fic: Farewell to Everest Chapter 2
Fandom: Supernatural
Title: Farewell to Everest, (2/3)
Author: aenissesthai
Genre: Het, angst
Rating: M (mature)
Characters/pairings: Amelia/Jimmy, Amelia/Castiel, Dean
Spoilers: Spoilers through Season 5, Episode 3
Warnings: dark, adult themes; issues with consent; harsh language; sexual situations
Author note: I do not warn for character death in any of my stories, since I consider it a plot spoiler. If character death is an emotional trigger for you, I urge you to avoid my work. Thank you for understanding.
Word Count: Chapter 2: 4000
Disclaimer: All characters from Supernatural are the intellectual property of Eric Kripke, Warner Bros. Television, and Kripke Enterprises. I make no profit from this fanfiction.
Summary: Dean and Castiel meet with Amelia Novak after Castiel’s confrontation with the archangel. Ch. 2. "It’s been an oddly detached ritual, undressing an angel, and she can’t help feeling there should’ve been more fanfare to it, a promise of divine retribution crackling through an atmosphere thick with sin."
Previous (Chapter One): aenissesthai.livejournal.com/7118.html#cutid1
Chapter Two:
She rummages through the boxes in her bedroom, hands made clumsy by her hyperawareness of the angel slouched near her window. Afternoon light seeps through the simple blinds, striping across his face, his hands, that utilitarian trench coat. Despite his casual pose, there’s something strange in his posture, something that screams otherness despite the fact that he’s barely visible in her peripheral vision.
It’s his stillness, she realizes, his complete lack of tics or twitches. For one awful moment, she wonders if he even breathes, if Jimmy had spent the last year of his life struggling for air, a celestial thumb pressed figuratively against his throat. Horror sweeps through her, and it’s all she can do to keep from gagging aloud. Against her will, her eyes dart over to him.
He meets her panicked stare with his usual detached gaze, his chest visibly rising and falling beneath the crooked blue tie.
She jerks her head away as if he’d slapped her. ‘Stay out of my mind!’ she wants to scream but bites her lip to keep the words inside. She has no proof he’s been reading her, and she’ll be damned before she gives him the satisfaction of raving like a madwoman.
She’s not insane. She knows what she’s doing.
She opens the last box and is relieved to feel thick layers of tissue paper wrapped around hard objects. She unwraps each one carefully and lays them out on the single sheet that covers the mattress. “Come here.”
The angel approaches with his hands tucked in the coat pockets, stopping just short of her personal space. He tilts his head to look at the pictures. Her fingers clench on the wedding photo in its crystal frame.
God, she looks so young-they both look so young, so certain of the benevolent future that awaited them, joined with God’s grace on this day. This isn’t one of the stiff, formal photos; it’s the black-and-white candid shot taken by his friend Brian, whose natural talent eventually won him a staff position at the Tribune. She and Jimmy are laughing into each other’s eyes, his hair beginning to escape its tightly combed control, the ribbons from her simple circlet wound loosely through his long, elegant fingers.
She’d always loved his hands, wished hers were half as graceful…remembered those hands trembling as he unhooked the thousand tiny clasps on the back of her dress, their first time together as a married couple.
She exhales sharply and grabs the next photo, holding it up for the angel’s inspection. It’s Jimmy cradling a two-year-old Claire, the child’s face reddened by angry wails. His eyes are alight with amusement, his lips pursed sympathetically as he tries to soothe her fit of toddler rage. He’d been the only one Claire would respond to whenever the world became too much for her baby senses. Daddy’s girl.
Daddy’s girl to the end.
Amelia runs her fingers along the frame of the last photo: Jimmy holding a helmet and goggles, windblown and grinning as he stands beside a helicopter on Navy Pier, the teal blue waters of Lake Michigan behind him stretching endlessly to the horizon.
“Do you see?” The cracked sound of her voice is harsh in the silent room. “He had a life. He had us. He was somebody.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what? Yes, you see the photos? Yes, you understand English? Yes, you understand what you did to us?”
