Fic: Collect The Whole Set (PG)
May. 15th, 2010 01:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosAaaand here is my other ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
apocalyptothon story. Dear fandom: Please don't eat me.
Title: Collect The Whole Set
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
apocalypsos
Recipient:soundingsea
Fandom: Supernatural
Disclaimers: BOYS. Oh, my God, BOYS. Let's get some BOYS. Let's get some BOYS. These BOYS are three hundred fucking dollars. BOYS.
Rating: PG
Spoilers (if applicable): General season five spoilers, although let's just say it deviates from a good chunk of the finale. ;)
Warnings (if applicable): None
Summary: They forgot about her.
** Collect The Whole Set **
They forgot about her.
The thought strikes her halfway through scrubbing away what's left of Chuck from the musty walls of his claustrophobic basement. She doesn't have to do this, of course. She should be packing a bag, running away without a destination in mind, scrounging up the last dregs of her two years of Girl Scout training from her cluttered mind in preparation for life in a dying world.
Instead, she's barefoot on clammy concrete giving her boyfriend a funeral by twisted sponge, a silent wrung-out burial in a pail full of pink water.
Lukewarm water drips down her forearm when the realization strikes her, and the giggles bolt from her chest like loosened horses. If they were anybody else's giggles she knows she'd be rearing away, creeped out and desperate for escape, but they're hers and she revels in the hitching high-pitched jags.
Well, of course they forgot about her.
She figures she should be grateful about that. She's read the books, after all, the ones that were published and the ones that would be, someday, scribbled in Chuck's anxious chicken-scratch on every clean surface, and she knows the score. Women don't last long around the Winchesters, and she imagines even fanfic-writing part-time car dealership receptionist whom Sam and Dean have only met a couple of times can expect much shorter life expectancies in return.
Except … well, they forgot about her.
There may be somebody alive in this backwater town, in this lousy state, in this destroyed country, but she sure as hell hasn't seen them in weeks. She's seen Chuck, and he was alive, and now he's a smear and she's …
She's nobody. She's nobody and she knows it, and it would be so much easier to be nobody if there were someone to be nobody with.
*
She doesn't know who or what killed Chuck. She doesn't know why he was in the basement or what the sigils on the walls traced in his splattered blood could possibly mean. She doesn't know who screamed, or who laughed, but she knows the two sounds woke her up like a blasphemous alarm clock, and she knows the familiar shreds of flannel and denim that dot the bloody wall.
She knows she has to run, and run soon.
It's strange the way it dawns on her, that she's been forgotten, that she needs to go before somebody up there realizes she's been forgotten. The thoughts clash. She's not that important, never has been, and yet –
She's halfway through cramming her spare jeans into a bookbag when she spots the books.
The Winchester gospel, she thinks, and stifles bursting white-hot rage that bubbles through her brain like fresh coffee. She thinks of the sickly-pink water she poured in sullen silence down the kitchen sink and only just keeps herself from hissing, “Gospels are named after the people who wrote them,” at the books.
The paperbacks are the only tidy untouched things in Chuck's house. They don't even have his name on them, for heaven's sake.
For a delirious moment she doesn't feel worthy of touching them anymore. She's been at Chuck's place for months, since her parents vanished on a trip to her grandmother's house in Missouri. When the world started to crumple around them, they came together and held up the walls for as long as they could.
It wasn't very long.
She stares at the books, stares hard, wonders briefly if she's just imagining them.
The Barnes and Noble across the highway burned down with the rest of the mall. The local library's doors are firmly locked. Amazon.com died when the internet keeled over.
Books are already a rare commodity, those books in particular.
She curses under her breath.
*
It's a sad fact of life that sometimes objects are more important than people.
She'll be the first to admit she's excitable and naïve and essentially worthless. No one's going to write angsty feminist fanfic about her being a strong woman in dire situations, doing sexy things or waving around a weapon while wearing a tight tank top. She's a joke, and up until being a joke became the only thing keeping her alive, she enjoyed her life and her fandom and her silly inexplicable hobby of writing explicit gay incest porn for fun.
But in the grand scheme of things, she's just not as important as she'd like to be.
She can't forget that. It's what's keeping her alive.
