Fic: On A Steel Horse (Supernatural)
May. 7th, 2006 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosTitle: On A Steel Horse
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,056 words
Pairing: None (Gen)
Spoilers: "Devil's Trap"
Warnings: Bad language, character death
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like playing with them.
Summary: This story doesn't end the way you think it does.
Author's note: Obviously, this isn't how this whole thing will turn out. That's kind of the point. :)
*****
On A Steel Horse
*****
This story doesn't end the way you think it does.
You think this story ends with a car, crushed and broken from the blunt force of a tractor trailer slamming into the side of it. You think it ends with three men just as crushed and broken lying inside its dark interior, blood running along their flesh in ominous rivulets. You think it ends with a quest for revenge fucked up beyond all reasonable comprehension.
Well, all right, if that's what you think, then the story does end the way you think it does.
But if you think this story ends with the death of a good man, you'd be wrong.
It's two good men who die that night, and their deaths aren't the end of the story.
*****
The last thing John Winchester remembers is the truck plowing into the passenger side of the Impala like a downhill train with no brakes. No hesitation there, no fear or shock in the driver's jet-black eyes.
The next thing John knows is a hospital bed and a flurry of surprised nurses, a bone-deep weariness and a calendar that claims a year has passed since that night.
He doesn't ask about the boys. He'd call what he's feeling fear, but he knows better by now.
*****
They want to keep him in physical therapy for months. They talk about weeks of exercises and medical treatment to get him ready for the outside world in a way that makes his head spin even more than it's done on a daily basis since he woke up. The doctors talk about it constantly like they can read the look on his face and know damn well he won't sit still for any of this bullshit.
Bobby comes to the hospital on a Tuesday, driving John's pickup and silent as the grave. It's a silence John knows like instinct by now.
"Where are they buried?" he asks, and Bobby flinches.
"I had them buried in my family plot," Bobby says. His voice drops low in a rough whisper. "Figured just in case you woke up ..."
The words trail off, but John knows where they were going. Didn't expect you to wake up. Kept the boys like he kept your truck. Have a shovel, some salt, and a box of matches back at the house if you need 'em.
John checks himself out of the hospital on Wednesday, and by Thursday morning, he's standing on top of Sam's grave with a shovel in his hand trying with everything in him not to throw up. He holds out pretty well, he thinks, right up until the point when it hits him that no one should know what every member of his family has smelled like as the flames devour their bodies.
Hell, nobody's stomach could hold up under that.
*****
When you salt and burn a body, its spirit goes away without fail. Hard and fast rule, that one is.
John wonders if he forgot to tell that to his boys when he gets in the truck to leave Bobby's place and Sam and Dean are sitting in the cab arguing over the music on the radio.
"Get out," he says, his eyes shut to the world. If it sounds more like a growl than anything remotely resembling words, he's not surprised.
The boys aren't there anymore the next time he allows himself to look and listen, but two hours later the radio screeches and wails before pumping out Metallica at top volume. After a few minutes of toying with the damn thing, he realizes all of the presets are set to classic rock stations and won't change no matter what he does to them.
He finally gets off at a truck stop in Nebraska and removes the radio, tossing it into the nearest garbage can and contemplating the hole in the dash with something like relief.
Somewhere in Wyoming, the music starts right back up again, lack of a radio be damned.
*****
In the year he's been in a coma, the number of possessions has climbed to fifty, five more mothers have died in agony above their children's cribs, and the underworld has become so active Bobby mentions rumblings of apocalypse.
In Utah, John's black coffee turns into some peppermint skim-milk latte shit in the cup.
He wonders briefly if he can write that off as a sign of armageddon but highly doubts it.
*****
The demon's given up on hiding, something that's obvious from the moment John hits the road again. It taunts him from afar like it knows he's not back at fighting weight just yet, its laughter floating through the back of his dreams like an eerie soundtrack. He stares at the Colt every day, at the lone bullet inside it, and prays and hopes and wishes as if doing so will make more bullets magically appear.
One day, John checks the cylinder and nearly drops the damn gun when he finds it fully loaded.
There are impossible things in the world, this he knows, but even as Dean's familiar laugh rings in his ears, he's pretty sure this is pushing it.
*****
If the world is ending, what he needs is an army.
His soldiers are dead and gone, buried and burned, and the fact that he can think of his only sons like that doesn't tear through him quite as strongly as he'd like. But if this fucking thing is so sure he's the worst threat out there, then it's only fair he live up to such a fine reputation.
He wakes up one morning to find a sheet of paper on the motel nightstand, a list of names scribbled down in Sam's neat handwriting. Underneath their names are the dates that their mothers died above them with their stomachs ripped open and their skin on fire.
John feels phantom hands on his shoulders, his arms, his head, and slams his eyes shut as if that will block them out.