His expression grows visibly troubled, yet he replies in that infuriating monotone. “What would you have me say?”
She chokes out a sound, half-sob, half-laugh. “I’d have you say you know where he is. I’d have you say you’re bringing him back to me. But that’s not going to happen, is it? You got what you wanted from him, just like that demon got what it wanted from me, and now you’re done with him.”
And there it is, the memory she’s been fiercely repressing for the past two weeks: that roiling, vicious sensation of being penetrated everywhere, violated down to the most secret corners of her being. She remembers watching helplessly as her hands bound her stunned daughter to a chair, her finger tightened on a trigger (she screams and screams), Jimmy’s shirt blossomed red, and God, God, why have you forsaken us?
A firm, almost painful grip on her arm yanks her back to reality. “I’m no demon, Amelia.”
“Oh, no? Then what do you call a creature that violates a twelve-year-old girl?”
She’s finally broken through his façade of angelic detachment. His face twists with anger, and he shakes her arm roughly. “I never violated Claire! I entered with her express consent!”
“Consent? What consent can a child give? She didn’t know what she was asking for!”
“She begged me to intervene, to help her! There was no other way to save all of you.”
“But did she know you intended to keep her forever?” He releases her arm and steps back, his features now darkening with shame. But it’s not enough for her, not nearly enough. She wants to see him bleed with shame. “Oh, yes, she remembers. We both remember, every time she wakes screaming from nightmares that you’re going to come back for her.”
“Tell her…” His jaw flexes with effort. “Tell Claire she needn’t fear. I wouldn’t have kept her. No matter my orders, I…such an act would be abomination. To myself and my charge.”
It takes her a moment to absorb this reassurance, before it all clicks in place. “You played him! You made Jimmy think-you made him choose between himself and his daughter, because you knew he didn’t want you back! You forced him to beg you to take him instead, because he thought-Oh, God!” she cries to the ceiling. “What kind of God makes a creature like you and calls it an angel? You’re nothing but a manipulative bastard, a contemptible body thief!”
“Call me what you will, but remember this: I saved his life.”
“Did you? Because from what I heard before, you threw his life away first chance that came along. All you wanted was his body, and now you have it!”
“This isn’t his body.” He meets her shocked gaze. “The encounter with the archangel…there was nothing left of him or me.”
The horror of that image would overwhelm her, but for the fact that it doesn’t make sense. “Then how are you here? Why do you still look like him?”
He looks away from her, and she knows he won’t answer. It doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t believe him. She can’t believe him.
“No. No, you’re lying. Do you think I don’t know him? He was my husband!” My partner. My lover. She gathers up the pictures on the bed and shoves them into his chest. He staggers slightly before recovering, setting them gently on top of a nearby stack of boxes. As soon as he turns back, she’s on him, striking him in the chest and fisting her hands in his lapels again. “You think I don’t know this body? You think I don’t know every line, every-” sweep of muscle, jutted hipbone, pulse point-
She stops, because there are no words-no words for this cold, furious swell of emotion, this yawning gulf inside her, screaming of hunger and loss, grief and need-
Her hands are moving, twisting the material between her fingers and shoving at it, pushing at the shoulders, pulling at the sleeves until the trench coat finally falls roughly to the floor. She grabs at the dark suit coat, and that’s when his hands come up and grasp hers, stopping her.
She looks up. His eyes are wide, his pulse beating visibly under his jawline. He’s surprised, maybe even scared, and it arouses something dark inside her, something that wells up in her throat, tasting of bile and iron. She knows he can easily swat her aside and leave, but she also knows the weapon she wields.
“You owe me,” she whispers. “You took him from me, and you owe me-” the chance to search for him across the familiar planes of this flesh, to gather the scattered fragments of his soul, to atone at last for the way she-
She jerks her hands away from him, gasping as if she’d just been slapped.
“Amelia?” There is real concern in his voice, making him sound almost like Jimmy, and she can’t bear it. He tilts his head, seeking out her gaze until he finally catches it, and what she sees reflected back at her (pity, compassion, dawning comprehension) may finally break apart what she has held together for the past year by sheer force of will-and she can’t bear it.
