A Gift From Nona, for astarloa
Title: A Gift From Nona
Recipient: astarloa
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,500
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: I combined prompt 1: Dean was seventeen when he learned how to knit, and prompt 3: So, there was this one hitchhiker they really, really shouldn’t have picked up. Thanks to my beta who I hope knows by now how much I value her sharp eyes and great advice!
Summary: In which we learn the stories of how Dean and Sam learned how to knit, and that sometimes picking up hitchhikers turns out much better than you’d think possible.
~~**~~
They really shouldn’t have stopped tonight-usually they wouldn’t have even considered it. Especially not out here in the middle of nowhere, in the true dark of midnight on the endless high prairie. He couldn’t have explained why they’d pulled over and picked the young woman up from the side of the highway. But they had, and she was in the back seat now. It seemed like she had been there forever at this point. All he could hear was the click-clack of her knitting needles that never seemed to stop or even pause; the endless sound was still audible underneath Dean’s usual blaring music.
He looked over at his brother, still driving them through the formless night, tension not very well-hidden in his shoulders and hands, extra stress wrinkles visible around his eyes. The final clue was the clenched that was twitching in time with her knitting needles.
“Just call me Nona,” the young woman had said as she’d clambered into the backseat, sheaf of shiny blonde hair catching the headlights of passing cars and momentarily blaring bright gold. “Don’t mind me, I’ll just be back here knitting while you drive. Carry on as if I’m not even here, gentlemen.”
At first, there had been some abortive attempts at conversation with their hitch-hiker/guest/resident fiber artist, whatever you want to call her, but they hadn’t gotten very far. She was still as much of a mystery as she had been when they’d first seen her, perched on a split-rail fence, swinging her legs, clutching her enormous carpet-bag. Sam recalled it had reminded him of Mary Poppins’ bag in that movie.
Dean had started off rambling once she was settled in the backseat; apparently nervous about the conversational silence in the car, he shared the story of how he’d learned how to knit at the tender age of seventeen. It had been a girlfriend of the moment (“Of course!” Sam interrupted) who had caught Dean’s heart up with her love of her grandmother. They’d spent hours every afternoon with the grandmother in the nursing home, learning how to knit from the sweet old lady. Dean’s agile fingers and quick mind had picked up the skill very quickly, or so he claimed now.
“So why didn’t I ever know about this talent of yours, Dean?” Sam had asked, just to keep the conversation going when their back-seat guest didn’t take the bait.
“You know, I was workin’ on a scarf for you that whole time, I was gonna give it to you for Christmas that year. But Dad came back in the middle of the night, all ripped up from that black dog that he’d thought was just a chupacabra, remember that? And we had to move out that next morning because we were supposed to already be in Montana helping Bobby with a triple poltergeist. You know, the usual, no time to say goodbye, wrap up things with her, or get my scarf.”
“You mean my scarf,” Sam corrected as any self-respecting little brother would, not noticing that his brother had just mentioned the details of their hunting lives as if it wasn’t a problem.
Dean rolled his eyes, but Sam could see him smile. He smiled too, he liked the idea of it, Dean making him something to wear. He pictured himself at thirteen and how thrilled he would have been to receive a gift like that from his older brother. He might have bitched about it or pretended to be mortified to wear it in public. But he would have treasured the damn thing, he’d probably still have it tucked away in his memory box hidden under his bed back home in the bunker.
Nona chuckled in the back seat at the end of the story, but she didn’t add any comments. Sam had a thought that it seemed like she was chuckling at what he’d been thinking, not at Dean’s story or their banter about it.
Sam filled the subsequent silence with a story of the time a sorority on the Stanford campus had held a knit-athon one year. How Jess had shamed him into going since it was a fund-raiser for a dog rescue charity, and he’d sat there with the dazzlingly perfect sorority sisters learning to knit on their perfectly manicured front lawn under the spreading oak trees. It had been almost ninety degrees in the California early autumn, but having his hands on the scratchy wool yarn brought back all the memories of bundling up in the wintertime when they were kids. He hadn’t gotten very far on finishing the scarf he’d started before he had to leave to go to study group. It was a good memory though.
