Fic: Glimpses (Jacob/Amelia, PG)
Title: Glimpses
Author: mwmm23
Recipient: pyrebi
Pairing: Jacob/Amelia, Claire
Summary: A year after his brother disappears, Amelia and Claire Novak show up on Jacob's doorstep dealing with a fall out they won't explain.
A/N: For pyrebi. Inspired by the prompt: She doesn't know where else to go when Castiel takes Jimmy again. And it's hard sometimes, because god they look so much alike, and she's so lonely... I am so sorry this comes late!
Gimpses
1.
The sharp sound of a knock on the door is very unwelcome. It's been another long day, another dead inbox of futile leads and blindingly formatted blog pages. Jacob knows he isn't as crazy as they make him seem, but apparently he sure knows how to attract people who are. This isn't the first time one of them has tracked down his address either.
Jacob tries to wait it out, but when you've bothered to track him all the way to his humble abode in the early hours, you're not going to give up after the first knock. The single knock turns to insistent rapping, until finally he stretches up and peers through the peephole. He opens the door in a flash, as much out of shock as anything.
"Amelia?"
Well, that was the last person he had ever expected to see show up on his doorstep. Especially at 2 o'clock in the morning, totally unprompted. His sister-in-law had never liked him much, as soon as she clocked the fact that he wasn't as perfectly pious as his brother. It had been almost a year since the last time he'd seen her, when he went to Illinois to help the search for Jimmy however he could. Or at least he'd tried. The trip had been cut abruptly short once she started railing on him about how somehow, it was his fault that Jimmy had gone nuts and vanished. That he was proof that Jimmy had been a genetic inevitability for a mental break.
Actually, that had been pretty insulting. She really had no reason to have come here. If it wasn't for Claire, he probably wouldn't have even let her in.
Well, he would have, but he would have at least protested a little.
"Hello, Jacob," she says. Claire flies past her, launches herself at him with desperate grabbing arms. He loves the girl and is always happy to see her, but her enthusiasm surprises him. It has been a while. He looks up at Amelia over her shoulder. "I hope we didn't wake you."
"No, no, don't worry," he says automatically.
She takes that as the invitation that it is but yet wasn't intended to be, and with unnerving speed has Claire set up in his bed and him making her coffee.
"No sweetener, sorry," he says as he hands it to her. He'd offer her bagel bites, but somehow he doubts she'd go for it. She steps out of his bedroom, closes the door behind her, Claire's watching eyes disappearing into the darkness.
"Thank you," she says, somewhat stiffly. She lets him wait out the entirety of an awkward, questioning pause until finally she continues, "I thought you should know. Jimmy's alive."
"What?" Jacob had always wanted to believe his brother was OK, but as time went on with no leads even through the extent of his, let's say, information gathering abilities, it had been getting harder and harder. "He's all right? Well where is he? What are you -"
"I didn't say he was all right," she interrupts him. She takes a sip of coffee, and he waits impatiently. "He's gone, for good this time."
"Where is he?" Jacob demands again. "What do you mean, he's not all right? And why come all the why here, why not just tell me over the phone?"
"I know you don't like me," Amelia says pointedly, even though that wasn't what he was trying to get across, "but we had to leave. I didn't know where else to go. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go make sure Claire's getting some sleep."
"Amelia, please," he says, but she's gone, disappeared into his bedroom. He stares incredulously at the closed door, then rushes to boot up his laptop. It doesn't take too long to find a news report from Pontiac, saying the two bodies of their neighbors were found in the Novaks' house. James Novak, who had been missing for a year and suspected dead, was seen in the neighborhood the day of their death and not since; the fate of his wife and daughter, now missing, is unknown. A number he was supposed to call with any information.
Although even if he had been the type to give them up, he couldn't say he really had anything to tell.
2.
Living with Amelia and Claire hasn't the easiest thing in the world, as a night turned into days turned into weeks. His apartment is barely big enough for one, and the couch he's been apparently permanently relegated to sure as hell wasn't meant to be slept on night after night. Amelia talks about what happens even less than the bare information she contributed initially from that point on, acting like life was normal from the moment she awoke the next day. Jacob wants to ask her about the neighbors, unable to believe his always kind-hearted brother could have killed anyone, even if he had some just cause, but two days later an apparently inexplicable energy eruption happens in Maryland and work is too busy to worry about Jimmy. He does wonder if Jimmy's disappearance is linked, given the timing, but he can't afford to dwell.
