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dixiehellcatWorlds Collide, part 10/11
Authors: dixiehellcat and tetiny68
Pairing/Characters: Sam, Dean, Bobby; Gen. Other SPN characters mentioned: Cas, Baltie, and Ash. Guest starring Zak Bagans, Nick Groff and Aaron Goodwin of Ghost Adventures.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Words: about 1400 this part; total roughly 17,000.
One more chapter after this one...dawn is coming and with it the end of our heroes' joint adventure. (But, perhaps, not the end of their association...)
Again a couple of notes at the end for non-SPN fans, and for non-GAC fans, who are reading.
And again, I own nobody in this joint. Eric Kripke (whose first name, to us SPN fans, is often Dammit) and the CW own Sam and Dean, and the GAC most definitely own themselves.
10 "Okay," Dean said finally, breaking the spell. "We're done here except for the relic, right? Burn it, or melt, I guess?"
Sam eyed the little ring, then crossed the room, scuffing the lines of the circle with his sneaker sole. "Since she crossed over voluntarily, I don't know that we have to destroy it, Dean," he said over his shoulder. To Zak, he added, "If you get any weird effects from it, you might want to do something about it. But she did want you to have it."
He held it out, and Zak took it."Like I need anything to remember her by," he said ruefully, looking down at it, before his fist closed around it and he thrust it into his pocket. "Thanks." He lifted his head, and his eyes met Sam's; in them, Sam saw an echo, however faint and fleeting, of Madison, Sarah, Jess, the loves Sam himself had lost. If Dean would let himself show it, Sam knew he would see the same there; and years ago, if Sam had not been so young and selfish, he knew he would have seen the same in his father's eyes.
A big paw landed on Zak's shoulder. In Aaron's look, Sam saw both the big man's memory of his own love lost, and his concern for his friend. Nick was already on the other side; Zak glanced at him, then at Aaron, in a wordless conversation for all the world like the ones Sam had with his brother every day. Sam hid a small, satisfied smile. He had Dean, but Zak had two friends who were damn near brothers to him. They would, he thought, all be okay.
As if reading his mind, Zak looked up at Sam again. A half-smile twisted his mouth, and a resolute glint lit his eyes. "So, guys," he said. "you must get some major frequent flyer miles visiting both heaven AND hell."
Sam groaned aloud, and behind him heard Dean make an almost identical noise.
+++
They tried to postpone the inevitable as long as they could. First they led the party back to the basement to put a temporary seal on the old mine shaft and block the return of any demons. As they had with several ghosts in the Goldfield, they took a supervisory role and let the Ghost Adventurers take over, led this time by Nick, whose grasp of the Latin was surprisingly good for a rookie. Then they returned to the safe room, where Sam launched into an exhaustive presentation on protective and defensive techniques. It wasn't like he was really trying to avoid the topics Zak had caught them out on, Sam rationalized; the guys needed this information to keep themselves safe, and the more info the better. That included every variety of devil's trap, myriad uses of salt, and at least six different ways to bless holy water.
Any hope that the sheer weight of the material would distract their companions from their earlier questions was a vain one. The newbies listened attentively; then Zak said, "Okay, good. Great. Thank you. Now, about heaven and hell…"
Dean let out an explosive sigh, but Sam's look at him said I've got this. "Okay," he said. "Without going into all the unnecessary details, here's the deal—"
"Is this story long enough to need provisions?" Aaron interrupted. "'Cause if so, I need a sugar hit first." He produced a large bag of assorted candy.
Dean's mood immediately improved, at least a little. His eyes lit up as he reached for the bag. "Sugar hit sounds good. Hey, you got Chick-a-sticks! You are my new best friend, man."
"Good. I think."
The bag made the rounds, and gave Sam, besides the Bit-o-Honeys he'd loved as a kid and hadn't eaten in years, another minute to gather his thoughts. "All right. So, we told you our mom was a hunter, and she was killed by a demon. While dad was hunting it, he found some info he passed on to us. We followed it up, and well, we found we'd stumbled onto a plot by some demons to free Lucifer from his cage in hell and bring on the apocalypse."
Nick nearly strangled on a gumdrop. "Wait. Apocalypse? As in, end of the world, hellfire and brimstone?"
"Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria?" Zak added.
"Yeah, that." Sam nodded. "Anyway, our little visit to heaven was while we were working to stop that."
