Seven Days in Dreamland
Title: Seven Days in Dreamland [A03]
Fandoms: Firefly, Stargate SG1, Supernatural
Wordcount: ~2,800
Rating: PG
Summary: Sam, River, and Daniel have something in common. And for seven days, they dream.
Notes/Disclaimers: 2001 xoverexchange story for
skieswideopen. Many thanks as always to my beta,
sophia_sol. I scraped this fic together in between exams and final essays, and thanks to her y’all don’t have to put up with my utter inability to handle tenses when tired. All the fandoms belong to their respective creators and not, you know, me. Set between Firefly and Serenity, but with spoilers for the big damn movie. Set in SG1 mid-season-seven, but with implied spoilers for the Ori plotline. Set mid season three for Supernatural, but with implied spoilers for season four/five.
The first night, River dreams.
In her dreams, two armies stand upon the empty field. Reavers to the one side; crisp Alliance soldiers to the other. It’s all costumes, though, she thinks. Underneath the paint and pomp, they’re all just boys and girls, younger than they think.
She wonders, as she dances idly across the field of battle, whose dream this is. It doesn’t feel like one of hers. But it also doesn’t feel like any other dream she knows.
Simon’s dreams are clean and white even when they’re full of horror. Kaylee’s dreams are like warm sand on a beach, scratchy-soft and full of sunlight. Jayne dreams simple dreams, of women and money and guns. His dreams are as welcoming as Kaylee’s, in their own way. Easy to sink into his mind and lose herself in uncomplicated things. Inara’s dreams are hidden, secret, tucked somewhere in beside her true self. River’s never found Inara’s dreams, although sometimes she thinks she sees them in the distance. Mal dreams of death, and sex, and sometimes of both together, and then wakes angry and guilty and sad. Wash and Zoe dream in each other’s arms, and River has never felt welcome there, always an intruder. But some mornings she smells gunpowder smoke, clinging to the contours of Zoe’s mind.
Maybe this is Book’s dream, she thinks, full of symbols. Book often dreams in symbols. But where is the Shepherd? She scans the armies’ ranks as she dances, searching for his face. And then, as one, the soldiers raise their weapons. With a sudden burst of lucid clarity it occurs to River that this isn’t a dream at all.
It’s a metaphor.
River is already waking as she begins to scream.
* * *
The second night, Daniel dreams.
Looking around the battle field, he sighs, softly. This is the second night in a row. “Really?” he asks of the air. “Again?”
It’s been like this ever since he descended. Strange dreams, of half-remembered places. Armies of fire and darkness against armies of light and air, and him standing in the middle.
He wanders between the ranks of the soldiers. “If this is some kind of lesson,” he informs the nearest combatant, who glows the harsh white of an ascended ancient, “I’d appreciate a hint.” He pauses. No response. “No? I guess I’ll just... keep walking, then.”
He drifts idly through the no-man’s and between the armies. If the armies of light are Ancients, what are the armies of fire? They look like pillars of flame, with hard-faced men and women in their depths. “Interesting symbolism,” he mutters. “Purification, and destruction. The burning bush and the fires of hell. Virility. Passion. Masculinity.” He tilts his head, eyes sharp behind his glasses. “Witches burning at the stake, maybe? Emotion against logic; magic against science.” He pauses, then adds, “Although I admit that’s something of a stretch.”
One the one hand, he knows that in theory, dreams come from one’s own subconscious. If so, he hasn’t the faintest idea what his subconscious is trying to tell him. On the other hand, he’s been with the SGC long enough to know that sometimes, a dream isn’t just a dream.
“You know,” he tells the air, “if you’d give me access to my sources, this would go a lot faster.” But his books and files fail to appear.
So he stops walking. He’d lost his patience for these games about the same time as he’d lost his memory. “Either something happens,” he tells the emptiness, “or I’m staying right here.”
“I know your name,” says a voice.
