13.01: On further review, fic recs, and an unfinished prologue
13.01 On further review
I noticed a couple of posts on Tumblr complaining about Sam's angel-banishing sigil not affecting The Angel Formerly Known as Drunk Girl. To me, this wasn't a inconsistency. We've seen that the sigil has a limited functional distance - in S5, when Cas carves it on his body, he has to wait for all the angels in the warehouse to get fairly close to him before setting it off.
I'm still thinking about the way Sam acted around Jack - specifically, how much fear Jared infused into his body language. The way he approached him in the nursery, the way he flinched away from him in the cell, especially when Jack got closer to sit on the cot. This is what we needed when Lucifer was in the bunker, not the campy "locked in Sam's room playing loud music" crap we got.
People are already shipping Sam and Jack and I'm not a fan, for LOTS of reasons. I do, however, love the ship name I saw on Tumblr: Jack and the Beanstalk.
And finally, I've been informed that my review is not actually a review because I "basically typed out the entire episode." So, I apologize to anyone who accidentally read an entire review and didn't realize, until the end, that I was basically typing out the entire episode, and was therefore spoiled.
13.01 Codas
So far, I've only seen a few, although all are outstanding. (If you like having your heart broken. Which I do). So allow me to recommend the following:
Gloaming by indefinissible
untitled 13.01 coda by themegalosaurus
A Son's Prayer by madebyme-X
My unfinished fic
This isn't an episode coda, it's more like a prologue. I started writing this right after Kelly made her escape in S12, and Lucifer was allegedly back in the cage. It got Kripke'd pretty quickly, so I set it aside. But after 13.01, I liked that I had kind of predicted the Sam/Dean dichotomy toward Jack (as if we didn't all see that coming), so even though it's rough, I'm going to post the part I actually finished...
////
Dean should have known what was coming. Should have known what Sam was going to say.
"Cas, what's so awful about a nephilim?"
"It is not meant to be. It should not exist. It is an abomination."
Sam's eyes go soft and sad. "Like me."
Fuck.
"No! No." Cas sighs. "I am sorry, Sam. I never should have used that word to describe you. I didn't know any better. I believed you to be an abomination because the leaders of my garrison said it was so."
"And how is this any different? How is a nephilim different from..." Sam puts his hand to his chest.
"But angels have known this since the beginning of time. Nephilim are not meant to be. Their presence cannot be tolerated."
"Yeah, I know. Abomination. Because the angels said so. Angels like Zachariah? Like Raphael? The ones who forgot to tell you that they were actually starting the apocalypse instead of trying to stop it? You never heard this from God, and don't tell me you trust Metatron's word. How do you know who really decided nephilim were dangerous?"
Dean jumps in before Cas can answer. "Okay, so maybe they're abominable, and maybe it was just a way to convince angels to keep their pants zipped. We don't know. We shouldn't take any chances."
"And that's why you took me out as soon as Dad told you I might be dangerous. Oh, except you didn't."
"Dammit, Sam. That's different. The demon blood is something that was done to you, not what you are. It wasn't in your DNA. You weren't Lucifer's baby, for fuck's sake."
"No. I was only Lucifer's perfect vessel. What if hunters had known about me before I was born, Dean? Should they have killed me then? Were the angels just not taking chances when they tried to kill Mom before I could be born? Was Gordon Walker just being extra super conscientious when he tried to get rid of me?"
Dean shudders at the memory of Anna's warm eyes gone cold and murderous, of Gordon peering down his sight at Sam from a rooftop, of everyone and everything who thought his little brother should be destroyed just because of something a demon did to him, something that wasn't his fault.
"I don't understand," Cas says, "Even if we accept that any other nephilim may be... good. Or neutral. This is still Lucifer's offspring. How can you, of all people, accept that?"
"How can I not? How can I, of all people, not believe in that child's ability to change its so-called fate?"
"Fate?" Dean snorts. "We're not talking fate. This isn't some crap written in Revelations." (Sorry, Cas.) "We're talking about Lucifer's kid. We're talking about genetics."
"Are we, Dean?" Sam replies. "Because if angels do have genetics the way humans do, and I'm pretty sure they don't, then remember, Lucifer didn't start out evil. It wasn't in his genes. Right, Cas?"
"He was well-loved by our father," Cas says thoughtfully. "Until he became twisted by jealousy. Exacerbated by the Mark of Cain, no doubt." And Dean can't exactly deny that the Mark is capable of twisting the fuck out of you.
"So, all we have is a child that's, at worst, potentially dangerous," Sam continues. "And I have to believe that those of us who are potentially dangerous should be given a chance."
