SN Fic: Glimpses of a Future
x-posted
Title: Glimpses of a Future
Series: Timeshifter AU-Canon
Author: Trystan
Rating: Teen; language
Timeline: anything aired in the US is fair game (and a plot piece for 5x04); Timeshifter AU: after A Sketch in Time.
Spoilers: the Timeshifter'verse, and some early spoilers for early Supernatural S5 epsiodes.
Word Count: 2,338
Notable Credits: Sam and Dean are not mine, although goddess knows I wish Dean was.
Author’s Notes: Title inspired by sweepea825; beta-read by aphrodite33, bodgei, and raloria. thanks!!
Summary: How do you kill a being with no shape or form? How do you kill it if it can manipulate time?
I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
~ David Bowie ©1971
Time-travel seems to be a subject upon which many authors speculate: If you go back in time and then return, when is your return time compared to your departure time? It is always the same, or can it vary? Would you return in the same moment you left, or would you be “missing” for a period of time?
Those who are able to shape time can do with you what they will, removing and replacing you where and when they choose. They are like children, these Timeshifters. But what happens when a Timeshifter interferes with an important, life-consuming mission?
The obvious answer is to remove this interference - the Timeshifter. But how do you kill a being with no shape or form? How can you kill it if it can erase your memory or trap you in a time loop? How do you kill it if it can manipulate time, take you out of your current timeline and relocate you somewhen entirely different?
Such a task requires well-formed plans, various back-up strategies, meetings to plan and work out details, and ironically, time. This formidable task started with a family meeting.
~*~
“Damn it, Dean, I told you. This demon comes first, before everything!” John Winchester hurled the words at his older son in the privacy of one of the motel rooms John was staying at.
“Not before everything, Sir,” Sam, the younger Winchester, said softly.
John now turned on Sam, who was sitting at the table that was in every motel room. “What was that, Sammy?” he demanded.
“We have one final thing in the way, Dad. The Timeshifter.”
“The Timeshifter,” John repeated, and shook his head disbelievingly.
“You know all about it, Dad,” Dean said, fixing his father with a look. “It caught you in that time-loop too. You told us that yourself.”
“The demon, then your Timeshifter,” John said, as if that was the end of the discussion.
“Not that easy, Dad.” Dean looked over at Sam, who just raised his eyebrows. “Yes, the Timeshifter got us in the time-loop too. But it also took us back in time.”
John stopped his nervous fidgeting and looked at the two of them.
“The night that Mom died - ” Dean started.
“ - there were two young men who tried to help you - ” Sam added.
“ - they were us,” Dean finished, thankful that his father hadn't interrupted him.
John remained still for just another moment before he turned away to the dresser to get his leather-bound journal. He went over the to the table Sam was still sitting at and put the small book in his duffel bag that was on the table.
“I know,” he said simply.
“You know?” Dean could feel his anger rising. “When did you know?”
John finished organizing the items in his duffel, and zipped it up.
“You boys seem to forget that you were there only that one night and then came back to your own time. I lived all those years, and had the time to learn about demons, and even time-travel. As you boys grew up and became the men you are now, one day it just came to me, that I knew you were them. And somewhere inside, I think I always knew it was you.”
“Wow, thanks Dad,” Dean said sarcastically. “That was touching. Sammy and I have died for each other, and yet all you can say is you knew it was us and the demon still comes first?! The Timeshifter has taken us in the past, the future and to some very strange places. Bobby was more sympathetic than you are.”
“Bobby? Bobby Singer? Haven't seen him in years. How's he doing?”
“The timeshifter is a demon, Dad,” Sam said softly.
John looked at his younger son, a look of shock starting to form across his features. But just as he looked up at Sam, the brothers felt that all-too-familiar cool air rush into the room.
“Oh, shit,” Dean said, looking towards Sam as they felt the Timeshifter taking them somewhen else.
~*~
It was sunset. They were outside a building that looked like a barn, with the words “Harvelle's Roadhouse” lit up in neon, but the area itself was completely unfamiliar. The door was standing open, and there was a shaft of light that fell out onto the ground.
