(no subject)
Oh hey, look what I've found, a journal!
As the R/S Games are finishing up, I think Team AU probably kicked our collective asses again, but whatever. It was loads of fun, which is all I personally care about. Then the Small Gifts exchange sign-ups opened up, and while I was trying to decide whether to go and play, they closed again. Which is not so bad because I'm still oscillating.
In the other news, Dear Diary, I has woe. It is caused by Season Six of Supernatural. It scares me in ways that the previous five couldn't, and oh, they tried with all that pulling off fingernails and cutting people's heads off with barbed wire. I thought the aforementioned stuff was awesome and so failed to cry for Mommy, but then came Sesaon Six, and wham! Dear Sera Gamble, stop creeping in the shadows over there 'cause I can see what you're up to. We're gonna have alcohol issues this season, aren't we? We're not gonna have any borderline inappropriate brotherly love until, like, 6.21 because you can't possibly go and resolve that missing soul issue in the next two-three episodes. And if you did, it'd be really lame. But fine, whatever, I have faith in you, just a little - or a lot - scared of the alcohol issues.
Still, I enjoyed 6.04 A LOT, along with 6.06 where Sam actually says more than two lines and some of it isn't bullshit. Ohh, Sammy, I miss you so. Will probably continue watching. Will probably bite my fingernails down to the elbows in the process.
Then TNT came along with their rerun of Season Two and didn't help the matters at all. So I drank a lot of tea, ate a lot of brownies, watched some Labyrinth and coughed up a fic. So I'm gonna post it unbetaed for the hell of it - because I has woe! - but you guys really don't have to read it. No, seriously.
Goblin Babe
SPN/Labyrinth: PG, gen, 2000 words, in which Sarah Blake is haunted by the Garbage Lady and Winchester brothers, who are most definitely not working for the mandroid. Beware: spoiler for Provenance and Nightshifter, and possible abuse of English language.
You remind me of the babe.
What babe?
Babe of the power!
What power?
Power of voodoo.
Who do?
You do. Quiet! A goblin babe.
The story goes like this: once upon a time Sarah Blake met a nice boy with the brightest smile and the biggest hands. He knew a little something about arts and took her out for dinner and picked an eyelash off her cheek. A nice boy. Sarah was smitten. Call her a sucker for a tall man.
A couple of days later she found herself standing in a graveyard at night, holding a flashlight while Sam and his brother dug up a grave. ‘Still think I’m a catch?’ Sam asked, wiping dirt across his nose in the most adorable way - only it wasn’t then, it was creepy. Soon after, a ghost of a long-dead girl tried to slice Sarah’s throat.
The moral of the story is: Sarah has a shitty taste in men.
****
“What happened there?”
Charlotte walks through the living room, putting in her evening earrings on the move, heels going click-clack-click-clack on the hardwood floor. A faint smell of perfume trails after her.
“Oh.” Sarah blinks at the TV screen. Charlotte has already disappeared into the bedroom. “A bank robbery in Milwaukee.”
“Hm.”
“…were identified as Dean and Samuel Winchester, already wanted in several states on a wide range of charges, which include murder…”
Sam looks less like the sweet college boy that she took him for the first time around. It’s probably the hair, she thinks. Dean is still the same, but then again, she doesn't remember much of Dean - loud, obnoxious and more handsome than any man should ever be, for his own good.
They are the news of the hour. They are Bonnie and Clyde all over again, and the FBI is on their tail. That’s the kind of gratitude they get.
“Hey, are you coming?” says Charlotte who is already standing by the door, purse in hand.
“Yes.” She casts one last glance at the TV, at Sam’s face caught on some security camera.
Charlotte smiles sweetly. “Didn’t know you were such a sucker for real crime.”
****
That night Sarah dreams of Sam. He drops his gaze and bites the smile that’s tugging on his lips, and when he looks up at her again, he says, “You remind me of the babe.”
****
She feels warm lips brush against her cheek and opens her eyes. Morning light filters through lace curtains and envelops the room, the bed and Charlotte’s freckled shoulders in soft glow.
“Morning, babe,” says Charlotte - tousled hair, pillow marks on her face and warm, sleepy softness.
You remind me of the babe.
“What babe?” Sarah mumbles.
