![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosWell, the Remix authors have been revealed, so I guess now's the time to admit that I wrote Man of War (Both Sides Now Remix). Heh. There's a good reason I didn't offer to write a story for whoever guessed which remix I wrote. I was pretty sure anybody who read it would know damn well I wrote it, considering the roll I've been on and the style I tend to write in. ;)
(And![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
soundingsea wrote the awesome remix of Dark Places Where Monsters Dwell. Wheeeee! *twirls her around the room*)
So now I repost, 'cause I like having all my fic right here. *cuddles it*
Title: Man of War (Both Sides Now Remix)
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural/X-Men Movieverse
Rating: R
Pairing: None
Spoilers for: X2/AU from before "Bloody Mary"
Warnings: Bad language
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like playing with them.
Summary: Blood tells a story, and sometimes it isn't a pretty one.
Written for:remixredux -- Remix of Proof in the Blood by lunarknightz
*****
Man of War (Both Sides Now Remix)
*****
The day it happens, Dean comes to with a pounding headache and the pattern of the steering wheel drawn across his forehead in furious bruises. The Impala tilts into the ditch underneath him, one of the back tires high enough off the pavement to curl up under and take a nap. The world's still spinning, spinning, spinning, at such cross purposes with the twisting in his head that his stomach surges and groans in rebellion.
Something's off-kilter, and it's not the car or the way that dizzying sensation shoots directly through his system like a shot of something wild and wicked pounded into his bloodstream.
Somewhere on the other side of town, Sam's on his knees in more pain than he's ever been in his whole life, clutching his head like his brain's trying to make a fucking break for it.
Dean doesn't want to think about how he knows that before he starts trying to extricate the Impala from the ditch.
*****
Before everything goes to hell, neither one of them even care about it, but afterwards it starts interfering with their work and there's no getting around it. Dean wonders sometimes if Dad's having the the same problem with this whole mutant thing, and tries Dad's number a few times before his voice telling callers to try contacting his son for help just starts to piss Dean off.
It's weeks after it happens that Sam leans across the mounds of paperwork they've been through half a dozen times, the scribblings that make up his usual theories and the books on the occult they practically have memorized by now. He sighs and says, "You know, it's possible it's a mutant," like he wants to ruin Dean's day just like that.
Mutant, Dean always thinks when the word comes up, A freak of nature I can't do shit about. Now let's use it in a sentence.
"Might be," Dean says with a shrug, dragging his fingertip through the salt he spilled on the tabletop. "Know any mutants who show up in mirrors and make your eyeballs explode?"
There, was that so hard?
*****
Dean hates all of this mutant crap, hates it so much he clenches his fists tight enough to hurt just thinking about it. Every time he thinks that, he feels like one of those creepy psycho religious people who don't believe in evolution because they're too busy believing their supreme being's so powerful it takes him six whole days to create a planet and then has to go take a fucking nap.
It's the same thing, though, except not. His mind wraps easily around ghosts and black magic and demons, but whip out that "genetic mutation" bullshit and his brain can't handle it. Hell, he barely passed every science class he ever took, but if they'd ever taken folklore classes, he'd have passed in a cakewalk.
Months after the incident that swept the planet, he's still waking up to the face of that shapeshifter he killed -- his face -- and wondering when the line between a thing he could shoot and a person he couldn't blurred beyond recognition.
*****
Every time Sam wakes up from a nightmare, Dean wakes up with him, and it's easy enough to pass it off as sharing the same motel room, the same air, the same startling awareness of one another.
One day, Sam's on the other side of town when some possessed girl stabs him in the leg with a kitchen knife, and Dean stumbles as he walks down the street with the cold slice of the blade through his muscles short-circuiting his senses.
Like twins, he cracks later when he tells Sam the story, and neither one of them mentions they're not.
*****
It finally comes to a head when they're in New York on a job, this gremlin in Central Park that's an even harder kill than either one of them thought. The thing is that it's the lack of sleep and failure to kill the bastard that's screwing with them, not an absence of information. That's the reason Sam suddenly deciding he's got to wander off on his own for research reeks like the lie it is. It's the same taint that hangs in the air when Dean tosses the lie back at Sam, saying he's got his own trail to follow at a different library.