Aaron's munching slowed, and he looked around at his friends. "I'd think you were totally batshit crazy," he told Sam, "if I hadn't spent so much time with these guys and seen what I've seen with them. Because of that, I only think you're half crazy."
"Thanks, dude," Sam returned.
"But about hell?" Zak wasn't backing off till he got the whole story, or at least thought he had.
"That's…a little more involved," Sam said slowly. "Lucifer did get out—it was partly our fault, though we didn't know that at the time, but we still felt responsible—"
"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Zak said with a significant look toward Dean, who did not respond, as his mouth was now full of jelly beans.
"—so we felt kind of obligated to find a way to put his ass back in. To make a real long story short, I tricked Lucifer into my body, opened a portal to hell, and —jumped in."
A long moment of stunned silence ensued. "We found a portal to hell once," Nick finally offered. "It's in the basement of this old bar in Kentucky. If we'd known you then, we could've saved you some trouble."
"So you basically scammed the DEVIL into possessing you, and then took him down." Zak shook his head, his eyes huge. "Damn, cuz, you are a far, far better man than I am. I mean, that one near miss with the demon in Italy fucked me up for weeks. But what about—Dean, you were talking about death, like it was a person. And something about Sam's soul?"
Dean had kept stuffing candy into his mouth, in hopes of not getting dragged into the conversation; but clearly, when it came to getting the facts, their cousin was a pit bull. At least the condensed version painted Sam, inadvertently, as the hero of the piece, which suited Dean fine; he much preferred flying under the radar. "Well, see, Death helped us open the portal. He wasn't any happier about the prospect of the world ending than we were. Pretty decent old guy, actually. Drives a sweet vintage Rolls, loves Chicago deep dish pizza. Anyhow, when we got Sam back, his soul had gotten separated and left behind. Death—kind of owed me one, so he went and got it out of Lucifer's cage, and put it back."
Zak opened his mouth, and this time Sam saw the question coming. "No, I don't remember anything about it." No sense getting into the whole wall of Jericho thing in his brain, he figured.
"Do I dare ask," Aaron ventured, "why Death owed you a favor, Dean?"
"Um, I filled in for him one day." Dean determinedly avoided looking anywhere except at the floor. "Not a good job he's got, lemme tell you. But everybody needs a break sometimes, you know?"
Nick let out a low whistle. "All hunters' lives this exciting?"
"Hardly," Sam replied with a short laugh.
"Are all Winchesters'?" Zak asked quietly.
Sam and Dean looked at each other, each knowing full well the other's thoughts had gone straight to Adam. Their father had tried to shield their half-brother from what they did, and Dean had grown up thinking his dad damn near infallible, but even he could see what a hell of a mistake that had been, leaving the kid unprepared.
He realized then, and saw in Sam's face the same realization, that everything they had done on this night had been to keep from making that same mistake with their cousin. Zak might not be as close in blood, but now, thanks to them, he was in a far better, safer, wiser position. "Pretty exciting, sometimes," Dean conceded. "But you've got the knowledge now, and you've got friends. Play your cards right, watch out for each other, and you'll probably live a long and boring life."
To GAC readers: Actually, most of the SPN content in this chappie is pretty self-explanatory. Sam oversimplified the heck out of his and Dean's lives, but he didn't really lie about anything. (I may have mentioned this earlier, but the 'wall of Jericho' Sam refers to was put up in Sam's brain by Death so the memories of Hell wouldn't drive Sam mad.)
The girls Sam thinks of are, obviously, past loves he lost through death, or leaving, or whatever. Dean's lost some loves too because of hunting, and of course their dad lost their mom. Winchester men don't have a great track record with the women, sadly.
We decided to let Nick take the lead on the Latin stuff mostly because I was pretty impressed with his Italian on Poveglia Island--wasn't perfect, but wasn't bad, and Latin is quite similar.
For readers not as familiar with GAC, the candy bag is a reference to a scene in the Sacramento Tunnels ep where Aaron & Zak raided a candy store before a lockdown. :D The sugar high that followed was pretty epic.
And the portal to hell Nick mentions is located in the basement of Bobby Mackey's Music World, a Kentucky honkytonk. The reference to Aaron's lost love ties in here, as the GAC's experiences there led to the breakup of his marriage, which he alluded to earlier in the story. :(
Cookie to whoever finds the movie line in this chap!
