Manna from Heaven - SN fic - PG13
Title: Manna from Heaven
Fandom: “Supernatural”
Disclaimer: not my characters, anyone you recognize. just for fun.
Warnings: spoilers for pilot
Pairings: Sam/Jessica, Jessica/OMCs, Jessica/OFC
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 4865
Point of view: third
Notes: sorta like a fifty-sentences thing, except I ain’t numberin’ ‘em and there's no prompt-word.
More notes: not in chronological order.
Notes cubed: I mention characters from “ a game that I cain’t play”
Spouse of notes the first: part of my Dean canon
The first time she laid eyes on Sam, she remembered Grandmomma’s stories about manna from Heaven.
The summer she was eighteen, in-between graduation and Stanford, Jessica worked for an old widow named Delores Smith, helping with the horses-“You’re the third person that devil’s ever let on,” the woman said of the big black called Griffin.
Their first date, Sam fumbled his compliment of her outfit; she laughed it off and bought him a drink.
Jessica named her cat after the gypsy woman from The Hunchback of Notre Dame; when Mom asked her why, the answer was, “She’s so graceful.”
When she was seven, Greg committed suicide-Daddy always told her it wasn’t her fault, but she knew that if she’d been a better little sister, he would have been fine.
Her favorite Disney princess was always Ariel: the mermaid knew what she wanted, and did whatever she could to get it.
Jessica’s baking left much to be desired, but Sam always ate every cookie and told her he’d never had better; the first time he baked, Jessica swore a bluestreak, because his left hers in the dust.
Before her first time with Sam, the greatest joy and freedom Jess had ever known was galloping across Ms. Smith’s property on Griffin.
“You’re a natural touch,” Ms. Smith said, giving Jessica a glass of lemonade. “People are either born for horses, or they’re not.”
Monica, Jess’ first best friend, left her for Frida, the new girl, in seventh grade; Jessica never did get over the painful betrayal, and sometimes, she still expects to be left behind.
Their second date, Jessica cooks Sam Salisbury Steak and mashed potatoes, ends up burning the meat, and finally takes him out to a nearby hole-in-the-wall restaurant, complaining about her last boyfriend, who accidentally hit her once and then got himself run over by her daddy.
When she told him her birthday, Sam chuckled almost sadly and said, “That’s the same as my brother.”
Fifteen years old, Jessica runs away-she’s back the next morning, tired and lonely, letting her mother hold her close and sob into her hair.
“So pretty,” Jacob said, gripping her wrist hard. “No way I’m letting you go.”
She picks Stanford because it’s where Greg had once said he’d want to go to college.
Jessica’d wanted to write for as long as she could remember; she used to curl up with Nate under the covers and weave long, involved stories of the two princes and the princess, who saved the kingdom from evil wizards and rode dragons through the sky.
She was four when they brought Nate home from the hospital, and she looked at him with wide eyes then turned to Greg, demanding, “Did I look like that?”
Only noticing him because he was taller than her, once Jessica met his cat-green eyes, she couldn’t look away.
Waking up alone in bed wasn’t a new thing, but the hushed conversation coming from the other room was.
Sometimes, Jessica nearly worried that Sam saw someone else when he looked at her.
Their third date, Jessica ranted about stodgy old professors who didn’t know history from myth and glared at Sam when he laughed.
Every now and then, Jessica visits the Pacific, sits on the beach, breathes in the salt air, and imagines riding Griffin again, imagines brushing Pinto, offering Melon some treats-just inhaling their horse-scent.
The first time she brought home a kitten, Daddy shook his head and muttered, “Not you too.”
Jessica never did learn much about Sam’s family, but figured she had plenty of time.
Benny, her best friend at Stanford, flung her soaking wet hair around, and demanded Jessica just go up and ask the tall guy out, already.
On her twentieth birthday, Nate surprises her with a small horse figurine, a black that he says is the closest he could come to that devil she described.
Jessica’s favorite weather was slightly overcast with a light breeze; Nate liked cloudless with lots of sun; if she recalled correctly, Greg loved snow.
Jasper, Daddy’s black lab/border collie mix, always loved Jessica best.
