Fic - the gods might offer gifts (American Gods/Supernatural)
Title: the gods might offer gifts
Fandoms: American Gods and Supernatural
Rating/Pairings: Gen, none
Summary: Dean remembers the week that Sammy came down with the croup, remembers Czernobog and the Zorya.
Disclaimer: Playing with other people's toys.
Notes: For June/July challenge_duck. Betas by snarkhunter, who came up with the eeriest image and pointed out that it wasn't done yet, and by starstillwonder, who makes my writing English good - thank you both! Any remaining issues are mine. (Or Dean's.) ETA: Read the DVD Commentary for this fic here.
---
America is a bad land for gods. They take root well enough, but grow stunted or crooked, pale distortions on the glass of distant immigrant memory.
America is a bad land for gods; it is a cruel land for heroes. When people have forgotten the divine, they like to live in ignorance of the other things that lurk in the dark closets of the mind. Those who would guard the door are unpleasant reminders - in their hearts, when sheep look at the dogs that guard the flock, they see too much of the wolf for comfort.
In the old places, in the old times, when they were turned away from the hearth, heroes could seek the temples and shrines and sacred places, and sometimes the gods would come to them. For service or caprice, the gods might offer gifts - magical arms or animal-tongues, prophecy or enchanted shields. But in a land where the gods are made selfish by their own waning, what gifts can heroes hope for on the hard road?
---
Dean remembers the week that Sammy came down with the croup. It was less than a month after the shtriga, and even twenty years before Sam’s theory about life-forces and immune systems, Dean knew that it was his fault. The hunt didn’t stop for the croup, though, and neither did John Winchester. There was a story that sounded like werewolves out of Central Illinois, somewhere near Springfield, and the full moon was coming up in a few days.
When they were younger, sometimes Dad had left them with friends, or friends-of-friends, but he’d stopped doing that nearly a year ago, when Dean had proven he could reliably shoot every gun they had. So when Dad left them on the stoop of a brownstone in Chicago, hugging them both tight, and looking long and seriously at Dean, before squeezing his shoulder tightly and heading off, Dean felt it like a failure, even if nothing had been said.
Dean and Sammy were staying with friends-of-friends this time, a fortune-teller and her family. Zorya Vechernyaya was a little old woman, and her sister Zorya Utrennyaya was even older and smaller, although her hair was still golden. They had a third sister, but as Zorya Utrennyaya explained when they arrived, “You will not see her, she is asleep in the day,” which would have worried Dean more but for the garlic in the cabbage rolls that they had for dinner. He had holy water in his backpack, if he needed it. The last member of the family - Dean thought maybe he was a cousin, but he wasn’t sure - was Czernobog, a big old man whose fingers were stained from smoking. He used to kill cattle in a meat factory.
---
The first couple days, Czernobog played checkers with Sammy while he was awake, both coughing. He told Dean stories about the killing floor while Sammy rested, until Zorya Verchernyaya scolded them. “You should not tell the boy cow-killing stories, it will give him nightmares!”
“This one, nightmares from my stories? Bah!” He shook his head, but waited until she had gone back to the kitchen. When he continued, he leaned forward and spoke more quietly, but his eyes were bright.
“You have not killed yet, boy, so you do not know, but what I tell you, you remember.”
Dean nodded and swallowed, only a little wide-eyed.
“With the gun or with the hammer, it doesn’t matter. Killing, it is not guns or hammers, it is not tools. It is a moment. Between you and them. You will know it, the first time, you have it in the blood.” Dean almost smiled at that, but Czernobog was looking at him shrewdly.
“You must not rush, it is,” he made a dismissive noise, and swept his big hand to the side. “It is not to rush! It is skill, the way you strike, not just hard and fast. But you must not be slow, you must hit at just the right time, not before, and not too late.”
“What happens if you time it wrong?”
