A hundred hearts
>> A hundred hearts
TITLE: A hundred hearts
AUTHOR:
ultraviolet9a
SPOILER: All of it.
GENRE: Gen. Crossover Supernatural/Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog
CHARACTERS: Dr. Horrible, Sam, Dean, Bobby, Penny
SUMMARY: How far would you go?
RATING: PG-13.
FEEDBACK: Dude… duh.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Not even the yoghurt.
BETA: by lovely
theladyscribe.
“Don’t,” he says, “please, Penny, don’t, it’s going to be alright, it’s me, everything will be alright.”
He doesn’t raise his arms to protect himself, doesn’t try to hold her any longer; he lets her beat tiny clenched fists against his chest, shoulders, head, can feel the bruises forming inside out, relishes at the reality of them. Her.
She makes small, quiet sounds of despair, groans of pain that can’t be physical (they promised she’d be whole) and sags against the bed. The sheet has slipped down to her waist, small breasts, and beneath them a long scar, only thing to mar her skin.
Silent tears, hair the brightest thing in this improvised laboratory and all he can think of is I love you and I fixed it and you’re safe. She flinches when his hand reaches out to her, but he only pulls the sheet higher, till abdomen and chest are covered. She clutches it against herself.
He gives her a tranquilizer shot, while she watches with too bright eyes. She doesn’t push it away. He watches her sink into sleep, arranges her head more comfortably against the pillow, draws the sheet up to her neck. Hesitates before kissing her forehead. Then he walks outside and locks the door behind him.
Bobby’s twisting his hat between his fingers, his face torn between tears and laughter.
“It worked,” he says and his laughter comes out in rasps. “It worked, Billy.”
Then Bobby’s arms wrap around him as Bobby laughs and cries and he can do this. Wants to do this. Wants to be Billy, whose master plan fixed what Dr. Horrible’s plan had ruined.
.:::.
Penny remembers. Remembers dying, remembers darkness, then peace. Remembers awakening in a strange room, in a strange place where everything felt wrong.
Dean doesn’t remember. He remembers the hellhounds attacking, but everything else is a blank.
“Repressed memories,” Billy says. “Your mind can’t cope. You’re sure to have nightmares.”
“When you do, you’d better talk, Dean. You’re not going through this alone,” Sam says, laying his hand against Dean’s shoulder, squeezing. As if tactility is the only way he has of believing that Dean is here, Dean is alive. Billy understands it. He lets his fingers brush against Penny’s hair when she’s sleeping or walking past him. He doesn’t dare touch her. She doesn’t touch him. She doesn’t talk much.
She’s made of sweetness and light and he loves her. Always has. She’s made of silence and frightened edges. And he loves her. Always will.
He tries to explain. Introduce her to this new world he would never have truly known if Sam Winchester hadn’t found him. Wonderful world of Internet, scavenging everything he could about resurrection, because after he truly became Dr. Horrible, he no longer wanted it. Be careful what you wish for and futility and searching, searching, willing to believe anything, try anything that would undo what was done to her, so he dug and dug in the online world till he found something and his fate aligned to Sam’s. Sam, who showed him another world, darker, more real, of bones and blood and salt.
So he lost Penny to science. He tried alternate routes. Billy remembers standing on the crossroad thinking that this was ridiculous, that this would go against everything he believed in and at the same time praying, hoping, believing that this could work, that all his science amounted to nothing, nothing, if this would be real.
He remembers Sam and Bobby stopping him before he had time to bury the metal box, remembers Sam telling him that he saw him in a vision, and Billy was the one to help him. Help you do what? Destroy Lilith, bring Dean back. Who’re they?
It all avalanched from there on, the Winchester family and yellow eyed demons and a fate that started from their cradle. The bastard Captain Hammer and the city Billy had left behind. The girl Billy loved.
And then search and study and experiments and master plans, working side by side with Sam and Bobby, carefully laying out how to get back what they loved most in this world, dark or not.
And when this was done, more storytelling.
They take turns telling the story to Dean and Penny, gently breaking to her what Dean already knows. Explain how Sam’s powers grew stronger, how they trapped Lilith, how they made her fix it. Dr. Horrible’s New and Improved Freeze Ray. Freezing Lilith. Unfreezing her. Blackmailing her. Bring Dean back, bring Penny back or you’ll be the coolest demon ever and once they were back, freezing her for good. Mystical freezing too, using the essence of the dagger Ruby had brought to their world.