“Don’t you say my name! And don’t you dare pity me, not until you understand what…not until you understand!”
He averts his eyes, muscles in his jaw twitching as he seems to fight some battle within himself. Suddenly, he unfastens the jacket, shrugging it off his shoulders until it crumples to the floor beside the trench coat. Lifting his chin, he stares past her as if gazing into the far distance.
Just like that, she knows she has won. So this dark emotion inside her must be triumph, sporting a rictus grin as it sinks its teeth into her heart.
She steps closer and lifts trembling hands to his tie.
/-/-/
He is almost completely unclothed now. Not once has he moved his gaze from the far wall of the bedroom, not even when she’d accidentally brushed his bicep, raising a trail of goosebumps in her fingers’ wake.
It’s been an oddly detached ritual, undressing an angel, and she can’t help feeling there should’ve been more fanfare to it, a promise of divine retribution crackling through an atmosphere thick with sin. Instead, there’s been silence, except for her occasional curt directions. Her initial agitation sinks beneath a deep surface calm, like a wreck beneath a murky lake.
However, one thing is certain: this is almost definitely her husband’s body. Maybe a little more muscled in the upper arms but not inexplicably so, considering his experiences of the past year (grabbing the candlestick and attacking Roger with a brute force she’d never seen in him before).
With that memory comes the disturbance of her calm (ripples as something dark and sinuous breaks the surface of her subconscious), and her fingers twitch with tension, hairs rising on the back of her neck. She grits her teeth against the pressure building in her throat and hooks her thumbs around the worn waistband of his boxer-briefs, pulling them straight down his legs.
There. Right there at the top of his right thigh, where the fine hair on his legs gives way to the smooth skin of his pelvis, lie two faint, irregular birthmarks. Café-au-lait spots, they’re called, and she remembers tracing their shape with her fingers in the lazy glow of mornings past.
Anger swells in her breast. “You lied to me. This is Jimmy’s body!”
“I haven’t lied.” He keeps his gaze fixed on the far wall, although there’s a rougher edge to his voice, if that’s possible. “His body was destroyed by the archangel.”
“Then how can it be so exact, even his birthmarks?”
“It was remade-”
“By whom? Who would be capable of doing something like this, making an exact copy of everything that was his, down to every detail?”
The angel tightens his lips (Jimmy’s soft, full lips), and she knows he won’t tell her. He finally turns his eyes upon her, piercing her with a gaze that’s every bit as frustrated as she feels. “What do you want from me? You say you want repentance, but you refuse to specify; you say atonement, but you won’t say how.”
“I want you to understand!” and she hates the vagueness of her clumsy words, but she dare not say more. She’s wavering on the edge of an emotional precipice, and one more word might just-
“How am I to do that, when you keep yourself closed to me?”
For the first time in her life, she literally sees red, bloodied tints of rage creeping in from every corner of her vision. If she could, she would spit venom at him like a snake, but all she has is words. “So that’s the only way you can do this, by having me open myself to you? I have to let you dig around inside my brain, my soul? Let me tell you something, angel. If you want to get inside me, that’s a two-way street. I get to get inside you, too.” She points without taking her glare from him. “Bed.”
His expression is a complex mix of anger, frustration, and trepidation, but he kicks his fallen briefs aside and obediently stalks toward the bed. She takes in his nakedness for the first time, the heaviness of his sex contrasting with the lithe lines of the rest of his body. She ought to feel appreciation or lust, she thinks, but those softer urges are crushed beneath the hard edges of intent.
He lies down on the thin sheet, arms straight at his sides, staring up at the ceiling like some kind of sacrificial offering. It infuriates her. He isn’t the one who was sacrificed. She unbelts her dusty jeans and yanks them off along with her shoes, pulls her shirt over her head…then hesitates. Her breasts are small and have begun to sag a little, but then again, this isn’t about desire, and there’s no need to please him. She unhooks her bra and tosses it to the floor before joining him on the bed, where she kneels at his side.
