Love Never Fails

70. Stranger in a Strange Land

Season Fourteen

Shot Down in Flames by AC/DC was playing.

ROAD – NIGHT

The Impala sped down the highway.

Sam was driving and Sylvie was passenger. Sam turned the stereo off. The music stopped. They kept driving in the night.

ROOM – MORNING

A man, Jamil, was resting on his bed. He woke up, stopped the music on his phone and lazily threw it away.

LATER

Jamil was getting ready to pray. He spoke Arabic. "Glorified be you, all praise is yours, perfect is your name, most high is your majesty and greatness. None has the right to be worshipped but you, the only one God." He placed his knees and hands on the floor. "Glorified be my God, the highest. Glorified be my God, the highest. Glorified be my God, the highest."

Jamil looked up. In front of him, Michael was sitting on a chair and staring down at him, wearing Dean's vessel. Jamil fell back, scared.

"Hello, Jamil," Michael greeted.

"Who are you?" Jamil asked.

"Oh, we've never met. But you've read all about me. How does it go?" Michael spoke in Arabic. "Whoever is an enemy to Allah, and His angels, and His messengers, and Gabriel and Michael then indeed, Allah is an enemy to the disbelievers." Michael's eyes glowed blue.

"You're... God?"

"Close, but... not quite."

"Gabriel?"

"The other one. The better one."

"Michael."

"There we go."

"No, no, no, no. Why are you here?"

"Well, that is the question, isn't it?" Michael stood. "Why are we here. I know why I'm here to ask you a question."

"What question?"

"The same question I've spent weeks traveling around this world asking all sorts of people. Holy men, leaders, killers. And now I come to you, Jamil Hamed." He paused. "What do you want?"

"What?"

"Do you want? Exactly. If you could have anything, name it."

"Peace. And love."

"If you cared about peace, you never would have left Syria. You never would have ran and abandoned your friends to die – and they did die."

"No."

"And if you cared about love, you never would have gone into that broom closet with – What was her name?"

Jamil breathed shakily. "No."

"Darlene? Your wife would have never left and you wouldn't be living in this... rat hole."

Jamil tried to attack Michael, who threw him on the floor without even moving.

"And that's the problem with you. You're lost... And not worth saving." Michael said.

"Wha—what—what do you want?" Jamil asked.

"What I always wanted... a better world."

BUNKER

Survivors from the AU were preparing their weapons. Mary approached one of them. "Hi."

The man pointed at various bullets. "You got silver. Devil's Trap. Holy Oil." He grabbed a gun. "And these here, they're dipped in Dean Man's blood."

Mary took the gun and loaded it.