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aelaer · 4 years

Note

Uhh can I ask for BBC Sherlock fic recs? (Preferably friendship and/or familial fics, but romance is okay too)

Ooohh boy are you in for a list. I know you asked this like, at the start of quarantine or at sometime where I decided that I was no longer interested in communicating with the wider world, but hopefully this will still be of interest to you?

Throughout 2018 I did very little writing because I was busy consuming everything offered by the Sherlock fandom produced over 7-8 years. I definitely read well into the millions of words. A lot of them were from specific collections on both ff.net and AO3. I recommend looking in “collections” on ff.net in particular (as I still can’t really figure out how collections work on AO3 and how to find them easily... it’s really easy to find them on ff.net).

To my knowledge, these are all complete.

If there is any romance tagged here, it’s because it’s really, really fucking good as romance is my least favorite genre. I cannot remember all of them, but there’s a lot of angst, definitely humour, and definitely some great canonical bits. Also whumpy ones that are either really really good or a bit ridiculous but there you go.

It’s long, so under a cut. If the cut doesn’t work, I have tagged it as well.

From ff.net (alphabetical order) - NOTE: I did NOT include anything from the authors I recommended because the list was already too freaking long! But be sure to check out the authors, you can sort by “category” on ff.net on their author page and then go down to “Sherlock” to find their works:

Anything by A Wandering Minstrel (sooooo many genres)

Most anything by chappysmom (tons of genres, some are excellent, some I could take or leave, overall good stuff)

Most anything by Dayja (she writes in a ton of genres, so some I *adore* while others aren’t my cup of tea, but overall good stuff)

Anything by Gwen's Blue Box if you want angst up the wazoo.

Anything by ivywatcher for fantastic character studies.

Most anything by Jennistar1 (another multi-genre writer, both friendship and slashfic)

Anything by Radon65 - a mix of stuff. Canon IIRC.

Anything by Richefic for good, canon-friendly gap-fillers

Anything by StillWaters1 for good, canon-friendly gap-fillers

A Brief Account Of Life With Zombies by Silver Pard Sherlock thinks it's all a bit of a nuisance, John is having the time of his life, and Mycroft is Not Impressed. With anything, but mostly his minions' inability to provide a good cup of tea. Rated: T - English - Humor - Chapters: 1 - Words: 2,384 - Complete

A House is not a Home by selenityshiroi This is a prompt fill from the LJ Fic Meme. John and Sherlock got a flat share because they needed to split the rent. But when John comes into money, people wonder 'why hasn't he found a place of his own' The actual prompt is inside the story Rated: T - English - Friendship - Chapters: 1 - Words: 8,190 - John W., Sherlock H. - Complete

Annie's Song by Berouge She has a second engagement with a man and his violin, in the park, at night. Sherlock's not going for it! ONESHOT! Rated: K - English - Romance - Chapters: 1 - Words: 8,869 - Sherlock H., Molly Hooper - Complete

Basic Training by chai4anne Summary: A death at a boys' school leads to conflict and revelations among Lestrade's team, Sherlock, and John. Set between "The Hounds of Baskerville" and "The Reichenbach Fall." No slash. Rated: T - English - Mystery/Friendship - Chapters: 1 - Words: 10,851 - Sherlock H., John W., DI Lestrade, Sgt. S. Donavan - Complete

Breaking Point by Haelia When Sherlock and Donovan are abducted and Sherlock is grievously wounded, it is up to Donovan to get them both out. "First things first, Freak. You do not give me orders. You are going to do everything I tell you to," Sally said sharply, "because we are getting out of here." Can they both escape with their lives from the most dangerous gang in London? Rated: T - English - Mystery/Hurt/Comfort - Chapters: 3 - Words: 14,401 - Sgt. S. Donavan, Sherlock H. - Complete

Firestorm by Dustbunny13 Sherlock returns, but his friendship with John is damaged. Nevertheless, they embark on their final hunt to finish off Moriarty's net, but it ends in a catastrophe: Sherlock is shot and lapses into a coma. As John keeps vigil, he reads Sherlock's diary written during the hiatus. Slowly, he begins to understand and finds himself wishing for another miracle. Completed. Rated: T - English - Hurt/Comfort/Adventure - Chapters: 53 - Words: 133,754 - Complete NOTE: Probably my favorite novel-length multi-chapter you find only on ff.net for this fandom.

How To Accidentally Summon a Demon by patster223 Sherlock is possessed by a demon. A damned, wicked soul that uses the kitchen table for blood rituals and experiments. John doesn't even notice the difference. Rated: K+ - English - Supernatural/Humor - Chapters: 1 - Words: 1,411 - Sherlock H., John W. - Complete

Kidnapped! A Comedy by scuttlesworth Poor kidnappers. Kidnapping John Watson is like pulling on a thread tied to all sorts of crazy. It's enough to make a bloke get a job and go straight. Rated: T - English - Humor/Friendship - Chapters: 2 - Words: 10,758 - John W. - Complete

Mobile Phones, Rubble and Shock by prettybirdy979 In the aftermath of the explosion, Lestrade must work to keep Sherlock Holmes alive and make sense of his communications... with only a mobile phone and Sherlock buried under the rubble of the pool. Rated: T - English - Hurt/Comfort/Angst - Chapters: 1 - Words: 2,679 - Sherlock H., DI Lestrade - Complete

Mouth of Babes by Morgan Stuart Several weeks after the explosion at the pool following "The Great Game" episode, Lestrade visits the recuperating Sherlock and John at 221B Baker Street. He brings case files and food... and a visitor in tow. Rated: K - English - Friendship - Chapters: 1 - Words: 2,495 - Sherlock H., DI Lestrade - Complete NOTE: This is a whole series. If you like it, look up the rest under the author. It’s super cute.

Of Surgeons and Soldiers by EmRose92 Being a doctor has its advantages. He knows how to put people back together, and he knows how to take them apart. 221B is forced into a hostage situation, and John seems to be the only one who has the power to get them out of it. Includes BAMF John, protective Sherlock, and several unfortunate criminals who mess with the wrong army doctor. No slash. Rated: K+ - English - Adventure/Family - Chapters: 2 - Words: 9,695 - Sherlock H., John W. - Complete

The Empty Home by chai4anne Sherlock would always be haunted by memories of one particular case. The first body, its once-so-familiar features blurred by the passing of time and death, moved him more than he would ever have expected. But the worst was the skeleton he uncovered later, bits of hair and clothes still clinging to it—which had no effect on him whatever, until he looked up and saw John's face. Rated: T - English - Mystery/Suspense - Chapters: 28 - Words: 150,773 - Sherlock H., John W. - Complete

The frigid trench by Nova-chan Sherlock is badly hurt. And alone. And incapacitated. Rated: T - English - Drama/Hurt/Comfort - Chapters: 15 - Words: 13,118 - Sherlock H., John W. - Complete

The Hand You're Dealt by Lady Sam Mallory Sherlock, John and several others are trapped in a building when an explosion disrupts the crime scene they are working. COMPLETE. Rated: T - English - Hurt/Comfort/Angst - Chapters: 1 - Words: 12,092 - Sherlock H., John W. - Complete

The Secret Identity of John Watson by scifigrl47 Taken out of context, John Watson leads a terrifying life. You have to wonder what those poor women he dates thinks of it, especially if John decides to try keeping one away from Sherlock, and Sherlock decides that it'd be best if he could get rid of her Rated: T - English - Humor - Chapters: 3 - Words: 29,251 - John W., Sherlock H. - Complete

This Is What He Does For Fun by nyssa123 Sherlock and John go to the pub after a long day and Sherlock realizes that the man sitting next to them is a serial killer. He then proceeds to tell everyone how he knows. Written for a prompt on the LJ kinkmeme.

Rated: K+ - English - Humor/Mystery - Chapters: 1 - Words: 1,147 - John W., Sherlock H. - Complete

Totem by IshkabibbleScribble Rescuing Sherlock from the clutches of a violent terrorist cell forces John to rely on a long-unused, lethal skill. Rated: T - English - Friendship/Drama - Chapters: 2 - Words: 8,752 - Sherlock H., John W. - Complete

War Wound by SoulfireInc Set sometime after Sherlock's return, before John's wedding to Mary Mortsan. An old comrade of John's arrives at 221B Baker St, scared and desperate for the consulting detective's help. Perhaps, had Sherlock known the consequences he and John would suffer as a result of this surprise encounter, he never would have accepted the case ... [Written before season three aired.] Rated: K+ - English - Drama/Friendship - Chapters: 1 - Words: 21,319 - Sherlock H., John W., DI Lestrade, OC - Complete

From AO3 (alphabetical order) - NOTE: Just like the ff.net list, I did NOT include anything from the authors I recommended because these lists are just ginormous.

NOTE: I did *not* include warnings, pairings, etc in these summaries (too many tags to try and organize in the messy copy/pastes). Read the tags if you have any sensitivities/squicks/etc for all links!

Most anything by CaffieneKitty (over 100 shorts, so some I really love, others I can pass. Well worth checking out)

Anything by dragonnan if you want a huge wallop of angst. Also illustrations. Also writes in the MCU.

Anything by Jolie_Black (You thought stories written in script could only be bad? You thought WRONG. Very very canon-compliant goodness).

Anything by sgam76 (another multi-genre writer)

A Freak Adventure by dioscureantwins Words: 13,719 Chapters: 1/1 Teen And Up Audiences Sherlock Holmes Sally Donovan John Watson Mrs. Hudson Oh Christ, the Freak will be like a dog with two tails if she turns to him for assistance. Sally can feel her hands curling into fists ready to punch the condescending smirk off his face as she glares at the lift panel, willing the lift to go faster. But this is about Susy, Sally tells herself, not about him or Sally’s abhorrence of the atrocious git. She’s still convinced he gets off on it but he can wank himself into a stupor over Susy’s disappearance for all she cares as long as he finds her.

A Smelly Affair by dioscureantwins Words: 13,756 Chapters: 1/1 General Audiences Sherlock Holmes John Watson Mrs Hudson Greg Lestrade Molly Hooper Anthea Mycroft Holmes Sherlock had published an interesting thesis on the splintering of various woods on his website. As well as an equally fascinating treatise on different types of ropes and knots and the best techniques for securing someone. Obviously, his captors had followed those instructions to the letter; thereby disproving John’s theory nobody took notice of Sherlock’s website. A victory, perhaps, but one Sherlock felt he could have done without. Trust his readership to turn the tables on the author. Morons.

Constantly by thesignsofserbia Words: 4,530 Chapters: 1/1 Mature Sherlock Holmes Mycroft Holmes Mycroft and Sherlock have a tenuous relationship at best, but with Sherlock taking down Moriarty's web, they might need each other more than they'd care to admit.

Croatia-Water-Blue by hollyesque Words: 12,117 Chapters: 1/1 Not Rated Sherlock Holmes John Watson Mycroft Holmes “I…” John licks his lips, twitches his fingers as though he wants to reach out, “I’m here, Sherlock,” he says; “I know I haven’t been, but…but I am now.” Sherlock wrinkles his nose. Haven’t been—? “What on earth do you mean, you haven’t been here?” he asks, “You’ve been living here.”

Getting to Know You by Dimity Blue (Arnie) Words: 4,605 Chapters: 1/1 General Audiences Arthur Weasley/Molly Weasley Sherlock Holmes John Watson Mycroft Holmes John picked up the kettle. "Nothing from Lestrade?"Sherlock flipped himself over on the sofa and presented John with his back; John sometimes felt he was living with a cat.Clicking the switch on the kettle, John grinned to himself and, keeping his tone casual, said, "Maybe you could send him an owl."There was silence for a few seconds, then Sherlock asked, "Why would I send him an owl?"

Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus by CaitlinFairchild Words: 4,572 Chapters: 1/1 Teen And Up Audiences Sherlock Holmes Mycroft Holmes John Watson Closing his eyes, Sherlock allows himself a brief swell of feeling--let’s not put a name on it, just call it a feeling--for his big brother. He knows that when Mycroft opens that steel door again, every man now inside will be a fresh corpse.The East Wind will take them all, Sherlock thinks fuzzily, before the curtain of sleep descends.

London Orbital by merripestin Words: 13,642 Chapters: 1/1 General Audiences Greg Lestrade Sally Donovan Sherlock Holmes John Watson "I'm driving first," Sally said. "Guv can take over after me. If we're all still mad enough to be at this after that, John can drive third shift. Then the freak, if we decide we can risk it.""John doesn't drive," said Sherlock."Then what's John along for?" Sally protested. Which Greg reckoned had to be just Sally trying to wind Sherlock up. She knew better. All night in a car with Sherlock was bad enough. All night driving round and round the M25 looking for a killer, with Sherlock deprived of John Watson, sounded like a new circle of hell.

Official Recruiter by Captain_Author Words: 49,469 Chapters: 21/21 General Audiences Clint Barton Phil Coulson Sherlock Holmes John Watson Stephen Strange Crimes were so simple before aliens, gods, and supernatural abilities made themselves known. But Sherlock Holmes never enjoyed simple and these inhumans and mutants provided quite a challenge. SHIELD needed someone to find the superpowered. Funny how both their needs can be met.

Rigging screws, size 1 3/8 inch, galvanised by AJHall Words: 15,250 Chapters: 6/6 Teen And Up Audiences Sherlock Holmes John Watson "How's a woman supposed to prove her husband's a murderer, dammit?" On the eve of a planned voyage to Brittany, Marjorie Jameson starts her day with no problems more pressing than forcing a boatyard to do an emergency repair to the family yacht. A chance encounter at the Cowes hi-speed ferry terminal begins to unravel a web of conspiracy and murder, with her charming, untrustworthy husband Julian right at the centre and Marjorie as the next intended victim.But no-one's going to trust the word of an aging housewife whose complaints of abuse the police have previously dismissed as delusions.

Somewhere in the Dinaric Alps by drpepperdiva91 Words: 1,735 Chapters: 1/1 General Audiences Sherlock Holmes John Watson Sherlock is caught off-guard by a flashback to his time in Serbia, just before John arrives home from work. Sweet, but still semi-realistic, hurt/comfort.

The Case of the Missing Bus Ticket by Unsentimentalf Words: 10,543 Chapters: 1/1 General Audiences Dirk Gently Sherlock Holmes Richard MacDuff John Watson Mycroft Holmes When Dirk and Richard's new client inexplicably fails to stay alive long enough to pay them, their ailing finances mean that a certain amount of subterfuge is required to get them back to London. The sudden death of their client has, however, attracted the attention of another rather more famous (if less holistic) detective and the stage is set for a long distance bus ride of suspense…

The Green Blade by verityburns Words: 72,929 Chapters: 15/15 Teen And Up Audiences Sherlock Holmes John Watson Lestrade (Inspector) Mycroft Holmes Sally Donovan Anderson (Sherlock) Mrs. Hudson As a serial killer hits the headlines, the police are out of their depth and the next victim is out of time. With faith in Sherlock Holmes at an all time low, this is a case which will push loyalties to the limit... WARNING: COMMENTS CONTAIN SPOILERS!

The Holiday by Scriblit Words: 18,962 Chapters: 9/9 Mature Sherlock Holmes John Watson Mycroft Holmes Mrs. Hudson Greg Lestrade Molly Hooper Mary Morstan ACD Canon Characters A month following an horrific, sadistic attack during a case, Sherlock is still physically incapacitated and emotionally damaged. A holiday is suggested, but even stuck out in the middle of nowhere, he and John happen upon a case that could make Sherlock begin to feel like his old self again - or could kill him.BBC Sherlock Reworking of ACD's Devil's Foot, with Illustrious Client in flashbacks. Scenes of violence and implied "off screen" sexual violence/sexual assault.

The Shallow End by hollyesque Words: 6,923 Chapters: 1/1 Teen And Up Audiences Sherlock Holmes John Watson Mycroft Holmes "I told you once that I don't have friends," he says to John's back, "Now you know why."

The Silence of the Bees by trappedinathoughtbubble Words: 14,169 Chapters: 7/? Mature Sherlock Holmes John Watson Mary Morstan Mary Watson Greg Lestrade Mycroft Holmes A kidnapped teenage girl. A political conspiracy. Bees. And somehow in the midst of it all, John learns a few things Sherlock forgot to mention about those two years. Note: Not completed, but the author's around and one of the sweetest people ever if you want to give encouragement to take a look again at this story!

The Triple Bluff by SarahKnight Words: 28,331 Chapters: 8/8 Mature Sherlock Holmes Greg Lestrade Mycroft Holmes Sally Donovan Philip Anderson Sherlock annoys his landlord at Montague street, grows to hate Donovan and gets into trouble a lot on a kidnapping case involving a woman who bullied him as a child.The events leading up to A Study In Pink. A case fic that answers questions from the first episode such as why Sherlock had to leave Montague Street and find a new flatmate, why he and Lestrade both quit smoking but didn't know the other had, why there's so much animosity between Sherlock and Donovan, and why Sherlock hates traveling in a police car.

Welcome Home by thesignsofserbia Words: 3,435 Chapters: 1/1 Teen And Up Audiences Sherlock Holmes John Watson Mrs. Hudson Mycroft Holmes "All my nightmares escaped my head. Bar the door, please don’t let them in. You were never supposed to leave. Now my head's splitting at the seams."

And of course I have my own Sherlock/Doctor Strange crossover up on AO3 if that tickles your fancy, illustrations and all. :D

But if you haven’t delved deep into the fandom, this should tide you over for some time.

This list is by no means an exhaustive list of recs. I didn’t really include anything that concentrated on a romantic pairing, for instance. I left off anything explicit as well. But yeah, here’s a small amount of the overall goodness produced by the BBC Sherlock fandom over the last 10 years.

#neutronstardust13 #long post #bbc sherlock #fic rec #sherlock holmes #john watson #gen fic #genre: humor #genre: angst #genre: fluff #crossover #greg lestrade #mycroft holmes #martha hudson #ask #answered

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holy-honeybees · 4 years

Text

Snowdrift

AO3

Rating: T+ (for swearing)

Summary: Three friends and their dog get lost in a snowstorm while investigating the paranormal. Amidst swirling flurries of white, some lose their way and get lost in their memories, others lose sight of their friends and loved ones, and an unforgiving winter quickly fills in the footprints one would follow to get back home.

A/N: I started this back in November 2019 but sadly never finished the work. I was thinking of holding off till it started to snow again, but figured now was as good a time as any to try and finish this.The title is taken from Snail's House song "[snowdrift]" which you can check out here!

My hopes of having a regular posting schedule were completely dashed by the disaster that is the year 2020. But I’m still here, I’m still writing, and though I don’t know when the next chapter will be, I know there will be another. Beware that from here on, there may be some slight SPOILERS for the latest MSA video, “The Future!” If you haven’t already watched it though, you absolutely should, it was amazing, and the whole team who worked on it are all so talented!!

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Chapter One

Chapter Seven

Lewis glanced behind him to watch as Vivi and Mystery disappeared into the woods, the flashlight beam wavering as his friends passed behind trees and headed deeper into the forest. His own fluorescence gave the surrounding snowdrifts a soft, pink glow, illuminating his path as he headed along where he guessed the road to be under the thick blanket of snow. The ghost fought the urge to turn around and check on Vivi and Mystery again, knowing if he gave in now he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from watching until the last glimmer of their flashlight faded from view. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them to take care of themselves. He knew how fearsome Mystery could be, even after his injury, and though Vivi was frustrated by her lack of mastery over magic, she’d taken to it readily. If her friends were in danger, Lewis knew nothing would stop her, magic or no. It was just hard for him to give up old habits. He couldn’t help but think of being the protector as his role in the group, especially after so many years of Arthur hiding behind him. Despite his size, Lewis had never been much of a fighter when he was alive. He’d always relied on his height and broad shoulders to intimidate, whether it was Arthur’s high school bullies or whatever monster of the week had decided to pick a fight with them. His death had surprisingly come with a few benefits, the supernatural speed at which he now travelled being just one of them. Already he had come to the bend in the road where their near miss had occurred just days ago, the guardrail and sign warped out of place from the impact with the van. Lewis ran his hand along the arrow on the sign, brushing loose snow to the ground.

It was hard to believe that they had been having snowball fights and drinking hot cocoa just the other day. The snow which had once been so entrancing to him now seemed ominous and deadly, the winter wonderland having transformed into a frozen wasteland. Lewis suppressed a shiver. He shouldn’t have been able to feel the freezing temperatures, but the cold gnawed at his bones nonetheless. He was reminded of the walk-in freezer at the Pepper Paradiso. Once, while he’d still been in high school, Lewis had accidentally locked himself in the walk-in at the restaurant. He’d only been stuck for about fifteen minutes, but the cold had seemed unbearable for even that short amount of time. He’d been lucky that Ma and Pa Pepper were so quick to get him out. He couldn’t get his teeth to stop chattering until his mom had fixed him up a special batch of her hot chocolate flavored with cinnamon and cayenne pepper. Lewis remembered sitting in the dining area, cradling his mug of hot chocolate as his dad rubbed a hand up and down his arm to help warm him up. His mother had been livid and had immediately called the fridge manufacturer to demand they send someone to replace the faulty door release on the inside of the walk-in. Despite his parents’ best efforts, the chill hadn’t left him until late that night when he was curled up in bed, bundled in extra blankets.

Lewis wondered just how long Arthur had been gone before the others had discovered him missing. He feared that the mechanic had been gone too long already. He knew now just how fragile people were, and given Arthur’s tendency to stress himself out and forgo basic needs, he worried for the mechanic more than most. Shifting his focus from his worries to the task at hand, Lewis turned to search the expanse of snow surrounding him, trying to find a sign that the mechanic had been this way at all. Each direction looked the same as the others though. It was impossible to tell if it was because Lewis had picked the wrong way to go or if the belligerent snowfall had simply covered Arthur’s tracks. Without any kind of path to follow, Lewis picked a direction at random. Phasing through the twisted metal of the guardrail, he sped away from the road into the snowy fields beyond to continue his search. The plains the ghost now flew over were as flat and empty as the rest of the landscape had been. Lewis hoped it would make the mechanic easy to spot, even with the moon covered by clouds and the thick snowfall still coming down. The snow in the distance went almost blue with shadows, but if he passed close enough to the mechanic, the ghost was sure he would recognize the bright orange color his friend so frequently wore.

“Arthur!” Lewis called. The snow on the ground muffled his shout, and the lowly moaning winds quickly drowned out the remaining sound. Still, Lewis couldn’t help but feel disappointed when he received no response. The spirit pushed onwards, constantly scanning his surroundings for a glimpse of familiar orange amidst all the white. As he rushed further away from the road to continue his search for Arthur, Lewis was struck with a sense of déjà vu. For a moment, he could have sworn that the snowy landscape had shifted, changing from a seemingly barren tundra to a familiar hallway, lined with portraits and doors that looped back in on each other in impossible patterns. The stripes in the wallpaper blurred together as he flew by, hunting down the scrawny mechanic that had betrayed him.

“Arthur!” the ghost bellowed.

Lewis skidded to an abrupt halt, shocked by the wrathful tone of his own voice. As he looked around again, he was back in the snowy field that lay beyond the bend in the road, no haunted mansion in sight. Just an endless, featureless white landscape. It had all been so real, the desire to find Arthur and punish him so strong, that for a moment Lewis had forgotten where he was. He’d forgotten himself and had lost the careful control he had on his anger. Even now that the specter had forgiven Arthur and come to peace with his own demise, the rage never seemed to go away. It was always simmering just below the surface, waiting for him to slip up and boil over. Afterall, it wasn’t just his attachment to Vivi that had brought him back, but his desire for vengeance as well. This anger was a part of him now, as much as he hated it, as much as he was afraid of it. Normally he kept it buried deep, able to force it back down whenever it reared its ugly head. He hadn’t felt such an intense flare of rage in months, and his fury had never boiled over without any provocation before. The imagined cold that had seeped into his bones was now completely burned out, the golden locket that served as his anchor thrumming with anger.

Did he really still hate his friend so much?

Lewis shook his skull back and forth, his hair flickering wildly at the movement. He had to keep it together. He thought back to all the late night conversations with Arthur that had helped to keep his loneliness at bay over the last few months. How before the cave, they would camp out on top of the van and look at the stars, guessing at the names of constellations, the mechanic at ease enough to fill the silence with idle chatter about science fiction and space travel. He remembered how his friend had helped him study for the law school he’d hoped to get into, shuffling through stacks of flash cards filled with legal jargon over milkshakes at the restaurant. Teenage years spent at each other’s houses, sleepovers filled with binge watching Sailor Moon andsuffering through Surf’s Up Pizza because he knew how much Arthur liked it. The only kid in middle school who had readily accepted that Lewis hadn’t been a part of the Pepper household up until the day he was.

