That Was Longer Than a Heartbeat: Chapter 3
Chapter 3: The Same Ghost Every Night
Two Months Later:
Alexis wakes up in a cold sweat, panting and terrified in the hay loft of an abandoned barn somewhere in Colorado. Her fingers immediately go to the thick lace of scars on her right hand, the raised skin fusing her pointer and middle fingers together, and she calms down. The digits are almost completely numb now, despite the surprising range of motion they still achieve. It's a quick reminder that any pain endured would fade eventually, and she clings to it like it's the memory of her father.
“Bad dreams?”
The voice startles her, and she has to remind herself that it's just Sam before she reaches for the crowbar by her makeshift bed. She quickly makes out the outline of his form in the dark, covered in a measly blanket as he sits by the ladder that leads down to the barn and acts as lookout.
They haven't seen anything for days, not a single zombie, unless you count the two horses that Emily - the third and final member of their ragtag group - had quickly and quietly put down in their stalls. The fact that both animals had been turned but not eaten hadn't sat right with any of them, but moving farther without cover hadn't seemed like a smart move either.
“I hate dreaming,” Alexis admits quietly, moving as silently as possible around Emily's sleeping form to sit next to Sam. “Even when it's just memories, it's bad.”
He nods. “Yeah, I keep dreaming about Jess: the good times, before-” He cuts himself off. “But it just makes it even worse to wake up.”
Alexis doesn't say anything to that. She doesn't know what to say. They're in Colorado to find Emily's father, and she still has hope that her dad is alive, even if it's nothing more than a lack of confirmation that he's dead. But, Sam has no one as far as she knows. He never talked about family, except a brother whose name was spoken with such reverence and misery that she'd always assumed that he'd died not long before Sam had come to Stanford, and after Jess... Alexis can't even imagine how alone Sam must feel, because she knows how bad it is for herself.
After a few more beats of silence, Alexis can't take it anymore.
“My dad must be having so much fun right now,” Alexis mumbles it into her knee. Sam doesn’t say ‘don’t get your hopes up,’ like he had the first couple of times that they’d had this conversation. It’s routine now, for him to just let this go, to let Alexis have her little moment where the same things get said over and over. Sam lets her pretend that he believes her, and she pretends that she isn’t pretending.
She used to do it with Emily, talk about her dad as if he were still alive. It doesn’t help anymore though, because Emily is always happy, and that doesn’t feel real to Alexis anymore. It’s a sad day when Sam’s quiet nods and vacant expression is more soothing than Emily’s smiles.
“We played laser tag together all the time, with Beckett. I think that’s why I’m such a good shot.”
He nods, but the look on his face is so sad for her, like he knows her father is dead. They don’t know anything though, and that’s almost worse.
“Don't look at me like that.” Her voice gets lost in the lump in her throat, but Sam acquiesces to her request and turns away.
“Well, if we're playing this game, I'd like to believe that my brother's alive.” He sighs and leans back, shifting to get comfortable against the wooden post he's spent most of the night leaning on.
Alexis' head jerks up. “Sam, that's not-”
Sam just smirks at her. “Just because I let you believe he was already dead, doesn't mean it's true.”
It's such an Emily tactic, avoiding lies with misleading truths.
“My brother was my best friend in the whole world. We grew up in each others pockets. He taught me how to shoot a gun when I was nine.” He turns to grin at her. “I think that's why my aim is so good.”
This is the most that Alexis has ever been told about Dean. Before that it was only, “We were really close,” “The way we left it was...” and “He could be a real dick sometimes.” Not very revealing in any sense.
“Dean, my brother, was a good hunter.” He pauses. “A great hunter. But he was reckless. Rush-into-a-fight-without-making-sure-you-can-survive-it-first-because-you'll-be-damned-if-anyone-gets-hurt-or-killed-on-your-watch type of reckless. And it may sound conceited, but Dean took my safety personally. After I left, I doubt that recklessness got any better, so even if he was still alive when this zombie shit hit the fan, well he would've been neck deep in undead, saving anyone and anything as fast as his car would take him. It would've got him killed, and as much as my dad pissed me the hell off sometimes, he was probably right behind Dean.”
Alexis shakes her head in the wake of his silence. “That's not how you play pretend.” The words come out less joking than she intended. They're practically accusatory, in fact.
“Maybe,” Sam murmurs, “but I don't know how else to tell this story. It's my fault that I don't know where he is right now, you know?”
