WIP meme, fanfic edition
The meme is: post a bunch of snippets from all the WIPs on your hard drive. The problem is: most of these WIPs I have absolutely no intention of finishing. Still, it'll be interesting to see what y'all think...
1. "Dude!" Dean exploded at him. Sam burst into hysterical giggles and was doubled over for most of the conversation. "That is not-- how many people you see wearing that?"
"You asked me to find something that appealed to me," Castiel said, unerringly patient and completely oblivious. "I suppose I wasn't... thinking about the situation correctly."
He looked so much like a depressed puppy, Dean agreed to buy him the damn thing just as long as he never-- never-- wore it out in public.
2. Maybe they should have had a big ceremony and a reception, a big, elaborate affair where they let their friends and co-workers and family toast them and danced, delirious, in front of a roomful of shining faces. But everyone works, and no one could attend, and they're not doing this for the sake of the rest of the world anyway. They're doing it for themselves, and for each other. A way to say this is what I want for the rest of my life, and I want it badly enough to give it the force of law.
Law's not the force Jensen's thinking about right now, though, not as they leave City Hall behind and hop a cab to the honeymoon suite they've booked at the Hilton. He's thinking much more of the force of Jared's body, radiating energy beside him, and the simple promise of big hands wrapped around his as they ride through the streets, all dressed up with nowhere to go.
3. "Oh, now, what's this, brother?"
Castiel doesn't need to look up to see who it is. He recognizes the voice, that snarky slurry snap of a voice. And he recognizes the sound of his brother's true voice somewhere beneath it. Still, he tries to raise his head off the pillow to catch a glimpse. He gets a blurry shot of Gabriel, the round, pale face and the smirk, before groaning and laying his head back down .
"Honeymoon suite? Really? That's not like the boys, to put you up here. Your boy Dean's been treating you right, I take it?" The voice is moving, and Castiel can tell Gabriel's wandering the room, looking around. "Though I have to say, the 1970s haven't been kind to design. God, the paisley in here just kills me. I lived this through once, it kind of sucks to come back again.
4. "You didn't think I'd really forgotten, did you?" Sam says behind him.
Castiel waves his hand. The lights go up, the blindfold falls. Dean blinks in the light and looks around. Candles are glittering on a round, dark cake on the table before him. Sam's hands idly caress his shoulder, and Gabriel's face in front of his is glittering. Behind the cake, Castiel stands, just barely smiling, patient as ever.
"Happy birthday, champ," Gabriel says.
Dean scowls. "You scared the crap out of me and tied me to a freaking chair. This is your way of giving a surprise party?"
5. Losing control isn't so new. Gabriel hasn't been in control, by some measures, since he had the falling-out with his brothers. He didn't commit a sin worthy of lock-up, but after a while it became clear that they were at cross purposes and Gabriel, for all his persuasion, couldn't do a damn thing to sway them. So flailing about wildlhy and being unable to even approach credibility? Not new. Being an ineffectual, impotent idiot trying in vain to make everybody sing happy songs and get along? Yeah, done that too. So why bother getting drunk? What's so great about it, anyway?
Besides, he's not so sure he can. His metabolism's already at levels that make a hummingbird look like a hippopotamus. Thus all the chocolate bars. He's very dubious about his ability now to reach any level of intoxication, even though he's been reconstituted according to some magic he's not aware of.
He's soooooo wrong.
6. They're driving across a swath of country as flat and starched as a bleach-blonde's hair, and the sunlight paints fat stripes of white acros the fields. Where there isn't flood, there's drought, and this place has seen the latter. There are dead birds along the highway like pepper flakes, and the wheat that used to stand up gold and proud is a sad endlesspile of straw.
But Zepp's on the stereo and Dean's singing, and Sam looks over at him and smiles a little.
"What?" The singing voice goes away and he frowns thunderclouds onto the horizon.
"I was just thinking about Gabriel," Sam said.
7. This, Hardison said, is Wo Fat. he's an international arms dealer and all-around bad guy. Ties to the yakuza in Japan, to the Indonesian revolutionaries, to the Chinese mafia... If it's in the pacific and corrupt, he's got a fingers in it.
Like a giant octopus, Parker offers helpfully. Everyone ignores her.
The slide on the screen flips. This is Steve McGarrett, he's currently been held in the honolulu district jail. he was found in the governor's mansion with his hhand on the gun that killed her. point blank. He swears he was set up.
Which Danny said, Nate mused.