He keeps his gaze fixed on the ceiling as his chest rises and falls with shallow, uneven breaths. It could be arousal, but he’s not erect, so she suspects it might be fear. Good. If she’s going to open for him, it’s only right that he is rendered as vulnerable as her.
She places one hand on his chest and feels his heart flutter beneath, then closes her eyes and carefully, fearfully, begins to lower the barriers that wall off her most painful memories. They seep out like acid, and she opens herself fully so that the angel may share in this poisoned cup.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Novak, but your husband’s symptoms-hearing mysterious voices, delusions that God has chosen him for a secret mission-are definitely those of classic schizophrenia. It’s a late onset for James; schizophrenia usually manifests in men by the time they reach their late twenties, but it’s not completely unheard of at his age. The good news is the disease is controllable with the proper drugs, especially with early intervention…”
She skims her hand along his body, brushing over his lower abdominals, which quiver as she traces the thin line of hair leading downward. This isn’t seduction, so she wastes no time with foreplay, reaching between his legs and grasping him firmly. He tips his head back and breathes hard through his nose as she strokes him, as if he doesn’t know that he could breathe through his mouth instead. Maybe he doesn’t.
“Mrs. Novak, this is the Kankakee County Sheriff’s Department. We’d like you to send your husband’s dental records to our office at-No, no, we haven’t found-well, yes, there was a body discovered near the river, but we have no clear indication…this is a formality only, Mrs. Novak. Two months ago? No, we don’t seem to have received them; at least, they’re not in our database. Would you mind sending them again? Sorry to disturb you, Ma’am.”
He begins to respond to her touch, but it’s not fast enough for her, not near fast enough for the urgency building in her chest. She shifts lower, leaning in, and suddenly inhales his scent. Images of frost and lightning spring to mind, and she blinks, momentarily thrown by the strangeness of the cool scent rising from his heated skin. Thunder snow, she thinks, that strange weather phenomenon she’s seen only a few times in her life, when lightning flashes and thunder rumbles as thick, heavy flakes fall from the sky.
However, her lapse is only momentary, because his alien scent doesn’t matter; she knows this body better than her own, and she knows how to make its nerves sing and its skin burn for her touch. She pushes his thighs apart and slides into place between his legs, closing the last remaining distance between them as she guides him into her mouth.
He gasps and convulses, tightening his thighs and throwing his head back against the hard mattress. For a moment, she thinks he might wrench himself away from her and leap out of bed, but he remains trembling beneath her touch, his hands flexing as he turns his face sharply to the left. His body swells completely, and she takes him deeper, stroking him where he doesn’t fit in her mouth while cupping the warm weight of his scrotum in her free hand.
He groans low in his throat, and his muscles begin to tense, tighten. ‘No, you don’t,’ she thinks, and digs a fingernail into his thigh, making him hiss with pain. Pulling her mouth from him, she growls, “Stay with me,” no tenderness in the command. They still have a distance to travel together, and she has no intention of allowing him to leave their twisted path before time. She closes her eyes and opens her mind, keeping one hand on him to make sure he’s with her as she once again lets the bitter memories flow.
“…yes, that's Claire Novak-one of the best junior high forwards I’ve ever seen in the church league. Beautiful child, isn’t she? and she's grown so much; I can only pray she keeps making the right choices. Oh, hadn’t you heard? Her father walked out on the family, completely disappeared last winter, no note, nothing. If you ask me, there’s a woman behind that somewhere; seems those traveling salesman jokes have a grain of truth in them after all. Oh! Hello, Amelia, I didn’t see you arrive. Won’t you sit with us? No? Some other time then, dear.”
It isn’t helping. None of this is helping, nothing is being resolved, and it’s all so pointless, because she’s still in agony, still alone. All she feels is frustration and emptiness and despair, each emotion spinning into the next, over and over until her urgency evolves into panic. Only one thought is clear in her mind.
Need.
I need him.
In one swift move, she pulls off her panties and straddles his hips.