Mom tried passing on her recipes to Jessica, but she just never was that good at cooking; give her a prompt, though, and she could write a notebook full in less than an hour.
“Oh, c’mon, Katie-you can’t really believe ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is that good of a love story! They both die in the end!” Jessica exclaimed in the middle of the lunch room one day; Katie replied that clearly Jessica just wasn’t a romantic.
Sam agrees with her that Shakespeare is overrated and she starts thinking about forever.
She calls Nate up the night after Jacob hits her and sobs that she just wants Greg back.
Bobby was her first, in his bedroom while his parents watched TV downstairs, and it was rushed and not all that fun, and she regretted it from the moment he thrust in.
Five minutes after Jessica breaks her mother’s favorite vase-a wedding present-she enters the kitchen bawling, asking if Momma’ll love her no matter what.
Daddy always called her his darling.
Jessica’s first kiss happened on the playground, in-between pushing Jonathan down into the dirt and being put in time out for the rest of recess.
The earliest thing Jessica remembers is Greg sitting next to her on the couch, her pressed up against his side, them flipping through a picture dictionary of horses.
In eighth grade, she almost got expelled for calling a teacher a bastard to his face; in the end, though, he got fired and sent to prison for raping Cynthia and Jessica felt only rage that no one had spoken up sooner.
Grandmomma always told the best stories; she’d curl up with Jess in Grandpapa’s chair and weave tales of sorcerers and dragons and princesses who went out and got things done, telling Jessica that it was alright to be what she wanted, not some damsel in distress.
Ms. Smith hires Jessica on the spot after Jessica tells her off for letting Griffin run himself into the fence and injure his leg, even though they both know the old woman couldn’t have done a damn thing about the fool horse not stopping.
Jessica brought home on art project in first grade that Greg told her was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen; looking at it years later, she shakes her head, thinking she’s never seen anything so ugly, but she loves her brother more than ever.
Momma found Greg’s body and in her nightmares, Jessica still hears the scream.
In Bible school, Jessica learns about Job and everything he had to suffer; that night, she asks Daddy why God had to test Job so hard-couldn’t He’ve just looked into Job’s heart and known?-but Daddy didn’t have an answer, and told her not to question God’s will.
Yolanda, Nate’s first girlfriend, rubbed Jessica wrong from the start; two weeks later, she caught the bitch making out with the quarterback and kicked her ass.
Jessica’s first poem was two days after Greg died; she still can’t reread it, because she sobs too hard to see the paper.
When she was nine, Jessica fell out of a tree, breaking her left leg in two places and one of her ribs; what she told no one(until Sam) was that she’d jumped on purpose because she wanted to see Greg again.
Jessica was sixteen the summer she experimented with Georgina, a girl from down the street-at the start of junior year, she decided she liked boys more, no matter how nice George could make her feel.
Between graduation and Stanford, Jessica traveled from her small town in northern Maine to Palo Alto, unable to stop moving until she saw the big black running through a field in eastern Kentucky; even then, though, she didn’t stop for long, only a few weeks.
Their fourth date, they missed their reservations and ended up at McDonald’s; Jessica’s ketchup packet sprayed all over Sam, and Jessica nearly passed out from the laughter.
Mom and Dad’s twentieth-fifth anniversary, Jessica gave them a homemade movie, featuring pictures of her and her brothers, and Mom sobbed in Dad’s arms, while Dad himself wept, and they both thanked her so much their words overlapped.
(Jessica never saw her parents twenty-sixth anniversary.)
By the time she was twelve, Jessica and Nate had agreed to disagree on who was cooler: she thought Batman kicked ass, but Nate worshiped that wimp Superman.
Nate and Dad never understood, but Mom and Jessica would curl up on the couch together and watch horror flicks, laughing their way through each movie.
Jessica’s least favorite Bible story was always the Twelve Plagues because she felt God was totally unfair to the Egyptians.
The day Jessica brought home a snake(she’d escaped from the neighbors) Daddy hung his head and sighed.
“Grandmomma,” Jess begs, “tell me about Snow White fighting the wicked witch.”