“Well, then the cow will kick you in the head. The cows, they kick hard!” and Czernobog clapped Dean on the shoulder nearly hard enough to knock him off the couch. That night, sleeping next to Sammy in the bed in the spare room, Dean didn’t have nightmares, but he dreamed of a gun frozen in time, its hammer falling slower and slower and slower, until the moment stretched into infinity.
---
The third afternoon, while Sammy was asleep - Dean could hear him wheezing - and Czernobog had gone out for cigarettes, Dean asked Zorya Vechernyaya about fortune-telling.
She narrowed her eyes and looked at him suspiciously. Dean thought that he could feel her gaze on the back of his skull - it itched - but he didn’t squirm. Abruptly, she grinned and winked at him. “The best fortunes, they are like the best lies!” She held up one finger. “First, you must tell enough truth for confidence. Sometimes this is not much truth.” She waved the finger back and forth, and the big amber ring she wore glinted. “Some people, they are gullible, yes?” Dean nodded; he’d seen it.
“Second,” and she held up two fingers, slightly hooked with age, like claws, “second, you must tell them what they want to hear. Now, this is the harder part, this means you must know what they want to hear.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, now, there are two ways for that! You can seek it out, you listen and watch. It is harder, this way, but it is done.” She shrugged. “With practice, it gets easy, because people are not so different from each other, most times.”
“And the easier way?”
“Oh the easy way, he says? Of course, you want the easy way! The easy way, young Dean, is this…” Zorya Vechernyaya ducked her head down, and beckoned him closer with crooked fingers. She looked him straight in the eye and whispered, “The easy way is to read it from their mind.”
At the unimpressed look on his face, she burst into laughter, patted him on the head, and headed into the kitchen to make dinner. Crazy old lady, Dean thought. Well, mostly crazy.
---
The fourth night, Dean woke up knowing something was off. He lay still for a minute, listening. He could hear Czernobog snoring and… nothing else. Sammy was warm in the bed next to him, but he wasn’t wheezing anymore.
He opened his eyes and froze, because there was a woman leaning over his brother, her long hair gleaming white in the light of the full moon, streaming in the window. He knew she couldn’t be the shtriga - the shtriga was dark and old and ugly, and she was fair and young and beautiful, but their father had taught him better than that.
He didn’t want to wake Sammy, now that he was sleeping quietly, but Dean sat up, and whispered, “Who are you?”
“I am Zorya Polunochnaya. Did I wake you?”
The sister who sleeps, Dean remembered. “No, I - I woke up because of Sammy. I couldn’t hear him.”
Zorya Polonochnaya nodded and ran a hand over Sam’s head. “He is quieter tonight. I think he is getting better.”
Dean thought that she was probably right. He lay back down, and watched her. She sat just on the edge of their bed, and alternated between watching them, and looking out the window. The moon was bright and full, framed in the window like a picture, surrounded by scattered stars, and Dean worried about his father, out hunting werewolves, and slid closer to Sammy.
Zorya Polunochnaya looked back from the window, and seemed to study them both. “Czernobog has a brother, you know.”
“Really?”
“Bielebog, yes. This is his room.”
“Huh.” Dean looked around, but the moonlight didn’t reveal anything of Bielebog in the nearly empty room. “What’s he like? Is he like Czernobog?”
“Oh, no. They are very different. They like different things. Some brothers are like that, you know.”
Dean nodded. “Where is he?”
“He is gone away.”
“Why?”
Zorya Polunochnaya paused, seeming to look for words. “He left because winter was coming.”
“Oh.” It almost made sense. Dean wondered if he were dreaming. Next to him, Sammy coughed a little, and wriggled closer. “I’d never leave.”
Zorya Polunochnaya smiled sadly, and smoothed her hand over Sammy’s back. His breathing evened out again. “No, you would not leave.” She looked at Dean, and her eyes were as old as her sisters’. “You will not remember, I think, but sometimes for people there is a time to leave. Bielebog left because of winter, not because of Czernobog.” She sighed, and stood up, walking to stand next to the window. “You should go back to sleep; it is still very late.”