The ghost put a hand to his anchor, willing himself to calm down as he wrapped his fingers around the heart-shaped locket. He didn’t hate Arthur. At least, not anymore. Facing down a murderous, possessed kitsune together hadn’t magically spirited away the hurt Lewis had felt. His behavior towards Arthur had ranged from cold to cruel in the first couple of months following their reunion. During one disastrous case, it had gotten bad enough that the mechanic had almost walked away from the Mystery Skulls for good. While on an investigation out of town, Lewis had lost his tenuous grip on his temper and had blown up at the mechanic to a nuclear degree. Arthur had fled, even leaving his precious van behind, determined to hitchhike his way back home to Tempo. Mystery had tried to talk the mechanic out of it, but Vivi had ended up having to drag Arthur away from the roadside herself. With the mechanic refusing to talk, the blue-haired girl had resorted to taking him to a bar and had plied him with alcohol to get him to open up. Arthur had finally broken down into a blubbering mess after several drinks. Once their tab had been paid and the mechanic tucked away safely in the back of the van to sleep it off, Vivi had tracked down Lewis to give the ghost a piece of her mind with a stern lecture that Ma Pepper would have been proud of. While she was sympathetic to the ghost’s position, she reminded him that it wasn’t really Arthur who had pushed him off the cliff, and that the mechanic had been devastated and desperate to find Lewis after he’d gone missing. Vivi also pointed out it wasn’t fair to force her to choose between the faithful friend she’d had by her side over the past year and someone she had only just started to remember having loved. Faced with the prospect of tearing the Mystery Skulls apart and driving away the people he cared about, the ghost had begrudgingly agreed to try and put the past behind him.

With the winter winds swirling around him, Lewis could feel the beating of the heart in his hand slow to a steady thump, thump, thump as he reminisced. Things had been hard at first. The smallest of slights irked the ghost, and it took tremendous concentration to think before he snapped. He had still failed on occasion, with his only choice then being to leave his friends behind while he cooled off. Little by little though, he was able to box up his resentment and pack it away, having a much easier time dealing with it in smaller pieces. He then found he could control his anger, and even if it had become a part of him, it didn’t have to control him. Talking with Mystery had helped. The kitsune had centuries of life experience to draw from, and was more than happy to offer advice or just sit back and listen when Lewis needed him to. Vivi was just as willing to help, but couldn’t always stop herself from offering up ideas and solutions when Lewis talked about his problems. Sometimes it was nice to have someone to just listen without interruption. With time, practice, and help from his friends, the ghost was finally able to be around Arthur again, and being around his former friend reminded Lewis of why they had been friends in the first place. After a while, he found he actually liked being around Arthur, even in their new circumstances. He wanted to try and be friends again, but there had been so much to remedy between them. It had taken a long time for the mechanic to let his guard down around the ghost, not that Lewis could blame him. When he finally did, they had slowly begun to mend their friendship, but something was still missing. Lewis struggled at times to keep his distance, not wanting the mechanic to feel uncomfortable or threatened by his presence after so much bad blood between them. He waited respectfully for Arthur to bridge the gap, but, even now, the mechanic still seemed wary of him. Lewis had to wonder if his friend just needed more time or if he’d irreparably broken something between them. The ghost would never forgive himself if he’d missed his chance to fix things. Lewis looked at the locket in his hand and flipped it open. Eyes unclouded by anger, he could clearly see the picture of the four of them it contained. Together, just the way they should be.

All he wanted now was his best friend back.

Lewis heaved a sigh, closing the locket again as he prepared to continue his search. The sight of the golden heart had given him an idea. Concentrating, the spirit summoned his coffin, the dark lacquered wood standing out against the snow. The casket lid sprung open to reveal six purple-colored spirits, each adorned with a small golden heart of their own. The Dead Beats immediately poured out of the coffin, winding around Lewis’s shoulders and bumping up against his shins. Vivi had been enthralled to be able to study the small ghosts up close once they’d been formally introduced. According to Mystery, they were weaker spirits drawn to Lewis’s power, feeding on his cast-off energy. The kitsune had assured the Mystery Skulls that they weren’t some kind of paranormal parasite though, and no harm would come to Lewis from their presence. It was a symbiotic relationship, and while there was no direct benefit to him, Lewis did find he enjoyed their company. They reminded him of affectionate cats sometimes. Especially with the way they rubbed against his legs, humming instead of purring, as they did now.

“I’m happy to see you too,” Lewis said earnestly, patting at one of the little specters’ heads, “But right now I need your help. Can you do something for me?”

The Dead Beats harmonized in a way he knew meant ‘yes’.

“Good,” he replied, “Arthur is missing. I need you to split up and help me look for him. If you find him, come tell me where he is right away. Can you do that?”

Another affirmative humming sound.

“Thank you! Please, go as quick as you can!” Lewis set about pointing each of the Dead Beats in a different direction, one of them doubling back to see if Arthur had travelled further along the road Lewis had left behind. The others fanned out through the field to cover more ground and expand their search radius. Lewis watched as they took off in every direction, zipping over the snowbanks as they began to search for the mechanic. Satisfied, he continued forwards on the path he’d chosen for himself. There were now six extra sets of eyes looking for the lost mechanic. Lewis only hoped that if one of them did find Arthur, they wouldn’t try to play any tricks on him. The Dead Beats had quite a mischievous streak, with Arthur being the favorite target of their practical jokes and pranks. Having the extra help in his search was a huge relief, but Lewis knew he wouldn’t truly feel at ease until his friend had been safely recovered.

Please don’t let me be too late…to find him…to fix things.

There was still so much Lewis wanted to say. They never talked about that night in the cave, and though sometimes Lewis felt that they didn’t have to, he did wonder if it would help. He hoped he would get the chance to find out. While Lewis had calmed himself considerably, his worried thoughts still tumbled about like a brewing storm as he continued the search for his missing friend. He ignored that, deep beneath the hopes and fears he felt, a spark of anger was still burning in his chest, refusing to go out.

#mystery skulls animated #msa #msa fanfic #mystery skulls animated fanfic #arthur #lewis #vivi #mystery #arthur kingsmen #lewis pepper #vivi yukino #Snowdrift

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huntertales · 4 years

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Part Two: G.I. Jane. (Devil May Care S09E02)

Episode Summary: In the aftermath of the fall, Sam and the reader are taken by surprise when they learn Crowley is still alive–and stuffed in the trunk of the Impala. A temporary situation before the reader and the Winchesters relocate him to the Men of Letters dungeon. Kevin is anything but enthusiastic about seeing the king of hell under the same roof as him. However the three hunters want the demon close, hoping Crowley will provide useful information about others of his kind. Meanwhile, Abaddon re-emerges and plans to take over hell. Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader Word Count: 5,098.

Previous Part | Supernatural Rewrite Masterlist

You never had such a strong desire to push your laptop off the library's table and away from you more than you did at this very moment. You let out a frustrated sigh and rubbed your aching eyes from staring at the screen for the past forty-five minutes. After combing through endless articles over every state in the country, you had officially hit a dead end on trying to find a lead. You weren’t sure what you were even supposed to be looking for anymore. You put in seven hours last night with Sam trying to do some research while Kevin tried translating the angel tablet some more in hopes he could find a way to undo the mess Metatron had made. The three of you accomplished absolutely nothing, forcing you to go to bed grumpy and even more stressed than how you started out.

You looked at the bottom right corner of the screen to read the time: 5:27 A.M. You reached for your empty coffee cup and contemplated if your heart could handle another serving. You’d been up for almost an hour after tossing and turning for half the night until you gave up on trying to sleep. Your restless mind wouldn’t stop thinking about everything that was happening. How was Kevin handling the fact that Crowley was staying in the bunker? Was Cas even anywhere near Kansas? What if he was hurt? What if you couldn't fix the damage that was done upon heaven? How the hell did you not know you were...you stopped yourself when you reached for questions you didn’t want to think about.

You gave up on trying to bury the anxiety down and tried to distract yourself instead by doing some more research. Maybe while you were wasting your time trying to sleep something had popped up. However your attempt at trying to be helpful ended with you wasting another hour of your life you couldn’t get back. You brewed yourself a pot of coffee since you weren’t going back to bed and had your routinely two cups of coffee, thinking it would make you sharper to finding a needle in a haystack. Only it made you feel like your heart was about to jump out of your chest. You didn’t understand what was going on with your body.

Normally it took you that amount to get your eyes to stay open in the morning, now it felt like you couldn't sit still, it was like your body was more sensitive to the substance. Maybe it was your restless mind that was having some sort of negative effect on your body. Whatever the reason was, you couldn’t sit here anymore and stare at your laptop screen. You needed to get out of here and distance yourself for a little while. You decided to do something you hadn't done in years; you were going to go for a run.

Running was something you used to do almost on a routine basis when you were younger. It started off as a way to keep yourself healthy and keep yourself in shape. Back when the only thing you were good at when it came to hunting was researching the history of a creature and how to kill it. Slowly it turned into a ritual for you that you looked forward to every morning. You laced up your sneakers and hit the local park that was a ten minute walk from your house with your favorite cassette tape or CD. Sometimes you let the sounds of nature be your music. You decided that’s what you needed right now.

You changed into some sweatpants you had buried somewhere in your room and grabbed your sneakers that were collecting dust in a box of your old belongings from your house. You didn’t realize how much you missed running until you stepped outside to see it was still dark and the sounds of crickets chirping in the distant woods. You inhaled a deep breath of the fresh air and began on your journey, hoping your muscles weren’t too rusty for the handful of miles you were about to accomplish. Maybe you could even see the run rise while you were out.

Over an hour later and several miles down, you arrived back at the bunker with the intention of distancing yourself away from technology for a little while longer for a chance to clear your head and look at this whole situation from another point. It seemed to do you some good when you found an article that caught your interest. You skimmed through it for a second time to make sure this was something worth looking into as you wandered over to the table after brewing yourself another cup of coffee. You told yourself that you worked off the caffeine to treat yourself to a third one after you brewed yourself another pot before you hopped into the shower after dripping with sweat from the workout.

You felt more refreshed after the run along with changing into normal clothes after your shower, yet your hair was still damp and face bare of any makeup you were still contemplating applying. One of the perks you learned quickly while living in the bunker was the endless hot water you had, along with the pressure that eased your aching muscles. You accidentally lost track of how long you had been standing in the shower, it was almost as if you had zoned out.

You glanced up when you heard the sound of slippers dragging around the bunker's floor and heading towards the kitchen, the noise made you break your concentration away from the article you had been reading more intensely now. A smile crept to the edges of your lips at the sight of a still sleepy looking Dean. The man was dressed in his boxers and a t-shirt he fell asleep in after calling it quits for himself a little after midnight.

"Morning." You greeted the man in a little too chipper of a voice for the both of you, taking you by surprise.

"Morning, sweetheart." Dean managed to grumble back.

You made your way over to the man to give him a quick peck on the lips like you normally did every morning before going back to your coffee to take a sip. You directed your attention back to the article that seemed like something worth investigating. At least it was the closest thing you had at the moment that caught your interest. Dean made his way over to pour a cup for himself. He noticed the pot was still scolding hot, which meant it was fresh. He looked around the kitchen to find evidence of another partner to join you. Sam wasn't around. And Kevin was most likely still sleeping from the stressful three days he had to endure on his own. It was just you.

"Hey, what time did you get up this morning?" Dean asked out of curiosity. You glanced up from the phone and to him, wondering why he wanted to know. "You came to bed at two. But when I went to the bathroom at six, you were gone.”

"Oh. I decided to do a little research. Then I went out for a run afterwards." You told the man, taking a seat at the table to try and continue reading. "I just got back an hour ago."

Dean looked up at the clock to see that it was a little past eight. It was common for you to be an early riser than him, except for the rare moments when the both of you spent the mornings cuddled in bed together. All though there were problems coming at you from both sides, Dean hoped you might have decided to sleep in. He would do anything to be wrapped up in each other's arms. He didn't know the last time where he could forget about the world and its problems. It was just you and him. Nothing else to worry about. Even if it was for a few minutes, it was what he needed right now. To have you near him, safe and sound. Knowing that you were okay. At least, to be reminded that he still cared for you. He still loved you.

"That was two hours ago." Dean said. You shrugged your shoulders and gave the man a slightly confused look as to why he was putting so much care into this. The three of you had strange sleeping patterns, it came with the job. You were lucky if you even got four hours of sleep. Suddenly Dean was acting as if this was out of the ordinary for you. "What time did you actually get up?"

"I don't know. I really couldn't sleep. I think I got up a little after four. Did a little digging for an hour and then I went out for a run." You gave the man a highlight of what you had been up to over the past few hours. You rubbed a hand over your aching muscles, trying to get used to the pain you hadn't felt in a while. "I shouldn't have done that extra mile. I'll be feeling it later, that's for sure."

"Are you sure you should be going this hard? I mean, you just..." Dean found himself trailing off, his silence mentioning the elephant in the room none of you had spoken about since a few nights ago. You watched as he gave you a serious expression, along with a worrisome glint in his eye. "I don't want you pushing yourself. Not when you're still in such a fragile state. We don't know how much damage was done on your body after the trials. Take it easy."

You put your phone down to the table and gave the man an annoyed glare. “Why are you talking to me like that?”

"...Like what?" Dean asked you. He found himself responding to your question a few seconds later after you forced him to break his concentration away from his personal thoughts.

"Like...I don't know." You weren't sure how to explain it to him without sounding crazy yourself. He walked on eggshells around you. You understood on some level that he didn't want you pushing yourself too hard, despite telling him over and over again that you felt fine. But it was how he spoke to you. Almost as if you were...dumb. Putting emphasis on certain words for you to comprehend them more easier. He was acting as if you didn't know the limits of your own body. "I'm fine." You tried to tell him, but even you knew that was bull. "I mean, fine as someone in my condition can be."

"All I'm asking is for you to take it easy. Don't be signing up for any marathons soon." Dean said. You rolled your eyes and moved your attention back to your phone, already growing tired of his overly protective behavior. "Did you find anything interesting? Angel-y?"

"Try demon-y. I found something weird enough for us." You said. You handed over your phone for Dean to take a look after he poured himself a cup of coffee and joined you at the table. From the look on his face after he scrolled through the article it seemed he was interested himself. "If we leave in the next hour we can be there this afternoon."

Dean let out a quiet sigh from your eagerness to jump on this case, however he agreed when he nodded his head and handed your phone back to you. You smiled at him and got up from your seat, mentioning about letting Sam know and getting everything ready to head out sooner than later. The older man simply took another sip of his coffee and rubbed his aching head.

+ + +

The moment you stepped out of the Impala and made the mistake of taking in a breath you were bombarded with the overwhelming stench of rotten eggs. You had to cover your nose with your hand and take in shallow breaths to keep yourself from inhaling too much of the smell that you despise more than anything in the entire world. Despite the report that caught your attention hours ago, evidence that pointed to demon activity was still fresh like the smell lingering in the air. You slammed the backseat door and inspected the crime scene in some kind of attempt to piece together what happened here. A military base was hit with a strange crime after several soldiers who were seen boarding up on a local bus ended with them going missing without a trace and other passengers dead without a clear cause.

You took notice of a few local police officers that surrounded the scene and taped off the perimeter to ward off any curious civilians. You adjusted your blazer and tried to smooth out any wrinkles on your black slacks after sitting in the car for so long. The professional outfit gave you an illusion that you were someone with authority. It paired well with the fake federal badge burning a hole in your pocket, waiting to be flashed at any officer who tried to stop you.

"Oh, God." Sam muttered to himself. It seemed he took notice of the smell when he stepped out of the Impala a few seconds after you did. "This place reeks of sulfur."

“Between the stink, with the freak thunderstorms, and every cow dead within three miles,” You listed off the rest of the red flags you had caught after doing more research before you left. You

ducked underneath the police tape Sam held up for you and his brother. “I’ll take demons for a thousand, Alex.”

You reached a hand inside your jacket pocket and pulled out your fake badge when you saw a soldier dressed in her uniform come forward to you. “Hey. Agent Stark. These are my partners Agent Banner and Agent Rogers. FBI.” Dean introduced himself first to the woman before nodding a head to his brother and then yourself. “Just need to have a look around.”

“Why?” The woman questioned all of you. “This is a military case, not a federal one.”

“Well, that’s not what our supervisor said.” Sam said.

“That so?” You felt a sigh threatening to escape your mouth when you realized this wasn't going to be easy like you hoped it would be. She wasn't going to crack so easily when you were on her territory, trying to poke your nose into her case. You forced your hands to rest at your side when she crossed her arms over her chest. "Then maybe him and I ought to have a chat.”

Dean wasn’t going to let this spook him from doing his job. It wasn’t your first time dealing with someone who didn’t fall so easily for the fake badge and the promised word that you were some sort of federal agent. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number for someone who would be the perfect boss to a couple of fake FBI workers. You wondered who the hell that was going to be. It used to be Bobby who saved your asses from getting into trouble. Sometimes it was one of you when you stayed back to do some research for the hunt. You kept a straight face when you realized who Dean was calling.

“Hey, boss. Uh, we got a little problem here.” Dean spoke to none other than Kevin Tran, who was back at the bunker working on translating the tablet. That's how you left him after you told him you were following the lead to a potential case. He sounded a little surprised from how the older Winchester greeted him, slightly thrown off by being called boss. Dean rolled with it without missing a beat. "Yeah, just a local badge needs confirmation that we’re supposed to be here...how the word came down from FBI headquarters in D.C.”

After doing this for long as you have, you learned how to talk out of your own ass and make it sound official. Dean handed the phone over to the soldier and gave her a tight smile. You really hoped Kevin didn’t drop the ball on this one. You didn’t want to spend the night in jail.

“This is Sergeant Miranda Bates.” She introduced herself with her title. “Who am I talking to?”

“Uh, Kevin…” You slightly leaned in closer to the woman to eavesdrop on the conversation she was having with the kid. You bit the inside of your cheek when you heard the kid give a last name that couldn’t have been anymore fake sounding. “Solo.”

“How old are you?” Miranda asked him, finding his voice awfully young sounding.

“Old enough.” He responded. “And I’m with the FBI, so you have to do what I say or—”

“Listen, kid. I don’t have to do anything, and I don’t take orders from the feeb, so unless you can give me one good reason you got a couple of pretty-boy agents poking around my crime scene, I’m gonna put them in cuffs and spank your ass raw.” Sergeant Bates layed down the law in a threatening tone of voice as she told the kid how it was going to be. You raised your brow slightly from the questionable tone she was speaking to him in. “Understand?”

“Cabo last June.” Kevin might not have a way with words like you and the boys, but he was smart enough to know how to make someone do what you want. He grabbed his laptop and quickly made his way into finding something that would make the woman back off. You watched as she slowly grew quiet at the mention of her past trip. “That’s my reason.” Kevin began to scroll through the pictures of the woman’s private life that would surely get her kicked out of the military. “Oh, my favorite’s you in a sombrero doing a body shot off some naked guy in a luchador mask. Super-classy.”

“How did you find them?” She asked him, trying her hardest to keep her voice calm.

“‘Cause I’m Kevin frigging Solo.” Kevin whispered into the phone, mocking her threatening tone she used on him just seconds ago. You felt a smile creeping at the ends of your lips when Bates began to change her behavior. “So, unless you want this forwarded to your commanding officer, Major Velasquez, I suggest you give my guys anything they want. You understand?”

Sergent Bates swallowed at the compromise she was put in, “Yes.”

“‘Yes...sir.’” Kevin corrected the woman.

“Yes, sir.” Sergent Bates repeated after him.

Bates handed the phone back to Dean after finishing up her call with the young man, the look on her face was enough to know that she wouldn't be giving you a problem anymore. You gave her a smile at your cooperation and watched as she walked away with her tail between her legs. Dean put the phone back to his ear, curious as to what the kid managed to pull on his own.

“Kevin, what the hell did you just do?” Dean asked.

“All military computers are linked to the same network.” Kevin explained. You and Sam gave the man a curious expression to see if you had permission to the crime scene after all. Dean nodded his head and let the both of you be on your way while he finished up the conversation with the kid about how he managed to get access. “I hacked it.”

"Hey, Kevin." Dean got the kid's attention before he hung up the phone and got back to his work. He knew the poor prophet was dealing with a lot at the moment, from the pressure he was under and the guest he was stuck with back at the bunker. Dean could hear the stress in Kevin's voice. He might not say it a lot, but sometimes everyone needed to hear some praise for a job well done. "Good job, buddy."

Dean ended the call and joined the both of you back on the bus where you were observing a dead body leaning back in his seat. You pointed to something on the man’s naked chest after the coroner must have been the one who undid the buttons of his blue shirt and tie to figure out a cause of death. To the untrained eye there most likely wouldn’t be anything unusual. You and Sam quietly spoke to one another about a strange mark on his chest that you were familiar with.

“Hey.” Dean said. You looked over in the older Winchester’s direction when you heard his voice as he made his way forward to you. “Anything.”

“Yeah, this guy was shot in the heart.” Sam told his brother what the both of you discovered.

“That what killed him?” The older man asked.

“Maybe—fifteen, twenty years ago. Every one of these bodies has a fatal wound or two or three, but they’re all old.” You said. “It’s physically impossible for anyone to have survived these kinds of attacks on their own.”

“So, we’re looking at meatsuits?” Dean wondered. You nodded your head at the possibility. “The bodies took a licking, and the demon inside kept them ticking.”

“Probably.” Sam said. “I think they were possessed, and now those soldiers are.”

"Excuse me, agents." You looked over your shoulder when you heard Sergent Bates' voice coming from behind you. She approached you with an outstretched arm holding a tablet. "We pulled this off a security camera. You might want to take a look.”

You mumbled a thank you to the woman and grabbed the tablet from her to examine the footage. You and the boys watched as a line of soldiers made their way off the bus, looking very much alive like you suspected. You hit the pause button when you noticed the last person walking off the bus wasn’t wearing a military uniform like the rest. You furrowed your brow slightly and zoomed in on the face. The problem with demons was that deep down they were nothing more than a puff of black smoke who could take over any human body they wanted. You felt your grip around the tablet tighten at the sight of a familiar meatsuit—one you thought you had burned to a crisp.

“Abaddon? Seriously?” Dean questioned the both of you about how the body of Joise Sand was walking around without a scratch on her body. “Thought you Kentucky fired that meatsuit, Y/N.”

“I did, Dean.” You reassured the man of that fact.

“Well, then, how did she get it back?” Dean asked you, as if you knew the answer off the top of your head. You could only shrug your shoulders and thank the officer who held up the police tape while you made your way back to the Impala after finishing up here. “And why’s she playing G.I. Joe?”

“No clue.” You muttered. “Why don’t you ask her yourself when we find the bitch?”

“Oh, I will.” Dean said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. “Then I’m gonna chop her freakin’ head off—again.”

+ + +

You laid in the backseat of the Impala with your back pressed against one of the doors and your heels long abandoned on the floor, lost in the darkness of the night as you focused on catching some sleep after the lack there of the night before. You felt more at ease with the familiar vibrations of the engine and the bumps of the road. There wasn't much more you could do for the case except try and get some rest while Dean drove back home. While you tried to fall asleep, you wondered how Abaddon was able to bring her charred meatsuit back to life. You remembered bits and pieces of the past several days, even less of the night at the church. But you knew for sure about the memory of dosing the knight of hell with holy oil and setting her suit on fire.

You were almost drifting off to a sleepless slumber, your head slowly bobbing up and down as you felt your eyelids drift shut. Right as you were about to close them, you suddenly felt yourself jerk wide awake at the sound of your phone ringing. You let out a sharp gasp from the unexpected noise that scared you. You quickly realized your surroundings and reached for your phone, wondering who the hell was trying to call you. When you saw Kevin’s name appear on the screen, you thought the kid had found something useful on the angel tablet. But it turned out your problems had reached his end.

“Kevin, wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.” You tried your hardest to get the kid to stop talking in a rushed voice so you could understand him better with what he was trying to say. You rubbed your eyes and tried to get yourself to focus on the things he was saying, hoping the boys might be able to make sense with the phone on speaker. “Slow down, for God’s sake.”

“She gave me these coordinates.” Kevin rushed out a series of numbers that you couldn't figure out on your own. You quickly waved a hand for Sam to track them while you listened to the rest of the information he had for you. "And two names, Irv Franklin and Tracey Bell."

“Irv’s a friend.” Dean said. “Don’t know Tracey.”

"All right, the lady said they were hunters and if you didn't go save them, that she would kill them." Kevin relayed the message back to you. You couldn’t help yourself when you rolled your eyes at the cliched threat you heard plenty of times before.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that song before.” You muttered to yourself. “You think these demons would get some better material by now.”

“Y/N, who was she?” Kevin asked you.

“She’s the bad guy. All right, new job. Dig up everything Men of Letters have on Knights of Hell.” You said. You felt a little bad giving the kid for work to do with the other responsibilities he had piled on his shoulders. Kevin sounded a little overwhelmed, but he agreed. “You find a way to kill one—I mean permanently—drop a dime. Thanks again, Kevin.”

You ended the call a second later and shoved it back into the pocket of your blazer. You pushed yourself up to the front seats and looked over at Sam, wondering he was able to figure out the coordinates Kevin gave. “The numbers point to a spot on the outskirts of Eugene, Oregon.”

"You boys know this is a trap, right?" You asked them. You were a bit surprised to see Abaddon sticking her head out like this, especially after what you did to her. They nodded their head a little too casually for the situation you were about to take on. “And we’re just gonna walk right into it?”

“Guns blazing.” Dean said. You softly bit your bottom lip at his plan of action that you expected out of him. For someone who wanted you to take it easy, you found it surprising he wanted you part of this with his brother. He took his gaze off the road for a moment to look at you. “You with me, sweetheart?”

“You know it.” You said.

You reassured the man of your full cooperation as you leaned further and gave him a quick peck on the cheek and patted Sam on the shoulder before you retreated into the backseat again. You might have not been able to shut the gates of hell once and for all, but killing the demon who played a part in ruining your life was second best. There was nothing you wanted more right now than to see the redheaded bitch dead once and for all.