It's what letting her walk out the front door of Chuck's house, into the dead hum of this new dead world. It's what keeps her arms from trembling as she cradles the cardboard box laden with paperbacks and bound unpublished manuscripts with the same delicate care as she would a newborn infant or her mother's collection of crystal animals.
She stomps down the front steps towards the black car sitting at the curb, uncaring if anyone might be out there in the world listening to her sullen footsteps and targeting her like a starving hawk. Let them hear. Let them come and get her. She can't find it in her to care about her own fate anymore.
The books, on the other hand … the books need to live on.
There is no awe in the way she opens the driver's side door of the car and slides the box across the seat to the passenger side. Maybe she might have made the odd happy noise over the car's very existence months ago, but it's a waste of time anymore.
She buckles in the box, efficient and protective. Any other time and she'd feel a bit more like an idiot.
This is not any other time.
She sits in the driver's seat and runs her fingers lightly over the steering wheel, tracing her fingertips over fine lines, pretending she knows where they came from. The worn patches left behind by the enthusiastic drumming of Michael's once-upon-a-time hands. The scratches in its surface inflicted by Lucifer's once-upon-a-time fingernails.
She hasn't seen Sam or Dean in months.
She never thought she'd be happy about that.
She starts the car with a determined twist of her fingers, reveling in the roar and purr of the old girl, and it's only when she glances to the right with a brimming spark of amusement that she spots the books again and realizes something.
Ask her anything. She knows the words and the characters and the canon. She knows the mythology and the monsters. Ask her about the contents of the secret compartment in the trunk. Ask her to quote lines of dialogue or the complete exorcism in Latin. Ask her dates and ages, Dean's favorites foods and Sam's favorite books.
Ask her how the angels screwed with the Winchesters to get what they want, and ask her which pages on Unpublished Cheaply Bound Manuscript #4 reveal the destinies Heaven and Hell intended Sam and Dean to fulfill.
And fulfill them, they did.
Turns out she is the only true Bible scholar in the world.
As she pulls away from the house her laughter rings through the open window, a jarring din, like a handful of bells dropped down a flight of stairs.
As far as she's concerned, it's the perfect soundtrack for the end of the world.
== the end ==
apocalyptothon story. Dear fandom: Please don't eat me.Title: Collect The Whole Set
Author:
apocalypsosRecipient:
soundingseaFandom: Supernatural
Disclaimers: BOYS. Oh, my God, BOYS. Let's get some BOYS. Let's get some BOYS. These BOYS are three hundred fucking dollars. BOYS.
Rating: PG
Spoilers (if applicable): General season five spoilers, although let's just say it deviates from a good chunk of the finale. ;)
Warnings (if applicable): None
Summary: They forgot about her.
They forgot about her.
The thought strikes her halfway through scrubbing away what's left of Chuck from the musty walls of his claustrophobic basement. She doesn't have to do this, of course. She should be packing a bag, running away without a destination in mind, scrounging up the last dregs of her two years of Girl Scout training from her cluttered mind in preparation for life in a dying world.
Instead, she's barefoot on clammy concrete giving her boyfriend a funeral by twisted sponge, a silent wrung-out burial in a pail full of pink water.
Lukewarm water drips down her forearm when the realization strikes her, and the giggles bolt from her chest like loosened horses. If they were anybody else's giggles she knows she'd be rearing away, creeped out and desperate for escape, but they're hers and she revels in the hitching high-pitched jags.
Well, of course they forgot about her.
She figures she should be grateful about that. She's read the books, after all, the ones that were published and the ones that would be, someday, scribbled in Chuck's anxious chicken-scratch on every clean surface, and she knows the score. Women don't last long around the Winchesters, and she imagines even fanfic-writing part-time car dealership receptionist whom Sam and Dean have only met a couple of times can expect much shorter life expectancies in return.
Except … well, they forgot about her.
There may be somebody alive in this backwater town, in this lousy state, in this destroyed country, but she sure as hell hasn't seen them in weeks. She's seen Chuck, and he was alive, and now he's a smear and she's …
She's nobody. She's nobody and she knows it, and it would be so much easier to be nobody if there were someone to be nobody with.