8. Mom and Dad are gonna die. Mom and Dad are gonna die.
Those are the words that run through Dean's mind as he runs, the fire hot on his back, Sam a struggling weight in his arms and the panic in Dad's face still etched behind his eyelids whenever he blinks. There's a foul smell coming from upstairs now, and even though Dean's four and he can't remember his Ds from his Bs, he will never forget that smell. He bursts from the front door, nearly falls down the porch steps, and stumbles into the yard, unshed tears burning his eyes.
In his arms Sam kicks and fusses, and Dean looks down at him. “It's okay, Sammy,” he whispers. “I'll take care of you. I promise.” It's the first promise he ever makes and it's the one he will both keep until he dies and break a thousand times. The first paradox that defines his life.
9. When Sam was 12, he had a dream about the Impala. He had fallen asleep in the back seat, and the next thing he knew the seatbelt had snaked out from its holder and started cubbing against him. It had slid across his stomach, down to his dick, and wrapped around it in a choking squeeze. Sam had tried to escape, but the pull of the belt had been powerful and almost painful. He'd cried out, but there was no one else there to save him, not in the dream. Panic and alarm welled up red in his gut as the seatbelt squeezed him, chafed him, built up heat inside him that he didn't understand, and he shook helplessly as it took over his whole body and turned him to fire.
He woke up with a wet spot in the front of his pants and the seatbelt hanging innocently at the side where it belonged.
When he told Dean about it, Dean laughed. "You had a wet dream, dude. My little Sammy's growing up."
"But it felt real," Sam said. "The car came to life."
10. Dean pointed to the brownish lump on the floor. It looked not-quite-solid. "That's so disgusting."
Sam knelt and inhaled. A vague chemical odor. No, not quite chemical. More like--
He exclaimed. "Dude. That's not dog poo. It's clay."
Dean blinked. "Seriously?" He knelt down, sniffed at it gingerly. "Hunh. It still looks like--"
"Yeah, yeah," Sam cut him off. "Well, at least we know what we're dealing with now."
"Fricking golems," Dean said. "Why's it always got to be golems?"
11. He chews his pencils, but never here.
That's the first thing Mike notices about the man who's suddenly taken up permanent residence in the back of the library, far from where the rest of the students are clustered, doing their research and projects. Mike feels for him -- he's clearly a loner, and if Mike had to guess he'd wager that crowds bother him. Thus the chewed-on pencils. They're leftovers from class, where pressure is high, but here in the back of the library his mystery patron is comfortable enough to sit back, relax, and thumb through his law books.
Mike likes the looks of him, His face is promising. Not that Mike gets a good look at it very often -- Harvey (yeah, so Mike's snuck a look at his papers once in a while) spends a lot of time with his nose pressed into the seven thousandth volume of so-and-so, like he could absorb the knowledge through osmosis. To his credit, most of the rest of the law students are still working on volume three thousand.
Oh, there's no doubt in Mike's mind that Harvey's smarter than the average bear. Of course, smart is relative when you're Mike Ross and you've never seen a piece of paper you didn't memorize. But be that as it may, Mike's really starting to wonder just how smart this guy is.
12. For Misha, arriving in Logan is coming home. For Jared, it's an adventure. He's been to Boston before, in his childhood, but he doesn't remember much and he gets that foreign feeling you get when you come to a new airport, the unfamiliar newspaper fonts and baseball caps with the letter hyou're not used to seeing emblazoned in the center. So he's wide-eyed and looking around as they walk through the terminal, dragging their carry-ons and wearing their own baseball caps to keep from getting too many prying eyes peering their way.
"So you gonna start tahking like you're from Bahstin?" Jared teases him, and Misha makes a face. "OK, no."
"First of all, I'm from western Massachusetts, and that's a South Shore accent," Misha starts. "And--"
Jared rolls his eyes, "Right. Gotcha."
"No, I really don't think you do."
13. Team Free Will hasn't got a lot. Not power, not numbers, and not destiny. Nothing's behind them but them.
What they've got is heart. A whole hell of a lot of it. And when that's all you've got, you share it just as freely as you can.
Castiel wakes up to find a man on either side, sleeping gently after having lain down beside him on the big bed. Castiel just caresses Sam's hair, turns over, brushes a kiss across Dean's jaw. "You'll never know how grateful," he begins, and then stops. Foolish words and he doesn't need to say them.
He lies down and closes his eyes because there's nothing else to do right now. But he doesn't sleep.
