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apocalypsosTitle: Strangers In Another Town
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,966 words
Spoilers: "Devil's Trap"
Warnings: Character death, bad language
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like playing with them.
Summary: Dean Winchester is pretty sure he's going completely fucking insane.
Author's note: It was Mother's Day, damn it, and I got a crackfic-ish post-finale bunny.
*****
Strangers In Another Town
*****
1.
Dean wakes up to a bright-eyed toddler perched on his chest shoving a cordless phone in his face, and when she says, "Phone, Daddy," he nearly chokes on something that isn't there.
It's a choice between taking the phone and going out of his mind. Somewhere else in the house, someone's frying bacon to the fuzzy tune of the low white noise from the television. The little girl won't stop bouncing up and down on his chest like it's a goddamn trampoline, dark curls flying through the air in a dizzying swirl.
She comes down on his stomach hard, and he puts the phone up to his ear just as her bony lttle knees push his next words from their hiding place deep in his chest.
"Happy Mother's Day, Mom."
His stomach feels like ice, like a solid fucking chunk hacked right off an iceberg, and he wouldn't think it could get any colder until a hauntingly familiar voice says, "Thanks, kiddo."
He doesn't know he's hung up until the phone drops to the floor with a loud clunk.
2.
"Like the bats, Daddy," the little girl squeals, and he flips her over and dangles her by her feet out of pure instinct.
Dean Winchester is pretty sure he's going completely fucking insane.
The last thing he remembers is this disjointed daisy chain of sensations crawling over him. The taste of his own blood, the heavy scents of sweat and fear, the piercing agony that rips through him with every bump in the road the Impala hits. Headlights off to his right, and the eerie screech of steel collapsing in on itself.
The little girl swings happily from his arms, high-pitched giggles bubbling up from deep inside her chest.
Dean doesn't even know her name.
3.
The girl's eyes are his, wild and green and mischievous, but the dark brown curls flash him a warning. When he follows the scent of breakfast to the kitchen and finds Cassie poking the contents of a frying pan with a spatula, he's not surprised.
He slides the girl gently to the floor and slips an arm around Cassie's waist, brushing his lips against the crook of her neck. "Happy Mother's Day," he whispers.
Cassie leans back into him, laughing quietly. "If it were happy, I wouldn't be cooking breakfast," she points out, and her free hand presses against the arm encircling her body.
The bacon's burning, the faint scent of cooking meat a stronger memory than his own daughter's name.
Dean reaches out absently and moves the frying pan to another burner, the smell slowly dying away, and maybe if it does all of this will be real.
4.
On the wall in the living room is a photo of Dean in sunglasses and tan fatigues, smiling for the camera with a bunch of other guys dressed the same way, the gang of them hanging all over one another in the middle of the desert. A pair of obituaries bookend the photo, and Dean matches faces without thinking.
Crisscrossed scars lace over the skin of his legs, the tip of his right pinkie is missing. He can't believe it took him this long to notice.
5.
The little girl's name is Amelia, and there's an off-center part of his brain that thinks it's pretty and wishes he'd thought of it.
There are no princesses or fairy tales in her bedroom, no Winnie the Pooh books or worn-out videotaped cartoons. When Dean walks in, he finds a trio of Gorey posters on the wall, a pile of old monster movies next to the TV, a dozen scary stories lining the bookshelves.
Maybe it's better that it doesn't look like Walt Disney threw up in here, but Dean's not so sure of anything anymore.
6.
When he finally redials the number from before, he can finally breathe without choking from imagining what he'll hear, what voice will come out of the phone. Dean grabs at the comforter as he stares at the phone, like he half-expects the damn bed to disappear out from under him. Downstairs, Amelia's curled up in Cassie's lap watching some black-and-white creature feature, and the screams from the television are more relaxing than they should be.
"Well, you took long enough to callf me back," she says at the other end of the line. There's laughter there, a playful tease, a security blanket.
Dean's stomach clenches. "Sorry --"
the word won't come, the word won't come
"-- Mom."