[Next Part]

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bountybossier · 4 years

Text

Falling Down That Hill | Nic & Orion

This chatzy brought to you by Kate Bush.

With: @3starsquinn

Nicodemus wasn’t drunk in public. That was illegal. But he was buzzed and as long as he avoided anyone and everything, it would be fine. Besides, with what he was hunting, it helped to be a little tipsy. The bloodsuckers loved their alcohol and he could feel eyes on him. His senses were shifting and rolling over each other enough that it was hard to achieve true drunkenness. Made it better to hunt. The hunter hummed to himself as he walked purposefully under every tree line he could come across, keeping close enough to town yet not close enough that he might get interrupted as he did his work. He took a long sip of his drink and tipped his head back to sigh a whiskey-heavy breath. A rustle came overhead and he smiled some. There it was. The creature was looking at him through the thick branches overhead and he pretended not to notice as he closed his eyes, gave it his back, and yawned with a large, exaggerated stretch. A crack and then the fwoosh of wings. Weight hit him and he went down, gloved hands first.

Orion figured that it was time to head back home. He had been at the Scribe Headquarters for multiple nights now, feigning excuses to his parents and sister about last minute exams that he needed to study for. He could only hold them off for so long. Still, to get some work done he had snuck one of the older scribe books into his backpack to take back with him. It would at least give him something to do that night. The book had been incredibly old, and had at some point suffered some water damage, leaving some of the pages illegible as well as a little moldy and musty smelling. He would need to look at new backpacks because he feared that the book would leave his whole bag smelling off. As he made his way through the forest, his hearing picked up on some kind of commotion. Orion followed the noise, trying to put to use the super hearing that he tried so hard to avoid. He ran through the woods towards the noise, finally coming across a man being attacked by a creature. Orion was familiar with the species… a subspecies of vampire. He remembered reading about them in a slayer’s journal, pictures of the beast he had killed attached. They loved alcohol, leading Orion to believe that the victim must have been drinking prior to wandering out into the woods. For a long while, Orion stood helplessly, staring at the scene, knowing that he needed to do something before it was too late. But how did he help against a creature like that. “Hey!” Orion yelled out, but the creature ignored him. Wait. Orion hurriedly swung his book bag over and dug into, pulling out the book and opening it up to wave it around. These creatures hated foul smells. Orion couldn’t be sure how strong the smell had to be, but he could hope that the musty smell of moldy paper was enough to at least throw it off it’s game.

So far, it was going well. The kuzlac was having a hell of a time getting through the neck of his jacket, but the smell of whiskey was so strong in Nicodemus’s blood that the creature didn’t want to give up the hunt now that it had already given itself away. The hunter started to push himself up, grunting against the extra weight on his back. Over the screeching and snorting sounds of the bat, he heard steps rushing toward. Well that wasn’t planned, but fine, he could work with it. His eyes slid to the right and caught sight of what looked like some kid, simply standing there and watching. At least he hadn’t pulled a fucking phone out and started recording the “drunk” man getting mauled by an overgrown alcoholic bat. Nicodemus couldn’t tell. Maybe there was some concern there. The kid yelled out and the bat was thoroughly uninterested, completely locked on the hunter that started to get up onto his knees. Whatever the kid had pulled out of his bag had the kuzlac gagging overhead and Nic immediately, albeit unhappily, prepared to get retched on. The smell hit the hunter well, thankfully less than it hit the kuzlac. He glanced over. What in the Harry Potter fuck was that? A book? Whatever it was, the creature hated it immensely and loosened its claws from his thick jacket to start rubbing at its nose. From what it looked like, the kid was helping him. It gave the hunter time to roll away, closer to the newcomer. The bat didn’t take off, instead fixing its eyes on the two. Not enough of a shit smell, it seemed. “Kid, I don’t think it likes your library book,” he muttered as he looked over. “Do...Do y’now what that is?”

Of course, Orion had considered all possibilities as he had judged whether to pull out the book or not. The best case scenario was that the smell was too much for the creature to take and the Kuzlac would scurry back off into the woods. But clearly the best case scenario was not going to happen. At least the man had been able to push the creature off of him and get back onto his feet. But the Kuzlac stood and sized the two up. Orion knew that he would be mostly safe, he wasn’t inebriated enough for the monster to consider him a dinner option. He couldn’t say the same for the other man. “Um I- it” Orion began stammering through his sentence, unsure of how to reply to the man. Orion knew what the creature was, but should he be disclosing his knowledge of the supernatural to some random man in the woods? “I uh, don’t think that it likes bad smells.” He tried, hoping that would be explanation enough, at least for the time being. “We should get out of here before that thing comes back after you- I mean uh, us.”

Nicodemus hoped the skeptical squint he gave the kid would be attributed to his state of “inebriation”. If he was interpreting right, picking up what the kid was trying to not put down, they both seemed to know what it was. And didn’t exactly want the other to know. What a mess, but goddamn if it wasn’t intriguing. “Hell, he tried to kill me,” he grunted, irritated. He wanted to see what would happen. The kuzlac was an ugly, miserable-looking creature and the hunter looked at it as such. He grabbed for something in his jacket with a gloved hand, a large but not entirely flashy knife, and reared up on the creature. “Can’t just leave that alone.” He dove for the creature and accidentally on purpose dropped the knife halfway between the kid and the kuzlac. With the other hand, he reached for a thin stake he had tucked into his jacket, careful to grab it from the blunt end. He didn’t go for the heart when he stabbed at. Not this one. It was needed alive. And the carach paralytic agent he slathered onto the stake earlier would help. The wood pierced skin and punctured the meat of the creature’s left shoulder joint, right into the gristle and cartilage. The hunter grinned as the kuzlac’s mouth opened wide at the smell of alcoholic blood so close. It wouldn’t be a weeknight if he wasn’t wrestling with something. “Where’d that damn knife go?”

The man did not seem very keen on the idea of running, much to Orion’s dismay. “Technically he tried to bite you.” Orion mumbled, mostly to himself out of nervousness. Kuzlac’s did not always murder their victims, though it wasn’t uncommon. A lot of times they just wanted a taste of liquored up blood. Orion cringed when the man tackled the beast. And held it down. Clearly this man was a hunter. Which instantly made Orion’s body stiffen and go on guard. Then the man was calling for the knife. The knife that Orion could very clearly see on the ground, directly between himself and the man pinning the vampire down. Orion was shaking by now, taking one step forward while weighing his options. The creature was trying to murder the man. Was it outside of morality to kill a rabid creature anymore than it was to put down a rabid dog? This vampire was not like others, there were no more humanly qualities. No critical thinking or soul. But it was still a living, breathing creature. “I don’t think we should kill it. We should just go.” Orion suggested, still inching towards the knife. Slowly, he bent down and picked it up, gripping it tightly in his hands as he stared at the hunter. Suddenly, the kuzlac snapped at the hunter, and Orion jumped, practically tossing the knife over to the hunter. He quickly backed away from the two, not looking behind him to see where he was going and losing his footing. As it turned out, there was a hill behind him. And Orion fell backwards onto his back and began rolling down it.

With a fistful of bat creature in his hand, it probably wasn’t the time for Nicodemus to discuss technicalities. The kid was shaking like a leaf, not at all unlike the way the musty book pages were shaking earlier. Shit. Was he one of those “kill nothing, love everything” people? Shit, that was worse than a cop showing up. Cops had rules that could be talked out of, but morals? He didn’t want anything to do with that. The drunken idiot schtick he was pulling slid off his back and he shook his head. “Well, good thing you don’t have to.” It was a gruff mumble, muffled underneath the kuzlac’s screeching as he snatched the blade and made three quick stabs. First the tendons in the legs, then the other shoulder joint where he left the knife buried. The kuzlac started to go slack against him as the paralytic agent from the stake kicked in. The hunter sighed and straightened up, rubbing his forehead against his jacket. As he pulled his arm away, the kid went ass over head and thumped his way down a hill. The night fell strangely quiet. “Thanks, k--Jesus Christ.” The kuzlac screech dwindled into a whine and it stared up at him, not unlike a pissed off cat. The kid was probably alright. He pulled a length of rope from under his jacket and set to tying the kuzlac up to haul it over his shoulder. Once he was done, he stood at the top of the hill and looked down. “...you good?” The hunter started the descent down the hill with a sigh, thankful for the grip in his boots to keep from slipping. “Still alive, kid?” He raised his shoulder to rock the kuzlac that gave a low whine. “This little shit still is.”

Orion fell harder than he was expecting to. His back hit the ground first, a sudden rush of pain shooting through his body. Then he kept tumbling. He would hit the ground and bounce, only to smack against it again just as painful each time. His shoulder smacked against a rock, and at the bottom of the hill Orion finally kept to a stop when he smacked his face against something cold and solid. “Ow.” Orion whined, holding his eyes closed for far longer than he should have. Once he opened his eyes, he would have to face the reality of what had just happened. Maybe if he laid here, he would pass out or something and he’d wake up alone. His entire body ached, every limb and muscle a victim of the fall. His shoulder throbbed from under him and his chest screamed in agony. He was pretty sure he had broken a rib in the fall, but maybe he was just being dramatic. When he finally opened his eyes, he could see a large tree root, probably what he had smacked his face against. His head stung, a mixture of pain and a headache coming on. Though Hunter healing wasn’t as fast as any supernatural creatures, it was faster than human’s. In a couple of hours, Orion would probably feel fine. A couple of days and any light bruising or cuts would be gone. But he was pretty sure he could feel the swelling around his eye. How ironic that he would be going home to explain a black eye to his parents. There was a drowned out noise coming from behind Orion, and he eventually focused in on it enough to realize it was the hunter. “I’m alive.” Orion groaned, tried yelling, but it came out more hoarse than anything. If his theories were correct, the man wouldn’t have any problem hearing him anyways. “Did you say it’s alive?” Orion asked curiously, using his arms to try to push himself back up to his feet.

“Good,” Nicodemus grunted out as he blinked down at the younger man. He squinted and looked at him thoughtfully. It wasn’t anyone’s first instinct to shake a book at a giant fucking bat creature. Not unless they knew just how sensitive kuzlac noses were. Now he was curious as to how the kid knew that important tidbit. Maybe it was in that old book of his. The kid looked like he had tumbled through all the layers of hell and then some, which considering White Crest, wasn’t too far off. Without grace, he tossed the kuzlac to the ground in order to help the other guy stand up. The creature let out an annoyed squeak as it laid there helplessly. “Yeah, it’s alive and pretty pissed off about it by the looks of it. Ain’t you?” Nicodemus glanced at the bat and the bat narrowed its eyes as best it could under the influence of the carach agent. As soon as the kid was righted, he stepped back to look at him. Considering where they were and how they got there, the hunter didn’t see any point to beating around the bush. “Got a question,” he said as he tapped his fingers against his thigh. “Looked like you knew a bit about them not likin’ smells. How’d that knowledge come about?” For the time being, the kuzlac could remain on the ground, trying to fidget as best it could. A hand went to his hip, idly resting on the knife kept there. “Not too many people aware of that last I checked. Willingly at least.”

The man helped Orion to his feet, and Orion absentmindedly tried to wipe some of the dirt and leaves from his clothes as he tried to connect the dots from tonight. His head hurt, a sudden and throbbing pain courtesy of the tree root Orion had made friends with on his trip down. He gently poked at his eye, immediately jerking his hand away at the stinging pain. He was definitely going to have a black eye. Lucky for him, those never lasted more than a couple of days or two. The hunter healing wouldn’t fix everything, the scars and bruises were enough evidence of that. But less serious injuries like this typically healed up quick enough. “You didn’t kill him.” Orion stated, not questioning it but more as an acknowledgement of the tied up, but still living creature on the ground next to them. He finally realized that he hadn’t asked a question and decided to finish his sentence, “Why?” Hearing the cries from the creature as it laid helplessly on the ground, bound and unmoving, Orion couldn’t help but feel bad for the guy. He needed to get out of there. Before things got any worse. But then the hunter was asking him questions. “I uh.. know enough about the supernatural.” Orion tended to avoid using the word hunter. Even if he had been born into a hunter family and had the strength of one didn’t mean that he couldn’t shun the duty. He refused to call himself by the title. But he assumed the man would want more than just that to go on, so Orion had to give him something. “I know people who are like you. They’re uh… hunters.” Even saying the word left a bitter taste in Orion’s mouth. And now that the adrenaline was wearing off, Orion was very conscious of the fact that he was alone in the middle of the woods with a hunter, a man that looked like he could very easily tear Orion in half if he decided. “I’m uh.. sorry. For getting in the way.”

The hit the kid took to the head would have put a lesser being out and yet there he was, looking mighty concerned for the creature at Nicodemus’s disposal. That was interesting. He reached into the inside of his coat and grabbed a small bottle of water before he tossed it over. “Nope, I didn’t,” he answered as he sucked on a sharp canine. The hunter didn’t look at the kuzlac, eyes trained solely on the younger man. He watched his shoulders, wondered if he might make a move to free the creature. The notion that he might be one of those bleeding hearts occured to Nic and already, he wanted to groan. He avoided those for a reason. Something or other about not wanting to get bled on. His jaw worked as he thought. “Catch and release purposes, kid.” It was close enough to the truth without burrowing under the muck and grime. Catch and release into whatever hell the client had prepared for the kuzlac. The hunter figured it was for purposes of weaning someone off of alcoholism or maybe to throw it into some fighting pit. He didn’t know. Knowing what they did or didn’t do with his captures made the whole of it easier. Gave him only one piece of the puzzle to think about while the rest could go jumbled and forgotten in the swamp shadows. “Knowin’ about it ain’t the same as experiencin’ it, is it?” His tone lacked any anger or frustration. Instead it was a quiet, monotone line of questioning. It shifted when the kid mentioned hunters. Not too happily, either, it seemed. The bleeding heart theory he had was getting closer to fruition. He rattled out a dry laugh. “Yeah? They family or somethin’ else?” The leather of his gloves stretched and squeaked as he stretched his fingers out. He could have just grabbed the kuzlac and hauled it back up the hill. Certainly could have. But he didn’t. At the apology, he snorted. “Think the hill was more of a danger than the kuzlac was,” he said, concealing a slim smile. “Not good at dealin’ with shit like this, are you?”

What the heck did catch and release mean? Orion was confused. The man hadn’t immediately killed the creature, which Orion had to admit was a plus. At least he thought it was, but again, Orion was mostly just confused. “Uh yeah. I’ll say.” Orion could recite entire texts on werewolves, but that didn’t mean anything the moment he was slack jawed and motionless as a werewolf barreled towards him. The same with the kuzlac, the moment he saw one in person he completely froze. Because he didn’t know what to do. Orion wished he could answer the man with something else. Sure, the Quinn family was family by blood, but it was barely the one he wanted to claim. “A bit of both I guess.” Orion admitted on instinct before realizing that he had just poured way too much on a complete stranger. Worse, a stranger that may or may not show up at the Silver Bullet and meet his family someday. It was hard to be the perfect family if Orion kept blabbing his guts to every person he ran into at night. “I mean they’re family. Obviously. A whole hunter legacy.” He fought the urge to roll his eyes. But he welcomed the change of subject to talk about the biggest menace of the night, the hill that had caused the headache lingering behind Orion’s temples. “Yeah, well. The species isn’t known to be incredibly aggressive. They care more about the alcohol than the person. A lot of stories I’ve read don’t even end in the victim’s death.” That didn’t necessarily make the blood sucking better… but not dying was better than dying right? “I don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of stuff. I guess that’s pretty obvious. You seem to know what you’re doing though.” Orion hadn’t meant it as a compliment, but it came out even more judgmental than he had intended it too.

Legacy. Nicodemus’s jaw set in stone and under his layers of clothes, he went rigid. The fingers of his right hand started moving first, a slow tap that progressively got faster until he finally clenched his fist to stop it. “Lemme guess, that family of yours put that legacy on you soon as you could walk?” His brow rose up sharp as soon as he looked at the kid again. He knew that he had it from as early as he could remember and before that, well, the situation was likely the same. Legacy. That fucking word. “You know that none of that means a goddamn thing, right? Blood. It don’t mean shit.” The kid didn’t ask for him to go on a tangent, but the very concept of legacy struck a nerve, if not the deepest one. Nico needed to pull it back. He shook his head, sighed a puff of air into the cold like cigarette smoke. Talking about the kuzlac was a welcome enough distraction. It pulled him away from the age-old fury in his head and he grunted. “Makin’ it sound like a failed marriage there, kid.” Tactless humor. That was a distraction in itself too. “Some people might be thin bloods around here. Killin’ intent or not, it can happen.” The way the kid looked at him, spoke to him, it wouldn’t do well to mention that if the kuzlac killed anyone or not, it wouldn’t matter to him. His arms folded across his chest. “I do. Got a legacy of my own that I was so kindly bestowed when I was a youngin’. Knowin’ what I’m doin’ has kept me alive long as I’ve been.” A rusty laugh came out of him. “Knowin’ what you’re doin’ might help you with hills an’ other shit.”

Clearly this man related to Orion. The man pinpointed exactly how his family had treated Orion as a child. The man sounded like he knew it a bit too well, and he didn’t sound happy about it either. Though, it was worth noting that the man was still out here, tying up vampires. So whether or not he gave in or agreed to his family’s teachings eventually lead him here, a road that Orion hoped that he didn’t follow as well. “I uh… well clearly you can see that their training didn’t do much for me.” Orion quipped. Orion had learned a lot from his parents and sister, for better or worse, about self defense and specifically homicidal offense. But his goal was to never have to use it against anyone or anything. “I appreciate it though. It’s nice to hear for once that family isn’t everything.” It was all he heard back at home. Nothing was more important than family. What a load of crap. “I- sorry I just… don’t handle violence very well.” Or anger. Or blood. Or danger. Or… most things, admittedly. Orion was a big ball of anxiety wrapped up in a skinny, five-eight package. “I prefer to know what I’m doing from a distance… like away from the danger or away from hills. I’m much more the… man behind the computer type? That actiony shows always have?” Though Orion wasn’t sure that he wanted to be involved in any type of murder or violence through there either. “Oh- I’m Orion… by the way. Or Rio. Whichever you prefer.”

His teeth pressed so tight that Nicodemus thought he might spit blood soon. The kid's statement brought him out of it and he blinked, pulling himself back to the conversation and away from his backwater home. The hunter rubbed at his jaw and chuckled. "No amount of trainin' will do shit for you if you want no part of it." And therein lied the issue. He enjoyed his training. Outside of the stale decay and rot of his old house, bleeding and sweating and aching was better than staring at the peeling wallpaper in the furthest corner in the house. It was an escape in itself. He sucked at his teeth and shrugged. He hadn't expected where he was that evening, bottom of the hill, talking to a young hunter that wanted nothing to do with hunting. He glanced back up the hill. They'd both have to walk back up it. "If I were you, don't buy what they're sellin'. Family is everythin' until you don't keep in line. Then you see how much family really matters." His tone shifted, the earlier humor wrung out of it. The kid, Rio, had looked pathetic earlier, a thought that he felt minority guilty to have passed over. Handed a torch he didn't want. "I gathered as much," he said with a raised brow. "Ain't the best thing to get used to, but…" A job's gotta get done went unsaid. He reached down to grab the kuzlac and heave it back over his shoulder. "Alright computer man. Rio. Tell you what." With the creature over his shoulder, he fully faced Orion. A heavy sigh expelled into the night before he straightened up. "You need help with somethin' that a fuckin' computer can't help you with, let me know. Now that I got your name and your story, I'd be pissed if you got killed by somethin' you should know better 'bout." A slim, faded smile came and went. A quick moon phase as his expression neutralized. "Name's Nicodemus. Nic, Nico. Sometimes Asher. Any of 'em and I'll answer, you got that?"

It was interesting; this man seemed so passionate about Orion avoiding hunting and not listening to his family for someone that had clearly been trained a hunter himself. And from the looks of it, had kept it up over the years if the boozed up blood thirsty vampire tied on the ground was any indication. He was right, in more ways than he probably knew. Orion had already learned what it was like to disappoint his family and suffer the consequences. But he had long concluded that he was incapable of becoming the man they wanted him to be either. So the Quinn family had fallen on something of a compromise. Orion showed up to the trainings, got his ass kicked by his sister and kept the truth about their family to himself. In return, his parents pretended like he didn’t exist. For what it was worth, this was a better outcome than Orion had expected. The man seemed to have an understanding of what that may be like, which was almost enough to make Orion want to spill his guts to him. He could only imagine how freeing it would be to have someone to talk to about it. Someone that wasn’t delusional like his sister. “Luckily, my sister is the golden child. Not me. She gets all of the focus.” And Orion wouldn’t have it any other way. “Oh uh… yeah. Deal.” Orion agreed to the proposition, though he couldn’t be sure what use he could have for a hunter. He didn’t intent to want anything dead in the near future. But despite Orion’s initial apprehension, the man had been pretty pleasant, and he hadn’t killed the creature that now rested on his shoulders. He wasn’t exactly sure what the plan was, but he figured it was better to not ask. “And if you ever need someone with an unhealthy amount of knowledge about useless facts, let me know.” He laughed nervously, trying for a joke. He didn’t plan on getting killed by anything anytime soon, but he wasn’t exactly in charge of that stuff. “That’s a lot of options… uh…” It shouldn’t have taken this long for him to decide on a name. He glanced around the woods nervously to try to settle his nerves and force himself into a decision. “Nic? Got it. It’s nice to meet you. I mean kinda. Despite the blood sucking and me falling down a hill.”

Nicodemus knew physical pain. Knew the bite of a knife, the punch of a bullet, the snap of jaws. That pain he knew. But the emotional and mental kind, the kind that didn't leave battered flesh to look at in a mirror…That was more unknown to him. Yet looking at Orion, he could sense it. The young hunter looked aged. Fuck, had he looked like that at his age? Too young to feel that old. Probably. He hadn't bothered to look at himself or after himself for his first few years alone. And the young man across from him still had a whole fucking family, yet he still looked like that. It was easier to recognize the wounds in others than it was for himself, he realized. Was it analyzing a weakness or was it understanding? His brow furrowed. "She drank the Flavor-Aid, huh? People always say Kool-Aid but it was goddamn Flavor-Aid," he said, voice devolving to an angry mumble before he cleared his throat. He huffed through his nose. "Guess I got useless facts of my own there, Rio. Might help my ass at trivia night." Orion was a jumbled mess of nerves and Nic gave him a curious glance. What was his home like? Made up to be a soldier too? Maybe he still had a chance before it was too late to change a fist to an outstretched hand. And why did Nic care? Changing Rio's outcome wouldn't change his. The hunter's head ached. It was supposed to be easy. "Could be worse. Could've had to choose between this guy or carryin' you to a hospital." He shrugged his shoulders much to the kuzlac's discomfort. The carach poison would wear off soon and he didn't have much less of it. "Gotta go do the...releasin' part of catch and release." He started to grin before he continued. "Need some help gettin' back up that hill here, Kate Bush?"

Orion began laughing, maybe more from nerves than anything else. Nic had seemed to know Orion’s situation. Was Nic agreeing with Orion? Siding with him by claiming that his sister had drank the kool-aid? Or was he baiting him? Who could say if Nic wasn’t a friend of his parents from the Silver Bullet? Just looking for him to slip up? No, that was just paranoia. This man had been too passionate. This guy… misguided as he may be, seemed to be a good person who seemed to care about Orion’s issue despite barely knowing him. “Right. Yeah. Well glad that I’m uh okay then I guess.” He sighed, scratching at his arms nervously. “But I mean… uh you would have chosen to take me to the hospital… right?” He questioned, laughing to mask the fact that it was lowkey a serious question. Afraid of hearing the answer, Orion began the hike back up the hill. “Ha ha. Very funny. I’m fine.” Orion assured, and then immediately tripped over a root and almost fell on his face again. Luckily for his sanity, he stabilized himself and stayed on both feet. “And I don’t know who Kate Bush is.”

For a poorly timed dramatic effect, the hunter said nothing in response to Orion’s question. Let the silence settle over the two of them before he snorted, face impassive. “Yeah, sure...Sure, I would’ve.” Nicodemus started up behind him, a pace or two behind as an active measure to keep the kid from eating complete shit again. He braced for impact, grip tight on the kuzlac that whined in annoyance and began to shift just slightly. Christ. The kid might actually manage to die on that hill if he so willed it. Guess he really didn’t give a shit at all about what his parents tried to force on him. The older hunter’s brows pinched together. Why had he gone off on such a tangent about legacy? Had he really just been sitting on that, keeping it warm with his anger until it cracked open and spilled out like a Cajun Pandora’s box of grievances? He stepped in time with Orion. “I’ll tell ya about her one day. The great hunter herself, Kate Bush...”

#wickedswriting #chatzy: falling down that hill #chatzy #c: orion #// I LOVE THEM #LOVE THIS DUO

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blatherkatt · 6 years

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Title: The Calm Is Terrifying When The Storm Is All You Know [Homestuck]

Chapter 33: Declarations

Summary: There were two kinds of trolls who went to Earth: rich shitheads with too much money and free time, and desperate assholes who couldn’t survive on Alternia, even with the best efforts of the young Condesce. Karkat hated the planet almost immediately, but with his home planet too dangerous for mutants, he really didn’t have any choice but to hide out on this weird little diurnal planet. At least he’d be safe. Or so he thought, right before blundering his way into an accidental friendship with the son of an anti-troll terrorist.