“Glad you got to have something like that, Sammy,” Dean said, smiling briefly and then clenching his fingers around the steering wheel.
Sam didn’t say anything, Dean always got weird whenever he shared stories from his time at Stanford. Instead of calling him on it, he just looked out the window and thought about Jess and how she’d laughed that day at his early knitting attempts, but then she’d been so encouraging, picking it up more quickly than him and cajoling him into sticking with it for just a little longer. He could just picture it, that peaceful afternoon, but it seemed so far away from his life now. Something too shiny and perfect to fit into anything but a memory.
Nona chuckled again in the back seat, needles not pausing a stitch, but she still offered no stories or words. Again, Sam interpreted her chuckle as being a comment on his memory of Jess, not the story he’d just told or Dean’s response to it.
They should have been low enough on gas to have to stop by now, but they weren’t, the gas gauge still showed a quarter tank. And according to the time on his watch, the sun should have been showing its earliest glimmers on the horizon, but it was still dead black. Sam looked out the window and could swear he recognized the landscape, but then everything looked like it was on a repeating loop at night.
The night-time-driving mixtape ran out then, the ending notes of Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” still echoing in the interior of the Impala. The silence that followed was total; Sam would have sworn he couldn’t even hear the engine or road noises, not even his own heartbeat.
“You met my sister a while ago, do you remember her?” Nona asked, voice ringing out too loud in the total silence, her needles finally laid down and blessedly silent in her lap. She tucked them away in her bag, but what she’d been knitting was still on her lap, Sam could see it out of the corner of his eye.
“We’ve met a lot of people, Nona, could you be more specific?” Sam asked, turning around slowly, hoping to not spook their passenger. She had been sitting right behind them all this time with fairly sharp knitting needles, and who had thought that was a great idea anyway?
“Atropos, her name is Atropos. Remember her now?” Nona said, voice cracking on a giggle.
“So you must be Clotho then, shouldn’t you be spinning, not knitting?” Sam asked, flashing on the names of the three Fates.
“An even thread is much too hard to manage in the backseat of a sixty-seven Impala I’m afraid, even for an immortal such as myself,” Nona said.
“Clotho, huh, so that’s why it’s so damn dark out here, you’re a daughter of Night, right? So, how is your sister doing these days? Has she been happier since she got to keep doing her job?” Dean asked.
“Yes, she is quite pleased that things with the warring angels have settled down. It was a lot of bitching to put up with for a while there,” Clotho said.
“Man, I sure know how that goes,” Sam said.
“Hey!” Dean protested.
“Gentlemen, I am here for a reason,” Clotho said, her voice taking on a solemnity it hadn’t had before. “I have come to bestow upon you a gift.”
“A gift?” both Sam and Dean asked.
“Yes, as you know, I am the one who spins out the golden thread of life to measure for each human soul. And you two, well let’s just say you’ve tangled my threads up something awful.”
“We’re sorry,” Sam said.
“No, Sam, no, we are not sorry, we’re damn glad we’re still alive and kicking even if it wasn’t according to your plans,” Dean snapped.
Clotho laughed then, not the restrained chuckles from before, but a full-out belly laugh the like of which hadn’t been heard in the Impala in quite a while. She finally calmed down and wiped at her eyes.
“Oh my, my dear Winchesters, I haven’t had a laugh like that in eons. Atropos warned me about your beauty, but she did not prepare me for your wit. Your gift, is this,” she said, flopping a knitted square over the backseat onto Sam’s left shoulder. He grabbed it and held it up to the meager light coming from the dashboard. The small square fit in the palm of his hand-it looked like a miniature pot-holder, more the size of a coaster really. The most beautifully gleaming golden coaster you’d never ever dare to put underneath a sweaty beer can.
