Chapter Text
i.
Dean does not believe in god anymore, except for the fact that he does.
He has no way of understanding, standing in the midst of a storm with nobody but a father figure and some knives strapped to his boots to guide him here. Yet, here, he decides to take chances and the sky decides to burn.
"No, no, yes goddammit, alright yes I'll do what you want," he begs for solace from the war behind his eyelids.
No one knows why Dean crawled his way back from oblivion. Too busy tending to the scars, thinking he had always asked too much, thanking the air he breathes—he decides to ask how instead. Who and then how. His brother is safe but that does not answer the litany of who and how and who and how (and sometimes why but never aloud).
Try as he might to be nothing but grateful, Dean does not know the stranger with his brother's name. Sam, the one who never used to stand before him with averted eyes because he wasn't sure Dean was even real. Sam, who was wise beyond his years and so, so good that Dean questions how they are related most of the time. Dean takes after Dad, Sam takes after Mom; and so on.
Dean is the one who now grits his teeth and bears it like the blood father that had shaped him in his image.
That father that may be holy batters at the door and grips him by the throat. His other other father, Bobby, his real father who raised him, grips a rifle and stands by his side like none of the others dared to and maybe well
ii.
maybe in that split second, Dean decides to pray. He only prays when he is desperate for comfort (and maybe he is always desperate for comfort but he decides no one is supposed to know).
Just say something funny for a chance to bask in the presence of a stranger’s smile or none of it is worth it (and to think that maybe nothing is worth it, well, that defeats all the waste-not-want-nots and the single yes). Maybe, as scarred as he is, he has a family to take care of and a god to curse between sleepless nightmares.
Maybe he needs to stop asking so many questions, or maybe he needs to ask more of them. Maybe Hell was not his Sodom and Gomorrah, but his greatest flood. Maybe it is regret and a promise that it will never come to this again, or maybe, like Lot's wife, this question is turning around to be his last.
He stands at the precipice, summoning what brought him from the depths and shaking, afraid because he has never been given an answer as clear as yes oh
iii.
yes, the sky still burns like a bedroom ceiling and the wind howls like a life he barely remembers. Yes, he curses god for killing him and curses god for bringing him back. Yes, he curses the angels he has not yet seen and the ones who were supposed to keep him safe. Yes, he curses for the worst of it and the best of it, because none of it can be justified by universal law, and not even his brother can outwit the twisted logic of loss.
Yes, Dean does not believe in god anymore except he has nothing else going for him, and those barn doors swing open
iv.
and he sees no deity who pulled him from the dirt. He sees a man claiming to be an angel like the ones who abandoned him. He sees a man who crosses all of his defenses and who stands just a bit too close.
"You have no faith," says the man who claims to be an angel.
Dean sees the man with a stoic expression and knows that the stoicism hides a sort of oblivious sadness. This angel does not understand that Dean has no reason to believe empty promises like they are watching over you they will protect you.
The walls illuminate with fire and lightning. With the shadow of power of moloch of holy of holies that strikes against rotting wooden boards and rusted metal.
And the angel says, far too softly to be real, "Good things do happen."
Not in Dean's experience they do not.
"What's the matter?" asks the angel who tilts his head in wonder. "You don't think you deserve to be saved."
The protests for this statement are immeasurable but Dean can only be human. They die at his lips. They die because he had brought his knife to the angel’s chest and the chest still rose and fell, so perhaps faith and fear are somewhere in between good and evil and god. Helpless, yes, he has always felt helpless. First by youth, then fire, then everything after, but here there is something else stirring within. Something burning like the brand on his shoulder that tethers him to the world he never thought he would see again.
"We have work for you."
Here comes the orders; sobering from the somber confusion between them in which a righteous man had looked an angel in the eye and denied.
v.
Dean does not believe in god anymore except he has to. He has gotten answers to the litany of questions running through his mind only for more to manifest themselves in their stead.
He does not believe in angels except he sees them everywhere—they mark his soul in an attempt to convince him that he is holy and worthy and somehow okay when he knows that he is not. He lacks faith and he wants even though he should not. He does not believe but he decides to look—
—and he is gripped by that gaze until he rises. Dean, he rises slowly but determined all the same to face the oncoming universe, thinking about infinity and cosmic dynamo. The startling truth is that here, here is where Dean is understood in a way that cannot be paralleled. This is who had cradled his soul through hell. So Dean decides to look.
The angel has eyes the color of Heaven’s sky: something ethereal and unknowable and millennia-old.
The angel has eyes trained on Dean like he is the world—and for a second he believes it.