Rating: M

Chapter Warnings: Implied/Mentioned abuse, mentions of terrorism, death mention, injury mention, depiction of an emotional breakdown, trauma aftermath; Illustrated; Pesterlog

FIRST | PREVIOUS | NEXT

— carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling tipsyGnostalgic [TG] —

CG: WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?

— tipsyGnostalgic [TG] is an idle chum! —

CG: FUCK YOU, I CAN SEE THAT FOR MYSELF, YOU PIECE OF SHIT PROGRAM. I’M GONNA FUCKING YELL ANYWAY.

CG: I THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO PICK ME UP AT NOON. IT’S LIKE, 1:30 AND YOU STILL AREN’T HERE, WHAT GIVES?

CG: IF YOU GOT KIDNAPPED, TOO, I SWEAR TO FUCK I’M PERSONALLY PUTTING THIS ENTIRE GODDAMN FAMILY UNDER PERMANENT WATCH.

CG: I’M NOT ABOVE SITTING ON YOU ASSHOLES IF THATS WHAT IT TAKES.

TG: okay first off i know youre like a literal alien but heres a protip for ya:

TG: general human earth etiquette is to not text people who you know are probably driving?

TG: its like a whole thing

CG: WHY

TG: idk probs because texting while driving’s a great way to fucking crash lol

TG: anyway!!

TG: yeah im real sorry about that mom fucking rang me up like

TG: hi im at the airport come get me!

TG: out of fucking nowhere because everything has to be a fucking hassle with this woman

TG: so i had to go get her

CG: WHY THE FUCK WAS SHE AT THE AIRPORT?

TG: because fuck me is why

TG: and THEN shes like

TG: ooooh i gotta do some mysterious whatthefuckever errand at some mall out in the middle of nowhere

TG: so now im sitting in the parking lot waiting for her to get back which might be a while because her bad leg’s been acting up lately

TG: and thats why im not there yet >:(

CG: WAIT. WAIT, HOLD ON, I’M CONFUSED.

CG: BY “MOM” ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT RACHEL? I DIDN’T EVEN THINK SHE HAD A BAD LEG.

TG: nonono

TG: ray is like. dirk and dave and rose’s mom

TG: i dont call her mom i just call her aunt ray cuz shes not my mom yknow

TG: my mom is aunt ray’s sister

TG: aunt ramona? they talk about her?

CG: OOOOOOH. YEAH.

CG: THE WOMAN WHO WRITES THOSE SHITTY SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE BOOKS KANAYA LOVES.

TG: hahaha yeah her trashy shit is great

CG: SHE’S HERE?

TG: apparently!!!!!!!!

CG: I’M SENSING SOME BITTERNESS.

TG: ugh its fine she just always does shit like this

TG: womans always gotta make a fuckin entrance even if that means not telling anyone shes coming

TG: and its goddamn annoying as shit!!

TG: but its fine i get it shes here to help out and we are kinda all hands on deck

TG: speaking of tho i heard something about kanaya not coming along after all?

CG: NOT YET, NO.

CG: SHE’S BEEN TALKING TO ROSE, AND APPARENTLY DAVE’S BEEN PRETTY UNEASY WITH THE NUMBER OF NEW FACES AT THE HIVE.

CG: HOUSE. WHATEVER.

CG: TEREZI’S PROTECTION DETAIL HAS HIM KIND OF ON EDGE, I GUESS?

CG: SHE’S GONNA COME AROUND LATER PROBABLY. AND MIGHT END UP STAYING WITH PORRIM AND KEEP IT TO VISITS, AT LEAST UNTIL THINGS SETTLE DOWN A BIT.

CG: SO IT’S JUST ME FOR NOW.

TG: ooooh yeah geez i bet

TG: poor dave :( :( :(

TG: i gotta tell you and mom some uh. serious shit about him when i pick you both up

TG: id pass it on here but its probs better if i just tell you face to face?

CG: OH, WONDERFUL!

CG: MORE NO DOUBT HORRIFIC NEWS REGARDING DAVE.

CG: I CAN’T WAIT. THIS PANIC ATTACK’S GONNA BE ONE FOR THE RECORD BOOKS, I CAN JUST FEEL IT!!!

TG: :(

TG: tl;dr hes not in great shape but hes getting better but theres some stuff we gotta go over

TG: jfc mom what the fuck are you doing its been ages

CG: SO WAIT. SHE JUST HAD YOU DRIVE HER OUT SOMEWHERE AND WALKED OFF ALONE?

TG: yeah

TG: woman can take care of herself just fine so like im not worried??

TG: but still, like. cmon woman!!! whatever it is hurry up a little

TG: it cant be that important we got places to be

In terms of location, it was almost an outlet mall; somewhat detached from the nearest city and surrounded by forest. It was mostly all one building, positioned in a dip in the ground next to a clear stream, and these features had helped make it a serviceable fortress during the invasion, although Derek had regularly complained that he’d have preferred a site that held the high ground. Still, they’d made do; the roof was high enough that one could see for quite some distance, the stream offered fresh water, the trees provided decent enough cover during skirmishes, and the walls were thick enough to turn away most weather and weapons. It hadn’t been much, but it had served well enough as home for six years for around threescore ragtag survivors-turned-fighters.

Out in the surrounding forest, those who hadn’t survived that conflict still lay buried in pitiful graves marked only with a stone or a chunk of wood. There hadn’t been time to properly put anyone to rest; it had been risky enough for two or three people to slip out during a stretch of quiet with a shovel and a body. They simply hadn’t been able to afford to have any sort of formal burial, not with the threat of an attack constantly looming.

Even so, even so…

Derek had picked a spot he would remember.

In life, the oak tree would have been the kind people would have thought of as a monarch, with branches spread wide and gnarled wood ancient and strong, holding children in its branches as easily as if they were made of nothing; but the tree had already been dead by the time the invasion started, a great, ancient, dried-out husk. Even so, decades later, it still stood, its branches reaching toward the sky, the other trees forming a circle around it as though too respectful to come too close. Mushrooms and trails of greenery crept about a quarter of the way up the ancient trunk.

At its roots, a rotting wooden spar stuck up out of the ground. This, too, had been reclaimed by flowers, grasses and mushrooms, decorating the splintered and decayed timber with dark summer greens and pale white-and-lavender blooms.

Derek Strider, down on one knee with his sheathed sword held in his right hand, sighed. Of course, the trouble with having to bury the dead so hastily meant that there’d been no one to look over the graves, so it was to be expected that it be in such disrepair, but even so, seeing this one choked out by the invading flora was…

It wasn’t right.

Overhead, the ancient branches rustled slightly, and the raucous calling of a bird broke the silence. Derek narrowed his eyes and ignored it, tried to write the disrespectful noise out of the scene.

The crow seemed to have other ideas. The bird lighted down on the wooden grave marker, red eyes fixed on Derek’s face. It flapped its wings a few times, cawing incessantly. Derek scowled, unsheathed his sword, and struck —

The blade passed through the bird with no resistance whatsoever. The creature’s body split in two, bloodlessly, as though Derek had cut through smoke — it even looked like smoke, like a cloud cut in two by a passing jet. As Derek looked on, uncomprehending and with a growing sense of dread, the bird’s body seemed to pull itself back together, a video played in reverse, and the bird’s accusatory squawks started up again as though nothing had happened.

Derek was on his feet in an instance, stepping away from the beast, and as he did, he happened to look up…

Perched on nearly every branch of the old tree were ravens. Unlike the crow, they were all silent, and aside from the occasional shifting of a foot or tilting of a head, motionless. Scores of staring animal eyes bored into him.

Derek had never been a superstitious man, but nor was he the sort of fool to ignore the truth his own eyes showed him. He’d spent six years fighting alongside a witch, and seen enough to learn that some things really couldn’t be explained away as coincidence.

Had it been anyone else, he would have responded to the sound of footsteps approaching this site with a furious attack; even Ben knew better than to disturb him here. But when he whirled to face the intruder, he froze.

She’d aged more since he’d last seen her than he would have expected. Hints of silver streaked her hair, and she leaned heavily on her gnarled black cane. A faint breeze stirred the black fabric of her dress, playing with the light shawl laying across her shoulders. The crow had fallen silent.

“Put that thing away before you take someone’s eye out,” said Ramona, nodding nonchalantly at Derek’s sword.

Derek narrowed his eyes, and did not respond aloud, instead choosing to slowly and deliberately slide the sword back into its sheathe. Only after his left hand had returned to his side did Ramona nod and continue.

“That’s better,” she said. “Now we can talk things over like reasonable adults. Mind you, I ought to do the world a favor and wipe you out right now,” and Derek took a slow, deep breath at that, as she continued, “But I’d prefer not to desecrate your brother’s grave by staining it with your blood. I respect him far too much for that. You, however, have somehow managed to exceed all of my worst expectations to a nearly unfathomable degree, as of late. I’ve held off on this confrontation out of respect for the past, but I can see now that this was a mistake.”

Derek shifted. “Everything I’ve done has been to protect our damn planet, Ramona,” he started, but was cut off.

“Really?” she said, “Well, then. I’m not about to attempt to ask you to cease killing trolls, as we both know that would be pointless, but I would very much like to know how exactly burning your own son alive plays into your grand battle strategy?”

“He…he turned on us,” Derek said, through gritted teeth, “He forced my hand, left me no choice!”

“He is a child!” Ramona snapped. “And you, of all people, should know better! If you really must follow this path of self-destruction to its end, fine, but he should never have been involved!”

“I—”

“And in any case, you had a perfectly good sword on hand, I’m sure. If young Dave really did need to die, you could have executed him with minimal pain, but no, you wanted him to hurt, to know he was dying and to fear you and suffer as he passed. How do you justify that, Derek? How does anyone, especially a child, deserve anything of the sort?”

The eyes of the ravens and that damned crow still drilled into him. He could feel the stares on his back, but kept his eyes locked on Ramona’s, refusing to back down.

He wasn’t going to take back what he’d done. There’d be no guilt, he’d done nothing wrong except overreact a bit. It was justified. That…that boy wasn’t Dave. Ramona was using the name like a blade, but she’d not win that way. He didn’t deserve the fucking name, didn’t deserve to have anything to do with Dave, he never would have let Rachel name the kid that if he’d known he was going to grow up to be such a pathetic, useless little coward.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” he said.

“No, I suppose you don’t,” said Ramona, folding her hands over the top of her cane. “I’ve a fairly good idea, in any case.” She sighed. “The war is over, Derek. The time to put aside this violence and misery is long since behind us. Our children do not deserve to grow up as we did.”

“The trolls are still here,” Derek spat.

There was a long silence. Ramona sighed again.

“Fine, then,” she said, “So be it. Do as you will. Chase violence as long as you like. But if you come near my family again, I will consider it an act of war.”

She turned, and he was tempted to take the bait, to try attacking her while her back was turned, but he held still. It was infuriating, knowing what a pointed insult turning her back on him was, knowing that she knew he would not risk attacking her—but she was right. She was much too dangerous.

“Come along, little one,” she said, abruptly. The crow rose off the grave and flew to land on top of Ramona’s cane. If Derek had cared to pay any attention, he might have noticed the crow look back at him with something like regret in its eyes, but Derek was already far too lost in his own thoughts.

As one bird, the ravens took wing, dispersing in all directions, leaving him alone again.

The trouble with trying to go from Alternian to English was a multifaceted one, to be sure, but so far the most obnoxious piece of it that Karkat could see was the tendency of guides on how to speak English to simply use the closest Alternian equivalent as an English word’s translation. More and more, the two languages were notably extremely different, and while he could speak English well enough that he’d never had any serious problems, there were any number of words that he kept tripping over as a result of a translation being extremely unclear and culturally misleading.

Witches, for instance, were clearly something very different on Earth. The Alternian word that was translated to English as “witch” was, like most Alternian words, a series of noises in the ‘click and growl’ family that most humans lacked the anatomy to create, and generally refered to certain lowblood prophets and healers in Alternian folklore. They were those who lived away from society and who, through some lucky genetics and convenient psychic powers, were able to fend of drones and effectively disappear from the world at large’s knowledge. They kept to themselves, sought to harm no one who didn’t attack them first, offered shelter to the weak and the hunted, and as such were always portrayed as utterly despicable beings in fiction, as no writer with any sense of self-preservation had dared to portray such reckless treachery under the rule of the last Condesce. There might have been some changes to the lore under the new one’s rule, but things like that changed slow.

In any case, they certainly weren’t anything like the old woman in a shawl who was sitting next to Roxy in the front of her car.

She was dressed all in black, for one thing. Alternian witches didn’t tend to wear much black. Some Alternian witches didn’t tend to wear all that much clothing at all, really. Most seemed to belong to ancient religions that weren’t particularly fond of shirts.

Ramona was definitely magic as shit, though, Rachel’d been right about that much. Was that all a witch was on Earth, just someone with magic? Fuck, if that were the case, then probably like at least a third of all trolls were witches by Earth’s standards. Then again, maybe magic was another poorly translated word? English didn’t seem to have a word to separate “things that we (read: trolls) know exist, like psychic powers and psiionics and ghosts and chucklevoodoos,” and “things that are super fake and don’t actually happen ever and make no sense.”

Whatever. In any case, Ramona didn’t look at all like Karkat had expected, and when he climbed into the back of the car, she didn’t react to his presence with anything stronger than an amiable nod. She seemed to have her mind on other things, and was largely silent at first.

Roxy wasn’t; she immediately piped up happily as Karkat swung open the door with a “Hey, man! Sorry about taking so long! Can you, uh, do me a favor and check on Jaspers? He’s in the carrier behind Mom, Rose asked me to pick him up while she and Aunt Ray were gone. He’s been missing them a lot, all staring out the window and kneading his blanket and shit, and he’s not a huge fan of car rides.”

“He’s asleep,” Karkat said after glancing into the little crate.

“Awesome. Alright, buckle up and we’ll get this damn show on the road.”

“On the road again, just can’t wait to get on—”

Karkat tilted his head as the car’s radio abruptly changed from quietly playing some human pop song over to something much louder and completely different. Ramona stifled a snort as Roxy stabbed a button, switching the radio back to the previous channel.

“No, thank you,” she said, glaring. “Christ, the fuck is with this thing today, I swear to god.”

“I suppose it may simply be getting into the spirit of things,” said Ramona with a smile. As the car pulled away from the curb, she turned back a bit to face Karkat. “It’s Karkat, isn’t it? Rachel’s been sending me any number of emails with updates, and from the sound of things, you’ve been rather instrumental in bringing young Dave back into the fold, so to speak.”

“…Into the what?”

“It’s a figure of speech, meaning in this case that you’ve helped us return him home as well as helping him to adjust to being there,” she said. “For which you have all of our heartfelt thanks. Ours is perhaps not the most functional of families, but it is ours, and as I’m sure you’ve seen firsthand, ripping away a piece of it the way Derek did has had some very painful consequences for all involved. We owe you a great deal.”

“Yeah, man!” Roxy said. “And from what Rose has been telling me, you were kind of a big part of why he finally spilled what he knows. Which, he did bee-tee-dubs, which means he’s off house arrest finally, so that’s good—”

“—And a partridge in a pear tree,” the radio crackled.

“What the fuck? It’s August,” Roxy scowled. She turned the radio off altogether as Ramona glanced hurriedly out the window.

“Speaking of Dave,” Karkat said, hopefully before anyone got distracted again, “Roxy, you mentioned that there was something that you needed to say face to face?”

“Right, shoot, yeah,” said Roxy. The car turned onto the long road that led eventually to the Lalonde hive. “Okay, so, like. There’s definitely some shit you should know before we get there, but I wanna preface it all real clearly by saying that Dave’s okay, y’know? He’s got a lot of healing to do, but the doctors said that as long as he’s looked after and we change bandages and shit and he gets plenty of rest, he’s definitely not in any danger anymore. He’s…weak, but he’s not like gonna keel over at any moment, okay?”

“Not actually making me feel any better, Roxy!” said Karkat. Oh, boy, with a preface like that…

“Well, fuck, I tried, I guess. Uh. So, Dave did get hurt…pretty bad, and there were some other complications—oh, for fuck’s sake!!”

“Watch me, watch me, hey, watch me, watch me!” The radio was louder than ever. Ramona’s hand flew up, poorly hiding a grin.

Karkat leaned around Roxy’s seat to glare at her.

“What the fuck, Roxy,” said Karkat.

“I’m not doing this!” Roxy said, waving her hand wildly. “I swear to fuck, I wouldn’t! I really do need to pass on some shit about poor Dave, and the radio’s never done this before? It’s been acting up since a little before we picked you up, keeps changing on its own and shit, augh!”

She fought with the controls, but the song stopped only for a moment before getting even louder.

“Why the fuck do you humans even have this obnoxious song?! Who listens to this?? It’s literally just some squawking wiggler screeching for its lusus’s attention!”

“I mean, I kinda love it for that honestly, it’s terrible and stupid and wonderful, but like, come the fuck on??? What’s with this thing?! Now is not the time!”

“Ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass—“

“GOD, that’s even worse!!” Roxy yelled, slamming her fist down on the dashboard. “Fucking stop!!”

“That’s enough for now,” Ramona said, almost murmuring it.

The radio turned off. Karkat and Roxy both turned a suspicious eye on Ramona, and with equal simultaneity, decided to drop it for now.

“Anyway,” Roxy said slowly, “What I was trying to say is, um…Karkat, do you know what it means for someone to ‘flatline?’ Because, um. Dave kinda did, for like, a minute and a half.”

Karkat shook his head, realized Roxy probably couldn’t see him with her eyes on the road, and said, “Uh, I have no idea what that word means, no.”

“Well, um…”

“It refers to a heart monitor indicating that the heart has ceased beating,” Ramona said. “The machine indicates activity with a line which shows peaks and valleys, and it goes flat when that activity has stopped, thus, ‘flatline’. The organ we call a heart serves an equivalent function to what trolls call a ‘blood pusher’ or a ‘pump biscuit.’”

Karkat felt for a moment like his own pump biscuit had stopped.

“Shit, Mom, when did you get so good at translating to trolls?” Roxy murmured.

Ramona shrugged. “I’ve made efforts to reach out,” she said. “The war ended, after all, and since we’re allies now, it doesn’t hurt to learn about each others’ cultures.”

“His fucking—What?!” Karkat screeched, unable to keep the harsh buzzing whine out of his voice. God, that was such a moirail noise, and any other time he’d have yelled at himself for not keeping it under control, but not now, not when… “His fucking blood pusher stopped and I’m supposed to be calm!?!”

“They got it moving again!” Roxy said. “He’s okay now, the doctors said it was going strong! It was, um, mostly just exhaustion, they think? Like, the burn wounds could’ve killed him on their own, sure, but they got on those quick enough that if he’d been healthy to begin with he probably wouldn’t have been so bad off? But between ten years of, you know…and just, apparently he hasn’t been eating enough even while he’s been back with us? And Ray’s gonna get on his ass about that, but, just—look, the thing is, Dirk doesn’t know about this yet, and Aunt Ray’s asked that we try to keep it that way, and I don’t really get why but I think she has her reasons?”

Karkat was definitely hyperventilating, oh fuck, oh fuck—Ramona’s hand reached back to touch his own, snapping him out of it.

“It’s fine to be worried,” she said, gentle. “I promise you, though, it is as Roxy says: he’ll be fine given time to recover and the safety with which to do so. He’ll be alive when we get there.” She sat back in her chair, turning towards the road again. “As for Dirk, I suspect Rachel is waiting for things to settle down before breaking it to him gently. He is, for better or worse, very like his father, and Derek handled his brother’s death poorly, in large part because at the time we could not afford to mourn. Rachel probably wants to make sure that Dirk does not feel he has to force himself to be strong when she tells him.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” Roxy muttered. “Anyway, the main thing about that is that he’s not got a lot of energy right now, so don’t…take it personally if he just falls asleep on you sometimes? Especially with the painkillers he’s on, apparently that’s a side effect, too. He can walk short distances, but he gets wobbly quick and needs help sometimes, so there’s that too.”

“Fuck,” said Karkat, softly.

The next ten minutes of the ride were carried out in tense silence. This was broken by the radio once again bursting back on and blasting the ass song again, at which point Roxy threatened to pull over and smash the fucking thing to smithereens.

By the time they actually got to the fucking house, Karkat felt like his soul was going to vibrate right out of his fucking body with impatience. They had yet another delay in the form of Terezi’s protection detail—Terezi herself wasn’t there, but some officers were, and they insisted on knowing about any weapons the three of them had as well as names, and went in to check with the family while making them all wait outside by the car. Karkat already had his fucking bag in hand, he was ready to go, but no, they had to go through this tedious procedure! Sure, it was probably a smart move, and when he was feeling a little more sensible he’d be more okay with it as it was the sort of thing that probably would make them all feel a bit safer (especially poor fucking Dave), but right now the were a pain in the ass and he was going to fucking explode!!! If they didn’t!!! Let him get in the fucking hive!!!!!

Rose stepped out as they were still talking to the police, and for the first time in his life Karkat was unspeakably happy to see her. She quickly confirmed to the police that all three of them were in fact expected and trusted by this household, and then gently let Jaspers out of his carrier. The cat immediately yowled and threw himself into her arms, kneading at her shoulders and rubbing his face against hers, and it all would have been super cute if Karkat didn’t have his mind on other fucking things.

“Come on in,” Rose said, nodding towards the door. “Dirk’s on the couch and Dave’s in Mom’s room, as neither of them can handle stairs right now and Dave needs his bandages changed at least twice a day. Karkat, do you—”

She was talking to air. He was already in the fucking door.

And then had to face the fact that he’d never actually been to Rachel’s room. Fuck. Rachel was coming up the hall, though, and a slightly bewildered young human (wait, fuck, that was Dirk, what happened to his hair? It looked so weird hanging down like that instead of spiked up) was sitting on the couch with an Earth husktop on his lap. Roxy pushed in the door with Ramona right behind her, dropped a heavy wheeled bag right next to the door, and immediately launched herself at Dirk, who gave a startled yelp as she did so.

Rachel rested a hand on Karkat’s shoulder as she passed him, rushing up toward Ramona throwing her arms around her shoulders. The two shared a long hug, and Rachel kissed Ramona’s cheek.

“God, I’m so glad you’re here,” Karkat heard Rachel murmur, before Rose tapped his shoulder.

“I was asking if you knew where Mom’s room is,” Rose said.

“Uh.”

“It’s down the hall to the observatory, but you take a left before you get to it. Make sure to make plenty of noise on the way over, Dave gets really jumpy when he’s the only person in that room. He can’t block the door since we need to be able to come in and out, and it’s got him a bit on edge.”

Karkat nodded, unable to get any words out past the lump in his throat. He more or less just dropped his bag on the ground and pushed past, zooming around toward the room indicated. Dave looked half-asleep when Karkat pushed the door open, and waved as he sat up with some effort.

God, the photo Rose had taken didn’t do justice to how fucking bad he looked. There were bruises across his face and neck turned a weird greenish-gray but still dark against his skin, and bandages everywhere, his hair was a mess (although that might have just been from sleeping). He was in some oversized shirt with an Earth hoofbeast on the front that was probably Dirk’s judging by the size, and Karkat had no idea why Dave had it on but right now he didn’t care.

“Hey, man, uh. Shit’s been crazy, huh?” Dave said with an awkward grin. He didn’t have his shades on either, which made sense if he’d been sleeping, except they weren’t on the bedside table (which did instead contain a nearly empty glass of water, several bottles of pills and salves, and a first aid kit from which clean cloth bandages overflowed).

Two weeks of emotion boiled over all at once. Wordless, Karkat stomped across the room and grabbed Dave’s stupid fucking shirt in both hands and tugged him close.

“It was three days, Dave,” Karkat hissed.

“Wha—?”

“Three days! And you got yourself fucking kidnapped by a terrorist on day goddamn two!! What the fuck, Dave?!” His voice was threatening to abandon him, but Karkat forced it right back into place by sheer willpower. This tangent would not be fucking stopped, hell no. “I take my eyes off of you for two days, and you get yourself into shit again! What the fuck!!! Do you have any idea how-how fucking agonizing it’s been waiting for news?! And you’re just sitting there like ‘Oh, hey! What’s up?’ What’s up is my foot up your waste chute, you hopeless fucking—!” Okay, nope, his voice was leaving after all, actually. He felt tears roll down his face, and he should’ve been more worried about that, but Dave already knew about his blood color and he was the only troll in the house right now, so, fuck it, fuck it all! Helpless, he tugged Dave closer again, letting his face press against that stupid shirt, claws still twisted into the fabric as he sobbed.

“Holy shit,” Dave muttered.

“I was so fucking scared,” Karkat gasped. This was pathetic, they weren’t remotely a couple, Karkat had no right to be this worked up and he knew it, but…Dave wasn’t exactly pushing him away, either, was he?

“I’m sorry, man, I didn’t even…It wasn’t planned this time, it just sorta happened, and Dirk got hurt, and I…”

“I’m not actually angry at you, despite having so much right to be that legislacerators everywhere have preemptively declared me innocent. I’m just fucking screaming for the sake of it, dumbass.”

“Oh.”

The awkward pause that followed was filled with only the sound of Karkat’s weeping, which, fuck, he was probably too fucking embarrassed to tell him off. Except…Dave’s hand lifted up to rest gently against Karkat’s back, so, maybe he didn’t mind that much? Was that wishful thinking?