Funny how science saved the day after all. Or not just science.
“You’re a damn fine alchemist, boy,” Bobby had said and that was the term, wasn’t it? Best term Billy could think of for what he did, combining science and mysticism, and his mystic Freeze Ray gun is now all used up and useless, but that doesn’t matter, because Lilith is frozen and the contract can’t be altered nor cancelled.
And Penny is back.
Sort of back.
She spends a lot of time in Bobby’s basement, looking at his washing machine. She does their laundry and Billy makes sure that there are dirty clothes around, even though their current lifestyle makes frequent laundries a necessity. Ketchup on his shirt, orange juice on Sam’s jeans. She sits alone in the darkness watching the clothes tumble and move round and round. He doesn’t dare keep her company. The others understand. Don’t say anything.
She doesn’t have nightmares, like Dean does, but Dean gets back to his life as if nothing has happened in between, as if no time has lapsed at all. He’s got scars too. The hellhounds did those, Sam had said when he showed him the cadaver all those months ago and his eyes held back tears and his teeth were clenched.
He watches them now, sparring on Bobby’s yard, as he waits for his turn. They’ve been teaching him how to spar, how to put some muscle on his tall lank frame, how to take down demons, how to be a hunter. He’s fixed them up with a portable enduring flamethrower and holy water handgrenades. And he’s not bad at fixing cars either.
He’s Billy, alchemist, hunter-to-be. Dr. Horrible feels far, far away.
.:::.
He wants to bring Penny frozen yoghurt as the clothes move around in the tumbler. He doesn’t know if he has the guts to sit beside her, talk to her as if nothing has happened, as if she doesn’t know who he is. Was. As if his ray wasn’t the one that gutted her.
He treads lightly, so as not to scare her, not to bother her, not to ruin the fragile balance they have going. Half way down the stairs he sees her. The dim light of the dusty light bulb throws shadows across her face and glint to her hair.
Dean is cradling her as she cries, telling her that it’s alright, it’s okay if there’s nothing and no one to return to back home, this is home now. That it’s okay if the world is scary, and it’s okay that she has a second chance, because so has he.
“I know what you’re going through, Penny,” Dean says as she moves away only to tuck her T-shirt up. She trails her fingers over her scar.
“I was dead, Dean,” she says. “I’m a freak.”
“You’re not a freak,” Dean replies pulling down his collar. “I understand. And it’s alright.”
And he does, Billy knows. Dean carries the scars to prove it.
He thinks of his own pale skin, scars only on his hands from experiments. Thinks how this life will add soon scars to the rest of him. Thinks how watching her in the dark talking has already scarred him in places no one will see.
Because it’s the same old story, isn’t it?
He wishes he could feel hate, like he hated Captain Hammer, but Dean doesn’t deserve it. He is a genuinely good guy, both he and his brother. And they’re both good-looking and supportive and Penny is bound to fall for that, how can she not? How can he blame her when his own tongue is tied and only his heart is eloquent?
He likes the Winchesters. Loves them, friends he should have found sooner. They treat him like an equal and don’t care about his past. Everybody has a past, they tell him. But he wishes… he wishes Dean had picked someone else, not the woman he knows Billy loves. Wishes he didn’t feel so betrayed by either of them.
“Billy,” Dean says. He still holds her, doesn’t take his arm away as if he’s done something wrong and Billy feels like… feels like Dr. Horrible.
Dean pats the space beside them.
“Come on,” he says. “Laundry confessional, who’d have thought, huh? Join us?”
Billy wants to slink away, ashamed for previous thoughts and feelings. But Dean pats the space beside him as Penny wipes her eyes. And Billy can’t leave.
Penny eats the yoghurt and all three huddle together. The washing machine murmurs to its own cycle.
In the half shadows of Bobby’s basement the world feels one shade lighter.
.:::.
She’s the same Penny he’s loved. She’s different. Tougher. Dean teaches her how to shoot. Sam shows her combat. Bobby lends her books. Billy watches her. Watches her and wonders why he can’t talk. She asked him once, when laundry confessional became a habit all started sharing because of Penny. She’s the only girl in the house and both Bobby and the Winchesters treat her like Snow White in a fairytale, and some dawns find them all sitting across the washing machine, playing poker or talking. And she’s asked him once, when they were the only two left because Bobby and the boys were on a routine hunt.
“Why’d you do all this, Billy?”
