This World We Live In

Part Eight

And this, Dear Reader, is where I hand the story back to Dean. He can tell it so much better than I can. Oh look and he just got back from getting us some hamburgers. Perfect timing. ~C.N.

"I'm not sad," Chaos said and lunged toward me.

I brought the sword up with an ease that surprised me, and allowed Chaos's momentum to drag him onto it. Hot blood trickled from the wound. I looked at it curiously.

"So gods really do bleed," I said. And then a blinding light seared through the sword, lighting up the now dark sky. It pulsed with a strange kind of radiance. Chaos's power. It surged within me. Chuck was right. The sword did transfer power. But he was wrong about one thing. It didn't kill me. It healed me. I felt the hole the sword had left close up. I gently pulled the sword from Chaos's sternum and dropped it in the dirt. The light dimmed and Chaos collapsed. I caught him before he hit the ground and held him.

"You're human now," I said. "How curious it is that to be human is to be less than. And to be a god is to have all the power. But you see now, don't you? To be human is to be so much more. Can you feel that? Our emotions are not our weaknesses. They are in fact, our strengths. They are what drives us to become better people. Humans as a species aren't bad, we just don't understand. We destroy this world we live in because destruction is all we have ever known. But we're learning. You just have to give us time. Time to see things the way they are, time to evolve. To be human is to be flawed and that will always be a profound truth," I paused and looked into Chaos's rich brown eyes. Oh how sad those eyes looked.

"Tell me why you look so sad," I said softly. Chaos closed his eyes.

"Adalia. Her name was Adalia," he whispered. Immediately I understood. Amara and Chuck's mother.

"You lost her. How?" I asked.

"It was Charles's idea, or Chuck as you call him. He and his sister were so young. So naïve. But they knew exactly what they were doing. It was cold, calculated. They always said it was an accident, but how? How could it have been an accident? To kill your own mother?" Chaos's breath hitched.

"You feel it, don't you? That raw emotion?" I smiled kindly.

"How is this good? It hurts so much," Chaos's voice dropped to a barely audible whisper.

"I know," I whispered back. "I know." I placed a hand on Chaos's sternum, healing the wound I had inflicted, and stood. Looking down at the now frail man who sat before me, I spoke again.

"I'm not going to tell you that it'll go away. It won't. But it will get easier to deal with. The first step is forgiving your children," I said and offered my hand to him. After a moment's hesitation, he brushed a tear away and took it. I pulled him up to a stand and looked him dead in the eye.

"Go," I ordered. "Go and talk to your son. And then leave. Leave this world and never return. Because if you do, we'll go against you again, and we will win again, because that is what we do. We will defend this planet until our last breaths. Never forget." I fell silent and turned to Cas, listening to Chaos's receding footsteps. Cas was looking at me in awe.

"Come on," I said. "Let's get the others and go home."

"But Dean," Cas's voice was soft, gentle. I looked at him. "Dean, Chaos wasn't bluffing when he said that they were gone. He killed them all. All except for Chuck." I huffed and looked down at my hands. The veins under my skin were shimmering with this new power.