Charlotte laughs and climbs from under the covers. “I’m going to shower,” she says. “Be a darling and make some coffee, would ya?”
Charlotte has lived in New York City for ten years now. She went through school here, she is a fashion designer, and her New York pronunciation is flawless, except sometimes in the mornings when the Texan drawl slips through, unnoticed. They say you can take a girl out of a desert, but you cannot take the desert out of the girl.
Sam Winchester wasn’t the first disaster of a man Sarah fell for, but he was the last. Accepting your own bisexuality is really nothing after you accept that ghosts are real.
Sarah purposefully leaves the TV off. She opens the window in the kitchen, pours coffee beans into a mill and stands there, yawning and curling her toes on the cold floor while she waits. Outside, a garbage truck crawls along the street, stopping at every corner, and a woman wearing an orange vest pulls out bags from trash cans. Sarah watches her for a while, sleepy and without a single formed thought.
A goblin babe, says a voice in her head, a random flash of memory that sounds nothing like Sam Winchester. At that moment, the garbage woman lifts her head and looks straight at Sarah. Her face is wrinkled as though she has twice the amount of skin she needs. Her eyes are small and mean under a mop of uncombed hair. Sarah automatically takes a step back, making the woman smirk, and suddenly the foulest smell imaginable hits her nostrils.
It smells like rotten peaches, like heaps and heaps of garbage, like ancient trees covered in moss and cobwebs, like crumbling walls all around her. It smells like a bog, the nastiest of them all.
Sarah gags and coughs and can’t seem to stop until Charlotte’s hands are gripping her shoulders.
“Are you okay? Hey, Sarah! Sarah, look at me!”
Sarah does, through a fog of tears. Charlotte looks like the most solid thing in the world, and suddenly everything swings back to focus. She realizes that the kitchen smells like coffee and nothing else.
“Wow,” she says. “I thought I smelled something just now. You wouldn’t believe it, it was… augh! It must have come from the garbage truck.” She looks outside, but the truck and the woman are gone.
****
Sam promised to keep in touch, but he only wrote four emails before disappearing altogether. Sarah spent the next three months on a brim of paranoia, salting the doors and windows of her apartment every night. The first time she brought Charlotte home, after she moved to New York City, she forgot about the salt lines and a funny look. Sarah found herself between two forces: one was Charlotte with her quick smile and her fashion shows, and the other was Sam with his adorable goofiness and his grave-robbing and corpse-burning. Sarah got rid of the salt lines, though she kept the container on the kitchen counter, easily accessible.
If Sam and Dean ever reappeared, Sarah would help them in a heartbeat. Their faces are all over the news. Even Charlotte noticed how much she pays attention to the story.
****
Knock, and the door will open.
****
“You seem a little jumpy,” Charlotte says as they walk home that evening.
Sarah shrugs. “I’m okay. I just have this funny feeling in my stomach, like I’ve forgotten something important.”
“Maybe an appointment?”
A garbage truck passes them and rounds the corner, and Sarah suddenly feels like her muscles have turned to wood. Briefly, an old woman behind the wheel glances at her and smirks.
“No, wait,” Sarah says, grabbing Charlotte’s hand. “What’s that garbage truck doing there?”
Charlotte blinks. “What?”
“That garbage truck. It’s seven at night - what is it doing out on the streets?”
“Okay. Baby? You’re sort of scaring me right now.”
Sarah feels her heart hammering in her chest, so strong her jaws vibrate. It’s the Winchester brothers, it’s seeing them on the news that brought this… this thing into her life again.
What exactly is the thing?
“Let’s not go that way,” she says.
****
She dreams of Dean this time. He says, “Take off your head!” and sweeps an old-fashioned razor an inch from her throat. Sarah wakes up clutching at her neck.
****
When Sarah was thirteen, she had a bad flu and ran a high fever. She dreamed of something - the most vivid, bizarre thing that boiled out of her subconscious as her brain was trying to cook itself inside her skull. And then she woke up and was all better. End of story, right?
****
“…considered armed and dangerous. If you see these men, please call 911 or your local FBI office…”
Charlotte is unloading grocery bags in the kitchen. “I thought we could stay in tonight. I bought some things for dinner. What are you watching there? Are they still going on about that bank robbery, for heaven’s sake?”
