The Deer Woman
Holy crap! Not only did I finish a challenge, I finished a challenge early. This is cause for celebration, friends. Maybe I'll reward myself with ice cream.
Title: The Deer Woman
Author: Merrin/walkawayslowly
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: Mmm... PG 13 ish.
Summary: Maybe they feel a little more guilty than they let on.
Word Count: 1513
Author's Notes: written for the spn_50states challenge. Thanks to nemoinis for the beta. (Like always.) The legend referenced is the legend of the Deer Woman.
Wild crashing through the underbrush, nothing like what he was taught and he knows Dean’ll give him crap for it later, for tripping on the tree root, leaping straight into a bush, and the harsh, gulping pants (who knew Oklahoma had so many goddamn hills?) but he can see her glowing palely in the moonlight, still ahead of him between the trees, the kid still chasing after her ahead of him. (Kid? Can’t be much younger than Sam and Sam wonders when he started thinking of himself as old.) Sam hears him calling out to her, asking her to wait.
Dean’s behind him, a hundred yards and slightly to the right and he doesn’t question how he knows that, he just runs.
He catches up with them in a small clearing, thinks he catches up with them but more likely she stopped and waited for the kid. He stumbles to a halt on the edge of the clearing, foot catching on a rock and momentum carries him forward, he’s down on his knees. She turns her head, catches him there and he can’t move, can’t get up on his feet. The kid’s thrall is broken and Sam can hear him stumbling over leaves and branches as he runs away into the night, no quieter than Sam was. Her face is sad, so sad that when he looks at her he wants to cry himself, the heartbreak of years, thousands of years etched on her young face.
She looks helpless and sorry, her face pinched up like she wants to close her eyes and turn away and can’t. She lifts her hands, fingers curled in on themselves, sharp nails like claws and she pushes him back, down into the dirt and grass. His arms are up, blocking his face and she cuts into them, dragging her claws through clothing and skin. He feels Dean getting closer and he hopes it’s close enough.
She slashes into him again and again and he closes his eyes against the onslaught, invisible hands holding him down, pinning him to the ground. A brief pause and a huge weight on his chest and he opens his eyes and the woman is gone but a damn deer is standing on top of him.
He’s never been a city guy, not really, even all that time at college didn’t cure him of the need for space, for empty horizons and clear blue sky. They’ve hunted in the woods countless times, run across all kinds of wild life but he still didn’t expect deer to get so… big.
It’s staring at him, pale and quiet and glowing faintly and he wonders (and he hopes this is blood loss talking) if this is what a patronus looks like. The hoofs dig into his skin, tiny little points of incredible pain.
“Hey,” he hears Dean say, above and behind him. The deer looks up in time to get a round of salt in the face and he flinches away as the deer disappears.
Sam drops his head back to the ground, eyes screwed shut. The cuts hurt but most of them are superficial (he’s had enough to know), it’s just that there are a lot of them. He pokes at the burning points where the hoofs dug in and flinches.
Dean hasn’t put down the shot gun yet, Sam feels him move across the clearing, poking around. Apparently satisfied, he props the gun against his shoulder and squints at Sam. “What’s a patronus?” Dean asks, and Sam wonders if he can pretend he passed out and instead Sam just says, “help me up.”
--
That isn’t really how it had started. It started a week ago in a Starbucks, with Dean dropping a newspaper over the keyboard of his lap top. “What do you know about Oklahoma?”
Sam shoved the newspaper aside to finish up the sentence he’d been typing. “The wind comes sweeping down the plains?” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen.
Dean stared blankly at him (not a new expression) and Sam guessed he wasn’t much into musicals. “All right,” he said finally. “Also, twelve guys have died on powwow night in Clinton.”
Sam picked up the newspaper and scanned the headlines. “In the same night? Why aren’t more people on this?”
“Not on the same night, not even on an anniversary, just on a night they’ve got a powwow, and only one at a time. Spread over a decade.” Dean sipped slowly at his coffee and rolled his eyes as Sam blew on the top of his double tall caramel macchiato.