As time-consuming and frustrating as the anomaly is, he has to admit he's happy with the excuse to stay away. It's difficult to see them, especially Claire. She'd always been so bright and interested, and believed in him fiercely despite what her parents told her. He'd provided her with her own secret radio, delighted in corrupting her with logic and science. The last time he saw her, she'd practically begged him as he was leaving to let her come home with him for a while instead of staying alone with her mom; now she looks like she'd rather be anywhere else. She looks permanently shaken, and barely speaks, apart from muttered prayers, staring out over the city from his modest balcony, waiting for something Jacob can't figure out. Whatever happened had really affected her, shelled into almost a different girl. He doesn't know how to help her, especially when he doesn't know what's wrong.
Amelia's changed too, although when it comes to her it's not necessarily undesirable. She seems to be trying to keep the appearance of normality, taking Claire to church on Sundays and treating her like nothing's wrong, although Jacob sees how drained she looks whenever Claire leaves the room. But she no longer purses her lips when he doesn't want to join them in prayer, apparently no longer worries for his immortal soul, as Jimmy once told him she'd mentioned.
She even asks him about his work sometimes, unprompted, and actually seems to listen to his surprise, hesitant explanations of his half-formed theories without shooting them down. He wonders if she thinks, maybe even knows, it's linked to Jimmy, too.
He tests the waters one evening, as she watches the news while he works off his laptop at the single seated kitchen table. Claire is sitting quietly at her feet, staring at his ancient TV with a guarded expression. There are reports of mass slaughter of a town in Missouri, and Jacob is getting no closer to the answers he wants. Amelia hesitates when he asks her what she thinks, like she's got information to weigh up first.
"You won't be able to explain it," she says finally. "All it means is the end of days."
A burst of static crackles through the screen and Claire jolts to life with a frisson before dying away again.
"The end of days?" he asks. "What, you mean... the apocalypse?"
"Just as planned," says Claire, under her breath.
"I suppose," Amelia confirms to him.
"Well, that doesn't eliminate the possibility of a reasoned explanation," says Jacob. "I could have thought so myself if these events fit any kind of pattern. But Maryland at least doesn't fit any electromagnetic pattern I can see."
"It's not natural," says Amelia. "It wasn't supposed to happen now."
So much for helping him, but at least the Amelia he thought he remembered is still a little in there.
3.
Claire and Amelia are arguing, audible from the elevator shaft through the thin walls. Jacob should walk in and interrupt, but curiosity overtakes him and he stands frozen, leans his head on the door frame. By now he's done everything he can think of by himself to find out what happened to his brother, what conspiracy he naively stumbled into. He's found the follow up news reports on the neighbors, the warrant for Jimmy's arrest, a record of the first and only time his brother used his credit card since his disappearance all those months ago, buying a bus ticket home. He's hacked his way through the internet and not come up with anything conclusive. The need to know what happened has been itching, distracting under his skin.
So he listens.
"- can't understand," Claire was saying, the most he'd heard her speak at once in weeks. "He was in me, mom! He was a part of me, and I was a part of him, and it changes things!"
"I was one of those... demons," says Amelia, gentler, missing the shrillness of an invigorated teenager. "I know how it felt."
"No, you don't!" Claire is adamant. "That thing was just controlling you, but I had to choose. He's out there, and he's going to come. Just wait. He'll bring Dad back as soon as he can."
"If he was going to let your dad go, he would have done so by now."
"Don't say that! He's coming! He promised me!"
"Claire, honey," Amelia says, voice more strained than the words. "You can't just keep waiting like this."
"You just don't get it!"
The quiet sound of an attempt at slamming the balcony door follows. Jacob pauses, collects himself like he hasn't been outright snooping, like he doesn't have a million questions he can't acknowledge rushing through his head, and opens the door. Amelia stands in the center of the room, folded in, eyes closed and pained, fingers balled on the bridge of her nose. The door shuts behind him with a soft click and she looks up, lets out a shaky sigh of embarrassment.