In fifth grade, Jessica got written up because she refused to get on the bus to the zoo, even though she’d brought home the permission slip and said nothing before; “I just can’t stand seeing them in cages,” she sobbed in the office, nestled between her parents, and they took her home, tucked her into bed-the next day, she was diagnosed with the flu. (She still had to take the detention, though.)
Jessica’s guilty pleasure, which she would be completely mortified about if anyone ever discovers, is watching the old “Superman” cartoons over and over and over again, even if Lois Lane is a helpless fool.
Her first cat, Mushroom, got hit by a car on Jessica’s tenth birthday; she didn’t leave her room for a week, even for school.
When Jessica was five months old, the family(Momma, Daddy, Greg, Grandmomma, and Grandpapa) took a trip to Alabama and spent a week at the beach, by the warm water; the pictures still decorated the house when she left for Stanford-Daddy walking her along the shoreline for the first time.
After Greg, Nate was the only one allowed to call her Jessie.
If asked what power Jessica would want out of any, she’d say the ability to heal.
Even as a little girl, she knew no one lived forever-Greg taught her that.
It was their fifth date before Sam made a move; for one awful moment, she thought he was like every other guy, but then he kissed her like she was something precious, and she fell even further.
In ninth grade, Jessica grew like a weed, finally stopping just under six feet; she felt gangly and awkward-until Sam towered over even her and held her like a China doll.
Jessica’s favorite book growing up was The Awakening(which she had no business reading so young)-she tried explaining it to Nate one summer day, but he just shook his head and went back to reading the Star Wars trilogy.
Sam told her his favorite novel had been Shane ever since his big brother read it to him in the back of their father’s Impala as they drove from Seattle to Cheyenne.
Bobby wooed her with roses; after she gave in to him in his room, she hated that flower so much the scent of it made her ill.
Jessica’s least favorite sport was basketball, but she loved going to baseball games with Sam.
When Nate was fifteen, the brat shot up to six three and never let her hear the end of it.
She was twelve the spring she had the Greek gods phase; she decided Ares was the coolest guy ever and she’d be Artemis when she grew up.
The same year Jessica experimented with George, she dyed her hair black, pierced her ears, nose, and eyebrow, and had a screaming match with her mom about going to college one day; she apologized a few hours later, took out the nose and eyebrow rings, and washed out the dye.
A week after she went to work for Ms. Smith, Pinto bit the crap out of Jessica’s right arm; she smacked the Paint on the shoulder and cursed a bluestreak, dealt with the wound, and went right back to picking the ungrateful mare’s hooves.
A few months after Greg died, Daddy brought home a Malamute puppy; he told Jess to name her and Jessica picked out Isis.
Sam never said much about his family, but Jessica talked enough for both of them; on their sixth date the entire story about Greg spilled out, and she ended up sobbing in Sam’s arms in the middle of the restaurant.
Her birthstone is garnet, but Jessica’s favorite color is amethyst and she has a ring hidden away that Greg gave her-even though she was too young for such jewelry-that she pulls out and looks at sometimes.
Sam never brings her roses, always sunflowers or violets.
Jessica makes Sam promise to take her to Louisiana for their third anniversary, so she can finally sample proper seafood with actual spices.
When she told Sam her favorite book was The Awakening, he bought her a collection of Kate Chopin short stories.
Their seventh date, Sam cooks her Chicken Marsala and she tells him she’s never letting him go.
Nate stops by a month into her first semester at Stanford, tells her he’s run away and she can’t make him go back; she’s terrified because her baby brother just traveled across the country by himself, and she flies back with him, holding his hand the whole way.
In kindergarten, Jessica resists learning to read as long as possible; by ninth grade, she hates to stop.
Sam’s fluent in six languages, three of them dead; Jessica can speak Spanish(Grandpapa), muddle her way through German(Grandmomma), and talk a smidge of French( Georgina).
Jessica’s easiest class has always been English, and she hates Calculus with a passion, but Dad made her take it and she passed with a high D.
On their eighth date, Sam confesses he’s always had a crush on Demeter, but his brother prefers Artemis.