She doesn't notice the hitch in his voice, the pull in his words. She makes a warm sound and Dean's chest feels like it's higher than he is, soaked in helium, leaking laughing gas. "You can make it up to me at dinner tonight," she says.
"Right," he says, "dinner."
When he laughs, it sounds hysterical, but Mary lets it slide.
7.
Dean Winchester works at the garage that his father owns and comes home every night to his beautiful wife. On weekends, he plays touch football with the guys he graduated with to strengthen his injured leg and twirls his little girl around the living room to whatever's playing on the classic rock station.
Dean Winchester doesn't own a gun or anything sharper than a steak knife. The only thing in the trunk of his Impala is a spare tire and a first aid kit that's on its last Band-Aid. Salt's on the shopping list on the fridge because they're down to what's in the shakers, and when he searches the kitchen drawers, he only finds a single matchbook that's probably older than Amelia.
If the day so far is any indication, Dean Winchester's life will wear like a lie and play with the soundtrack of twisting metal and groans of pain.
8.
Dean sees his mother alive again in front of some trendy theme restaurant, the kind with pop collectibles on the wall and a thirty-minute wait for a table with a cheap beeper in your hands. It's all so ridiculous, a reunion that isn't as they're surrounded by smiling women carrying expensive bouquets and vintage movie posters.
Mom comes over to him as soon as she sees him, slips her arms around his neck and squeezes tight, and maybe he says "Happy Mother's Day" and maybe he doesn't, but he suddenly knows the weight and feel of her and it's brilliant. Like stars, like falling, her voice whispering in his ear, the soft scent of coconut from her hair. Dad had saved her perfume, her shampoo, the body lotion she'd used before the fire, but opening the bottles and inhaling the sweet combination of their scents never really was the same.
She steps back with a gentle brush of her fingertips over his cheek, and the sight of laugh lines on her face hit him like a gut punch.
"You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago," Dad scolds with a quick check of his watch, and Dean startles at the lack of harshness, at the void where accusation should be.
Dad grins wide and easy past a neatly trimmed growth of salt-and-pepper beard. For a brief frightening instant, Dean doesn't even recognize him.
And then Sam is there behind them. Sam who's leading in a heavily pregnant Jess with a permanent smile on his face, Sam who reaches out to Cassie and Amelia and tickles Dean's daughter until she giggles forever, Sam who sweeps Mom into his arms and spins her around like he's fucking giddy, like he's gone crazy with this sick perfection.
There's a sore spot on Dean's side like somebody really did elbow him into this life.
In the crushed Impala in his head, blood runs down Sam's face and he isn't waking up.
9.
The air outside the restaurant threatens rain, but Dean ignores it as he sits down on the bench. He's fought werewolves during thunderstorms and poltergeists during blizzards. He's stood with an emptied gun and a pair of open wounds knee-deep in fresh snow. A little shower never killed anyone.
At the very least, it's never killed him.
He faked a questionable reaction to the steak to get some fresh air and now he's wondering how the hell he got out here, how he ended up standing outside a restaurant when his entire family's sitting inside fawning all over their girls. He starts going over his options in his head like they don't all sound insane. He's dead, in a coma, in a mental hospital. It's magic, it's the demon, it's Sam's freaky psychic bullshit at work. Soon he'll wake up, find out this is Heaven, find out this is Hell.
"What do you think?"
Dean flinches, glances over at Sam as he sits down next to Dean on the bench. Dean didn't even hear him come out, too lost in his thoughts. Only a day and I'm getting rusty, he thinks, and rubs his palms along his thighs.
"Think of what?" he asks, and looks at Sam. Sam, who fed Jess half of his dessert and laughed more before their dinners came than he had for the past year that he'd been hunting with Dean.
Sam, who stares at him now looking far too much like the brother he knows and says, "Do you think we're still in the car?"
The world goes silent and dark for a long moment, and this isn't relief and yet it can't be anything else.
