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lit_gal
GrayAfter having her world destroyed by the Winchesters, Eve wanted to rebuild her family. She claimed a soul with his own dark power and his own moral gray. He would be her champion. Hopefully. Xander just wanted to go home, preferably before the hunters Sam and Dean Winchester caught up with him.
Chapter ONE :: Chapter TWO :: Chapter THREE :: Chapters 4+5 :: Chapter SIX :: Chapter SEVEN :: Chapter EIGHT :: Chapter NINE :: Chapter TEN :: Chapter ELEVEN : Chapter TWELVE :: Chapter THIRTEEN :: Chapter FOURTEEN :: Chapter FIFTEEN :: Chapter SIXTEEN :: Chapter Seventeen :: Chapter Eighteen :: Chapter Nineteen :: Chapter TWENTY :: Chapter TWENTY-ONE :: Chapter TWENTY-TWO : Chapter TWENTY-THREE :: Chapter TWENTY-FOUR :: Chapter TWENTY-FIVE :: Chapter Twenty-SIX :: Chapter Twenty-SEVEN :: Chapter Twenty-EIGHT :: Chapter Twenty-NINE :: Chapter Thirty :: Chapter THIRTY-ONE :: Chapter Thirty Two :: Chapter THIRTY-THREE :: Chapter THIRTY-FOUR :: Chapter THIRTY-FIVE ::
Chapter THIRTY-SIX -- Saturday
Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN -- Sunday Morning
Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT -- Sunday Afternoon
Chapter THIRTY-NINE -- Sunday Evening
Chapter FORTY and Forty-ONE-- Sunday Late
Epilogue
Benny walked out into the night, searching the faint ghosts that rose to meet him. He figured only one person would be carrying the sort of mental carnage he saw on his front lawn. “Dean? That you, brother?”
A shadow near the fence moved. “Benny,” Dean called.
“Hey. Lizzy has a good batch of gumbo cookin’ up. Come on in.” Benny headed downslope to where Dean waited.
“I’m not really fit company right now.”
“I ain’t ever fit company, and she still puts up with me.” Benny grinned, but his smile faded as he got close enough to feel the anguish rolling off Dean in waves.
“So, is it working?” Dean asked. He gestured toward the house on the hill.
“What? The whole going straight and playing the part of the boring man?” Benny moved closer and leaned on the split rail fence. “Nah. I go out and clean out a few nests every now and then. I get me some visions… track down some folk that I reckon need tracking. But most of the time I do just keep the grill running, and that’s fine as long as I can let the needs out every once in a while.”
Dean closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face.
“What has you all tied up in knots, Dean?”
“Nothing.” And that was about the worst case of lying that Benny had ever heard. He nodded and looked out over the gentle slope. Dean would talk when he was ready and not before. Benny was a little surprised that it only took about twenty seconds for Dean to reach that point. Either life was wearing him down worse than purgatory had or he was carrying too much.
“Sam loves the whole military thing. ‘Hey, let Carter and her guys handle it. Why doesn’t Dorsey try out his fancy new powers on this one? Maybe the general can just call in a fucking airstrike.’” Dean’s mocking voice wasn’t exactly attractive. The mention of Dorsey’s name made Benny reach back through that connection he could always feel. The vision of a tall black man with a military bearing came to mind. His brother—the other slayer. He could see Dorsey’s guide, a woman with red hair and a quick smile. Willow, his memory supplied. Benny felt a flash of both warmth and frustration.
“The military is letting Dorsey do some hunting then?”
“They love the powers.” Dean lifted his head and seemed to search the horizon for something he didn’t find. “Giles is a prick. He’s like Bobby, only with the arrogance of leviathan shoved up his ass.” Dean sighed. “But he does know a lot of lore, more than Dad ever did.”
Dean stared out at the darkness as the bugs sang their chorus. “He doesn’t want to hunt,” Dean whispered. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who Dean meant, and it sure wasn’t this Giles. “If we aren’t hunters together, what do we have in common?”
Benny couldn’t answer that, so he didn’t.