“It’s beautiful, Clotho, thank you,” Sam said, wondering what in the world this thing in his hand was. He could feel some sort of power emanating from it, seeping into his hand, a gentle trickle that felt good, healing almost.
“I’m not looking for your thanks or praise, but I appreciate it, Sam. This is no-what did you call it? It’s not a potholder or a coaster, this is an…um, well it’s the first time I’ve made one, so I haven’t had a chance to make up a name for it yet. Think of it like a life band-aid. Slap that puppy on next time one of you is thinking of dying before the other one, okay? Sound good?”
“Yeah good, okay…I guess? Couple quick questions though, what’s the cost if we use it, how many times can we use it, and for what kind of dying situations? You probably know we’ve had quite a few of them,” Sam asked.
“Oh yeah, I know all right about you guys dying all the time, that’s why your threads are so tangled up together. I’ve never seen anything like it, but that’s soul mates for you, I guess. Look, this thing will patch you up until you make it to your finish line, the one you’re supposed to have, and spoiler alert, the plan is you reach it together, if you know what I mean. Everyone, and I mean ev-er-y-bo-dy knows there’s no point to that.”
“And the cost of using it? Is there one?” Dean asked, guessing that she was leaving out the important part.
“No, no there isn’t. It’s a freebie, basically, oh hell, I’ll be honest, it’s to get back at Billie. She’s being a royal pain in the ass, she didn’t want to get promoted when you took out Death, and she’s not playing by the rules. I can’t stand that kind of thing. So I got the rest of us together on it, and…well, this is our solution.”
“Would it still work if we cut it into two pieces?” Sam asked. “A few of the times we’ve died, or almost died, we haven’t been together.”
Clotho sighed and waved her hand impatiently over the back of the seat. Sam’s hand tingled and burned, and then there were two golden knitted squares about the size of the width of a credit card. The patterns were identical, intricate interlocking knots and swirls with a complicated-looking braided edge. “It’ll work up until it’s time for it not to.”
“Thanks, Clotho. We appreciate it-“ Sam said, cutting off abruptly as the backseat was suddenly and surprisingly empty.
“Let me guess, she’s gone, right?” Dean asked, checking the mirrors with a cursory look.
“Yeah,” Sam said, turning back from making sure she was gone. “Guess these are going to come in handy at some point.” He handed one of the golden squares over to Dean who shoved it into his jean’s front pocket. “Just don’t lose yours in the wash or something.”
They rode in silence for a while. Dean didn’t bother to put on a tape or the radio. At least it wasn’t the total silence from before though-Sam was relieved to hear the Impala’s familiar noises, and Dean’s tongue clicking on occasion. It was also good to see the sun finally rising. The gas gauge was low so they’d have to stop soon, maybe get some breakfast.
Sam was reviewing all the things that Clotho had said, and his mind got stuck on one thing. He turned it over and over, not sure how to bring it up to Dean. “You heard the thing she said…uh about the rest of them getting together and deciding to give us these band-aid things?”
“Yeah…oh wait, let me guess, you’re picturing the Greek gods all having a meeting and discussing us?”
“Pretty much, kind of hard not to, but that’s not what I’m stuck on. She said this gift was given to us because of what we’ve done when the other one is dying without us, that we have to go out together and that they all know that now. We’ve changed the plan, Dean.”
“Like we had an impact on Fate or whatever we’re calling it now?” Dean asked.
“Yeah, all the things we’ve chosen-they’ve impacted the immortals somehow, or at least enough to send one of them to us to give us this gift. And I’m not sure how to feel about that, you know?”
“Well, I keep tellin’ you, Sammy, we’re awesome, glad someone up there knows it too, it’s about damn time,” Dean crowed, grinning widely, eyes twinkling at Sam.
Sam smiled and settled back into his seat when he saw his brother’s prideful boast for what it really was, relief that the important point of Clotho’s visit had gotten through to both of them. They were going out together once it was their time, and there was something supremely comforting about that, to both of them.
