Eight Crazy Nights, part one
Happy Hanukkah!
OK, so my professional writing has been so overloaded that these are going to be more uncertain than usual, but I still might have some room if anyone wants to prompt me. (Pro tip: even if you decline travel, if you agree to write multiple book chapters you will still have a miserable semester. The More You Know.)
For
wendelah1 :, how does it work for the people in one timeline when you start another one? Do Peter, Olivia and Astrid just go on for a while and then blink out of existence? What do people do when they know they're living on borrowed time, in a sense?
“So what happens now?” Astrid asked, right before Olivia worked herself up to the same question. “Do we-will we stay like this?”
And somehow Astrid’s words made her feel the full horror of the thought: living in this half-destroyed world, their hope irreversibly gone to redeem the lives of some other Olivia and Peter and Etta. A broken branch on the floor of the universe, or multiverse, or whatever this was.
Peter’s calculating expression seemed so much livelier now that she’d been able to compare it with real emotionlessness. She could see him turning the problem over in his head, spinning it out the way she would’ve analyzed a perpetrator’s next moves back when she’d been in the FBI.
“I think,” he said in the way that meant ‘I hope,’ “it’ll be like an earthquake, or a volcano erupting. There will be ripples, transmitting forward and backward through time, and when they hit us-”
“So this isn’t like the splits that created the different universes before,” Olivia said, just to be sure. It was one thing to know that a woman with her face was living a completely different and mostly happy life in another world. She just didn’t know how she’d survive knowing that someone else had her daughter back.
Peter shook his head and shifted closer, so that she could feel his warmth. His hand settled into hers, the skin chapped rough but still grounding. “No, those were splits caused by choices at particular points in time. This, what Walter went to do-if it works, it will affect all those points at once. No splits.”
“How long?” Astrid asked.
“I don’t know,” Peter said, but Olivia could hear the shades of doubt in his voice. The Observers had appeared to move instantaneously. They’d already had so much time without Walter. If he hadn’t succeeded, then whether they were in a split timeline would become irrelevant.
Astrid was standing close enough that it seemed only natural for Olivia to reach out and take her hand too. If their fate was to be slaughtered by the Observers in advance of the rest of the world, then at least they’d do it together.
“Whatever happens,” she said, “I want you to know-”
For
serrico: SPN: Sam finds something in the MoL bunker that gives him pause.
The kitchen had become Dean’s territory so fast Sam half expected to wake up one morning and find it upholstered in Impala-black leather. So when Sam was searching for a grater to use on the exotic ingredients for the spell Kevin insisted was worth trying to find fallen angels, it was no surprise that he had to open way too many drawers.
What he didn’t expect from the drawer mostly full of skewers and toothpicks was the keyring featuring the little leather oval with Dean’s first name burned into it in scraggly letters. It looked handmade, the hole for the metal ring not quite symmetrically placed. Though there were no keys on it, it looked like it had seen some use, the tan leather darkened and rubbed smooth in a few places.
It looked like something Sam would have made for Dean back when he was a kid. Sam had made a clay mug for Dean, and a drawing of the two of them together, even though he’d known from the moment he started working that neither would survive long in their lives. The mug had been left behind not a month after he’d given it to Dean, one of the nights they snuck out of the crappy apartment of the moment only a few hours ahead of the cops; he didn’t even know what had happened to the drawing. Anything Sam made to bring home and show off, he’d only ever made for Dean, not for Dad. But he’d never taken a leatherworking class.
Sam dropped the keyring, his fingers numb as if he was back during the Trials, as he realized. Ben Braeden must’ve made it for Dean. And Dean had kept it after he’d erased Lisa and Ben. Kept it, but not been able to stand having it in his perfect homey room, and not been able to dump it either (not like he’d been able to dump the amulet, Sam’s hurt still whispered after all these years). Shoved it in a drawer so that it could continue to surprise him with the sting of memory every once in a while.
His eyes stung, hurt on Dean’s behalf and angry at him all over again. Dean was his own worst enemy-well, if you didn’t count the demons and the angels, though that was hard to do. But still. Dean made terrible choices from terrible alternatives, and God (and Lucifer) knew that Sam had walked that walk too, so Sam couldn’t claim any superiority there. But sometimes it was like Dean wanted to be the guy who could never have anyone, who had to trust his gun and his car because there was no one else there to trust.
No. Dean didn’t want that, but he believed it, that was the heart of the fuckup. Even now, he didn’t seem to notice that Sam had decided to keep the gates of Hell open-that every demon-damned person from here on out was Sam’s responsibility-because he couldn’t let Dean down one more time.
Sighing, Sam made himself pick up the keyring and tuck it back in among the sharp bristling implements in the drawer. Throwing it in Dean’s face wouldn’t help. But sometime soon, Sam was going to have to explain that Dean was well and truly stuck with him now. Dean wasn’t going to let himself have another family like Lisa and Ben, so Sam was going to have to provide. And even though it was more likely that Dean would die a peaceful death at eighty-five than that Sam would ever convince him all the way, Sam was willing to keep trying.
He’d been the guy who’d listened to anybody but Dean about what would be right for Dean, just like Dean had been a family man. That hadn’t worked. Now the only thing left to do was to be smart about it. Maybe talk Cas into coming back, give Dean someone else to take care of while Sam returned to the hunt. Keep Cas in the bunker, not exposed to the world and in danger of becoming just another set of mementoes that Dean used to cut himself with.
Sam went to the next drawer and opened it. He had a lot of work to do.
more tomorrow, I hope! Happy Thanksgivukkah!