When she was six, Jess told Momma she wanted to be Loki for Halloween; Greg-even though he was twelve-went as Odin and Momma dressed little Nate up as Fenrir.
After Monica abandoned her, Jessica confronted the bitch in the bathroom and slapped her across the face.
Jessica’s senior quote, Momma said, was a bit pessimistic: This, too, shall pass.
Nate was fifteen when he got caught shoplifting; after Mom and Dad took away all of his privileges, he called Jessica and she blistered his ear for the better part of an hour.
The first time Jessica saw Sam angry, it was after a phone call from someone he never named, but she heard him yell, “Why do you let him treat you like that?”
When they read “Macbeth” in high school, Jessica admitted that Shakespeare had some good one-liners, even if on the whole he annoyed her.
Six years in a row, Jessica only asked for notebooks and pens at Christmas.
Momma washes Jessica’s mouth out with soap after she yells cuss words on the playground because Johnny Martin said something about Greg.
Daddy builds houses and Momma teaches art, and Jess feels pride every night at dinner because her parents work hard.
A few weeks after they moved in together, Sam walked in on Jessica curled up on their bed, clutching her amethyst ring close and sobbing; he didn’t ask any questions, just wrapped around her and kissed her hair.
“Jessie,” Greg whispers the night before he kills himself with Fred-from-down-street’s gun, crawling into bed with her and hugging her close, “remember I love you, no matter what.”
When Sam showed her the one picture he had of his parents, she noticed that his mother looked an awful lot like her; she never mentioned it.
Their ninth date, Jessica takes Sam to the Pacific and he laughs as he plunges into the ocean, calling over the roar that it’s the first time.
If Jessica’s scared of one thing before turning twelve and learning that there are some really nasty folk out in the real world, it’s that she’ll never see Greg again.
(They never tell her, but Momma almost died as she was born.)
Grandmomma whispers, that horrible night after Greg was lowered into the ground-gone forever-, that Greg’s in Heaven now, he doesn’t hurt anymore, and she should let him go so that he can fly above the clouds with the angels.
Jessica’s dream, from the moment Grandmomma let her sit on Gwaihir(the roan gelding almost as old as Momma), was to have her own horse one day.
It’s funny, but her whole life, Jessica has never feared fire.
Sam thought she hadn’t noticed, but Zack told her he’d been looking for rings; she hoped he knew she didn’t like gold.
Their tenth date, Sam rented Rebecca and they watched it in her dorm; their eleventh, Jessica dug Rebecca out of her closet, where it’d been stashed when she first moved in, and made him read her ten chapters-his was the best voice she’d ever heard, even better than Dad and Grandpapa’s.
A few weeks after she met Sam, Jessica borrowed Shane from the library and read it in one sitting; the next day, she ordered it off the internet, and then got an extra copy for Nate.
Momma discovered Jessica was allergic to strawberries when she was five and they were visiting family in Georgia; her allergy to latex waited till she was fourteen and in the hospital with appendicitis to rear its blasted head.
Jessica never did figure out why Greg put that bullet in his brain; Nate can’t even remember their big brother.
(Momma never mentions the letter spotted with Greg’s brain matter and blood, the letter that says life’s too hard and he has to escape, and to tell Jessie and Nathan he loves them more than anything and he’s so so sorry-she doesn’t think it’d help.)
When she’s nine, two weeks after the cast comes off her leg, Jessica announces to her parents that she’s going to become a shark tamer.
Jessica decided, that first time she ever had a crush on a boy and found out where babies came from, that her son would be named Gregory Benjamin; when she moved in with Sam and started thinking about forever, she rectified that to Samuel Gregory.
Once she settled on Stanford and got accepted, she realized she had to say goodbye to Isis and Jasper and Mushroom’s grave and Lucky the King Parakeet and Seth, Isis’ son, and Esmeralda-and Momma and Daddy and Nate and Grandmomma and Grandpapa… and Greg.
Daddy fell off a roof in May, two weeks before Nate’s ninth birthday; it was a miracle he survived and walked again, and Jessica’s faith in God was almost restored-almost.
Jessica gave up on magic the day her brother died, though she still wove stories for Nate.