Dean and Sam looked at each other, and then entered in to the main room. There were a number of men at the tables to their right, and some sheets hanging up against the back wall, but it was the two women at a table to their left that caught Dean's attention.
He went over and sat down next to the younger one, a small shapely blonde but you could see her muscled arms in her baby-doll t-shirt.
“Hey there, I'm Dean,” he said, smiling at her. But she ignored him.
“I miss them, Mom,” the young blonde said to the other woman. Her hair was light auburn, her face weathered and tired from time and worry.
Sam went around to the mother's side of the table and noticed a shot gun propped up against the table.
“There's a shotgun over here. Looks sawed off.”
“Huh,” Dean said, still watching the blonde. He waved his hand in front of her eyes.
“I'm pretty sure we can't be seen this time, Dean,” Sam suggested.
“I know, Jo, honey,” the mother said. “We all do. And they died doing what they did best. Hunting things, saving people. That's why everyone's here today.”
“Ellen?” A man came over from the other side of the room to the mother. “We're ready for you.”
“So it's a hunter's memorial,” Dean mused, and looked up towards Sam.
Sam was already on the other side of the room, where there was a table set aside with a box on top to serve as a lecturn, and behind that, hanging on the wall, were the two sheets they'd seen when they first came in.
The man who spoke to the woman named Ellen pulled the sheets down, reavealing two rather larger-than-life pictures. One was Dean, and the other was Sam; their birthdates were on them, as well as a deathdate.
“Shit, Dean, that's like five years from now!” Sam said, a little too loud. But when no one turned to shush them, Dean said,
“Huh, maybe we are invisible. That's weird. Timeshifter never did that before.”
“But there's something here it wants us to see, Dean. It's what it does, remember?”
“Yeah, I do, but doesn't this creep you out? Even a little?”
“Actually, it does. A lot,” Sam admitted.
~*~
The woman named Ellen spoke about Dean and Sam Winchester, their life and their work, and finally the end. As best as Dean and Sam could figure, the apocolypse did happen, but they were there to end it. In a twisted way, it was kind of comforting, Dean thought.
Ellen did mention something that Sam thought was interesting, and he mentioned it to Dean.
“So, if the demons went back to Hell and the angels returned to Heaven, isn't that just a little too convenient?”
“It is - it's like a timebomb waiting to go off,” Dean said in agreement.
“What about Yellow Eyes in all this?” Sam asked.
But Dean was watching the daughter step up to speak. Jo went on about how she missed Dean, and especially Sam, and how they turned her life around in the short time she'd known them.
“Dude, do you know her?” Dean nudged Sam.
“Nope. She seems more your type, though.”
When she began to cry, Dean had had enough of the chick-flick moments. He was just about to tell Sam it was time to get out of there and track down the Timeshifter, when a newcomer entered the roadhouse.
He was about Dean's height, but walked slightly hunched over in his tan logger jacket, head down and covered with a hood from a sweatjacket underneath. If there was any murmuring around the room, it stopped when this man reached the table. He stood up and pulled the hood off his head.
“Dad?” Dean said, quite shocked. He looked over at Sam, who was just staring at their father in disbelief.
“My sons are heroes,” he said, keeping his voice calm and level. “But that day, all those months ago, when they left here that morning and ended up not coming back, a part of me died too. They sure as hell wouldn't want this sorta thing,” John waved in the general direction of the gathering, “and neither do I.
“Azazel and his demon army are gone; Castiel and his angels have gone too. Yes, we should remember my sons, but we have to move on. We know tomorrow will be here; we just don't know what it'll bring.”
He left the table and started walking towards the door. As he passed unknowingly between Dean and Sam, he turned back to Ellen.
“You might want to turn the heat up in here too,” he called over his shoulder.
“He senses us, Dean!” Sam said, excited.
“We're already dead, Sammy - don't freak him out more!” But Sam was gone from the room, and Dean had no idea what his brother was going to do.
