Supernatural: “the world ends in sunlight” (Adam, Jo)
Title: the world ends in sunlight
Characters: Adam Milligan (from 4.19), Jo Harvelle, mentions of everyone close to them, AU
Timeline: Season 2, assuming that after John’s death, psychic Sammy-visions enabled the boys to find Adam and they drop him off at Harvelle’s Roadhouse….
Word Count: 1046
Note: I wrote this a while back- it was a three-sentence ficlet that spun out of control. I haven’t seen season five yet so this might be more AU than it already was.
the world ends in sunlight
Three in the morning and he’s sitting listless at a table in the darkening Roadhouse, failing in his pact with himself not to think about his mother (-and his brothers, wherever they are right now; and Dad who’s gone as well and how--when--why did this happen, Dad-).
And right when Adam’s drifting, half-asleep to the tick of Sam’s watch on his wrist, there’s a flash of golden hair, and then someone’s there, warm (alive), pulling up a seat and cradling two beers close.
He goes rigid, blinks once. It’s only her.
I…you’re Jo, right?
She just looks at him, all pale and out-of-focus strange. You haven’t moved or spoken for three hours, did you know that?
.
.
.
Adam’s not blind, you know. Anyone says the words John or Winchester or both, and even across a room, Jo tenses, her face tightens; and he might as well be seeing all that’s unsaid in himself, playing out on her.
One of those nights, he’s glaze-eyed, getting a little too lost in the workings of Ash’s demon alert files (the guy’s a research badass, apparently, and so will Adam be…allegedly). He jumps -about ten feet- when Jo raps a fist on the bar, hits him with, Did John every say anything to you about my dad?
You…you want to tell me about him? Adam ventures, cautious, and the harsh look in her eyes dims down.
.
.
.
He utters a low holy crap and cracks out the smile he hasn’t used in months, the very first time he hurls a knife, the way he thinks she wants him to.
Striding over to him with more grace then he could ever summon, Jo adjusts the angle of his throwing arm, turns him away from straight sunlight, and mutters low in his ear, It’ll be a hell lot harder when the target’s, you know, moving.
Seven hours and two lessons later, she drags him and herself up from the ground, punctuates the knockdown with a shake of her head: My mom and your brother? Are gonna kill me.
.
.
.
Adam and some girl he always struck up dares with, they’d once snuck by a decrepit shooting range. He’d stood in that yawning space and envisioned, in more ways that one, that he could maybe save a life (or two or more), bare hands and all, and, and-
-And, he concludes, the last thing he wants to say is that it was his ‘blood’ or ‘instinct’ calling - time to count on choice now, because every other one of his got taken away.
Jo laughs and catches his gaze, keeps it there. You think you chose this?
Adam shrugs and takes aim. Maybe I did, or I wish I did. Pick one; I can’t.
She breaks into another quiet laugh (he kind of likes it a lot) and between gunshots, she tells him about the time everyone at school came to gape at her knife collection; how her blood belongs to her father’s hunt. How it’s kind of twisted and kind of right that she could never stay anywhere brightly lit for too long.
She pulls a trigger, blowing away gunsmoke. Go ahead and think you did, she says. We can both do that.
Sounds like a plan, he says lightly and she smiles around her edges. Okay, why not?
Later in the day, they both click bottles, and without speaking, drink to their displaced and jaded selves, still geared up for battle in the middle of nowhere.
.
.
.
Days, nights, his two brothers are here, and then they’re gone. Brothers. Adam calls them that, locks that word to his name, as if he could ever forget. Sam and Dean (his father’s sons) come, go, head out into their darkness again and again.
He’s almost dead certain that Dean has caught him these days, walking with a fledgling hunter’s stride; he knows that Sam often pins those discerning eyes on him, seeking out things that Adam can’t want to know.
But neither one spares a word about it these days, and with what feels like a brotherly favor (yeah, he’s learning about those), Adam shrugs off the growing, dimming shadow on both Winchesters whenever they tell him we’ll see you later.
(It always sounds like the end, and the fear is theirs, not his.)
One night, as he lingers at the door they walked out of, a sigh falls behind him. Jo closes her hand around his wrist, squeezes, and it’s tight enough to hurt.
Hey, you. She’s gentle, or just almost. Don’t take it too hard, they…they’ll be back if I think I know ‘em.
…They better. Or, I’ll-
Adam doesn’t bother to fool himself- he’s got exactly zero room for any more loss or grief.
He follows her inside; looks back only once (only, always).
They- they just better.
.
.
.
It’s dark, a darkest hour inching towards dawn and they’re left standing.
They scatter salt and burn bones in a far-flung graveyard, and the rest of their night goes out in smoke; the past few hours that are all nightmares, and predatory shadows, and the both of them centered and waiting, the adrenaline that’s making its home in Adam’s veins.
Jo’s touch is freezing cold; but it’s hers, and she locates him in the near-dark, asks how he’s holding up.
Not so swell, but I’m fine if you are, Adam whispers back, breathing in smoke and cold and too many ghosts-his father and brothers, living with nothing but this for years; Jo taking it in like air and knowing what it means, to want to bring it down-
-It bided its time, he thinks, knife in hand and gaze to the flames, it took a while but the darkness went around and got him too.
(What he told Jo at the start, what he’ll tell Sam and Dean: Might as well return the favor.)
.
.
.
She hits the road, and for now, Adam follows.
Another day, open sky. Apocalypse around the next bend, and they’re carrying on.