“Sorry for this,” he said, just in case, as he pulled away a bit. “It’s really fucking embarrassing, I know, I just…”

“It’s cool, man,” said Dave. Then, with a wink, he said, “I know you got your massive Strider homocrush, it’s only natural—”

“Dave, I swear to fuck, injured or not, I will pummel you into dust with a fucking pillow, don’t test me!” Karkat snapped.

Dave snorted. “Hey, man, it’s fine, everyone’s allowed to be a lil gay sometimes with their friends, it’s only natural.”

“I’ll ‘natural’ you!! Motherfucker, I spent the two weeks worrying about your wellbeing and you come at me with more of this bullshit!!”

Dave cackled with laughter. Karkat rolled his eyes and sniffled. He feigned annoyance as best he could, but, God, it was such a relief to hear Dave laugh. Rubbing a sweater sleeve furiously across his eyes, Karkat pulled back, sitting awkwardly on the edge of the bed. “Okay, but seriously, what’s with the shirt?” he asked, gesturing at the floating head of the hoofbeast. It wasn’t even a joke or a drawing. It was just…a straight photo of a hoofbeast’s face, with no text or explanation of any sort. What the fuck??

Dave glanced down, and snickered. “Oh, shit. Uh, yeah, we needed something that’s easy to get me in and out of, since the bandages on this fuckin’ burn need to be changed like, a lot, not to mention the gross-ass cream they have us slathering all over it on the regular. We tried a button down, but the buttons were kinda chafing, and like…who the fuck wants to ruin a fancy shirt with gross burn juices, right? And Dirk’s shit is more comfortable, and this one’s big enough that it’s real easy to take off even if I’m high on the damn painkillers.”

Karkat winced slightly, but decided not to comment. The scream from the video echoed somewhere in his think pan. “Where’re your shades?”

“Bro fuckin’ stepped on them or something, man, I dunno. They fell off at some point, and they were already cracked before all that, and Terezi just found pieces. Which fucking sucks, I mean God dammit, those were a gift from John. Shit sucks.”

“John?” Karkat tipped his head.

“Yeah, he’s like, an old friend of mine. Have I not mentioned him to you? Whatever, he, uh.” Dave scratched at the side of his head. “He was an online friend from before Bro started doing the, uh, raid shit, and I kept talking to him and another friend, Jade, for a while afterwards even though I wasn’t supposed to?”

“Jade’s name I remember,” Karkat said.

“Haha, yeah, yeah cuz I told you about…anyway.” He cleared his throat. “I guess since Dirk’s college is starting up again soon, not that he’s going for the first couple weeks with his leg and a fucking concussion, but, it’s starting up, and John’s sister goes there too, and he’s gonna come with so we’ll be able to hang out for a bit? Which is fuckin’ rad, I haven’t even talked to the guy in three years and we’re finally meeting in person.”

“You want him to be here? While you’re this badly injured?” Karkat yelped.

Dave blinked at him like he’d just grown a secondary head.

“I mean, yeah?” Dave said. “Like, yeah, I’m not in great shape and I guess it’ll be a lil weird for him to see me like this, but I’ve missed him.” Before Karkat could press the question further, though, Dave yawned. “Ugh, fuck, I wanna keep talking, but I’m…halfway to falling asleep, shit.”

“Oh,” said Karkat. He got up, ready to leave. He wanted to stay, wanted to curl himself around Dave’s obnoxiously lanky frame as best he could and protect this fragile idiot human from the entire universe, but…it wasn’t his place, was it? No.

“You leaving?” said Dave, rubbing at his unbruised eye.

“You said you wanna sleep,” Karkat said.

“Right. Uh. Could you, like…fill this back up for me, then, I guess?” Dave said.

“…Sure,” said Karkat.

He was…still confused, but Dave was tired, so he didn’t press. But he couldn’t wrap his head around wanting a friend around while he was so injured—well, he’d wanted Karkat around, hadn’t he? He’d seemed happy to see him, aside from the, uh, yelling. Still, it didn’t make sense! Every troll knew as a small child that the only people you could trust when you were injured were your lusus, your moirail, and maybe your matesprit! Anyone else might take advantage of the weakness and kill you, that was just basic logic! But Dave didn’t even seem to be thinking about it.

And…and yet, come to think of it, Roxy’d been awfully forthright about how bad Dave’s condition was. Hell, she’d heard it from Rose, who seemed like the one most likely to know not to spread that weakness, but the humans were all sharing it and passing it around. It wasn’t just that they didn’t seem to care who knew that Dave and Dirk were injured, it was like they wanted people to know.

And as he filled up the glass of water in the kitchen, he watched as Roxy and Dirk talked on the couch, as Dirk told her that he’d passed on the news of their condition to Jane already, that Rose had told her and Dave’s friends, and it just kept going. Everyone had to be up to date on the fact that both brothers were injured and vulnerable, and yet…

“I hope the flight wasn’t too long,” Rachel was saying to Ramona.

“Nothing would be too long right now,” she said in turn, blowing gently on a cup of tea that Rachel had just poured her. “Times like these, we all need to do our part. I know I might not be able to do much, mind you. My leg’s been acting up something fierce, as of late, but I’ll do whatever I can.”

Something clicked. All at once, the curtains pulled back and Karkat saw the whole picture—saw maybe not what it always was, and certainly not what the Lalondes achieved on any sort of regular basis, but what it was supposed to be, how it was meant to work.

On Alternia, everyone lived in constant competition. Trolls had to be strong as close to all the time as they possibly could, or at the very least find a moirail who could, because otherwise their society wouldn’t particularly care much if they died. That just meant they didn’t deserve to be a part of the gene pool or to contribute to society. If they were injured badly and left vulnerable, it was seen as normal for others to take advantage of that weakness and exert power or outright kill a rival. It was how they survived so long, or so the cultural narrative had so long stated: by this competition, the strongest survive. Nevermind that this survival was built on the corpses of uncountable trolls who didn’t make the cut, it Worked.

As a result, trolls had been bewildered just as Karkat had by how humans as a species managed to be so frail and yet so reckless and to still survive, especially when they didn’t exactly have the kind of numbers that trolls did. Humans lacked the numbers to be expendable, lacked the strength and toughness that kept Trolls alive, and yet they looked Death in the eye and pointed and laughed, and pushed themselves to extremes for no purpose other than to have some warped idea of fun. It was a question that had lingered around his consciousness for ages; how the fuck do humans even work as a species? How had such a seemingly doomed race not died off yet?

The answer that hit him now, as he watched Roxy help Dirk stand up and balance himself on a pair of crutches, was that humans didn’t have to be strong all the time, and that was the magic of their little social units, their families—they took care of each other. No one person had to be good at everything, or so good at one thing that it could keep them safe in any situation. It didn’t matter that their skin was thin or that they weren’t particularly strong or fast, they always, always had others around who would pick up the slack, others who would come even across oceans to offer what aid they could in times of strife; they weaved together all their strengths and weaknesses into a fabric able to withstand just about anything. Fuck, no wonder they’d wanted Dave back so badly. The Lalondes may have been less a tapestry and more a patchwork quilt, but it was still their quilt, and Dave was a part of it….

He felt a near-agonizing pang of envy that he didn’t have a quilt of his own. Humans might have been stupid about a lot of things, but this…this they’d gotten right.

“Fucking water? Is that really the best you could think of? Fucking dumbass,” Dave muttered to himself. God. This was stupid. This was all really fucking stupid. He couldn’t even deal with being alone while he was asleep, for Chrissakes! Too scared of nightmares of a big mean dog, like some fuckin’ little kid.

Yeah, he was tired, but he really, really didn’t wanna be alone right now, was the thing. Not with that fucking troll-drug-induced nightmare lingering around the edges, waiting to chase him down again at its first chance. But. Like. Karkat was kind of right? Bros don’t watch each other sleep, that’s fuckin’ creepy. Like. Okay, so maybe they’d done a bit of that way back when Karkat had been kidnapped, but they didn’t have a choice back then, and anyways they mostly slept at the same time during that experience, which was super different from just asking his best alien friend to fuckin’ hold his hand so the bad dreams wouldn’t get him. Fuck.

So he’d asked Karkat to refill his glass, even though he wasn’t thirsty right now, because it was an excuse to make Karkat come back, at least for a few more minutes, and they could talk for a bit, and maybe Dave’d stop being tired, wouldn’t that be rad.

Karkat came back in looking really thoughtful. He handed the glass over, and Dave took a sip to try and look like he hadn’t been 100% bullshitting there, and mumbled a thanks as he set it down. Then, just as a thought, he jerked his head toward the rest of the bed—it was a big king-sized one, probably left over from before the divorce and Mom had just never downsized or whatever, so there was a lot of space to Dave’s right—and told Karkat he could sit down if he wanted, Dave wasn’t gonna, like, pass out right this minute or anything, haha.

Karkat stayed quiet, which was fuckin’ weird, but he did sit down. He stared at the sheets for a minute, and then spoke up suddenly, saying, “I think I get it.”

“Get what?” said Dave.

“Why they wanted you back so bad,” said Karkat. “I mean, way back when you were first arrested. I kind of fought with Dirk over it at one point, because my only experience with the word Dirk used for why you should be with him was fucking Strider. And also I think I get why this shit all works, for humans in general. I mean, I’m probably just saying obvious shit, but it’s not how trolls work, we don’t take care of each other, not like this.”

Dave tipped his head.

“I mean with the whole fucking family thing,” Karkat said, rolling his eyes. “I’ve been trying to get it this whole time, but this shit’s used to justify so much bullshit with you humans, and I think I get it now, and why it’s so fucking important to you as a species.”

Dave snorted. “Dude, it’s not that big a thing—”

“It is, though! It just seems normal to humans because it’s how you always work, but, Dave, I’m serious, back on Alternia it’s every troll for themself. Maybe you have one person who has your back if you’ve got a moirail, maybe some are lucky like me and have friends who are actually consistently on your side and won’t take the first chance they get to kill you or fuck you up some other way, but we definitely don’t have a whole cluster of others we can just fall back on any time we’re met with something we can’t handle alone.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” Dave started, but Karkat just kept going. Apparently he’d had some sort of fuckin’ epiphany in the past two minutes.

“It took me so fucking long to get this, but I get it now! You know what I don’t get, though, is why the fuck you ever tried to convince me that Strider is part of your fucking family.”

Something in Dave dropped like a stone.

He’d…had a similar thought, really. Repeatedly. Multiple times, over the past week or so. He’d been kind of trying to avoid it, because every time it popped up, he got really stressed out.

“And don’t give me any of the bullshit about being ‘related’ or what the fuck ever, I don’t wanna hear it,” Karkat kept right on going. “I still don’t get why you humans care so much about that. The whole point of this family thing is that you all take care of each other, not that you’re related or whatever! Your aunt’s here, did you know that? She flew across an entire fucking ocean just to make sure she could help out you and Dirk! What the fuck did Strider ever do for you?”

It was a good question. And the answer, of course, was: aside from trying to kill him, do you mean? Hahaha.

Karkat was still talking, but Dave wasn’t really hearing him. Fuck, this had been a mistake, he should’ve taken his chances with the fucking nightmare dog. That was better than this old song and dance with his own thoughts.

The facts were pretty simple. He’d operated under pretty clear logic when he went up against Bro: We’re family, so he loves me, so therefore if I ask him to let me leave and explain that I really can’t deal with this, he’ll let me go. Except, Bro had tried to kill him, which meant that…

That was as far as Dave ever got. He couldn’t think any farther than that.

He felt like…like the next thought should be obvious, but he couldn’t make himself think it. It was too big—not so much a square peg in a round hole as it was trying to cram a grain silo into a pinhole, and the thought threatened to overwhelm and destroy him, so instead of thinking it, his brain kept rejecting it, the effect being like a broken record skip-skip-skipping, over and over, repeating the last thought he could get to before the Big One, because he couldn’t not think the Big One, either…

It was so fucking stupid, it was just a thought, why couldn’t he…

“Hah, yeah, now that you mention it, I guess I was always kinda wrong about this shit, wasn’t I?” Dave said, unable to stop the sardonic laughter bubbling up in his throat. “I mean, fuck, no wonder it took you so long to get, I probably gave you the wrong idea. My dumb ass was convinced he’d never try to kill me, cuz we’re family, and, well, here we fuckin’ are!”

Skip, skip, skip—

Karkat was still talking in stuttered phrases in the gaps of Dave’s own flood of words, looking almost scared, but Dave didn’t comprehned any of them, and anyway, the ranting had started, there was no stopping this shit now. “Like, what the fuck was I even thinking, right? I really thought that was gonna work, that somehow he’d just let me go if I asked, like a fucking idiot! Haha, what a fuckin’ dipshit, right?! And here I was thinking he—” Frantic laughter bubbled up, overtaking the words, not that more would’ve come, that next thought was just too big. Was he crying? Fuck, Karkat didn’t need to see any of this shit, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t think

Skip, skip, skip, skip, skipskipskipskipskipskip—

It wasn’t Karkat’s fault. It really wasn’t. He might’ve set it off, but the storm had been building up for days, now, and it broke hard, sweeping Dave up in a torrent of just wordless mental screaming. He couldn’t think the next thought. He couldn’t. But the thing was damming him up, and he couldn’t ignore it anymore, and he was stuck in the middle and left to just completely melt down and dissipate into the flood.

A sound like a cicada crossed with the creakiest horror movie door ever to creak ripped through the tides, and suddenly Dave found himself tugged into a full body hug, wrapped up in four limbs with his face pressed into a thick sweater. The touch dragged him out of the flood and onto dry land, brought him back into now before he even knew what was happening. Karkat’s whole chest was vibrating with some intense cricket-cat hybrid purr, and this should’ve been so embarrassing but he was so tired and so lost and it was fucking comforting, so who the fuck cared. Who cared anymore. It was all bullshit. He could be embarrassed later.

Too soon, Karkat seemed to have the same thought, and tried to pull away. “Shit, sorry, I shouldn’t—fuck, I’m so sorry, this is really presumptive and I know you aren’t even into boys,” he babbled.

Dave groaned, wrapping his arms around Karkat’s chest and pulling him close. “Dude, if you try to make this about alien romance right now, I swear to fuck,” he gasped out between harsh sobs. Christ, he was going harder than Karkat did like twenty minutes earlier, what the fuck.

Karkat paused. Good. It meant his warm arms were still there. “Dave, I…I mean, this is troll romance, this is textbook moiraillegience, and I shouldn’t just be throwing myself at you because you had a moment of weakness, no matter how bad I, uh.”

Dave sniffled, wracked his brain for a moment…Karkat had explained this stuff about a million times, which one was…”That’s like…the bros quadrant, right?”

“The what.”

“The one that’s, like, platonic and shit.”

“…Yeah?” The cricket-purr started up again, cautiously.

“We fuckin’ kinda do most of that shit already, don’t we?” Like. Yeah. He wasn’t gay. That was still a thing. But Karkat was warm and solid and real and Dave was fucking exhausted and didn’t want to be alone, especially not when he felt right now like he was wrapped in safety. “Please, Karkat,” he added, because why not beg. He was already at maximum pathetic, there was no digging this hole lower, fuck it. “I really don’t wanna be alone right now, just, please don’t go.”

Karkat was quiet for a long moment, but finally, the cricket-purr went back to full volume and Karkat’s arms tightened around him.

“Okay,” Karkat said quietly. Dave let out a breath he’d barely known he’d been holding and went back to crying.

“We’re going to have to talk about this later,” Karkat murmured, which put him at about normal volume for anyone else.

“Later, then,” said Dave, and let himself finally fall the fuck asleep.

#dave strider #karkat vantas #davekat #roxy lalonde #longpost//#u BET UR BUTT THIS OENS GOIN IN THE DAVEKAT TAG #ITS ABOUT TIME #fanfic #fanfiction #calmvsstormfic #calmvsstormchapter #katt does a writing #jkdfsgfjhsfjshf not the best start to a relationship but like its something #lord this got long.#why tf did i think 32 and 33 would ever fit into one chapter.

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harlequinlaw · 6 years

Text

The Unknown Original

So this story is older. I wrote it in late 2016, so it doesn’t fall in with the current storyline. I lost my motivation to continue it, but thought I would share what I did have. Maybe I’ll pick it back up and finish it soon.

The storm had quickly crept across the early morning sky, invading New Orleans before most of her patrons had awoke. Ominous clouds blocked out the sun, bringing crashing thunder and flashing lightning as buckets of water were released onto the city below. Along with the storm, a new figure graced the streets, wearing an odd combination of flip flops and a white, ankle length coat with an oversized fur-lined hood.

As the figure approached the quarter, the presence of the people they had been searching for became crystal clear. Childish glee began to build as they made their way to the courtyard of the Mikaelson compound.

As per usual, big things are going on among the original family and those closest to them. A meeting had been called to discuss matters and currently Elijah, Klaus, Freya, Hayley, Marcel, and Camille were present. However the group ceased their heated discussion, turning as a petite figure entered the room barefoot, while water dripped from their coat.

Suddenly, the coat hit the floor, a cry of “Eli” echoed through the room as the figure had moved, the sound causing everyone in the room to cringe at its intensity and then there was a young woman standing before Elijah. She had quickly unbuttoned his jacket and slipped her arms inside to encircle his waist as she buried her face in his chest, a content sigh escaping her. Surprise flashed across Elijah’s face, quickly being replaced by a soft smile as he wrapped his arms around her back. Everyone looked to Klaus to see him frozen in place, and as the scent that had hit him finally registered, shock and then surprise flew across his face.

Everyone else present stared at the back of this girl who appeared to be very familiar in the company of Elijah. She was a tad on the short side, roughly 5’ 2"-3", dark Auburn hair in a flipped out bob, with longer pieces hanging down that were braided and colored in a variety of bright shades. The strange girl turned towards her audience bringing bright green eyes that peered out of a freckled face into their line of sight, watching as they worked their way down the line of people before settling on Klaus. Her scrutiny left everyone else feeling uncomfortably exposed even though her inspection of each of them was no more than a few scant seconds. A bright smile stretched across her face before she launched herself at Klaus, wrapping her arms around his neck, and burying her face there as her legs wound around his waist. “Nic, it’s been far too long! Honestly, I’m so glad I found you though. I’ve been searching for a while…cause I need your help.”

A smile appeared on Klaus’ face before his expression turned pensive, “What seems to be the problem, Breán my love?” The others in the room recognizing his tone for what it meant for whoever caused this girl to seek him out. The girl brightened at the familiar name before she noticed the stare of the others in the room and turned to them with a slight glare, “What? Have you never seen a family reunion before? Are you all newbies?”, she looked between the brothers, “Can you boys not find anyone your own age to spend time with?” Her serious face then melted into a grin as she erupted with laughter that seemed to bounce off the walls and vibrate the glassware, “Of course not…when there are so few that are remotely close to your ages. Even still, none of these people are more than a few centuries old, well excluding the witch. How do you interact with people who have such a minuscule season?”

Elijah spoke up before the girl could continue, “Don’t you think it would be easier for the others to understand the situation if you at least introduced yourself?” The girl looked slightly admonished before she straightened up, giving a formal bow before she continued, “Oh…where did I leave my manners. My given name is Aibreán Rhysia Mikaelson, though I go by April these days. I am the original chimera. It’s intriguing to see several sire lines represented here, as they tend to not get along for whatever ridiculous reason…along with having vampires, hybrids and witches in the same room.” She turned to look at Klaus, “You all picked an interesting place to call ‘home’. None of the witches in the quarter seemed happy with my being here. What have you done to the witches?”

A teasing smile broke across Klaus’ face, “My love, that is a long story for another time. Now, what did you come to see me for?”

As said girl untangled herself from Klaus, the others finally got a good view at what she was wearing. Black lace tank top with baggy cargo capris and gloves that went up past her elbows. “Could you pull the gloves off, Nic? Be quick about it, please.” Klaus nodded before grabbing the fingers of both gloves and quickly pulling them from her arms, revealing a couple werewolf bites. Klaus grasped her arm and brought it closer for inspection, “Some of these are well advanced. How long has it been since you were first bitten?”

“Oh, um. I’m not sure, a few weeks maybe? The first bite is on my back and I’ve been on the move since, so I haven’t seen it.” Elijah had stepped up behind her and pulled her shirt up until the wound was visible. Elijah’s eyes widened at the severity of the bite. A smile that reminded them all of Klaus appeared on her face as she spoke, “They tried to tear me apart, but I ruptured all their eardrums and they let me go so they could lick their wounds.”

Suddenly, her legs gave out and both men moved to prevent her from hitting the ground. Her body started shaking as she broke out in a sweat. She started to close in on herself as the brothers tried to comfort her. The girl pulled what appeared to be an epinephrine pen from her pants pocket and handed it to Elijah. “I need a dose, brother…in the back of my neck, please.” Elijah followed her instruction and whatever was in that dose seemed to take the edge off as she visibly relaxed. Klaus had poured a glass of blood and had her drink it down as soon as she was able. Her wounds started healing immediately and within a few minutes, she had passed out in Klaus’ lap. Klaus picked her up before addressing Elijah, “Brother, I’m taking her up to my room. You should finish things up here before you join us.” Klaus was gone before anyone could question the meaning of his comment.

Marcel stepped forward, “Okay, I’ll bite. Who was that and how is she still alive after that many werewolf bites?”

Elijah straightened up his jacket before he spoke, “That Marcellus, is essentially a collective child of the Mikaelson originals. Roughly 925 years ago we found Aibreán alone alongside the road, during our century stay in Italy. She was somewhere between 2-3 years old at the time and Rebekah insisted that we bring her with us. We named her, raised her and masqueraded her around as another sibling until she became one of us…each working to educate her from our personal strengths. We discovered a few years after taking her in that she was a gifted witch, we believe she was an Irish immigrant whose family perished shortly after their arrival. She became headstrong and daring as she grew older, often spending time getting into mischief alongside Kol…I suppose that is a side effect of being raised by vampires. We all spoiled and doted on her.

Kol and Finn had concocted a plan to create a block that would prevent our father from finding us and Aibreán was the one who tested their ideas. During her 14th summer among us she was out in the woods gathering ingredients when she was accidentally hit by a stray arrow. The boys who shot it came upon her, panicking when they saw all the blood and they took off, leaving her to die. Aibreán had been planning to test a blood spell that day and had a jug containing a mixture of blood from each of us. She was aware of the healing ability of our blood so she removed the arrow and drank it before returning to the village. The boys saw her and quickly told their parents what had happened. They immediately hung her as a witch and later Rebekah found her in the town square when she came to look for her. In our anger and grief we razed the village, Finn recovered her body and brought it back to be buried before we moved on.” Elijah had poured himself a drink before he continued. “Aibreán woke up in the middle of the night, having no clue where she was.”

Freya spoke up before Elijah could go on, “Don’t most vampires reawaken in a state of confusion?”

“Yes, and that is probably one of the only things she has in common with typical vampires. The circumstances behind her change is what makes Aibreán different from other vampires, even unique from us originals. She is not sired from any single one of us, but from all of us simultaneously. When a newly made vampire first awakens, they tend to be overwhelmed by their heightened senses, which is due to receiving the blood of one vampire line. However, Aibreán received the blood of all five of us.” Elijah glanced up from his glass to see that his explanation wasn’t really explaining anything if based on the look of the faces looking back at him.

He thought for a moment before he spoke, “We all cringed when she first spoke earlier…cause her voice can cause disturbances in sound pressure at varying levels, she is physically stronger and faster than most vampires, her thought process rivals a computer and she can throw tantrums that make Klaus seem like a choir boy. Her emotions intensify everything, whether her feelings are positive or negative. She can sense auras that allow her to tell humans from supernatural beings and has an interconnected blood bond with all of us. Her hearing and sense of smell are heightened to a point she has trouble sleeping and being among groups of people and other simple everyday things can easily become overwhelming. It was practically impossible to help her conform to life as a hypersensitive vampire. It would be similar to imagining all of us mixed into one person…powerful, intelligent and highly unstable emotionally. Unfortunately, about a decade in she overheard us discussing her condition and Finn made the suggestion that it might be an act of mercy to kill her. She disappeared a short time later and we haven’t seen or heard anything from her since.”

“That’s terrible! Did you all not search for her after she disappeared?”, Hayley spoke up in April’s defense. Elijah looked affronted as he responded, “Of course we did…but don’t forget that she grew up during a time when we were running from our father, so she is an expert at making herself vanish. We searched for her until a time came when it was safer for her to not be with us. We were soon confronted by the first hunters and then our father not long after.”

“How she survived so many bites for so long? Well, she can’t be killed by normal means, so I would speculate that whatever was in that dose I gave her, mutes her abilities and that she must have been withholding the dose to exert her full will to fight the spread of the venom through her system.” Elijah placed his glass down as he made his way to the staircase.

“That’s enough for now. If you don’t live here, you need to leave. Marcel…Camille, someone will contact you to let you know when you can return. Freya, could you be so kind as to put up a sound barrier around Niklaus’ room? It will aid Aibreán in sleeping. Don’t expect to see either of us until tomorrow unless it is an absolute emergency. Hayley, why don’t you and Freya take Hope out for the day? No business is going to get done until we get Aibreán settled in.” Elijah turned and made his way up the stairs to Klaus’ room.