So when Dean wakes up, looks at him and runs a hand down his thigh, gently, Castiel opens his eyes and doesn't ask Dean to stop.
14. It's nothing like kissing a woman. Nothing at all.
Sam thinks it's going to be. Gabriel is small. His lips are Cupid's-bow curvy. Even his nose is pert, and his eyes blaze like a model's when she's making love to the camera. Sam has allowed himself to admit he's attracted to Gabriel mostly because he looks something like a woman, at least from far away. It doesn't mean a damn thing. It's just that if Gabriel were a girl, he'd be a beautiful one.
He toys with the idea of kissing Gabriel like a cat paws at a chew toy. He holds loosely onto it, keeps it at arm's length but can't quite let go. Should he do it? No, probably not. Not after all the gay jokes, all the creepiness of Chuck's fans. It'd just add a layer of complexity that's not worth indulging his curiosity. He's got bigger problems to deal with. But the casual, lazy interest stays, just out of reach, enticing him.
15. “Pirates, Sammy,” he said, breaking into a grin. “Real pirates. Earrings and parrots and cannons and the whole shebang. I cannot wait.”
Sam looked balefully at the traffic, which up ahead was narrowing to four lanes and didn't see any signs of letting up. “I think you're gonna have to.”
“Tell me about. What the hell is this? This is the butt-end of the tail of the country, man, and it's constipated!”
“Dean, that is disgusting.”
“Oh, sorry. Didn't realize what a delicate little flower you were, Sammy.”
Sam leaned forward against the dashboard. “Wake me up when we get there.”
16. Gabriel likes Sam. And Sam likes women. This would be a problem if Gabriel were anyone but Gabriel.
He knows to avoid the Great Loves. He's not going to touch Jessica or Madison. And lord knows there's too much baggage with Ruby. But there have been a few others, ones that Sam only had once, or that he never had but he thought about.
So he waits for Sam to sleep. And he spirits him away to a different bed in the same motel, and he lets him think the whole thing is just a dream.
The first night he dreams about Sarah. He hasn't given her a thought for a long time, and he figures that by now she's married, maybe with some adorable children, still too smart for her own good, still stunningly beautiful. And she is, when she comes to him.
17. "Dad paid you a compliment," Sam said levelly. "And you didn't know how to take it, so you shouted some shit, came here, and got high enough to forget the matter."
"Well, who can blame me?" Dean sat on the bed, winding the sheets up around his lower legs as though he was trying to bind up a wound.
"Yeah. You lead a poor, deprived life. Your own father thinks you did a good job at the negotiating table."
"He knows how I feel about that! Why doesn't he just send you? You're the human-lover."
"That's the problem, isn't it?" Sam sat on the big chair across the way. "Dad makes you treat humans like humans. If he just gave you free rein to hunt kill them all, you'd be out there at his side like the proud little heir."
"Oh, I see. Brother envy." Dean gave a cocky little smile. "Sorry, can't help when I was sired."
"It's not about that and you know it. Look, Dean, we need them to live, OK? They're not animals. They talk--"
"Oh, is that where we're setting the bar these days? Talking?" Dean blinked. "Dude, the rugarus can talk. You don't see us sitting down with them."
18. - ANDREA -
She holds the gun in her hand, rests the hilt against her palm and turns it over. The metal's not cold. It never is, not after she's held it for just a few seconds. A gun has never been a cold thing to her. Perhaps as a child, watching the news, first understanding that there's life and there's death and sometimes it doesn't rise and fall by nature alone. Perhaps then a gun seemed like a cold thing. But there was Dad, and there were lessons and the mechanical simplicity of cleaning, or loading and assembling it. And then the gun was warmth itself. Was protection. Was Dad.
And when something took Dad from her it wasn't a gun. What would she have against guns then? Guns have never been an enemy.
She punches the clock. A full second slower than last time. She's letting her mind wander. It's no good. She has to do it again. Has to be worthy of the gun.
19. The tree log swings back and forth like a metronome. Tick-tock. It's too late for countdowns. This tick-tock counts up. Four months, three weeks, twenty-seven days and loose change in hours and minutes since the end of the world. A count up never ends. There's no point to it. It just goes on and on. One plus one plus one into infinity.
It makes my eyes glaze over, and I keep missing. Shane's yelling at me in the background. The more he yells, the more it jumbles into background noise, the more I feel disconnected from the whole scene. I see myself shooting, I see myself missing, I steady myself but it's like reaching through a plastic bag, removed, wrong. It's a big target and I'm still missing. The problem isn't my aim. The problem is, there's no point.