Dean shakes his head, and he doesn't know where it comes from, but he says, "You and me, or Dean and Sam?"
Sam runs his fingers through too-long hair, exhales with a whispered, "Jesus," and looks over his shoulder. Dean turns back and he sees it, too, their family crowding into the open area by the front door with foreign smiles and eerie laughter. Cassie toys with the ends of Amelia's braids when her mind is wandering, and Jess already has half a dozen baby names picked out. Mary rips her dinner rolls to pieces and pops the chunks of bread into her mouth like Dean does, and John nuzzles her neck and grins when everybody teases them like he's begging for an audience.
"We need to fix this," Sam says.
Dean wishes he couldn't agree, but he nods and says, "Tonight," before he can stop himself.
The wind picks up as rain pours from the sky, but neither one of them bother to notice.
10.
The next morning, Cassie stops pouring the milk for Amelia's cereal as Dean's arm slips around her waist. He and Sam holed themselves up in the basement the night before, staying up so late Cassie had given up and gone to bed alone, and there's something about the pressure of his hand on her stomach that makes her look over her shoulder at him and ask, "Bad dream?"
Dean thinks of suddenly appearing in his battered car in more pain than he ever felt in the war, of a truck driver with black eyes and his father slumped over dead in the front seat.
"Baby, you have no idea," he says quietly, and kisses her to drive away the memories of yesterday.
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,966 words
Spoilers: "Devil's Trap"
Warnings: Character death, bad language
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like playing with them.
Summary: Dean Winchester is pretty sure he's going completely fucking insane.
Author's note: It was Mother's Day, damn it, and I got a crackfic-ish post-finale bunny.
Strangers In Another Town
*****
1.
Dean wakes up to a bright-eyed toddler perched on his chest shoving a cordless phone in his face, and when she says, "Phone, Daddy," he nearly chokes on something that isn't there.
It's a choice between taking the phone and going out of his mind. Somewhere else in the house, someone's frying bacon to the fuzzy tune of the low white noise from the television. The little girl won't stop bouncing up and down on his chest like it's a goddamn trampoline, dark curls flying through the air in a dizzying swirl.
She comes down on his stomach hard, and he puts the phone up to his ear just as her bony lttle knees push his next words from their hiding place deep in his chest.
"Happy Mother's Day, Mom."
His stomach feels like ice, like a solid fucking chunk hacked right off an iceberg, and he wouldn't think it could get any colder until a hauntingly familiar voice says, "Thanks, kiddo."
He doesn't know he's hung up until the phone drops to the floor with a loud clunk.
2.
"Like the bats, Daddy," the little girl squeals, and he flips her over and dangles her by her feet out of pure instinct.
Dean Winchester is pretty sure he's going completely fucking insane.
The last thing he remembers is this disjointed daisy chain of sensations crawling over him. The taste of his own blood, the heavy scents of sweat and fear, the piercing agony that rips through him with every bump in the road the Impala hits. Headlights off to his right, and the eerie screech of steel collapsing in on itself.
The little girl swings happily from his arms, high-pitched giggles bubbling up from deep inside her chest.
Dean doesn't even know her name.
3.
The girl's eyes are his, wild and green and mischievous, but the dark brown curls flash him a warning. When he follows the scent of breakfast to the kitchen and finds Cassie poking the contents of a frying pan with a spatula, he's not surprised.
He slides the girl gently to the floor and slips an arm around Cassie's waist, brushing his lips against the crook of her neck. "Happy Mother's Day," he whispers.
Cassie leans back into him, laughing quietly. "If it were happy, I wouldn't be cooking breakfast," she points out, and her free hand presses against the arm encircling her body.
The bacon's burning, the faint scent of cooking meat a stronger memory than his own daughter's name.
Dean reaches out absently and moves the frying pan to another burner, the smell slowly dying away, and maybe if it does all of this will be real.
4.
