Players: Sam, Dean, Charlie, Kevin, a few surprises along the way, brief mention of an oddly named cat.
Words: I think I got up to 3, 500
Rating: uh, pretty PG
Warning: here be potty mouths and resurrection
AN: Alright, so, quickreaver posted this picture over on LJ and said WRITE THINGS and I was powerless to resist, which doesn't happen often, but it got a little out of hand and uh. Yeah. This is part one of the resulting madness. Also, this is pretty much hot off the press, I may go back and expand it later, pretty sure I missed some stuff…
I Blame: quickreaver and kettle_o_fish for this whole thing. Just like, all of it.
penumbra
part one
"You don't have to do this, Sam."
It's been a persistent mantra for the past two months and up until now, he hasn't bothered to answer it.
The altar before him gleams wetly under the moonlight, as though already covered in sacrificial blood, and though he knows it's just an illusion, a temporary construct made by the goddess who stands upon its black marble steps, the sight of it still sends a thrill of precognitive adrenaline through him. Either side of the steps are bronze stags tarnished so dark they too appear black, their branching antlers threatening to scrape holes in the thick night air. At the top is a wooden table with a bronze bowl and a stack of silver arrows beside their matching bow. There's the scent of new pennies on the barely-there breeze, still hot and cloying, an unspoken threat, rising like steam from the fresh deer heart that sits in the bowl, red and wet and obscene.
"Sam –"
"Yes, I do," he says, turning abruptly to his brother. "I'm the one who… Yes, I do."
He turns back to the goddess, and Artemis smiles her small, brittle smile at him. She's different from the last time they saw her – wearing a dress of black sackcloth instead of the hunting leathers and wielding a quieter bearing that the remembered deadly bravado. Sam doesn't know which man she mourns for, her father or her lover, or both, but she came when he called and listened when he spoke and hasn't tried to kill them. Yet.
"Do it," he tells her. "Whatever you have to do…do it."
She lifts her hand to his face…
"SAM!"
And when her fingertips touch his eyelids, the world spirals into a white haze.
oOoOoOo
He can hear everything – it reminds him uncomfortably of those last fevered days filled with demon blood; the hypersensitivity, the closeness of his own harsh breathing, the intensity of fucking everything…
"…Sam?"
And there's Dean, nearby, but he already knew that; sensed him, moments ago, as be began to come 'round. He hears his brother drop into the chair by Sam's bed.
"Sam, hey, you in there?" He sounds so wary…
Somewhere, not as close as Dean, in the next room it sounds like, there are the half-familiar noises of a small child playing. Sam can hear the rhythmic thud of determined little feet as she bounces and runs, the occasional burst of a small piping voice accompanied by Charlie's upbeat chatter and the rattling and clinking of toys.
"It worked," his breathes. Some knot inside him, one he didn't even know he had, releases suddenly and the force of it takes his breath away. He's glad to be lying down already, feeling all will to move drain out of him as that emotional exhaustion catches him. He's felt like this before, so many times, but welcomes it; after the exhaustion fades there will come relief.
"Yeah," Dean says, and there is surprising bitterness there. "Yeah, it worked alright. Just not the way you planned."
"She's here, she's alive. It worked."
"She's a year old."
Sam closes his eyes – it's not like there's any point keeping them open – and thinks, and the more he thinks about it, the more it makes sense.
"If she'd been human…"
"Yeah, I figured." His brother lets out a deep sigh, and Sam knows the look that will be on his face, the aftermath of helpless anger, of anguish and all that thwarted protectiveness. "Just over a year. Fifteen months now. Got all her teeth, and walking and talking and just climbing all over me like nothing bad ever happened and she never…"
Got shot in the chest by her uncle.
Sam turns his face towards his brother.
"It's good," he says quietly, "that she doesn't remember."
"What if she does? Later, I mean; what if the memories filter back when she grows up?"
"Then we'll – then I'll deal with it." Sam swallows and turns his face back to the ceiling. It occurs to him that she may remember now, but hasn't shown any sign of it since she hasn't seen him yet.
Dean sighs again, and Sam knows this is where the really bad news comes in.
"Sam…"
"Just say it."
"Look, Artemis said it isn't permanent, it's just – there had to be a sacrifice and she -"
"She sacrificed my eyes."
"No, no man, she…did something to them." There's a pause and Sam knows that Dean is struggling to find a way to explain their – his – new predicament. "She said they're… okay, I know this sounds bad but…"
"Christ, Dean, just spit it out," Sam snaps.
"They're not human eyes anymore," Dean blurts, a little angrily. "And the only reason you're blind right now is that you have to learn how to use them. That's what she said, before she vanished. Again."
Sam feels like his chest is compressing. Not human eyes. It's not as bad as it could be – and he knows, he's been there, it could be so much worse – but not human seems to echo in his skull like a bell ringing down through the years to find him again.
He hears that bright, piping laugh in the next room and closes his new eyes again.
oOoOoOo
His first lesson comes a week later, when he's finally memorized the route from his room to the main bathroom and is stripping for a shower. He pulls his shirt over his head, hip against the sink for balance because sometimes that lack of visual orientation still catches him unawares, and there's a blast of light in the darkness.
Sam barely catches himself on the sink, one knuckle popping with the sudden strain, and then he feels lightheaded and has to lock his knees to keep from hitting the tiles; there in front of him, bobbing with his movements, is a star.
He blinks frantically, and seconds later recognizes the shape of it – it's his anti-possession tattoo.
As the initial shock fades and his eyes adjust, he can see that it's still there on his chest in black ink, but that it looks backlit, like someone has lit a stripe of magnesium under his skin. He can just make out the mapping of vein under there, glowing in tones of vermillion and garnet where the light bleeds into them.