Klaus carried April upstairs, laying her down in his bed before looking over her bite marks again. The more recent ones had healed, but a couple of the older ones seemed to be taking longer. He supposed he should give her some more blood in a few hours as a booster. Klaus changed into some pajama pants before pulling all the curtains, which helped block out the lightning. He could faintly hear Elijah recounting April’s life story downstairs. He lit a single lamp and set it on the far side of the room before he climbed into bed with April. Almost immediately, April turned towards him in her sleep…tucking her face in his neck, breathing deeply before all the tension left her body. Klaus found himself focusing on her irregular yet familiar heartbeat and dozed lightly till Elijah arrived. He watched as his brother removed his jacket and tie before going to the adjoined bathroom to change into pajama pants, having left his undershirt on, before he returned and climbed in the bed behind April. April’s hand found Elijah’s, intertwining their fingers before she pulled his arm around her waist. As the sound barrier went up, the three fell asleep.

A few hours later, Klaus untangled himself from April’s limbs before turning her towards Elijah. He watched as she settled against his brother, then rose from the bed to get a glass of blood for April. Feeling the bed move stirred April from her nap, sitting up to see where Klaus had took off, eyes half-lidded as sleep tried pulling her back into the warmth of the bed. “Nic, where is Bekah? Who were those people downstairs? You two are going to show me around the city soon, right? Oh, when can I meet Hope?” At this point, the rapid fire questions had woke up Elijah who was watching Klaus in smug anticipation of his responses. “Alright my love, let me answer these questions before you move onto more. Rebekah is away on holiday for a while…Elijah and I have some things to sort out here and it was better for her to be gone for now. Sure, we can escort you around New Orleans tomorrow if you are feeling up to it. Perhaps you can meet Hope later in the week, young ones tend to be all over the place…fairly unpredictable. The people downstairs?” Klaus and Elijah shared a look before Elijah took over the explanations while Klaus went to get drinks and then returned to the bed. “Well Breán dear, the witch is our elder sister Freya…the one we had been misinformed about having died. We were all recently reunited. The hybrid is Hayley, Hope’s mother and the alpha of the crescent wolf pack. I think you will get along well with her, Rebekah does. The blonde vampire Camille, was Niklaus’ therapist before she became a vampire and his most recent estranged lover. Now she is trying to sort through her own baggage since her transition, by driving us insane. That leaves Marcellus, who Klaus picked up off a plantation about 200 years ago. He’s the current leader of the Strix, a long standing organization that I created several centuries ago.”

“Is Kol really gone? I get pulses every once in a while, but he disappeared for a long time a few years ago. What about Finn? It’s all felt very strange.”

“Yes, Kol is in a magic induced sleep and Finn was killed again recently.” April’s eyes grew big at the new information.

“Oh, no! I hope Kol can be woke up soon and I wish I had made it here to see Finn. I hope to see Bekah soon, too. Getting into trouble is so much more fun with Kol. The rest of you take things too seriously.”

Klaus handed April her glass before refilling his own, “It appears you’ve found a way to manage your unique abilities?” She handed him the empty glass before she stretched and hopped out of bed and to the closest mirror. April pulled her shirt up and tried looking at her back before she pulled both her pant legs up to see the remnants of the spots on her legs disappear. In her excitement, she had began bouncing on the balls of her feet. She caught herself though and took a deep breath before she started inspecting the room as she began her explanation.

“First, I went to your homeland of Norway after hearing the stories you all told me that were passed down from your mother…I wanted to see it for myself. I ended up isolating myself away in a cave system there for a few hundred years. I finally decided the best solution to my problems was coming up with a way to dilute the effect of the world on my senses. The world is moving at a much quicker pace than it did in the middle ages. I finally tracked down a witch who was able to give me a spell to enchant a mixture that I use once a month. I’ve also learned a bit of self control through meditation, doing what I can to keep from affecting the environment and drawing attention to myself.” April turned from her spot across the room and returned to the bed, jumping and sliding into the headboard…the impact causing the bed to bounce off the wall. “This room is fabulous! Freya put a spell on it, right? Everything about this room is soothing. Can I sleep here sometimes Klaus? I want to see your room to Elijah. Can we sleep there tonight? Will I get my own room too?” Just as she finished a yawn broke across her face.

“April, why don’t you lay back down for a bit. Niklaus and I have some things to discuss, but we’ll remain in the room until you awake. Then maybe we’ll see about a bath and some food?” April nodded before giving each brother a hug and a peck on the cheek before snuggling back down in the bedding.

The sound of running water woke April a couple hours later. She could sense a people outside Klaus’ room and knew that the brothers were milling about. As she sat up, she noticed that Klaus was sitting in one of the chairs reading a book, while Elijah was moving in and out of the bathroom. “Breán, I’ve got the bath running and I’ll see if we have some clothes that you can change into until we purchase some”, and with that he left the room to inquire with the other women in the house. “So, are you feeling up to eating something? I thought that ordering in would be ideal tonight since we’ve all been preoccupied today. Anything specific you have in mind?”, Klaus looked up from his book waiting for a response. “Oh, well you know my tastes Nic. Though, I’ve never ate food from around here before so if you’d get a variety of things so I could try them out, that would be fantastic!”, April replied…becoming more excited at the prospect of eating as she spoke. “Very well. I’ll get that ordered and we can eat in here when it arrives. Freya and Hayley will be eating with us, since they live here I think you should become accustomed to them as quickly as possible.” April looked thoughtful for a moment, “That’s a fabulous idea, Nic! I’ll see you when I get out of the bath…and let Eli know that the door will be unlocked in case he comes back with some clothes before I’m done”, turning to go into the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

Elijah came back into the room sooner than Klaus had expected. He was packing a few bags, “Seems like our sister and Hayley were thinking ahead of us. They bought some clothes for Breán so she would have something until we are able to take her shopping.” Klaus looked over the bags before speaking, “Breán wanted to let you know she left the door unlocked so you can set the bags inside. I ordered out for supper tonight, so it should be arriving shortly. We decided to eat in here and invite Freya and Hayley so that Breán can get accustomed to them.” Elijah moved to place the bags in the bathroom before returning to sit across from Klaus.

An excited squeal reverberated from the bathroom…cracking every piece of glass in the room. It suddenly stopped and then a muffled 'sorry’ followed. April emerged from the room a few minutes later wearing black tights with a mid-thigh black skirt and a bright blue, bell-sleeve top. After taking a few steps into the room, April stopped and looked around before bowing and apologizing again when she noticed the cracks in the bedroom glass also, “Awww no! I hope I didn’t mess up all the glass in the house. I’m so sorry. The clothes are amazing and I got excited over having something new.” Elijah walked up to April and she hugged him, “Breán, don’t worry about it. We can’t expect you to never be happy or express yourself. Things happen and we’ll deal with them accordingly. Why don’t we set up the table to eat while Niklaus gets the girls and the food?”

Soon everyone was sitting around the table with crawfish etouffee, muffulettas and beignets spread out before them. “Oh, Nic the food looks fabulous. You’re the best! Freya, Hayley thank you so much for thinking of me today while you were out. The clothes are fantastic! Eli, is there a television in your room? I’d really like to watch a movie or something before we go to bed.” At this point, everyone was looking at April as she had finally quit talking and was beginning to eat as she waited for someone to continue the conversation. “Breán dear, there is a media room downstairs, so we could watch a movie there before bed. We don’t use it very often…do you have a specific movie in mind that you would like to see?” April was so pleased by the answer, you could see it in her eyes. “Oh, I’ve been wanting to see Deadpool. I’ve heard that it’s hilariously inappropriate.” “That’s one of those movies that is based on a comic book, right Breán?” “Yes! He has a complete gutter mouth and constantly breaks the 4th wall. He’s insane, but it’s okay cause he does it all for love.”

“So Breán, what have you been up to since you managed to harness some control over your abilities?”, Elijah inquired. “Well, I’ve been traveling the world! Growing up in Italy and then spending over 300 years in Norway left my world view immensely skewed. Plus, I think it was easier to adjust to the times while on the move. I really enjoyed Asia and Australia…such unique cultures. I was working my way across Canada when I was attacked and I had heard about you all being here in the states, so then I started my search.” By this point, everyone was finishing up their meal.

Freya took a drink of water before speaking, “Alright Klaus, Elijah…why don’t you two head downstairs to get the movie ready and we’ll hang out for a bit and have some girl time.”

“That would be nice, Freya. Okay, guys! Here are the rules for the movie room. No ties, no zippers, no dress shirts…uh, no shoes, no phones, all baggage and worries stay at the door. Jaded Elijah and Niklaus stay out…I just want MY brothers tonight, alright?”

#the originals #writers block #oc #mikaelson family #fanfic

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pantstomatch · 7 years

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@andromedainwonderland said:

Teen Wolf-Scooby Doo, as in, the Teen Wolf crew driving around in the Jeep solving supernatural mysteries. Just me?

So I don’t know what this is, but this fic turned out to be my ARCH NEMESIS, so, you know, make of that what you will. It’s even alternating POVs, which I haven’t written in years upon years. So please appreciate how much this story wanted to kill me, and how we’re still eyeing each other with open hostility from different corners of the room.

The groundskeeper has gnarled, knotted fingers and rheumy eyes, and it takes five hundred years for him to turn the key in the rusted padlock. The gate creaks almost as loud as his bones, and Derek flicks an ear in irritation.

“That’s a big dog you’ve got there,” he says, only mildly curious.

Stiles buries one hand in the scruff around Derek’s neck. “Not sure he is one,” Stiles says, and Derek cocks his head up at him.

Scott has the van idling behind them.

Derek takes a deep breath and sneezes. Decay, old blood, and sulfur flood his senses—he whines softly. He doesn’t have a good feeling about this.

The old house looms in front of them, stone and spires, ominous, cloaked in shadows thrown by the nearly full moon. His skin ripples under his fur, uneasy, and he tucks his tail between his legs.

“Relax,” Stiles murmurs to him. “This is easy money, right? A simple salt and burn.”

Derek huffs, knocks into Stiles’ side as he hastily turns around, and then slinks back to the van. He doesn’t like this place. He never likes haunted places, too much lingering despair that stirs up old guilt, but this house feels like it’s made out of skeleton bones, dread sits like a stone in his belly.

Lydia already has the side of the van open. He hops in, slides past Kira, and then digs into Stiles’ open duffle, buries his snout in an old t-shirt that smells a little bit like Scott, too.

“Dude,” Stiles says when he climbs in after him. “Come on.”

Derek growls, low in his throat, and Stiles backs off with a huffy, “Fine, be that way.”

The van grinds into gear and rolls forward slowly, tires bumping over the cobblestone drive, and Derek feels like his chest is caving in.

Stiles doesn’t know why he gets to be Keeper of the Wolf: official title. Wolf doesn’t seem to particularly like any of them, is the thing, except Stiles is generally the only person he’ll even remotely listen to—barring Scott’s Alpha Voice, which he rarely, if ever, uses—and more often than not Wolf just… follows Stiles around.

It’s not like Stiles can’t guess who he is. He’s a traumatized Hale relation, obviously, since they found him two months ago living in filth and sadness in the shell of the old Hale house—and hadn’t that been a fun job, with a half-feral werewolf trying to thwart all their plans to lay the Hales to rest. Granted, they’d been hired by a contractor to help tear the place down. The ghosts were the peaceful part of that deal.

Nobody had warned them about the locally famed Demon Wolf that guarded the place.

They’d had a couple things to their advantage, though. The really big one being Scott’s True Alpha status, and the astoundingly effective way it made Wolf come to heel. Their backup plan had included Kira calling down lightning and Stiles’ stash of mountain ash, and he’s really happy they didn’t actually have to use that, in retrospect.

Wolf has a sensitive nose and a deep-seated fear of thunder storms.

This house, the North Mansion, has been languishing on the real estate market for over five years, and the current owner’s sick of all potential buyers getting chased off.

It could be raccoons—that’s happened before—but going by Wolf’s reaction, Stiles is leaning a little more toward malicious poltergeist.

He rubs his hands together in anticipation as they pull up to the top of the curved drive. They haven’t had a good old exorcism for a while. This is going to be fun.

Even though Derek wants to hide away in the van for the entire job, he only hesitates a moment to follow when everyone else clambers out. He keeps low to the ground, gaze dipped, and seeks out Stiles by scent.

Stiles rubs one of his ears between his fingers, and Derek noses the back of his knee.

Lydia says, “Huh,” and Derek finally looks up just in time to see her stuff her phone back into the purse she has slung over her shoulder.

“What?” Kira says, glancing around wildly. “Does anyone else think this house is, like, extra creepy?”

Derek woofs in agreement.

And then the door slowly creaks open on its own.

Stiles says, “Cool,” with a stupid amount of enthusiasm, and Derek bites into his jeans to keep him from just flouncing inside. “Ow, what the fuck, dude?”

Stiles tries to shake him off, but Derek feels like he’s being watched, the hair down the middle of his back bristles, and his lips open up into a soundless snarl around the caught denim.

Kira’s eyes flare orange and a light beyond the doorway flickers on.

“No, wait,” Scott says, a hand on Lydia’s arm. “What do you mean by huh?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Lydia says, hands on her hips. She looks at the open door, tilts her head back to gaze up the slick, moss covered stone. “Ask me again after we step inside.”

There’s an elaborate wolf head carved into a knocker on the door, elongated canines carefully fit around a metal ring.

Derek’s ears flatten against his head. He can hear the echo of phantom howls, and he lets go of Stiles’ jeans to press closer to his legs.

Stiles stumbles under his weight, says, “Whoa, Wolf,” and lets him huddle between his feet, hastily balancing into a crouch over him.

Derek only relaxes minutely under the hands on his head and back.

Something wrong happened here.

There are too many dead, and all of them are angry.

Lydia freezes in the front foyer at the bottom of a wide staircase, eyes glazing over, fingers curled into Stiles’ arm. Her nails dig into his skin hard enough to cut, and he wraps his other hand around her wrist to ground her.

“What is it?” Scott says.

The air inside is cold. Stiles doesn’t hear the dead, not like Lydia, at least, but he can tell when the space is so packed with spirits no warmth can touch it.

He can see his breath, and Wolf shivers beside him.

It’s oppressive, and Wolf backs up onto his haunches, like he’s ready to bolt.

Lydia’s voice does the eerie doubling thing, like two of her are talking at once. “The wolves,” she says, words echoing off the marble tiled floor. “They slaughtered them all.”

“Hunters?” Stiles says. They’ve had the displeasure of coming across many a hunter over the past couple years—a ragtag group of supernaturals solving mysteries attracts an unsurprising amount of attention. They always leave an unpleasant taste in his mouth.

“No,” Lydia says, and then shakes off the voice with a slight stumble of step that she’s visibly annoyed by. She straightens and tugs down her shirt and clears her throat.

“Who was it?” Kira says. She’s poking around the light fixtures, and then the hallway to the left lights up, bulbs glowing one by one down the long corridor. She grins brightly and does a fist pump.

“I’m—“ Lydia’s perfect brow wrinkles a little. “Wolves?”

Wolf’s ears suddenly prick up, and he lurches forward, nose in the air.

Scott’s fangs drop and his eyes flash red. He says, “Someone’s in here. Alive.”

All the lightbulbs explode at once, and Kira says, “Sorry,” just before Derek gets thrown back against a wall.

His head spins, there’s a pressure in his chest keeping him pinned in the corner of the foyer, paws scrambling uselessly on the floor.

Stiles yells, “Why do we always fucking do this at night, how come that’s a thing?” and then Derek’s temporarily blinded by the beams of three flashlights.

The vice grip on his chest travels up to his throat, invisible hands forcing his head back. He lets out a long, drawn out howl. And then the pressure’s just…gone.

Derek sags down onto the floor, heaving panting breaths, whole body wracked with spasms, and then buries his head in Stiles’ lap when he drops down in front of him.

“Hey, big guy, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Derek says, and then Stiles says, “Holy shit, you can talk!”

Officially, Scott and Stiles started off as supernatural debunkers. Shithead eighteen year olds with a couple gopros, a book of magic lore they’d ‘borrowed’ from Scott’s veterinarian ex-boss, and a YouTube channel. They guilted Scott’s dad into buying them a used van, downloaded a map of haunted places, and set off across the country for a gap year that stretched well past what their parents think is acceptable.

And then Scott got bit by a werewolf off highway 95, they accidentally set Kira free from an Arizona desert prison, and Lydia Martin, Stiles’ high intensity high school crush, aka the smartest and most beautiful woman in puppet land, called him up out of nowhere at 3 am one random Tuesday and nearly blew out his eardrums with a banshee scream and a death omen.

Stiles has business cards introducing himself as a mage, which started off as a token human joke and then got a whole lot real when he figured out how to make himself invisible by sheer wishing and willfulness.

Scott’s veterinarian ex-boss calls him a spark, but Stiles doesn’t feel like spending the money for a reprint.

They no longer film themselves. It’s all a little too damning.

And two months ago they acquired their very own Scooby to round out the mystery gang, never mind that it was a werewolf seemingly very happily stuck in a full shift—so of course, why not, why not have him talk.

“It’s like some storybook Gmork shit, you shouldn’t have the vocal chords for this,” Stiles says, absolutely fascinated as Wolf says, wearily, “Shut up, Stiles.”

“Could you always talk?” Stiles says.

Wolf gets to his feet and licks his chops. His mouth works open and closed, it’s so fucking weird, and then he says, hoarse, “No.”

Derek doesn’t know what’s happening, but he knows it’s probably bad.

His throat feels raw and overworked, like something has rebuilt his insides. He fights down a rising panic, and then a vision in white, a woman that flickers between being viciously scarred and serenely pretty, appears in the middle of the stairs and smiles at him.

He can hear her heartbeat. It’s louder than anyone else’s in the room.

“There,” she says. “Isn’t that better?”

It’s probably really fucking strange that Stiles only notices that Kira and Scott and Lydia are no longer in the room with them when the scary lady starts talking.

Stiles holds up a hand. Salt works for ghosts, but ash works for creatures, and he’s not sure yet what he’s dealing with here.

She grins wider. “I’m sure we can all be nice,” she says. “After all, I did give poor Derek here back his voice.”

Derek, Stiles thinks. Derek Hale, the kid everyone thought actually set the Hale fire all those years ago. Huh.

Derek growls. “It was never missing,” he says. His mouth moves when he talks, and there’s a strange disconnect, like Stiles is watching something break and reform with every impossible word. Wolves’ mouths aren’t shaped for speaking.

“Oh, of course,” she says, face light. “But when you refuse to shift,” she shrugs, “we work with what we have.”

The bigger question, Stiles thinks, is why this crazy lady wants Derek to talk.

“Now, we can all sit down for a nice long chat later,” she says, and her eyeballs get full-on zombie white. “I need to find your meddling friends first.”

Stiles has a brief moment of relief that Scott and Kira and Lydia are purposely missing, hopefully working on a solution to this mess, and then everything goes black.

It’s cold, and Derek curls around Stiles, wriggling his head into Stiles’ chest so he’s nested up against him. Stiles’ warm breath and plodding heartbeat are reassuring.

They’re in the basement, thin planks of wood underneath them, loose boards to cover the dirt—it’s like laying on a block of ice.

The still air is dank, and Derek buries his head against rising whispers. Thin, reedy howls. Cries of anguish, pain, revenge.

She’s got an army of wolves in the house. They’re buried underneath the floorboards.

Stiles groans and shifts against him—his arms tighten around Derek’s neck and then release as he gingerly pushes up onto his elbows. “What happened?” he asks. “Where are we?”

“The basement,” Derek says.

“Crap. That’s never going to stop being weird.” Stiles pokes at Derek’s mouth and Derek snaps his teeth at him.

“Stop it.”

“Okay.” Stiles cradles his head in his hands. “Okay, so what’s the plan, big guy? Wait it out? Hope Scott smokes the lady and rescues us?”

Derek snorts.

Stiles stifles a laugh, says, “Right. Right.” He leans heavily against Derek. “Do we have any idea what’s going on here?”

The chill is tense and thick, like the wolves are standing guard.

Years ago, Derek remembers, certain packs had disappeared. Wiped entirely off the map, leaving gaping holes in the northern California territory. His mom had been nervous about it. He doesn’t think this mass grave is a coincidence.

Derek sniffs the air and says, “Maybe.”

“Wolves,” Derek says, after pacing the length of the basement restlessly.

Stiles narrows his eyes and says, “What?”

Derek pads up to him, drops down close, so they’re touching again. “The ghosts are all werewolves,” he says, clearly irritated.

“Huh,” Stiles says. “So that’s what Lydia meant.” He props his back up against the cold concrete wall, rolls his shoulders against the rough texture and resists running his hand over the ache at the back of his head.

Derek is a soothing wall of furry warmth next to him. Stiles curls his cold fingers into a fist to keep from petting him. He wouldn’t have hesitated before, but it’s a little weird now that he can talk.

“Ghost wolves, ghost lady—”

“She’s not a ghost,” Derek says. “I don’t know what she is, but she’s not dead.”

Probably magical then, Stiles thinks. In charge of ghost wolves and strong enough to take down Derek—Stiles has witnessed Wolf tear a chupacabra to shreds—“So… we’re thinking… witch?”

“The word you’re searching for is Darach, darling,” the woman in question says, feet soundless on the basement steps. “We’re a bit more specialized.” She pauses at the bottom, one hand on her hip, the other skimming lightly over the rickety-looking rail. “Now, Derek, tragically, I see you’re an alpha of none.” Her eyes are shrewd. “There seems to be a lot of that going around.”

Wisps of cool smoke swirl around her legs, coalescing here and there in snaps of teeth, furred snouts and paws with big-ass claws.

“Unfortunately, I can’t use you as bait.” She pouts, a parody of disappointment. “Despite quite a lot of nasty rumors, it seems you didn’t actually kill your entire pack.”

Derek snarls.

Stiles says, warily, “What are you talking about?”

The woman flickers, like a TV with a loose cable, and then her glamor drops to reveal a gray face full of scars, her head and neck slashed—her grin shows off blackened gums, and she says, “I’m talking about revenge.”

Derek shrinks away from the Darach when she leans toward him. He feels Stiles grip the fur on his back, an anchor, and forces his eyes wide when she crouches in front of them.

She says, “Tell me everything you know about Deucalion.”

Derek bares his teeth. “I don’t know anything.”

Stiles gives out a pained cry as she shoots an arm out, blindly squeezing a hand around his throat. Derek’s ears flatten against his skull, listening to the dry rasp of Stiles failing to drag in a breath.

“Talia was a close friend,” she says, impassive. “Your mother was there when the hunters took his eyes.”

Derek had been fourteen and oblivious to almost everything except his first girlfriend. “I don’t know,” he says.

Stiles is choking to death, and the Darach isn’t even looking at him.

“Hmmmm,” she says, and then abruptly releases Stiles—he slumps over Derek, coughing—“Kali?”

Kali, Kali, Derek scrambles for anything, any bit of information he remembers, and blurts out, “She gave me condoms. Once.”

The Darach’s laugh is mean-edged, but breathless. “Julia gave you condoms,” she says, and then drags both hands over her eyes, her mouth; there’s a slump to her shoulders that has Derek freezing in place.

Stiles says, “Derek,” a croak in his voice, and Derek whimpers a warning for him to stay quiet.

“I could make you a man again,” she says, voice muffled. She drops her hands and her glamor is suddenly back in place, brown, wavy hair framing a pale, delicate face. “Would you like that, Derek Hale?” Her fingers lightly play over the fur on Derek’s brow. “To be a real boy?”

“Leave him alone,” Stiles slurs.

She ignores him and says, “I bet you grew up fine.”

Derek doesn’t know how he grew up. Sometimes he doesn’t think he grew up at all. How many years has it been? Six? Ten? Twelve? Everything up to Stiles, and Scott, is pale gray and faded, like old newspaper ink.

“Don’t listen to her, Derek,” Stiles says, as the Darach clucks her tongue, eases fingers over Derek’s right ear.

“I wonder whose fault it really is,” she says idly, “that Argent burned your whole family alive.”

Derek pushes down the hurt and guilt, lets the wolf snap forward and snarl. He whips his head up, catches the thin skin of the Darach’s wrist between his teeth and shakes.

She laughs as he bites down, and pets his head with her other hand.

“Derek,” Stiles says, and Derek bristles, hunches down, coiled in anger with blood in his mouth.

“Derek,” Stiles says again louder, a hint of horror in his tone, and Derek shrugs off his grip, locks his jaws, feels the bones in his mouth crunch and splinter.

And then the Darach says, voice steady, “Good boy,” and Derek—he lets her go with a whimper and a gasp.

Good puppy, Kate would say. Good boy.

The Darach gets to her feet with a cloak of anger wrapped around her, finally turning to narrow her eyes at Stiles. And then:

The door at the top of the steps slams open; Derek’s ears ring from the echo of Lydia’s scream. All the lights burn bright in a sizzle of sparks, and then Scott is slicing through the pack of ghost wolves with an iron fire poker as Kira summersaults through the air to slice off the Darach’s head with her sword.

Stiles says, weakly, “10/10 form there, Yukimura. Would recommend,” before passing out.

Stiles wakes to soft slaps on his face and a concerned Scott hovering over him. He winces at the overhead lights and pushes away Derek’s insistently nudging head.

“I’m up, I’m up,” he says, struggling into a sitting position.

“We need to get out of here,” Scott says. “Can you walk?”

“Sure,” Stiles says. He’s pretty sure he can. Whatever whammy the Darach put on him made his limbs loose and his head rattle, and his throat feels tight and hot—his bruises are going to be spectacular—but he’ll crawl out of there if he has to. Stiles has faced down demons and spectral dragons, but that lady was the worst.

