Fic: Bring on the Empty Horses (Sleepy Hollow/Various, PG-13)
Title: Bring on the Empty Horses.
Author: Prochytes.
Fandom: Sleepy Hollow/Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles/Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D./Torchwood.
Rating: PG-13. Angst and some violence.
Characters/Pairing: Jenny Mills, Abbie Mills (Sleepy Hollow ); Sarah Connor ( T: tSCC); Raina (AoS); Gwen Cooper (TW).
Disclaimer: None of these prophets of the End Times belongs to me.
Summary: Jenny, in the asylum, is visited by the four horsewomen of several apocalypses.
Word Count: 1590.
A/N: Spoilers for Sleepy Hollow to 1x11: “Vessel”; small spoilers for T: tSCC 1x01, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to 1x05: “Girl in the Flower Dress”, and Torchwood to 4x11: “The Blood Line”.
1. And I saw, and behold a white horse.
Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon. Kings can pull stunts like that and look bountiful rather than insane, although the crazy wasn’t a bullet which Nebuchadnezzar dodged indefinitely. Still a far cry from Brandon, in the third room down from Jenny’s, who builds castles out of his own machicolated shit.
An image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits, which couldn’t really have been so. Jenny runs the numbers in her head. The ratio of height to breadth in an adult human is never anywhere near as low as ten to one. Abbie (for example) is not half a foot across. Jenny watches the flex of muscle in her sister’s shoulders as Abbie leans across the table earnestly to upbraid her. Strong shoulders for a woman of Abbie’s size; the yoga must really be working out for her.
Four inches; twenty pounds. Jenny shudders at the thought. She buries it again in Bible study, while Abbie continues to dispense the lorem ipsum of sisterly concern.
The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. Small space for the dross of the drowned Creation to scratch and mewl and jabber and moan and stink. All night, every night, when the lights are dimmed on the corridors, and the orderlies trawl the Internet for porn.
“… and you haven’t heard a word that I’ve been saying.” Abbie still revs her “r”s like a chainsaw when she’s annoyed. She bites her lip. “We can’t go on like this. You’re making yourself sick.”
Abbie Mills, health sitting on her skin like dew (yoga, definitely), perches poised upon the grimy madhouse chair, and speaks to Jenny in grave tones about sickness. Soon she will ride her high horse to Quantico, and conquer the world. Four inches; twenty pounds. Jenny’s knuckles whiten.
The ram caught in a thicket by his horns is John the Baptist’s Lamb of God. Jonah buried in the belly of the fish is Christ swallowed by the sepulchre. The crowned archer is conquest, or maybe pestilence. The Bible is a hall of mirrors: nothing is itself.
Jenny is not always Jenny. She breathes again when Abbie leaves, on whom she has four inches, and twenty pounds.
2. And there went out another horse that was red.
“You’re a fake,” says Jenny, to Sarah-from-the-Government. Sarah-from-the-Government is a woman in a pantsuit with shaggy brown hair, who looks to be in early middle age. Her ID is fake; her credentials are fake (though all are very good indeed - Jenny would like to have been able to shop where she does). Ergo, the cover story that has brought her to this face-to-face with Jenny is a fake as well.
“The interview protocols in this institution are kinda lax.” Jenny leans forward, giving Sarah-from -the-Government the full benefit of her big crazygirl eyes. “No one’s watching. Joe the orderly is all the way down the hall. Even if you scream, he won’t make it here before I beat your real play out of you.”
Sarah-from-the-Government sighs, and lifts her forearms. Jenny recognizes, with unease, a pugilist’s guard.
“You’ll try,” says Sarah-not-from-the-Government. “We’ll talk, when you feel you’re done.”
The brawl is brief, brutal, and all but silent. The gasps from punches delivered and endured barely trouble the motes in the bland autumnal light. Jenny slumps groggy in her chair, and drops her fists.
“You’re right. I can’t take you. Finish it, if that’s what you’re here to do.” Jenny hopes that this sounds more like defiance than a plea.
“You’re good.” The other woman spits bloodily on the floor, damask on dust. “Strong, fast, trained. Which leads me to wonder, Mills, why you made the rookie move, and let them see what it’s like inside your head.”
“You aren’t from the Government.”
“No. But I am Sarah. They tell me that you know about Judgment Day.”
