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apocalypsos) wrote2007-02-01 11:54 pm
apocalypsos) wrote2007-02-01 11:54 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: When The Mirror Is Empty (Supernatural)
Title: When The Mirror Is Empty
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1400 words
Spoilers: “Nightshifter”
Summary: She says she doesn’t have a sister and is pretty sure they don’t believe her.
Author's note: I was trying to write another coda and this is what came out. *shrugs*
*
When The Mirror Is Empty
*
The days following the bank robbery feel like a bad episode of Law and Order, one of the reruns she catches sometimes where they focus on the victims and she doesn’t end up seeing Stabler or Curtis nearly as much as she’d like.
They wrap a blanket around her and put her in an ambulance, give her a sedative and ask her what went on inside the bank. Things move so fast everything that happens is a great big jumble.
Someone asks her if she saw who killed her sister.
She says she doesn’t have a sister and is pretty sure they don’t believe her.
*
For days, the phone calls come. Reporters, talk shows, a couple of overzealous novelists looking to write about what went down.
She takes the phone off the hook and watches bad romantic comedies while poking at the contents of a carton of Cherry Garcia instead.
The Winchesters killed someone who looked exactly like her. She figures she’s earned the right to gain ten pounds in retaliation.
*
Her therapist says it’s survivor’s guilt, that she misses her twin. He drums his pen on his notepad and asks if her sister would want her to keep wallowing in her grief like this.
What the hell does he know?
No, really, she didn’t have a sister.
She took the DNA test to prove everyone wrong, to get them to stop looking at her with pity in their eyes, but since the DNA test came back a perfect match for her own she supposes she asked for it.
*
They try to release the body to her and she refuses.
Instead, she goes home and drinks half a bottle of Captain Morgan and avoids the nightly news programs with their repeated flashes of Dean Winchester’s face as if watching them will give her syphilis or something.
She has no idea what they do with the body and does a damn fine job of not giving a fuck.
*
Her friends Joey and Casey and Mika drag her out of her apartment all the time in this sordid attempt to keep her from turning into one of those traumatized women who never leaves their house and is afraid of dust and car exhaust poisoning them and gets a cat just to have someone to talk to. She gives in to shut them up, then gives in because they have a point, then just gives in.
She’s good for a while, letting guys buy her drinks and tug her onto the dance floor, laughing with Casey and Mike and throwing Joey at every cute gay boy who glances in their direction. It’s just like old times, if two months ago really counts as old times.
And then she lets some handsome dark-haired guy spin her around on the dance floor and could swear she sees a familiar face in the crowd.
The tall one. Sam.
Jesus.
She hurries into the bathroom to call the police, to tell them she saw, and her hands tremble so much she drops her cell phone into the toilet.
She’d blame the four rum and cokes she’d had when she runs into the next stall to throw up, but she doubts that’s why.
*
It’s Joey the Internet junkie who suggests it one Sunday afternoon, when the two of them are polishing off Joey‘s frighteningly strong margaritas and making fun of whatever made-for-TV crapfest is playing on Lifetime.
“Hey, have you thought about looking them up online?”
She barely glances away from the television, where some poor homeless blonde waif is about to get a recording contract from the hot ex-cowboy. “Looking who up?”
He’d better not mean who she thinks he means, but thankfully he just shrugs and says, “You know, other … victims, I guess. I mean, these guys are supposed to be the second coming of Bonnie and Clyde, so shouldn’t there be a support group or something just for them?”
Her friends don’t say the name Winchester anymore. They learned their lesson quick enough.
“Maybe,” she says, and forces a smile. “Can we just finish this?”
“You’re really that worried about whether she’ll marry the cowboy? Because it’s Lifetime, sweetie. He’ll either marry her or kill her.”
He winces at that like he thinks he‘s said the wrong thing, but she just says, “Yeah, yeah,” and hits him with her pillow.
Maybe she’s getting a little better, bit by bit.
*
She’s never been a big computer person, outside of Myspace and the occasional music download. She knows how to use Google, though -- she’s not a completely hopeless case.
She looks up Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester and victim and crime, gets all the same tired bullshit about people they’ve killed and bodies they’ve dug up for God only knows what.
I don’t have a twin sister, she keeps thinking. I never did.
It takes a while, but she finally adds unexplained to the search.
She doesn’t find anything, not really, a few weird postings from one or the other brother on websites about witches and ghosts that make her roll her eyes. Questions about urban legends, magical symbols, religious lore. She wonders if anybody gave a damn about this stuff, if there’s some file at the FBI stuffed full of these.