They’re in a salt circle. They’re practically in a salt field, considering the amount they’ve dumped all around them, but Kira is busy prying up floorboards with Derek’s help, so Stiles figures their reasoning is two-fold. “We’re burning the house down,” he says, not really a question.

Scott grins at him, strained at the edges. “We’re burning the house down.”

“What are the odds of us not getting arrested for this?” Stiles asks.

Lydia looks up from where she’s painting containment sigils all over the Darach’s headless body with her lipstick. “Faulty wiring,” she says. “I’ll call Jackson tonight.”

Outside the salt, the ghost wolves are milling, howls rising like echoes in a cavern. Scott leverages Stiles to his feet, and Stiles throws an arm over his shoulder to steady himself.

“We need to get out of here,” Lydia says. “Now.” She caps her lipstick, stuffs it into her purse, then hefts the iron poker Scott had brandished earlier.

Kira tosses the now-empty sack of salt into the corner of the room. She flicks out a lighter and looks over at them. “Want a head start?”

Scott lurches forward under Stiles’ weight. Lydia is already halfway up the stairs, slicing through wolves with the poker, and Scott and Stiles follow right behind, Derek at their heels. He pushes steadily on the back of Stiles’ legs, urging him to go faster.

The fire has already spread to the kitchen by the time they all make it outside.

Dawn is creeping over the tops of the trees and flames are licking out of the second story windows when Lydia finally calls 911.

The smell of smoke makes Derek’s eyes burn and belly cramp, and he worms his way under the van to hide.

He watches Stiles’ beat up sneakers slowly walk toward him before he collapses on the ground by the back tire.

After a long pause of silence, the crack and roar of the fire and the distant echo of sirens the only sound, Stiles says, “She was wrong, you know.” Stiles’ long-fingered hand is pressed flat on the stone next to him, and Derek shuffle-crawls close enough to nudge his nose into his pinky.

He whines.

“I know you don’t believe me,” Stiles says, “but she’s wrong.”

“You don’t even know what happened,” Derek says.

“Well, big guy,” Stiles says, lifting his hand to scratch behind Derek’s ears, “I know who the black sheep of the Argent clan are. And I know you always have my back. I’m pretty confident in my assumption here.” He scratches a little harder, and Derek tilts his head into his hand. “If you ever wanna give me the rundown sometime, though, I’m all ears.”

Derek is quiet through the full moon, and Stiles doesn’t know if that’s because whatever the Darach did to him wore off, or if he just doesn’t have anything to say.

They spend the long night in a motel just outside a preserve, and their resident werewolves scuffle like puppies in the woods. Stiles thinks Scott’s a little disappointed he can’t shift past beta, but he doesn’t seem to let that stop him from joyously running off with Derek every full moon anyhow.

Stiles sleeps in fits and starts, ears straining toward the playful yips and howls—he’s worried, for probably the first time, how Derek is actually doing.

Wolf was such a separate being, a tag-along, a warm body to curl up with. Derek watched his family burn, and then hid for years in the ruins. Stiles isn’t exactly a sensitive soul, but he tends to latch onto people he cares about and never let go. Somehow, Derek has managed to weasel his way into his heart.

At little before dawn, Stiles’ door gets bumped open, and Derek pounces through with a goodbye wave from Scott—Stiles watches sleepily. Derek has his tongue out, panting, and his tail and furry butt wag as he prances toward the bed.

Stiles yawns around, “Have a good time?”

The mattress shakes as Derek jumps up and spins in a circle, letting out a humph as he drops down in the bend of Stiles’ knees.

Derek stares down at his hands, bigger than he remembers. Hairier. The muscles in his legs feel strange. He wiggles his narrow feet against the rough carpet, fascinated with the knobs of his ankles. The sheer difference in the width of his chest has him purposely heaving breaths, rolling his shoulders. He remembers lean arms and peach fuzz—he palms the side of his face and thinks he probably needs to shave.

Behind him, Stiles stretches awake. He says, “Der—“ and cuts off with a yelp, a, “Holy fuck,” and a muffled thump as he rolls off the other side of the bed.

Derek grins into the mirror propped over the dresser across the room. His cheeks puff out and his ears flush.

“Derek?”

Derek turns to look over his shoulder at Stiles, huddled in all the sheets pulled off the bed, hair sticking up every which way, eyes impossibly wide as he clutches the side of the mattress.

“Derek?” Stiles says again.

Derek says, “Hey.”

Stiles can’t stop looking at Derek. Scott’s shirt fits him pretty good, but Stiles’ pants are tight across his thighs—Stiles watches Derek’s hands curl and uncurl against the fabric.

“Dude,” Scott says, flicking him a glance through the rearview mirror. “Stop making it weird.”

“I can’t help it!” The whole situation is already weird; this is not Stiles’ fault.

Because Derek Hale is hot. Derek Hale is surface-of-the-sun hot, but Derek Hale is also quiet, slightly awkward in his skin, and keeps making aborted movements toward Stiles, like he wants to rub up against him. Stiles tends to freeze when that happens, buzzing with nerves and anticipation, causing Derek to soundlessly back off, even though that’s the exact opposite of what Stiles actually wants him to do. He can’t quite bring himself to say that out loud.

Lydia had been all narrow eyes and questions that morning over breakfast, but now she’s adopted a bored-with-it air, riding shotgun, bare feet curled up on the dash, concentrating on making sure the government knows Derek is still alive.

Kira had been trapped underground for three hundred years before they found her. She’d shaken Derek’s hand with a sunny smile and offered him half of her share of bacon. Currently, she’s calling up possible clients in the way-back seat with her regular cheerful zeal.

Stiles’ hands desperately want to pet Derek, rub over an arm, slide fingers through the hair at his nape, but his mind keeps flashing warning signs to back off. Derek is not a dog.

It’s like Stiles’ brain and body aren’t syncing up, and the strain of holding back is exhausting. Finally, in the heat of the late afternoon, Stiles can’t take it anymore. He slumps into his seat, presses his shoulder against Derek’s, carelessly knocking their knees together. The rocking of the van over the stretch of route 66 lulls him into a waking coma, he blinks against flashing trees and long dashes of beige. He doesn’t even fully register it when Derek worms his hand into his and holds on.

When they’re working, Derek still prefers to stay a wolf.

He tells Stiles it’s because his senses are keener, when really he feels like he’s layered in armor—he has sharp teeth and big claws and the only creatures that don’t seem impressed by that are the family of opossums they find in the attic of a house in Nevada.

He tells himself it isn’t because when he’s a wolf, Stiles finally relaxes around him again.

Whatever the Darach did to his canine throat had disappeared with his first shift. At first, Stiles had seemed disappointed, but then it was business as usual—salt and burn the ghosts, exorcise the demons, keep out of the way of anything fae, call an exterminator for the snakes and raccoons.

“Bats,” Stiles says, wrapping his arms around his chest and shoving hands up into his armpits. He has a sluggishly bleeding scrape on his forehead and a sour expression. “I hate bats.”

Derek woofs and licks his forearm.

“Come on,” Scott says. He slaps Stiles on the back as he hops down the front stoop. “Let’s get something to eat. And then we can go home.”

Stiles’ face lights up at the word, and something hot squeezes around Derek’s heart.

Their last job bought them close enough to Beacon Hills to justify a detour home, one they try to manage at least once every couple months. The last time was when they were on their way to the Hale job, just outside Beacon County.

Stiles is irrationally disappointed when Derek refuses to shake off his fur to meet his dad.

He understands it, is the thing. He totally gets why Derek tries to hide behind his legs when his dad pulls him into a hug at the front door.

He gets why he lies under the kitchen table during dinner, and then flops down across his feet in his tiny twin bed.

Stiles says, “I’m not going to be able to feel my feet in the morning,” and Derek just grunts, squirms over onto his back to really dig into Stiles’ ankles, legs playfully kicking at the air.

His dad knocks on the half open door, eyes them both, and says, “I somehow expected this to be less weird.”

Derek rolls up onto his haunches, ears alert, half the covers pulled down around his paws.

Dad points at them and says, “Let’s all try to be human for breakfast, okay?” and then wanders off down the hall, muttering to himself about dang werewolves.

Derek huffs and hides under the blanket, and won’t budge no matter how hard Stiles kicks him in the head.

Somehow, it’s always been easier to sleep on the road than at home—curled up in the van, sharing dumpy motel rooms. He has too much energy, most nights, to have any sort of restful sleep if he’s not bone-deep exhausted from the day.

He stares at the ceiling of his old bedroom, pinned down by Derek’s weight. He doesn’t think Derek’s sleeping either.

He says, “It’s only for a couple days,” into the darkness, and isn’t all that surprised when Derek doesn’t make a sound in answer.

When he finally drifts off, eyelids falling heavy against the moon shadows lengthening across his ceiling, Stiles dreams of the Hale house.

Of the burned-out husk, the ash-gray of the front veranda, the moldering charred remains of a house that was, miraculously, mostly still standing. The fire had been localized in the back of the house, like a bomb went off where the kitchen used to be. The door leading to the basement hanging off its hinges. Lydia wouldn’t go near it.

He dreams of red eyes, like a crouching demon in the dark.

He dreams of howls, thin and plaintive, round and angry, and when he wakes up, panting, the ghost of hot breaths and sharp fangs against his skin, fingers clenched in his messy sheets, Derek is gone.

The call is familiar, like an old ache, and Derek shoves open Stiles’ window and slips outside. He hops to the ground and leaps back into the wolf, digging his back claws into the soft dirt, scraping long grooves into the grass. He scales the fence with a brush of his underbelly against rough slats, and then he pauses, ears up.

The howl is long, mournful, and faint, and Derek knows it’s traveling over miles.

He glances back at the house once, dark and quiet, and then sets off through the woods, hope and wonder lengthening his strides.

They wait a week; three days longer than they’d planned to stay. Even Lydia is getting restless, and finally Stiles folds and they pack up the van: extra food from Melissa, two more books from Deaton—given freely, this time, along with a small supply of animal tranqs—and brand new socks and underwear for all. It’s like they’re on tour, except instead of being in a band, they save the world from supernatural creatures and possible rabies.

Scott gives Stiles not-very-encouraging smiles, and by the time Beacon Hills is fading from their rearview mirror, Stiles has a halfway formed plan in his head that involves a very small detour to the Hale house that’ll only put them another day behind.

“No,” Lydia says.

“What’s another day, we’re already late!” Stiles says. “What if something’s wrong?”

“We got rid of everything that was wrong there,” Lydia says, one eyebrow arched pointedly. “I told the DeMattos we’d be there the day after tomorrow.”

Scott stays silent, mouth pressed closed, and Kira is shooting everyone indecisive puppy-eyes.

Finally, Scott sighs and says, “Look. Look, Stiles, I know how you feel, man, but Derek knows how to find us, okay? He’s got a phone and everything now.”

“He left his phone when he ran away from my house naked,” Stiles says. Naked, wolf, same thing. He left his duffle with every single piece of his clothing in it; Stiles very shamelessly rifled through it before tossing it in the back of the van. He sinks down low in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest, biting his lip. “What if something’s wrong,” he says again.

“He’s a grown wolf,” Lydia says primly. Then she leans over and squeezes Stiles’ leg. “He’s going to be fine. And if we haven’t heard from him by the time we finish with the DeMattos, we can come back and check.”

The house has a very distinctive smell: a mixture of mold, ash and despair. Derek didn’t realize how used to it he’d become over the years. Now, it makes his nose twitch and burn, the fur on his back prickle with unease.

There’s a woman sitting on the porch steps, dark hair pulled back into a low ponytail. Derek pauses just outside the tree line, crouching in weeds and wildflowers, watching.

Her head jerks up, eye’s narrowing in prickly rage, a flash of gold, and then a split-second later they round with disbelief. “Derek?” she says.

Derek slinks forward, belly low to the ground.

Cora—this is Cora, all sharp cheekbones and thin wrists—slowly stands up, arms falling limply to her sides. The last time Derek saw Cora she’d just turned eleven, baby pudge still soft on her face, and Derek thought she’d died in the fire. Derek doesn’t know what to make of her now.

She says, voice hoarse, “I heard they were going to knock it down.”

Derek wants to say: they tried.

He wants to say: Stiles wouldn’t let them and I’m sorry.

Instead, he huddles at Cora’s feet and pushes his head into her hand.

“What the fuck, Derek,” Cora says, and then drops to her knees, wraps her arms around his neck, and buries her face in his fur. “I thought you were dead, asshole.”

Derek whimpers and licks at her wet cheek.

The DeMattos have an amusement park problem. Various eye-witnesses describe a slimy swamp-like monster that rises out of the pond around the Tunnel O’ Love, but Stiles’ money is on a bunch of stoned kids fucking with them.

“This is classic Scooby Doo shenanigans,” Stiles says, waving his flashlight around. “All we need is the Harlem Globetrotters and Don Knotts to show up.”

It’s weird, he feels strangely vulnerable without Derek’s furry presence at his side, despite having done this for years before they found him.

Normally, this kind of job would be awesome—spooky abandoned amusement park, chockfull of expired corn dogs, paint-peeled clown statues that hilariously freak out Scott, and the rickety spires of roller coasters that have an eighty percent chance of actually killing someone. The greater worry here is the risk of getting lockjaw, not getting eaten by a swamp monster.

There’s no such thing as a swamp monster anyway.

Stiles kicks at some gravel and tries not to pout.

He keeps checking his phone, like Derek’ll call him even though his phone is still buried at the bottom of his bag in the back of the van.

Kira says, “Okay, but do you think they’re hiding a weed crop or a meth lab?” as the two of them examine the control panel for the Tunnel O’ Love. She wiggles her fingers and the lights flicker and burn, a loop of plinky carnival music starts up, and half-sunk swan boats clunk into each other at the dock.

“Why would anyone want to reopen this fun house of horrors?” Stiles says. “They should just leave it to the local swamp monsters. Wanna set something on fire?”

“That’s arson, Stiles,” Kira says, but she looks intrigued.

They’re gonna get a reputation.

“Scott would be mad,” Stiles says.

They stare at each other.

“Lydia would be furious,” Kira says.

The loudspeaker across the park suddenly crackles on, echoing demented clown laughter all over the grounds, and in the distance: baying hounds.

Stiles cocks his head. “That’s a weird combination,” he says absently. “That’s weird, right?”

“Stiles,” Kira says, grabbing his arm and shaking him. “Stiles, look.”

While the presence of a hulking, oozing man-shaped mass sloping toward them could be the result of Stiles getting too little sleep in the days since Derek disappeared, it’s kind of tough to argue that when Kira can see it too.

Kira says, “Oh no,” and Stiles takes an unsteady step backward. Both of their hands are raised, Kira with electricity jumping from finger to finger, Stiles pooling wishes in his palms.

And then the dock makes an ominous crack and Stiles goes flailing into the murky Tunnel O’ Love pond.

“Oh, gross,” he says, coughing and swiping suspiciously slimy water off his face. He can’t see anything beyond the broken planks overhead, but he hears Kira yell, “Fuck you, motherfucker!” which is, like—he winces to himself, Kira’s cursing usually consists of liberal use of poop with some grandmotherly dang-its thrown in for good measure.

He’s just about pulled himself back up onto dry ground when a familiar fur-face barrels into him and accidentally—hopefully—pushes him back in.

Stiles smells like gasoline and sludge and old corn dogs, but it doesn’t make Derek back off.

Cora huffs at him, wrinkles her nose and then retreats a good distance away, where Scott is tying up three teenagers who are high as kites and laughing their asses off.

Stiles wraps himself around Derek and says, “Oh my god, you tried to kill me,” but he has his face planted in Derek’s side, so Derek’s pretty sure he knows it was an accident.

One Cora will never let him live down.

He didn’t expect to miss Stiles this much, especially after finding Cora. But there’s a weird tentativeness between him and Cora that didn’t exist ten years ago, and he has no idea how to make it go away—or if it ever will.

They’ve spent their nights curled up together as wolves, but traveling miles apart during the day, keeping track of each other by howls.

Stiles hugs him tight and says, “Hey, Wolf, hey,” and murmurs, “Missed you,” and the bright flush of embarrassment and pleasure make him warm all over.

When they finally make it over to the others, Lydia has her phone out and Scott gives Kira a high five, and then everyone stares at Cora—she has her head held high, ears pricked, and only Derek and maybe Scott can tell it’s more from apprehension than disdain.

Stiles says, “Who the heck is that beauty,” with an exaggerated wink at Cora and Cora snaps her teeth at him. He holds up his hands and says, “Alright, Lady Wolf, cool your heels and watch your fangs.”

Cora growls, low in her throat.

Stiles says, “I’ve dealt with Grumpy for over two months, I can handle a little Surly,” with the hint of a waver in his voice that makes Derek maneuver himself fully in front of him and stare Cora down.

Cora as a wolf is lean, red and rangy, taller at the haunches than Derek, faster, if push came to shove, but without his muscle bulk and his terrible stubborn willingness to protect Stiles at all cost.

Cora dips her head, though, pads forward to rub her cheek along his.

“Aww, isn’t that adorable?” Stiles says. “Hey, Scotty, how come you can’t go all full wolf?”

Cora silently bares her teeth at him and then transforms into human shape with a fluidity Derek envies, a smirk firmly affixed on her face. “Because he wasn’t born one.”

“So that’s your sister,” Stiles says, cupping his hands around a warm mug of coffee. He won’t admit to being briefly jealous of Derek’s new lady friend, but he thinks maybe Derek knows about that anyhow. “Also, I mean, there’s no tactful way to say this, but… I thought she was dead?”

Derek shrugs, picking apart his muffin with his fingers. “You thought I was dead, too.”

True, true, Stiles nods, pretty much all of the Hales were presumed dead, given that no one knew they could turn into large hairy wolves. “You, though,” he grimaces, “the famed Demon Wolf of the woods—we know where you were hanging all those years. Where’s she been?”

Derek’s muffin is massacred on his napkin, Stiles is pretty sure none of it ever made it to his mouth.

Derek says, “I don’t know,” shoulders hunched in to make him look smaller.

It should be ridiculous, Derek’s muscles have muscles, but it just makes Stiles want to press his palms into the back of Derek’s neck and let him hide his face against Stiles’ chest. Stiles keeps his hands to himself, though, because Stiles is a gentleman, and Derek only seems to invite pets when he’s got four paws and a tail.

Stiles could sing songs about his spring green eyes and the way they change color in the sun, but he does not.

He could write poetry about the careful fold of his shirt cuffs over his forearms.

He shifts in his seat, lets go of his coffee cup to tap his fingers on the table. He bounces his leg and feels weird about the way the gang is three tables away, giving them some semblance of privacy—that Stiles is staunchly pretending he doesn’t know why they need, ignoring Kira’s exaggerated winks—and he can only thank mother moon that Cora is back at the motel getting a shower, because he’s pretty sure she’d be able to feel his emotions spilling all over the place.

Someone needs to put him out of his misery here.

Derek’s chest expands on a big breath. He says, “She wants me to go back with her.”

Stiles freezes. “You don’t even know where she’s been all these years, but you’re going to leave for parts unknown with her?” He shoves a hand through his hair. “What, did you come find us just to say goodbye? Jesus Christ, Derek.”

Derek’s eyebrows slant down, mouth frowning. “She’s my sister.”

“Yeah? A sister who abandoned you—”

“She was eleven,” Derek says, voice rising.

“And it’s been over a decade, Derek, she didn’t stay eleven, did she?” Stiles pushes back his chair, it makes a screeching noise that echoes around the small cafe—Scott glances over, alarmed, but Stiles holds a hand out to stop him from coming over. He takes a deep breath. “Look,” he says finally, “I get it, okay? We’re just—“ he flops a hand between them, trying hard not to let on that his heart is breaking, what the fuck, “—you do what you gotta do. I guess maybe I’ll see you around. Sometime.”

Scott is giving him big, worried eyes when he moves past their table, but Stiles just shakes his head, he doesn’t want anyone following him right now.

It’s ridiculous and it’s total crap, and he’s a big boy. He can handle this.

Fuck.

Cora finds Derek sitting on top of a picnic table around the side of the motel. It’s almost sunset. He can hear the van idling in the parking lot as the gang packs up their things.

They have a job on the east coast. They need to start moving soon.

Cora hops up on the worn wood next to him and bumps their shoulders. She prefers to be human, she’s told him, and she seems a lot more comfortable around him than when she’s a wolf. When her instincts take over. He’s not sure what that says about them—he doesn’t think it’s anything good.

“You ready to go?” she says.

Derek shoots her a glance, but she’s not looking at him. She has her hands on her knees and her face to the sky.

The sun is low and golden. There are darkening clouds to the east, a storm rolling in. The wind picks up and ruffles the ends of his too-long hair.

Cora’s hair is a mess to her shoulders, framing a solemn mouth and rueful eyes. She plucks at his shirt, a playful tug on his sleeve, and suddenly: she’s ten and needling him for the last of his pancakes. Nine and using her doe eyes to borrow his precious comics. Seven and hiding with him in the attic after using up all of Laura’s lipstick.

He’s ready, he thinks, and opens his mouth and says, “No.”

It doesn’t take very long to pack up, but Stiles drags his feet. He dumps his bag out on the bed and methodically separates his clothes into clean, relatively clean, and dirty piles. He wipes down his deodorant, trashes his last toothbrush, throws out the boxers he was wearing when he fell into the amusement park pond.

Derek’s duffle is zipped up and sitting on the floor by the door, mocking him.

Scott peeks around the doorjamb and says, “We need to get at least six hours of driving in today, dude,” with an apologetic frown.

Stiles sighs. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he says, and then sweeps up all his piles together and stuffs them haphazardly in his bag.

He leaves the door open, for Derek, and then shoves his bag in the back of the van, under the seats.

Kira’s already in shotgun and Lydia’s got the wheel. She’s far too classy to make impatient noises, but she glares at him and his sloth-like speed as he hefts himself through the side door.

It’s just… he’d been hoping to say goodbye to Derek again. He hates that he made it weird.

And then Scott says, “Whoa, hey,” and a massive black wolf pushes past him to scramble in the van—he sits on his haunches directly behind Lydia and gives Stiles and Scott an innocent well, what are you waiting for look, and it’s—

Stiles doesn’t bother trying to stop the wide grin he can feel blooming across his face.

“There better be room for me,” Cora says from behind them.

Stiles whips around to see her lugging Derek’s bag with a resigned expression. She says, “I’ll need to stop for clothes,” knocking Scott to the side.

“No, really, what’s going on?” Stiles says before he can stop himself.

Derek huffs.

Cora wrinkles her nose and says, “Derek thinks McCall here is his alpha.”

“Can alphas have alphas?” Stiles says. “Is that a thing? Wait, you know what, I don’t actually care.” He thumps his butt down next to Derek and feels his warmth all along his side.

Scott pulls the door shut behind himself before joining Cora in the way-back.

Lydia says, “Seatbelts, please,” like none of this is odd, and then they’re off.

They play musical chairs at the next rest stop, and Derek ends up next to Cora in the third row of seats.

It’s full dark, and he stares at the moon outside the window, feels Cora sigh and shift and pointedly not say anything.

Derek waits her out.

Finally, she says, soft, “Satomi took me in.”

Derek tenses, watches Cora’s reflection in the window.

“I was in the attic,” she went on. “Dad tossed me out the dormer before going down to help everyone else. He took Teddy, because he wouldn’t have survived the fall.”

Derek’s chest is tight, and his eyes burn.

She says, “You were napping in your room,” a hitch in her breath. “I remember. I remember you snapped at us to leave you alone, and then I never saw you again.”

Derek blindly gropes for her hand and squeezes.

“I went to Dad’s family, in South America. The pack Cousin James married into.” Derek can feel her shrug, stiff and forced. “And then you know the rest.”

They’re quiet again for a while. Stiles is in front of them, head tipped back and snoring.

After a few long moments he slips his sweaty hand out of hers and says, “Thanks.”

She arches an eyebrow at him.

“For coming with me,” he clarifies. He gives an aborted wave toward Stiles and she snorts.

She snorts and then covers her mouth with the back of her hand, failing to hide a smile, and says, “Good luck with that. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Derek has no idea what he’s doing, but he thinks that’s okay.

“You don’t really think Scott’s your alpha, do you?” Stiles says, curled up on a bed in the cheapest motel they could find outside of Tucson, watching through the mottled window as the sun creeps up over the horizon.

“You’re fishing,” Derek says, voice sleep-rough.

Stiles rolls over to look at him. At some point in the middle of the night, Derek had slipped from wolf to man. He’s got his head pillowed on a massive bicep, the sheet tucked just over his hip, and Stiles tries to keep his eyes firmly on Derek’s face. It’s not a hardship. Derek has pillow creases on his cheek, enough dark scruff to be officially dubbed a beard, and a soft smile on his lips.

“Answer the question, Wolf,” Stiles says, poking the divot in Derek’s chin with a finger.

“Yes, Stiles, I really think Scott is my alpha,” he says, but he curls his hand around Stiles’ and slowly drags it down his throat—Stiles fans his fingers out and swallows dry.

“Okay,” Stiles says, nodding slowly. “Okay, but you’re an alpha too, so how does that—”

Derek’s other hand fists in the front of his t-shirt and Stiles flails a little with a squawk of surprise, and then Derek’s mouth is opening up under his and—okay. Okay.

