Fic: The Ashes of Another Life
Feb. 19th, 2006 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosI swear to God, this fandom has turned me into the angstiest angst monkey that ever angsted.
Title: The Ashes of Another Life
Author: Troll Princess
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Spoilers for: "The Benders"
Pairing: None (Gen)
Disclaimer: Supernatural and all related characters and mythologies belong to someone who isn't me. I'm just playing with them.
Warning: None
Summary: John's only doing what's best for his boys ... both of them.
Author's note: So I saw people complaining about the possibility of Sam not being John's son and ... well, I wouldn't be me if I didn't see it as a challenge and run with it.
*****
The Ashes Of Another Life
*****
So there's this mingled mixture of woodsmoke and something metallic weighing down the air, and the sulfur's so thick it tastes like it's been slathered on John's tongue with a butter knife. Inside his ankle, the bones leave an ominous sensation behind with every movement, like a palmful of popcorn kernels being squeezed together.
Ten feet away, Dean's body's crumpled up against the wall, limp and pale. John pictures a sun-faded marionette cut from its strings as icicles crawl up his spine, and he thinks, Wasn't supposed to end like this, last time I checked.
There is John and Dean and there is the creature they've been hunting, and in between is a reed-thin nine-year-old whose voice would tremble if he spoke, holding a sawed-off shotgun in an eerily still grip and aiming it at the thing that hurt his dad and brother.
"If you want my family, you're going to have to go through me" hangs in the air, unsaid but perfectly understandable.
Definitely not like this, John thinks, and waits for the sound of the blast.
*****
Days after the death of his wife, John Winchester stumbles out of Missouri Mosely's house, leans against the side of his pickup truck, and lets his stomach heave and roll for what feels like hours.
Jump ahead ten minutes, and he's turning the corner towards his house, or what's left of it, and has to stop the truck in the middle of the road to keep from driving right into a parked car. His fingers clench on the steering wheel -- tight, tighter now -- like he's choking an invisible something (and maybe he is). If he closes his eyes, the scent of burned flesh hangs heavy in the air, and if he opens them, there's a garish black scar on the landscape where his wife used to be.
Kids scream as they run past his truck and there's a dog barking in the distance and a cold, empty spot in his memories from the moment he left Missouri's house to the time he sees home.
Jump ahead fifteen minutes, and the keys to the motel room they're staying in dangle from his fingertips only inches from the lock. More missing time, another gap in his mind where there should be turn signals and stoplights and instead all there is is screaming.
Jump ahead another fifteen minutes, and the boys are curled up next to one another on his bed. The babysitter's voice rings in his ears -- fed, changed, bathed, and napping -- but all he can do is choke on the urge to grab Dean and run, just pack up in a hurry and go, go go like a goddamn criminal..
Jump ahead ten minutes, and he's bent over the toilet throwing up once again.
Another five minutes gone by, and the splash of cold water on his face isn't helping.
Another five minutes, and the splash of Jack Daniels in a glass is.
*****
The heat wave comes on like a wild tsunami, soaking the entire town in intense humidity. Mary wakes to sweat-dampened sheets twisted around her legs, quietly grateful that John's on his yearly hunting trip with his buddies. Her legs feel sore and weighted down, as if she's been rolling and kicking in her sleep all night long, and she winces as she opens her eyes.
A figure sits on the edge of the bed and panic fills her for the briefest of instances before she realizes it's just John.
"You're home early," she says. Her smile is weak under the spell of his fingers pushing her hair away from her face, and her head swims as if she were drugged. It's the heat, she thinks, that's all.
And if there's something in his eyes that doesn't look right as he leans forward to kiss her, something cunning and strange, then that's the reason she chalks it all up to a dream.
*****
In the old days, the gods got their kicks hooking up with married women. Apparently, however, phenomenal cosmic power and magic didn't come with a hell of a lot of confidence. So the gods did what anyone else in their situation would do to get laid and made themselves look like the husbands of the objects of their desire.
The gods could be real bastards like that.
*****
Sam doesn't have that baby-soft newborn scent like Dean did, not the same one anyway, and that's the only difference she can see. She trails her fingertip over the end of his nose and the gentle curve of his cheek and thinks hopefully, He looks like John.
There's a dark voice in her head that responds with, Just like his father, but she forces herself to remain desperately oblivious to it.
*****
Missouri took his hand when he came into the room and let her fingers dance across his palm tracing the lines in it for a minute or so, but he knows she's the real deal because she never really looked at his palm at all. Her fingernails trail along his lifeline, light and easy. With any other woman, he'd think she was flirting, but the sensation of it's ticklish and high-pitched and he wonders how something so simple can fight against the darkness she's filling him with.
