—Day 91—
Vera’s door is cracked open, two packed duffle bags perched on the steps leading to the small porch. It’s not even dawn yet, the east only a lighter shade of grey, but she must have been up for hours already. He raps his knuckles against the doorframe in warning before poking his head inside.
“Vera?”
Dean winces at the sound of something dropping before she appears from the closest door, looking startled. “Dean? What are you doing up this early?”
“Disobeying my doctor.” It was a special hell getting Cas to agree to wake him up, but since technically she’s doing this for him, Cas reluctantly agreed he deserved the chance to see her off. It’s weird how technically being Cas’s commanding officer has absolutely no effect on what he’s allowed to do. “Where’s Amanda?”
“She hates goodbyes,” Vera says with a smile in her voice before adding, “You coming in or not?”
“Since you asked, why not,” he decides, closing the door behind him and looking around the tiny, bare living room, a worn couch and battered coffee table the only furniture. They all live like they’ll pack up and leave in an hour; he guesses everything she owns is in those duffle bags outside. “So you ready?”
“Yeah, I’m good. Uh….” She trails off uncertainly before jerking her head toward the kitchen. “Coffee?”
“Yeah, thanks.” He follows her to the rickety kitchen table, one leg supported by a chuck of wood that from the look of it came directly off a tree, and watches her locate a second cup and pour from the half-empty pot. Taking it with a murmured thanks, he warms his fingers around the fragile ceramic body and warily lowers himself into one of the spindly metal chairs as Vera joins him at the table.
“If you’re looking for Cas,” she says after taking a drink, “he’s still with Jeremy.”
“He said something about needing to check—something,” Dean tells her, remembering Cas’s totally not obvious dart out the door before he even finished saying the words. “He’s only that vague when he’s hiding something. I knew I should have asked what.”
“Secret weapon even Jeremy doesn’t know he’s got,” she confides, resting her elbows on the table as she takes a sip from her cup. “I mentioned last night that Jeremy was a little nervous. It’s like a reflex or something; Cas doesn’t even know he does it. He’ll repack Jeremy’s bags and double check his ammunition, remind him to shoot first and run away after, the usual. Jeremy doesn’t have to admit he wants Cas to tell him it’ll be okay, and Cas doesn’t have to acknowledge it’s something he needs to do.”
He sits back, impressed. “You’re good.”
“Not the best fighter,” she says, counting off the points. “Don’t know shit about religions past and present, don’t know a dozen dead languages, no military background, and no experience as a hunter.” She shrugs. “I had to expand my skill sets somehow. My survival depended on it.”
Dean files that away without a change of expression: survival. “Be useful.”
Her eyes narrow curiously, but all she says is, “Yeah. People are hard—anyone who says otherwise is lying through their goddamn teeth—but learning their buttons is easy. Once you know that—”
“’Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world’.” Vera’s mouth drops open. “Archimedes was the shit, no lie. Guy thought he could shift the earth itself; all he needed was a place to stand.”
“I wish you’d space out doing this kind of thing,” she remarks irritably. “It’s weird.”
“It’s really useful to know,” he argues. “So, Archimedes, you think you know what lever’s gonna work to move Alpha?” She stills, cup half-way to her mouth. “I know what I’m asking you to do, and it’s not just going down there to announce my return to a chorus of trumpets. Though you and Cas tried your damndest to make me think just that yesterday. Dying, not stupid.”
“You’re not dying,” she says in annoyance. “I know Gloria, and she’s told me enough about Amy and Elijah to get a read on them. Once I meet them, I’ll have a better idea of how to go about it.”
“You’re gonna convince them of something you don’t even believe yourself.” Setting down his cup, he studies the surface of the table intently before meeting her eyes. “Like I said, I know what I’m asking you to do.”
“I never said that.” He rolls his eyes. “Dean, I’m not still here because I like living two steps above a refugee, and I didn’t willingly cross the border into an infected zone to get here just because why not. I’m here—I chose to stay here—because I believe in what you’re doing.”
“And now you’re going to Alpha to argue on behalf of the man who killed your girlfriend,” he says deliberately. “Believing in what I’m doing isn’t the same thing as believing in me. That, you have no reason to do.”
She lets out a breath in a hot rush. “Dean, I told you—”
“I know what you told me, but that doesn’t change what happened. Now I’m sending you to argue for me, and you’re allowed to tell me how much you hate having to do it,” he interrupts, keeping his voice even. “You’re allowed to be pissed about that, Vera, come on.”