Daniel turns - but the speaker, a waif-like girl with straggly black hair, isn’t talking to him. She’s peering worriedly into the face of a burning soldier. Suddenly, she turns and darts across the battlefield.
“And your name too,” she tells one of the Ancients, sounding increasingly distressed. She runs from soldier to soldier, taking their faces in her hands and pulling her own face close, not seeming bothered by the brilliance of the light or the heat of the flame. “I know you all!”
“Excuse me,” says Daniel.
The girl whirls, wide-eyed, and says quite solemnly, “I name them all: Miranda!”
Danial awakens, the name still ringing in his mind.
* * *
The third night, Sam dreams.
He hits the floor immediately, diving for the nonexistent cover offered by a vast expanse of nothingness. There’s an army of demons right there, eyes black and white, yellow and red. The ranks bristle with guns and more esoteric weaponry, and he, Sam Winchester, is right in the kill zone in front of them. He covers his head with his arms for what futile protection that gives him, and thinks a silent apology at Dean for not making it home this time -
- and then slowly uncurls, feeling foolish. This is the third night in a row, but he still can’t kill the knee-jerk panic. Although, in his defense: army of demons.
He wishes he could dream himself a bag of salt.
Climbing to his feet, he stare up into the blank expanse of space. It’s not white, exactly, nor black. It’s just... empty. His mind shies away from the thought, and he glances at the army. They’re not paying him any attention. They never pay him any attention. They’re focusing across the field of nothingness, on the second army.
The second army looks a lot like the first one, arrayed in neat rows, but they glare across the field with normal, human eyes. No guns for them, but plenty of more archaic weaponry, especially swords. Sam frowns. There’s something about their shadows that always seems strange to him. They seem to flutter and flicker, like smoke.
Or maybe wings.
Gritting his teeth, Sam makes himself walk over to the demonic army. Raising a hand, he waves it in the face of the nearest soldier. Nothing. No response at all. There never is.
“Still just a dream,” he tells himself. “Only a dream.” But it doesn’t feel like a regular dream. It feels more like one of his prophecy dreams. Sam feels sick. If this is what’s coming...
He turns and starts walking down the empty expanse between the armies, full of twitchy energy. He doesn’t know how long he’s been walking when he sees the figures. They’re standing right up next to the demonic army, so close that from a distance they’d almost looked part of the ranks. After a moment’s hesitation, Sam ducks into the ranks of the second army. There’s no other cover in this place. At least these soldiers don’t seem to notice him any more than the demons do.
One of the figures is a girl, young. Sixteen or seventeen maybe. She’s wearing a flowery dress, and, inexplicably, heavy combat boots. Beside her is a man in his thirties. His thick glasses say “academic”, but he’s wearing some kind of military uniform. He moves like a Hunter.
Who the hell are these people? Why is he dreaming about them?
“You’re not looking close enough,” the girl chides the man. “They weren’t always what they are now.”
“What were they?” the man asks. He looks a little bemused by the whole situation.
The girl turns suddenly, and through the assembled ranks of soldiers unerringly finds Sam’s eyes. He freezes, and she smiles, sadly. “Us,” she says.
Sam opens his eyes in a crappy motel room.
* * *
The fourth night, River dreams.
“No, no!” She’s laughing, almost tripping over her own feet. “Toe point back kick turn!” She demonstrates, twirling around in a bouncing, joyful jig.
“My apologies,” says Daniel, dryly. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” He tries again, but his feet get hopelessly tangled up, and he wobbles, almost falling.
River laughs again. She likes Daniel. His mind reminds her of Mal and Kaylee and Simon, all mixed up. Simon’s crisp white worried intelligence with Kaylee’s warm-soft rust red caring and Mal’s watchful soldier eyes.
“Here, like this.” She grabs his hands to brace him, then moves her feet slowly. “See?”
She thinks this is what Simon would call a lucid moment. She feels real, and solid. The dreams always seem fuzzy and distant when she awakens, but while she’s here everything seems simple again. River frowns. Maybe Simon wouldn’t call this a lucid moment after all.