She shakes her head, but it wasn't a question.
“I could have called him at any point: before we knew what was going down, afterwards when you and Emily tried to call your dads.”
She flinches at the reminder of the twenty calls that had gone to voicemail. Right after they'd left Jess and Sam's apartment, and right before the cell towers were officially pronounced dead. She had been certain then that Richard Castle was gone, but any number of things could have kept him from picking his phone up. Emily's dad hadn't picked up the first three times either, but then his breathy voice had whispered into the phone that he was alive, that he loved her, and that she should stop calling his cell and attracting zombies to their location. Apparently Cal Lightman wasn't too aware of the 'silent' feature on his phone.
Emily even knew that her mother was dead. They'd all watched her get torn apart in a courtroom on the 6 O'clock news. It's why Emily wasn't in class that day with Alexis, so long ago. It's probably why she's still alive today. Alexis hates to think of that news broadcast as a blessing, but she would give anything to know what Emily knows, no matter the truth.
Sam is staring at his hands now, eyes glazed over with a teary film. Sam's got a penchant for this, for wetting his eyes with an unfathomable sorrow, but never letting the tears fall. It's a kind of widespread phenomenon in the aftermath of the zombies. No one really cries. And if you do, you need to be watched constantly, because you're probably ten seconds away from a psychotic breakdown that could leave half of your party in a bloody mess. But this old-soul, teary eyed stare is common place.
Alexis used to think - when all those muscled, hunky guys on TV and in the movies would get that look in their eyes - that sorrow was beautiful. In real life though, it's like a thousand kicked puppies sitting on your chest, heavy and impossible to turn away from.
“Dean was so mad at me when I left for university,” Sam starts talking again. “He drove me to the bus stop, gave me money, but he wouldn't look at me. I didn't tell him I was leaving, not until my bags were packed and I was halfway out the door. I knew I'd done something irrevocable to us, and broken some trust in him that I would never get back. But Dean would always forgive me.
“I pretended that he wouldn't though, because I didn't want to get dragged back into the hunting lifestyle. I didn't want him to messy up my pretty new apple-pie life. I told myself that he wouldn't answer my calls, that he would ignore me, but Dean would never do that to me. I cut him out of my life, not the other way around.”
The look Sam gives Alexis then half breaks her heart. She's never had a sibling to connect to like Sam and Dean obviously did with each other. She can't decide if Sam's look makes her upset or thankful about that.
“I spent so much time being angry at him for never calling, but I wouldn't have picked up, Lex. I was way worse to Dean than he ever was to me. Now he's dead, and I'll never get to apologize.”
Sam still isn't crying, and Alexis has no idea what to say.
Silence stretches wide, like a void between them.
“Stop thinking so loud you two! I did lookout duty last night and you're making it impossible to sleep.” Emily's hiss is muffled by hay and slurred by sleep, and Alexis has to stop herself from laughing.
She's jealous sometimes, that Emily is so cavalier still, even after all this time. The other girl never snaps, never falters, just stays happy and spends her spare time coming up with quips to yell while chopping zombies' heads off with her fire-axe. The only time Alexis had ever seen her really angry was when they'd argued about whether to head North to Washington and Cal Lightman, or East to New York and Richard Castle. Emily had won, only because Washington was closer, and it made more sense to stick together and try to find their families as a team. Sam didn't care which way they went. He'd mumbled something about Dean being a highway, and Alexis had assumed at the time that he'd meant that his brother's spirit was with him wherever he went.
It hadn't mattered either way, because they'd quickly learned that going up along the coast was a horrible idea. People were flocking to the ocean, desperate to get aboard ships to foreign shores, oblivious to the fact that they were trapping themselves in a zombie infested bottleneck if they couldn't catch a boat, and trapping themselves on zombie infested ships if they did. Plus, Sam had done his research, the last transmissions from the TVs had been about the 'global' pandemic. There was no corner of the world untouched. The last thing she'd seen on TV was a helicopter view of a zombie, one of the fast ones that Emily had taken to calling 'hunters,' tackling a hiker down a snowy slope on Everest.
