Apotheosis

[forthedog]

It comes all at once, but it's not like it's ever been before.

Unlike every other time, it's as though he really is just remembering something he already knew. At the same time it feels like a gift. Like the last gift. He can almost see his own face, hear his own voice. He can feel the words.

You're ready for this now.

So he watches it unfold, briefly blinded by a sunrise from another world.

He puts the girls to bed, kisses their foreheads before he turns out the light. They must sense that something is different, because they're quieter than usual and they don't put up any fight. He tangles his fingers in their cornsilk curls and remembers.

He's still not that man. But everything that man had is his now.

Almost everything.

Without really tracking his progress from one place to the other, he drifts back into the world to find himself on the couch, hands clasped between his knees. His cheeks are wet, though he doesn't remember crying. It feels like something is over. Maybe later it'll feel like something else is beginning.

It takes a few more moments to understand that he's mourning himself. That he has to.

Comments

[likeaplanet]

I'm on the phone while I clean up the dishes from dinner, laughing into the receiver as I wipe down the counter and load up the dishwasher. It's normal and domestic and even boring and I don't really care. I'm just hanging up as I head into the living room. It's quiet, which means he somehow already got the girls in bed.

"Shit, man. That's gotta be a record," I laugh... then I see the tears on his face and stop dead just a few feet away. "Mike...?"

[forthedog]

He doesn't look up, isn't even totally aware of Neil for a few seconds, and when he is he only lets out a long breath. It doesn't shake, but not because he's trying to keep anything from showing.

You know. You knew.

"You were with me, weren't you?"

[likeaplanet]

"With you when?" I ask quietly, but I know what day it is, today. It's not a day I can easily forget.

"You... You remember it like that? That I was there?"

[forthedog]

"Yeah." He looks down at his hands, opens them, like he might find something there. There had been the pounding of his feet on the sand, the cool of the air in his lungs - and someone beside him. Hadn't there been? It's like he can see it both ways, alone and not alone, but the memory with Neil feels real. The other one feels like a faintly bad dream.

"I wasn't scared, was I?"

[likeaplanet]

"No, you weren't," I breathe, sinking down onto the couch beside him, "I didn't... Jesus, Mike. I didn't think you'd remember it that way. That was... It was one of those island things. Those loops. You weren't even really there. I thought it was in my head."

But it had felt so real, and now he remembers it, too.

[forthedog]

"I..." He shakes his head, closing his eyes. This is a little like the first time, on his knees with the fire baking his face and Neil's fist crashing into his skull and that entire other world breaking open inside his head. He isn't just seeing what was, but what might have been, or was somewhere else, or something else he only imagined.

"You said you knew. I remember."

[likeaplanet]

"Knew what?" I ask quietly, my hand reaching out to rest on his shoulder. I lived through a lot of versions of that morning, but what I remember most was the weight of him against my side, the two of us promising to see each other again.

Nothing can keep us apart.

[forthedog]

"That it was gonna happen." He says it slowly, as if he's still working things out. Because he is, feeling his way through them rather than thinking, the ache and the terrible beauty of that moment and how good it had been to not be alone at the end.

"So you must've... It must've happened before. I don't understand it, but... it feels right."

[likeaplanet]

"It was one of those loops. A year after..." I explain, "But I knew... I knew it, before then. I knew something was gonna happen. You'd been, I dunno. You always acted like your time was coming up, on the island, and I just figured one morning you'd be gone."

Huffing out a strained breath of laughter, I say, "I just didn't know it'd be like that. But when it happened, you were alone, and I couldn't... I could never get past that. I fuckin' hated it, not bein' there. Not bein' able to say goodbye. I hadn't even talked to you, that morning." I scrub a hand across my face and drag in a breath, one corner of my mouth lifting into a pained smile. "A year later-- this day, I woke up, and I was back there. I got to live it all over again. I got to be with you. You weren't alone."

[forthedog]

"I'm glad," he murmurs. Unconsciously, he's leaning against Neil, pressed warm against his side - and that's familiar. It was like that, then. But everything in him is wrenching, fresh tears spilling down his face, because even with all the things he's regained - a home and most of a family and a future worth fighting for - something was lost that day that neither of them will ever get back.

"It didn't hurt... but I didn't wanna leave, Neil. I wanted to stay." He pulls in a hitching breath. "I'm so sorry I couldn't stay."

He's said he's sorry for it before. But before it hadn't meant the same.

[likeaplanet]

"I know," I murmur, my arm around his shoulders and my lips against the curve of his cheekbone, the taste of him salty with tears.

I never thought, even for a second, that he wanted to go. That he would've gone, if he'd had a choice. What I couldn't live with, what made me fuckin' crazy for a whole year, was not knowing... Not knowing if he'd been afraid. If he'd been in pain.

"That day... It's one of the first things Dean remembered, here. He knew my name, and he knew that somebody had died. Somebody close to me. He remembered telling me." That day stuck with a lot of people. Not just me.

[forthedog]

He pulls in another breath, less strained, and reaches up to swipe a hand down his face. "You serious? He remembered that?" Some days he forgets that there's anything hiding in the wreckage of Dean Winchester for him to remember.

He manages a short laugh. "Hell of a thing to remember about you."

[likeaplanet]

"Yeah, well... it was hard to forget," I admit, but he and I both know I don't blame him for it. Never did.

"You gonna be okay?"

[forthedog]

"Yeah," he breathes, turning his head and leaning it against Neil's - not a kiss, not even a nuzzle, but something harder, his hand closing around the back of Neil's neck.

He smiles faintly. "It's me."

[likeaplanet]

"Is that supposed to be comforting?" I tease him, my own hand curving around behind his neck, holding onto him tight. The thing is, I'm not afraid he's gonna slip away. Not this time. Right now, we've gotta worry about living, not spend all our time waiting for him to up and die again.

[forthedog]

"No, I mean..." He turns, almost facing Neil now, reaching up and framing Neil's face with his hands, their foreheads almost touching. But he's pulled back enough to look into Neil's eyes. This feels important. Even if he's not sure how to say it.

"It's me. It's like it's... It's not, but it is."

[likeaplanet]

I can't help it when I laugh, just a soft exhalation of sound as my hands move to frame his face.

"All the blanks filled in, finally, huh?"

[forthedog]

"Feels like it." Not all of them, not completely. Some of it still feels distant, fuzzy, fragmentary.

But no part of him feels like a stranger in his own family.

He leans in and brushes their lips together, an ache passing beneath his breastbone. "I love you."

[likeaplanet]

"I love you, too," I murmur, dragging in a slow, shuddering breath, my lips moving against his, more of a nuzzle than an actual kiss.

"You got no fuckin' idea..." My hands tighten on him, pulling him closer, thinking about last year, about all that time he wasn't here with me.

[forthedog]

"Think I got some idea," he counters gently. Loss, between the two of them; he gets the sense that it'll always work both ways like this. And for several wretched months he'd felt that loss, heavy enough to crush his heart, and hadn't known how to bear up under it.

I need you. I will always need you.

"C'mon," he murmurs against Neil's lips. "Let's go to bed."