Fate and Gravity (CW RPS)
For the warning and info, see the master post.
0.0 PROLOGUE
The problem with fate is that it doesn’t exist as long as you don’t believe in it. Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple: the problem with not believing in fate is that someone else always does and drags you to the fated path of their own life. So basically it doesn’t matter if you believe in fate; it’s going to hunt you down any way. The bitch.
The only thing you can do to somehow influence it is to try and resist it as hard as possible. Resisting will always make it mad and concentrated on you. After that? You’re pretty much screwed, but no one bothers to tell you that before you actually try. That’d be too easy.
~
Palm Harton was a beautiful small city and Jared loved it from first sight. His delighted laughter filled the whole street the moment he first breathed the slightly salty breeze of the seaside. Or so his mother kept telling him over the years. After all, he was barely two then and didn’t remember all that much from the trip. Obviously he had to like it, because the next time his parents asked him where he wanted to go he said ‘Harton’ clearly enough. And repeated it for a while, adding a temper tantrum for a good measure. Palm Harton it was, then. And a year after that. And two years after that too. And three. And four. By the time Jared was seven, he couldn’t go to Palm Harton over the summer. At first he left for camp and later he got awfully sick and spent half of his summer fighting pneumonia. He was sure this little city by the sea was the most perfect place on earth. And of course his parents tried to send him to different places and visit different parts of the country or even globe-trop with him with him, but Jared never truly got it. After all, wasn’t the point of finding heaven on earth not needing to look anywhere else?
Sure, he could fly away and enjoy the California or Paris, but in the end he still missed his favorite souvenir’s shop right behind Miss Polly’s shop with vegetables, and the best ice-creams in the world that uncle Ernie sold by the beach. Jared was chatty and friendly enough to know pretty much everyone in the town that a good, regular tourist should know. He even occasionally had a pleasant conversation with the most feared person in Palm Harton, who most people called Grandma without actually ever thinking of her as one. Grandma had a quite difficult personality. Jared was pretty sure she hated him from the moment she saw him. Considering he was thensix years old and at his most adorable age, it was saying something. Later, he learned it was just Grandma’s way of dealing with people. It couldn’t be changed.
~
“Mom! Mom! Look!” shouted little Jared, tagging Sheri’s arm again.
The boy was so full of energy. He saw something interesting every few minutes, running and shouting and laughing. His mother turned her head to smile tiredly at her husband and he just shook his head. One could think the kid liked this place more than Disney World, where they took him earlier this summer. Of course, it wasn’t really true, because no kid likes a small city more than Disney World. It’s just that after a week or so of talking about Disney World constantly, Jared’s enthusiasm finally faded and he started missing his favorite place on Earth. While he was there, everything was just as exciting as a huge Mickey Mouse. Or even more.
Jared almost ran to the old lady standing by the small wagon full of bracelets of any kind, all beautiful and hand-made. Some of them were simple leather straps, while some had so many ornaments and shiny stuff added that it seemed impossible to wear them comfortably. A few of them were pure metal, some of them even looked silver or gold. A few looked like they completely didn’t belong there; delicate, engraved, and gold, they looked like jewelry for a princess from a faraway land.
The old lady who obviously owned it all looked more like an old witch than the nice and happy, darkly tanned ladies that sold the tourists souvenirs all over the main road down the beach. She looked up at Sherri with piercing blue eyes that stood out in her old, wrinkled face and smirked. Jay’s mother squeezed his hand, hoping that her son was not thinking similar things about the lady’s looks . She didn’t want him to blurt it out in his childish innocence.
“Hello, ma’am,” said Jared politely with a smile and Sheri breathed a small sigh of relief. “You look like a witch!”
Sherri closed her eyes, feeling defeated, and hoped that the pure amazement in Jared’s voice would stop the old lady from turning him into a frog. She seemed right on this account: the owner of the wagon with bracelets laughed loudly, not making the situation any less awkward, but much less scary.
“Do you mind that, my boy?” she asked finally, after calming herself down.
“No! I think it’s cool!” he said happily. “Are you a witch?”
“Now, now, young lad, would it be wise of me to tell you if I was?”
Sheri blinked at her surprised at the old woman’s choice of words. ‘Young lad’? Seriously? Jared just frowned in concentration, obviously slowly analyzing her words to understand what exactly was she implying.
“I guess not.”
“There you go, then. I’m not a witch.” She smiled and winked at him, still completely ignoring his mother. “But perhaps I can interest you in a magical bracelet? I have a feeling one of them would really like to be yours.”
Sheri was a mother for long enough to recognize the sudden brightness in Jay’s eyes as a symptom of wantwantwant-and-I-will-cry-like-tortured-animal-if-until-I’ll-get-it. She held his hand tighter.