“Where’d you get this?” Sam asked.
“I do my own research sometimes, dude.”
He squirmed under Sam’s steady gaze. “Did Ellen call you?”
Dean shrugged. “Only because she couldn’t get you. Tying up your phone with 900 numbers again?”
“Shut up.”
Sam shut the lap top, slides it into his bag.
“Do you think we’ll see a tornado?” Dean picked up the newspaper again, flipping through the first section, probably looking for natural disasters.
“Do I look like Helen Hunt to you?”
Dean looked up. “Do I have to answer that?”
Ten minutes later they’re in the car, pointed west.
--
The light in the bathroom isn’t great, one of the bulbs is out and Dean digs a flashlight out of his bag, gives it to Sam to shine at his own chest while Dean leans in close between Sam’s thighs, poking the skin around the cuts and bruises.
“One on your arm might need stitches,” he says, digging through the kit.
“Just butterfly me.”
Dean smirks but doesn’t make the obvious jokes. Sam arches his back when Dean reaches around him to turn the tap on and he wets a wash cloth to clean Sam’s cuts with.
Dean’s hands are heavy on him, heavy with secrets and desires and things they shouldn’t really feel for each other but Sam welcomes that weight, helps Dean carry it when he can. The washcloth is pink and red when Dean is done washing his arms and chest. “Why’d she come after you?” Dean asks, spreading Neosporin over the cuts.
“Maybe…”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because of us.”
“Dude, that’s sick.”
“You can’t tell me what we do is right.”
“Dude, she goes after abusers, rapists. That’s not what we are.”
Sam shrugs and Dean’s hands clench around his wrist, harder than he needs to. “Why did she turn into a deer?”
Sam leans his head back against the mirror, rests the arm holding the flashlight on the towel rack. “The legend, it says a deer sat with the woman while she died, so she wouldn’t die alone. Maybe they merged or something.”
“Weird.” Dean spreads the last bandage on his arm but he doesn’t step out Sam’s reach, drops his hands down to Sam’s legs and his fingertips whiten as he grips Sam’s thighs.
Sam sets the flashlight on the sink, covers Dean’s hands with his. “She looked so sad,” he says, eyes on his hands.
“She was beaten and raped and left to die. She’s got some shit to deal with.”
Sam shrugs, feels the pull of the butterfly bandage holding a scrape on his shoulder together. Dean leans in closer, close enough that Sam has to look at him, Dean fills his vision. “We’ll fix it,” Dean says, and leans in to kiss him. Soft lips against his, mouth open but it isn’t hurried, isn’t demanding. Sam can’t remember when he started needing this, can’t remember a time he didn’t.
He doesn’t think about her for the rest of the night.
--
Angela’s family members are distinctly unhelpful in revealing the location of Angela’s grave. Her neighbor, however, is only too willing after watching Angela’s father and younger brother kick them out of the house.
“They’ve got a plot, you know?” She draws them a map on a diner menu.
--
It’s not like they aren’t expecting her (or the deer), they’ve yet to meet a ghost that goes quietly into the night. (Except that one, but Sam doesn’t always count that one. Nothing was normal about her.)
“Hurry, man, c’mon.” Sam hears Dean fumbling behind him, down in the grave and standing on the casket. He’s always hated this part of their job.
She doesn’t appear in the distance this time, expecting him to follow her. She appears right in front of him and she still looks sorry when her hands curl into claws and start ripping into the heavy coat he worse just for this reason. She holds his hands down, too hard for him to swing the shot gun around.
“Got it,” Dean yells, and she starts burning, and she looks at him and she’s happy.
--
They’re heading out of the state on 44 (“Goddamn toll roads,” Dean keeps saying) and there’s nothing, just cows as far as Sam can see.
“It’s flat,” Sam says.
“It’s Oklahoma, where the waving wheat sure smells sweet.”