She starts to get up. “I don’t have time for this—”
“Sit down.” She hesitates, hand tightening on the back of the chair, before dropping gracelessly into the seat, possibly just to get a better angle for glaring purposes. “That works? It doesn’t on Cas, he just stares at me. He’ll do it eventually, but it’s pretty clear it’s because he decided he wanted to. No idea how he does it….”
“What do you want?” she asks flatly.
“I’m going to tell you two things,” he answers. “What you do with them is up to you, but no one should walk into negotiations without knowing everything, and no one shouldn’t know one thing the other side doesn’t. First, though: you don’t have to come back.”
She blinks slowly. “What?”
“You can stay there,” he clarifies. “When you’re done negotiating, send someone else back with the information, come yourself and then go back, whatever, you and Jeremy both. It’s been a while since I’ve been to Alpha, but it sounds pretty good. You can fight there just as easily as here. I’d write you a recommendation, but who knows how Elijah and Amy would take that, so….”
“You’re throwing me out?”
“No,” he answers quickly, hearing the thread of fear in her voice. “I’m saying, I’m giving you options. This is a shit job you’re going to do for me, among many shit jobs in a shit life in the place where you lost someone you loved, and the person who pulled the trigger is your leader. There’s doing your duty and great job, but it doesn’t have to be this hard.”
She swallows, looking away. “Life’s not fair.”
“That’s a shitty excuse for doing nothing.” She starts, eyes snapping to him in surprise. “Life’s not fair, you know what that is? It’s a heads-up to fix it.” He meets her eyes. “I can’t bring her back, and I can’t change the world so she never got infected at all. But I can do this. It’s up to you what you do with it.”
She licks her lips, nodding slowly. “That’s number one?”
“No, we’re getting to that now.” To his surprise, that is already harder than he thought, and it’s not gonna get easier now. “Your negotiations are going to suck. They know a lot about me that you don’t, which yeah, true for you, too, but they’ll assume you know more than you do. You can probably hide that pretty well, but one thing you need to know. I had a brother.” He winces, taking a breath. “Have a brother.”
Her expression flickers through a couple of tries at something before settling on resignation. “I know. During the fever—”
“I remember.” She looks guiltily surprised. “I overheard you talking to Cas—never mind. You never said anything, and I appreciate that.”
“I’m your doctor,” she says, a glimmering of a reluctant smile curving the corner of her mouth. “We get all the good shit, and the best part is knowing things no one else knows. Telling would ruin it.”
Dean’s surprised to realize he’s smiling back. “Blackmail, always an option.”
“Don’t think I haven’t considered it.” She relaxes in her chair, leaning forward to rest an elbow on the table. “They know you have a brother. You think it might come up?”
“You asked the wrong question,” he says, watching her. “What should you have asked?”
She hesitates, eyes searching, but she doesn’t disappoint him. “Why you’re hiding it from us if they already know.”
“There we go.” Her mouth twitches reluctantly. “The reason you don’t know is part of the reason I left the South in the first place.”
He’s starting to think he gets why Cas agreed with his predecessor’s assessment of the situation here; what Cas can’t tell him, because he might not even know, is if he would have agreed before he spent two years in a camp where humanity disillusioned him so thoroughly. Dean doesn’t know all of it yet—and God knows how he’ll find out, though he knows where he’s starting—but that means he’s only going by instinct. This Dean was wrong about a lot of things, and it starts here: people are people, good and bad, and sometimes, they’re bad at it, but sometimes, they’re not. The moment you forget that, the moment you stop believing anything else, you lost your reason to fight at all.
“I have a younger brother,” he says, meeting Vera’s eyes. “His name is Sam Winchester.”
She nods, waiting.
“Lucifer needed to claim his true vessel—the human body he could use to begin his conquest of earth—and there was only one of those. That’s how it works, I guess; one for him, and one for Michael, final battle between them for earth and heaven, you know the spiel, vessels, all that, right?”
“Cas explained it to me,” she agrees warily. “His commentary on Michael was something to hear, let me tell you.”
He can imagine. “Did he tell you why the Host left?”
She hesitates, one finger drawing absent circles on the table. “They didn’t get what they wanted,” she says finally. “He wasn’t very specific, and he lapsed into Enochian a couple of times, but I got the gist.”