~*~
“Well that was weird,” Dean said, nonchalantly. He was again sitting in the chair at the motel room where the Timeshifter took them from. But this time was different. The Timeshifter returned him to the right location, but instead, he was outside the motel. He grabbed the flamethrower from the trunk of the Impala and re-entered the motel room, just in time to see Sam reappear in the seat he was in just a moment ago.
“What the hell -?” John spluttered at Sam's reappearance and Dean's entrance.
“What the hell what, Dad?” Sam asked, as if the Timeshifter showed them scenes like that that every day.
“You boys ... disappeared for a second. Just a tiny 'blip' like on a radar. But you were gone. And - and... what's with the flamethrower?” John was very flustered by this occurrence.
The brothers looked at each other, and then back to their father.
“Timeshifter,” they said in unison, as Dean sat down where Sam was sitting before their side trip into the future.
“It's slipping,” Sam said. “It didn't return us to the same exact second it took us from.”
“Or the same exact place - I was outside. That's not normal, is it?” Dean asked.
“I wouldn't think so,” Sam replied.
“Boys!” John yelled at their banter. “What the hell is going on?”
They looked at each other, and then attempted to explain. When they were done telling him all the previous exploits the Timeshifter had put them through, John leaned back in the motel chair, took a deep breath, and sighed.
“Sounds like we really do need to take care of this Timeshifter first,” he said at last. The brothers looked at each other again, this time in disbelief. “Where do we start?”
“We need something to make it show us it's form,” Sam started.
“My flame thrower ought to…” Dean stopped for a moment. He felt the room getting colder again. He looked at Sam again, and stood up. “I think it's already here.”
“Dude, you don't want to use that flamethrower in here, do you?” Sam asked, standing as well. He could see his breath as he spoke.
“Like I've got a choice?” Dean asked, motioning towards the middle of the room. All three men saw the air seem to ripple, and watch as the shape of a man started appearing. As it did so, laughter could be heard in the room.
“I think it knows, Dean,” Sam felt the need to point out. His teeth were now chattering and he looked for his jacket. Damn it was cold in here, Dean thought.
“I already know everything,” the form giggled, the playful voice seeming to echo through them.
“Eat this then!” Dean aimed the flamethrower at the Timeshifter and fired. The ripple in the air seemed to melt and rip apart. Sam turned away from Dean to see John returning to the room with two more flamethrowers from the back of his truck. John handed one to his younger son.
The two turned their weapons on the Timeshifter as well.
Pieces of the being seemed to peel off and melt into nothing as the three steadily pelted it with the stream of fire. Oddly enough, nothing in the motel room was touched by the flames, which was just as well. Less explaining to do.
As the last parts of the Timeshifter melted into the ether, the temperature in the room returned to normal.
~*~
“Why didn't it decide send us somewhere before it exploded?” Dean asked.
“Don't ask me,” Sam said, “I haven't a clue.”
John put his still-smoking flamethrower on the table, next to the other two.
“Do you want to tell me where that thing took you?” John practically demanded.
The brothers looked up at each other from the bags they were packing, then at their father.
“No,” Sam said, at the same time Dean said “Not really.”
“But,” Dean added, “I'll tell you one thing - I'm ready to go kick some Yellow-Eyed Demon ass.”
“See you in Frontierland,” Sam said, heading out the door.
“What the hell's that supposed to mean?” John said, gathering his bags and weapons together.
“I have absolutely no idea,” Dean said.
Time may change me
But I can't trace time...
I said that time may change me
But I can't trace time
***
Supernatural Fan Fiction
For entertainment only
© 2009 by Caren Franco
Only the Timeshifter is original. Beta-read by Aphrodite, Bodge and Raloria. Dean, Sam, and John Winchester; Ellen and Jo Harvelle; Bobby Singer, Castiel, and this incarnation of Azazel were created by Eric Kripke, Robert Singer, Kripke Enterprises Scrap Metal and Entertainment, Warner Brothers, and the CW. “Changes” from “Hunky Dory” by David Bowie, ©1971.