Recipient: astarloa
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,500
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: I combined prompt 1: Dean was seventeen when he learned how to knit, and prompt 3: So, there was this one hitchhiker they really, really shouldn’t have picked up. Thanks to my beta who I hope knows by now how much I value her sharp eyes and great advice!
Summary: In which we learn the stories of how Dean and Sam learned how to knit, and that sometimes picking up hitchhikers turns out much better than you’d think possible.
~~**~~
They really shouldn’t have stopped tonight-usually they wouldn’t have even considered it. Especially not out here in the middle of nowhere, in the true dark of midnight on the endless high prairie. He couldn’t have explained why they’d pulled over and picked the young woman up from the side of the highway. But they had, and she was in the back seat now. It seemed like she had been there forever at this point. All he could hear was the click-clack of her knitting needles that never seemed to stop or even pause; the endless sound was still audible underneath Dean’s usual blaring music.
He looked over at his brother, still driving them through the formless night, tension not very well-hidden in his shoulders and hands, extra stress wrinkles visible around his eyes. The final clue was the clenched that was twitching in time with her knitting needles.
“Just call me Nona,” the young woman had said as she’d clambered into the backseat, sheaf of shiny blonde hair catching the headlights of passing cars and momentarily blaring bright gold. “Don’t mind me, I’ll just be back here knitting while you drive. Carry on as if I’m not even here, gentlemen.”
At first, there had been some abortive attempts at conversation with their hitch-hiker/guest/resident fiber artist, whatever you want to call her, but they hadn’t gotten very far. She was still as much of a mystery as she had been when they’d first seen her, perched on a split-rail fence, swinging her legs, clutching her enormous carpet-bag. Sam recalled it had reminded him of Mary Poppins’ bag in that movie.
Dean had started off rambling once she was settled in the backseat; apparently nervous about the conversational silence in the car, he shared the story of how he’d learned how to knit at the tender age of seventeen. It had been a girlfriend of the moment (“Of course!” Sam interrupted) who had caught Dean’s heart up with her love of her grandmother. They’d spent hours every afternoon with the grandmother in the nursing home, learning how to knit from the sweet old lady. Dean’s agile fingers and quick mind had picked up the skill very quickly, or so he claimed now.
“So why didn’t I ever know about this talent of yours, Dean?” Sam had asked, just to keep the conversation going when their back-seat guest didn’t take the bait.
“You know, I was workin’ on a scarf for you that whole time, I was gonna give it to you for Christmas that year. But Dad came back in the middle of the night, all ripped up from that black dog that he’d thought was just a chupacabra, remember that? And we had to move out that next morning because we were supposed to already be in Montana helping Bobby with a triple poltergeist. You know, the usual, no time to say goodbye, wrap up things with her, or get my scarf.”
“You mean my scarf,” Sam corrected as any self-respecting little brother would, not noticing that his brother had just mentioned the details of their hunting lives as if it wasn’t a problem.
Dean rolled his eyes, but Sam could see him smile. He smiled too, he liked the idea of it, Dean making him something to wear. He pictured himself at thirteen and how thrilled he would have been to receive a gift like that from his older brother. He might have bitched about it or pretended to be mortified to wear it in public. But he would have treasured the damn thing, he’d probably still have it tucked away in his memory box hidden under his bed back home in the bunker.
Nona chuckled in the back seat at the end of the story, but she didn’t add any comments. Sam had a thought that it seemed like she was chuckling at what he’d been thinking, not at Dean’s story or their banter about it.
Sam filled the subsequent silence with a story of the time a sorority on the Stanford campus had held a knit-athon one year. How Jess had shamed him into going since it was a fund-raiser for a dog rescue charity, and he’d sat there with the dazzlingly perfect sorority sisters learning to knit on their perfectly manicured front lawn under the spreading oak trees. It had been almost ninety degrees in the California early autumn, but having his hands on the scratchy wool yarn brought back all the memories of bundling up in the wintertime when they were kids. He hadn’t gotten very far on finishing the scarf he’d started before he had to leave to go to study group. It was a good memory though.