She’s taking a shower when the curtain is pulled aside and the dark man with golden eyes grabs her neck, covering her mouth before she can scream.
Sometimes, Jess can’t remember Greg’s voice, and that lack hurts.
From when she was twelve to when she left for Stanford, Jessica took tae kwon do lessons every week.
In the end, it doesn’t hurt, and she thanks God for that, though she hasn’t believed in years.
The first time she lays eyes on Dean Winchester, she can’t breathe because he’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen; when he speaks, though, she immediately kicks herself back into gear, and thinks-just for a moment-that he’s purposefully making himself distasteful.
The day after her first date with Sam, Benny laughs as she gushes and says, “Aren’t you glad you listened to me?”
A week before she meets Sam, Jess calls George, just to talk, and they spend three hours on the phone.
On their twelfth date, Jessica ends it early because she’s got to study for a major final; Sam offers to help, if she wants, and they end up discussing horrible ‘60’s movies.
The second time she saw Sam mad, they were walking home from their fifth date and came upon four guys fighting one; Sam jumped in and ended it with a few well-placed punches, and explained it away as hating bullies.
Jessica’s first word was Grey, because she couldn’t quite manage the second G.
Frankie, Jess’ very first boyfriend ever(if preschool counts) asked her to marry him just after snack and before nap; she said yes.
If Jessica could pick any form besides human, she’d become a Luna moth, though even she can’t say why.
The first major argument Jess had with Greg, she was three-according to the story-and accidentally hit him in the head with a football.
Frida, that bitch who stole Monica, ended up pregnant in the middle of junior year and dropped out of school; last Jessica heard of her, she was well on the way to drowning herself in a bottle.
On a ninth grade history test, one of the questions was about a battle cry during the American Revolution; Jessica’d had a pretty shitty day and wrote “Remember the Alamo.”
On their thirteenth date, Jess gets blindingly drunk(first time in her life) and Sam carries her home, tucks her into bed, kisses her forehead, does the dishes, straightens the living room, and locks the door behind him as he leaves.
When Sam invites Jessica to move in with him, they’ve been going out for five months and she says she’ll think about it.
Besides his height and eyes, the first thing Jess notices about Sam is his hair: it just looks so soft.
For her eighth birthday, Jessica locked herself in her room and refused to come out until Momma and Daddy made Greg come home; finally, Nate sobbing outside her door had her opening it and pulling him into her arms.
Grandpapa promised to buy her a mustang for her twenty-fifth birthday; Nate said she should hold out for an Aston Martin and she whacked him upside the head, laughing that he’d never understood.
Her second semester at Stanford(about a month before she met Sam), Nick Helton tried forcing himself on her at a party and she broke his jaw, dislocated his shoulder, and kicked him in the balls.
When she was ten, Jessica’s parents took her and Nate to Florida for a week; Nate got stung by a stingray and Jess swam with dolphins.
(Jessica never learns that Sam was never really hers.)
The only movie she ever walked out of was Titanic; apparently, Katie was right: she’s just not a romantic.
When she was a little girl-couldn’t have been more than three-Daddy pulled her onto his lap and pointed out the different constellations, telling her that if she wanted, she could walk in the sky.
Horace, her third boyfriend, took her to a gypsy when they traveled to the coast; the woman was bundled in shawls, older than the hills, and told her to beware of fire.
On the tenth anniversary of Greg’s death, Grandmomma hugged Jess close and told her to always cling tight to hope, because one day the pain would lessen; despite it being Grandmomma, Jessica didn’t believe.
Nate called her up a few days after he received Shane in the mail and thanked her, saying he’d have never found the book otherwise and it is awesome.
Almost a year after they moved in together, Jessica threw a dictionary at Sam’s head; he ducked to the side, eyes wide, and then gathered her in his arms as she sobbed that Greg had been gone for too long.
Their fourteenth date, Jessica curled up in Sam’s lap and made him read her Shane aloud, cover to cover.
Her final thought is, Now Nate’ll be an only child.
Jessica helped Greg sell home-made clam chowder the December she was four, when Nate was only weeks old; thinking back later, the stuff tasted like crap, but they still made a killing.