Stiles shakes his hands out of Derek’s grip and threads his fingers into Derek’s hair, pressing up against him with a groan. This is all good, right? This is like—Stiles has no idea what’s happening, but everything is a-okay with him. There’s the hot slide of Derek’s naked muscles underneath him, basically the only thing holding Stiles back right now is the tangle of sheets around his legs.

And then there’s a pounding on their door and Cora shouting through the thin wood: “Hurry up, Losers!”

Stiles backs off of Derek with wide eyes, leverages up with his palms flat on Derek’s chest. “That was…” He trails off, not sure what to say.

Derek blinks blearily up at him. His soft grin is even softer. Derek is like a puzzle within a puzzle—his tragic past, his dark years, the way he looks at Stiles, sometimes, like Stiles is some kind of hero, like Stiles could be his whole world.

That’s a lot of pressure to put on a twenty-something dude who fights supernatural baddies for pennies and still gets an allowance from his dad.

Stiles stares at him, and the longer Stiles stays quiet, the more concern creeps into Derek’s eyes.

Stiles straightens up and away, kicking his legs out of the sheets to crisscross in front of him.

Derek shifts on the mattress, a dull flush on his ears, says, “Stiles, you don’t—” just as Stiles says, “I hope you realize this makes us boyfriends.”

He’s not going to have rules, like Derek has to be human with him eighty percent of the day—impossible to expect—or Derek can’t rip out the throats of his enemies to protect him—because that’s badass, even if Stiles can take care of himself.

But they’ve kissed, Derek kissed him, boyfriends is non-negotiable.

One of Derek’s hands curls over his bare knee. “Okay,” he says.

“Right, uh,” Stiles clears his throat, jerks his gaze away from the dip of the sheet at Derek’s groin, the smooth skin of his throat, the curve of his jaw under his ear, “we better get a move on. Before Cora turns the hose on us.”

Derek moves up onto an elbow and cocks his head—Stiles manfully resists inserting a dog joke—and his blush becomes more pronounced, grin sheepish. “Scott’s, uh, lecturing her on patience and privacy. They’re going to breakfast without us.”

Stiles says, “Oh, good,” and tackles Derek back onto the bed.

Derek laughs into his mouth. “Slow down,” he says. “We’ve got a while.”

#tumblr prompt #my fic #scooby doo #sterek #teen wolf #andromedainwonderland #I still want to murder this fic #tumblr prompts

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huntertales · 6 years

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Part Two: Fate is a Cruel Mistress. (My Heart Will Go On S06E17)

Episode Summary: After Balthazar changes history and keeps the Titanic from sinking, Fate intervenes and begins killing those who would have died on the ship. Castiel tells the reader, Sam and Dean that Fate is upset with the three of them and the only way they can stay alive is to kill her. Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader Word Count: 5,131.

Previous Part | Supernatural Rewrite Masterlist

Two dead bodies and a piece of gold string found at each crime scene, it was about the best lead you and the boys had going for. Along with the fact that the poor people had their lives cut short from a fatal “accident” that left you scratching your head in a bit of confusion. Nobody got beheaded by their garage door and it was more than just bad luck for someone to get choked by a fax machine after their keys somehow got misplaced behind there and their scarf got caught in the thing. But you had no valid proof something supernatural caused this to happen. There was no EMF to detect a pissed off spirit, no traces of sulfur or even a lingering smell and no hex bag to rat out a witch seeking a bit of revenge. All of it appeared to be accidental. But in the words of Dean himself, accidents just don’t happen “accidentally.”

You and the boys headed back to the motel to reevaluate the evidence that you did have and try to dig deeper on the family history of the two victims that was a little too squeaky clean. You decided while you sat at the table with Sam, both of your laptops open, and little help from the internet to guide you to an answer, there was somebody who might know something. When in doubt, you always called Bobby when you were in a pinch. But you were smart enough than to call him up when he was in such a mood. So you settled for the very next best thing—Ellen. She happily answered the phone when she noticed your incoming call.

You explained to Ellen about the situation going on, from the strange accidental deaths and the piece of gold thread pinched between your fingers. When she asked you to describe it, you tilted your head to the side and tried your hardest. “So, we found another piece of this, I don't know,” You shrugged your shoulders, not sure what kind of adjectives you could describe a piece of thread “Shiny string. It was at both scenes.”

"Oh, I was afraid of that." Ellen mumbled. You dropped the hand holding the string to the laptop keyboard, asking her why. "Oh, these so-called accidents—we're seeing 'em nationwide. About seventy-five so far. I got Jo and her crew working on a cluster in California."

"Blood relatives?" You presumed, wondering if this thing was a curse that was affecting families. But the biggest question was why people were dropping like flies because of some crazy accident. And why the hell a piece of string was left at each scene, like it was the calling card of some sick and twisted monster claiming its work.

“Some yeah, some no.” Ellen said. “She's got about what you do—pile of bodies and a whole bunch of gold thread.”

“So what's it mean?” You asked the woman.

“I don't know.” Ellen admitted. “I got Bobby working on it right now.”

You twirled the piece of string between your fingers and stared at your laptop screen, suddenly becoming worried at the mention of the man who had raised you since you were ten. You'd seen him with his ups and downs, but never bad as this. "How's he doing, by the way?" You curiously asked, trying your hardest not to worry Ellen from the sound of your voice.

“Oh, don't worry, Y/N.” Ellen reassured you. “I'm kicking his ass back to health and happiness.”

"Who asked you to? To hell with you." Bobby’s voice echoed from the other line, his crude and sarcastic attitude clear as day. The ends of your lips stretched into a faint smile deciding to take it as a sign he was doing all right. And you felt more reassured that he wouldn’t be alone during such a hard time in his life. Ever since Ellen had come into his life, she’d been nothing but good for him. And everyone else, too.

“I heard that.” You said, calling Bobby out on his rude behavior. Ellen chuckled at what unfolded and reassured you once again that he would be okay. But you knew Rufus’ untimely death didn’t just affect the older hunter. It was taking a toll on all of you. You couldn’t help but ask the woman out of concern, “Are you okay?”

"Aw, honey, you're sweet." Ellen mumbled. "You know me. I just worry about you boys."

"Yeah, well. We're all doing fine." You said. You looked up from your laptop screen to see Sam was diligently working on his laptop as Dean sat across the room on his bed, silently watching TV. You pushed yourself up to your feet and began walking over to Dean, taking the liberty to take a much needed break from your laptop and plopped yourself down on his bed. "All right, so, all these corpses, anything relate 'em?”

"Well, actually, I did dig up one thing. I just don't know what to make of it." Ellen. You hummed quietly, informing her that you were listening to what she had to say. You continued on the conversation while you mindlessly watched whatever sort of show Dean was watching. "Well, it's a weird one, and it was buried pretty deep, but Bobby and me were combing through the family trees on all the victims, and we started seeing, well, the families all came over to America the same year."

“Really? That is weird.” You noted.

"Yeah. 1912. But here's the real weird part.” Ellen said, getting to the part where you would get a kick out of. “They all came over on the same boat."

You furrowed your brow slightly, finding that bit of information way too strange for that to be a coincidence. That might be the connection to what was going on here. Only you had no possible information to make such a theory. “All right, so what's so special about the boat?”

“Nothing. It was a boat.” Ellen said. “It did what boats do.”

“What was it called?” You asked.

"The Titanic. Did you ever hear of it?" She wondered, you told her no. You weren't familiar with the name. If it was just a boat that sailed across the sea, then why the hell was it killing off its passengers families nearly a century later? And for no apparent reason, you might add. "Yeah, me neither. I'll keep digging."

You exchanged your goodbyes to the woman and ended the conversation with more information that you had to start. You thought for a moment to yourself while you sat up in bed, Dean's arm wrapped loosely around your waist, trying to somehow keep you here for a little while longer. You remained where you were, trying to think of you knew anything about this boat, if you might have learned it in school or not. There had to be something. But your mind was coming up blank on this one.

"Hey, guys," You spoke up, getting each of their attention. "Does the name Titanic ring a bell?"

Dean thought about it for a few seconds before answering no. Sam took a little longer, but even his big brain of his, the man couldn't recollect on any sort of information that connected to the Titanic. You unwillingly stepped away from the bed and Dean's embrace and back to the rickety old chair and your laptop. It took a few minutes of searching the Titanic to find a complete website dedicated to the boat. Skimming the information, you picked out what seemed slightly interesting and read it back to the boys.

"Okay, so, the RMS Titanic was the largest passenger steamship in the world when it made its maiden voyage across the North Atlantic in 1912." You read off the first paragraph you found.

“So what's the big friggin' deal?” Dean asked, not seeing what the big fuss was all about. “It's a ship. It sailed.”

"On the evening of April 14, 1912 the Titanic had a dangerously close call with an iceberg. Only the sharp eyes of the First Mate, Mr. I.P. Freely saved the ship from disaster. Despite the late hour, and poor visibility conditions, Mr. Freeley spotted the iceberg which was almost one hundred (100) feet high and four hundred (400) feet long. Emergency maneuvers averted what would surely have been a disastrous collusion. Freeley was hailed a hero by the passengers and crew.”

"Looks like there was a close call. Ship almost hit an iceberg. Luckily the first mate spotted it just in time." You said, telling the boys about the near fatal crash that took the ship down. You read more of the paragraph that told of the dangerous night that almost ended in disaster. The more you read, the more eerily strange from the coincidence. Dean looked you, wondering why you were staring at the laptop screen with a bit of a confused expression. “Uh, this first mate. Mr I.P. Freeley.”

"Well, that's not suspicious. You got a picture of old Freeley?" Dean asked. You scrolled through the website where you found a grainy black and white picture of the crew. Clicking on it, you pulled up a bigger version, and of the man dubbed a hero. Who you saw made your face drop in slight twinge of annoyance. Dean headed over as Sam leaned over the table to get a good look himself. It didn't take long for Sam to have the same reaction as you did. All Dean needed to do was take a quick glance to realize why the man looked so familiar. He let out a frustrated sigh. "Balthazar."

You didn’t have a very good friendship with Balthazar. He had a knack for elaborate, over the top schemes you and the boys always seemed to get in the middle of. You weren't the least bit surprised to see that he had landed himself in more trouble. His choices and bad plans to only benefit him were inconvenient and annoying, but this...whatever sort of trick was up his sleeve, it was causing the lives of too many people. You and the boys decided to have a friendly chat with him. However, in order to get into contact with angel, praying wasn’t a valid option for you. So you chose to summon him.

The process wasn’t an easy one. You shut the curtains to give the three of you privacy while the boys moved the table across the room to give all of you more room. You removed the laptops from the table so Sam could place down a bowl full of all sorts of ingredients after Dean drew a few familiar sigils in chalk. To add the final touch, you lit a match against the box before throwing it into the bowl, watching as the flame ignited before dying down. You looked around the room to see that things were working when you noticed the lights began to flicker, a few bulbs even burst from what was about to happen.

“Boys, boys, boys. And the lovely, always delightful Y/N.” Balthazar’s familiar accent filled the room, signaling his arrival. You turned around to see the angel himself. Your lips stretched into a frown. “Whatever can I do for you?”

“We need to talk.” You informed the angel.

"Oh," Balthazar mumbled. He took notice of your body language, crossed arms over your chest and annoyed glare, to realize you summoned him on not so good terms. "You seem upset, Y/N."

“I kind of am. You see, the boys and I are working this case. And you know whose face I come across while doing research for this case?” You asked him. Before Balthazar could try and give a sarcastic answer, you tell him. “Yours! What the hell is with the boat, Balthazar.”

“What boat are you possibly referring to, darling? I’ve been around for a very long time. Seen a lot of boats.” Balthazar said. You narrowed your eyes on him in annoyance at his response. “Be more specific, that’s all I’m asking.”

“The Titanic.” You told him in a sharp tone. “Ring any bells?”

“Oh. Ja. The Titanic. Yes, well, uh, it was meant to sink, and I saved it.” Balthazar explained to all of you. His voice was all too casual, acting as if he was talking about the weather. You raised your brow slightly from what you just heard and asked him what he meant by that. “Well it was meant to bash into this iceberg thing and plunge into the briny deep with all this hoopla, and I saved it. Anything else I can answer for you?”

“Why?” Sam asked the angel.

Balthazar looked at the younger Winchester with a bit of a confused expression by his question, “Why what?”

“Why did you un-sink the ship?” Dean asked again more clearly this time, and a little bit slower. Due to the fact that he was trying to keep his patience.

“Oh, because I hated the movie.” Balthazar said.

Your face scrunched up slightly, “What movie?”

Balthazar let out a laugh, “Exactly.”

“Wait, so you saved a cruise liner because—“ Sam said, trying to wrap his head around what he was hearing.

“Because that God-awful Celine Dion song made me want to smite myself.” Balthazar said. You and the boys grew confused at the name the angel mentioned. “Before you waste your time asking, she’s not important. Thanks to my wonderful plan she's a destitute lounge singer somewhere in Quebec, and let's keep it that way, please.”

"Okay, I didn't think that was possible." Sam said. "I thought you couldn't change history."

"Oh, haven't you noticed? There's no more rules, boys." Balthazar said. The angel grew a smirk at his plan that he thought was oh, so brilliant. Only it was causing all sorts of problems. But you highly doubted Balthazar thought that far ahead to get whatever he wanted.

"Wow. The nerve on you." Sam mumbled. He slowly shook his head and scoffed at what he was hearing from the angel. "So you just, what, un-sunk a giant boat?"

"Oh come on. I saved people.” Balthazar defended himself against the younger Winchester and his judgemental glare. “I thought you loved that kind of thing."

"Yeah, but now those people and their kids and their kids' kids, they must have interacted with so many other people, changed so much crap. You totally Butterfly-Affected history!" Sam said. He pointed out the big, glaring flaw Balthazar refused to think about to get his own way.

"Dude. Dude." Dean mumbled, getting his brother's attention. You rolled your eyes from what he felt the need to bring up at a time like this. "Rule one, no Kutcher references."

"Ah, yes. Unfortunately, there's still an Ashton Kutcher. And you still averted the Apocalypse, and there are still Archangels. But, thanks to me, I made it a bit harder for them to do it. It’s just the small details that are different, like you don't drive an Impala.” Balthazar said. Your face scrunched up slightly at the mention of a car you don’t think you’ve ever heard of. The angel spoke up quickly, not feeling the need to waste time on unimportant knowledge. “Yes, yes. ‘What's an Impala?’ Trust me, it's not important. You see, Y/N wasn’t supposed to be raised by Bobby. Along with the fact that Ellen and Jo aren’t supposed to be alive.”

"Wait, what?" You asked the angel, suddenly becoming way too confused at what was going on here to keep up with what he was explaining. Balthazar walked over to the small kitchen area where he spotted a bottle of unopened whiskey. He took it upon himself to pour himself a drink

while you thought more about what he said. "What do you mean?”

“You see, your darling mother—Ella, right? She was supposed to end up with a different man that you think is your real father, who died when you were six. A whole bunch of nonsense. Basically you’re supposed to be a half demon. The apocalypse was supposed to go a

other way. A bunch of things.” Balthazar said. He twisted off the top to the whiskey and poured a drink while he explained. “Luckily I tipped off a cherub to point his magic arrow somewhere else so you could be raised by Bobby, who you always went on about being your ‘real’ father. And, of course there was that whole ordeal with Ellen and Jo.”

“What?” You mumbled, your voice suddenly growing eerily quiet.

"Ella wasn't supposed to have died when you were a kid and by that hound. She was supposed to sell her soul, sell her husband's soul and all that jazz. Ellen and Jo are supposed to be dead.” Balthazar said. “You see, I save a boat, those peoples' kids have kids, your mother falls in love with someone else, one thing leads to another, which leads to another thousand things, and yada, yada, yada. To cut a long story short, they don't die in a massive explosion and you three get to grow up together. Let's agree I did a good thing. One less Billy Zane movie and I saved two of your closest friends.”

You weren't sure what the hell was going on anymore. Your way into this world and upbringing wasn't a usual one. You learned when you were in your early twenties that your mother made a deal with Azazel, a yellow eyed demon responsible for the tragedy in your life, to have a child after she couldn't get pregnant. Deals only brought ten years. Your mother thought she could try and outrun a hellhound. You remembered on your tenth birthday you were in the process of moving, somewhere far away. It had been just the two of you since your father was killed in a car accident when you were six years old. She just wanted a normal life.

But your mother’s idea of a perfect life was cut short when she was ripped apart by a hellhound. And you heard it all. All you remembered about the tragedy was locking yourself in a closet, petrified you would mauled by a beast you could hear, but couldn’t see. John Winchester and Bobby found you a few days after your mother died. While John had his hands full with his own two sons, Bobby couldn't stomach the idea of letting you out of his sight, so he took you in. He'd been your father figure ever since then. You didn't know what you'd do without him, but hearing all of this from Balthazar, about how things were supposed to be different, the room felt like it was spinning.

"But now somebody is killing the descendants of the survivors." Sam said, his voice bringing you back into the situation right in front of you. Balthazar raised his brow, wondering why he should care about such a thing. "And that's maybe, like, fifty thousand people."

Balthazar continued to stare at the three of you with a blank expression, “And?”

“And we need to save as many people as we can, but we need to know who's after them.” The older Winchester explained the situation a bit more clearly for Balthazar to understand without really having to think about the mess he just made.

“Oh, uh, sorry, uh. You have me confused with the other angel—you know, the one in the dirty trench coat who's in love with you. I...don't care.” Balthazar spoke the last three words rather slowly, making sure you and the boys would get the message so you wouldn’t bug him again. You scoffed as he took a long sip of his drink to finish it up. “Goodbye, boys. And it’s been a pleasure, Y/N.”

"Whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait." Dean said, trying to get the angel to stay for a few more minutes. He stepped forward in an attempt to try and stop Balthazar, but when you blinked, the angel vanished from your sight, leaving you to clean up the mess he made. "Son of a bitch!"

+ + +

After you were left high and dry by Balthazar, you and the boys tried to figure out the extent of the consequences you were left to deal with by the angel after he unsank a boat for the sake of keeping a movie from being made and a lounge singer from seeking fame. The most troubling fact you had to break to Bobby was about Ellen and Jo and their...different path. You knew it was going to break his heart to hear the news. You tried to postpone it far as you could while you explained the situation to the older hunter on speaker phone.

"So, Balthazar un-sank a boat, and now we got a boatload of people who should never have been born." Bobby said, recapping the information you and the boys told him over the past few minutes.

"Yeah. Like fifty-thousand." Sam said, giving the haunting number of people you were supposed to try and save. The older hunter's response wasn't what you were anticipating. He seemed casual, saying that all of this made sense. "How does any of this make sense?”

“Because I got an idea who we're up against. Fate." Bobby said. Fate was a word that meant everything happens for a reason, why your life ended the way it did was because that's how the reality of things were written out. You always thought of the word as a concept, something someone higher up chose, like God himself. It turned out fate might not be a concept, more of a person in charge of how things turned out.. "I mean Fate, like the Fates. Or one of 'em, at least."

“You mean like Greek mythology?” You wondered. “Like the sisters?”

You could thank all of your knowledge about the things that went bump in the night on Bobby. He taught you everything you needed to know. And you spent most of your time reading the dusty books cluttered all over his house. What else was a girl to do? Dean's mumbled remark of calling you a nerd didn't go unnoticed. You gave him a look as you lightly kicked him in the shin.

“These ladies are responsible for how you go down, literally. So if you get creamed by a garage door or crunched by a copy machine, they're the ones who hammer out the details of how you die. Spin out your fate on a piece of pure gold." Bobby explained to all of you. You realized the gold thread found at each scene of where the victims had died was for a reason. It made sense from what Bobby was saying. "And then one of 'em writes it all down in her Day Runner of Death. It's high-level stuff. Anyway—fits. Now we know what Balthazar did. It seems to me that maybe Fate is just trying to clean up the mess."

Sam asked the question on everyone’s mind, "So, how do we stop it?"

“How do we stop Fate? Good question.” Bobby said.

"Well, there's got to be a way." Dean said, thinking there had to be a loophole of some sort.

“Or there ain't. I mean, this is Fate we're talking about here. You know, the easiest way would be to get that angel to re-sink the boat.” Bobby said. You found yourself shooting down the idea in a heartbeat before he could try and suggest it again. “Big difference between dying awful and never being born, Y/N.”

“We are not sinking the boat, Bobby. Okay?" You told him in a tone of voice that you didn’t want to hear anymore of this. You never spoke to Bobby like this. But you didn’t want to change the way things were, the way you grew up to think that this was how it was meant to be. You knew things were more complicated than you could handle, but you’d deal with it. “Don't even think about it."

"Well, okay. What's got you biting my head off? Normally you're all about doing the right thing." Bobby said. You let out a quiet sigh as you found your gaze lingering over to the boys, as if you were hoping for some guidance on what to say next. Bt they looked overwhelmed themselves at what the right thing to do was. So, you told the man that it was nothing. Bobby didn't believe your excuse. "Try that again?"

"Look, it doesn't even really matter, but..." Dean decided to spare you from breaking the bad news when he spoke up, however he found himself growing silent for a moment, not wanting to tell the man the bitter truth. But, he forced himself to. "Apparently, a crapload of dominoes get tipped over if the Titanic goes down. And, uh, bottom line—Ellen and Jo die.”

The other line suddenly went quiet when Dean told the older hunter the news. You bit the inside of your cheek as you imagined what must have been going through his mind right now. Bobby and Ellen had been married for over a year now, since the apocalypse wrapped up. Both of them were head over heels in love with each other. Ellen was like a mother you never had, and Bobby was a father figure to you since you were little. The thought of things being different made you feel uneasy. When Bobby spoke up a few moments later, his response to the information wasn’t the least bit surprising.

"Okay, you three. Listen up." Bobby spoke up, his voice dead serious. "You make sure... Keep those angels from sinking that boat. Do you understand me?”

You and the boys agreed with the plan. You ended the call on that note, only you found yourself feeling more overwhelmed at what you were ahead of. Along with the fact that you had no clue how the hell to fix any of this. You tossed the phone to the bed and let out a loud sigh.

"He's bad enough without her." You mumbled. "Think how he'd be if she was gone."

"Yeah." Sam sighed, knowing the situation ahead of you was going to be a moral dilemma. "So, what do we do? I mean, how do we save fifty-thousand people?"

“I got no freaking clue.” Dean said.

“We don't even know who they are.” Sam added more details you didn’t want to think about.

You were about to let out another sigh from the trouble ahead of you as you turned your head slightly in the direction of the nightstand. You noticed something sitting on the ledge, leaning forward, you realized it was the pamphlet Dean grabbed from the office of one Sean Russo. A dick in a shiny suit—who might be the next victim of Fate. And your only possible lead in stopping this situation before it could get any worse than it already was.

+ + +

The next morning you and the boys decided to stake out Russo's office to catch him off guard this time. You called his secretary, posing as a potential client, asking when he'd be available, big surprise to hear that he was all booked with appointments. You watched from the backseat window as car passed by every so often, blocking your view of the front door to the office. It was a little over an hour of waiting before you spotted Russo. He was making his way out with a client from the looks of it, who looked in terrible shape from the neck brace and cane he had to use while walking. You scoffed at how Russo acted. He just radidated bad vibes.

You and the boys got out from the car to tail Russo in attempt to get his attention. While you and the boys called out the man’s name to get his attention, the man was at least twenty feet ahead of you, too wrapped up in his phone conversation that he took to acknowledge either one of you.

"I don't care. Send him a fruitcake." Russo said to the person on the other line. You tried to get the man's attention when you called out his name a little louder, but he continued to chat into his phone, getting closer to the end of the sidewalk to cross the street. You had a feeling he was too wrapped up in his conversation to look both ways. "Who's the judge? Ah, no. 20 bucks. Believe me, this guy—he owes me."

“Russo, stop!”

You took no chances when you called out his name on the top of your lungs. While you did get his attention, it was at the possibly worst time. You looked to see that there was a van speeding down the road, showing no signs of breaking for pedestrians. Before Russo could become roadkill, Dean lunged forward, saving the day by grabbing ahold of the man and roughly shoving him to the sidewalk, getting him out of the way. Russo went tumbling to the ground as his cell phone bounced a foot or so away.

The driver slammed on his breaks, exactly where Russo was just standing a few moments ago. If none of you had acted when you did, Russo would have been good as dead. But it seemed the man wasn't feeling gratitude for your act of heroism.

"Get off of me." Russo ordered, pushing away Sam's awaiting hand to help the man back up on his feet. You gave Russo a dirty look when he snatched his phone away from your grip after you generously picked it up for him. "And you—I told you and your creepy friend to leave me alone, didn't I?”

"Look, we're just trying to help you out, okay?" You said, Russo scoffed at your excuse.

“Help me?! You almost killed me, you lunatic. Unbelievable." Russo grumbled underneath his breath. You gave him a dirty look at how he was acting as he began attempting to walk across the street now that it was clear of any cars. Dean tried to get the man's attention, causing Russo to stop in the middle of the street. "Just be glad I'm not suing your a—!"

Russo would never be able to finish his passive threat, and those would the last words he would ever get the chance to say. Things turned for the worst at what happened next. Nobody saw it coming. A bus came hurtling down the street, going too fast to stop for the idiot that stepped into the road and didn’t move when the bus was approaching. You and the boys stood there in silence, eyes wide and mouths parted open, wondering what the hell you just witnessed.

[Next Part]

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