If he wanted an army, he thinks, his sons have just handed him one.
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,056 words
Pairing: None (Gen)
Spoilers: "Devil's Trap"
Warnings: Bad language, character death
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like playing with them.
Summary: This story doesn't end the way you think it does.
Author's note: Obviously, this isn't how this whole thing will turn out. That's kind of the point. :)
On A Steel Horse
*****
This story doesn't end the way you think it does.
You think this story ends with a car, crushed and broken from the blunt force of a tractor trailer slamming into the side of it. You think it ends with three men just as crushed and broken lying inside its dark interior, blood running along their flesh in ominous rivulets. You think it ends with a quest for revenge fucked up beyond all reasonable comprehension.
Well, all right, if that's what you think, then the story does end the way you think it does.
But if you think this story ends with the death of a good man, you'd be wrong.
It's two good men who die that night, and their deaths aren't the end of the story.
The last thing John Winchester remembers is the truck plowing into the passenger side of the Impala like a downhill train with no brakes. No hesitation there, no fear or shock in the driver's jet-black eyes.
The next thing John knows is a hospital bed and a flurry of surprised nurses, a bone-deep weariness and a calendar that claims a year has passed since that night.
He doesn't ask about the boys. He'd call what he's feeling fear, but he knows better by now.
They want to keep him in physical therapy for months. They talk about weeks of exercises and medical treatment to get him ready for the outside world in a way that makes his head spin even more than it's done on a daily basis since he woke up. The doctors talk about it constantly like they can read the look on his face and know damn well he won't sit still for any of this bullshit.
Bobby comes to the hospital on a Tuesday, driving John's pickup and silent as the grave. It's a silence John knows like instinct by now.
"Where are they buried?" he asks, and Bobby flinches.
"I had them buried in my family plot," Bobby says. His voice drops low in a rough whisper. "Figured just in case you woke up ..."
The words trail off, but John knows where they were going. Didn't expect you to wake up. Kept the boys like he kept your truck. Have a shovel, some salt, and a box of matches back at the house if you need 'em.
John checks himself out of the hospital on Wednesday, and by Thursday morning, he's standing on top of Sam's grave with a shovel in his hand trying with everything in him not to throw up. He holds out pretty well, he thinks, right up until the point when it hits him that no one should know what every member of his family has smelled like as the flames devour their bodies.
Hell, nobody's stomach could hold up under that.
When you salt and burn a body, its spirit goes away without fail. Hard and fast rule, that one is.
John wonders if he forgot to tell that to his boys when he gets in the truck to leave Bobby's place and Sam and Dean are sitting in the cab arguing over the music on the radio.
"Get out," he says, his eyes shut to the world. If it sounds more like a growl than anything remotely resembling words, he's not surprised.
The boys aren't there anymore the next time he allows himself to look and listen, but two hours later the radio screeches and wails before pumping out Metallica at top volume. After a few minutes of toying with the damn thing, he realizes all of the presets are set to classic rock stations and won't change no matter what he does to them.
He finally gets off at a truck stop in Nebraska and removes the radio, tossing it into the nearest garbage can and contemplating the hole in the dash with something like relief.
Somewhere in Wyoming, the music starts right back up again, lack of a radio be damned.
In the year he's been in a coma, the number of possessions has climbed to fifty, five more mothers have died in agony above their children's cribs, and the underworld has become so active Bobby mentions rumblings of apocalypse.
In Utah, John's black coffee turns into some peppermint skim-milk latte shit in the cup.
He wonders briefly if he can write that off as a sign of armageddon but highly doubts it.
The demon's given up on hiding, something that's obvious from the moment John hits the road again. It taunts him from afar like it knows he's not back at fighting weight just yet, its laughter floating through the back of his dreams like an eerie soundtrack. He stares at the Colt every day, at the lone bullet inside it, and prays and hopes and wishes as if doing so will make more bullets magically appear.
One day, John checks the cylinder and nearly drops the damn gun when he finds it fully loaded.
There are impossible things in the world, this he knows, but even as Dean's familiar laugh rings in his ears, he's pretty sure this is pushing it.
If the world is ending, what he needs is an army.
His soldiers are dead and gone, buried and burned, and the fact that he can think of his only sons like that doesn't tear through him quite as strongly as he'd like. But if this fucking thing is so sure he's the worst threat out there, then it's only fair he live up to such a fine reputation.
He wakes up one morning to find a sheet of paper on the motel nightstand, a list of names scribbled down in Sam's neat handwriting. Underneath their names are the dates that their mothers died above them with their stomachs ripped open and their skin on fire.
John feels phantom hands on his shoulders, his arms, his head, and slams his eyes shut as if that will block them out.
If he wanted an army, he thinks, his sons have just handed him one.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-08 04:32 pm (UTC)