(He’s still waiting. But it isn’t for the end.)
***
Characters: Adam Milligan (from 4.19), Jo Harvelle, mentions of everyone close to them, AU
Timeline: Season 2, assuming that after John’s death, psychic Sammy-visions enabled the boys to find Adam and they drop him off at Harvelle’s Roadhouse….
Word Count: 1046
Note: I wrote this a while back- it was a three-sentence ficlet that spun out of control. I haven’t seen season five yet so this might be more AU than it already was.
the world ends in sunlight
Three in the morning and he’s sitting listless at a table in the darkening Roadhouse, failing in his pact with himself not to think about his mother (-and his brothers, wherever they are right now; and Dad who’s gone as well and how--when--why did this happen, Dad-).
And right when Adam’s drifting, half-asleep to the tick of Sam’s watch on his wrist, there’s a flash of golden hair, and then someone’s there, warm (alive), pulling up a seat and cradling two beers close.
He goes rigid, blinks once. It’s only her.
I…you’re Jo, right?
She just looks at him, all pale and out-of-focus strange. You haven’t moved or spoken for three hours, did you know that?
.
.
.
Adam’s not blind, you know. Anyone says the words John or Winchester or both, and even across a room, Jo tenses, her face tightens; and he might as well be seeing all that’s unsaid in himself, playing out on her.
One of those nights, he’s glaze-eyed, getting a little too lost in the workings of Ash’s demon alert files (the guy’s a research badass, apparently, and so will Adam be…allegedly). He jumps -about ten feet- when Jo raps a fist on the bar, hits him with, Did John every say anything to you about my dad?
You…you want to tell me about him? Adam ventures, cautious, and the harsh look in her eyes dims down.
.
.
.
He utters a low holy crap and cracks out the smile he hasn’t used in months, the very first time he hurls a knife, the way he thinks she wants him to.
Striding over to him with more grace then he could ever summon, Jo adjusts the angle of his throwing arm, turns him away from straight sunlight, and mutters low in his ear, It’ll be a hell lot harder when the target’s, you know, moving.
Seven hours and two lessons later, she drags him and herself up from the ground, punctuates the knockdown with a shake of her head: My mom and your brother? Are gonna kill me.
.
.
.
Adam and some girl he always struck up dares with, they’d once snuck by a decrepit shooting range. He’d stood in that yawning space and envisioned, in more ways that one, that he could maybe save a life (or two or more), bare hands and all, and, and-
-And, he concludes, the last thing he wants to say is that it was his ‘blood’ or ‘instinct’ calling - time to count on choice now, because every other one of his got taken away.
Jo laughs and catches his gaze, keeps it there. You think you chose this?
Adam shrugs and takes aim. Maybe I did, or I wish I did. Pick one; I can’t.
She breaks into another quiet laugh (he kind of likes it a lot) and between gunshots, she tells him about the time everyone at school came to gape at her knife collection; how her blood belongs to her father’s hunt. How it’s kind of twisted and kind of right that she could never stay anywhere brightly lit for too long.
She pulls a trigger, blowing away gunsmoke. Go ahead and think you did, she says. We can both do that.
Sounds like a plan, he says lightly and she smiles around her edges. Okay, why not?
Later in the day, they both click bottles, and without speaking, drink to their displaced and jaded selves, still geared up for battle in the middle of nowhere.
.
.
.
Days, nights, his two brothers are here, and then they’re gone. Brothers. Adam calls them that, locks that word to his name, as if he could ever forget. Sam and Dean (his father’s sons) come, go, head out into their darkness again and again.
He’s almost dead certain that Dean has caught him these days, walking with a fledgling hunter’s stride; he knows that Sam often pins those discerning eyes on him, seeking out things that Adam can’t want to know.
But neither one spares a word about it these days, and with what feels like a brotherly favor (yeah, he’s learning about those), Adam shrugs off the growing, dimming shadow on both Winchesters whenever they tell him we’ll see you later.
(It always sounds like the end, and the fear is theirs, not his.)
One night, as he lingers at the door they walked out of, a sigh falls behind him. Jo closes her hand around his wrist, squeezes, and it’s tight enough to hurt.
Hey, you. She’s gentle, or just almost. Don’t take it too hard, they…they’ll be back if I think I know ‘em.
…They better. Or, I’ll-
Adam doesn’t bother to fool himself- he’s got exactly zero room for any more loss or grief.
He follows her inside; looks back only once (only, always).
They- they just better.
.
.
.
It’s dark, a darkest hour inching towards dawn and they’re left standing.
They scatter salt and burn bones in a far-flung graveyard, and the rest of their night goes out in smoke; the past few hours that are all nightmares, and predatory shadows, and the both of them centered and waiting, the adrenaline that’s making its home in Adam’s veins.
Jo’s touch is freezing cold; but it’s hers, and she locates him in the near-dark, asks how he’s holding up.
Not so swell, but I’m fine if you are, Adam whispers back, breathing in smoke and cold and too many ghosts-his father and brothers, living with nothing but this for years; Jo taking it in like air and knowing what it means, to want to bring it down-
-It bided its time, he thinks, knife in hand and gaze to the flames, it took a while but the darkness went around and got him too.
(What he told Jo at the start, what he’ll tell Sam and Dean: Might as well return the favor.)
.
.
.
She hits the road, and for now, Adam follows.
Another day, open sky. Apocalypse around the next bend, and they’re carrying on.
(He’s still waiting. But it isn’t for the end.)
***