Gift for Charliebradbury
Title: this is how we tried to love
Gifter: canon_is_relative on AO3
Pairing/Characters: Sam/Dean, mentions of John and appearances by Mary and Jack
Word count: ~4,000 for now
Rating: Mature
Warnings: none
Summary: This started out as a coda to 14.13 ‘Lebanon’ and turned into something much bigger. It’s a complicated first time story whose roots lie in the moment Sam first asked himself, ‘Why me?’ Why was Sam the one who had to send John back into the past?
To my dear giftee, thank you for the amazing prompts you sent my way for this exchange. I found inspiration from every one of them, perhaps most notably from #1: “that fic/art/vid you've always wanted to do <3”. That blanket permission was the springboard I needed to start working on something that has been on my mind for almost a year. But then…the whole thing became much broader in scope than I’d ever imagined and, to cut a long story short, it’s not finished and the next three weeks are going to be incredibly busy for me. So I took the first 1/3 of the story, found a place where it comes to a natural end and stands alone, and I’m posting that for you today. I have a lot of the rest written and I hope to be able to return to it around the new year - if not sooner! I hope you enjoy part one, although more of the things in you list of ‘likes’ ended up in the later sections ... how’s that for narrative irony :)
Link to gift on AO3
this we were, this is how we tried to love,
and these are the forces they had ranged against us,
and these are the forces we had ranged within us,
within us and against us, against us and within us.
-Adrienne Rich
Gifter: canon_is_relative on AO3
Pairing/Characters: Sam/Dean, mentions of John and appearances by Mary and Jack
Word count: ~4,000 for now
Rating: Mature
Warnings: none
Summary: This started out as a coda to 14.13 ‘Lebanon’ and turned into something much bigger. It’s a complicated first time story whose roots lie in the moment Sam first asked himself, ‘Why me?’ Why was Sam the one who had to send John back into the past?
To my dear giftee, thank you for the amazing prompts you sent my way for this exchange. I found inspiration from every one of them, perhaps most notably from #1: “that fic/art/vid you've always wanted to do <3”. That blanket permission was the springboard I needed to start working on something that has been on my mind for almost a year. But then…the whole thing became much broader in scope than I’d ever imagined and, to cut a long story short, it’s not finished and the next three weeks are going to be incredibly busy for me. So I took the first 1/3 of the story, found a place where it comes to a natural end and stands alone, and I’m posting that for you today. I have a lot of the rest written and I hope to be able to return to it around the new year - if not sooner! I hope you enjoy part one, although more of the things in you list of ‘likes’ ended up in the later sections ... how’s that for narrative irony :)
Link to gift on AO3
this we were, this is how we tried to love,
and these are the forces they had ranged against us,
and these are the forces we had ranged within us,
within us and against us, against us and within us.
-Adrienne Rich