On the wall in the living room is a photo of Dean in sunglasses and tan fatigues, smiling for the camera with a bunch of other guys dressed the same way, the gang of them hanging all over one another in the middle of the desert. A pair of obituaries bookend the photo, and Dean matches faces without thinking.
Crisscrossed scars lace over the skin of his legs, the tip of his right pinkie is missing. He can't believe it took him this long to notice.
5.
The little girl's name is Amelia, and there's an off-center part of his brain that thinks it's pretty and wishes he'd thought of it.
There are no princesses or fairy tales in her bedroom, no Winnie the Pooh books or worn-out videotaped cartoons. When Dean walks in, he finds a trio of Gorey posters on the wall, a pile of old monster movies next to the TV, a dozen scary stories lining the bookshelves.
Maybe it's better that it doesn't look like Walt Disney threw up in here, but Dean's not so sure of anything anymore.
6.
When he finally redials the number from before, he can finally breathe without choking from imagining what he'll hear, what voice will come out of the phone. Dean grabs at the comforter as he stares at the phone, like he half-expects the damn bed to disappear out from under him. Downstairs, Amelia's curled up in Cassie's lap watching some black-and-white creature feature, and the screams from the television are more relaxing than they should be.
"Well, you took long enough to callf me back," she says at the other end of the line. There's laughter there, a playful tease, a security blanket.
Dean's stomach clenches. "Sorry --"
the word won't come, the word won't come
"-- Mom."
She doesn't notice the hitch in his voice, the pull in his words. She makes a warm sound and Dean's chest feels like it's higher than he is, soaked in helium, leaking laughing gas. "You can make it up to me at dinner tonight," she says.
"Right," he says, "dinner."
When he laughs, it sounds hysterical, but Mary lets it slide.
7.
Dean Winchester works at the garage that his father owns and comes home every night to his beautiful wife. On weekends, he plays touch football with the guys he graduated with to strengthen his injured leg and twirls his little girl around the living room to whatever's playing on the classic rock station.
Dean Winchester doesn't own a gun or anything sharper than a steak knife. The only thing in the trunk of his Impala is a spare tire and a first aid kit that's on its last Band-Aid. Salt's on the shopping list on the fridge because they're down to what's in the shakers, and when he searches the kitchen drawers, he only finds a single matchbook that's probably older than Amelia.
If the day so far is any indication, Dean Winchester's life will wear like a lie and play with the soundtrack of twisting metal and groans of pain.
8.
Dean sees his mother alive again in front of some trendy theme restaurant, the kind with pop collectibles on the wall and a thirty-minute wait for a table with a cheap beeper in your hands. It's all so ridiculous, a reunion that isn't as they're surrounded by smiling women carrying expensive bouquets and vintage movie posters.
Mom comes over to him as soon as she sees him, slips her arms around his neck and squeezes tight, and maybe he says "Happy Mother's Day" and maybe he doesn't, but he suddenly knows the weight and feel of her and it's brilliant. Like stars, like falling, her voice whispering in his ear, the soft scent of coconut from her hair. Dad had saved her perfume, her shampoo, the body lotion she'd used before the fire, but opening the bottles and inhaling the sweet combination of their scents never really was the same.
She steps back with a gentle brush of her fingertips over his cheek, and the sight of laugh lines on her face hit him like a gut punch.
"You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago," Dad scolds with a quick check of his watch, and Dean startles at the lack of harshness, at the void where accusation should be.
Dad grins wide and easy past a neatly trimmed growth of salt-and-pepper beard. For a brief frightening instant, Dean doesn't even recognize him.
And then Sam is there behind them. Sam who's leading in a heavily pregnant Jess with a permanent smile on his face, Sam who reaches out to Cassie and Amelia and tickles Dean's daughter until she giggles forever, Sam who sweeps Mom into his arms and spins her around like he's fucking giddy, like he's gone crazy with this sick perfection.
There's a sore spot on Dean's side like somebody really did elbow him into this life.
In the crushed Impala in his head, blood runs down Sam's face and he isn't waking up.
9.