Wrinkling her nose, River resolves not to tell Simon about the dreams.
River feels the other man’s mind in the distance, sinking down slowly into the fog of sleep. “The Hunter’s coming,” she tells Daniel, a new smile spreading across her face.
Daniel looks a bit worried. “The Hunter?”
And the Sam fades into existence beside them. He hits the floor and rolls, crouching in a defensive posture; then sees them staring. Slowly, looking embarrassed, he straightens up and clears his throat. “Hi,” he says. “I’m, uh, Sam.”
No last name. Too much lore; too many creatures that can use your name to hurt you. River marvels at the world she sees in Sam’s head. It’s almost as wonderful-horrible as the world she sees in Daniel’s.
Musn’t forget out manners. “River Tam,” she says, sweeping one leg back and bobbing her knees in a curtsy. “I’m a real girl today.”
“Doctor Daniel Jackson,” says Daniel. He’s thinking that Sam looks like a man who’s seen combat. He’s thinking that Sam looks like a scared kid. He’s thinking he wants to save them both, River and Sam, if he can.
River likes Daniel, but he can’t save either of them. That makes her sad, so she twirls in in a circle, skirts flaring out. It’s hard to be sad when you’re dancing.
“I’ll teach you the jig,” she offers to Sam. The confusion on his face makes her laugh.
It’s not nearly long enough before River wakes again.
* * *
The fifth night, Daniel dreams.
“Are you both... real?” Sam asks. They’re sitting in a circle, looking inward to each other, not wanting to face the armies that surround them.
Daniel raises an eyebrow. “Are you?”
“Maybe we should meet,” Sam said. “There’s some stuff that maybe we should...” he pauses, takes a deep breath, and then says, “I’ve met other people like us.”
River is shaking her head. “Can’t meet,” she says.
Daniel nods his agreement. “I’ve been talking with River,” he says. “I don’t think we’re from the same planes of existence.”
“What?”
“Midbulk transport, standard radion-accelerator core, classcode 03-K64. Firefly,” says River, then adds, “Home.”
“River,” says Daniel dryly, “has told me some very interesting things about the spaceship she lives on. Specifically, about the fate of Earth in her universe. Presuming she’s correct - ” and that her world isn’t just another facet of her madness, of course. But if it is, then her fantasy world has a remarkable internal consistency. “ - we’re from different points in time. Probably different dimensions, too.”
“Then - how - ” Sam frowns. “Did something happen to the two of you when you were young? To make you... different?”
“They cut up my brain,” says River, wide-eyed and serious. “Took me away and made me a weapon.”
“Not when I was younger,” says Daniel, “But last year I ascended, for a while.”
“Ascended?” asks Sam.
Daniel nods towards the assembled ranks of Ancients. “Turned into a being of pure energy. Like them.”
There’s a pause, and then River says, “Soldiers. Purplebellies. Good Alliance boys and girls.”
“Yeah,” says Sam, “I’m not seeing any energy-beings either. I’m seeing, uh... actually, I think I might be seeing angels.”
Sam looks defensive, like he’s waiting for someone to laugh at him, but Daniel’s mind is already racing ahead. “We’re not seeing the same things,” he say. “But then - that implies - ” He whirls, pointing to the army he saw as pillars of flame. “What do you see when you look at them? Pillars of fire?”
“Reavers,” says River promptly. “No fire.”
“Demons,” adds Sam. “No fire that I can see either.”
Daniel stares at the assembled ranks. He can feel the heat on his face.
Behind him, he hears River ask Sam, “What happened? When you were young?”
“A demon,” says Sam reluctantly. “A demon fed me his blood.”
Daniel is turning back towards them when he wakes up.
* * *
The sixth night, Sam dreams.
River is having a bad night. She raves as she wanders through the ranks of the armies, sometimes striking at them in a fury, other times clinging to their clothes, pleading. It’s futile. The soldiers don’t react.
