justforspite | SPN: The First Born: Part Nine

Part Nine
belief in things unseen

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was her face and that sorry-ass look. He was curled up next to his body; half his spirit melded with the flesh, the other half was on his side and in a fetal ball. The most random thought passed through him—did Adam and Eve ever curl up like this? He turned a little away from her and noticed that they weren’t in the Critical Care Unit any more. He was connected to less than half the machines he’d previously been jacked into and he was breathing all on his own.

“How long was I out?” He asked, rolling up, his legs vanishing into his legs.

“Not long,” she said quietly. Her dejection was evident.

“‘Not long’ angel time or ‘not long’ for someone who isn’t immortal?”

“Um . . . about a week or so. You missed Christmas. Tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve . . . Merry Belated Christmas,” she said lamely.

“A week is pretty long,” he said.

“Not that long,” she countered.

“Yeah, pretty freaking long Ami.”

She threw her hands up, “I won’t argue time with you Michael. You invented it.”

Dean sat up, sitting cross-legged inside his still form. “Where’s Sam?”

“Getting breakfast with your aunt.”

“My aunt?”

“That’s what Missouri told the doctors. Your dad’s sister.”

He smiled, “And they bought that?”

She allowed herself to grin a little, “Well, they were mostly concerned about how bad it would look if they didn’t believe her.”

He chuckled, “Classic.”

She felt the ice between them had melted a little and she attempted,” Okay, big pink elephant can finally be broached?” He frowned and turned away. She sighed, “Your grousing skills were inherited from your father—”

“Ami—”

“You’re upset with me!” She exclaimed, heartbroken.

He shook his head, “No, Ami—on the scale from ‘kinda ticked’ to ‘really fucking pissed’ you’re a little higher up than ‘upset’.”

“I wasn’t going to let you die,” she said in her defense.

“But Sam’s not expendable!” He shouted, a rage like he’d never felt before closing in from the corners of his mind. She shrank back to the wall. “If a choice has to get made, you’re going to choose him first, that’s how it goes.”

“I won’t,” she whispered.

He bolted out of the bed and came up to her, nose to nose. “Say whatever you want. Think whatever you want. If you are ever in a position to help him then you will or I’ll spin you inside out.” Something dark flitted over his eyes. An oily cloud of complete opaque onyx.

Ami gasped, “Micha?”

The black quickly vanished and Dean’s spirit wavered and he collapsed, her arms quickly catching him. “Ami—?” He groaned, his vision blurring.

She trembled, “Umm . . . you, uh, you exerted yourself too quickly,” she lied, holding him until his mind cleared.

“Was I saying something?” He asked, groggily.

So many lies. As the angel of truth she cursed herself under the weight of so many lies. “No, you were just walking around.” She prayed to her mother, her father, that this would be the last time she saw Micah emerge.

“I’m supposed to be pissed at you,” he grumbled, still resting in her arms.

“Okay,” she said simply, not wanting to provoke whatever it was she had provoked before.

He couldn’t help but grin, “Human females aren’t generally so passive Ami.”

She snorted, “I remember Lilith.”

He hummed, “True.”

“Aggression, dominance, power plays, they aren’t needed between us. We have ranks and files and I couldn’t presume to become your alpha.”

“But you’d still ignore a direct order?” He asked, his voice a little far away. Letting go of himself was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. He felt something essential be released and for a while he’d felt like he was just fighting to break back through the surface of himself again. Ami said it had been a week but it had felt like an entire lifetime to him. He’d felt himself struggling, merging, diverging and it didn’t feel real or sane but it felt necessary and essential. When he woke he hadn’t felt completely ‘him’ anymore and it frightened him. In the end, Sam and he were both alive so could he really complain to her? But he felt that having to pull that energy out of him may have unleashed something he’d most likely have wanted, needed to stay buried.

“And I’d ignore it again,” she replied, helping him to his feet. “Let’s hope that doesn’t have to happen?”

He sighed, “Yeah, pretty sure I agree with that.” Dean walked around the room a few times, testing out his motion and strength. He still felt weak but more was being restored to him every passing moment. “So, did I break any records?” He asked, glancing over to his healing body.

“Like?” She asked, confused.

“Most Jellified Person, Un-Jellified Fastest?”

Ami giggled, “I think your neurologist wet herself and your Internist found Jesus so that was nice to see.”

Dean scratched the back of his head, smiling, “You know . . . talk to me a day before all this shit happened and I . . . I don’t know.”

“Your faith had been shaken?” She asked, though it had been clear when she overheard him talking to Dr. Bose in Wyoming.

He arched a brow, “Something would have to be pretty solid to surprise someone if it ever got shaken . . . my faith wasn’t ever really solid.”

“Why do you always try to lie to me?” She asked with a smile. He seemed confused and she tried to explain, “Well . . . hmm, okay, umm . . . no talisman would have any power behind it if there wasn’t faith to reinforce it. Example: A crucifix in the hands of an atheist is—”

“As useful as hip-hop to a redneck?”

She smiled, “Exactly! An exorcism prayer to someone who was on the bench about the existence of God?”

He nodded, catching her drift, “Beachfront property in Kansas.”