Dean nodded, but laid awake, watching Sammy. He wondered what Zorya Polunochnaya meant. He wouldn’t leave Sammy; Sammy and Dad were all he had. He looked over to where she stood by the window, white as a ghost in the moonlight. He wondered why she slept during the day, and why she was watching the stars. It reminded him of something, the way she stood and watched, but he couldn’t quite catch it. After a little while, he fell asleep, still wondering.
When Dean woke up the next morning, Sammy was watching him quietly from the other pillow, and Zorya Polunochnaya was gone. All he could see out the window was the brick wall of the taller building next-door.
---
Dad came to pick them up early the on the sixth morning; only Zorya Utrennyaya was up to see them off. As Dad headed down the stairs with Sammy in one arm, and their bag in the other, she stopped Dean with a hand on his shoulder. “You are a good boy, Dean. I have for you…” She patted at her golden hair sheepishly and hummed for a moment, “I have for you a gift.” She held out her hand, and opened it palm up. It was a golden amulet on a black cord.
Dean reached out, and his hand hovered over hers. Her hand was very small, he noticed, and it shook, a little. “Why?”
“Because you need it. And… maybe you will think of us, sometimes, yes?”
Dean took the amulet and held it tightly in his fist. His father was probably wondering what was taking so long. He looked at Zorya Utrennyaya, thought of the last week, and nodded. “Yes. I’ll remember.” Then he ran down the stairs to join Sammy and Dad, wondering what they were going after next.
---
Years later, after they’ve dealt with the shtriga for the last time, Dean and Sam find a rusalka in north-western Michigan. It takes both of them to pry her hands off of her latest victim; only three-quarters drowned, this time. Sam drags the guy away from the lake, back towards the road, and Dean has an armful of angry Russian water-succubus.
Dean had dropped the shotgun while they were wrestling her off her prey, and she catches him by the throat, unnaturally strong, before he can grab it again. When her cold, clammy hand makes contact with his amulet, there is a sizzling sound, and she screams, hurling him away, further towards the forest. He lands hard, on his back, cracking his head into the ground. He struggles to breathe, and fights to keep from blacking out.
“Dean!”
Sammy must have gotten that guy back to the car, Dean thinks slowly, waiting for air. There is a shot, the rusalka’s angry scream, Sam yelling, and then splashing. Not quite fast enough with the gun, though.
He struggles to sit up, the first breath painful as it always is when he gets winded, but not so bad that it means broken ribs. He ignores the pain and dizziness as he climbs to his feet and staggers back towards the lake. The rusalka has Sam under water, still in the shallows, and is trying to drag him further in. Luckily, when she’d knocked the gun out of Sam’s hands, she’d thrown it in the same direction as she’d thrown Dean; he almost falls down again as he lunges to pick it up. He has no good shot - Sam and the rusalka are thrashing around in the water.
“Hey, you soggy, ugly bitch!”
She whirls around, spitting like a wet cat, and his shot takes her high in the center of her chest.
“Let go of my brother.”
Her body collapses down into the water as Sam sits up, coughing up water. He drags himself toward shore, and Dean stumbles toward the lake, and they both collapse in a heap half in the water and half on the beach.
“Hey, Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“You really know how to talk to a woman.”
“Shut up, Sammy.”
They just sit, adrenaline winding down but still high. After a couple minutes, Sam clambers to his feet, holding out a hand to Dean and smiling.
“… thanks.”
Dean grins back. “What I’m here for, man.” He takes Sam’s hand, and lets his brother pull him to his feet.
---
America is a cruel land for heroes. It takes and takes and very rarely gives anything back. Even its most generous gods can offer little enough. The gifts that the hero can count on most often are the gifts of blood. Sometimes the gods can yet intercede in combat, and gifts bought in battle come with warranties of scars. But the best gift of blood is beyond the gods’ magic. The hard road of the hero is easiest when it is shared, and the best gift of blood is family.