She looked just like me, she thinks.
She must be out of it, too much sleep or not enough, because she types Winchester and unexplained and shapeshifter into the search engine before she can think about it too much.
A moment later, an instant message box pops up on her computer.
When dr_badass says to her, “Took you long enough, sunshine,” she nearly chokes on the water she‘s drinking.
*
She drives down to the roadhouse because she’s been having nightmares about everything from falling out a window to sneezing so hard she snaps her neck. This week, it’s plane crashes, and she doesn‘t think she could buy a plane ticket if she tried.
Funny, how her nightmares are never about being stabbed.
The roadhouse looks like a joke, like the kind of place she and her friends would normally drive past at top speeds while making jokes about bikers and leather fetishes. She wouldn’t go in but there’s no other choice, because she never had a sister but nobody’s listening.
Inside there’s more cigarette smoke than air and the jukebox is older than she is. The place is empty except for the bartender, and she nearly turns right back around again and walks out when a smoky voice says, “You want a drink or just to stretch your legs?”
She looks back.
The bartender smiles at her, warm and motherly. She’s an older woman a little rough around the edges who looks like she recognizes her newest customer.
“Uh, I’ll take a beer, I guess.”
She pulls up a stool as the bartender slides her a cold one, wraps her fingers around the bottle and tries to remember how to breathe.
“You … you wouldn’t happen to know where I could find a guy named Ash, do you?”
The bartender puts her hands on her hips, tilts her head so just so and asks, “Why you lookin’ for Ash?” like she already knows the answer.
A long moment of silence follows, REO Speedwagon filling the air, and when Sherri finally speaks her words rasp like they’re scratching her throat on the way out.
Her gaze connects with the bartender’s, unsteady and unsure.
“I was in the bank that the Winchesters took hostage,” she says, “and I think they killed something that looked just like me.”
Something.
Jesus, she hadn’t even said it out loud before, not really. She’d barely even allowed herself to think it.
But something … yeah, that sounds about right.
The bartender’s lips curve into a comforting smile as she leans forward and puts her hand over one of Sherri’s. “Well, hell,” she says, swiping away Sherri’s bottle, “if we’re going to explain this, I’d better go get something strong enough to beat the ever-lovin’ hell out of a bottle of Bud.”
She walks away then, calling for Ash and saying he’s got a visitor.
And for the first time in weeks, Sherri feels like she can breathe again.
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1400 words
Spoilers: “Nightshifter”
Summary: She says she doesn’t have a sister and is pretty sure they don’t believe her.
Author's note: I was trying to write another coda and this is what came out. *shrugs*
When The Mirror Is Empty
*
The days following the bank robbery feel like a bad episode of Law and Order, one of the reruns she catches sometimes where they focus on the victims and she doesn’t end up seeing Stabler or Curtis nearly as much as she’d like.
They wrap a blanket around her and put her in an ambulance, give her a sedative and ask her what went on inside the bank. Things move so fast everything that happens is a great big jumble.
Someone asks her if she saw who killed her sister.
She says she doesn’t have a sister and is pretty sure they don’t believe her.
For days, the phone calls come. Reporters, talk shows, a couple of overzealous novelists looking to write about what went down.
She takes the phone off the hook and watches bad romantic comedies while poking at the contents of a carton of Cherry Garcia instead.
The Winchesters killed someone who looked exactly like her. She figures she’s earned the right to gain ten pounds in retaliation.
Her therapist says it’s survivor’s guilt, that she misses her twin. He drums his pen on his notepad and asks if her sister would want her to keep wallowing in her grief like this.
What the hell does he know?
No, really, she didn’t have a sister.
She took the DNA test to prove everyone wrong, to get them to stop looking at her with pity in their eyes, but since the DNA test came back a perfect match for her own she supposes she asked for it.
They try to release the body to her and she refuses.
Instead, she goes home and drinks half a bottle of Captain Morgan and avoids the nightly news programs with their repeated flashes of Dean Winchester’s face as if watching them will give her syphilis or something.
She has no idea what they do with the body and does a damn fine job of not giving a fuck.
Her friends Joey and Casey and Mika drag her out of her apartment all the time in this sordid attempt to keep her from turning into one of those traumatized women who never leaves their house and is afraid of dust and car exhaust poisoning them and gets a cat just to have someone to talk to. She gives in to shut them up, then gives in because they have a point, then just gives in.
She’s good for a while, letting guys buy her drinks and tug her onto the dance floor, laughing with Casey and Mike and throwing Joey at every cute gay boy who glances in their direction. It’s just like old times, if two months ago really counts as old times.