-
Title: Glimpses of a Future
Series: Timeshifter AU-Canon
Author: Trystan
Rating: Teen; language
Timeline: anything aired in the US is fair game (and a plot piece for 5x04); Timeshifter AU: after A Sketch in Time.
Spoilers: the Timeshifter'verse, and some early spoilers for early Supernatural S5 epsiodes.
Word Count: 2,338
Notable Credits: Sam and Dean are not mine, although goddess knows I wish Dean was.
Author’s Notes: Title inspired by sweepea825; beta-read by aphrodite33, bodgei, and raloria. thanks!!
Summary: How do you kill a being with no shape or form? How do you kill it if it can manipulate time?
I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
~ David Bowie ©1971
Time-travel seems to be a subject upon which many authors speculate: If you go back in time and then return, when is your return time compared to your departure time? It is always the same, or can it vary? Would you return in the same moment you left, or would you be “missing” for a period of time?
Those who are able to shape time can do with you what they will, removing and replacing you where and when they choose. They are like children, these Timeshifters. But what happens when a Timeshifter interferes with an important, life-consuming mission?
The obvious answer is to remove this interference - the Timeshifter. But how do you kill a being with no shape or form? How can you kill it if it can erase your memory or trap you in a time loop? How do you kill it if it can manipulate time, take you out of your current timeline and relocate you somewhen entirely different?
Such a task requires well-formed plans, various back-up strategies, meetings to plan and work out details, and ironically, time. This formidable task started with a family meeting.
~*~
“Damn it, Dean, I told you. This demon comes first, before everything!” John Winchester hurled the words at his older son in the privacy of one of the motel rooms John was staying at.
“Not before everything, Sir,” Sam, the younger Winchester, said softly.
John now turned on Sam, who was sitting at the table that was in every motel room. “What was that, Sammy?” he demanded.
“We have one final thing in the way, Dad. The Timeshifter.”
“The Timeshifter,” John repeated, and shook his head disbelievingly.
“You know all about it, Dad,” Dean said, fixing his father with a look. “It caught you in that time-loop too. You told us that yourself.”
“The demon, then your Timeshifter,” John said, as if that was the end of the discussion.
“Not that easy, Dad.” Dean looked over at Sam, who just raised his eyebrows. “Yes, the Timeshifter got us in the time-loop too. But it also took us back in time.”
John stopped his nervous fidgeting and looked at the two of them.
“The night that Mom died - ” Dean started.
“ - there were two young men who tried to help you - ” Sam added.
“ - they were us,” Dean finished, thankful that his father hadn't interrupted him.
John remained still for just another moment before he turned away to the dresser to get his leather-bound journal. He went over the to the table Sam was still sitting at and put the small book in his duffel bag that was on the table.
“I know,” he said simply.
“You know?” Dean could feel his anger rising. “When did you know?”
John finished organizing the items in his duffel, and zipped it up.
“You boys seem to forget that you were there only that one night and then came back to your own time. I lived all those years, and had the time to learn about demons, and even time-travel. As you boys grew up and became the men you are now, one day it just came to me, that I knew you were them. And somewhere inside, I think I always knew it was you.”
“Wow, thanks Dad,” Dean said sarcastically. “That was touching. Sammy and I have died for each other, and yet all you can say is you knew it was us and the demon still comes first?! The Timeshifter has taken us in the past, the future and to some very strange places. Bobby was more sympathetic than you are.”
“Bobby? Bobby Singer? Haven't seen him in years. How's he doing?”
“The timeshifter is a demon, Dad,” Sam said softly.
John looked at his younger son, a look of shock starting to form across his features. But just as he looked up at Sam, the brothers felt that all-too-familiar cool air rush into the room.
“Oh, shit,” Dean said, looking towards Sam as they felt the Timeshifter taking them somewhen else.
~*~
It was sunset. They were outside a building that looked like a barn, with the words “Harvelle's Roadhouse” lit up in neon, but the area itself was completely unfamiliar. The door was standing open, and there was a shaft of light that fell out onto the ground.