Pushing away from the fence, Dean started to pace. “We’re hunters. We were raised to be hunters. But he can just walk away from a fight—push it off onto some jarhead who salutes nicely and the he doesn’t think anything more about it until he gets the fucking report. He locks himself in a room with the research, and that’s it. He doesn’t want anything more, not the hunt, and sure as hell not me.” Dean froze.
Benny reckoned it was more complicated than that. Dean had gone to hell, but he’d done it knowing he was trying to save his brother. Sam had learned that his whole life had been one long dress rehearsal for having Satan climb up into him and destroy the world. Benny figured that would be enough to make a man want to avoid any repeats of that. But Dean wasn’t in a mood to hear anything, so he waited.
“If I’m not… What do I have to offer him if not hunting?” Dean asked, and he sounded so lost that Benny couldn’t stand by. He bent down and ducked under the top rail before going to Dean’s side and resting a hand on his back.
“He doesn’t want that life because of what Lucifer’s done to him, not because of anything you have or haven’t done. You can still offer him your support.”
“My support to not hunt.” Dean said the words so weakly that it was pretty clear he didn’t want that to be the right answer.
“My pappy, my human pappy… he wanted me to be a priest,” Benny said. “He had this whole life planned for me. He put an awful lot of energy into teaching me reading and writing when there weren’t too many folks down here who could. Mostly folk died young and their bodies kept the gaters happy. But my pappy… he had all these plans.”
“That didn’t involve you being a vampire or a slayer,” Dean finished for him.
“I had to make my own way, and my daddy’s plans weren’t right for me. Now, I coulda gone and struggled real hard to make myself fit into that life, if I’d loved him enough to do that. Sadly, I didn’t. My human pappy wasn’t the nicest of men, so I wasn’t all that tempted to make the sacrifice.”
Dean looked over. “You think Sam’s sacrificing for me?”
“I think he’s trying real hard to be the brother you want. You said he walked away clean… twice now. But this time around, he’s still researching all these beasties because he still wants part of your life. He loves you that much.”
Dean pressed his eyes closed. “I don’t want him to do it for me.”
“I know, brother.”
“I just… It’s who we are.”
“It’s who you are, Dean.”
Dean pressed his eyes closed so tightly that wrinkles gathered at the edges. “What am I supposed to do? Walk away? Tell him I never want him to hunt again? Because that would be a lie.”
“I know.”
Dean turned and gave Benny and anguished look. “How am I supposed to fix this?”
Benny held his empty hands out. “I ain’t got answers, cher. You know I’m here for you if you need, but I don’t know what to tell you about any of this.”
“You’re here. Right.” Dean gave a rough laugh. “The sad thing is that I’m jealous of Lizzy.”
“Lizzy? Why?” That did seem to be a bit of a detour.
“Because she has someone. I’ve seen Dorsey and Willow work. Dorsey may be the slayer, but Willow… she’s not all human, either, is she? The doctors keep trying to pin it down, but all they know is that she heals faster and produces more blood and runs a little faster and is getting stronger every day. She’s the other part of him. And that’s what Lizzy has. She’s part of something.”
“You want to be my other half?” Benny asked. That shocked him. True, he’d seen Dean at his worst in purgatory and knew what it meant to curl around the other man, to live and sleep so close together they felt like one person, but Dean was right that Lizzy and Willow weren’t all human anymore. He’d always figured Dean for the sort to hang onto his humanity.
“Not an option,” Dean said.
Benny curled his fingers around Dean’s arm. “Me and Lizzy… she’s like a daughter to me, Dean. There’s room for you. However you want this to work, there’s room for you.”
Dean shook his head. “It’s stupid. I’m just having a bad day.” Dean grinned, and suddenly all that pain and loneliness vanished under his smile.