A library. Christ. Sam must really be out of it if he actually thinks Dean's gleefully traipsing off to a fucking library without Sam around to do all the work.
Rusty doesn't even begin to describe it, Sam not noticing Dean following after him. Dean almost loses him when he startles the hell out of some punk trying to pick his pocket and nearly breaks the kid's wrist in the process, but a minute later he catches a glimpse of Sam ducking into a building full of private practices.
The office Sam goes to is nice, well-appointed, fancy as hell, and not the least bit ashamed or secretive about what they're doing there. Nothing's required yet, no government-ordered doctor's visits or people being led into labs at gunpoint, but with the world being what it is anymore, it's only a matter of time.
"You here for the genetic testing?" the receptionist asks with a sympathetic smile.
Dean nods with his usual charming air and thinks, Someone's making a lot of money breaking the bad news to a ton of people.
Thirty minutes later, Dean leans back against the paper-lined cushion with the vial of his blood in plain sight and Sam's voice politely thanking some faceless doctor out in the hallway. He tilts his head just so, unable to stop looking at the vial of his blood, and wonders if he's allowed to ask for them to give it back when they're done.
He's never given blood without taking something else's blood back in the long run, and when he realizes that, the tiny spot on his arm won't stop itching.
*****
He almost forgets about the results, about getting his hands on them, but halfway through their battle with the gremlin the damn thing slashes the hell out of Sam's shoulder and searing phantom pain sets Dean's upper arm on fire like the worst wake-up call on the planet.
There is an exact amount of pressure that you can place on a person's neck that will cut off their circulation enough to kill them, and Dean can almost feel it as the doctor gives his diagnosis.
Mutant. A freak of nature I can't do shit about. Now let's use it in a sentence.
"But I can't be a . . ." The words choke off in his throat, and there's that exact amount of pressure at work.
All right, I guess it is that hard.
When he bolts out of the office, it's the first time Sam's voice behind him has made him run in the opposite direction rather than towards it.
*****
It takes Sam an hour to find him, pretty pathetic considering the first thing he does is run right back to the gremlin's hunting ground in Central Park. Spots of green blood still litter the pathway like spilled paint, and the metallic scent hangs in the air and comforts him a hell of a lot better than any teddy bear or security blanket ever has.
Dean paces back and forth like a bear in the zoo, watching Sam walk up and fixing his gaze on the small but thick envelope in Sam's hand.
Positive results come with lots of paperwork, he thinks like some sort of crazy man.
"Go away, Sam," he says, but Sam doesn't listen. Sammy never listens, not as long as he's awake, and that's why he plops down on a nearby bench as if he owns the entire park.
Dean remembers being loud in the office, being far too loud, as if the higher his voice got when he called it a mistake, the more it might actually be one. He can't take his eyes off that goddamn white envelope, Sam calmly studying Dean's behavior like he's about to write a term paper on it.
What would Dad do if he were here?
The thought makes Dean sit down hard on the bench next to Sam, because Dean would want someone to rage and flail through this along with him and Dad wouldn't be the one to turn to for that. Dad wouldn't care if they both developed superstrength and shot laser beams out of their eyes. They weren't possessed by demons, and that was all that mattered, wasn't it?
Dean absently scratches his other arm, the one they didn't take the blood from, and glances over to see Sam scratching the same spot on the inside of his elbow.
What would Dad do if he were here? Dean thinks again, his hand dropping to his side as something sharp bursts bright but painlessly behind his eyes.
And when Well, he wouldn't be in Oklahoma fighting a fucking werewolf right now floats through his mind with a startling, truthful clarity, Dean has to grab at the seat of the bench in a white-knuckled grip to keep from punching something.
(And
soundingsea wrote the awesome remix of Dark Places Where Monsters Dwell. Wheeeee! *twirls her around the room*)So now I repost, 'cause I like having all my fic right here. *cuddles it*
Title: Man of War (Both Sides Now Remix)
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural/X-Men Movieverse
Rating: R
Pairing: None
Spoilers for: X2/AU from before "Bloody Mary"
Warnings: Bad language
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like playing with them.