“Glad you got to have something like that, Sammy,” Dean said, smiling briefly and then clenching his fingers around the steering wheel.
Sam didn’t say anything, Dean always got weird whenever he shared stories from his time at Stanford. Instead of calling him on it, he just looked out the window and thought about Jess and how she’d laughed that day at his early knitting attempts, but then she’d been so encouraging, picking it up more quickly than him and cajoling him into sticking with it for just a little longer. He could just picture it, that peaceful afternoon, but it seemed so far away from his life now. Something too shiny and perfect to fit into anything but a memory.
Nona chuckled again in the back seat, needles not pausing a stitch, but she still offered no stories or words. Again, Sam interpreted her chuckle as being a comment on his memory of Jess, not the story he’d just told or Dean’s response to it.
They should have been low enough on gas to have to stop by now, but they weren’t, the gas gauge still showed a quarter tank. And according to the time on his watch, the sun should have been showing its earliest glimmers on the horizon, but it was still dead black. Sam looked out the window and could swear he recognized the landscape, but then everything looked like it was on a repeating loop at night.
The night-time-driving mixtape ran out then, the ending notes of Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” still echoing in the interior of the Impala. The silence that followed was total; Sam would have sworn he couldn’t even hear the engine or road noises, not even his own heartbeat.
“You met my sister a while ago, do you remember her?” Nona asked, voice ringing out too loud in the total silence, her needles finally laid down and blessedly silent in her lap. She tucked them away in her bag, but what she’d been knitting was still on her lap, Sam could see it out of the corner of his eye.
“We’ve met a lot of people, Nona, could you be more specific?” Sam asked, turning around slowly, hoping to not spook their passenger. She had been sitting right behind them all this time with fairly sharp knitting needles, and who had thought that was a great idea anyway?
“Atropos, her name is Atropos. Remember her now?” Nona said, voice cracking on a giggle.
“So you must be Clotho then, shouldn’t you be spinning, not knitting?” Sam asked, flashing on the names of the three Fates.
“An even thread is much too hard to manage in the backseat of a sixty-seven Impala I’m afraid, even for an immortal such as myself,” Nona said.
“Clotho, huh, so that’s why it’s so damn dark out here, you’re a daughter of Night, right? So, how is your sister doing these days? Has she been happier since she got to keep doing her job?” Dean asked.
“Yes, she is quite pleased that things with the warring angels have settled down. It was a lot of bitching to put up with for a while there,” Clotho said.
“Man, I sure know how that goes,” Sam said.
“Hey!” Dean protested.
“Gentlemen, I am here for a reason,” Clotho said, her voice taking on a solemnity it hadn’t had before. “I have come to bestow upon you a gift.”
“A gift?” both Sam and Dean asked.
“Yes, as you know, I am the one who spins out the golden thread of life to measure for each human soul. And you two, well let’s just say you’ve tangled my threads up something awful.”
“We’re sorry,” Sam said.
“No, Sam, no, we are not sorry, we’re damn glad we’re still alive and kicking even if it wasn’t according to your plans,” Dean snapped.
Clotho laughed then, not the restrained chuckles from before, but a full-out belly laugh the like of which hadn’t been heard in the Impala in quite a while. She finally calmed down and wiped at her eyes.
“Oh my, my dear Winchesters, I haven’t had a laugh like that in eons. Atropos warned me about your beauty, but she did not prepare me for your wit. Your gift, is this,” she said, flopping a knitted square over the backseat onto Sam’s left shoulder. He grabbed it and held it up to the meager light coming from the dashboard. The small square fit in the palm of his hand-it looked like a miniature pot-holder, more the size of a coaster really. The most beautifully gleaming golden coaster you’d never ever dare to put underneath a sweaty beer can.