“You didn’t,” he says quietly. “He didn’t tell you much because he was protecting me.”
Her eyes fly to his face.
“About two and a half years ago, Lucifer claimed his true vessel and could walk on earth, start the war. The only way—according to the Host—that he could be defeated was if Michael claimed his and they got out their sibling rivalry with Heaven and Earth as the stakes.” He takes a deep breath. “Lucifer’s vessel said yes, but Michael’s didn’t. So the Host left.”
“Who—” She licks her lips again. “Sam was Michael’s vessel and he said no?”
“Sam is Lucifer’s vessel. He said yes,” he answers, throat tight. “I’m the one who said no to Michael, and that’s why the Host left.”
Her eyes widen. “You.”
“Me.” Now that it’s out there, it’s easier; the truth really does set you free, who knew. “The Apocalypse could have ended two years ago; all I had to do is say yes to Michael, let him fight Lucifer, and paradise on earth, all that. Instead, you get this: an Apocalypse in progress, a dead girlfriend, and a war we don’t know how to fight against a goddam archangel who’s riding my brother. ‘Life’s not fair’ is just an excuse, Vera; if anyone’s to blame for that, it’s me.”
“If you had…” She sits back, looking at nothing. “Cas didn’t agree with them. He stayed behind for you.”
“Cas is fucked up,” he points out, ignoring her scowl. “Gotta tell you, as an angel? Take away the drugs and sex thing, not a lot of difference. He’s always been crazy.”
“No, that I believe.” She looks up at him. “Who but someone crazy doesn’t run from a fight they’re gonna lose?”
Someone who doesn’t give up, and maybe, just maybe, never really wanted to. “Yeah.”
“Unless it’s worth fighting for,” she continues, still watching him. “Angels didn’t think they could win, they ran for it. Heaven and Earth, right? But not us. That’s why you said no. Either way, we weren’t gonna win this.”
“There’s no way you can know that.”
“You’re sending me to negotiate with Alpha and think I don’t know how to hear what people aren’t saying?” she asks, cocking an eyebrow. “Dean, a lot about you I doubted, but never what you were doing. Michael kills Lucifer, or you kill your own brother; no one, no one, picks the second unless the first is worse. Tell me I’m wrong: what would have happened if you’d said yes?”
“Paradise on earth,” he answers.
“And humanity?”
Jesus. “I don’t think we’d get to see much of it. Can’t prove it or anything—”
“You don’t have to,” she interrupts. “The Host left. That’s proof of what they were fighting for.” She hesitates, expression changing “Who knows about this?”
“Not many alive,” he answers slowly. “Chuck and Cas know all of it.”
“Chuck I guessed,” she agrees shortly, still staring at him. “Who else?”
“Gloria, Amy and Elijah, and the other camp leaders knew I had a brother, maybe a few others, I’m not sure. It’s been a while. That he’s Lucifer’s vessel—no idea, but there’s no way someone didn’t make the connection by now. Me being Michael’s? I’d be stupid to think someone won’t. This was prophecy, and the Host spread that shit to their followers on earth and so did Lucifer.”
“Brothers, yeah: this screams Biblical destiny, Cain and Abel, talk about recycling your material.” She levels a sharp look at him. “There’s more you’re not telling me.”
Dean sucks in a breath but doesn’t deny it.
“Don’t say anything,” she says immediately. “Not now. I only need to know one thing—the more? Who knows that?”
“Cas, Chuck, and Gloria,” he says, wondering where she’s going with this. “No one else.”
“So that’s why,” she says softly, almost to herself. “All this time, I thought….”
“Vera?”
She blinks, eyes narrowing. “Why are you telling me now? For the negotiations? Dean, this isn’t coming up unless I want to use it for blackmail, you have to know that.”
“Vera, if you were the type to blackmail, I wouldn’t send you to negotiate for me in the first place,” he points out. “I’m telling you—”
“So I can decide if I even want to,” she finishes for him, voice rising. “That’s why you started with the shit about me defecting to the South!”
Okay, not what he expected. “Uh—”
“You tell me I can leave if I want, then tell me exactly why I should, that’s how this is supposed to work? Because you’re responsible for the Apocalypse? Are you fucking with me?”
“You’re pissed,” he observes intelligently. “Why?”