Dean finishes the verse, his hand tight on Sam’s leg and Sam looks to the horizon and laughs.
Title: The Deer Woman
Author: Merrin/walkawayslowly
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: Mmm... PG 13 ish.
Summary: Maybe they feel a little more guilty than they let on.
Word Count: 1513
Author's Notes: written for the spn_50states challenge. Thanks to nemoinis for the beta. (Like always.) The legend referenced is the legend of the Deer Woman.
Wild crashing through the underbrush, nothing like what he was taught and he knows Dean’ll give him crap for it later, for tripping on the tree root, leaping straight into a bush, and the harsh, gulping pants (who knew Oklahoma had so many goddamn hills?) but he can see her glowing palely in the moonlight, still ahead of him between the trees, the kid still chasing after her ahead of him. (Kid? Can’t be much younger than Sam and Sam wonders when he started thinking of himself as old.) Sam hears him calling out to her, asking her to wait.
Dean’s behind him, a hundred yards and slightly to the right and he doesn’t question how he knows that, he just runs.
He catches up with them in a small clearing, thinks he catches up with them but more likely she stopped and waited for the kid. He stumbles to a halt on the edge of the clearing, foot catching on a rock and momentum carries him forward, he’s down on his knees. She turns her head, catches him there and he can’t move, can’t get up on his feet. The kid’s thrall is broken and Sam can hear him stumbling over leaves and branches as he runs away into the night, no quieter than Sam was. Her face is sad, so sad that when he looks at her he wants to cry himself, the heartbreak of years, thousands of years etched on her young face.
She looks helpless and sorry, her face pinched up like she wants to close her eyes and turn away and can’t. She lifts her hands, fingers curled in on themselves, sharp nails like claws and she pushes him back, down into the dirt and grass. His arms are up, blocking his face and she cuts into them, dragging her claws through clothing and skin. He feels Dean getting closer and he hopes it’s close enough.
She slashes into him again and again and he closes his eyes against the onslaught, invisible hands holding him down, pinning him to the ground. A brief pause and a huge weight on his chest and he opens his eyes and the woman is gone but a damn deer is standing on top of him.
He’s never been a city guy, not really, even all that time at college didn’t cure him of the need for space, for empty horizons and clear blue sky. They’ve hunted in the woods countless times, run across all kinds of wild life but he still didn’t expect deer to get so… big.
It’s staring at him, pale and quiet and glowing faintly and he wonders (and he hopes this is blood loss talking) if this is what a patronus looks like. The hoofs dig into his skin, tiny little points of incredible pain.
“Hey,” he hears Dean say, above and behind him. The deer looks up in time to get a round of salt in the face and he flinches away as the deer disappears.
Sam drops his head back to the ground, eyes screwed shut. The cuts hurt but most of them are superficial (he’s had enough to know), it’s just that there are a lot of them. He pokes at the burning points where the hoofs dug in and flinches.
Dean hasn’t put down the shot gun yet, Sam feels him move across the clearing, poking around. Apparently satisfied, he props the gun against his shoulder and squints at Sam. “What’s a patronus?” Dean asks, and Sam wonders if he can pretend he passed out and instead Sam just says, “help me up.”
--
That isn’t really how it had started. It started a week ago in a Starbucks, with Dean dropping a newspaper over the keyboard of his lap top. “What do you know about Oklahoma?”
Sam shoved the newspaper aside to finish up the sentence he’d been typing. “The wind comes sweeping down the plains?” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen.
Dean stared blankly at him (not a new expression) and Sam guessed he wasn’t much into musicals. “All right,” he said finally. “Also, twelve guys have died on powwow night in Clinton.”
Sam picked up the newspaper and scanned the headlines. “In the same night? Why aren’t more people on this?”
“Not on the same night, not even on an anniversary, just on a night they’ve got a powwow, and only one at a time. Spread over a decade.” Dean sipped slowly at his coffee and rolled his eyes as Sam blew on the top of his double tall caramel macchiato.