“It’s beautiful, Clotho, thank you,” Sam said, wondering what in the world this thing in his hand was. He could feel some sort of power emanating from it, seeping into his hand, a gentle trickle that felt good, healing almost.
“I’m not looking for your thanks or praise, but I appreciate it, Sam. This is no-what did you call it? It’s not a potholder or a coaster, this is an…um, well it’s the first time I’ve made one, so I haven’t had a chance to make up a name for it yet. Think of it like a life band-aid. Slap that puppy on next time one of you is thinking of dying before the other one, okay? Sound good?”
“Yeah good, okay…I guess? Couple quick questions though, what’s the cost if we use it, how many times can we use it, and for what kind of dying situations? You probably know we’ve had quite a few of them,” Sam asked.
“Oh yeah, I know all right about you guys dying all the time, that’s why your threads are so tangled up together. I’ve never seen anything like it, but that’s soul mates for you, I guess. Look, this thing will patch you up until you make it to your finish line, the one you’re supposed to have, and spoiler alert, the plan is you reach it together, if you know what I mean. Everyone, and I mean ev-er-y-bo-dy knows there’s no point to that.”
“And the cost of using it? Is there one?” Dean asked, guessing that she was leaving out the important part.
“No, no there isn’t. It’s a freebie, basically, oh hell, I’ll be honest, it’s to get back at Billie. She’s being a royal pain in the ass, she didn’t want to get promoted when you took out Death, and she’s not playing by the rules. I can’t stand that kind of thing. So I got the rest of us together on it, and…well, this is our solution.”
“Would it still work if we cut it into two pieces?” Sam asked. “A few of the times we’ve died, or almost died, we haven’t been together.”
Clotho sighed and waved her hand impatiently over the back of the seat. Sam’s hand tingled and burned, and then there were two golden knitted squares about the size of the width of a credit card. The patterns were identical, intricate interlocking knots and swirls with a complicated-looking braided edge. “It’ll work up until it’s time for it not to.”
“Thanks, Clotho. We appreciate it-“ Sam said, cutting off abruptly as the backseat was suddenly and surprisingly empty.
“Let me guess, she’s gone, right?” Dean asked, checking the mirrors with a cursory look.
“Yeah,” Sam said, turning back from making sure she was gone. “Guess these are going to come in handy at some point.” He handed one of the golden squares over to Dean who shoved it into his jean’s front pocket. “Just don’t lose yours in the wash or something.”
They rode in silence for a while. Dean didn’t bother to put on a tape or the radio. At least it wasn’t the total silence from before though-Sam was relieved to hear the Impala’s familiar noises, and Dean’s tongue clicking on occasion. It was also good to see the sun finally rising. The gas gauge was low so they’d have to stop soon, maybe get some breakfast.
Sam was reviewing all the things that Clotho had said, and his mind got stuck on one thing. He turned it over and over, not sure how to bring it up to Dean. “You heard the thing she said…uh about the rest of them getting together and deciding to give us these band-aid things?”
“Yeah…oh wait, let me guess, you’re picturing the Greek gods all having a meeting and discussing us?”
“Pretty much, kind of hard not to, but that’s not what I’m stuck on. She said this gift was given to us because of what we’ve done when the other one is dying without us, that we have to go out together and that they all know that now. We’ve changed the plan, Dean.”
“Like we had an impact on Fate or whatever we’re calling it now?” Dean asked.
“Yeah, all the things we’ve chosen-they’ve impacted the immortals somehow, or at least enough to send one of them to us to give us this gift. And I’m not sure how to feel about that, you know?”
“Well, I keep tellin’ you, Sammy, we’re awesome, glad someone up there knows it too, it’s about damn time,” Dean crowed, grinning widely, eyes twinkling at Sam.
Sam smiled and settled back into his seat when he saw his brother’s prideful boast for what it really was, relief that the important point of Clotho’s visit had gotten through to both of them. They were going out together once it was their time, and there was something supremely comforting about that, to both of them.