---
Fandoms: American Gods and Supernatural
Rating/Pairings: Gen, none
Summary: Dean remembers the week that Sammy came down with the croup, remembers Czernobog and the Zorya.
Disclaimer: Playing with other people's toys.
Notes: For June/July challenge_duck. Betas by snarkhunter, who came up with the eeriest image and pointed out that it wasn't done yet, and by starstillwonder, who makes my writing English good - thank you both! Any remaining issues are mine. (Or Dean's.) ETA: Read the DVD Commentary for this fic here.
---
America is a bad land for gods. They take root well enough, but grow stunted or crooked, pale distortions on the glass of distant immigrant memory.
America is a bad land for gods; it is a cruel land for heroes. When people have forgotten the divine, they like to live in ignorance of the other things that lurk in the dark closets of the mind. Those who would guard the door are unpleasant reminders - in their hearts, when sheep look at the dogs that guard the flock, they see too much of the wolf for comfort.
In the old places, in the old times, when they were turned away from the hearth, heroes could seek the temples and shrines and sacred places, and sometimes the gods would come to them. For service or caprice, the gods might offer gifts - magical arms or animal-tongues, prophecy or enchanted shields. But in a land where the gods are made selfish by their own waning, what gifts can heroes hope for on the hard road?
---
Dean remembers the week that Sammy came down with the croup. It was less than a month after the shtriga, and even twenty years before Sam’s theory about life-forces and immune systems, Dean knew that it was his fault. The hunt didn’t stop for the croup, though, and neither did John Winchester. There was a story that sounded like werewolves out of Central Illinois, somewhere near Springfield, and the full moon was coming up in a few days.
When they were younger, sometimes Dad had left them with friends, or friends-of-friends, but he’d stopped doing that nearly a year ago, when Dean had proven he could reliably shoot every gun they had. So when Dad left them on the stoop of a brownstone in Chicago, hugging them both tight, and looking long and seriously at Dean, before squeezing his shoulder tightly and heading off, Dean felt it like a failure, even if nothing had been said.
Dean and Sammy were staying with friends-of-friends this time, a fortune-teller and her family. Zorya Vechernyaya was a little old woman, and her sister Zorya Utrennyaya was even older and smaller, although her hair was still golden. They had a third sister, but as Zorya Utrennyaya explained when they arrived, “You will not see her, she is asleep in the day,” which would have worried Dean more but for the garlic in the cabbage rolls that they had for dinner. He had holy water in his backpack, if he needed it. The last member of the family - Dean thought maybe he was a cousin, but he wasn’t sure - was Czernobog, a big old man whose fingers were stained from smoking. He used to kill cattle in a meat factory.
---
The first couple days, Czernobog played checkers with Sammy while he was awake, both coughing. He told Dean stories about the killing floor while Sammy rested, until Zorya Verchernyaya scolded them. “You should not tell the boy cow-killing stories, it will give him nightmares!”
“This one, nightmares from my stories? Bah!” He shook his head, but waited until she had gone back to the kitchen. When he continued, he leaned forward and spoke more quietly, but his eyes were bright.
“You have not killed yet, boy, so you do not know, but what I tell you, you remember.”
Dean nodded and swallowed, only a little wide-eyed.
“With the gun or with the hammer, it doesn’t matter. Killing, it is not guns or hammers, it is not tools. It is a moment. Between you and them. You will know it, the first time, you have it in the blood.” Dean almost smiled at that, but Czernobog was looking at him shrewdly.
“You must not rush, it is,” he made a dismissive noise, and swept his big hand to the side. “It is not to rush! It is skill, the way you strike, not just hard and fast. But you must not be slow, you must hit at just the right time, not before, and not too late.”
“What happens if you time it wrong?”