"Whatever did this was looking for a way in," she says. "A way of breaking one boy by hurting him with the other."
John tries to pull his hand away, but Missouri's grip is deceptively strong.
"You can't let that happen," she says. "Can't let those boys be led astray like that. Either one of them."
Later on, with the taste of alcohol burning his sore throat, he stares at his boys, Dean curled up against Sammy's side, one tiny arm draped over Sammy like an iron shield. In his head, Dean stands before his brother with a lifetime of blood on his hands, a warrior in everything but name, a thousand saved and grateful victims in his past. The Dean in his head aims a gun at his brother's forehead with a steady hand, and the smile that curls Sammy's lips in response turns John's blood to ice.
Not a chance, John thinks with a vengeance. Not my boys.
He tucks a blanket over both of them -- tight, tighter now -- and tries to figure out if five is too young to start training someone with a weapon.
*****
So there's this mingled mixture of blood and fire and something acidic weighing down the air, and the sulfur's so thick it tastes like it's been slathered on Sam's tongue with a butter knife. Dean hunches on the ground nearby, trying to stagger to his feet under the weight of a mass of bruises and lumps. John's slumped against the far wall, blood soaking his shirt so dark it's turned black and hidden him in the shadows.
Sam takes a deep breath and lets it out in a ragged shudder, then steps between his family and the thing that broke them. He is nine again, but the shotgun is long gone, replaced with a harsher truth, and his voice would tremble when he spoke if the lightbulbs and walls and everything else his mind can reach weren't doing it for him.
"If you want my family, you're going to have to go through me" hangs in the air, unsaid but perfectly understandable.
John presses a hand to his wound, thinks, This is where it ends, and waits for the sound of what's to come.
Title: The Ashes of Another Life
Author: Troll Princess
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Spoilers for: "The Benders"
Pairing: None (Gen)
Disclaimer: Supernatural and all related characters and mythologies belong to someone who isn't me. I'm just playing with them.
Warning: None
Summary: John's only doing what's best for his boys ... both of them.
Author's note: So I saw people complaining about the possibility of Sam not being John's son and ... well, I wouldn't be me if I didn't see it as a challenge and run with it.
The Ashes Of Another Life
*****
So there's this mingled mixture of woodsmoke and something metallic weighing down the air, and the sulfur's so thick it tastes like it's been slathered on John's tongue with a butter knife. Inside his ankle, the bones leave an ominous sensation behind with every movement, like a palmful of popcorn kernels being squeezed together.
Ten feet away, Dean's body's crumpled up against the wall, limp and pale. John pictures a sun-faded marionette cut from its strings as icicles crawl up his spine, and he thinks, Wasn't supposed to end like this, last time I checked.
There is John and Dean and there is the creature they've been hunting, and in between is a reed-thin nine-year-old whose voice would tremble if he spoke, holding a sawed-off shotgun in an eerily still grip and aiming it at the thing that hurt his dad and brother.
"If you want my family, you're going to have to go through me" hangs in the air, unsaid but perfectly understandable.
Definitely not like this, John thinks, and waits for the sound of the blast.
Days after the death of his wife, John Winchester stumbles out of Missouri Mosely's house, leans against the side of his pickup truck, and lets his stomach heave and roll for what feels like hours.
Jump ahead ten minutes, and he's turning the corner towards his house, or what's left of it, and has to stop the truck in the middle of the road to keep from driving right into a parked car. His fingers clench on the steering wheel -- tight, tighter now -- like he's choking an invisible something (and maybe he is). If he closes his eyes, the scent of burned flesh hangs heavy in the air, and if he opens them, there's a garish black scar on the landscape where his wife used to be.
Kids scream as they run past his truck and there's a dog barking in the distance and a cold, empty spot in his memories from the moment he left Missouri's house to the time he sees home.
Jump ahead fifteen minutes, and the keys to the motel room they're staying in dangle from his fingertips only inches from the lock. More missing time, another gap in his mind where there should be turn signals and stoplights and instead all there is is screaming.
Jump ahead another fifteen minutes, and the boys are curled up next to one another on his bed. The babysitter's voice rings in his ears -- fed, changed, bathed, and napping -- but all he can do is choke on the urge to grab Dean and run, just pack up in a hurry and go, go go like a goddamn criminal..
Jump ahead ten minutes, and he's bent over the toilet throwing up once again.
Another five minutes gone by, and the splash of cold water on his face isn't helping.
Another five minutes, and the splash of Jack Daniels in a glass is.