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
OK, so my professional writing has been so overloaded that these are going to be more uncertain than usual, but I still might have some room if anyone wants to prompt me. (Pro tip: even if you decline travel, if you agree to write multiple book chapters you will still have a miserable semester. The More You Know.)
For
wendelah1 :, how does it work for the people in one timeline when you start another one? Do Peter, Olivia and Astrid just go on for a while and then blink out of existence? What do people do when they know they're living on borrowed time, in a sense?
“So what happens now?” Astrid asked, right before Olivia worked herself up to the same question. “Do we-will we stay like this?”
And somehow Astrid’s words made her feel the full horror of the thought: living in this half-destroyed world, their hope irreversibly gone to redeem the lives of some other Olivia and Peter and Etta. A broken branch on the floor of the universe, or multiverse, or whatever this was.
Peter’s calculating expression seemed so much livelier now that she’d been able to compare it with real emotionlessness. She could see him turning the problem over in his head, spinning it out the way she would’ve analyzed a perpetrator’s next moves back when she’d been in the FBI.
“I think,” he said in the way that meant ‘I hope,’ “it’ll be like an earthquake, or a volcano erupting. There will be ripples, transmitting forward and backward through time, and when they hit us-”
“So this isn’t like the splits that created the different universes before,” Olivia said, just to be sure. It was one thing to know that a woman with her face was living a completely different and mostly happy life in another world. She just didn’t know how she’d survive knowing that someone else had her daughter back.
Peter shook his head and shifted closer, so that she could feel his warmth. His hand settled into hers, the skin chapped rough but still grounding. “No, those were splits caused by choices at particular points in time. This, what Walter went to do-if it works, it will affect all those points at once. No splits.”
“How long?” Astrid asked.
“I don’t know,” Peter said, but Olivia could hear the shades of doubt in his voice. The Observers had appeared to move instantaneously. They’d already had so much time without Walter. If he hadn’t succeeded, then whether they were in a split timeline would become irrelevant.
Astrid was standing close enough that it seemed only natural for Olivia to reach out and take her hand too. If their fate was to be slaughtered by the Observers in advance of the rest of the world, then at least they’d do it together.
“Whatever happens,” she said, “I want you to know-”
For
serrico: SPN: Sam finds something in the MoL bunker that gives him pause.
The kitchen had become Dean’s territory so fast Sam half expected to wake up one morning and find it upholstered in Impala-black leather. So when Sam was searching for a grater to use on the exotic ingredients for the spell Kevin insisted was worth trying to find fallen angels, it was no surprise that he had to open way too many drawers.
What he didn’t expect from the drawer mostly full of skewers and toothpicks was the keyring featuring the little leather oval with Dean’s first name burned into it in scraggly letters. It looked handmade, the hole for the metal ring not quite symmetrically placed. Though there were no keys on it, it looked like it had seen some use, the tan leather darkened and rubbed smooth in a few places.
It looked like something Sam would have made for Dean back when he was a kid. Sam had made a clay mug for Dean, and a drawing of the two of them together, even though he’d known from the moment he started working that neither would survive long in their lives. The mug had been left behind not a month after he’d given it to Dean, one of the nights they snuck out of the crappy apartment of the moment only a few hours ahead of the cops; he didn’t even know what had happened to the drawing. Anything Sam made to bring home and show off, he’d only ever made for Dean, not for Dad. But he’d never taken a leatherworking class.
Sam dropped the keyring, his fingers numb as if he was back during the Trials, as he realized. Ben Braeden must’ve made it for Dean. And Dean had kept it after he’d erased Lisa and Ben. Kept it, but not been able to stand having it in his perfect homey room, and not been able to dump it either (not like he’d been able to dump the amulet, Sam’s hurt still whispered after all these years). Shoved it in a drawer so that it could continue to surprise him with the sting of memory every once in a while.
His eyes stung, hurt on Dean’s behalf and angry at him all over again. Dean was his own worst enemy-well, if you didn’t count the demons and the angels, though that was hard to do. But still. Dean made terrible choices from terrible alternatives, and God (and Lucifer) knew that Sam had walked that walk too, so Sam couldn’t claim any superiority there. But sometimes it was like Dean wanted to be the guy who could never have anyone, who had to trust his gun and his car because there was no one else there to trust.
No. Dean didn’t want that, but he believed it, that was the heart of the fuckup. Even now, he didn’t seem to notice that Sam had decided to keep the gates of Hell open-that every demon-damned person from here on out was Sam’s responsibility-because he couldn’t let Dean down one more time.
Sighing, Sam made himself pick up the keyring and tuck it back in among the sharp bristling implements in the drawer. Throwing it in Dean’s face wouldn’t help. But sometime soon, Sam was going to have to explain that Dean was well and truly stuck with him now. Dean wasn’t going to let himself have another family like Lisa and Ben, so Sam was going to have to provide. And even though it was more likely that Dean would die a peaceful death at eighty-five than that Sam would ever convince him all the way, Sam was willing to keep trying.
He’d been the guy who’d listened to anybody but Dean about what would be right for Dean, just like Dean had been a family man. That hadn’t worked. Now the only thing left to do was to be smart about it. Maybe talk Cas into coming back, give Dean someone else to take care of while Sam returned to the hunt. Keep Cas in the bunker, not exposed to the world and in danger of becoming just another set of mementoes that Dean used to cut himself with.
Sam went to the next drawer and opened it. He had a lot of work to do.
more tomorrow, I hope! Happy Thanksgivukkah!
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.