of Dean's neck. He shrugs it off.
“How’s Dad?” he asks lowly, and regrets it immediately.
Mary turns around, her eyes a little wide, eyebrows climbing toward her hairline. Dean isn’t sure why he asked. He backtraces his train of thought, only to find he hadn’t had one at all; seems he’s done his usual shtick of putting his foot in his mouth the very moment he opens it.
Mary seems to sense his imminent retraction, and she settles her face into a genial smile. “He’s good,” she says mildly and comes back to her seat across from Dean. “Wasn’t sure he’d like it here, at first. But,” she settles into the worn wooden chair, “I think he does.”
Dean represses a scoff at that. “Why wouldn’t he?” he says and picks up his fork, eyes downcast. “He’s got you.” He slides the crumbs around on his plate, shoulders hunching forward. “All he ever wanted.”
Mary is silent for a long moment, and Dean doesn’t look up - he can picture her face well enough. His fork scrapes against white porcelain, the sun a bright glare on the stainless steel tines.
Mary sighs, barely audible. “You ever gonna talk to him?”
Her voice is soft and ambivalent, as if she’s already accepted his answer. It gets Dean’s back up, and he peers up at her through flinty eyes.
She’s staring at him, face guileless and open. There’s a spark of curiosity in her eyes, flavored with a sort of tempered sadness. But there’s no reproof, no expectation, and Dean gets the strange feeling that there isn’t a right answer. Or a wrong one.
Dean’s jaw goes a little slack, and for a moment, he thinks he might simply say, No.
Mary tips her head to the side, eyes going soft as her lips turn up, and the moment passes.
“‘Course, I will,” Dean grumbles, casting his eyes back to his empty plate. He shrugs. “Not avoiding him, just...” he trails off and shakes his head. Best leave it there.
Mary takes a slow breath, and Dean sees the vague shape of her leaning forward in her seat.
“Well,” she starts, lacing her fingers on the tabletop. “I won’t speak for him—”
Dean snorts. “But.”
Mary sighs, amused and resigned. “But... I know he’s got a lot to say. He just...” she pauses for a moment, then shrugs her shoulders. “He doesn’t really know how to say it. He knows he—” she cuts herself off with a quick shake of her head. “Well,” her hands raise in a brief shrug. “It’s his truth to tell.”
Dean nods absently, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He’s known since ‘they live over yonder’ that a reckoning would come for him and his dad. Dean just isn’t quite sure if he’s ready for whatever truth John might tell - or if he’s even inclined to listen to it.
Dean clenches his jaw and drops his fork onto the plate. It clatters loud in the calm of the spring afternoon, and Dean barely restrains a flinch.
Mary leans further forward, hand sliding halfway across the table.
“Dean—”
“Think Sammy’s gonna join the Arch,” Dean says overloud, settling his elbows on the tabletop.
Mary pauses at the abrupt change of subject, but deftly lets it slide. Her eyes flutter a bit, and she pulls her hand back. “Yeah?” she asks, giving a slightly awkward smile.
Dean feels a twinge of guilt in his throat and swallows it down. “Mm,” he nods. “Eileen’s gonna join. And lord knows wherever she goes—”
“Sam goes,” Mary finishes, her smile seeming to widen and soften at once. “He loves her,” she murmurs.
Dean’s stomach clenches taut, even as a smile comes unbidden. He remembers Sam peering over his shoulder as they’d stood on the bridge, his mouth slack and eyes liquid. Dean had known without looking who stood behind him. Sam had gone to her on shaky legs that crumbled beneath him as he reached her. Dean’s vision had gone blurry, and he’d turned away from them, eyes squinting out at the sunlit mountain.
“Yeah,” Dean says, voice a little thick. He clears his throat and nods. “And I get it, ya know. He—” he interrupts himself on a wincing inhale. “He lost her before.” A dry swallow. “Twice.”
Mary makes a little noise in her throat. “Three times,” she whispers.
Dean frowns, confused, and glances up at Mary. Her eyes are shiny, mouth screwed up in a tiny sad smile.
Oh. “She... she went before him?”
Mary’s eyebrows scrunch together, and she sniffs. “She stayed with us. Til he came.”
Dean’s brows rise at that. Offering comfort in a time of need isn’t really his parents’ bag - at least, not that Dean can remember.
Then again, he can’t think of anyone who knows grief better.
“Huh,” he grunts in lieu of a response, and glances up.
Mary is still staring at him, but the melancholy has given way to a sharp sort of consideration. Her eyes dart over his face, slightly squinted, and she looks so much like Sam that Dean turns to stare out at the sun.
Here in Heaven, Sam and Mary are quite alike: happy, whole, and ready for a new life - a new fight.
Dean is just... tired.
“You know,” Mary begins, and Dean’s eyes flick to her hands, still resting on the table. “He’s not going anywhere,” she says, and Dean’s eye twitches in a wince. “You know that, right?”
Dean nods and swallows, looking down at his own hands. “Yeah, I know.” And he does know.
“Even if he joins the Arch,” she continues as if he hadn’t spoken. Her voice is ardent but still gentle, and she leans forward. “He’s not going anywhere. He—” she huffs and tips her head side to side. “He might get a little banged up, maybe, but—”
He knows. “I know.”
“—he...” Mary trails off on a sigh, stretching her arm across the table. Her fingers brush his, and he holds himself still. “No one’s gonna take him away, Dean.” She runs her thumb over the knuckles of his fist. “It’s work,” she acknowledges. “Dirty work, even, but... it’s not life or death,” she murmurs with a tiny smile. “Not here.”
Dean knows this. He knows all of this, but... But that doesn’t stop him from... It’s not the same as...
It doesn’t make him—
“I know,” he intones, giving her a tight smile.
Her eyebrows make a sympathetic shape, and she pulls her hand back. Dean’s shoulders relax, just slightly.
“You know, your dad thought you would join,” she says with a little smile.
Dean huffs out a chuckle, bitter and resigned. “‘Course he did,” he grunts, pressing his thumbs together.
“Dean,” Mary sighs, tone somewhere between chiding and apologetic.
Dean’s lips turn down, and he shakes his head. “Sorry,” he mutters, mostly sincerely.
“It wasn’t an expectation,” Mary says, then gives a little shrug. “He just... I think he figured all the—” she shakes her head, as if searching for the words, “-the soul-searching would...” she sighs. “I dunno... Make your teeth itch,” she finishes with a wry smile.
Dean gives her one back, though he feels a headache coming on. His teeth do itch. Everything itches. Everything chafes.
“Well,” he starts and swallows again. His throat’s gone bone dry. “Still searching, I guess,” he says, and he supposes it might be true, but- “Not sure what for, though.”
Mary reaches her hand out again, and Dean goes tense for a moment. His eyes flit to hers, and he finds them crinkled at the corners. She’s smiling at him as she’d smiled at his little drawing, as she’d smiled when she sat him down, as she’d smiled while he ate his pie. She’s smiling at him now, as she had when he was a boy, as she always has.
Her skin looks like clouds, her eyes like the sky. She laces her fingers with Dean’s, and the tension across his back fades away.
“I think,” Mom murmurs, “you’ll know it when you find it.”
chapter one | chapter three
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