Benny couldn’t stand to lose Dean to that smug imposter who would swagger around with all the pain poorly hidden inside. He pressed his fingers tightly into Dean’s arm. Letting his power unfurl, he watched Dean’s eyes as Dean felt the power invade him, seeking out the cracks in Dean’s defenses. “I call ‘em guides, Dean. It’s hard to avoid listening when you have a guide telling you you’re wrong. They have a power. But just because Lizzy’s one don’t mean I couldn’t use some help out on the road. You have a place with me, and I ain’t talking about for the night.”
Benny felt Dean’s shock, and that jostled his defenses enough that Benny set an anchor into him. “If you walk away, I’m going to respect that. But if you want to come in, I know Lizzy’s going to welcome you. I know I would love to have you with me, brother.” Benny reached up and let his palm rest against Dean’s neck.
“Did you…” Dean took an uneven breath.
“I started it. You have to finish it or the connection fades. At least, I assume it does,” Benny said with a shrug. “Willow and Lizzy, they both set upon us so fast that neither me or Dorsey really had a chance to do more than either reject or accept their offer. I guess now that’s the choice you have.”
Benny turned and headed back upslope. Lizzy was standing on the porch now, and he could feel her curiosity through their bond. She’d known he was reaching out to someone, but then Lizzy usually did know more than Willow. Benny didn’t know if that was because Lizzy was pushier or because the other slayer was more of a closed off bastard.
“I felt that,” Lizzy admonished him.
“I know, cher.” Benny leaned close and offered her a kiss on the cheek. Behind him, he could feel Dean coming close, that connection between them burning brighter.
“He’s a good man,” Lizzy said.
“He’s family,” Benny said. In his world that’s all that mattered. He could feel the echo of that through the connection as Dean stepped up onto the porch.
“So, what’s for supper?” he asked, and he sounded nervous as a teenager who’d come a’calling.
“Nothing unless you get washed up,” Lizzy said, without mercy as usual. “Benny’ll show you the washroom, dinner in ten minutes, and if you track mud into my house, I will make you pick it up with tweezers.”
Clearly Dean didn’t have much of a problem being threatened by a woman, because he offered a quick, “Yes, ma’am,” before he sat down and started unlacing his boots. Benny watched as Dean hurried to get them off.
When Dean stood, Benny held the door open for him and said, “Washroom’s on the right,”
Dean nodded and headed inside while carrying those dirty boots.
For a second, Benny looked out into the blue-black night. “I got ‘em, Pappy. Don’t you be worrying none.”
Xander sucked in a breath as he sat up in bed.
“Pet?” Spike pushed himself up onto an elbow and groaned. “Bloody hell. We only just got to sleep.”
“We would have gotten to sleep earlier if you weren’t such a sex fiend,” Xander pointed out as he poked his memories of Benny. Dorsey was stirring, coming half-awake as Xander pushed the memories toward him. General O’Neill needed to know that Dean’s situation had changed a bit. And if he did one thing to make Benny unhappy, Xander was going back to that universe and kicking Air Force ass.
Dorsey chuckled and sent a reassuring thought back through the connection.
Spike turned on the lamp next to the bed and propped himself up on an elbow. “What happened?”
“Dean found his way back to Benny,” Xander said.
“He okay?”
“Emotionally, not really.”
“Pet, he hasn’t been emotionally okay in a long time. Did Benny take him in?”
Xander nodded. “Took him as a second guide.”
“Then he’ll be fine.” Spike reached over and turned the light back off. “Now go to sleep. You’re a bloody mother hen, Harris.”
Xander lay back down. “Look who’s talking.”
“I never clucked over my minions like you do.” Spike wrapped an arm around Xander’s waist and pulled him close.
“All your minion children are dead,” Xander pointed out. After creating Dorsey and Benny, he couldn’t imagine ever letting either of them die. He wondered if Eve felt that same sort of desperate hope for him or if she was more like Spike—reproducing without a second thought about where her children ended up. She talked a good game about love, but that didn’t mean she felt it.
“Exactly,” Spike said in a sleep voice. “They’re dead and not interfering with my night’s sleep.”
“That is why you’re not allowed to have children.”