1. "Dude!" Dean exploded at him. Sam burst into hysterical giggles and was doubled over for most of the conversation. "That is not-- how many people you see wearing that?"
"You asked me to find something that appealed to me," Castiel said, unerringly patient and completely oblivious. "I suppose I wasn't... thinking about the situation correctly."
He looked so much like a depressed puppy, Dean agreed to buy him the damn thing just as long as he never-- never-- wore it out in public.
2. Maybe they should have had a big ceremony and a reception, a big, elaborate affair where they let their friends and co-workers and family toast them and danced, delirious, in front of a roomful of shining faces. But everyone works, and no one could attend, and they're not doing this for the sake of the rest of the world anyway. They're doing it for themselves, and for each other. A way to say this is what I want for the rest of my life, and I want it badly enough to give it the force of law.
Law's not the force Jensen's thinking about right now, though, not as they leave City Hall behind and hop a cab to the honeymoon suite they've booked at the Hilton. He's thinking much more of the force of Jared's body, radiating energy beside him, and the simple promise of big hands wrapped around his as they ride through the streets, all dressed up with nowhere to go.
3. "Oh, now, what's this, brother?"
Castiel doesn't need to look up to see who it is. He recognizes the voice, that snarky slurry snap of a voice. And he recognizes the sound of his brother's true voice somewhere beneath it. Still, he tries to raise his head off the pillow to catch a glimpse. He gets a blurry shot of Gabriel, the round, pale face and the smirk, before groaning and laying his head back down .
"Honeymoon suite? Really? That's not like the boys, to put you up here. Your boy Dean's been treating you right, I take it?" The voice is moving, and Castiel can tell Gabriel's wandering the room, looking around. "Though I have to say, the 1970s haven't been kind to design. God, the paisley in here just kills me. I lived this through once, it kind of sucks to come back again.
4. "You didn't think I'd really forgotten, did you?" Sam says behind him.
Castiel waves his hand. The lights go up, the blindfold falls. Dean blinks in the light and looks around. Candles are glittering on a round, dark cake on the table before him. Sam's hands idly caress his shoulder, and Gabriel's face in front of his is glittering. Behind the cake, Castiel stands, just barely smiling, patient as ever.
"Happy birthday, champ," Gabriel says.
Dean scowls. "You scared the crap out of me and tied me to a freaking chair. This is your way of giving a surprise party?"
5. Losing control isn't so new. Gabriel hasn't been in control, by some measures, since he had the falling-out with his brothers. He didn't commit a sin worthy of lock-up, but after a while it became clear that they were at cross purposes and Gabriel, for all his persuasion, couldn't do a damn thing to sway them. So flailing about wildlhy and being unable to even approach credibility? Not new. Being an ineffectual, impotent idiot trying in vain to make everybody sing happy songs and get along? Yeah, done that too. So why bother getting drunk? What's so great about it, anyway?
Besides, he's not so sure he can. His metabolism's already at levels that make a hummingbird look like a hippopotamus. Thus all the chocolate bars. He's very dubious about his ability now to reach any level of intoxication, even though he's been reconstituted according to some magic he's not aware of.
He's soooooo wrong.
6. They're driving across a swath of country as flat and starched as a bleach-blonde's hair, and the sunlight paints fat stripes of white acros the fields. Where there isn't flood, there's drought, and this place has seen the latter. There are dead birds along the highway like pepper flakes, and the wheat that used to stand up gold and proud is a sad endlesspile of straw.
But Zepp's on the stereo and Dean's singing, and Sam looks over at him and smiles a little.
"What?" The singing voice goes away and he frowns thunderclouds onto the horizon.
"I was just thinking about Gabriel," Sam said.
7. This, Hardison said, is Wo Fat. he's an international arms dealer and all-around bad guy. Ties to the yakuza in Japan, to the Indonesian revolutionaries, to the Chinese mafia... If it's in the pacific and corrupt, he's got a fingers in it.
Like a giant octopus, Parker offers helpfully. Everyone ignores her.
The slide on the screen flips. This is Steve McGarrett, he's currently been held in the honolulu district jail. he was found in the governor's mansion with his hhand on the gun that killed her. point blank. He swears he was set up.
Which Danny said, Nate mused.