"Hey," he says quietly.
"How long have you been there?" she says.
"Not that long."
Their words are slow and stilted, vast pauses suffocating the space around them. Claire is a silhouette on the balcony, backlighted dramatically by the artificial bulbs outside the window.
"I can't say I understood much," he volunteers. He doesn't know if he has the right to ask, even about the mystery visitor Claire apparently thinks will one day be turning up at his apartment; who somehow took Jimmy away, no less.
He doesn't have much time to wonder about it as suddenly Amelia unravels, tears pooling in her creased eyes. Alarmed, he steps forward, doesn't even think not to. It's uncomfortable; her head is burrowing forward against his chest with her body too far away to really put his arms around, but he leans his chin on her hair and tries to soothe her.
"Sorry," she says, her voice surprisingly clear when it comes after the wait, slightly muffled though it is by her downwards tilt. "I don't usually do this."
"It's OK. It'll just take time," he says. "It'll all be all right."
She looks up at him then, full lips and wide eyes, suddenly much too close. He's gotten used to having her around, but never really thought of anything like what he's thinking now. And somewhere out there poor Jimmy is suffering god knows what and yet here they are.
"Who was he?" he says suddenly.
"What?"
She pulls away from him, and Jacob can breathe a little easier.
"The guy you were talking about," he says. "The one who's got Jimmy."
Amelia is smoothing herself over, and when she looks back at him it's with a wry smile.
"His name is Castiel. He's an angel," she says.
Her gaze is disappointingly solid, her expression disappointingly calm. Somehow Jacob had just forgotten how much she believes in; whoever he really is, he's managed to pull off his act. The moment is truly over.
"Doesn't sound like much of an angel," he can't resist saying, even though he lost the will to properly argue religion with her years before.
"I didn't say he was."
4.
She comes one night when Claire is asleep. He hears her footsteps before he sees her and as soon as the blanket is lifted he knows; he opens his eyes and she slips under. She traces his face, thumbs over a scar he has on his chin from a lab experiment gone sour, lingering. Her nails are tickling his throat as he swallows his words.
"I don't think -" he mumbles but then she's kissed him. All of her warmth focuses sharply to that one point and the length of time it takes to push her away belies the futility of the attempt.
"No, don't," he says, but he's letting her slide her hand to bunch up the back of his T-shirt, press further kisses up his jaw. He's weaker than he wants to be.
"Why?" she whispers, breath on his ear. "Because of Jimmy? You know he's never coming back." Her leg curls into his ankle and he shudders. She breaks away slightly to look at him, leg still winding, tantalizing. "He might as well be dead, and I want -" One hand is playing with the chain around his neck, the other arm crooked to stay on his chin, almost pinching.
"What are you looking for?" he asks. He can't figure out whether she wants this because he could be Jimmy or because he isn't. Maybe she can't either.
5.
It doesn't even occur to Jacob that he should probably call Amelia until he's already at the airport; he never did quite get used to not being alone. It's strangely disappointing to get her voicemail; there's not even a personalized message.
His phone buzzes to life in his pocket as he's settling into his seat; Amelia's number, but Claire's voice on the other end of the line. She still spends her hours talking to Castiel, but with less conviction than at first. She talks to him more now, and listens to his radio show again even though she doesn't have much to say about it. He took her down to the station one time and she sat at the controls, smiled properly when he let her use them at will. It wasn't like his listeners were going to complain any more than usual. Jacob still doesn't ask about what happened, but he feels like maybe he doesn't even need to for now.
Claire, on the other hand, seems to have lots of questions.
"When are you getting back?" she asks, as Jacob fights off the ineffectual glares of his affronted fellow passengers. "Where are you going? What are you looking for?"
"I'll try and stop by the gift shop for you," he promises. "Coffee mug or keychain?"
"Just come home," she says, almost a whisper.
So maybe Claire's gradual improvement isn't quite as healthy as he wants to think. She probably has some displacement issues, too, although it would be a challenge for them to surpass her mother's. And he wouldn't want to replace his brother, even though he is obviously a much better influence. But at least Jacob is here where Jimmy can't be, if that's all he can do for them.
