The Land Of Dreams Is Better Far
 
 
 
 
 
**I**
 
Lucifer is done.
And the world is not ending. But it’s not a good place to be at the moment.
Nevertheless, Sam smiles. Dean creases his head and says, “You believe it? We made it. I can almost convince myself that it’s really over.” He looks at Sam, avoiding with his eyes the dirt, the smoke and all the things that remind them of death. “We made it, Sammy… it’s really over. God… I’m gonna sleep for a week….”
And he is happy, like Sam doesn’t remember seeing him lately, maybe like he never was before.
Dean is happy.
Lucifer is done.
The world is a bad place, but not ending.
 
Life is good.
 
Sam closes his eyes just to savour the moment. So he doesn’t look. He doesn’t pay attention. He doesn’t know. He can only feel. Something’s coming.
He has barely the time to think it. When he opens his eyes to… advise, dodge, scream, save, sacrifice, just do something…. Dean is crouched at his feet.
 
Already a corpse.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
**II**
 
They say you don’t know it until you try it.
And if you don’t try it, you can’t talk about it.
 
So Sam tries it. Does everything that he is supposed to do.
He cheats, scams, steals, kills, cons, plays.
It’s only fair.
They took his brother. Now he can take them. One by one. Time doesn’t matter.
Time, he’s got.
 
The angel beside him unfolds his wings in a futile attempt to escape. It’s almost poetic. So beautiful Sam thinks he could cry. If he had any tears left. Any compassion. Any emotion, at all.
 
With an energy Sam doesn’t even want to know where it come from, he rips the feathery white being apart. The angel moans, but is a strange sound, too thin to be heard.
 
It’s not Castiel. Not yet.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
**III**
 
“What do you want?”
 
The voice is made of void, and power. It seems like an important question.
Sam pays attention.
And god… he has so many answers to that… But he can’t decide. He can’t choose. He can’t settle.
And he thinks: I want it to be over. I want my brother back. I want it to stop. I want all of this to have never happened. I want… I want…Why is this happening? Why it went so horribly wrong?
 
The creature looks at him, with curious eyes, not unkind, but not nearly sympathetic. “You need to decide what you want right now, or it will all be a waste.”
Jesus, what a waste…
 
Sam shivers. No, he thinks. Not a waste. Not after all of this.
And then he says what no-one should ever be allowed to say.
“I want to bring the end of the world.”
The creature bows his horns. “Very well,” it says.
Sam closes his eyes, sees the path clearly into his head.
 
The end begins.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
**IV**
 
As it turns out, erasing the world alone is a matter that requires years.
Sam is not ready to wait that long. So he speeds up the process.
He calls up everyone interested or willing. Every kind and species.
If it’s supernatural, it can be useful.
So Sam enlists them all. Becomes their general, their king.
Sam would come to terms with his actions, find a reason to stop. But not now.
The end is near. Closer every day.
 
And Sam still wants many things, still can’t settle: punishment, or forgiveness, or be forgotten. Sam wants to feel again, like when his brother was alive.
Dean.
Sam wants Dean.
Sam wants Dean to live, to have a family, a home, long days of summer and sleepy days of winter.
Sam wants Dean to have it all.
 
But Dean is dead, because the apocalypse had been adverted, and what’s dead should stay dead. Or go back to being dead. Dean was living on borrowing time.
Nobody bothers to mention that.
 
Bastard of an angel…
Bastards them all.
 
So Dean is dead, should stay dead, and nobody can do a single thing about it.
Not even Sam, the antichrist.
And if Dean can’t have it all, then no one will.
 
 
 
 
 
 
**V**
 
In the end there is a sharp, staggering noise, and Sam turns, because he can’t do anything else.
 
The sound of the barrel is slick and almost gentle. Familiar. The surprise in his eyes is soon replaced by something new, something he knows and recognises.
Jesus what a waste…what an absolute waste…
 
Dean is in front of him, the same face he buried long months ago. Different eyes, sad, desperate.
Their destiny is sealed.
Sam knows. If he knows one thing at all is this: nothing could ever be done. No matter what, they would have always come to this.
This showdown.
 
Brother versus brother.
Biblical, and ironic, in its twisted way.
 
Dean looks at his hands, as if he doesn’t recognise them.
Then his eyes look into Sam’s. “They say I’m here just to do this. This time they said it. I won’t stay. They won’t let me.”
 
Sam knows that. And so he says: “I know. It’s ok.”
Dean doesn’t believe him anyway, shakes his head, the weight of the gun is comforting and repulsing altogether. He still doesn’t know if he can do it.
“They say you killed a whole bunch of them. They say you want to erase the world, Sammy.”
 
Sam nods, “It’s true.”
 
“But why?” Dean asks, stares at him. “Resurrected, again, to ace my brother. Sucks to be me. I want some answers, Sam. Why are you doing it?”
 
Sam would want to smile. But he doesn’t remember how. He can’t feel anything. Not even now.
Dean doesn’t understand. He will never understand. It’s not his fault.
It’s too late. It’s over.
The old Sam would want to try to explain himself, would want to say: I missed you so bad, I wanted to change it, and when I figured I couldn’t, I wanted to punish them all. Every single living thing.
But words fail him. And this could be his chance. His chance to stop. Have someone… Dean, his brother, the one he loves enough to destroy the world for… stops him.
 
“Do it,” so Sam says instead. “Do it, it’s only fair.”
Dean roars “What’s fair? That I’m gonna kill you, and then turns back to ashes?”
 
The gun fires.
At first the sound is like a bombing: unpredictable, unexpected and surreal.
Then it’s just a subtle echo. Like tides, waves, or an approaching storm.
Then, exactly like it started, it subsides to nothing at all.
 
And Sam is still breathing, and the gun is still hot in Dean’s hands.
 
Dean turns his face towards a cloudy, dying sun. Might be a trick of the light, but for an instant his eyes seem almost yellow in the dim twilight.
“What are you doing?” Sam asks. He is not afraid, just curious.
 
“Fuck you all,” Dean shouts over to the sky. Then go back to Sam.
“I won’t kill you. Here…” he opens his arms, to take all in, “The world is truly yours, Sammy. Let’s decide together what to do with it.”
 
So, yeah…
The world is not a good place to be at the moment.
 
But Dean is not a corpse. And Lucifer is done. And the angels have been and are going to be punished, and what do I want? What now?
 
Dean holds out his hand.
Sam takes it.
 
 
 
06/07/09