Goddammit. This is so not the same thing. There is no way that Sam can really compare himself, an innocent human baby who was jerked around by both demons and angels, to Lucifer's actual spawn. Dean throws up his hands in frustration. "Then what do you want us to do? Just watch and wait?"
"Yeah. Watch and wait. And help, if we can."
What the hell. But, well. The universe does owe Sam a break. Dean shoots Cas a look that says I don't like it, you don't like it, we'll deal with it.
"Fine. But we're gonna watch. We're gonna be on that thing's ass 24/7, you understand?"
...
Cas asks, later, quietly, "If we discover after the child's birth that it is... Will Sam allow us to do what needs to be done?"
Dean remembers a werewolf with liquid brown eyes; remembers Sam taking the gun from his hand. "Yeah, he will. Sam will do the right thing."
/////
Kelly Kline hears Lucifer's voice inside her head long before she feels his baby quickening inside her belly. At first it's a whisper in the back of her dreams, Jeff's voice but not quite. When she wakes, his absence is a hollow ache inside her chest.
She'd thrown her old cell phone away to eliminate the temptation of answering when Jeff calls. Or to eliminate the heartbreak of knowing he hasn't called; she's not sure which would be more likely. (Does he know? Does he remember? Does he wonder?) She's not going to call her D.C. connections, she lost contact with her college friends when life as the President's aide/lover became all-consuming, and she has no family to speak of. She's completely alone.
Except she's never alone.
After a few weeks, the voice starts to invade her waking hours, Jeff's voice but not quite, whispering promises. Predictions. Threats. When she can't take it any more, she calls the one number she saved from her old phone.
"How is he doing it?" she asks frantically. "You said he was locked up. You said I was safe. How does he talk to me from inside my own head?"
The angel's (an angel? seriously? she's calling an angel's cell phone?) voice is gravelly and strangely calming. "He was sent back to his cage, but we know the cage was damaged. Not enough to allow his escape, but enough that he could... he must have forged a connection to you through the child."
"Can you do anything to make it stop? Please?"
"There's someone else I think you should talk to," Castiel says. "Sam has... experience with this. He can help you."
She laughs humorlessly. "What, Sam was impregnated with Satan's baby?"
"No. Sam is a male." Okay, apparently angels don't get sarcasm. "But he's a human, like you, and he's had Lucifer inside his head. I know he would want to help you."
Honestly, she doesn't even remember which one of those guys was called Sam, and she doesn't feel like sharing this burden with a stranger. Castiel says there's nothing he can do to break that connection (without killing her baby, which he doesn't say out loud but they both feel it hanging there) A few minutes after she politely ends the fruitless conversation, a text message blinks onto her screen. Sam Winchester's phone number.
She makes it another two weeks before she feels desperate enough to call it. He picks up on the second ring, his voice deep and sleep-muddled.
"H'lo?"
"Sorry," she stammers. "Wrong number." Because this is ridiculous. But a few seconds after she ends the call, her phone rings. Dammit.
"Kelly!" He's wide awake now, and verging toward frantic. "Are you okay? Do you need help?"
"No, I'm fine. I mean. I'm not fine fine. I'm just not having an emergency right now. I guess I'm as fine as I ever get any more."
"Yeah. I know that kind of fine." He laughs a little, calming down, and she's pretty sure she knows which one he is now. The one with the long hair. "But why are you calling? What's going on?"
"How did you know it was me?" Yeah, she's stalling.
"Cas gave me your number. I put it in my phone, but I didn't think I should be the one... I figured you'd reach out if you wanted to talk." There's an edge to his voice again. "Oh crap, Kelly, I'm sorry; were you expecting me to call you? I'm so sorry -"
"No," she interrupts. "No. I wasn't. This is good. I couldn't have talked to you a month ago."
"Well, a month ago I was still in prison, so I couldn't have talked to you either."
"Prison? What happened?" Which is probably a rude question, but who is she getting mixed up with?
"Um... we allegedly tried to kill the President."
"What? But I thought - you guys - you saved him!"
"Yeah, unfortunately, he had no memory of that, so..."
"Oh, God, I never heard about this on the news. I could have vouched for you. I would have been your witness. I'm so sorry."
"No one would have believed you anyway. It doesn't matter, I swear. Just. Tell me how you're doing? Are you okay?"
No, she's not okay. She tells him about the voice, about the promises and the threats and the cold gloating. He doesn't explain how he ended up with Lucifer inside his head, and that's fine, she thinks she probably doesn't want to know, but he does have some tips. Meditation, distraction, but honestly, just talking to someone who's been there, who gets it, who listens to her without suggesting (maybe without even thinking) that there's a pretty simple way to make it stop... it helps.
It's Jeff's baby, after all. No matter who was in the driver's seat, it's was Jeff's body, it's Jeff's DNA growing inside her. Everything is going to be fine.