"Of course."
Author: mwmm23
Recipient: pyrebi
Pairing: Jacob/Amelia, Claire
Summary: A year after his brother disappears, Amelia and Claire Novak show up on Jacob's doorstep dealing with a fall out they won't explain.
A/N: For pyrebi. Inspired by the prompt: She doesn't know where else to go when Castiel takes Jimmy again. And it's hard sometimes, because god they look so much alike, and she's so lonely... I am so sorry this comes late!
Gimpses
1.
The sharp sound of a knock on the door is very unwelcome. It's been another long day, another dead inbox of futile leads and blindingly formatted blog pages. Jacob knows he isn't as crazy as they make him seem, but apparently he sure knows how to attract people who are. This isn't the first time one of them has tracked down his address either.
Jacob tries to wait it out, but when you've bothered to track him all the way to his humble abode in the early hours, you're not going to give up after the first knock. The single knock turns to insistent rapping, until finally he stretches up and peers through the peephole. He opens the door in a flash, as much out of shock as anything.
"Amelia?"
Well, that was the last person he had ever expected to see show up on his doorstep. Especially at 2 o'clock in the morning, totally unprompted. His sister-in-law had never liked him much, as soon as she clocked the fact that he wasn't as perfectly pious as his brother. It had been almost a year since the last time he'd seen her, when he went to Illinois to help the search for Jimmy however he could. Or at least he'd tried. The trip had been cut abruptly short once she started railing on him about how somehow, it was his fault that Jimmy had gone nuts and vanished. That he was proof that Jimmy had been a genetic inevitability for a mental break.
Actually, that had been pretty insulting. She really had no reason to have come here. If it wasn't for Claire, he probably wouldn't have even let her in.
Well, he would have, but he would have at least protested a little.
"Hello, Jacob," she says. Claire flies past her, launches herself at him with desperate grabbing arms. He loves the girl and is always happy to see her, but her enthusiasm surprises him. It has been a while. He looks up at Amelia over her shoulder. "I hope we didn't wake you."
"No, no, don't worry," he says automatically.
She takes that as the invitation that it is but yet wasn't intended to be, and with unnerving speed has Claire set up in his bed and him making her coffee.
"No sweetener, sorry," he says as he hands it to her. He'd offer her bagel bites, but somehow he doubts she'd go for it. She steps out of his bedroom, closes the door behind her, Claire's watching eyes disappearing into the darkness.
"Thank you," she says, somewhat stiffly. She lets him wait out the entirety of an awkward, questioning pause until finally she continues, "I thought you should know. Jimmy's alive."
"What?" Jacob had always wanted to believe his brother was OK, but as time went on with no leads even through the extent of his, let's say, information gathering abilities, it had been getting harder and harder. "He's all right? Well where is he? What are you -"
"I didn't say he was all right," she interrupts him. She takes a sip of coffee, and he waits impatiently. "He's gone, for good this time."
"Where is he?" Jacob demands again. "What do you mean, he's not all right? And why come all the why here, why not just tell me over the phone?"
"I know you don't like me," Amelia says pointedly, even though that wasn't what he was trying to get across, "but we had to leave. I didn't know where else to go. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go make sure Claire's getting some sleep."
"Amelia, please," he says, but she's gone, disappeared into his bedroom. He stares incredulously at the closed door, then rushes to boot up his laptop. It doesn't take too long to find a news report from Pontiac, saying the two bodies of their neighbors were found in the Novaks' house. James Novak, who had been missing for a year and suspected dead, was seen in the neighborhood the day of their death and not since; the fate of his wife and daughter, now missing, is unknown. A number he was supposed to call with any information.
Although even if he had been the type to give them up, he couldn't say he really had anything to tell.
2.
Living with Amelia and Claire hasn't the easiest thing in the world, as a night turned into days turned into weeks. His apartment is barely big enough for one, and the couch he's been apparently permanently relegated to sure as hell wasn't meant to be slept on night after night. Amelia talks about what happens even less than the bare information she contributed initially from that point on, acting like life was normal from the moment she awoke the next day. Jacob wants to ask her about the neighbors, unable to believe his always kind-hearted brother could have killed anyone, even if he had some just cause, but two days later an apparently inexplicable energy eruption happens in Maryland and work is too busy to worry about Jimmy. He does wonder if Jimmy's disappearance is linked, given the timing, but he can't afford to dwell.