“No, I don’t have children because I have my hands full with you. Now shut your gob before I go find your gag.” Spike’s threat might have sounded more threat like if he didn’t kiss a gentle trail down the side of Xander’s neck.
“The cuffs are in the drawer,” Xander suggested hopefully.
Spike’s kisses vanished. “Now that’s worth losing some sleep over.” In a flash, Xander found himself pinned on his stomach. “I’m going to bugger you good, pet,” Spike threatened as he locked the first cuff around Xander’s wrist. Either Spike was getting way faster or he had the cuffs out before Xander had asked.
“Blah, blah, threat, threat, blah,” Xander said dismissively.
“Oh luv, you’re paying for that,” Spike said, but before Xander could antagonize him anymore, Spike’s fangs sunk deep into Xander’s shoulder, and heat seared him. Xander cried out in pleasure. Children later. Sex now.
I know that this has been Xander's story--Xander's voyage to having power and learning to live with it. It means that there are a lot of questions that haven't been answered... particularly with Sam and Dean. If you have a question, ask it and I'll tell you where these guys end up.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2013-08-06 12:18 am (UTC)Ooooh look, I was first *happy dance*
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Date: 2013-08-06 01:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-06 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-06 01:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-06 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-06 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-06 01:43 am (UTC)And Poor Dean! He is such a mess but at least he is on the right path now.
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Date: 2013-08-06 02:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-06 02:10 am (UTC)And the ending is just perfect for the relationships they are in now.
Hope that Dean will find his place in his new *family* and Sam will understand his brothers reasons for Dean's *partnership* with Benny.
Will we see all of them in a sequel again?
It would be so good to see how they move on and what will happen to all of them. :)
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Date: 2013-08-06 02:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-06 03:13 am (UTC)snarky dean at stargate would be awesome. just saying.
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Date: 2013-08-06 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-06 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-06 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-06 04:22 am (UTC)So now what do we get? You know I need a Lit Gal fix a couple of times a week. Got something new in the drawer?
Raenae
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Date: 2013-08-06 04:48 am (UTC)Maybe Sam goes to the Mountain for research, and things go Fubar, like they always do around him, he has the worst luck. And Dorsey infects him, chuckles, Dean would be so pissed that he didn't end being the big scary in their partnership, at least at first. Think about this, despite Sam's headstrong ways, and stubbornness, he has a talent for messing up his life, sound familiar, (Xander, anyone?). Sometimes top Sam gets tiring, and he should be doing what Dean is telling him too.
Okay, I'll stop, but that was what was totally happening in my head. I adore Sam/Dean, and I know that not everyone does. I just want them both to be happy, in the end, and you certainly laid a path for that. Thank you. Your stories are so rich with emotional texture, and scenery detail. Just vivid, and gripping, and very addicting. You are a talented writer, and your work is wonderful.
Though, I do want to add, that in my own personal head cannon, the idea that Sam really didn't do anything about getting Sam out of Purgatory is silly. He can't talk about it, no, 'cause that's part of the deal. But Dean, and Benny conveniently getting their hands on that spell out of Purgatory? Really? And Sam driving down that road like a bat out of Hell, but no backstory for that either? Uh, uh, not buying that. Shrugs, yeah, no, they left that wide open. I just can't figure out why. :D I keep waiting for the zinger. We'll see, maybe they won't revisit it at all. Ciao. -slvrbld747
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Date: 2013-08-07 06:04 am (UTC)Zaz
Yum!
Date: 2013-08-06 06:03 am (UTC)Oooh, nasty thought: Lizzie vs. O'Neil. Lizzie vs DANIEL. <3
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Date: 2013-08-06 12:15 pm (UTC)Thank you for this!
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Date: 2013-08-06 08:50 pm (UTC)Thank you
Lucie xx
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Date: 2013-08-06 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-07 01:37 am (UTC)Raissa Emailed You
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Date: 2013-08-10 10:35 am (UTC)*happy dance*
I loved it.
Thank you.
I do hope there is more in this verse.
I is a happy =^..^=
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Date: 2013-08-15 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-21 10:56 pm (UTC)