Summary: Blood tells a story, and sometimes it isn't a pretty one.
Written for:
remixredux -- Remix of Proof in the Blood by lunarknightzMan of War (Both Sides Now Remix)
*****
The day it happens, Dean comes to with a pounding headache and the pattern of the steering wheel drawn across his forehead in furious bruises. The Impala tilts into the ditch underneath him, one of the back tires high enough off the pavement to curl up under and take a nap. The world's still spinning, spinning, spinning, at such cross purposes with the twisting in his head that his stomach surges and groans in rebellion.
Something's off-kilter, and it's not the car or the way that dizzying sensation shoots directly through his system like a shot of something wild and wicked pounded into his bloodstream.
Somewhere on the other side of town, Sam's on his knees in more pain than he's ever been in his whole life, clutching his head like his brain's trying to make a fucking break for it.
Dean doesn't want to think about how he knows that before he starts trying to extricate the Impala from the ditch.
*****
Before everything goes to hell, neither one of them even care about it, but afterwards it starts interfering with their work and there's no getting around it. Dean wonders sometimes if Dad's having the the same problem with this whole mutant thing, and tries Dad's number a few times before his voice telling callers to try contacting his son for help just starts to piss Dean off.
It's weeks after it happens that Sam leans across the mounds of paperwork they've been through half a dozen times, the scribblings that make up his usual theories and the books on the occult they practically have memorized by now. He sighs and says, "You know, it's possible it's a mutant," like he wants to ruin Dean's day just like that.
Mutant, Dean always thinks when the word comes up, A freak of nature I can't do shit about. Now let's use it in a sentence.
"Might be," Dean says with a shrug, dragging his fingertip through the salt he spilled on the tabletop. "Know any mutants who show up in mirrors and make your eyeballs explode?"
There, was that so hard?
Dean hates all of this mutant crap, hates it so much he clenches his fists tight enough to hurt just thinking about it. Every time he thinks that, he feels like one of those creepy psycho religious people who don't believe in evolution because they're too busy believing their supreme being's so powerful it takes him six whole days to create a planet and then has to go take a fucking nap.
It's the same thing, though, except not. His mind wraps easily around ghosts and black magic and demons, but whip out that "genetic mutation" bullshit and his brain can't handle it. Hell, he barely passed every science class he ever took, but if they'd ever taken folklore classes, he'd have passed in a cakewalk.
Months after the incident that swept the planet, he's still waking up to the face of that shapeshifter he killed -- his face -- and wondering when the line between a thing he could shoot and a person he couldn't blurred beyond recognition.
Every time Sam wakes up from a nightmare, Dean wakes up with him, and it's easy enough to pass it off as sharing the same motel room, the same air, the same startling awareness of one another.
One day, Sam's on the other side of town when some possessed girl stabs him in the leg with a kitchen knife, and Dean stumbles as he walks down the street with the cold slice of the blade through his muscles short-circuiting his senses.
Like twins, he cracks later when he tells Sam the story, and neither one of them mentions they're not.
It finally comes to a head when they're in New York on a job, this gremlin in Central Park that's an even harder kill than either one of them thought. The thing is that it's the lack of sleep and failure to kill the bastard that's screwing with them, not an absence of information. That's the reason Sam suddenly deciding he's got to wander off on his own for research reeks like the lie it is. It's the same taint that hangs in the air when Dean tosses the lie back at Sam, saying he's got his own trail to follow at a different library.
A library. Christ. Sam must really be out of it if he actually thinks Dean's gleefully traipsing off to a fucking library without Sam around to do all the work.
Rusty doesn't even begin to describe it, Sam not noticing Dean following after him. Dean almost loses him when he startles the hell out of some punk trying to pick his pocket and nearly breaks the kid's wrist in the process, but a minute later he catches a glimpse of Sam ducking into a building full of private practices.
The office Sam goes to is nice, well-appointed, fancy as hell, and not the least bit ashamed or secretive about what they're doing there. Nothing's required yet, no government-ordered doctor's visits or people being led into labs at gunpoint, but with the world being what it is anymore, it's only a matter of time.
"You here for the genetic testing?" the receptionist asks with a sympathetic smile.