As time-consuming and frustrating as the anomaly is, he has to admit he's happy with the excuse to stay away. It's difficult to see them, especially Claire. She'd always been so bright and interested, and believed in him fiercely despite what her parents told her. He'd provided her with her own secret radio, delighted in corrupting her with logic and science. The last time he saw her, she'd practically begged him as he was leaving to let her come home with him for a while instead of staying alone with her mom; now she looks like she'd rather be anywhere else. She looks permanently shaken, and barely speaks, apart from muttered prayers, staring out over the city from his modest balcony, waiting for something Jacob can't figure out. Whatever happened had really affected her, shelled into almost a different girl. He doesn't know how to help her, especially when he doesn't know what's wrong.
Amelia's changed too, although when it comes to her it's not necessarily undesirable. She seems to be trying to keep the appearance of normality, taking Claire to church on Sundays and treating her like nothing's wrong, although Jacob sees how drained she looks whenever Claire leaves the room. But she no longer purses her lips when he doesn't want to join them in prayer, apparently no longer worries for his immortal soul, as Jimmy once told him she'd mentioned.
She even asks him about his work sometimes, unprompted, and actually seems to listen to his surprise, hesitant explanations of his half-formed theories without shooting them down. He wonders if she thinks, maybe even knows, it's linked to Jimmy, too.
He tests the waters one evening, as she watches the news while he works off his laptop at the single seated kitchen table. Claire is sitting quietly at her feet, staring at his ancient TV with a guarded expression. There are reports of mass slaughter of a town in Missouri, and Jacob is getting no closer to the answers he wants. Amelia hesitates when he asks her what she thinks, like she's got information to weigh up first.
"You won't be able to explain it," she says finally. "All it means is the end of days."
A burst of static crackles through the screen and Claire jolts to life with a frisson before dying away again.
"The end of days?" he asks. "What, you mean... the apocalypse?"
"Just as planned," says Claire, under her breath.
"I suppose," Amelia confirms to him.
"Well, that doesn't eliminate the possibility of a reasoned explanation," says Jacob. "I could have thought so myself if these events fit any kind of pattern. But Maryland at least doesn't fit any electromagnetic pattern I can see."
"It's not natural," says Amelia. "It wasn't supposed to happen now."
So much for helping him, but at least the Amelia he thought he remembered is still a little in there.
3.
Claire and Amelia are arguing, audible from the elevator shaft through the thin walls. Jacob should walk in and interrupt, but curiosity overtakes him and he stands frozen, leans his head on the door frame. By now he's done everything he can think of by himself to find out what happened to his brother, what conspiracy he naively stumbled into. He's found the follow up news reports on the neighbors, the warrant for Jimmy's arrest, a record of the first and only time his brother used his credit card since his disappearance all those months ago, buying a bus ticket home. He's hacked his way through the internet and not come up with anything conclusive. The need to know what happened has been itching, distracting under his skin.
So he listens.
"- can't understand," Claire was saying, the most he'd heard her speak at once in weeks. "He was in me, mom! He was a part of me, and I was a part of him, and it changes things!"
"I was one of those... demons," says Amelia, gentler, missing the shrillness of an invigorated teenager. "I know how it felt."
"No, you don't!" Claire is adamant. "That thing was just controlling you, but I had to choose. He's out there, and he's going to come. Just wait. He'll bring Dad back as soon as he can."
"If he was going to let your dad go, he would have done so by now."
"Don't say that! He's coming! He promised me!"
"Claire, honey," Amelia says, voice more strained than the words. "You can't just keep waiting like this."
"You just don't get it!"
The quiet sound of an attempt at slamming the balcony door follows. Jacob pauses, collects himself like he hasn't been outright snooping, like he doesn't have a million questions he can't acknowledge rushing through his head, and opens the door. Amelia stands in the center of the room, folded in, eyes closed and pained, fingers balled on the bridge of her nose. The door shuts behind him with a soft click and she looks up, lets out a shaky sigh of embarrassment.