“So even with the tiny sliver of faith you have, the microscopic faith that to you is no faith at all . . . is so powerful that you can do the work you do everyday.” Her smile fell a little, “I think that was probably also one of the main things Azrael saw in you . . . how he knew that you weren’t all human. If you were, nothing you did would have any power. Your problem isn’t lack of faith in the existence of things unseen, you didn’t trust anymore.”

He leaned against the foot of his bed. “It’s hard for me . . .” his voice trailed off.

“What is?”

“To know. To know and then realize that no matter what, no matter how much faith or devotion you have, bad shit still happens to good people.”

Amitiel walked over and sat next to him. She placed her hand on his arm, “How much of before do you remember?”

An eternity’s worth of memories that he’d eventually have to sort through and piece together. “A lot,” he answered.

“Do you remember home? Heaven?” She asked, seeing the confusion first float across his features then she saw him smile something warm, something childlike. Something close to amazement as the memory of that place came to the fore of his mind. He was picturing heaven.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

“It’s true, bad things do happen to good people. It can’t be avoided but a minute there, a second there, more than makes up for a lifetime here.” His jaw shook and he looked away when she touched his chin and caught his hazel eyes, “Everyday is better than the last and she’s happy. Mary’s happy.” He nodded, a few stray tears falling from his stoic face. Ami hugged him, “No one will ever take that away from her. That’s the promise of faith.”

“You know what’s most fucked up about a self-fulfilling prophecy?” Lucy asked, reclined against her bed of skulls; a Golgotha of blood and gristle.

“The self-fulfilling part?” Azrael asked, with no hidden frustration.

Appoloin yawned.

“The fact that everything you do only leads faster to the designed destiny,” she said.

Azrael groaned, “That’s the self-fulfilling part Luce.”

“Stuff it!” She shouted. “The self-fulfilling part is the point where we are right now. The crossroads. We have one play left then we’re on our bellies like serpents. We can act or let Michael play ghost buster until every demon on Earth comes crashing down over our heads. If we act, we have a 50/50 chance to either dominate the situation on Earth again or do not pass go, do not collect 200 and go straight to—”

“Already in hell,” Appoloin interjected.

“When I ask for your opinion remind me to kill myself.”

“Don’t be jealous Luce, you’re the one who fucked up and thought you could take down Mom. Mom Is. You don’t need too much logic to realize what that means. Is me, Is you, Is that darkness Azrael’s trapped in. Air, light, stars, space. What the fuck?”

“Blah blah!” She screamed, always the petulant child. “I don’t have to justify my thinking to you Polly!”

“Please don’t. Not in the mood for ‘crazy’.” He went back to listlessly watching the mouth of hell. Being the angel of destruction and the bouncer for hell was a damn boring job but he never complained. He liked his ass just where it was, thank you.

Her mind was made up in a fit of impertinent rage, not considering the consequences of her actions and not considering the hell she would soon bring upon herself. Self-fulfilling prophecies were often never kind and never forgiving. “Azrael, make it happen!”

“Won’t work,” Appoloin said, stretching.

“Last—nerves—Polly,” she warned.

He dryly replied, “Oh wow . . . cause I care? What you’ve got planned won’t work because Michael’s being on Earth was done with purpose and it’s a divine purpose. You fuck with his destiny and I can assure you you’ll get fucked. Remember Jesus? Remember him?”

“Thanks so much! Shut up now!” She smiled broadly.

He snickered, “Whatever Luce. I just want front row seats when your ass becomes grass.”

“Douche.”

When his brother walked into the room, healthy, whole, Dean just wanted to wrap his arms around him and then make sure he still had ten fingers and ten toes. It wasn’t his machismo that stopped him but rather the disappointing knowledge that he really couldn’t. The almost maternal role he’d taken in Sam’s life had reared its ugly PTA-meeting-attending head several times in their lives but no time so strongly as this.

Ami watched him and could feel Shekhinah emanating from him. As the angel of love and protection Michael was the guardian and vessel for Shekhinah, what people call the Holy Spirit. Being always in such close proximity to that energy gave him a vast capacity for love. She realized, sensing the power of it now, how much he loved his brother and began to understand why he was willing to die for him. Christ was once one with Shekhinah and his capacity for love allowed his sacrifice of life.

She suddenly felt small. She suddenly felt what it was he’d been telling her. The value of life compared to the value of love. She wondered if she’d been wrong about John Winchester as well. Did he die to save the world or to save his son? She backed away from him and left them alone as she tried to reconcile these new conflicts within her.

Dean came up close and searched long and hard for a scar that had already faded. He wanted to tell him to get more sleep ‘cause he looked worn out. He wanted to tell him to eat something because his clothes looked too big on him. He needed a haircut and a change of clothes and he was ready to give Missouri a piece of his mind for not watching over his Sammy.

Yeah, he exploded into full Jewish grandmother mode and grinned; he’d missed it so much.

Sam sat down by the bed and took Dean’s hand through the rails. “Never thought this would be how we spent the New Year.”

Dean shook his head, “Right now’s the best New Year ever.”

“Dean?” Sam asked, his voice tense with anxiety.