She only ever wanted to tell stories, to make someone smile-then she met Sam, and thought she’d found the one, and she loved it when he grinned big enough to light up the world.
It was their fifteenth date, three months into their relationship, when Jessica finally decided to seduce him, and he was gentler than she’d ever dreamed; it wasn’t till they moved in together that she learned what he could really be like, and she never once regretted it.
She doesn’t tell him goodbye, just watches him walk out the door with his brother, and almost thinks he’ll never come back.
Greg told her, and she believed him for the longest time, that everyone is royalty and deserves the best the world has to offer; sometimes, she thought that was why amethyst became her favorite color.
Jessica was born in January, Greg in February, and Nate in October.
Jessica preferred Han to Luke until Jedi, when he turned kick-ass; she felt sorry for the Rancor, though.
Three months after Greg died, Jessica crawled into bed with Nate and hugged him close, swearing to always be there for him, no matter what.
She was thirteen the March she decided to learn knives, though she gave up after a few weeks.
Midway through Saturday(when Sam’s been gone for hours), Jessica finds herself pacing through their apartment, wondering if she was a replacement for his mother or his brother.
Sam told her his mom died when he was a baby and his father never did get over it.
Benny demands every single detail and Jess just giggles.
Jessica loves the ocean, but she adores the mountains; their first anniversary, Sam takes her on a hiking trip through a few foothills of the Rockies.
There’s so much Sam didn’t tell her, and the man with golden eyes laughs and laughs.
She dreams of Greg, sometimes; often, she wonders how tall he would have been.
It isn’t until her third day on the road to Stanford that Jessica realizes she left Sade, her stuffed panther, at home.
Jessica gets her period on the first of every month, just like clockwork; eventually, Sam catches on and makes sure there are cookies to offer her by the twenty-eighth/ninth, the thirtieth, or the thirty-first, respectively.
There was a joke Greg used to tell: what’s green and makes holes? Mom tells it every year on his birthday and sobs when she answers herself: a drill pickle.
A week after she turned twelve, a man tried shoving her into his van, and she screamed and screamed, and he slapped her across the face and got into his van and drove away, and Jessica didn’t stop trembling and shuddering until Momma wrapped her in her arms and they got word from the cops that the man fought a brick column and lost.
A week after she almost got kidnapped, Jessica started tae kwon do lessons.
She watches as Sam and his brother have a conversation without talking, and she wonders if she’s already lost-then she thinks back to Nate, and Greg, and knows she never had a chance.
Whenever he studied in their apartment, Sam would put on one of the classic rock CDs he’d bought and turn it up loud; he just shrugged when Jessica asked, and smiled sheepishly.
Until Sam, Jess kept her hair short, but he loved running his fingers through it, so she grew it out.
A tiny Hispanic girl plops down next to Jessica in the cafeteria one day, introduces herself as Benita(“Call me Benny”), and never leaves.
Jessica wanted to ask a thousand times(more)-where did all these scars come from, Sam?
Ms. Smith called Jessica a horse-fool-“just like the rest of us, girl”-and said she’d give Griffin to her, but she’d already promised the devil to another.
Jessica tries to convince Sam to go riding with her, but he begs off; she takes Rebecca instead, and they chat about boys the whole time.
“I love you,” Sam said for the first time right in the middle of Shane’s best part.
(Momma can’t stand up on her own at the funeral and Nate doesn’t speak for three months, not even to Grandpapa.)
Jessica makes Sam read The Joy Luck Club and he forces on her Changer; they agree that Batman kicks ass and Catwoman is hot.
No matter how many times she tells Sam to guess a number, he always picks seven.
One day while Sam’s out, his cell phone rings an she picks up without a second thought, says, “Hello?” and a male voice says, “Sorry, wrong number.” It isn’t until Dean makes a comment about the Smurfs that she realizes who it was.
September eleventh made Jessica curse; Katrina and Rita made her cry for days.
Sam told Jessica his senior quote was “Hakuna Matata” and she laughed.
“I love you,” she cuts off her diatribe about foreign policy to tell him and his smile lights up the room.
She dies with smoke in her mouth and it tastes like Heaven.