She doesn't know who or what killed Chuck. She doesn't know why he was in the basement or what the sigils on the walls traced in his splattered blood could possibly mean. She doesn't know who screamed, or who laughed, but she knows the two sounds woke her up like a blasphemous alarm clock, and she knows the familiar shreds of flannel and denim that dot the bloody wall.
She knows she has to run, and run soon.
It's strange the way it dawns on her, that she's been forgotten, that she needs to go before somebody up there realizes she's been forgotten. The thoughts clash. She's not that important, never has been, and yet –
She's halfway through cramming her spare jeans into a bookbag when she spots the books.
The Winchester gospel, she thinks, and stifles bursting white-hot rage that bubbles through her brain like fresh coffee. She thinks of the sickly-pink water she poured in sullen silence down the kitchen sink and only just keeps herself from hissing, “Gospels are named after the people who wrote them,” at the books.
The paperbacks are the only tidy untouched things in Chuck's house. They don't even have his name on them, for heaven's sake.
For a delirious moment she doesn't feel worthy of touching them anymore. She's been at Chuck's place for months, since her parents vanished on a trip to her grandmother's house in Missouri. When the world started to crumple around them, they came together and held up the walls for as long as they could.
It wasn't very long.
She stares at the books, stares hard, wonders briefly if she's just imagining them.
The Barnes and Noble across the highway burned down with the rest of the mall. The local library's doors are firmly locked. Amazon.com died when the internet keeled over.
Books are already a rare commodity, those books in particular.
She curses under her breath.
It's a sad fact of life that sometimes objects are more important than people.
She'll be the first to admit she's excitable and naïve and essentially worthless. No one's going to write angsty feminist fanfic about her being a strong woman in dire situations, doing sexy things or waving around a weapon while wearing a tight tank top. She's a joke, and up until being a joke became the only thing keeping her alive, she enjoyed her life and her fandom and her silly inexplicable hobby of writing explicit gay incest porn for fun.
But in the grand scheme of things, she's just not as important as she'd like to be.
She can't forget that. It's what's keeping her alive.
It's what letting her walk out the front door of Chuck's house, into the dead hum of this new dead world. It's what keeps her arms from trembling as she cradles the cardboard box laden with paperbacks and bound unpublished manuscripts with the same delicate care as she would a newborn infant or her mother's collection of crystal animals.
She stomps down the front steps towards the black car sitting at the curb, uncaring if anyone might be out there in the world listening to her sullen footsteps and targeting her like a starving hawk. Let them hear. Let them come and get her. She can't find it in her to care about her own fate anymore.
The books, on the other hand … the books need to live on.
There is no awe in the way she opens the driver's side door of the car and slides the box across the seat to the passenger side. Maybe she might have made the odd happy noise over the car's very existence months ago, but it's a waste of time anymore.
She buckles in the box, efficient and protective. Any other time and she'd feel a bit more like an idiot.
This is not any other time.
She sits in the driver's seat and runs her fingers lightly over the steering wheel, tracing her fingertips over fine lines, pretending she knows where they came from. The worn patches left behind by the enthusiastic drumming of Michael's once-upon-a-time hands. The scratches in its surface inflicted by Lucifer's once-upon-a-time fingernails.
She hasn't seen Sam or Dean in months.
She never thought she'd be happy about that.
She starts the car with a determined twist of her fingers, reveling in the roar and purr of the old girl, and it's only when she glances to the right with a brimming spark of amusement that she spots the books again and realizes something.
Ask her anything. She knows the words and the characters and the canon. She knows the mythology and the monsters. Ask her about the contents of the secret compartment in the trunk. Ask her to quote lines of dialogue or the complete exorcism in Latin. Ask her dates and ages, Dean's favorites foods and Sam's favorite books.
Ask her how the angels screwed with the Winchesters to get what they want, and ask her which pages on Unpublished Cheaply Bound Manuscript #4 reveal the destinies Heaven and Hell intended Sam and Dean to fulfill.
And fulfill them, they did.
Turns out she is the only true Bible scholar in the world.
As she pulls away from the house her laughter rings through the open window, a jarring din, like a handful of bells dropped down a flight of stairs.
As far as she's concerned, it's the perfect soundtrack for the end of the world.