3. And I beheld, and lo a black horse.
“And what did you tell her?”
Jenny shrugs. “Demons. Cultists. The whole apocalyptic enchilada. She seemed disappointed.”
“I can’t imagine how you would disappoint anyone, Jenny.”
The girl in the flower dress cocks her head and smiles. Jenny honestly cannot tell whether this is a grilling or a seduction. She is happy to go on sprinkling chicken-feed until she can.
“‘Sarah’ wanted to know why I was here.”
“That’s obvious, surely.”
Jenny’s brow lowers. “You think I’m crazy.”
“Far from it.” Her new inquisitor leans in, confiding. “I do a lot of window-shopping.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” Jenny knows that that dress isn’t off the peg.
“Not shopping in windows.” The flowers bow and curtsey to one another as the body beneath them curves. “Shopping for windows. Your next one would be at nine fifteen p.m. tomorrow, when Jim who drinks is covering the night shift. It took me five minutes at Reception to work that out; I don’t believe it would have taken you any longer. To a woman of your skills, Jenny, this place has more windows than a greenhouse. You’re here because you know that this is where you need to be.”
“Then what brings you here?”
“I have faith. You’re special, Jenny. The world thinks what the world wants to think. But I have always depended on the strangeness of strangers.”
The visitor’s hand lies, petal-soft, upon her own. Jenny is so tired. How easy it would be to fold herself in that smile, those flowers, the perfumed promise of understanding and cease from strain. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.
But the other’s eyes give her away. Jenny does not see sympathy in their depths, or compassion, or even desire. In fact, all Jenny really sees is….
Hunger.
“A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine,” says Jenny.
Her visitor looks puzzled. “What does that mean?”
“Means ‘don’t let the door smack your pretty ass on your way out’.”
4. And I looked, and behold a pale horse.
“Why won’t you people leave me alone?”
“Hmm? Oh yes - I’ve seen your visitor log. We aren’t all from the same place, Jenny Mills, although we share particular interests. We’re the ladies who lunch at the ends of the Earth.”
“‘Ends’?”
“This little world’s on suicide watch, love. It finds so many inventive ways to kill itself. Although good luck telling Sarah that there’s more than one. Quite the right hook on her, hasn’t she?”
Jenny winces in acknowledgment.
“The Quantum Madonna, she is. The mother of the Redeemer, until it’s certain that that won’t be so. She fights the good fight, which is more than you can say for Blodeuwedd.”
“Who?”
“That’s my name for the other one. A legend, from the land of my fathers. The woman Math ap Mathonwy made from flowers. It’s not a nice story, if you follow it to the close. You begin as meadowsweet upon the valleys; you end puking pelleted prey, amber-eyed - a floating silence, unloving and unloved. I don’t think she knows where her story ends. But would any of us begin, if we knew that?”
“That’s them. What about you?”
“You can call me Eve. After all, I brought Death into the world. Death and the knowledge of good and evil, Jenny Mills. They’re the things that matter, because they’re the things we were never supposed to have.”
Jenny studies how the Welsh voice kneads the freckled throat. Behind her back, her fingers tighten.
“So, Jenny Mills, before you consider shanking me with the pencil you don’t think that I saw you nick, there are two points you need to bear in mind. Number one: I didn’t just bring a pencil.” Below the table, Jenny feels a slight, cold pressure against her leg. “I brought a paper-clip. You’d paint the ceiling from your femoral artery just as thoroughly as I would from my carotid. It’d be a proper lark, like all those dancing fountains outside Heathrow. Or we could go on playing nice.”
Jenny shrugs, and rests the pencil on the table. “What’s number two?”
“I’m here to help. I like stationery, and family packs of Monster Munch, and watching a bit of Strictly on the telly of a Saturday. Before I’d give those up to the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone, I’d murder every angel there ever was. Do you believe me?”
Jenny holds the Welshwoman’s gaze, and slowly nods.
“Good. In a moment, I’ll give you the directions to where I’ve buried a ’phone, which reaches a pre-programmed number. When you need our help, ring that number and give the password ‘Abaddon’.”
“Abaddon?”
“It helps to be reminded of old mistakes.”
“I made a decision to stay here.”
“Yes. And that takes a strength I’ll never have. But the time will come when you change your mind. Everything changes, Jenny Mills.” The Welshwoman smiles a gappy smile. “Come and see.”