The trio was quickly forced to curve up through Nevada, avoiding the ocean front as much as possible. By the time they reached Idaho it was clear from conversations they'd had with a group holed up in a local mall that the Lightman group was doing a similar loop, and that they'd just missed each other. Thus, Colorado. Emily wasn't even phased when she'd figured out that her father had turned East instead of West towards Stanford. She'd just said, 'well isn't that helpful,' and thanked the group they'd found sheltering in the top six floors of a skyscraper in Salt Lake. Alexis was particularly impressed with them, as the removable walkways they'd built between buildings let them get almost the whole way through the city without going near the ground once.
They'd all changed. Sam was no longer the grinning, joking, mysterious boy with the kicked puppy looks, he was just mysterious and kicked. Alexis knew that she'd turned her own determination into a serious character flaw, going after a group of zombies and not stopping until they were eradicated, no matter the possibility of her own escape at any point in the process. Sam had berated her for it more than once. But Emily? She just cared less, laughed more, and made fun of everyone and everything with more vitriol than she ever had before. It was understandable, different people dealt with grief in different ways, but sometimes Alexis wanted to punch her. Emily was the only one who had actual eyewitnesses that knew her dad was alive and well. Alexis didn't know if her dad was dead in New York, and Sam didn't even have anyone to worry about as far as he was concerned. Emily shouldn't be using humour to mask grief, she should be legitimately happy.
Alexis knows that their friendship was better justified before the end of the world. Emily was a sarcastic hellion whose rebellion perfectly balanced out Alexis' sometimes (yes, she'd admit it to herself) prudish tendencies, and they both had great stories about embarrassing fatherly intervention. They got each other, and if they didn't, they took the time to try to understand. If this was before, she would be helping Emily through whatever she was feeling. But she couldn't do that anymore.
Everything was broken now, and Alexis didn't know how to fix herself, let alone her friends.
Honestly, they had so little time where safety was even a pipe-dream, that discussing anything serious just wasn't an option. You had maybe three hours of feeling secure every few weeks, on the off chance that you found a group of people who had actually managed to build themselves a secure place to live. It was really hard to find a private moment to have a mental breakdown yourself, let alone find someone in the right mood to have a mental breakdown with you. And then you had the people in the actual shelters to worry about. Some of those places were just powder kegs waiting to go off, and all it took was one crazy to get you strangled from behind or cannibalized. Not everyone had as great a setup as the group in Salt Lake, and people were getting desperate.
They leave the barn soon after. The world is beginning to light up, and they've found that the best time to travel is right before dawn, when the world is still murky grey enough to provide cover, but light enough to nullify the zombies' advantage of night vision. If it's really sunny out - like, hot enough to cook an egg on the sidewalk - then they can pretty much stroll their way across the country. Zombies seem to find the extreme heat discomforting, but as they leave both California and September behind, those days get few and far between.
Two weeks later they finally catch up with the group Emily's father was travelling with. Alexis remembers Gillian Foster, Cal Lightman's business partner, from when she helped Alexis and Emily move their stuff into their apartment. She'd been playful and laughing, with a healthy glow and a twinkle in her eye. She is none of those things now. Haggard and skeletal, she breaks down crying when she sees Emily. They hug for a long time, and then Emily starts asking about her dad. No one says anything, and Gillian cries harder.
Alexis knows right away that Cal Lightman is dead. She doesn't have to wait for Emily to look at Loker - another person she remembers from the move - and say “The truth please.” She doesn't have to wait for him to answer with something about a demon in the last town. Alexis wants to help her friend through this, she wants to move forward and give Emily a hug. But something inside her has been threading loose for awhile now. Fraying, fraying, fraying until it snapped, just now, at this moment.
It is suddenly much harder to pretend that Richard Castle is alive.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
A/N 1: Chapter title comes from The Same Ghost Every Night by Wolf Parade.
A/N 2: Well, this is the longest fic I've ever written. As such, I'm pretty proud of it, even though I think that the actual propulsion of plot (and plot itself) was a tad lacking. So please be nice, but also, if you have any constructive criticism on how I could better tell a longer story or keep everyone in character, please let me know. This was actually supposed to be much longer, with an eventual addition of Dean and Cas (he has no angel powers anymore!) But I got past my 5000 word minimum and I was crazy busy, so I decided to end it with the first discovery of what happens to one of their family members. I may write more in the future, but it's not a guarantee, because I am lazy like that.
A/N 3: I don't think Alexis is a prude, but I think that sometimes she'd feel that way about herself, especially if she was friends with Emily.
And last but not least thank you so much to glasslogic for doing the art for this. Having art done for something you wrote? It's kind of epic.