After a while, even Daniel gives up trying to help her. “I don’t know what exactly happened to her,” he says grimly, his hands crossed over his chest, “but I’d like to have a good long talk with the people who did it.”
Sam nods. He spends his days searching for something, anything to get Dean out of his deal... but sometimes he thinks it’s a good thing there’s a hell. Sometimes he thinks that some people deserve it.
“I wish,” Sam says suddenly, “that I could meet you. So I could be sure this is real, I mean.” And because he likes Daniel. Sam can’t help but think that Daniel would make a good Hunter. But one more like Sam, maybe, than the usual sort. Daniel has that same balance of fighter and thinker that makes Sam feel so out of place with other Hunters.
Daniel shoots him a rueful grin. It says without words that he knows exactly how Sam’s feeling.
When Sam awakes, he has a faint smile on his face.
* * *
The seventh night, River dreams.
“Seven,” she informs Sam when he appears, “is significant.” She can feel Daniel fading into sleep. He’ll be here soon.
Sam nods. They’re getting used to the way she speaks. She likes that; it makes her feel less broken when they understand her. “Symbolically speaking, seven is important in a lot of the Lore.” He glances uneasily at the army of Reavers. “Especially this kind of Lore; all this Bible stuff.”
“Agreed,” says Daniel. River laughs at the look of surprise on Sam’s face. Sam didn’t feel him fading. He never does. “Have you looked at the armies yet?”
Sam glances at the Reavers again. “Yeah. What - oh. Huh.”
River looks too. The last six nights, the soldier and the Reavers held their weapons loosely at their sides. Tonight, guns are raised and blades hefted high. “Battle’s eve,” she whispers. She wonders what Sam and Daniel see. She’s tried to look, but she sees the same thing through their eyes that she sees through her own.
“I think,” says Daniel, after a moment, “that we may be running out of time. And I still don’t understand why we’re here.”
“You don’t?” River asks, astonished. “But I told you.”
Sam and Daniel exchange looks. “You didn’t tell me,” says Sam. “Do you mind explaining?”
She rolls her eyes, and grabs Sam’s hand. She tows him behind her, over to the army of Reavers. He stiffens. He doesn’t understand. “Look at their faces,” she tells him sternly. Daniel trails along behind them, leaning in to peer at the faces with eyes squinched up behind his glasses, like it hurts to look too close.
“Now here,” she says, and grabs Sam’s arm again, dragging him to the Alliance army. “Look at their faces!”
Daniel, still trailing behind them, makes a puzzled noise; but it’s Sam who understands first. She can feel it in his mind when he finally sees what she’s showing him. “They have the same faces. Both armies - they’re the same. What does that even mean? Demons are good?” He sounds part pensive, to her ears, and part disgusted.
“Or Ancients are bad,” says Daniel, sounding resigned. “It can’t be that black and white, can it?”
“Everything’s gray. No one is as different as they want us to think,” she says, shrugging one shoulder. “You’re learning all the wrong lessons. They’re good and bad and right and wrong and no one is what they told us.” She bites her lip, uncertain. This is important. She wished she could say it clearer. “Storm’s coming. Angels. Origins.” She shudders, then adds reluctantly, “Miranda.” She doesn’t like the name. But she can feel Miranda in her future, looming larger.
They’re silent for a while, then Daniel says, “So. Lesson learned.”
“Dark days are coming,” Sam says, raising his eyebrows mischievously. The days will be dark, but he’s being silly for her sake, so River gives him a smile.
“But the bad guys might not wear black hats and twirl their moustaches,” Daniel finishes, in his best dust-dry tones.
They both look to River for confirmation. She laughs, and twirls in a circle, her bare feet light against the nothingness. “Smart boys,” she says.
Sam frowns. “If that’s it, then why are we still asleep?”
“Because tonight’s our last night,” says River. “The last night with friends should be special.”
“In my experience,” says Sam carefully, “the universe doesn’t normally care about that kind of thing.”
“Stars never care. Dirt never cares.” River beams up at him. “But sometimes, you get lucky.”