FINIS
Author: Prochytes.
Fandom: Sleepy Hollow/Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles/Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D./Torchwood.
Rating: PG-13. Angst and some violence.
Characters/Pairing: Jenny Mills, Abbie Mills (Sleepy Hollow ); Sarah Connor ( T: tSCC); Raina (AoS); Gwen Cooper (TW).
Disclaimer: None of these prophets of the End Times belongs to me.
Summary: Jenny, in the asylum, is visited by the four horsewomen of several apocalypses.
Word Count: 1590.
A/N: Spoilers for Sleepy Hollow to 1x11: “Vessel”; small spoilers for T: tSCC 1x01, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to 1x05: “Girl in the Flower Dress”, and Torchwood to 4x11: “The Blood Line”.
1. And I saw, and behold a white horse.
Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon. Kings can pull stunts like that and look bountiful rather than insane, although the crazy wasn’t a bullet which Nebuchadnezzar dodged indefinitely. Still a far cry from Brandon, in the third room down from Jenny’s, who builds castles out of his own machicolated shit.
An image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits, which couldn’t really have been so. Jenny runs the numbers in her head. The ratio of height to breadth in an adult human is never anywhere near as low as ten to one. Abbie (for example) is not half a foot across. Jenny watches the flex of muscle in her sister’s shoulders as Abbie leans across the table earnestly to upbraid her. Strong shoulders for a woman of Abbie’s size; the yoga must really be working out for her.
Four inches; twenty pounds. Jenny shudders at the thought. She buries it again in Bible study, while Abbie continues to dispense the lorem ipsum of sisterly concern.
The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. Small space for the dross of the drowned Creation to scratch and mewl and jabber and moan and stink. All night, every night, when the lights are dimmed on the corridors, and the orderlies trawl the Internet for porn.
“… and you haven’t heard a word that I’ve been saying.” Abbie still revs her “r”s like a chainsaw when she’s annoyed. She bites her lip. “We can’t go on like this. You’re making yourself sick.”
Abbie Mills, health sitting on her skin like dew (yoga, definitely), perches poised upon the grimy madhouse chair, and speaks to Jenny in grave tones about sickness. Soon she will ride her high horse to Quantico, and conquer the world. Four inches; twenty pounds. Jenny’s knuckles whiten.
The ram caught in a thicket by his horns is John the Baptist’s Lamb of God. Jonah buried in the belly of the fish is Christ swallowed by the sepulchre. The crowned archer is conquest, or maybe pestilence. The Bible is a hall of mirrors: nothing is itself.
Jenny is not always Jenny. She breathes again when Abbie leaves, on whom she has four inches, and twenty pounds.
2. And there went out another horse that was red.
“You’re a fake,” says Jenny, to Sarah-from-the-Government. Sarah-from-the-Government is a woman in a pantsuit with shaggy brown hair, who looks to be in early middle age. Her ID is fake; her credentials are fake (though all are very good indeed - Jenny would like to have been able to shop where she does). Ergo, the cover story that has brought her to this face-to-face with Jenny is a fake as well.
“The interview protocols in this institution are kinda lax.” Jenny leans forward, giving Sarah-from -the-Government the full benefit of her big crazygirl eyes. “No one’s watching. Joe the orderly is all the way down the hall. Even if you scream, he won’t make it here before I beat your real play out of you.”
Sarah-from-the-Government sighs, and lifts her forearms. Jenny recognizes, with unease, a pugilist’s guard.
“You’ll try,” says Sarah-not-from-the-Government. “We’ll talk, when you feel you’re done.”
The brawl is brief, brutal, and all but silent. The gasps from punches delivered and endured barely trouble the motes in the bland autumnal light. Jenny slumps groggy in her chair, and drops her fists.
“You’re right. I can’t take you. Finish it, if that’s what you’re here to do.” Jenny hopes that this sounds more like defiance than a plea.
“You’re good.” The other woman spits bloodily on the floor, damask on dust. “Strong, fast, trained. Which leads me to wonder, Mills, why you made the rookie move, and let them see what it’s like inside your head.”
“You aren’t from the Government.”
“No. But I am Sarah. They tell me that you know about Judgment Day.”
3. And I beheld, and lo a black horse.
“And what did you tell her?”