Dean and Sam looked at each other, and then entered in to the main room. There were a number of men at the tables to their right, and some sheets hanging up against the back wall, but it was the two women at a table to their left that caught Dean's attention.
He went over and sat down next to the younger one, a small shapely blonde but you could see her muscled arms in her baby-doll t-shirt.
“Hey there, I'm Dean,” he said, smiling at her. But she ignored him.
“I miss them, Mom,” the young blonde said to the other woman. Her hair was light auburn, her face weathered and tired from time and worry.
Sam went around to the mother's side of the table and noticed a shot gun propped up against the table.
“There's a shotgun over here. Looks sawed off.”
“Huh,” Dean said, still watching the blonde. He waved his hand in front of her eyes.
“I'm pretty sure we can't be seen this time, Dean,” Sam suggested.
“I know, Jo, honey,” the mother said. “We all do. And they died doing what they did best. Hunting things, saving people. That's why everyone's here today.”
“Ellen?” A man came over from the other side of the room to the mother. “We're ready for you.”
“So it's a hunter's memorial,” Dean mused, and looked up towards Sam.
Sam was already on the other side of the room, where there was a table set aside with a box on top to serve as a lecturn, and behind that, hanging on the wall, were the two sheets they'd seen when they first came in.
The man who spoke to the woman named Ellen pulled the sheets down, reavealing two rather larger-than-life pictures. One was Dean, and the other was Sam; their birthdates were on them, as well as a deathdate.
“Shit, Dean, that's like five years from now!” Sam said, a little too loud. But when no one turned to shush them, Dean said,
“Huh, maybe we are invisible. That's weird. Timeshifter never did that before.”
“But there's something here it wants us to see, Dean. It's what it does, remember?”
“Yeah, I do, but doesn't this creep you out? Even a little?”
“Actually, it does. A lot,” Sam admitted.
~*~
The woman named Ellen spoke about Dean and Sam Winchester, their life and their work, and finally the end. As best as Dean and Sam could figure, the apocolypse did happen, but they were there to end it. In a twisted way, it was kind of comforting, Dean thought.
Ellen did mention something that Sam thought was interesting, and he mentioned it to Dean.
“So, if the demons went back to Hell and the angels returned to Heaven, isn't that just a little too convenient?”
“It is - it's like a timebomb waiting to go off,” Dean said in agreement.
“What about Yellow Eyes in all this?” Sam asked.
But Dean was watching the daughter step up to speak. Jo went on about how she missed Dean, and especially Sam, and how they turned her life around in the short time she'd known them.
“Dude, do you know her?” Dean nudged Sam.
“Nope. She seems more your type, though.”
When she began to cry, Dean had had enough of the chick-flick moments. He was just about to tell Sam it was time to get out of there and track down the Timeshifter, when a newcomer entered the roadhouse.
He was about Dean's height, but walked slightly hunched over in his tan logger jacket, head down and covered with a hood from a sweatjacket underneath. If there was any murmuring around the room, it stopped when this man reached the table. He stood up and pulled the hood off his head.
“Dad?” Dean said, quite shocked. He looked over at Sam, who was just staring at their father in disbelief.
“My sons are heroes,” he said, keeping his voice calm and level. “But that day, all those months ago, when they left here that morning and ended up not coming back, a part of me died too. They sure as hell wouldn't want this sorta thing,” John waved in the general direction of the gathering, “and neither do I.
“Azazel and his demon army are gone; Castiel and his angels have gone too. Yes, we should remember my sons, but we have to move on. We know tomorrow will be here; we just don't know what it'll bring.”
He left the table and started walking towards the door. As he passed unknowingly between Dean and Sam, he turned back to Ellen.
“You might want to turn the heat up in here too,” he called over his shoulder.
“He senses us, Dean!” Sam said, excited.
“We're already dead, Sammy - don't freak him out more!” But Sam was gone from the room, and Dean had no idea what his brother was going to do.