8. Mom and Dad are gonna die. Mom and Dad are gonna die.
Those are the words that run through Dean's mind as he runs, the fire hot on his back, Sam a struggling weight in his arms and the panic in Dad's face still etched behind his eyelids whenever he blinks. There's a foul smell coming from upstairs now, and even though Dean's four and he can't remember his Ds from his Bs, he will never forget that smell. He bursts from the front door, nearly falls down the porch steps, and stumbles into the yard, unshed tears burning his eyes.
In his arms Sam kicks and fusses, and Dean looks down at him. “It's okay, Sammy,” he whispers. “I'll take care of you. I promise.” It's the first promise he ever makes and it's the one he will both keep until he dies and break a thousand times. The first paradox that defines his life.
9. When Sam was 12, he had a dream about the Impala. He had fallen asleep in the back seat, and the next thing he knew the seatbelt had snaked out from its holder and started cubbing against him. It had slid across his stomach, down to his dick, and wrapped around it in a choking squeeze. Sam had tried to escape, but the pull of the belt had been powerful and almost painful. He'd cried out, but there was no one else there to save him, not in the dream. Panic and alarm welled up red in his gut as the seatbelt squeezed him, chafed him, built up heat inside him that he didn't understand, and he shook helplessly as it took over his whole body and turned him to fire.
He woke up with a wet spot in the front of his pants and the seatbelt hanging innocently at the side where it belonged.
When he told Dean about it, Dean laughed. "You had a wet dream, dude. My little Sammy's growing up."
"But it felt real," Sam said. "The car came to life."
10. Dean pointed to the brownish lump on the floor. It looked not-quite-solid. "That's so disgusting."
Sam knelt and inhaled. A vague chemical odor. No, not quite chemical. More like--
He exclaimed. "Dude. That's not dog poo. It's clay."
Dean blinked. "Seriously?" He knelt down, sniffed at it gingerly. "Hunh. It still looks like--"
"Yeah, yeah," Sam cut him off. "Well, at least we know what we're dealing with now."
"Fricking golems," Dean said. "Why's it always got to be golems?"
11. He chews his pencils, but never here.
That's the first thing Mike notices about the man who's suddenly taken up permanent residence in the back of the library, far from where the rest of the students are clustered, doing their research and projects. Mike feels for him -- he's clearly a loner, and if Mike had to guess he'd wager that crowds bother him. Thus the chewed-on pencils. They're leftovers from class, where pressure is high, but here in the back of the library his mystery patron is comfortable enough to sit back, relax, and thumb through his law books.
Mike likes the looks of him, His face is promising. Not that Mike gets a good look at it very often -- Harvey (yeah, so Mike's snuck a look at his papers once in a while) spends a lot of time with his nose pressed into the seven thousandth volume of so-and-so, like he could absorb the knowledge through osmosis. To his credit, most of the rest of the law students are still working on volume three thousand.
Oh, there's no doubt in Mike's mind that Harvey's smarter than the average bear. Of course, smart is relative when you're Mike Ross and you've never seen a piece of paper you didn't memorize. But be that as it may, Mike's really starting to wonder just how smart this guy is.
12. For Misha, arriving in Logan is coming home. For Jared, it's an adventure. He's been to Boston before, in his childhood, but he doesn't remember much and he gets that foreign feeling you get when you come to a new airport, the unfamiliar newspaper fonts and baseball caps with the letter hyou're not used to seeing emblazoned in the center. So he's wide-eyed and looking around as they walk through the terminal, dragging their carry-ons and wearing their own baseball caps to keep from getting too many prying eyes peering their way.
"So you gonna start tahking like you're from Bahstin?" Jared teases him, and Misha makes a face. "OK, no."
"First of all, I'm from western Massachusetts, and that's a South Shore accent," Misha starts. "And--"
Jared rolls his eyes, "Right. Gotcha."
"No, I really don't think you do."
13. Team Free Will hasn't got a lot. Not power, not numbers, and not destiny. Nothing's behind them but them.
What they've got is heart. A whole hell of a lot of it. And when that's all you've got, you share it just as freely as you can.
Castiel wakes up to find a man on either side, sleeping gently after having lain down beside him on the big bed. Castiel just caresses Sam's hair, turns over, brushes a kiss across Dean's jaw. "You'll never know how grateful," he begins, and then stops. Foolish words and he doesn't need to say them.
He lies down and closes his eyes because there's nothing else to do right now. But he doesn't sleep.
So when Dean wakes up, looks at him and runs a hand down his thigh, gently, Castiel opens his eyes and doesn't ask Dean to stop.