Masterpost | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
Two Months Later:
Alexis wakes up in a cold sweat, panting and terrified in the hay loft of an abandoned barn somewhere in Colorado. Her fingers immediately go to the thick lace of scars on her right hand, the raised skin fusing her pointer and middle fingers together, and she calms down. The digits are almost completely numb now, despite the surprising range of motion they still achieve. It's a quick reminder that any pain endured would fade eventually, and she clings to it like it's the memory of her father.
“Bad dreams?”
The voice startles her, and she has to remind herself that it's just Sam before she reaches for the crowbar by her makeshift bed. She quickly makes out the outline of his form in the dark, covered in a measly blanket as he sits by the ladder that leads down to the barn and acts as lookout.
They haven't seen anything for days, not a single zombie, unless you count the two horses that Emily - the third and final member of their ragtag group - had quickly and quietly put down in their stalls. The fact that both animals had been turned but not eaten hadn't sat right with any of them, but moving farther without cover hadn't seemed like a smart move either.
“I hate dreaming,” Alexis admits quietly, moving as silently as possible around Emily's sleeping form to sit next to Sam. “Even when it's just memories, it's bad.”
He nods. “Yeah, I keep dreaming about Jess: the good times, before-” He cuts himself off. “But it just makes it even worse to wake up.”
Alexis doesn't say anything to that. She doesn't know what to say. They're in Colorado to find Emily's father, and she still has hope that her dad is alive, even if it's nothing more than a lack of confirmation that he's dead. But, Sam has no one as far as she knows. He never talked about family, except a brother whose name was spoken with such reverence and misery that she'd always assumed that he'd died not long before Sam had come to Stanford, and after Jess... Alexis can't even imagine how alone Sam must feel, because she knows how bad it is for herself.
After a few more beats of silence, Alexis can't take it anymore.
“My dad must be having so much fun right now,” Alexis mumbles it into her knee. Sam doesn’t say ‘don’t get your hopes up,’ like he had the first couple of times that they’d had this conversation. It’s routine now, for him to just let this go, to let Alexis have her little moment where the same things get said over and over. Sam lets her pretend that he believes her, and she pretends that she isn’t pretending.
She used to do it with Emily, talk about her dad as if he were still alive. It doesn’t help anymore though, because Emily is always happy, and that doesn’t feel real to Alexis anymore. It’s a sad day when Sam’s quiet nods and vacant expression is more soothing than Emily’s smiles.
“We played laser tag together all the time, with Beckett. I think that’s why I’m such a good shot.”
He nods, but the look on his face is so sad for her, like he knows her father is dead. They don’t know anything though, and that’s almost worse.
“Don't look at me like that.” Her voice gets lost in the lump in her throat, but Sam acquiesces to her request and turns away.
“Well, if we're playing this game, I'd like to believe that my brother's alive.” He sighs and leans back, shifting to get comfortable against the wooden post he's spent most of the night leaning on.
Alexis' head jerks up. “Sam, that's not-”
Sam just smirks at her. “Just because I let you believe he was already dead, doesn't mean it's true.”
It's such an Emily tactic, avoiding lies with misleading truths.
“My brother was my best friend in the whole world. We grew up in each others pockets. He taught me how to shoot a gun when I was nine.” He turns to grin at her. “I think that's why my aim is so good.”
This is the most that Alexis has ever been told about Dean. Before that it was only, “We were really close,” “The way we left it was...” and “He could be a real dick sometimes.” Not very revealing in any sense.
“Dean, my brother, was a good hunter.” He pauses. “A great hunter. But he was reckless. Rush-into-a-fight-without-making-sure-you-can-survive-it-first-because-you'll-be-damned-if-anyone-gets-hurt-or-killed-on-your-watch type of reckless. And it may sound conceited, but Dean took my safety personally. After I left, I doubt that recklessness got any better, so even if he was still alive when this zombie shit hit the fan, well he would've been neck deep in undead, saving anyone and anything as fast as his car would take him. It would've got him killed, and as much as my dad pissed me the hell off sometimes, he was probably right behind Dean.”
Alexis shakes her head in the wake of his silence. “That's not how you play pretend.” The words come out less joking than she intended. They're practically accusatory, in fact.
“Maybe,” Sam murmurs, “but I don't know how else to tell this story. It's my fault that I don't know where he is right now, you know?”
