SPN: Send Them Home on the Morning Train

[alexseanchai]

For various people on fandom_stocking.

Title: Send Them Home on the Morning Train
Rating: PG
Summary: Dean's not the only one who's met a reaper.
Word Count: 600

Sam thinks he must have blacked out for a moment, from the pain; it's gone now, but Dean is screaming his name, shaking, shuddering, as though something's wrong—as though someone died—and oh God Sam is such an idiot, should have killed Jake anyway or kept him talking a few minutes longer or something anything that wouldn't leave Dean like this—Dean, Dean, I'm right here, look at me, look at me—

Jake gets away, no surprises there, and Dean carries Sam into one of the abandoned houses and lays him out on a bed and just stands there, barely blinks when Bobby palms the car keys, and all Sam can do is stand next to Dean while they sit shiva over Sam...no, it's not actually sitting shiva till after the burial, is it? Sam can't bring himself to call it a wake, though—Jessica was Irish enough for an Irish wake, and this is entirely too sober in both senses to be one—Sam looks outside at an engine sound and here comes Bobby, though, driving a truck towing back Dean's car, and he's probably got food and booze, so.

Sam resolutely ignores the pretty blonde who appears from nowhere right about then, except to tell her, once, that he's not going with her. He's dead, so she must be a reaper; he's not leaving Dean until Dean sends him on his way.


"I've seen you before, haven't I," Sam says to the pretty blonde who's appeared from nowhere outside Lucky Chin's.

"Yes," she answers. "You should have come with me then."

Sam gets up, looks down; oh. "Dean would still have made the deal," Sam says. She tilts her head. Sam blinks. "He would have," he repeats. "He'd still have brought me back."

She turns to watch Hope and Wes through the restaurant window. "As stoned as she is, she can't stop him," she says. "I don't know why I came."


Asphyxia kills in three minutes tops. But that estimate assumes the presence of breath in the lungs; there's a lot of oxygen in any given exhalation, and someone who can't breathe can still survive on that last lungful for those three precious minutes. Without lungs, well, it's no real surprise when Sam blacks out in under a minute, nor that a familiar pretty blonde shows up right after he comes to. But her eyes go wide when she sees him. "Oh no, not you," she says.

Sam rolls to his feet and grabs her wrist, ignoring Dean; he can't let himself think about Dean, not now (this is the same mistake he made a few days ago; this is fixing that same mistake). "You're a reaper," he says. "If you take me with you, is there any way to bring me back?"

"N-no."

"Good," Sam says (he doesn't look at Dean). "Get me out of here."

"I won't," she says. "I can't. Let me go!"

Sam blinks. "Why are you afraid?"

"Revelation nine six," she says, "if you die, he'll kill me," and yanks herself free and vanishes while Sam's trying to place the verse.


"'And their faces were as the faces of men, and they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions,'" Dean reads. "Are we sure this isn't just John the Revelator on an acid trip?"

Sam snorts. "Let's hope," he says, because Sam knows damn well he hasn't got the seal of God on his forehead, but his attention's caught by another verse in the chapter.

And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.