“I’m sorry, but how much do they cost?” she asked quickly and the w… old lady finally concentrated on her, looking slightly surprised, as if she really expected to hold the whole conversation with Jay and treat his parents as unimportant additions.
“Oh, it depends of course,” said the lady lazily. “Some of them are imported and made of pure gold, others are beautiful things created from the junk laying around… But they’re not very cheap, my lady, because you buy two of them, you see. One I give to you, one to your soul mate if I ever be lucky enough to meet them.”
Sheri blinked slowly, but the old lady seemed to be deadly serious about her job. And it didn’t look as if she was just acting to make the ‘magic’ look real. Jay looked fascinated by one of the bracelets that seemed to be made of a silver chain keeping together many amulets-mostly round wooden ones with some letters on them. Sheri glanced at the old lady.
“That one is thirty dollars, but it ain’t for you, little fella. You’d be driven mad if you got stuck with either of its owners… You’re a leather, metal type of guy. Simple, but meaningful.” She nodded thoughtfully as if that actually meant something.
“I think we need to thank you, but I’m afraid we shouldn’t buy anything at the moment,” said Mrs. Padalecki, smiling politely and dishonestly, while tugging Jay’s hand and ignoring his watering eyes.
“You’re more than welcome, ma’am. If there is a bracelet for this young lad here, it will wait here for him.”
“That’s… reassuring, I guess,” smiled Sheri again and the old lady just smirked at her awkwardness, before pushing the wagon and moving forward in slow, sure steps.
Sheri felt more sure with every step as she got closer to the smiling Gerald, who stood by the sweet shop with Jeff, obviously unable to stop himself from buying something more for his older son, who, contrary to Jay, didn’t quite buy the theory about Palm Harton being heaven on earth. Suddenly Sheri stopped; Jared had stopped moving.
“Mom, something is shining there on the road behind the wagon, I think it fell of off it!” He quickly slipped his hand out of his mom’s grasp and ran there before she managed to stop him.
He picked up a bracelet from the road and ran after the old lady, calling for her. She stopped and looked back at him surprised, even more when she noticed the bracelet he gave her. She looked carefully at it.
“You lost it, ma’am.”
“Silly boy, I don’t lose things,” she said quickly and gave the bracelet back to him. “It obviously wanted to be yours. You may now keep it, though it may be a bit too big for ya, kid.”.”
“But my mommy said she won’t buy me a bracelet.”
“Well, then it’s good this one is already paid for, kiddo. Now move along, I have others to sell things to.”
She started walking away and Sheri wondered if she’d have to again deal with a poor Jay crying his eyes out because someone was mean to him. The kid was way too sensitive and friendly for his own good. To her surprise, he turned to her with a bright smile, his dimples showing and eyes shining.
“Mom!” he yelled running to her. “I have a bracelet to find my soulmate!”
Gerald laughed at that and Sheri couldn’t stop herself from joining him and hugging her joyful little son as Jeff only rolled his eyes, feeling older and wiser. Sheri thought that she could let it slide, knowing that neither his displeasure with the bracelet nor Jay’s soulmate finding plan will last for long. She just silently prayed that the baby growing slowly inside her would be a girl. She wasn’t sure she can handle another competitive boy in her household.
Later when Sheri remembered this experience, she decided it was the very first time she noticed that the only thing that could kill Jay’s lack of concentration was his sheer stubbornness. At first he carried the bracelet around his wrist, not concerned much with the fact that it was so big it was always falling off his hand. He kept his hand up, usually holding it with another one and every time he forgot about it and the bracelet fell off he just picked it up and got it back on. After, of course, that short and stressful period of time when he used it as a key-chain. It lasted for few months until one winter morning he lost it on his way to the kindergarten and he could not calm down until finally, after hours of search by the whole family, Jeff came back, threw his bike by the house and brought his ‘little, stupid brother’ the ‘stupid’ bracelet. By some weird miracle he found it, when it fell on the road, thrown along with the snow from the shovel, while their neighbor was shoveling his driveway. Everyone was too glad that Jared finally calmed down to even think of questioning the coincidence.
After that, Jay wore his bracelet around his ankle until he grew up enough to wear it loosely around his wrist,barely able to tie it up. By the time he was twenty-three it fit perfectly, as if it were really made just for him so he could find his soulmate. Of course, by that time he was seriously angered by this lore, banging on the door of the house of one person that could explain this whole soulmate mess to him. His anger was thorougly suppressed by surprise when instead of Grandma the door opened to reveal a confused and irritated young, beautiful man. He was wearing the bracelet made of black, oval leather string and silver stamp in the center of it in the shape of a relatively simple Chinese sign. The exact same one as Jared had around his own wrist.
“Who the hell are you?” asked Jared’s soul mate in a deep voice.