The air outside the restaurant threatens rain, but Dean ignores it as he sits down on the bench. He's fought werewolves during thunderstorms and poltergeists during blizzards. He's stood with an emptied gun and a pair of open wounds knee-deep in fresh snow. A little shower never killed anyone.
At the very least, it's never killed him.
He faked a questionable reaction to the steak to get some fresh air and now he's wondering how the hell he got out here, how he ended up standing outside a restaurant when his entire family's sitting inside fawning all over their girls. He starts going over his options in his head like they don't all sound insane. He's dead, in a coma, in a mental hospital. It's magic, it's the demon, it's Sam's freaky psychic bullshit at work. Soon he'll wake up, find out this is Heaven, find out this is Hell.
"What do you think?"
Dean flinches, glances over at Sam as he sits down next to Dean on the bench. Dean didn't even hear him come out, too lost in his thoughts. Only a day and I'm getting rusty, he thinks, and rubs his palms along his thighs.
"Think of what?" he asks, and looks at Sam. Sam, who fed Jess half of his dessert and laughed more before their dinners came than he had for the past year that he'd been hunting with Dean.
Sam, who stares at him now looking far too much like the brother he knows and says, "Do you think we're still in the car?"
The world goes silent and dark for a long moment, and this isn't relief and yet it can't be anything else.
Dean shakes his head, and he doesn't know where it comes from, but he says, "You and me, or Dean and Sam?"
Sam runs his fingers through too-long hair, exhales with a whispered, "Jesus," and looks over his shoulder. Dean turns back and he sees it, too, their family crowding into the open area by the front door with foreign smiles and eerie laughter. Cassie toys with the ends of Amelia's braids when her mind is wandering, and Jess already has half a dozen baby names picked out. Mary rips her dinner rolls to pieces and pops the chunks of bread into her mouth like Dean does, and John nuzzles her neck and grins when everybody teases them like he's begging for an audience.
"We need to fix this," Sam says.
Dean wishes he couldn't agree, but he nods and says, "Tonight," before he can stop himself.
The wind picks up as rain pours from the sky, but neither one of them bother to notice.
10.
The next morning, Cassie stops pouring the milk for Amelia's cereal as Dean's arm slips around her waist. He and Sam holed themselves up in the basement the night before, staying up so late Cassie had given up and gone to bed alone, and there's something about the pressure of his hand on her stomach that makes her look over her shoulder at him and ask, "Bad dream?"
Dean thinks of suddenly appearing in his battered car in more pain than he ever felt in the war, of a truck driver with black eyes and his father slumped over dead in the front seat.
"Baby, you have no idea," he says quietly, and kisses her to drive away the memories of yesterday.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 05:38 pm (UTC)"Do you think we're still in the car?"
This? AAAHH.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 05:41 pm (UTC)Wonderful amazing job. Just so painful because I'm SO happy for them having this life but it's not theirs. It's not REAL. Sob.
They're still in the car.
Break my heart why don't you babe.
Amazing job, just amazing!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 05:52 pm (UTC)i love it. *sniffles*
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 06:01 pm (UTC)because it's not his life.... for a second i though it was sam's, and dean had been dragged into it by sheer force of winchester will, but no, it's not sam's life either....
it's wrong and wrenching and fabulous.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 06:03 pm (UTC)that was amazing and so sad and perfect
I'm still reeling
time to re-read
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 06:30 pm (UTC)...gaah!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 07:03 pm (UTC)I love the surreal feel I got while reading this fic. It was jarring in it's oh so wrong feel.
"Do you think we're still in the car?" *shivers*
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 07:59 pm (UTC)this one hit particularly hard, especially the part at the restaurant, because you captured the typical mother's day outing so perfectly it made my own family dinner last night a little eerie.
♥
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 08:43 pm (UTC)I love Dean in this and everything else.
Gorgeous.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 09:35 pm (UTC)Great job!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 10:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 10:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 11:33 pm (UTC)This was awesome and heartbreaking and just... *flails*
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 11:51 pm (UTC)