“No,” Sarah says. “Just the alert for the two… criminals.” Her voice catches on the last word.
“I don’t get it. Why are you so fascinated with this thing?” More rustling from the kitchen. “I got you some peaches.”
For a moment, Sarah can feel that stench again, the one the Garbage Woman brings. “I hate peaches,” she chokes out.
****
She dreams that the doorknockers on her and her neighbor’s doors turned huge. They have become iron heads of the Winchester brothers, and Dean has a heavy ring passed through his ears, while Sam is holding his in his mouth.
‘Mmeem! Mmphu mm umph,” says Sam.
“Whatever, bitch,” says Dean. “Can’t hear you.”
And then they still manage to bicker somehow. Sarah knows that she is supposed to knock, but she backs away from the doors.
Beware, for the path you’ve taken will lead to certain destruction.
****
In her dream, Sarah knows that the Garbage Woman has taken her memories, has stolen something important from her. It’s hard to look when you don’t know what you’re looking for. Is it perhaps her teddy bear, Lancelot? But no, she remembers, the bear is still sitting on the shelf in her childhood bedroom. Is it her little brother? But that’s just weird, and why would she think that anyway when Toby is just fine, safe at home with Dad?
It’s all because of Sam and Dean Winchester. It’s their faces on TV that are stirring up these half-forgotten memories. They try and pull her away with them, to some place of slime-covered rocks and ancient walls, where insects the size of sparrows buzz over foul water and a white owl gazes upon a stone labyrinth.
A labyrinth?
****
Sarah wakes up in the dark, feeling like she has slept for days, for weeks, for years. Her head is crystal-clear, and so is her memory. She swings her legs off the bed and tiptoes out of the room barefoot.
Charlotte has fallen asleep in front of the TV with the sound turned low. Sarah stands in the doorway and watches her chest rise and fall as bluish lights dance across her face. Some late-night horror flick is on. The sight is so familiar, so wonderfully domestic that Sarah forgets her doubts for a second. She walks into the kitchen and pulls open the fridge because maybe a nice glass of milk will help her sleep…
Heaps and heaps of garbage pour out.
“Right,” Sarah says to herself. “Couldn’t have been that easy.”
When she turns around, the Garbage Woman is standing in the shadows, bent under the weight of the mount of trash she carries on her back. And there is the smell again, only this time Sarah can place it. It’s the Bog of Eternal Stench. It smells like nothing else in the whole world.
“Well, look here, young lady,” the Garbage Woman croaks, moving towards the center of the kitchen. She holds out an iron poker. “Is that what you were looking for?”
“No,” Sarah says calmly and stands so that she is blocking the doorway to the living room where Charlotte sleeps. “I don’t want anything from you.”
“Well, but look here!” The old woman shuffles closer, leaving a disgusting trail of garbage in her wade like a snail’s slime. She tries to hand Sarah an antique doll with raven black hair. “I have everything here, everything you’ve been looking for.” She holds out a wallet, a lighter, a rotten peach with a bite taken out of it, opens up her palm and shows Sarah a tiny eyelash that looks like it can pierce through a man’s heart easily. “That’s it, isn’t it?” She is only a step away now, and her breath is rank against Sarah’s face.
Sarah braces her arms against the door frame. “Go away,” she says. “I don’t want this, and I don’t want anything from you.”
It’s all junk, she thinks. ‘Real’ is in the living room, working on getting a stiff neck and a flowery imprint of her cheek from sleeping on the couch all night.
The look in the Garbage Woman’s eyes is murderous. She opens her toothless mouth, and that’s when Sarah grabs a canister from the counter and tosses salt in her face.
She blinks. Night traffic whispers on the freeway outside, a few streets over. The open fridge is pouring yellow light into the kitchen, and on the shelves Sarah can see harmless yogurt and water bottles sitting alongside the remainders of last night’s dinner wrapped in plastic. The air smells like Charlotte’s lilac candles.
Sarah carefully sweeps up the spilled salt. She walks into the living room and pulls the remote from under Charlotte’s hand. The horror flick is over, and it’s Sam’s face again on the screen.
“You have no power over me,” says Sarah. Sam rolls his eyes and turns into an owl. She switches off the TV.