“Well, then the cow will kick you in the head. The cows, they kick hard!” and Czernobog clapped Dean on the shoulder nearly hard enough to knock him off the couch. That night, sleeping next to Sammy in the bed in the spare room, Dean didn’t have nightmares, but he dreamed of a gun frozen in time, its hammer falling slower and slower and slower, until the moment stretched into infinity.
---
The third afternoon, while Sammy was asleep - Dean could hear him wheezing - and Czernobog had gone out for cigarettes, Dean asked Zorya Vechernyaya about fortune-telling.
She narrowed her eyes and looked at him suspiciously. Dean thought that he could feel her gaze on the back of his skull - it itched - but he didn’t squirm. Abruptly, she grinned and winked at him. “The best fortunes, they are like the best lies!” She held up one finger. “First, you must tell enough truth for confidence. Sometimes this is not much truth.” She waved the finger back and forth, and the big amber ring she wore glinted. “Some people, they are gullible, yes?” Dean nodded; he’d seen it.
“Second,” and she held up two fingers, slightly hooked with age, like claws, “second, you must tell them what they want to hear. Now, this is the harder part, this means you must know what they want to hear.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, now, there are two ways for that! You can seek it out, you listen and watch. It is harder, this way, but it is done.” She shrugged. “With practice, it gets easy, because people are not so different from each other, most times.”
“And the easier way?”
“Oh the easy way, he says? Of course, you want the easy way! The easy way, young Dean, is this…” Zorya Vechernyaya ducked her head down, and beckoned him closer with crooked fingers. She looked him straight in the eye and whispered, “The easy way is to read it from their mind.”
At the unimpressed look on his face, she burst into laughter, patted him on the head, and headed into the kitchen to make dinner. Crazy old lady, Dean thought. Well, mostly crazy.
---
The fourth night, Dean woke up knowing something was off. He lay still for a minute, listening. He could hear Czernobog snoring and… nothing else. Sammy was warm in the bed next to him, but he wasn’t wheezing anymore.
He opened his eyes and froze, because there was a woman leaning over his brother, her long hair gleaming white in the light of the full moon, streaming in the window. He knew she couldn’t be the shtriga - the shtriga was dark and old and ugly, and she was fair and young and beautiful, but their father had taught him better than that.
He didn’t want to wake Sammy, now that he was sleeping quietly, but Dean sat up, and whispered, “Who are you?”
“I am Zorya Polunochnaya. Did I wake you?”
The sister who sleeps, Dean remembered. “No, I - I woke up because of Sammy. I couldn’t hear him.”
Zorya Polonochnaya nodded and ran a hand over Sam’s head. “He is quieter tonight. I think he is getting better.”
Dean thought that she was probably right. He lay back down, and watched her. She sat just on the edge of their bed, and alternated between watching them, and looking out the window. The moon was bright and full, framed in the window like a picture, surrounded by scattered stars, and Dean worried about his father, out hunting werewolves, and slid closer to Sammy.
Zorya Polunochnaya looked back from the window, and seemed to study them both. “Czernobog has a brother, you know.”
“Really?”
“Bielebog, yes. This is his room.”
“Huh.” Dean looked around, but the moonlight didn’t reveal anything of Bielebog in the nearly empty room. “What’s he like? Is he like Czernobog?”
“Oh, no. They are very different. They like different things. Some brothers are like that, you know.”
Dean nodded. “Where is he?”
“He is gone away.”
“Why?”
Zorya Polunochnaya paused, seeming to look for words. “He left because winter was coming.”
“Oh.” It almost made sense. Dean wondered if he were dreaming. Next to him, Sammy coughed a little, and wriggled closer. “I’d never leave.”
Zorya Polunochnaya smiled sadly, and smoothed her hand over Sammy’s back. His breathing evened out again. “No, you would not leave.” She looked at Dean, and her eyes were as old as her sisters’. “You will not remember, I think, but sometimes for people there is a time to leave. Bielebog left because of winter, not because of Czernobog.” She sighed, and stood up, walking to stand next to the window. “You should go back to sleep; it is still very late.”