I noticed a couple of posts on Tumblr complaining about Sam's angel-banishing sigil not affecting The Angel Formerly Known as Drunk Girl. To me, this wasn't a inconsistency. We've seen that the sigil has a limited functional distance - in S5, when Cas carves it on his body, he has to wait for all the angels in the warehouse to get fairly close to him before setting it off.
I'm still thinking about the way Sam acted around Jack - specifically, how much fear Jared infused into his body language. The way he approached him in the nursery, the way he flinched away from him in the cell, especially when Jack got closer to sit on the cot. This is what we needed when Lucifer was in the bunker, not the campy "locked in Sam's room playing loud music" crap we got.
People are already shipping Sam and Jack and I'm not a fan, for LOTS of reasons. I do, however, love the ship name I saw on Tumblr: Jack and the Beanstalk.
And finally, I've been informed that my review is not actually a review because I "basically typed out the entire episode." So, I apologize to anyone who accidentally read an entire review and didn't realize, until the end, that I was basically typing out the entire episode, and was therefore spoiled.
13.01 Codas
So far, I've only seen a few, although all are outstanding. (If you like having your heart broken. Which I do). So allow me to recommend the following:
Gloaming by indefinissible
untitled 13.01 coda by themegalosaurus
A Son's Prayer by madebyme-X
My unfinished fic
This isn't an episode coda, it's more like a prologue. I started writing this right after Kelly made her escape in S12, and Lucifer was allegedly back in the cage. It got Kripke'd pretty quickly, so I set it aside. But after 13.01, I liked that I had kind of predicted the Sam/Dean dichotomy toward Jack (as if we didn't all see that coming), so even though it's rough, I'm going to post the part I actually finished...
////
Dean should have known what was coming. Should have known what Sam was going to say.
"Cas, what's so awful about a nephilim?"
"It is not meant to be. It should not exist. It is an abomination."
Sam's eyes go soft and sad. "Like me."
Fuck.
"No! No." Cas sighs. "I am sorry, Sam. I never should have used that word to describe you. I didn't know any better. I believed you to be an abomination because the leaders of my garrison said it was so."
"And how is this any different? How is a nephilim different from..." Sam puts his hand to his chest.
"But angels have known this since the beginning of time. Nephilim are not meant to be. Their presence cannot be tolerated."
"Yeah, I know. Abomination. Because the angels said so. Angels like Zachariah? Like Raphael? The ones who forgot to tell you that they were actually starting the apocalypse instead of trying to stop it? You never heard this from God, and don't tell me you trust Metatron's word. How do you know who really decided nephilim were dangerous?"
Dean jumps in before Cas can answer. "Okay, so maybe they're abominable, and maybe it was just a way to convince angels to keep their pants zipped. We don't know. We shouldn't take any chances."
"And that's why you took me out as soon as Dad told you I might be dangerous. Oh, except you didn't."
"Dammit, Sam. That's different. The demon blood is something that was done to you, not what you are. It wasn't in your DNA. You weren't Lucifer's baby, for fuck's sake."
"No. I was only Lucifer's perfect vessel. What if hunters had known about me before I was born, Dean? Should they have killed me then? Were the angels just not taking chances when they tried to kill Mom before I could be born? Was Gordon Walker just being extra super conscientious when he tried to get rid of me?"
Dean shudders at the memory of Anna's warm eyes gone cold and murderous, of Gordon peering down his sight at Sam from a rooftop, of everyone and everything who thought his little brother should be destroyed just because of something a demon did to him, something that wasn't his fault.
"I don't understand," Cas says, "Even if we accept that any other nephilim may be... good. Or neutral. This is still Lucifer's offspring. How can you, of all people, accept that?"
"How can I not? How can I, of all people, not believe in that child's ability to change its so-called fate?"
"Fate?" Dean snorts. "We're not talking fate. This isn't some crap written in Revelations." (Sorry, Cas.) "We're talking about Lucifer's kid. We're talking about genetics."
"Are we, Dean?" Sam replies. "Because if angels do have genetics the way humans do, and I'm pretty sure they don't, then remember, Lucifer didn't start out evil. It wasn't in his genes. Right, Cas?"
"He was well-loved by our father," Cas says thoughtfully. "Until he became twisted by jealousy. Exacerbated by the Mark of Cain, no doubt." And Dean can't exactly deny that the Mark is capable of twisting the fuck out of you.
"So, all we have is a child that's, at worst, potentially dangerous," Sam continues. "And I have to believe that those of us who are potentially dangerous should be given a chance."
Goddammit. This is so not the same thing. There is no way that Sam can really compare himself, an innocent human baby who was jerked around by both demons and angels, to Lucifer's actual spawn. Dean throws up his hands in frustration. "Then what do you want us to do? Just watch and wait?"