14. It's nothing like kissing a woman. Nothing at all.
Sam thinks it's going to be. Gabriel is small. His lips are Cupid's-bow curvy. Even his nose is pert, and his eyes blaze like a model's when she's making love to the camera. Sam has allowed himself to admit he's attracted to Gabriel mostly because he looks something like a woman, at least from far away. It doesn't mean a damn thing. It's just that if Gabriel were a girl, he'd be a beautiful one.
He toys with the idea of kissing Gabriel like a cat paws at a chew toy. He holds loosely onto it, keeps it at arm's length but can't quite let go. Should he do it? No, probably not. Not after all the gay jokes, all the creepiness of Chuck's fans. It'd just add a layer of complexity that's not worth indulging his curiosity. He's got bigger problems to deal with. But the casual, lazy interest stays, just out of reach, enticing him.
15. “Pirates, Sammy,” he said, breaking into a grin. “Real pirates. Earrings and parrots and cannons and the whole shebang. I cannot wait.”
Sam looked balefully at the traffic, which up ahead was narrowing to four lanes and didn't see any signs of letting up. “I think you're gonna have to.”
“Tell me about. What the hell is this? This is the butt-end of the tail of the country, man, and it's constipated!”
“Dean, that is disgusting.”
“Oh, sorry. Didn't realize what a delicate little flower you were, Sammy.”
Sam leaned forward against the dashboard. “Wake me up when we get there.”
16. Gabriel likes Sam. And Sam likes women. This would be a problem if Gabriel were anyone but Gabriel.
He knows to avoid the Great Loves. He's not going to touch Jessica or Madison. And lord knows there's too much baggage with Ruby. But there have been a few others, ones that Sam only had once, or that he never had but he thought about.
So he waits for Sam to sleep. And he spirits him away to a different bed in the same motel, and he lets him think the whole thing is just a dream.
The first night he dreams about Sarah. He hasn't given her a thought for a long time, and he figures that by now she's married, maybe with some adorable children, still too smart for her own good, still stunningly beautiful. And she is, when she comes to him.
17. "Dad paid you a compliment," Sam said levelly. "And you didn't know how to take it, so you shouted some shit, came here, and got high enough to forget the matter."
"Well, who can blame me?" Dean sat on the bed, winding the sheets up around his lower legs as though he was trying to bind up a wound.
"Yeah. You lead a poor, deprived life. Your own father thinks you did a good job at the negotiating table."
"He knows how I feel about that! Why doesn't he just send you? You're the human-lover."
"That's the problem, isn't it?" Sam sat on the big chair across the way. "Dad makes you treat humans like humans. If he just gave you free rein to hunt kill them all, you'd be out there at his side like the proud little heir."
"Oh, I see. Brother envy." Dean gave a cocky little smile. "Sorry, can't help when I was sired."
"It's not about that and you know it. Look, Dean, we need them to live, OK? They're not animals. They talk--"
"Oh, is that where we're setting the bar these days? Talking?" Dean blinked. "Dude, the rugarus can talk. You don't see us sitting down with them."
18. - ANDREA -
She holds the gun in her hand, rests the hilt against her palm and turns it over. The metal's not cold. It never is, not after she's held it for just a few seconds. A gun has never been a cold thing to her. Perhaps as a child, watching the news, first understanding that there's life and there's death and sometimes it doesn't rise and fall by nature alone. Perhaps then a gun seemed like a cold thing. But there was Dad, and there were lessons and the mechanical simplicity of cleaning, or loading and assembling it. And then the gun was warmth itself. Was protection. Was Dad.
And when something took Dad from her it wasn't a gun. What would she have against guns then? Guns have never been an enemy.
She punches the clock. A full second slower than last time. She's letting her mind wander. It's no good. She has to do it again. Has to be worthy of the gun.
19. The tree log swings back and forth like a metronome. Tick-tock. It's too late for countdowns. This tick-tock counts up. Four months, three weeks, twenty-seven days and loose change in hours and minutes since the end of the world. A count up never ends. There's no point to it. It just goes on and on. One plus one plus one into infinity.
It makes my eyes glaze over, and I keep missing. Shane's yelling at me in the background. The more he yells, the more it jumbles into background noise, the more I feel disconnected from the whole scene. I see myself shooting, I see myself missing, I steady myself but it's like reaching through a plastic bag, removed, wrong. It's a big target and I'm still missing. The problem isn't my aim. The problem is, there's no point.