As the R/S Games are finishing up, I think Team AU probably kicked our collective asses again, but whatever. It was loads of fun, which is all I personally care about. Then the Small Gifts exchange sign-ups opened up, and while I was trying to decide whether to go and play, they closed again. Which is not so bad because I'm still oscillating.
In the other news, Dear Diary, I has woe. It is caused by Season Six of Supernatural. It scares me in ways that the previous five couldn't, and oh, they tried with all that pulling off fingernails and cutting people's heads off with barbed wire. I thought the aforementioned stuff was awesome and so failed to cry for Mommy, but then came Sesaon Six, and wham! Dear Sera Gamble, stop creeping in the shadows over there 'cause I can see what you're up to. We're gonna have alcohol issues this season, aren't we? We're not gonna have any borderline inappropriate brotherly love until, like, 6.21 because you can't possibly go and resolve that missing soul issue in the next two-three episodes. And if you did, it'd be really lame. But fine, whatever, I have faith in you, just a little - or a lot - scared of the alcohol issues.
Still, I enjoyed 6.04 A LOT, along with 6.06 where Sam actually says more than two lines and some of it isn't bullshit. Ohh, Sammy, I miss you so. Will probably continue watching. Will probably bite my fingernails down to the elbows in the process.
Then TNT came along with their rerun of Season Two and didn't help the matters at all. So I drank a lot of tea, ate a lot of brownies, watched some Labyrinth and coughed up a fic. So I'm gonna post it unbetaed for the hell of it - because I has woe! - but you guys really don't have to read it. No, seriously.
Goblin Babe
SPN/Labyrinth: PG, gen, 2000 words, in which Sarah Blake is haunted by the Garbage Lady and Winchester brothers, who are most definitely not working for the mandroid. Beware: spoiler for Provenance and Nightshifter, and possible abuse of English language.
You remind me of the babe.
What babe?
Babe of the power!
What power?
Power of voodoo.
Who do?
You do. Quiet! A goblin babe.
The story goes like this: once upon a time Sarah Blake met a nice boy with the brightest smile and the biggest hands. He knew a little something about arts and took her out for dinner and picked an eyelash off her cheek. A nice boy. Sarah was smitten. Call her a sucker for a tall man.
A couple of days later she found herself standing in a graveyard at night, holding a flashlight while Sam and his brother dug up a grave. ‘Still think I’m a catch?’ Sam asked, wiping dirt across his nose in the most adorable way - only it wasn’t then, it was creepy. Soon after, a ghost of a long-dead girl tried to slice Sarah’s throat.
The moral of the story is: Sarah has a shitty taste in men.
****
“What happened there?”
Charlotte walks through the living room, putting in her evening earrings on the move, heels going click-clack-click-clack on the hardwood floor. A faint smell of perfume trails after her.
“Oh.” Sarah blinks at the TV screen. Charlotte has already disappeared into the bedroom. “A bank robbery in Milwaukee.”
“Hm.”
“…were identified as Dean and Samuel Winchester, already wanted in several states on a wide range of charges, which include murder…”
Sam looks less like the sweet college boy that she took him for the first time around. It’s probably the hair, she thinks. Dean is still the same, but then again, she doesn't remember much of Dean - loud, obnoxious and more handsome than any man should ever be, for his own good.
They are the news of the hour. They are Bonnie and Clyde all over again, and the FBI is on their tail. That’s the kind of gratitude they get.
“Hey, are you coming?” says Charlotte who is already standing by the door, purse in hand.
“Yes.” She casts one last glance at the TV, at Sam’s face caught on some security camera.
Charlotte smiles sweetly. “Didn’t know you were such a sucker for real crime.”
****
That night Sarah dreams of Sam. He drops his gaze and bites the smile that’s tugging on his lips, and when he looks up at her again, he says, “You remind me of the babe.”
****
She feels warm lips brush against her cheek and opens her eyes. Morning light filters through lace curtains and envelops the room, the bed and Charlotte’s freckled shoulders in soft glow.
“Morning, babe,” says Charlotte - tousled hair, pillow marks on her face and warm, sleepy softness.
You remind me of the babe.
“What babe?” Sarah mumbles.