~*~
“Well that was weird,” Dean said, nonchalantly. He was again sitting in the chair at the motel room where the Timeshifter took them from. But this time was different. The Timeshifter returned him to the right location, but instead, he was outside the motel. He grabbed the flamethrower from the trunk of the Impala and re-entered the motel room, just in time to see Sam reappear in the seat he was in just a moment ago.
“What the hell -?” John spluttered at Sam's reappearance and Dean's entrance.
“What the hell what, Dad?” Sam asked, as if the Timeshifter showed them scenes like that that every day.
“You boys ... disappeared for a second. Just a tiny 'blip' like on a radar. But you were gone. And - and... what's with the flamethrower?” John was very flustered by this occurrence.
The brothers looked at each other, and then back to their father.
“Timeshifter,” they said in unison, as Dean sat down where Sam was sitting before their side trip into the future.
“It's slipping,” Sam said. “It didn't return us to the same exact second it took us from.”
“Or the same exact place - I was outside. That's not normal, is it?” Dean asked.
“I wouldn't think so,” Sam replied.
“Boys!” John yelled at their banter. “What the hell is going on?”
They looked at each other, and then attempted to explain. When they were done telling him all the previous exploits the Timeshifter had put them through, John leaned back in the motel chair, took a deep breath, and sighed.
“Sounds like we really do need to take care of this Timeshifter first,” he said at last. The brothers looked at each other again, this time in disbelief. “Where do we start?”
“We need something to make it show us it's form,” Sam started.
“My flame thrower ought to…” Dean stopped for a moment. He felt the room getting colder again. He looked at Sam again, and stood up. “I think it's already here.”
“Dude, you don't want to use that flamethrower in here, do you?” Sam asked, standing as well. He could see his breath as he spoke.
“Like I've got a choice?” Dean asked, motioning towards the middle of the room. All three men saw the air seem to ripple, and watch as the shape of a man started appearing. As it did so, laughter could be heard in the room.
“I think it knows, Dean,” Sam felt the need to point out. His teeth were now chattering and he looked for his jacket. Damn it was cold in here, Dean thought.
“I already know everything,” the form giggled, the playful voice seeming to echo through them.
“Eat this then!” Dean aimed the flamethrower at the Timeshifter and fired. The ripple in the air seemed to melt and rip apart. Sam turned away from Dean to see John returning to the room with two more flamethrowers from the back of his truck. John handed one to his younger son.
The two turned their weapons on the Timeshifter as well.
Pieces of the being seemed to peel off and melt into nothing as the three steadily pelted it with the stream of fire. Oddly enough, nothing in the motel room was touched by the flames, which was just as well. Less explaining to do.
As the last parts of the Timeshifter melted into the ether, the temperature in the room returned to normal.
~*~
“Why didn't it decide send us somewhere before it exploded?” Dean asked.
“Don't ask me,” Sam said, “I haven't a clue.”
John put his still-smoking flamethrower on the table, next to the other two.
“Do you want to tell me where that thing took you?” John practically demanded.
The brothers looked up at each other from the bags they were packing, then at their father.
“No,” Sam said, at the same time Dean said “Not really.”
“But,” Dean added, “I'll tell you one thing - I'm ready to go kick some Yellow-Eyed Demon ass.”
“See you in Frontierland,” Sam said, heading out the door.
“What the hell's that supposed to mean?” John said, gathering his bags and weapons together.
“I have absolutely no idea,” Dean said.
Time may change me
But I can't trace time...
I said that time may change me
But I can't trace time
***
Supernatural Fan Fiction
For entertainment only
© 2009 by Caren Franco
Only the Timeshifter is original. Beta-read by Aphrodite, Bodge and Raloria. Dean, Sam, and John Winchester; Ellen and Jo Harvelle; Bobby Singer, Castiel, and this incarnation of Azazel were created by Eric Kripke, Robert Singer, Kripke Enterprises Scrap Metal and Entertainment, Warner Brothers, and the CW. “Changes” from “Hunky Dory” by David Bowie, ©1971.
-