She shakes her head, but it wasn't a question.
“I could have called him at any point: before we knew what was going down, afterwards when you and Emily tried to call your dads.”
She flinches at the reminder of the twenty calls that had gone to voicemail. Right after they'd left Jess and Sam's apartment, and right before the cell towers were officially pronounced dead. She had been certain then that Richard Castle was gone, but any number of things could have kept him from picking his phone up. Emily's dad hadn't picked up the first three times either, but then his breathy voice had whispered into the phone that he was alive, that he loved her, and that she should stop calling his cell and attracting zombies to their location. Apparently Cal Lightman wasn't too aware of the 'silent' feature on his phone.
Emily even knew that her mother was dead. They'd all watched her get torn apart in a courtroom on the 6 O'clock news. It's why Emily wasn't in class that day with Alexis, so long ago. It's probably why she's still alive today. Alexis hates to think of that news broadcast as a blessing, but she would give anything to know what Emily knows, no matter the truth.
Sam is staring at his hands now, eyes glazed over with a teary film. Sam's got a penchant for this, for wetting his eyes with an unfathomable sorrow, but never letting the tears fall. It's a kind of widespread phenomenon in the aftermath of the zombies. No one really cries. And if you do, you need to be watched constantly, because you're probably ten seconds away from a psychotic breakdown that could leave half of your party in a bloody mess. But this old-soul, teary eyed stare is common place.
Alexis used to think - when all those muscled, hunky guys on TV and in the movies would get that look in their eyes - that sorrow was beautiful. In real life though, it's like a thousand kicked puppies sitting on your chest, heavy and impossible to turn away from.
“Dean was so mad at me when I left for university,” Sam starts talking again. “He drove me to the bus stop, gave me money, but he wouldn't look at me. I didn't tell him I was leaving, not until my bags were packed and I was halfway out the door. I knew I'd done something irrevocable to us, and broken some trust in him that I would never get back. But Dean would always forgive me.
“I pretended that he wouldn't though, because I didn't want to get dragged back into the hunting lifestyle. I didn't want him to messy up my pretty new apple-pie life. I told myself that he wouldn't answer my calls, that he would ignore me, but Dean would never do that to me. I cut him out of my life, not the other way around.”
The look Sam gives Alexis then half breaks her heart. She's never had a sibling to connect to like Sam and Dean obviously did with each other. She can't decide if Sam's look makes her upset or thankful about that.
“I spent so much time being angry at him for never calling, but I wouldn't have picked up, Lex. I was way worse to Dean than he ever was to me. Now he's dead, and I'll never get to apologize.”
Sam still isn't crying, and Alexis has no idea what to say.
Silence stretches wide, like a void between them.
“Stop thinking so loud you two! I did lookout duty last night and you're making it impossible to sleep.” Emily's hiss is muffled by hay and slurred by sleep, and Alexis has to stop herself from laughing.
She's jealous sometimes, that Emily is so cavalier still, even after all this time. The other girl never snaps, never falters, just stays happy and spends her spare time coming up with quips to yell while chopping zombies' heads off with her fire-axe. The only time Alexis had ever seen her really angry was when they'd argued about whether to head North to Washington and Cal Lightman, or East to New York and Richard Castle. Emily had won, only because Washington was closer, and it made more sense to stick together and try to find their families as a team. Sam didn't care which way they went. He'd mumbled something about Dean being a highway, and Alexis had assumed at the time that he'd meant that his brother's spirit was with him wherever he went.
It hadn't mattered either way, because they'd quickly learned that going up along the coast was a horrible idea. People were flocking to the ocean, desperate to get aboard ships to foreign shores, oblivious to the fact that they were trapping themselves in a zombie infested bottleneck if they couldn't catch a boat, and trapping themselves on zombie infested ships if they did. Plus, Sam had done his research, the last transmissions from the TVs had been about the 'global' pandemic. There was no corner of the world untouched. The last thing she'd seen on TV was a helicopter view of a zombie, one of the fast ones that Emily had taken to calling 'hunters,' tackling a hiker down a snowy slope on Everest.
The trio was quickly forced to curve up through Nevada, avoiding the ocean front as much as possible. By the time they reached Idaho it was clear from conversations they'd had with a group holed up in a local mall that the Lightman group was doing a similar loop, and that they'd just missed each other. Thus, Colorado. Emily wasn't even phased when she'd figured out that her father had turned East instead of West towards Stanford. She'd just said, 'well isn't that helpful,' and thanked the group they'd found sheltering in the top six floors of a skyscraper in Salt Lake. Alexis was particularly impressed with them, as the removable walkways they'd built between buildings let them get almost the whole way through the city without going near the ground once.