Charlotte laughs and climbs from under the covers. “I’m going to shower,” she says. “Be a darling and make some coffee, would ya?”
Charlotte has lived in New York City for ten years now. She went through school here, she is a fashion designer, and her New York pronunciation is flawless, except sometimes in the mornings when the Texan drawl slips through, unnoticed. They say you can take a girl out of a desert, but you cannot take the desert out of the girl.
Sam Winchester wasn’t the first disaster of a man Sarah fell for, but he was the last. Accepting your own bisexuality is really nothing after you accept that ghosts are real.
Sarah purposefully leaves the TV off. She opens the window in the kitchen, pours coffee beans into a mill and stands there, yawning and curling her toes on the cold floor while she waits. Outside, a garbage truck crawls along the street, stopping at every corner, and a woman wearing an orange vest pulls out bags from trash cans. Sarah watches her for a while, sleepy and without a single formed thought.
A goblin babe, says a voice in her head, a random flash of memory that sounds nothing like Sam Winchester. At that moment, the garbage woman lifts her head and looks straight at Sarah. Her face is wrinkled as though she has twice the amount of skin she needs. Her eyes are small and mean under a mop of uncombed hair. Sarah automatically takes a step back, making the woman smirk, and suddenly the foulest smell imaginable hits her nostrils.
It smells like rotten peaches, like heaps and heaps of garbage, like ancient trees covered in moss and cobwebs, like crumbling walls all around her. It smells like a bog, the nastiest of them all.
Sarah gags and coughs and can’t seem to stop until Charlotte’s hands are gripping her shoulders.
“Are you okay? Hey, Sarah! Sarah, look at me!”
Sarah does, through a fog of tears. Charlotte looks like the most solid thing in the world, and suddenly everything swings back to focus. She realizes that the kitchen smells like coffee and nothing else.
“Wow,” she says. “I thought I smelled something just now. You wouldn’t believe it, it was… augh! It must have come from the garbage truck.” She looks outside, but the truck and the woman are gone.
****
Sam promised to keep in touch, but he only wrote four emails before disappearing altogether. Sarah spent the next three months on a brim of paranoia, salting the doors and windows of her apartment every night. The first time she brought Charlotte home, after she moved to New York City, she forgot about the salt lines and a funny look. Sarah found herself between two forces: one was Charlotte with her quick smile and her fashion shows, and the other was Sam with his adorable goofiness and his grave-robbing and corpse-burning. Sarah got rid of the salt lines, though she kept the container on the kitchen counter, easily accessible.
If Sam and Dean ever reappeared, Sarah would help them in a heartbeat. Their faces are all over the news. Even Charlotte noticed how much she pays attention to the story.
****
Knock, and the door will open.
****
“You seem a little jumpy,” Charlotte says as they walk home that evening.
Sarah shrugs. “I’m okay. I just have this funny feeling in my stomach, like I’ve forgotten something important.”
“Maybe an appointment?”
A garbage truck passes them and rounds the corner, and Sarah suddenly feels like her muscles have turned to wood. Briefly, an old woman behind the wheel glances at her and smirks.
“No, wait,” Sarah says, grabbing Charlotte’s hand. “What’s that garbage truck doing there?”
Charlotte blinks. “What?”
“That garbage truck. It’s seven at night - what is it doing out on the streets?”
“Okay. Baby? You’re sort of scaring me right now.”
Sarah feels her heart hammering in her chest, so strong her jaws vibrate. It’s the Winchester brothers, it’s seeing them on the news that brought this… this thing into her life again.
What exactly is the thing?
“Let’s not go that way,” she says.
****
She dreams of Dean this time. He says, “Take off your head!” and sweeps an old-fashioned razor an inch from her throat. Sarah wakes up clutching at her neck.
****
When Sarah was thirteen, she had a bad flu and ran a high fever. She dreamed of something - the most vivid, bizarre thing that boiled out of her subconscious as her brain was trying to cook itself inside her skull. And then she woke up and was all better. End of story, right?
****
“…considered armed and dangerous. If you see these men, please call 911 or your local FBI office…”
Charlotte is unloading grocery bags in the kitchen. “I thought we could stay in tonight. I bought some things for dinner. What are you watching there? Are they still going on about that bank robbery, for heaven’s sake?”