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Fandoms: Firefly, Stargate SG1, Supernatural
Wordcount: ~2,800
Rating: PG
Summary: Sam, River, and Daniel have something in common. And for seven days, they dream.
Notes/Disclaimers: 2001 xoverexchange story for
skieswideopen. Many thanks as always to my beta,
sophia_sol. I scraped this fic together in between exams and final essays, and thanks to her y’all don’t have to put up with my utter inability to handle tenses when tired. All the fandoms belong to their respective creators and not, you know, me. Set between Firefly and Serenity, but with spoilers for the big damn movie. Set in SG1 mid-season-seven, but with implied spoilers for the Ori plotline. Set mid season three for Supernatural, but with implied spoilers for season four/five.
The first night, River dreams.
In her dreams, two armies stand upon the empty field. Reavers to the one side; crisp Alliance soldiers to the other. It’s all costumes, though, she thinks. Underneath the paint and pomp, they’re all just boys and girls, younger than they think.
She wonders, as she dances idly across the field of battle, whose dream this is. It doesn’t feel like one of hers. But it also doesn’t feel like any other dream she knows.
Simon’s dreams are clean and white even when they’re full of horror. Kaylee’s dreams are like warm sand on a beach, scratchy-soft and full of sunlight. Jayne dreams simple dreams, of women and money and guns. His dreams are as welcoming as Kaylee’s, in their own way. Easy to sink into his mind and lose herself in uncomplicated things. Inara’s dreams are hidden, secret, tucked somewhere in beside her true self. River’s never found Inara’s dreams, although sometimes she thinks she sees them in the distance. Mal dreams of death, and sex, and sometimes of both together, and then wakes angry and guilty and sad. Wash and Zoe dream in each other’s arms, and River has never felt welcome there, always an intruder. But some mornings she smells gunpowder smoke, clinging to the contours of Zoe’s mind.
Maybe this is Book’s dream, she thinks, full of symbols. Book often dreams in symbols. But where is the Shepherd? She scans the armies’ ranks as she dances, searching for his face. And then, as one, the soldiers raise their weapons. With a sudden burst of lucid clarity it occurs to River that this isn’t a dream at all.
It’s a metaphor.
River is already waking as she begins to scream.
* * *
The second night, Daniel dreams.
Looking around the battle field, he sighs, softly. This is the second night in a row. “Really?” he asks of the air. “Again?”
It’s been like this ever since he descended. Strange dreams, of half-remembered places. Armies of fire and darkness against armies of light and air, and him standing in the middle.
He wanders between the ranks of the soldiers. “If this is some kind of lesson,” he informs the nearest combatant, who glows the harsh white of an ascended ancient, “I’d appreciate a hint.” He pauses. No response. “No? I guess I’ll just... keep walking, then.”
He drifts idly through the no-man’s and between the armies. If the armies of light are Ancients, what are the armies of fire? They look like pillars of flame, with hard-faced men and women in their depths. “Interesting symbolism,” he mutters. “Purification, and destruction. The burning bush and the fires of hell. Virility. Passion. Masculinity.” He tilts his head, eyes sharp behind his glasses. “Witches burning at the stake, maybe? Emotion against logic; magic against science.” He pauses, then adds, “Although I admit that’s something of a stretch.”
One the one hand, he knows that in theory, dreams come from one’s own subconscious. If so, he hasn’t the faintest idea what his subconscious is trying to tell him. On the other hand, he’s been with the SGC long enough to know that sometimes, a dream isn’t just a dream.
“You know,” he tells the air, “if you’d give me access to my sources, this would go a lot faster.” But his books and files fail to appear.
So he stops walking. He’d lost his patience for these games about the same time as he’d lost his memory. “Either something happens,” he tells the emptiness, “or I’m staying right here.”
“I know your name,” says a voice.
Daniel turns - but the speaker, a waif-like girl with straggly black hair, isn’t talking to him. She’s peering worriedly into the face of a burning soldier. Suddenly, she turns and darts across the battlefield.