He didn’t know if she meant her death or her second life, but he wanted to tell her either way. Wanted to tell her that he loved her. Wanted to tell her that somehow it was his fault, even if Captain Hammer had pulled the trigger, because he had been Dr. Horrible and he had wanted to do evil. Wanted to tell her that no life was life without her around.
“Penny,” he said, as if that explained everything. Then he left.
.:::.
When he looks in the mirror, he’s not sure who he’s looking at. The image still has traces of him, but he’s in the hunter life now. T-shirts and jeans, a bit more filled out than when he started, from work-out and Bobby’s barbecues, eyes a bit harsher, scars still healing across his forehead because the poltergeist had been nasty.
Bobby and Dean helped him, but it’s Billy who fixed the truck all by himself. And Bobby gave it to him, just like that, as it stood gleaming in the sun in new dark grey paint. Grinning, Bobby’s palm warm against the back of his neck, Bobby saying You did good, son, keys warmed from Bobby’s palm.
He takes them all out for a ride, drives them to Maumee’s joint, has Dean nudge him because, he says, Dolores (sturdy legs and pretty eyes) always preferred Sam to Dean which means she likes nerds.
“Ergo, you got a chance with her, Billyboy,” Dean laughs. Sam rolls his eyes, asks if he’s been reading up dictionaries because no way he knows the word ‘ergo’.
“Geekdom is contagious,” Dean laughs and ruffles Sam’s and Billy’s hair at the same time. It should bother Billy. It doesn’t. Dolores smiles at him.
He smiles back.
He won’t do anything. He’s only got one heart and one body, and these have Penny carved all over them.
.:::.
Penny has died in his arms, but Billy’s never had any other encounter with death before. Eleven months after Penny and Dean came back, he almost dies on a hunt. Feels like a man when he doesn’t. Not grown-up or macho; it’s like his vision clears and all tangled knots inside him loosen up.
He has redemption, he knows that. Found a purpose in life he’s never had before.
Knows what he wants: Penny happy and the world safer for her. He doesn’t care what becomes of him, didn’t care when he was about to bury the metal box, doesn’t care now, not this way. He loves, and his love runs deep, has thrown roots spreading inside him, bracing him for anything the future throws. And what he wants is her happy. He thinks Penny will never be happy if she has ties to the past.
“I need to go,” he tells them when he can stand up and piss again without help and without blood.
“Go where?” Dean asks, brow furrowed.
“Go,” Billy says. “For a while. Roadtrip.”
“You can’t hunt alone,” Sam says. “It’s not safe.”
Billy shrugs. Bobby doesn’t say anything. He looks at him and Billy thinks Bobby already holds the answer.
“We’ll be here, boy,” Bobby says. “You’ll always have a place to return to.”
Penny doesn’t say anything. Eventually, Billy thinks, she’ll end up either with Sam or Dean. It’s alright. All of them need healing.
It’s done.
.:::.
When he packs to leave, it’s dawn. He doesn’t want dramatic goodbyes, and besides he told them he’d be back soon. Holding them all tight would negate his lie.
When he carries his stuff to his truck, Penny is in front of the driver’s door, hands behind her back.
“Why?” she asks. Her hair is reaching down her back, in the starlight darker, more silvery.
And he wants to tell her. So bad. About his shame. His despair. Guilt. Love. Anger. Belonging. Happiness. All of it.
“You know, Penny,” he whispers instead. “You always have.”
“You love me,” she says.
“Yeah,” he replies. It’s like a weight has been lifted from him, and it’s ironic really, isn’t it? Her taking him out of the tough spot she’s put him in to begin with.
“Stay.”
She looks younger, softer. Almost like the old, old Penny that was never meant to die. He doesn’t know what to reply, always tongue-tied.
He can do this.
She puts her hands forward. She’s holding frozen yoghurt and spoons.
Forgiveness. Happiness. Belonging.
Yeah. He can do this.
They lean against the truck, eat in silence. Stars overhead. Darkness around them.
-The End
A hundred hearts would be too few
To carry all my love for you.
~Author Unknown
SIDENOTE: I really loved Penny and her death caught me offguard. And then I thought, how far would Dr. Horrible go if he found a way to get her back? And then somehow it turned into a fic ABOUT Billy/Dr. Horrible. Because I guess I really liked his character too. So there.
Also, the frozen yoghurt thing? OF COURSE they had the fridge stocked up. Duh.