"Hey," he says quietly.
"How long have you been there?" she says.
"Not that long."
Their words are slow and stilted, vast pauses suffocating the space around them. Claire is a silhouette on the balcony, backlighted dramatically by the artificial bulbs outside the window.
"I can't say I understood much," he volunteers. He doesn't know if he has the right to ask, even about the mystery visitor Claire apparently thinks will one day be turning up at his apartment; who somehow took Jimmy away, no less.
He doesn't have much time to wonder about it as suddenly Amelia unravels, tears pooling in her creased eyes. Alarmed, he steps forward, doesn't even think not to. It's uncomfortable; her head is burrowing forward against his chest with her body too far away to really put his arms around, but he leans his chin on her hair and tries to soothe her.
"Sorry," she says, her voice surprisingly clear when it comes after the wait, slightly muffled though it is by her downwards tilt. "I don't usually do this."
"It's OK. It'll just take time," he says. "It'll all be all right."
She looks up at him then, full lips and wide eyes, suddenly much too close. He's gotten used to having her around, but never really thought of anything like what he's thinking now. And somewhere out there poor Jimmy is suffering god knows what and yet here they are.
"Who was he?" he says suddenly.
"What?"
She pulls away from him, and Jacob can breathe a little easier.
"The guy you were talking about," he says. "The one who's got Jimmy."
Amelia is smoothing herself over, and when she looks back at him it's with a wry smile.
"His name is Castiel. He's an angel," she says.
Her gaze is disappointingly solid, her expression disappointingly calm. Somehow Jacob had just forgotten how much she believes in; whoever he really is, he's managed to pull off his act. The moment is truly over.
"Doesn't sound like much of an angel," he can't resist saying, even though he lost the will to properly argue religion with her years before.
"I didn't say he was."
4.
She comes one night when Claire is asleep. He hears her footsteps before he sees her and as soon as the blanket is lifted he knows; he opens his eyes and she slips under. She traces his face, thumbs over a scar he has on his chin from a lab experiment gone sour, lingering. Her nails are tickling his throat as he swallows his words.
"I don't think -" he mumbles but then she's kissed him. All of her warmth focuses sharply to that one point and the length of time it takes to push her away belies the futility of the attempt.
"No, don't," he says, but he's letting her slide her hand to bunch up the back of his T-shirt, press further kisses up his jaw. He's weaker than he wants to be.
"Why?" she whispers, breath on his ear. "Because of Jimmy? You know he's never coming back." Her leg curls into his ankle and he shudders. She breaks away slightly to look at him, leg still winding, tantalizing. "He might as well be dead, and I want -" One hand is playing with the chain around his neck, the other arm crooked to stay on his chin, almost pinching.
"What are you looking for?" he asks. He can't figure out whether she wants this because he could be Jimmy or because he isn't. Maybe she can't either.
5.
It doesn't even occur to Jacob that he should probably call Amelia until he's already at the airport; he never did quite get used to not being alone. It's strangely disappointing to get her voicemail; there's not even a personalized message.
His phone buzzes to life in his pocket as he's settling into his seat; Amelia's number, but Claire's voice on the other end of the line. She still spends her hours talking to Castiel, but with less conviction than at first. She talks to him more now, and listens to his radio show again even though she doesn't have much to say about it. He took her down to the station one time and she sat at the controls, smiled properly when he let her use them at will. It wasn't like his listeners were going to complain any more than usual. Jacob still doesn't ask about what happened, but he feels like maybe he doesn't even need to for now.
Claire, on the other hand, seems to have lots of questions.
"When are you getting back?" she asks, as Jacob fights off the ineffectual glares of his affronted fellow passengers. "Where are you going? What are you looking for?"
"I'll try and stop by the gift shop for you," he promises. "Coffee mug or keychain?"
"Just come home," she says, almost a whisper.
So maybe Claire's gradual improvement isn't quite as healthy as he wants to think. She probably has some displacement issues, too, although it would be a challenge for them to surpass her mother's. And he wouldn't want to replace his brother, even though he is obviously a much better influence. But at least Jacob is here where Jimmy can't be, if that's all he can do for them.
"Of course."