The heat wave comes on like a wild tsunami, soaking the entire town in intense humidity. Mary wakes to sweat-dampened sheets twisted around her legs, quietly grateful that John's on his yearly hunting trip with his buddies. Her legs feel sore and weighted down, as if she's been rolling and kicking in her sleep all night long, and she winces as she opens her eyes.
A figure sits on the edge of the bed and panic fills her for the briefest of instances before she realizes it's just John.
"You're home early," she says. Her smile is weak under the spell of his fingers pushing her hair away from her face, and her head swims as if she were drugged. It's the heat, she thinks, that's all.
And if there's something in his eyes that doesn't look right as he leans forward to kiss her, something cunning and strange, then that's the reason she chalks it all up to a dream.
In the old days, the gods got their kicks hooking up with married women. Apparently, however, phenomenal cosmic power and magic didn't come with a hell of a lot of confidence. So the gods did what anyone else in their situation would do to get laid and made themselves look like the husbands of the objects of their desire.
The gods could be real bastards like that.
Sam doesn't have that baby-soft newborn scent like Dean did, not the same one anyway, and that's the only difference she can see. She trails her fingertip over the end of his nose and the gentle curve of his cheek and thinks hopefully, He looks like John.
There's a dark voice in her head that responds with, Just like his father, but she forces herself to remain desperately oblivious to it.
Missouri took his hand when he came into the room and let her fingers dance across his palm tracing the lines in it for a minute or so, but he knows she's the real deal because she never really looked at his palm at all. Her fingernails trail along his lifeline, light and easy. With any other woman, he'd think she was flirting, but the sensation of it's ticklish and high-pitched and he wonders how something so simple can fight against the darkness she's filling him with.
"Whatever did this was looking for a way in," she says. "A way of breaking one boy by hurting him with the other."
John tries to pull his hand away, but Missouri's grip is deceptively strong.
"You can't let that happen," she says. "Can't let those boys be led astray like that. Either one of them."
Later on, with the taste of alcohol burning his sore throat, he stares at his boys, Dean curled up against Sammy's side, one tiny arm draped over Sammy like an iron shield. In his head, Dean stands before his brother with a lifetime of blood on his hands, a warrior in everything but name, a thousand saved and grateful victims in his past. The Dean in his head aims a gun at his brother's forehead with a steady hand, and the smile that curls Sammy's lips in response turns John's blood to ice.
Not a chance, John thinks with a vengeance. Not my boys.
He tucks a blanket over both of them -- tight, tighter now -- and tries to figure out if five is too young to start training someone with a weapon.
So there's this mingled mixture of blood and fire and something acidic weighing down the air, and the sulfur's so thick it tastes like it's been slathered on Sam's tongue with a butter knife. Dean hunches on the ground nearby, trying to stagger to his feet under the weight of a mass of bruises and lumps. John's slumped against the far wall, blood soaking his shirt so dark it's turned black and hidden him in the shadows.
Sam takes a deep breath and lets it out in a ragged shudder, then steps between his family and the thing that broke them. He is nine again, but the shotgun is long gone, replaced with a harsher truth, and his voice would tremble when he spoke if the lightbulbs and walls and everything else his mind can reach weren't doing it for him.
"If you want my family, you're going to have to go through me" hangs in the air, unsaid but perfectly understandable.
John presses a hand to his wound, thinks, This is where it ends, and waits for the sound of what's to come.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 10:18 pm (UTC)...
Umm...yeah. Nicely written, as always.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 12:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 12:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 01:33 am (UTC)Again, awesome fic :D
no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 12:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 11:21 pm (UTC)*BLINK*
that was terrific. i'm all ashiver at the eerie ominousness of it, how you managed to make it both creepy and touching. nguh.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 12:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 01:22 am (UTC)Then Sam and Dean would be only half brothers... wow. I don't think I'd like that. Hm.
Anyway, love the circular nature of this, and just all of it. Beautiful.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 12:21 pm (UTC)That was the only way I could really see Sam not being John's son, because I just can't see Mary cheating and you'd think they would have told Sam already if he were adopted.
And the half-brothers thing doesn't bother me so much, but then again there's a lot of adoptions and divorces and remarriages in my family, so the whole half-brothers thing still looks like brothers to me if you treat it like that. Plus, it makes an odd sort of sense in the long run, Sam choosing John and Dean as his family because they're the people who love him the most. I kinda like that. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 12:23 pm (UTC)If it helps, I've got glue and duct tape. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 10:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-21 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-26 05:47 am (UTC)The Dean in his head aims a gun at his brother's forehead with a steady hand, and the smile that curls Sammy's lips in response turns John's blood to ice. ~ I love the fact that this fic is completely the way everything could go, heartbreaking as it would be.
♥
no subject
Date: 2007-02-22 07:31 pm (UTC)