And then she lets some handsome dark-haired guy spin her around on the dance floor and could swear she sees a familiar face in the crowd.
The tall one. Sam.
Jesus.
She hurries into the bathroom to call the police, to tell them she saw, and her hands tremble so much she drops her cell phone into the toilet.
She’d blame the four rum and cokes she’d had when she runs into the next stall to throw up, but she doubts that’s why.
It’s Joey the Internet junkie who suggests it one Sunday afternoon, when the two of them are polishing off Joey‘s frighteningly strong margaritas and making fun of whatever made-for-TV crapfest is playing on Lifetime.
“Hey, have you thought about looking them up online?”
She barely glances away from the television, where some poor homeless blonde waif is about to get a recording contract from the hot ex-cowboy. “Looking who up?”
He’d better not mean who she thinks he means, but thankfully he just shrugs and says, “You know, other … victims, I guess. I mean, these guys are supposed to be the second coming of Bonnie and Clyde, so shouldn’t there be a support group or something just for them?”
Her friends don’t say the name Winchester anymore. They learned their lesson quick enough.
“Maybe,” she says, and forces a smile. “Can we just finish this?”
“You’re really that worried about whether she’ll marry the cowboy? Because it’s Lifetime, sweetie. He’ll either marry her or kill her.”
He winces at that like he thinks he‘s said the wrong thing, but she just says, “Yeah, yeah,” and hits him with her pillow.
Maybe she’s getting a little better, bit by bit.
She’s never been a big computer person, outside of Myspace and the occasional music download. She knows how to use Google, though -- she’s not a completely hopeless case.
She looks up Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester and victim and crime, gets all the same tired bullshit about people they’ve killed and bodies they’ve dug up for God only knows what.
I don’t have a twin sister, she keeps thinking. I never did.
It takes a while, but she finally adds unexplained to the search.
She doesn’t find anything, not really, a few weird postings from one or the other brother on websites about witches and ghosts that make her roll her eyes. Questions about urban legends, magical symbols, religious lore. She wonders if anybody gave a damn about this stuff, if there’s some file at the FBI stuffed full of these.
She looked just like me, she thinks.
She must be out of it, too much sleep or not enough, because she types Winchester and unexplained and shapeshifter into the search engine before she can think about it too much.
A moment later, an instant message box pops up on her computer.
When dr_badass says to her, “Took you long enough, sunshine,” she nearly chokes on the water she‘s drinking.
She drives down to the roadhouse because she’s been having nightmares about everything from falling out a window to sneezing so hard she snaps her neck. This week, it’s plane crashes, and she doesn‘t think she could buy a plane ticket if she tried.
Funny, how her nightmares are never about being stabbed.
The roadhouse looks like a joke, like the kind of place she and her friends would normally drive past at top speeds while making jokes about bikers and leather fetishes. She wouldn’t go in but there’s no other choice, because she never had a sister but nobody’s listening.
Inside there’s more cigarette smoke than air and the jukebox is older than she is. The place is empty except for the bartender, and she nearly turns right back around again and walks out when a smoky voice says, “You want a drink or just to stretch your legs?”
She looks back.
The bartender smiles at her, warm and motherly. She’s an older woman a little rough around the edges who looks like she recognizes her newest customer.
“Uh, I’ll take a beer, I guess.”
She pulls up a stool as the bartender slides her a cold one, wraps her fingers around the bottle and tries to remember how to breathe.
“You … you wouldn’t happen to know where I could find a guy named Ash, do you?”
The bartender puts her hands on her hips, tilts her head so just so and asks, “Why you lookin’ for Ash?” like she already knows the answer.
A long moment of silence follows, REO Speedwagon filling the air, and when Sherri finally speaks her words rasp like they’re scratching her throat on the way out.
Her gaze connects with the bartender’s, unsteady and unsure.
“I was in the bank that the Winchesters took hostage,” she says, “and I think they killed something that looked just like me.”
Something.
Jesus, she hadn’t even said it out loud before, not really. She’d barely even allowed herself to think it.
But something … yeah, that sounds about right.
The bartender’s lips curve into a comforting smile as she leans forward and puts her hand over one of Sherri’s. “Well, hell,” she says, swiping away Sherri’s bottle, “if we’re going to explain this, I’d better go get something strong enough to beat the ever-lovin’ hell out of a bottle of Bud.”
She walks away then, calling for Ash and saying he’s got a visitor.
And for the first time in weeks, Sherri feels like she can breathe again.