SPN Fic: Accountability (Gen, PG, In My Time of Dying)

[dodger_winslow]

Title: Accountability
Author: Dodger Winslow
Genre: Gen
Word Count: 5,020
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Up to In My Time of Dying
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for a while.

Summary: Karl Buckman had been driving a big rig since he was eighteen, and he’d never even had so much as a speeding ticket until now. For the life of him, he didn’t

Comments

[ultraviolet9a]

Oh. *stunned* At first I really liked how you took a secondary character and gave his POV and his motives and i was thinking oh so nice and then you hit me with that twist in the end, which by the way i so didn't see coming, and i'm like whoa!

Nice job.

[dodger_winslow]

Thanks. We spent so long over the hiatus thinking of that trucker as the epitome of evil, then to have him fall to his knees once he was de-demoned with an "Oh my God, did I do this?" was so anguished I though there is a story there. This man isn't going to just shrug his accountability off.

Oh my, oh my...

[noirbabalon]

Didn't see that...

The truck driver's horror at what he thought he had done always left me chilled and wondering about what had happened to him (even if this is fiction and nothing really "happened" to him)

The voice of the driver is so real, the language and the tone.

The grief of the boys. Your description of the Dean's eyes.

I so love your writing. You always bring the real situations and emotional response.

Thank you.

Re: Oh my, oh my...

[dodger_winslow]

Thanks. It's always a bit of a challenge to write an geographically specific character with atypical ways of saying things without indulging it to a place where it gets kinda silly. So I spent most of the time on this story refining how to play those aspects of Karl's character against one another, and how to portray him as someone you might really believe was a trucker but who lived his life in a very non-stereotypical trucker way.

So very much, reality of tone and dialog is hugely important to me, so it squees me to know I hit the right mix.

[writingpathways]

Awesome twist ending! Loved Karl. He was a good guy and I liked what he was able to share with Sam and Dean.

[albeitslowly]

Goodness, that was an evil twist, and even though I usually force myself to look for those things, I completely missed it. I'll chalk it up to reading on only half a cup of coffee. LOL. Excellent job, darlin'. Thanks.

HT

[dodger_winslow]

Heh. I was evol on purpose there. I actually ended up going with the twist as a result of some things I laid into the narrative before I realized what was going on with Karl. But there were just a few too many tiny indicators that just seemed to fit for him that when I got to the end of the story, it kinda came as a suprise to me, too, that this was the story I was writing. I love it when something does that ... but it's kinda scary, too. Cause hello? The driver should know where we're going, shouldn't they? *snerk*

[dodger_winslow]

Thanks! I love writing outsider perspective of the Winchesters, especially when we know there is something going on with them that the outsier doesn't realize. That's just hella fun to play with.

[dodger_winslow]

Thanks. I really wanted to write a character who was morally devestated by the events as they unfolded. Wanted to create a trucker who defined himself by his profession and who was a moral man, because to then face the idea that you caused this heinous accident without even being able to remember it? How could someone ever take the risk of doing something like that again, but if driving a rig was all you'd ever done and the only thing you really had in your life ... that was the essence for Karl for me. The idea that he did bear great moral responsibility and accountability for his actions and how those actions affected others made him great fun to write.

[lady_octavia]

You do it every time!! I love that twist at the end and how throughout it seems as if the big reveal is Karl not knowing John is dead, when it is really Sam not knowing Karl's dead.

And the description of the boys is heart wrenching.

(and nice touch with the John's just missing a while, 'cause we totally know he's coming back... somehow... someday!)

[dodger_winslow]

Heh. When I first started writing it, the big reveal wasn't that Karl didn't know John was dead, it was that Dean would let Karl continue to think that. The ghost thing came later when I saw some unintentional foreshadowing that seemed to open a possibility that was just too much fun to pass up once I thought about it

[dodger_winslow]

Oh, and I meant to add, there is a little bit of the you and me in the idea that Karl is a ghost; but he doesn't realize John is dead, so if Karl is dead, wouldn't he KNOW something like that if John was really dead?

Hey, I think he would. I think being dead would mean Karl would have insight into the fact that John had also died. And since he didn't, I'm sticking to the idea they weren't walking the stairway to heaven together, baby. :D

[lady_octavia]

:D I was kind of wondering when in the pre/post mortem of John he spoke to Karl. I love the idea of John trying to give the boys (esp. Dean) some kind of comfort and promise esp. after dropping that bomb in his lap right before. And because he had to know they would figure it out and that it would tear Dean apart to think that John went to Hell -and with that Demon to boot- rather than let him die.

I think being dead would mean Karl would have insight into the fact that John had also died. I was wondering about that, which of course just leads to the conclusion that Johnny isn't dead and that what the boys burned wasn't their Dad... I mean remember what the reaper chick said - it's her sandbox. So John either has a plan (and he's always got a plan) to bust out of Hell (I'm not sure how he gets his body back, but certainly easily managed by John Winchester), or he isn't acutally dead, but in the process of paying off or double crossing the Demon before he comes back to his boys. (At which point they both ought to hit him really