Authors: dixiehellcat and tetiny68
Pairing/Characters: Sam, Dean, Bobby; Gen. Other SPN characters mentioned: Cas, Baltie, and Ash. Guest starring Zak Bagans, Nick Groff and Aaron Goodwin of Ghost Adventures.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Words: about 1400 this part; total roughly 17,000.
One more chapter after this one...dawn is coming and with it the end of our heroes' joint adventure. (But, perhaps, not the end of their association...)
Again a couple of notes at the end for non-SPN fans, and for non-GAC fans, who are reading.
And again, I own nobody in this joint. Eric Kripke (whose first name, to us SPN fans, is often Dammit) and the CW own Sam and Dean, and the GAC most definitely own themselves.
10 "Okay," Dean said finally, breaking the spell. "We're done here except for the relic, right? Burn it, or melt, I guess?"
Sam eyed the little ring, then crossed the room, scuffing the lines of the circle with his sneaker sole. "Since she crossed over voluntarily, I don't know that we have to destroy it, Dean," he said over his shoulder. To Zak, he added, "If you get any weird effects from it, you might want to do something about it. But she did want you to have it."
He held it out, and Zak took it."Like I need anything to remember her by," he said ruefully, looking down at it, before his fist closed around it and he thrust it into his pocket. "Thanks." He lifted his head, and his eyes met Sam's; in them, Sam saw an echo, however faint and fleeting, of Madison, Sarah, Jess, the loves Sam himself had lost. If Dean would let himself show it, Sam knew he would see the same there; and years ago, if Sam had not been so young and selfish, he knew he would have seen the same in his father's eyes.
A big paw landed on Zak's shoulder. In Aaron's look, Sam saw both the big man's memory of his own love lost, and his concern for his friend. Nick was already on the other side; Zak glanced at him, then at Aaron, in a wordless conversation for all the world like the ones Sam had with his brother every day. Sam hid a small, satisfied smile. He had Dean, but Zak had two friends who were damn near brothers to him. They would, he thought, all be okay.
As if reading his mind, Zak looked up at Sam again. A half-smile twisted his mouth, and a resolute glint lit his eyes. "So, guys," he said. "you must get some major frequent flyer miles visiting both heaven AND hell."
Sam groaned aloud, and behind him heard Dean make an almost identical noise.
+++
They tried to postpone the inevitable as long as they could. First they led the party back to the basement to put a temporary seal on the old mine shaft and block the return of any demons. As they had with several ghosts in the Goldfield, they took a supervisory role and let the Ghost Adventurers take over, led this time by Nick, whose grasp of the Latin was surprisingly good for a rookie. Then they returned to the safe room, where Sam launched into an exhaustive presentation on protective and defensive techniques. It wasn't like he was really trying to avoid the topics Zak had caught them out on, Sam rationalized; the guys needed this information to keep themselves safe, and the more info the better. That included every variety of devil's trap, myriad uses of salt, and at least six different ways to bless holy water.
Any hope that the sheer weight of the material would distract their companions from their earlier questions was a vain one. The newbies listened attentively; then Zak said, "Okay, good. Great. Thank you. Now, about heaven and hell…"
Dean let out an explosive sigh, but Sam's look at him said I've got this. "Okay," he said. "Without going into all the unnecessary details, here's the deal—"
"Is this story long enough to need provisions?" Aaron interrupted. "'Cause if so, I need a sugar hit first." He produced a large bag of assorted candy.
Dean's mood immediately improved, at least a little. His eyes lit up as he reached for the bag. "Sugar hit sounds good. Hey, you got Chick-a-sticks! You are my new best friend, man."
"Good. I think."
The bag made the rounds, and gave Sam, besides the Bit-o-Honeys he'd loved as a kid and hadn't eaten in years, another minute to gather his thoughts. "All right. So, we told you our mom was a hunter, and she was killed by a demon. While dad was hunting it, he found some info he passed on to us. We followed it up, and well, we found we'd stumbled onto a plot by some demons to free Lucifer from his cage in hell and bring on the apocalypse."
Nick nearly strangled on a gumdrop. "Wait. Apocalypse? As in, end of the world, hellfire and brimstone?"
"Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria?" Zak added.
"Yeah, that." Sam nodded. "Anyway, our little visit to heaven was while we were working to stop that."