Dean nods with his usual charming air and thinks, Someone's making a lot of money breaking the bad news to a ton of people.
Thirty minutes later, Dean leans back against the paper-lined cushion with the vial of his blood in plain sight and Sam's voice politely thanking some faceless doctor out in the hallway. He tilts his head just so, unable to stop looking at the vial of his blood, and wonders if he's allowed to ask for them to give it back when they're done.
He's never given blood without taking something else's blood back in the long run, and when he realizes that, the tiny spot on his arm won't stop itching.
He almost forgets about the results, about getting his hands on them, but halfway through their battle with the gremlin the damn thing slashes the hell out of Sam's shoulder and searing phantom pain sets Dean's upper arm on fire like the worst wake-up call on the planet.
There is an exact amount of pressure that you can place on a person's neck that will cut off their circulation enough to kill them, and Dean can almost feel it as the doctor gives his diagnosis.
Mutant. A freak of nature I can't do shit about. Now let's use it in a sentence.
"But I can't be a . . ." The words choke off in his throat, and there's that exact amount of pressure at work.
All right, I guess it is that hard.
When he bolts out of the office, it's the first time Sam's voice behind him has made him run in the opposite direction rather than towards it.
It takes Sam an hour to find him, pretty pathetic considering the first thing he does is run right back to the gremlin's hunting ground in Central Park. Spots of green blood still litter the pathway like spilled paint, and the metallic scent hangs in the air and comforts him a hell of a lot better than any teddy bear or security blanket ever has.
Dean paces back and forth like a bear in the zoo, watching Sam walk up and fixing his gaze on the small but thick envelope in Sam's hand.
Positive results come with lots of paperwork, he thinks like some sort of crazy man.
"Go away, Sam," he says, but Sam doesn't listen. Sammy never listens, not as long as he's awake, and that's why he plops down on a nearby bench as if he owns the entire park.
Dean remembers being loud in the office, being far too loud, as if the higher his voice got when he called it a mistake, the more it might actually be one. He can't take his eyes off that goddamn white envelope, Sam calmly studying Dean's behavior like he's about to write a term paper on it.
What would Dad do if he were here?
The thought makes Dean sit down hard on the bench next to Sam, because Dean would want someone to rage and flail through this along with him and Dad wouldn't be the one to turn to for that. Dad wouldn't care if they both developed superstrength and shot laser beams out of their eyes. They weren't possessed by demons, and that was all that mattered, wasn't it?
Dean absently scratches his other arm, the one they didn't take the blood from, and glances over to see Sam scratching the same spot on the inside of his elbow.
What would Dad do if he were here? Dean thinks again, his hand dropping to his side as something sharp bursts bright but painlessly behind his eyes.
And when Well, he wouldn't be in Oklahoma fighting a fucking werewolf right now floats through his mind with a startling, truthful clarity, Dean has to grab at the seat of the bench in a white-knuckled grip to keep from punching something.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-04-02 09:46 pm (UTC)The above was my exact reaction to this story, along with a mouthful of chicken and rice.
This is fucking excellent
dude!!no subject
Date: 2006-04-03 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-03 12:09 am (UTC)Wow. I've only seen a couple episodes of Supernatural, but you tell a neat story here. I like their sense of connectedness and the scary, omnipresent idea of mutant registration hanging over their heads.
Spots of green blood still litter the pathway like spilled paint, and the metallic scent hangs in the air and comforts him a hell of a lot better than any teddy bear or security blanket ever has.
This is such a vivid description, I can almost taste the coppery blood in the air.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-03 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-03 12:14 am (UTC)This? Is fucking BRILLIANT.
*flails some more*
no subject
Date: 2006-04-03 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-03 10:14 pm (UTC)Just telling you once more how truly awesome this story is.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-05 05:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-23 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-24 03:05 am (UTC)Yeah, it's neat. I love Dean's denial and 'use mutant in a sentence' and...
Yeah.
*bounce*
no subject
Date: 2007-06-09 02:53 am (UTC)This just begs for more. That last sentence especially was a real punch to the gut. I'd love to see them track their dad down and..I dunno. DO something. This is a cool story. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-05-27 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-29 01:47 am (UTC)