Jenny shrugs. “Demons. Cultists. The whole apocalyptic enchilada. She seemed disappointed.”
“I can’t imagine how you would disappoint anyone, Jenny.”
The girl in the flower dress cocks her head and smiles. Jenny honestly cannot tell whether this is a grilling or a seduction. She is happy to go on sprinkling chicken-feed until she can.
“‘Sarah’ wanted to know why I was here.”
“That’s obvious, surely.”
Jenny’s brow lowers. “You think I’m crazy.”
“Far from it.” Her new inquisitor leans in, confiding. “I do a lot of window-shopping.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” Jenny knows that that dress isn’t off the peg.
“Not shopping in windows.” The flowers bow and curtsey to one another as the body beneath them curves. “Shopping for windows. Your next one would be at nine fifteen p.m. tomorrow, when Jim who drinks is covering the night shift. It took me five minutes at Reception to work that out; I don’t believe it would have taken you any longer. To a woman of your skills, Jenny, this place has more windows than a greenhouse. You’re here because you know that this is where you need to be.”
“Then what brings you here?”
“I have faith. You’re special, Jenny. The world thinks what the world wants to think. But I have always depended on the strangeness of strangers.”
The visitor’s hand lies, petal-soft, upon her own. Jenny is so tired. How easy it would be to fold herself in that smile, those flowers, the perfumed promise of understanding and cease from strain. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.
But the other’s eyes give her away. Jenny does not see sympathy in their depths, or compassion, or even desire. In fact, all Jenny really sees is….
Hunger.
“A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine,” says Jenny.
Her visitor looks puzzled. “What does that mean?”
“Means ‘don’t let the door smack your pretty ass on your way out’.”
4. And I looked, and behold a pale horse.
“Why won’t you people leave me alone?”
“Hmm? Oh yes - I’ve seen your visitor log. We aren’t all from the same place, Jenny Mills, although we share particular interests. We’re the ladies who lunch at the ends of the Earth.”
“‘Ends’?”
“This little world’s on suicide watch, love. It finds so many inventive ways to kill itself. Although good luck telling Sarah that there’s more than one. Quite the right hook on her, hasn’t she?”
Jenny winces in acknowledgment.
“The Quantum Madonna, she is. The mother of the Redeemer, until it’s certain that that won’t be so. She fights the good fight, which is more than you can say for Blodeuwedd.”
“Who?”
“That’s my name for the other one. A legend, from the land of my fathers. The woman Math ap Mathonwy made from flowers. It’s not a nice story, if you follow it to the close. You begin as meadowsweet upon the valleys; you end puking pelleted prey, amber-eyed - a floating silence, unloving and unloved. I don’t think she knows where her story ends. But would any of us begin, if we knew that?”
“That’s them. What about you?”
“You can call me Eve. After all, I brought Death into the world. Death and the knowledge of good and evil, Jenny Mills. They’re the things that matter, because they’re the things we were never supposed to have.”
Jenny studies how the Welsh voice kneads the freckled throat. Behind her back, her fingers tighten.
“So, Jenny Mills, before you consider shanking me with the pencil you don’t think that I saw you nick, there are two points you need to bear in mind. Number one: I didn’t just bring a pencil.” Below the table, Jenny feels a slight, cold pressure against her leg. “I brought a paper-clip. You’d paint the ceiling from your femoral artery just as thoroughly as I would from my carotid. It’d be a proper lark, like all those dancing fountains outside Heathrow. Or we could go on playing nice.”
Jenny shrugs, and rests the pencil on the table. “What’s number two?”
“I’m here to help. I like stationery, and family packs of Monster Munch, and watching a bit of Strictly on the telly of a Saturday. Before I’d give those up to the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone, I’d murder every angel there ever was. Do you believe me?”
Jenny holds the Welshwoman’s gaze, and slowly nods.
“Good. In a moment, I’ll give you the directions to where I’ve buried a ’phone, which reaches a pre-programmed number. When you need our help, ring that number and give the password ‘Abaddon’.”
“Abaddon?”
“It helps to be reminded of old mistakes.”
“I made a decision to stay here.”
“Yes. And that takes a strength I’ll never have. But the time will come when you change your mind. Everything changes, Jenny Mills.” The Welshwoman smiles a gappy smile. “Come and see.”
FINIS