"Yeah. Watch and wait. And help, if we can."
What the hell. But, well. The universe does owe Sam a break. Dean shoots Cas a look that says I don't like it, you don't like it, we'll deal with it.
"Fine. But we're gonna watch. We're gonna be on that thing's ass 24/7, you understand?"
...
Cas asks, later, quietly, "If we discover after the child's birth that it is... Will Sam allow us to do what needs to be done?"
Dean remembers a werewolf with liquid brown eyes; remembers Sam taking the gun from his hand. "Yeah, he will. Sam will do the right thing."
/////
Kelly Kline hears Lucifer's voice inside her head long before she feels his baby quickening inside her belly. At first it's a whisper in the back of her dreams, Jeff's voice but not quite. When she wakes, his absence is a hollow ache inside her chest.
She'd thrown her old cell phone away to eliminate the temptation of answering when Jeff calls. Or to eliminate the heartbreak of knowing he hasn't called; she's not sure which would be more likely. (Does he know? Does he remember? Does he wonder?) She's not going to call her D.C. connections, she lost contact with her college friends when life as the President's aide/lover became all-consuming, and she has no family to speak of. She's completely alone.
Except she's never alone.
After a few weeks, the voice starts to invade her waking hours, Jeff's voice but not quite, whispering promises. Predictions. Threats. When she can't take it any more, she calls the one number she saved from her old phone.
"How is he doing it?" she asks frantically. "You said he was locked up. You said I was safe. How does he talk to me from inside my own head?"
The angel's (an angel? seriously? she's calling an angel's cell phone?) voice is gravelly and strangely calming. "He was sent back to his cage, but we know the cage was damaged. Not enough to allow his escape, but enough that he could... he must have forged a connection to you through the child."
"Can you do anything to make it stop? Please?"
"There's someone else I think you should talk to," Castiel says. "Sam has... experience with this. He can help you."
She laughs humorlessly. "What, Sam was impregnated with Satan's baby?"
"No. Sam is a male." Okay, apparently angels don't get sarcasm. "But he's a human, like you, and he's had Lucifer inside his head. I know he would want to help you."
Honestly, she doesn't even remember which one of those guys was called Sam, and she doesn't feel like sharing this burden with a stranger. Castiel says there's nothing he can do to break that connection (without killing her baby, which he doesn't say out loud but they both feel it hanging there) A few minutes after she politely ends the fruitless conversation, a text message blinks onto her screen. Sam Winchester's phone number.
She makes it another two weeks before she feels desperate enough to call it. He picks up on the second ring, his voice deep and sleep-muddled.
"H'lo?"
"Sorry," she stammers. "Wrong number." Because this is ridiculous. But a few seconds after she ends the call, her phone rings. Dammit.
"Kelly!" He's wide awake now, and verging toward frantic. "Are you okay? Do you need help?"
"No, I'm fine. I mean. I'm not fine fine. I'm just not having an emergency right now. I guess I'm as fine as I ever get any more."
"Yeah. I know that kind of fine." He laughs a little, calming down, and she's pretty sure she knows which one he is now. The one with the long hair. "But why are you calling? What's going on?"
"How did you know it was me?" Yeah, she's stalling.
"Cas gave me your number. I put it in my phone, but I didn't think I should be the one... I figured you'd reach out if you wanted to talk." There's an edge to his voice again. "Oh crap, Kelly, I'm sorry; were you expecting me to call you? I'm so sorry -"
"No," she interrupts. "No. I wasn't. This is good. I couldn't have talked to you a month ago."
"Well, a month ago I was still in prison, so I couldn't have talked to you either."
"Prison? What happened?" Which is probably a rude question, but who is she getting mixed up with?
"Um... we allegedly tried to kill the President."
"What? But I thought - you guys - you saved him!"
"Yeah, unfortunately, he had no memory of that, so..."
"Oh, God, I never heard about this on the news. I could have vouched for you. I would have been your witness. I'm so sorry."
"No one would have believed you anyway. It doesn't matter, I swear. Just. Tell me how you're doing? Are you okay?"
No, she's not okay. She tells him about the voice, about the promises and the threats and the cold gloating. He doesn't explain how he ended up with Lucifer inside his head, and that's fine, she thinks she probably doesn't want to know, but he does have some tips. Meditation, distraction, but honestly, just talking to someone who's been there, who gets it, who listens to her without suggesting (maybe without even thinking) that there's a pretty simple way to make it stop... it helps.
It's Jeff's baby, after all. No matter who was in the driver's seat, it's was Jeff's body, it's Jeff's DNA growing inside her. Everything is going to be fine.