Dean nodded, but laid awake, watching Sammy. He wondered what Zorya Polunochnaya meant. He wouldn’t leave Sammy; Sammy and Dad were all he had. He looked over to where she stood by the window, white as a ghost in the moonlight. He wondered why she slept during the day, and why she was watching the stars. It reminded him of something, the way she stood and watched, but he couldn’t quite catch it. After a little while, he fell asleep, still wondering.
When Dean woke up the next morning, Sammy was watching him quietly from the other pillow, and Zorya Polunochnaya was gone. All he could see out the window was the brick wall of the taller building next-door.
---
Dad came to pick them up early the on the sixth morning; only Zorya Utrennyaya was up to see them off. As Dad headed down the stairs with Sammy in one arm, and their bag in the other, she stopped Dean with a hand on his shoulder. “You are a good boy, Dean. I have for you…” She patted at her golden hair sheepishly and hummed for a moment, “I have for you a gift.” She held out her hand, and opened it palm up. It was a golden amulet on a black cord.
Dean reached out, and his hand hovered over hers. Her hand was very small, he noticed, and it shook, a little. “Why?”
“Because you need it. And… maybe you will think of us, sometimes, yes?”
Dean took the amulet and held it tightly in his fist. His father was probably wondering what was taking so long. He looked at Zorya Utrennyaya, thought of the last week, and nodded. “Yes. I’ll remember.” Then he ran down the stairs to join Sammy and Dad, wondering what they were going after next.
---
Years later, after they’ve dealt with the shtriga for the last time, Dean and Sam find a rusalka in north-western Michigan. It takes both of them to pry her hands off of her latest victim; only three-quarters drowned, this time. Sam drags the guy away from the lake, back towards the road, and Dean has an armful of angry Russian water-succubus.
Dean had dropped the shotgun while they were wrestling her off her prey, and she catches him by the throat, unnaturally strong, before he can grab it again. When her cold, clammy hand makes contact with his amulet, there is a sizzling sound, and she screams, hurling him away, further towards the forest. He lands hard, on his back, cracking his head into the ground. He struggles to breathe, and fights to keep from blacking out.
“Dean!”
Sammy must have gotten that guy back to the car, Dean thinks slowly, waiting for air. There is a shot, the rusalka’s angry scream, Sam yelling, and then splashing. Not quite fast enough with the gun, though.
He struggles to sit up, the first breath painful as it always is when he gets winded, but not so bad that it means broken ribs. He ignores the pain and dizziness as he climbs to his feet and staggers back towards the lake. The rusalka has Sam under water, still in the shallows, and is trying to drag him further in. Luckily, when she’d knocked the gun out of Sam’s hands, she’d thrown it in the same direction as she’d thrown Dean; he almost falls down again as he lunges to pick it up. He has no good shot - Sam and the rusalka are thrashing around in the water.
“Hey, you soggy, ugly bitch!”
She whirls around, spitting like a wet cat, and his shot takes her high in the center of her chest.
“Let go of my brother.”
Her body collapses down into the water as Sam sits up, coughing up water. He drags himself toward shore, and Dean stumbles toward the lake, and they both collapse in a heap half in the water and half on the beach.
“Hey, Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“You really know how to talk to a woman.”
“Shut up, Sammy.”
They just sit, adrenaline winding down but still high. After a couple minutes, Sam clambers to his feet, holding out a hand to Dean and smiling.
“… thanks.”
Dean grins back. “What I’m here for, man.” He takes Sam’s hand, and lets his brother pull him to his feet.
---
America is a cruel land for heroes. It takes and takes and very rarely gives anything back. Even its most generous gods can offer little enough. The gifts that the hero can count on most often are the gifts of blood. Sometimes the gods can yet intercede in combat, and gifts bought in battle come with warranties of scars. But the best gift of blood is beyond the gods’ magic. The hard road of the hero is easiest when it is shared, and the best gift of blood is family.
---