NEXT: Part 1.0
0.0 PROLOGUE
The problem with fate is that it doesn’t exist as long as you don’t believe in it. Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple: the problem with not believing in fate is that someone else always does and drags you to the fated path of their own life. So basically it doesn’t matter if you believe in fate; it’s going to hunt you down any way. The bitch.
The only thing you can do to somehow influence it is to try and resist it as hard as possible. Resisting will always make it mad and concentrated on you. After that? You’re pretty much screwed, but no one bothers to tell you that before you actually try. That’d be too easy.
~
Palm Harton was a beautiful small city and Jared loved it from first sight. His delighted laughter filled the whole street the moment he first breathed the slightly salty breeze of the seaside. Or so his mother kept telling him over the years. After all, he was barely two then and didn’t remember all that much from the trip. Obviously he had to like it, because the next time his parents asked him where he wanted to go he said ‘Harton’ clearly enough. And repeated it for a while, adding a temper tantrum for a good measure. Palm Harton it was, then. And a year after that. And two years after that too. And three. And four. By the time Jared was seven, he couldn’t go to Palm Harton over the summer. At first he left for camp and later he got awfully sick and spent half of his summer fighting pneumonia. He was sure this little city by the sea was the most perfect place on earth. And of course his parents tried to send him to different places and visit different parts of the country or even globe-trop with him with him, but Jared never truly got it. After all, wasn’t the point of finding heaven on earth not needing to look anywhere else?
Sure, he could fly away and enjoy the California or Paris, but in the end he still missed his favorite souvenir’s shop right behind Miss Polly’s shop with vegetables, and the best ice-creams in the world that uncle Ernie sold by the beach. Jared was chatty and friendly enough to know pretty much everyone in the town that a good, regular tourist should know. He even occasionally had a pleasant conversation with the most feared person in Palm Harton, who most people called Grandma without actually ever thinking of her as one. Grandma had a quite difficult personality. Jared was pretty sure she hated him from the moment she saw him. Considering he was thensix years old and at his most adorable age, it was saying something. Later, he learned it was just Grandma’s way of dealing with people. It couldn’t be changed.
~
“Mom! Mom! Look!” shouted little Jared, tagging Sheri’s arm again.
The boy was so full of energy. He saw something interesting every few minutes, running and shouting and laughing. His mother turned her head to smile tiredly at her husband and he just shook his head. One could think the kid liked this place more than Disney World, where they took him earlier this summer. Of course, it wasn’t really true, because no kid likes a small city more than Disney World. It’s just that after a week or so of talking about Disney World constantly, Jared’s enthusiasm finally faded and he started missing his favorite place on Earth. While he was there, everything was just as exciting as a huge Mickey Mouse. Or even more.
Jared almost ran to the old lady standing by the small wagon full of bracelets of any kind, all beautiful and hand-made. Some of them were simple leather straps, while some had so many ornaments and shiny stuff added that it seemed impossible to wear them comfortably. A few of them were pure metal, some of them even looked silver or gold. A few looked like they completely didn’t belong there; delicate, engraved, and gold, they looked like jewelry for a princess from a faraway land.
The old lady who obviously owned it all looked more like an old witch than the nice and happy, darkly tanned ladies that sold the tourists souvenirs all over the main road down the beach. She looked up at Sherri with piercing blue eyes that stood out in her old, wrinkled face and smirked. Jay’s mother squeezed his hand, hoping that her son was not thinking similar things about the lady’s looks . She didn’t want him to blurt it out in his childish innocence.
“Hello, ma’am,” said Jared politely with a smile and Sheri breathed a small sigh of relief. “You look like a witch!”
Sherri closed her eyes, feeling defeated, and hoped that the pure amazement in Jared’s voice would stop the old lady from turning him into a frog. She seemed right on this account: the owner of the wagon with bracelets laughed loudly, not making the situation any less awkward, but much less scary.
“Do you mind that, my boy?” she asked finally, after calming herself down.
“No! I think it’s cool!” he said happily. “Are you a witch?”
“Now, now, young lad, would it be wise of me to tell you if I was?”
Sheri blinked at her surprised at the old woman’s choice of words. ‘Young lad’? Seriously? Jared just frowned in concentration, obviously slowly analyzing her words to understand what exactly was she implying.
“I guess not.”
“There you go, then. I’m not a witch.” She smiled and winked at him, still completely ignoring his mother. “But perhaps I can interest you in a magical bracelet? I have a feeling one of them would really like to be yours.”
Sheri was a mother for long enough to recognize the sudden brightness in Jay’s eyes as a symptom of wantwantwant-and-I-will-cry-like-tortured-animal-if-until-I’ll-get-it. She held his hand tighter.