“I don’t know yet!” she snaps. “Does Cas know you’re telling me?”
“No.”
From the look on her face, that’s not the answer she expected. “You didn’t tell Cas you were dropping this on me?”
“It was—” He’s not sure, actually. “Cas is crazy?”
“Oh God,” she breathes, closing her eyes before opening them on a glare that pins him in his seat, almost literally. “ Dean—you can’t tell anyone else about this. Tell me you won’t, not anyone, not for any reason.”
Somewhere, this conversation went way off-track. “What—”
“I don’t have time—Jesus, you do this an hour before I leave? I can’t—” She stops short, looking at him incredulously. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone—anyone—what you told me today until I get back. You can talk Cas into anything, but I’m not the angel who Fell for you; I won’t care how betrayed you look at me. Not like I’ll be here to deal with it, which’ll help.”
“I don’t—I don’t do that.”
“You do do that,” she confirms brutally. “You’re good at it. Promise me, Dean; I’m bringing you back the entire goddamn South, so I think you can give me this.”
Dean swallows. “They might not—Vera, I won’t hold it against you if they refuse. Not like you can perform miracles.”
“Now you think I can’t?” she demands, almost half-out of her chair. “Or that I don’t want to?”
“I have no idea how to answer that,” Dean confesses, staring back; he suddenly understands how a deer in headlights feels. “Neither?”
“I’m gonna do it,” she says flatly. “Now promise me—promise me—that—”
“You gonna tell me why?” he asks in frustration. “I know what happened to Cas, I know about Luke, and I get what the risk is! But I spent two years lying to my entire fucking camp, after I promised to lead you, and that shit’s gotta stop! I gotta do better if I’m going to ask everyone to fight a war and expect anyone to believe we can win it!”
“Holy shit,” Vera breathes, dropping back into her chair with a thump. “You think we’ll win?”
“Thanks for not making me work to prove my point,” he mutters. “Why not?”
“Can we?”
“Why not?” he demands. “What’s the worst that could happen? We’ll be really disappointed before we die, fine. Life’s shitty enough, no reason to add fatalism to it.”
“You—” She opens and shuts her mouth helplessly before finally saying, “You had to do this an hour before I leave?”
“In retrospect, the timing’s not my best,” he admits. “Whatever happens in Alpha—”
“I’ll get them.”
“—I know you’re gonna do your best,” he continues firmly. “But I won’t hold it against you if you can’t. That’s on me.”
“How they feel right now is on you,” she says flatly. “How they feel when I’m done is on me. I’m gonna move the earth, and I know exactly where I need to stand to do it. I can do this, Dean.”
He swallows. “All right.”
“You trust me with this,” she continues more quietly, “then trust me enough to know what I’m talking about when I tell you this: some secrets are meant to be kept. This one—this one you need to keep. Promise me you’ll keep it.”
Dean doesn’t fight it, not when she looks like that. “Until you get back?”
“Until I get back,” she confirms shakily. “Let me get you Alpha before you decide to rearrange Chitaqua’s entire collective mind into the new world order. I’m supposed to be your spy, the least you can do is wait until I get back so I have something worth spying on. This? Epic potential. I don’t want to miss it.”
“You got it.” He looks at his empty cup, realizing he’s out of reasons to be here. “Right. So I should—”
“Get me a cup while you’re up,” she interrupts, holding out her mug. Half out of his chair, Dean looks between it and her expectant look. “I got about thirty minutes before Cas comes to repack my bags and double check I’m armed.”
“He does that to you, too?” Dean asks on his way to the coffee maker. “Jesus, what the hell is that?”
“He checks you?”
Dean nods, filling their cups with the last of the coffee and returning to the table. “Ever since I got here.” He makes a face, then just goes with the slip. “He’s been a little paranoid since the thing in Kansas City.”
“You mean you going missing for over two weeks?” she asks with really unnecessary sarcasm. “Wow, that’s completely unexpected.”
“And what’d you do to get Mr. Are You Wearing At Least Five Guns Or You Can’t Get Out of the Jeep riding your ass?” Dean asks, taking a drink as she grimaces. “That bad?”
“He was stoned off his ass and I was halfway across the camp on the way to my jeep,” she mutters, shaking her head. “At dawn. How the hell could he tell I forgot my boot knife?”
Dean takes in her disgruntled expression and bursts out laughing.