“And your name too,” she tells one of the Ancients, sounding increasingly distressed. She runs from soldier to soldier, taking their faces in her hands and pulling her own face close, not seeming bothered by the brilliance of the light or the heat of the flame. “I know you all!”
“Excuse me,” says Daniel.
The girl whirls, wide-eyed, and says quite solemnly, “I name them all: Miranda!”
Danial awakens, the name still ringing in his mind.
* * *
The third night, Sam dreams.
He hits the floor immediately, diving for the nonexistent cover offered by a vast expanse of nothingness. There’s an army of demons right there, eyes black and white, yellow and red. The ranks bristle with guns and more esoteric weaponry, and he, Sam Winchester, is right in the kill zone in front of them. He covers his head with his arms for what futile protection that gives him, and thinks a silent apology at Dean for not making it home this time -
- and then slowly uncurls, feeling foolish. This is the third night in a row, but he still can’t kill the knee-jerk panic. Although, in his defense: army of demons.
He wishes he could dream himself a bag of salt.
Climbing to his feet, he stare up into the blank expanse of space. It’s not white, exactly, nor black. It’s just... empty. His mind shies away from the thought, and he glances at the army. They’re not paying him any attention. They never pay him any attention. They’re focusing across the field of nothingness, on the second army.
The second army looks a lot like the first one, arrayed in neat rows, but they glare across the field with normal, human eyes. No guns for them, but plenty of more archaic weaponry, especially swords. Sam frowns. There’s something about their shadows that always seems strange to him. They seem to flutter and flicker, like smoke.
Or maybe wings.
Gritting his teeth, Sam makes himself walk over to the demonic army. Raising a hand, he waves it in the face of the nearest soldier. Nothing. No response at all. There never is.
“Still just a dream,” he tells himself. “Only a dream.” But it doesn’t feel like a regular dream. It feels more like one of his prophecy dreams. Sam feels sick. If this is what’s coming...
He turns and starts walking down the empty expanse between the armies, full of twitchy energy. He doesn’t know how long he’s been walking when he sees the figures. They’re standing right up next to the demonic army, so close that from a distance they’d almost looked part of the ranks. After a moment’s hesitation, Sam ducks into the ranks of the second army. There’s no other cover in this place. At least these soldiers don’t seem to notice him any more than the demons do.
One of the figures is a girl, young. Sixteen or seventeen maybe. She’s wearing a flowery dress, and, inexplicably, heavy combat boots. Beside her is a man in his thirties. His thick glasses say “academic”, but he’s wearing some kind of military uniform. He moves like a Hunter.
Who the hell are these people? Why is he dreaming about them?
“You’re not looking close enough,” the girl chides the man. “They weren’t always what they are now.”
“What were they?” the man asks. He looks a little bemused by the whole situation.
The girl turns suddenly, and through the assembled ranks of soldiers unerringly finds Sam’s eyes. He freezes, and she smiles, sadly. “Us,” she says.
Sam opens his eyes in a crappy motel room.
* * *
The fourth night, River dreams.
“No, no!” She’s laughing, almost tripping over her own feet. “Toe point back kick turn!” She demonstrates, twirling around in a bouncing, joyful jig.
“My apologies,” says Daniel, dryly. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” He tries again, but his feet get hopelessly tangled up, and he wobbles, almost falling.
River laughs again. She likes Daniel. His mind reminds her of Mal and Kaylee and Simon, all mixed up. Simon’s crisp white worried intelligence with Kaylee’s warm-soft rust red caring and Mal’s watchful soldier eyes.
“Here, like this.” She grabs his hands to brace him, then moves her feet slowly. “See?”
She thinks this is what Simon would call a lucid moment. She feels real, and solid. The dreams always seem fuzzy and distant when she awakens, but while she’s here everything seems simple again. River frowns. Maybe Simon wouldn’t call this a lucid moment after all.
Wrinkling her nose, River resolves not to tell Simon about the dreams.