“I’m sorry, but how much do they cost?” she asked quickly and the w… old lady finally concentrated on her, looking slightly surprised, as if she really expected to hold the whole conversation with Jay and treat his parents as unimportant additions.
“Oh, it depends of course,” said the lady lazily. “Some of them are imported and made of pure gold, others are beautiful things created from the junk laying around… But they’re not very cheap, my lady, because you buy two of them, you see. One I give to you, one to your soul mate if I ever be lucky enough to meet them.”
Sheri blinked slowly, but the old lady seemed to be deadly serious about her job. And it didn’t look as if she was just acting to make the ‘magic’ look real. Jay looked fascinated by one of the bracelets that seemed to be made of a silver chain keeping together many amulets-mostly round wooden ones with some letters on them. Sheri glanced at the old lady.
“That one is thirty dollars, but it ain’t for you, little fella. You’d be driven mad if you got stuck with either of its owners… You’re a leather, metal type of guy. Simple, but meaningful.” She nodded thoughtfully as if that actually meant something.
“I think we need to thank you, but I’m afraid we shouldn’t buy anything at the moment,” said Mrs. Padalecki, smiling politely and dishonestly, while tugging Jay’s hand and ignoring his watering eyes.
“You’re more than welcome, ma’am. If there is a bracelet for this young lad here, it will wait here for him.”
“That’s… reassuring, I guess,” smiled Sheri again and the old lady just smirked at her awkwardness, before pushing the wagon and moving forward in slow, sure steps.
Sheri felt more sure with every step as she got closer to the smiling Gerald, who stood by the sweet shop with Jeff, obviously unable to stop himself from buying something more for his older son, who, contrary to Jay, didn’t quite buy the theory about Palm Harton being heaven on earth. Suddenly Sheri stopped; Jared had stopped moving.
“Mom, something is shining there on the road behind the wagon, I think it fell of off it!” He quickly slipped his hand out of his mom’s grasp and ran there before she managed to stop him.
He picked up a bracelet from the road and ran after the old lady, calling for her. She stopped and looked back at him surprised, even more when she noticed the bracelet he gave her. She looked carefully at it.
“You lost it, ma’am.”
“Silly boy, I don’t lose things,” she said quickly and gave the bracelet back to him. “It obviously wanted to be yours. You may now keep it, though it may be a bit too big for ya, kid.”.”
“But my mommy said she won’t buy me a bracelet.”
“Well, then it’s good this one is already paid for, kiddo. Now move along, I have others to sell things to.”
She started walking away and Sheri wondered if she’d have to again deal with a poor Jay crying his eyes out because someone was mean to him. The kid was way too sensitive and friendly for his own good. To her surprise, he turned to her with a bright smile, his dimples showing and eyes shining.
“Mom!” he yelled running to her. “I have a bracelet to find my soulmate!”
Gerald laughed at that and Sheri couldn’t stop herself from joining him and hugging her joyful little son as Jeff only rolled his eyes, feeling older and wiser. Sheri thought that she could let it slide, knowing that neither his displeasure with the bracelet nor Jay’s soulmate finding plan will last for long. She just silently prayed that the baby growing slowly inside her would be a girl. She wasn’t sure she can handle another competitive boy in her household.
Later when Sheri remembered this experience, she decided it was the very first time she noticed that the only thing that could kill Jay’s lack of concentration was his sheer stubbornness. At first he carried the bracelet around his wrist, not concerned much with the fact that it was so big it was always falling off his hand. He kept his hand up, usually holding it with another one and every time he forgot about it and the bracelet fell off he just picked it up and got it back on. After, of course, that short and stressful period of time when he used it as a key-chain. It lasted for few months until one winter morning he lost it on his way to the kindergarten and he could not calm down until finally, after hours of search by the whole family, Jeff came back, threw his bike by the house and brought his ‘little, stupid brother’ the ‘stupid’ bracelet. By some weird miracle he found it, when it fell on the road, thrown along with the snow from the shovel, while their neighbor was shoveling his driveway. Everyone was too glad that Jared finally calmed down to even think of questioning the coincidence.
After that, Jay wore his bracelet around his ankle until he grew up enough to wear it loosely around his wrist,barely able to tie it up. By the time he was twenty-three it fit perfectly, as if it were really made just for him so he could find his soulmate. Of course, by that time he was seriously angered by this lore, banging on the door of the house of one person that could explain this whole soulmate mess to him. His anger was thorougly suppressed by surprise when instead of Grandma the door opened to reveal a confused and irritated young, beautiful man. He was wearing the bracelet made of black, oval leather string and silver stamp in the center of it in the shape of a relatively simple Chinese sign. The exact same one as Jared had around his own wrist.
“Who the hell are you?” asked Jared’s soul mate in a deep voice.
NEXT: Part 1.0