“No,” Sarah says. “Just the alert for the two… criminals.” Her voice catches on the last word.
“I don’t get it. Why are you so fascinated with this thing?” More rustling from the kitchen. “I got you some peaches.”
For a moment, Sarah can feel that stench again, the one the Garbage Woman brings. “I hate peaches,” she chokes out.
****
She dreams that the doorknockers on her and her neighbor’s doors turned huge. They have become iron heads of the Winchester brothers, and Dean has a heavy ring passed through his ears, while Sam is holding his in his mouth.
‘Mmeem! Mmphu mm umph,” says Sam.
“Whatever, bitch,” says Dean. “Can’t hear you.”
And then they still manage to bicker somehow. Sarah knows that she is supposed to knock, but she backs away from the doors.
Beware, for the path you’ve taken will lead to certain destruction.
****
In her dream, Sarah knows that the Garbage Woman has taken her memories, has stolen something important from her. It’s hard to look when you don’t know what you’re looking for. Is it perhaps her teddy bear, Lancelot? But no, she remembers, the bear is still sitting on the shelf in her childhood bedroom. Is it her little brother? But that’s just weird, and why would she think that anyway when Toby is just fine, safe at home with Dad?
It’s all because of Sam and Dean Winchester. It’s their faces on TV that are stirring up these half-forgotten memories. They try and pull her away with them, to some place of slime-covered rocks and ancient walls, where insects the size of sparrows buzz over foul water and a white owl gazes upon a stone labyrinth.
A labyrinth?
****
Sarah wakes up in the dark, feeling like she has slept for days, for weeks, for years. Her head is crystal-clear, and so is her memory. She swings her legs off the bed and tiptoes out of the room barefoot.
Charlotte has fallen asleep in front of the TV with the sound turned low. Sarah stands in the doorway and watches her chest rise and fall as bluish lights dance across her face. Some late-night horror flick is on. The sight is so familiar, so wonderfully domestic that Sarah forgets her doubts for a second. She walks into the kitchen and pulls open the fridge because maybe a nice glass of milk will help her sleep…
Heaps and heaps of garbage pour out.
“Right,” Sarah says to herself. “Couldn’t have been that easy.”
When she turns around, the Garbage Woman is standing in the shadows, bent under the weight of the mount of trash she carries on her back. And there is the smell again, only this time Sarah can place it. It’s the Bog of Eternal Stench. It smells like nothing else in the whole world.
“Well, look here, young lady,” the Garbage Woman croaks, moving towards the center of the kitchen. She holds out an iron poker. “Is that what you were looking for?”
“No,” Sarah says calmly and stands so that she is blocking the doorway to the living room where Charlotte sleeps. “I don’t want anything from you.”
“Well, but look here!” The old woman shuffles closer, leaving a disgusting trail of garbage in her wade like a snail’s slime. She tries to hand Sarah an antique doll with raven black hair. “I have everything here, everything you’ve been looking for.” She holds out a wallet, a lighter, a rotten peach with a bite taken out of it, opens up her palm and shows Sarah a tiny eyelash that looks like it can pierce through a man’s heart easily. “That’s it, isn’t it?” She is only a step away now, and her breath is rank against Sarah’s face.
Sarah braces her arms against the door frame. “Go away,” she says. “I don’t want this, and I don’t want anything from you.”
It’s all junk, she thinks. ‘Real’ is in the living room, working on getting a stiff neck and a flowery imprint of her cheek from sleeping on the couch all night.
The look in the Garbage Woman’s eyes is murderous. She opens her toothless mouth, and that’s when Sarah grabs a canister from the counter and tosses salt in her face.
She blinks. Night traffic whispers on the freeway outside, a few streets over. The open fridge is pouring yellow light into the kitchen, and on the shelves Sarah can see harmless yogurt and water bottles sitting alongside the remainders of last night’s dinner wrapped in plastic. The air smells like Charlotte’s lilac candles.
Sarah carefully sweeps up the spilled salt. She walks into the living room and pulls the remote from under Charlotte’s hand. The horror flick is over, and it’s Sam’s face again on the screen.
“You have no power over me,” says Sarah. Sam rolls his eyes and turns into an owl. She switches off the TV.