River feels the other man’s mind in the distance, sinking down slowly into the fog of sleep. “The Hunter’s coming,” she tells Daniel, a new smile spreading across her face.
Daniel looks a bit worried. “The Hunter?”
And the Sam fades into existence beside them. He hits the floor and rolls, crouching in a defensive posture; then sees them staring. Slowly, looking embarrassed, he straightens up and clears his throat. “Hi,” he says. “I’m, uh, Sam.”
No last name. Too much lore; too many creatures that can use your name to hurt you. River marvels at the world she sees in Sam’s head. It’s almost as wonderful-horrible as the world she sees in Daniel’s.
Musn’t forget out manners. “River Tam,” she says, sweeping one leg back and bobbing her knees in a curtsy. “I’m a real girl today.”
“Doctor Daniel Jackson,” says Daniel. He’s thinking that Sam looks like a man who’s seen combat. He’s thinking that Sam looks like a scared kid. He’s thinking he wants to save them both, River and Sam, if he can.
River likes Daniel, but he can’t save either of them. That makes her sad, so she twirls in in a circle, skirts flaring out. It’s hard to be sad when you’re dancing.
“I’ll teach you the jig,” she offers to Sam. The confusion on his face makes her laugh.
It’s not nearly long enough before River wakes again.
* * *
The fifth night, Daniel dreams.
“Are you both... real?” Sam asks. They’re sitting in a circle, looking inward to each other, not wanting to face the armies that surround them.
Daniel raises an eyebrow. “Are you?”
“Maybe we should meet,” Sam said. “There’s some stuff that maybe we should...” he pauses, takes a deep breath, and then says, “I’ve met other people like us.”
River is shaking her head. “Can’t meet,” she says.
Daniel nods his agreement. “I’ve been talking with River,” he says. “I don’t think we’re from the same planes of existence.”
“What?”
“Midbulk transport, standard radion-accelerator core, classcode 03-K64. Firefly,” says River, then adds, “Home.”
“River,” says Daniel dryly, “has told me some very interesting things about the spaceship she lives on. Specifically, about the fate of Earth in her universe. Presuming she’s correct - ” and that her world isn’t just another facet of her madness, of course. But if it is, then her fantasy world has a remarkable internal consistency. “ - we’re from different points in time. Probably different dimensions, too.”
“Then - how - ” Sam frowns. “Did something happen to the two of you when you were young? To make you... different?”
“They cut up my brain,” says River, wide-eyed and serious. “Took me away and made me a weapon.”
“Not when I was younger,” says Daniel, “But last year I ascended, for a while.”
“Ascended?” asks Sam.
Daniel nods towards the assembled ranks of Ancients. “Turned into a being of pure energy. Like them.”
There’s a pause, and then River says, “Soldiers. Purplebellies. Good Alliance boys and girls.”
“Yeah,” says Sam, “I’m not seeing any energy-beings either. I’m seeing, uh... actually, I think I might be seeing angels.”
Sam looks defensive, like he’s waiting for someone to laugh at him, but Daniel’s mind is already racing ahead. “We’re not seeing the same things,” he say. “But then - that implies - ” He whirls, pointing to the army he saw as pillars of flame. “What do you see when you look at them? Pillars of fire?”
“Reavers,” says River promptly. “No fire.”
“Demons,” adds Sam. “No fire that I can see either.”
Daniel stares at the assembled ranks. He can feel the heat on his face.
Behind him, he hears River ask Sam, “What happened? When you were young?”
“A demon,” says Sam reluctantly. “A demon fed me his blood.”
Daniel is turning back towards them when he wakes up.
* * *
The sixth night, Sam dreams.
River is having a bad night. She raves as she wanders through the ranks of the armies, sometimes striking at them in a fury, other times clinging to their clothes, pleading. It’s futile. The soldiers don’t react.
After a while, even Daniel gives up trying to help her. “I don’t know what exactly happened to her,” he says grimly, his hands crossed over his chest, “but I’d like to have a good long talk with the people who did it.”