“Where’d you get this?” Sam asked.
“I do my own research sometimes, dude.”
He squirmed under Sam’s steady gaze. “Did Ellen call you?”
Dean shrugged. “Only because she couldn’t get you. Tying up your phone with 900 numbers again?”
“Shut up.”
Sam shut the lap top, slides it into his bag.
“Do you think we’ll see a tornado?” Dean picked up the newspaper again, flipping through the first section, probably looking for natural disasters.
“Do I look like Helen Hunt to you?”
Dean looked up. “Do I have to answer that?”
Ten minutes later they’re in the car, pointed west.
--
The light in the bathroom isn’t great, one of the bulbs is out and Dean digs a flashlight out of his bag, gives it to Sam to shine at his own chest while Dean leans in close between Sam’s thighs, poking the skin around the cuts and bruises.
“One on your arm might need stitches,” he says, digging through the kit.
“Just butterfly me.”
Dean smirks but doesn’t make the obvious jokes. Sam arches his back when Dean reaches around him to turn the tap on and he wets a wash cloth to clean Sam’s cuts with.
Dean’s hands are heavy on him, heavy with secrets and desires and things they shouldn’t really feel for each other but Sam welcomes that weight, helps Dean carry it when he can. The washcloth is pink and red when Dean is done washing his arms and chest. “Why’d she come after you?” Dean asks, spreading Neosporin over the cuts.
“Maybe…”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because of us.”
“Dude, that’s sick.”
“You can’t tell me what we do is right.”
“Dude, she goes after abusers, rapists. That’s not what we are.”
Sam shrugs and Dean’s hands clench around his wrist, harder than he needs to. “Why did she turn into a deer?”
Sam leans his head back against the mirror, rests the arm holding the flashlight on the towel rack. “The legend, it says a deer sat with the woman while she died, so she wouldn’t die alone. Maybe they merged or something.”
“Weird.” Dean spreads the last bandage on his arm but he doesn’t step out Sam’s reach, drops his hands down to Sam’s legs and his fingertips whiten as he grips Sam’s thighs.
Sam sets the flashlight on the sink, covers Dean’s hands with his. “She looked so sad,” he says, eyes on his hands.
“She was beaten and raped and left to die. She’s got some shit to deal with.”
Sam shrugs, feels the pull of the butterfly bandage holding a scrape on his shoulder together. Dean leans in closer, close enough that Sam has to look at him, Dean fills his vision. “We’ll fix it,” Dean says, and leans in to kiss him. Soft lips against his, mouth open but it isn’t hurried, isn’t demanding. Sam can’t remember when he started needing this, can’t remember a time he didn’t.
He doesn’t think about her for the rest of the night.
--
Angela’s family members are distinctly unhelpful in revealing the location of Angela’s grave. Her neighbor, however, is only too willing after watching Angela’s father and younger brother kick them out of the house.
“They’ve got a plot, you know?” She draws them a map on a diner menu.
--
It’s not like they aren’t expecting her (or the deer), they’ve yet to meet a ghost that goes quietly into the night. (Except that one, but Sam doesn’t always count that one. Nothing was normal about her.)
“Hurry, man, c’mon.” Sam hears Dean fumbling behind him, down in the grave and standing on the casket. He’s always hated this part of their job.
She doesn’t appear in the distance this time, expecting him to follow her. She appears right in front of him and she still looks sorry when her hands curl into claws and start ripping into the heavy coat he worse just for this reason. She holds his hands down, too hard for him to swing the shot gun around.
“Got it,” Dean yells, and she starts burning, and she looks at him and she’s happy.
--
They’re heading out of the state on 44 (“Goddamn toll roads,” Dean keeps saying) and there’s nothing, just cows as far as Sam can see.
“It’s flat,” Sam says.
“It’s Oklahoma, where the waving wheat sure smells sweet.”
Dean finishes the verse, his hand tight on Sam’s leg and Sam looks to the horizon and laughs.