Fic: March-Stalkers Mighty
A Fox and the Hound fusion in a Beowulf-themed world. I don't even know.
Author: whit_merule
The Ladies: Ellen, Jo, Charlie, Anna, Gwen, Rachel, Jody.
Reason: This is, I’m ashamed to admit, the first fic I’ve written that really gave the female characters - or, I should say, any character who aren’t my adored quartet of boys - time to breathe. Creating the world in which my central characters lived and giving them a reason to love it meant developing the people around them and letting them have their own stories and their own motivations and loves. In that regard, I’m particularly fond of the dynamic between Ellen and Jo; of the hints we get of Charlie’s life and her tendency to brush it all off and still be as cheery and sharp as we see her in canon; of the glimpses of Rachel’s backstory and the reasons for her fierce dedication to Castiel; and of Gwen’s decision, completely independent of my plans for the story and despite being a minor character, to take off after Sam and refuse to let him and Gabriel and Castiel go off together without taking her along. It’s actually the fic which made me realise that yes, I can write these characters, and want to give them more space - and which has given me courage to sign on for the spnpairingbingo, with a het/slash/femslash card! So expect to see more from that in future. :)
Rating: Explicit (for canon-level violence, people being unpleasant, and a male/male sex scene).
Spoilers: Fantasy AU, so no direct plot spoilers. Supporting characters from all seasons (from Missouri to Charlie). Events, character interactions, aspects of relationships, quotations, etc, do mirror and allude to some canon events (Mary’s death early in the boys’ lives, Castiel talking about bees, etc).
Word count: 150 000, plus several timestamps.
Pairings and other characters: Castiel/Dean, and Gabriel/Sam friendship or pre-slash. Background Ellen/Bill, Bobby/Jody, Anna/Charlie, Demian/Barnes. Other characters... well, let’s call it large ensemble cast.
Summary: In the middle of the barren monster-ridden marches, there is a wall. Encircled by the wall and all its ancient protective symbols there is a small town: a few farms, a few orchards, a few herds of cattle and sheep, a few hundred humans who know that nothing outside the wall is anything but an enemy. The second-worst of the monsters that inhabit their lands are the demons; the very worst are also the most newly arrived, and they are the angels. Dean and Sam Winchester have buried the memories of the silent boy with blue eyes and black wings whom Dean had used to play with as a child, down by the wall, years before any other human ever saw an angel. But when one of the regular travelling pedlars turns out to be hiding wings; when Dean encounters a face he’d stubbornly forgotten for years sneaking into their village at night; when Sam gets hit by a curse that takes his human form away, and Bobby sustains an injury that makes him (by his own rules) less than human, and the behaviour of some humans begins to reveal a darker side, Dean isn’t the only one who will have to struggle to redefine the boundaries between humanity and monstrosity.
Warnings, kinks, and tropes (spoilerish detail in mouse-over text for potentially triggerish or distasteful tags): Dehumanisation, including by narrating character. Moderate PTSD (not in narrating character). Ignorance of homosexuality, struggles with one’s own attraction to member of the same sex (no true homophobia). Mild wing-kink, including passing mention of preening oil as lubricant. Temporary animal transformation. Minor character deaths. Hinted child neglect. Interspecies sex. Virginity and confused virgin sex. Fight scenes, mildly graphic treatment of injuries. Angels as biological creatures who eat, age, reproduce, etc. Large dollops of hurt!Cas, because he will keep getting into trouble, and occasional hurt!Gabriel and hurt!Sam. Also the Impala is now a dog.
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