Sam nods. He spends his days searching for something, anything to get Dean out of his deal... but sometimes he thinks it’s a good thing there’s a hell. Sometimes he thinks that some people deserve it.
“I wish,” Sam says suddenly, “that I could meet you. So I could be sure this is real, I mean.” And because he likes Daniel. Sam can’t help but think that Daniel would make a good Hunter. But one more like Sam, maybe, than the usual sort. Daniel has that same balance of fighter and thinker that makes Sam feel so out of place with other Hunters.
Daniel shoots him a rueful grin. It says without words that he knows exactly how Sam’s feeling.
When Sam awakes, he has a faint smile on his face.
* * *
The seventh night, River dreams.
“Seven,” she informs Sam when he appears, “is significant.” She can feel Daniel fading into sleep. He’ll be here soon.
Sam nods. They’re getting used to the way she speaks. She likes that; it makes her feel less broken when they understand her. “Symbolically speaking, seven is important in a lot of the Lore.” He glances uneasily at the army of Reavers. “Especially this kind of Lore; all this Bible stuff.”
“Agreed,” says Daniel. River laughs at the look of surprise on Sam’s face. Sam didn’t feel him fading. He never does. “Have you looked at the armies yet?”
Sam glances at the Reavers again. “Yeah. What - oh. Huh.”
River looks too. The last six nights, the soldier and the Reavers held their weapons loosely at their sides. Tonight, guns are raised and blades hefted high. “Battle’s eve,” she whispers. She wonders what Sam and Daniel see. She’s tried to look, but she sees the same thing through their eyes that she sees through her own.
“I think,” says Daniel, after a moment, “that we may be running out of time. And I still don’t understand why we’re here.”
“You don’t?” River asks, astonished. “But I told you.”
Sam and Daniel exchange looks. “You didn’t tell me,” says Sam. “Do you mind explaining?”
She rolls her eyes, and grabs Sam’s hand. She tows him behind her, over to the army of Reavers. He stiffens. He doesn’t understand. “Look at their faces,” she tells him sternly. Daniel trails along behind them, leaning in to peer at the faces with eyes squinched up behind his glasses, like it hurts to look too close.
“Now here,” she says, and grabs Sam’s arm again, dragging him to the Alliance army. “Look at their faces!”
Daniel, still trailing behind them, makes a puzzled noise; but it’s Sam who understands first. She can feel it in his mind when he finally sees what she’s showing him. “They have the same faces. Both armies - they’re the same. What does that even mean? Demons are good?” He sounds part pensive, to her ears, and part disgusted.
“Or Ancients are bad,” says Daniel, sounding resigned. “It can’t be that black and white, can it?”
“Everything’s gray. No one is as different as they want us to think,” she says, shrugging one shoulder. “You’re learning all the wrong lessons. They’re good and bad and right and wrong and no one is what they told us.” She bites her lip, uncertain. This is important. She wished she could say it clearer. “Storm’s coming. Angels. Origins.” She shudders, then adds reluctantly, “Miranda.” She doesn’t like the name. But she can feel Miranda in her future, looming larger.
They’re silent for a while, then Daniel says, “So. Lesson learned.”
“Dark days are coming,” Sam says, raising his eyebrows mischievously. The days will be dark, but he’s being silly for her sake, so River gives him a smile.
“But the bad guys might not wear black hats and twirl their moustaches,” Daniel finishes, in his best dust-dry tones.
They both look to River for confirmation. She laughs, and twirls in a circle, her bare feet light against the nothingness. “Smart boys,” she says.
Sam frowns. “If that’s it, then why are we still asleep?”
“Because tonight’s our last night,” says River. “The last night with friends should be special.”
“In my experience,” says Sam carefully, “the universe doesn’t normally care about that kind of thing.”
“Stars never care. Dirt never cares.” River beams up at him. “But sometimes, you get lucky.”
crossposted from Dreamwidth |
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