He smiled broad and wide. He’d almost forgotten. His ability to be heard by his brother and Sam’s own psychic antennae made this a two-way call. He sank his hand into his hand and squeezed Sam’s palm as much as his healing fingers could.

“I’m right here Sam,” he said quietly. “Don’t worry about me.”

Sam mashed his large free hand on his watering eyes and said, “I knew I heard you. It was you wasn’t it? I-I thought I was dying and then I saw you.” Sam cracked a smile, “You went poltergeist on that gurney.”

“Hell yeah, that fucker was on a mission.” He said it in such a way that made Sam laugh out loud. “Fucking T2.” Sam kept on smiling, over a week’s long tension escaping him with ease. “He won’t ‘be back’.”

“Oh man, you have no idea how much I missed your lame jokes.”

“Dude . . . offended.”

Sam chuckled until he was out of breath. He felt like his life, which had been on pause, was finally allowed to move on. He had so many questions. He needed so many answers. He took a deep breath, “But, wow, how’d you know?” He didn’t see Dean’s smile had gone as he tried to formulate an answer to this.

Was this the best time to tell Sam that his big brother was God’s #1 avenging angel? That he was sent here to save him or destroy him if he couldn’t? That if he were never sent then Sam would be four years older, a few inches shorter and probably playing for the other team?

Maybe not today. Maybe not ever but definitely not today. Perhaps Sam was strong enough to hear shit like that but Dean just wanted some kind of normalcy left in his life, and for his life, this out of body communiqué was pretty fucking normal.

“Hmm, how’d I know?” He asked in a low, raspy voice. “I-I don’t know,” he said then began to hum the Twilight Zone theme, “Do do do do, do do do do—”

Sam laughed, “Shut up Dean.”

“How is he?” Missouri Moseley asked into the receiver of her cell phone. She stood outside Dean’s new room in the neurological sciences in-patient floor of Canmore General Hospital. She glanced around the hallway. It was pretty empty with visiting hours having been over at lunch time. She and Sam still had 24 hour access mainly because she made it very clear that she and Sam would have 24 hour access. There wasn’t a soul near enough to notice that her phone wasn’t on, or that her eyes were focused onto invisible eyes.

“He’s better,” Ami replied, sitting cross-legged on the wall, defying gravity in a stretched lotus position. “If he continues at this rate then he’ll be out of here next week.”

Missouri nodded, smiling, “Good. And he’s still himself and all?”

Ami nodded, “Sure. I mean before I’d have preferred he break through but I’m realizing that maybe the distinction between Dean and Michael is all semantics? They’re more the same than I’d given allowance for.”

Missouri tried not to give the reaper the stink eye, “Dean Winchester is not exactly my vision of St. Michael and ain’t no way in hell you’re gonna convince me otherwise.”

Amitiel smiled, “Then you don’t understand Michael,” she said simply which did much to rile and rankle Ms. Moseley but the peace and calm that Ami exuded quickly relaxed her. “There is one thing though,” she added, worry etching her perfect mask.

“What?”

“I-I don’t want it to be true so I shouldn’t say it and give it life but . . . for a moment there, right after he woke, he wasn’t Dean or Michael.”

“What are you saying? What came through?”

“Angels have two parts. There is the Essence. In human’s it’s the soul, their humanity. In a person, the soul can be corrupted but in an angel, our souls are incorruptible. Angels have a second part called the Sil, the raw chaos that exists when something is devoid of a soul, when there is no humanity. Our souls make up 99.99% of us and our Sils are minuscule. They are just enough to allow us to cause essential disruption, like allowing me to take souls and allowing Michael to battle demons. Lucifer’s Sil is perhaps only a small amount of her, probably 90% of her is still Essence but you see what horror she has wrought with only so little Sil. She’s cultivated it that way. It’s hard to remove yourself from your Essence. But . . . Michael was born in the chaos. In the beginning there was rage and confusion and he was the first step to balance so his Sil is the greatest of ours. Mother, father had to spiritually bind him when the light was created. All of us were born in the light, he was the only one born in the darkness. It was only the force of mother, of father, that made his Sil dormant.”

Missouri paled, “But you said you saw it?”

“Yes, just a flash of it but it terrified me. El is to be godlike. Amiti-El. Isra-El. Micha-El. The Sil cannot be godlike. Where Michael is divine, Micha is devoid. I saw Micha.”

“Do we have to be worried here?”

Ami smiled, shaking her head. “Nothing can separate the Essence and the Sil. Michael’s done trillions of year’s worth of meditation to dominate his darkness. He’s only lost control once and I wasn’t really fond of reaping dinosaurs anyway . . . We’ll be fine,” she added lamely.

Missouri’s mouth hung open, “And if we aren’t? If his Sil does take over?”

It was Ami’s turn to pale, “You mustn’t think of it.” She stepped down from the wall, her hands shaking, “You mustn’t even imagine it.”

One play.
One bullet.

part TEN

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Look what you did!!! You made me so very very happy!!!

I'm in love with this story and the banter you throw about. Serious issues serious belief sytems but you've turned them into a story that is believable and totally got me hooked!

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SPN: The First Born: Part Nine

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