Aaron's munching slowed, and he looked around at his friends. "I'd think you were totally batshit crazy," he told Sam, "if I hadn't spent so much time with these guys and seen what I've seen with them. Because of that, I only think you're half crazy."
"Thanks, dude," Sam returned.
"But about hell?" Zak wasn't backing off till he got the whole story, or at least thought he had.
"That's…a little more involved," Sam said slowly. "Lucifer did get out—it was partly our fault, though we didn't know that at the time, but we still felt responsible—"
"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Zak said with a significant look toward Dean, who did not respond, as his mouth was now full of jelly beans.
"—so we felt kind of obligated to find a way to put his ass back in. To make a real long story short, I tricked Lucifer into my body, opened a portal to hell, and —jumped in."
A long moment of stunned silence ensued. "We found a portal to hell once," Nick finally offered. "It's in the basement of this old bar in Kentucky. If we'd known you then, we could've saved you some trouble."
"So you basically scammed the DEVIL into possessing you, and then took him down." Zak shook his head, his eyes huge. "Damn, cuz, you are a far, far better man than I am. I mean, that one near miss with the demon in Italy fucked me up for weeks. But what about—Dean, you were talking about death, like it was a person. And something about Sam's soul?"
Dean had kept stuffing candy into his mouth, in hopes of not getting dragged into the conversation; but clearly, when it came to getting the facts, their cousin was a pit bull. At least the condensed version painted Sam, inadvertently, as the hero of the piece, which suited Dean fine; he much preferred flying under the radar. "Well, see, Death helped us open the portal. He wasn't any happier about the prospect of the world ending than we were. Pretty decent old guy, actually. Drives a sweet vintage Rolls, loves Chicago deep dish pizza. Anyhow, when we got Sam back, his soul had gotten separated and left behind. Death—kind of owed me one, so he went and got it out of Lucifer's cage, and put it back."
Zak opened his mouth, and this time Sam saw the question coming. "No, I don't remember anything about it." No sense getting into the whole wall of Jericho thing in his brain, he figured.
"Do I dare ask," Aaron ventured, "why Death owed you a favor, Dean?"
"Um, I filled in for him one day." Dean determinedly avoided looking anywhere except at the floor. "Not a good job he's got, lemme tell you. But everybody needs a break sometimes, you know?"
Nick let out a low whistle. "All hunters' lives this exciting?"
"Hardly," Sam replied with a short laugh.
"Are all Winchesters'?" Zak asked quietly.
Sam and Dean looked at each other, each knowing full well the other's thoughts had gone straight to Adam. Their father had tried to shield their half-brother from what they did, and Dean had grown up thinking his dad damn near infallible, but even he could see what a hell of a mistake that had been, leaving the kid unprepared.
He realized then, and saw in Sam's face the same realization, that everything they had done on this night had been to keep from making that same mistake with their cousin. Zak might not be as close in blood, but now, thanks to them, he was in a far better, safer, wiser position. "Pretty exciting, sometimes," Dean conceded. "But you've got the knowledge now, and you've got friends. Play your cards right, watch out for each other, and you'll probably live a long and boring life."
To GAC readers: Actually, most of the SPN content in this chappie is pretty self-explanatory. Sam oversimplified the heck out of his and Dean's lives, but he didn't really lie about anything. (I may have mentioned this earlier, but the 'wall of Jericho' Sam refers to was put up in Sam's brain by Death so the memories of Hell wouldn't drive Sam mad.)
The girls Sam thinks of are, obviously, past loves he lost through death, or leaving, or whatever. Dean's lost some loves too because of hunting, and of course their dad lost their mom. Winchester men don't have a great track record with the women, sadly.
We decided to let Nick take the lead on the Latin stuff mostly because I was pretty impressed with his Italian on Poveglia Island--wasn't perfect, but wasn't bad, and Latin is quite similar.
For readers not as familiar with GAC, the candy bag is a reference to a scene in the Sacramento Tunnels ep where Aaron & Zak raided a candy store before a lockdown. :D The sugar high that followed was pretty epic.
And the portal to hell Nick mentions is located in the basement of Bobby Mackey's Music World, a Kentucky honkytonk. The reference to Aaron's lost love ties in here, as the GAC's experiences there led to the breakup of his marriage, which he alluded to earlier in the story. :(
Cookie to whoever finds the movie line in this chap!