They'd all changed. Sam was no longer the grinning, joking, mysterious boy with the kicked puppy looks, he was just mysterious and kicked. Alexis knew that she'd turned her own determination into a serious character flaw, going after a group of zombies and not stopping until they were eradicated, no matter the possibility of her own escape at any point in the process. Sam had berated her for it more than once. But Emily? She just cared less, laughed more, and made fun of everyone and everything with more vitriol than she ever had before. It was understandable, different people dealt with grief in different ways, but sometimes Alexis wanted to punch her. Emily was the only one who had actual eyewitnesses that knew her dad was alive and well. Alexis didn't know if her dad was dead in New York, and Sam didn't even have anyone to worry about as far as he was concerned. Emily shouldn't be using humour to mask grief, she should be legitimately happy.
Alexis knows that their friendship was better justified before the end of the world. Emily was a sarcastic hellion whose rebellion perfectly balanced out Alexis' sometimes (yes, she'd admit it to herself) prudish tendencies, and they both had great stories about embarrassing fatherly intervention. They got each other, and if they didn't, they took the time to try to understand. If this was before, she would be helping Emily through whatever she was feeling. But she couldn't do that anymore.
Everything was broken now, and Alexis didn't know how to fix herself, let alone her friends.
Honestly, they had so little time where safety was even a pipe-dream, that discussing anything serious just wasn't an option. You had maybe three hours of feeling secure every few weeks, on the off chance that you found a group of people who had actually managed to build themselves a secure place to live. It was really hard to find a private moment to have a mental breakdown yourself, let alone find someone in the right mood to have a mental breakdown with you. And then you had the people in the actual shelters to worry about. Some of those places were just powder kegs waiting to go off, and all it took was one crazy to get you strangled from behind or cannibalized. Not everyone had as great a setup as the group in Salt Lake, and people were getting desperate.
They leave the barn soon after. The world is beginning to light up, and they've found that the best time to travel is right before dawn, when the world is still murky grey enough to provide cover, but light enough to nullify the zombies' advantage of night vision. If it's really sunny out - like, hot enough to cook an egg on the sidewalk - then they can pretty much stroll their way across the country. Zombies seem to find the extreme heat discomforting, but as they leave both California and September behind, those days get few and far between.
Two weeks later they finally catch up with the group Emily's father was travelling with. Alexis remembers Gillian Foster, Cal Lightman's business partner, from when she helped Alexis and Emily move their stuff into their apartment. She'd been playful and laughing, with a healthy glow and a twinkle in her eye. She is none of those things now. Haggard and skeletal, she breaks down crying when she sees Emily. They hug for a long time, and then Emily starts asking about her dad. No one says anything, and Gillian cries harder.
Alexis knows right away that Cal Lightman is dead. She doesn't have to wait for Emily to look at Loker - another person she remembers from the move - and say “The truth please.” She doesn't have to wait for him to answer with something about a demon in the last town. Alexis wants to help her friend through this, she wants to move forward and give Emily a hug. But something inside her has been threading loose for awhile now. Fraying, fraying, fraying until it snapped, just now, at this moment.
It is suddenly much harder to pretend that Richard Castle is alive.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
A/N 1: Chapter title comes from The Same Ghost Every Night by Wolf Parade.
A/N 2: Well, this is the longest fic I've ever written. As such, I'm pretty proud of it, even though I think that the actual propulsion of plot (and plot itself) was a tad lacking. So please be nice, but also, if you have any constructive criticism on how I could better tell a longer story or keep everyone in character, please let me know. This was actually supposed to be much longer, with an eventual addition of Dean and Cas (he has no angel powers anymore!) But I got past my 5000 word minimum and I was crazy busy, so I decided to end it with the first discovery of what happens to one of their family members. I may write more in the future, but it's not a guarantee, because I am lazy like that.
A/N 3: I don't think Alexis is a prude, but I think that sometimes she'd feel that way about herself, especially if she was friends with Emily.
And last but not least thank you so much to glasslogic for doing the art for this. Having art done for something you wrote? It's kind of epic.
Masterpost | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3