I need to find him again, please, please, he must be in here somewhere, just let me…
Taking him in hand, she forces herself down onto him, half-expecting dryness, harsh friction, pain-but he slides into her as slick and full as if he were made for her (the way Jimmy was made for her).
He’s looking up at her, his eyes wide, vulnerable, glistening. Jimmy’s eyes-and the last barrier falls as she finally, finally understands whose atonement she seeks.
“Claire. Room. Now.”
“Can I see her?”
“No. I don’t know yet.”
She braces her hands next to his shoulders and rocks her hips urgently against him, seeking-
His mouth curves in grief, that crazy, soft, poignant mouth, and his pain is a tangible, yearning presence between them. “The only thing that matters to me is you and Claire. And I…I can’t undo what I’ve done…but I just want to come home again.”
She shakes her head, stubbornly shielding herself with her own pain. “No. I don’t know if I can do that. Not yet.”
Her breaths are coming faster; she’s panting, maybe sobbing as she drives herself harder against him.
“Daddy, aren’t you going to say grace?”.
“No, honey, I don’t think I am.”
“Why are you crying?”
“Because I’m happy…”
And she can see that he isn’t happy-he’s devastated, adrift now that his faith is gone, and she should do something, reach out for him, catch his hand, but she doesn’t, she doesn’t-the doorbell is about to ring, bringing horror right into their home, and why doesn’t she ignore the bell, take him in her arms, tell him-
The memory dissolves as the body beneath hers shifts, (someone is keening, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ in her voice), two fingers cross her line of sight and settle on her forehead, and-
She’s staring into Jimmy’s eyes sparkling behind his goggles as he laughs joyfully, the lake spinning away from them as the skyline pierces the horizon with its blue, grey, and white spires. It’s his thirtieth birthday, and she’s saved enough money to splurge on a weekend in Chicago, topped off with a helicopter ride above the city. She’s gripping her seat nervously, but he’s loving every moment of it, the sensation of flight as they dip and swoop across the endless lake. The cabin vibrates with the rotor’s noisy thwop-thwop, and he turns to her and mouths, ‘I love you’-
And she’s shattering, falling against the man beneath her as her climax tears her apart, love and passion, grief and longing coming together in one yearning cry: “Jimmy! Jimmy!”
A strong arm clamps across her waist, and she’s spinning in midair, falling against the mattress with him still inside her. He rears above her and drives into her, sending the aftershocks of her orgasm singing through her veins with every stroke. She grips his arms, helplessly riding his passion as he gasps words in some unknown language that sounds like prayer.
Suddenly, his arms go around her, encircling her back, and he pulls her upright so that she straddles his lap as he sits back on his haunches. He continues to thrust frantically into her (God, he’s so strong) as her aftershocks deepen, intensifying until they peak into a second orgasm, sharp, bittersweet, painfully intense. She throws her head back and cries out, and he buries his face in her neck, his harsh breaths warm against her throat. Two more powerful thrusts, and he groans, his shudders reverberating through her before he gives one last, deep push and rests his head against her shoulder.
They remain joined, quietly gasping for breath. She feels him continue to shudder against her, his breath hitching, his lips moving against her skin. Yielding to a sudden urge, she twines her fingers through his hair and pulls his head back so she can see him.
His face is wet, his eyes clouded, far away, as his lips keep moving. “Lost him,” he’s whispering in a sad, stunned litany, “I lost him...lost him.” Suddenly he focuses, and he touches a hand uncertainly to his cheek, gazing in wonder at the salt tears staining his fingers. He looks up at her, the blue depths of his eyes reflecting her pain, her loss-and his face crumples. She pulls him to her as he trembles under the onslaught of his newly-awakened grief.
She’s taught an angel how to mourn; now she’ll teach him how to accept comfort. Threading her fingers through the dark curls at the nape of his neck, she rocks him gently against her body. “Sh-shh,” she soothes, “it’s all right. We’re going to make it through this, Castiel; we’re going to be all right.”
/-/-/
To be continued
/-/-/
Next: Chapter Three: aenissesthai.livejournal.com/7645.html