ruby take my hand, please lead me to the promise land
alternatively titled
frankenstein
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summary: Ness ends the world in a fit of rage because she's a thing and not a person and that's what things do.
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Renesmee Cullen is an impossible thing. And impossible things either last forever or go mad trying.
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Edward lied and said vampire because it was an easier thing to swallow then fallen.
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Ness is Nephilim and everything that means.
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note: this is kind of incoherent, take it because Ness is unstable mentally, take it as what it is. It's out of order in some places and doesn't follow reason in others. Ness is dramatic in her descriptions, some things are overplayed and others are underplayed. it's weird. metaphors man.
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"Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful."
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Her name is Ness, and this, this, is the end of her life. This is how she dies. Everything ends, and everything dies.
And that's fine, she thinks. Ness thinks that's fine. She's awake, huddled in a bunker with her parents, her ageless parents with still hearts and simpering smiles. They whisper to each other, quiet, intangible things, and selfishly, Ness wishes that she'd never been born. Jacob's head is hot on her shoulder, and not for the first time, she resents everything he represents.
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The world burns.
Ness; "I'm gonna live to be a thousand."
She thinks Jacob wants to believe her.
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Ness isn't a baby. She's not not not not not not not. Even when her mom acts like she is or when Jacob acts like she isn't or when her dad reads her mind and Ness doesn't want to be the baby, or someone's soulmate or wrongwrongwrongwrongwro—she hates being a thing, mostly.
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"Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it," she wants him to understand. Standing there, covered in dirt and grime and blood and guts and tar and terrified. She wants him to get it. Ness wants to shake him until his neck snaps and she wants him to understand because she's selfish and wrong and it's all about her.
She'll burn the world so he gets it.
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He never does.
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Ness burns it all so he might.
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She thinks her mom is afraid of her. That's fine too, she thinks. She's right. Ness is there, her mind breaks down the fragile barriers, creeps under her skin and into her mind and makes her see what Ness want's and and isn't that fun.
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"I could've loved you."
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She laughs in his face.
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Nobody could love a thing.
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After all.
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"If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!" It's about her still, even when she's stolen all the words she's ever spoken.
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Jacob dies with a whimper. Not the bang she's expected. He stops when he really sees her, he just. Stops. He sees her suddenly, his breath slipping out of his lungs in a whoosh as he takes a moment to see all that she's become.
All that she is.
Another life, perhaps, and Ness would have been perfect.
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She's free for the first time in her entire life.
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"What is she?" it's a hiss in the night, while she feigns sleep. Her face is towards the wall, and if she lets herself drift enough, Edward won't realize she's awake.
Carlisle says nothing. Bella cries.
"Tell me."
"Bella—"
"Tell me," said Edward, his voice a breath. Ness strained to hear. "I deserve to know what I've brought into the world. What is she? Because I've seen Dhampirs, and she is not one."
She could hear her mother cry.
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"Nephilim."
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Nephilim were "sons of God" and the "daughters of men".
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She wonders what that makes her.
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"Is anyone sitting here?"
No. Yes. That's Jacob'sseatandyoucan'tsittherevilehumanworthlessgoaway—
Ness wordlessly pushes the chair. The girl sits.
"I'm Jess," she says, hair blonde and curly and if Ness looks hard enough she can taste flames and see yellow.
Instead she smiles (fakefakefakefake), and says, "Ness."
Jess giggles. "Jess and Ness."
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He shows up that night with a swagger in his step and none of the spunk of before.
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"Renesmee," he says. "You need to come back."
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She hopes he'll choke on his tongue one day.
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Edward walks around in a haze, guilt on his mind and straining his soul. He'd messed up with Ness, in her existence. He'd gotten to close to his charge, and now, now.
Now it was obvious.
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Ness burns the world to sate him. To appease her Father.
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Castiel finds her.
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"You have a choice," he says.
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"The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone."
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Sam cries when she blows into their lives. On the tailcoat of Dean's resurgence, of befriending an Angel—he's faced with her.
Ness hopes he hurts.
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"She talked about you a lot," she says, watching his face crumple and Castiel's fists tighten. Dean's jaw clenches when he gets it.
"Renesmee," says Castiel. "You are better then this."
She's really tired.
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"I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."
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Dean asks why.
"She's quoting Frankenstein, Sammy. Doesn't that strike you as a little odd for someone who is supposedly the next evil to end all evils?"
She has the potential to be good, says Cas, insists Cas. She can do good. She could save them, she could help them. She has the freewill of man but the strength of an angel.
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"Help us," says Sam, bleeding and empty as Lucifer cracks his brain open and sings.
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She does.
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The town is ruined, the aftermath is secondary, and there she stands, among the carnage. Ness drops to her knees and screams at the sky.
The world burns around her.
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"I get it now," Dean tells her later, when she's staring out the window and pretending she can't hear. "But you're wrong. You aren't a monster."
"I am alone and miserable. Only someone as ugly as I am could love me."
Dean laughs to himself.
"You and me both, kiddo."
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He sits across from her in diners, and sometimes, when Sam's off doing research and they've gone for a midnight snack because even monsters need to eat, Dean'll talk to her, tell her stories from when he was a kid and in return she'll project pictures in his mind of her family, of who she was, of why she is.
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Other times they sit in silence, Dean sipping a coffee and pushing a piece of pie around a plate, Ness'll look out the window and watch the people pass.
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Rinse.
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"So get this—"
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Wash.
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"What the hell is that thing?"
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Repeat.
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She gets worse before she gets better.
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"Kill me," she begs.
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"That's not a quote."
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"First words I've ever spoken," a pause, then. "Thank you."
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"C'mon," says Dean, holding a hand out to her. Ness glances between him and Cas.
"You said I could choose," Castiel nods. "How?"
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Dean drives late into the night, and at some point, long after Sam's fallen asleep in the back with a book open on his lap and his head lolled to the side does Ness gain control over the radio.
Spitefully, she looks Dean dead in the eye and turns it to something she knows he'll hate.
Patrick Swayze's voice echoes through the radio, boldly proclaiming, "She's like the wind—"
and Dean's glare could melt even Ness' heart.
She laughs so hard Sam wakes up and Dean joins in. Sam goes back to sleep and pretends he didn't see anything.
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It wouldn't have been funny if they weren't half as tired.
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"Is that like a superpower? Making shitty music come on the radio? Because not even Sam can do it and honestly it's—" she kisses him then, the neon glow of the motel sign illuminating Dean's face and music he can't stand playing while Sam sleeps in the back and then she pulls away because she's scared of rejection and—
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He doesn't let her get far.
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"I'm terrified of you," she admits flippantly later, after it's been long enough that Dean's mostly forgotten about it.
He exhales slowly, looking at her.
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His jaw clenches.
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"I'm scared of you too."
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"Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous," said Renesmee.
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This is how she dies. Not in a bunker, not in the Apocalypse, not on a hunt.
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Not with Jacob.
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it's standing outside a 24 hour diner with Dean Winchester laughing at his grumble of, "They better have pie."
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she thinks, later, that she couldn't have asked for anything more then that.