He doesn't think twice.
"DEAN!"
"Where's the fire?" Dean says when he arrives in the room in a whirlwind of thumping boots and the smell of tomato sauce and baby shampoo. He's been getting Emma ready for bed.
"I can see it."
He hears the sharp drawn breath. "See what?"
"My tattoo. It's glowing."
"Shit."
"Yeah."
He hears the rasp of stubble; Dean rubbing a hand over his face. "What's this mean?"
"Don't know. Either I can see tattoos or…supernatural symbols, maybe?"
"Or just supernatural tattoos."
Sam aims a look at him and Dean immediately barks back, "what? It could be a thing."
"Take your shirt off."
"…excuse me?"
"Shirt off, so I can see if I can…see your one too."
There's some muttering, the rustle of fabric and then a second blast of light. Sam blinks and yes, there, Dean's tattoo hoving into view.
Sam takes a deep breath and grips the sink again, trying to centre himself. It's the first time he's seen anything in seven whole days and… it's a lot.
Distantly he registers more rustling and then Dean's hand on his shoulder. "Sam."
"I'm good."
"My ass. You saw my tat?"
"Yeah, I just can't figure out why it's taken me so long to see my own, or any of the other magical crap there must be stored around here."
"I dunno…your brain adjusting, making new neural connections? I mean it's not like you're dealing with the standard equipment anymore, maybe it's taken this long for your brain to read the manual."
It sounds plausible, but Sam's worried that it's not his physical brain that's been the hold up, but the other part.
"You're eyes went black…?"
He doesn't want to go there again. But right now it looks like he doesn't have a choice.
oOoOoOo
Magic.
His new eyes let him see magic. And the supernatural, and the paranormal, and the super- and sub-human, celestial, demonic…
Just not in a way that's really helpful.
He sees them the way he saw his tattoo; in a nimbus of light in a variety of pale colours, or in the case of the demonic, a morass of charcoal vapours like dirty cobwebs. Ghosts and spirits stream afterimages of themselves as they move, while pagan gods move in a wake of lurid mist. Angels are almost painful to look at, so bright they blot out stars and gently illuminate beings around them with reflected glow. The first time Cas pops in to check on them Sam spends the next two hours blinking green spots from his vision.
The one disappointment is that he can't see Emma. After all that's happened, he doesn't get to see the fruits of his labours. The only visual clue he has to her presence is the afterimage of Dean's bronze pendant that sits like a brassy reverse silhouette between her collarbones (Sam's not the only one who made sacrifices).
She's completely human.
Emma is bothered not at all by his limitations and learns quickly how to get his attention and interact with him. She puts her toys in his hand instead of waving them at him and sits quietly against his chest while he struggles through a nursery rhyme book in braille instead of interrupting and pointing at things or squirming. Sam learns the smell of baby shampoo and apple sauce and peanut butter that means 'Emma', and can track the sound of her little piping voice twice the distance that Dean or Charlie can.
He can do these things, but.
He can't hunt.
They tried, once, and never ever, ever again. Sam has enough scars already and he's not fond of the new ones on both his kneecaps, thanks. It's crippling though, not an exaggeration, like something has been physically cut out of him, like Artemis really had used the silver knife at her belt and carved out his true eyes, and taken part of his heart and his hands and his strength and spilled them down the steps of her altar.
He wants a purpose, he wants his old one back, but really, anything other than stumbling through the base and 'helping' whenever Emma needs a story read or Dean needs an object from the repository to be identified or Charlie wants a guinea pig for some terrifying new recipe…
And this is when the dreams start again.
oOoOoOo
"I don't get it," says Dean.
"I keep dreaming about Adam and pulling him out of the Cage," Sam says again.
"No, I get that part," Dean says, and Sam knows he's narrowing his eyes suspiciously and making the face that means 'don't be a smartass Sam, it's not cute'. "What I wanna know is why. First Emma and now Adam? Why?"
"Guilt?" Sam suggest wearily, which isn't untrue – the fact that they never managed to find a way to retrieve Adam has dogged him over the years just as hard as the demon blood days.
"Maybe," Dean allows, "but then why not others? I mean, why not Jo and Ellen, and Ash and hell, Rufus, Pam, Pastor Jim, Caleb, mom and dad… the list goes on. Why Adam? Why now?"
"Search me," Sam says, rubbing a hand over his face and peering tiredly around the repository. Points of light leapt out at him like emerging stars in a myriad of kaleidoscope colours. A line of prayer wheels became a constellation of silver and blue, a cursed knife was a slash of malevolent indigo and Sam knew the rippling galaxy of red and gold and green was their family tree, spilling down and down the tallest wall and perpetually re-writing itself whenever there was a hint of change to their own small family.
Family…
Family.
"Crap," says Sam.
oOoOoOo
The air is hot, almost unbearably, and it catches in the back of his throat, reeking of sulphur and brimstone and burning flesh.
He's in Hell again, at the very bottom of the Pit.
Below his bare feet lies the door to the Cage; a plain of red rock and earth, discoloured by the rains of blood and viscera that fall from Hell and scorched from the firestorms that rage through the endless night.
Same looks up at the pile of tumble red stone before him, spearing into the fraught blackness overhead and spies a single point of white.
Angel glow spills like phosphor from a hole in the mountain's centre and Sam feels the urge to go to it, to bask in that one clean spot amongst the filth. He starts climbing, hand over hand, bare feet bloodied by the red stone until he leaves a trail of deeper red behind him, glistening the lights of the unholy fires.
Finally he crouches over the hole, barely two foot wide, and filled from edge to edge with that depthless, beating light…
A human hand erupts from the glow and knots itself in the front of his shirt.
"And then I wake up," Sam says.
"So, we're fucked then," Dean says.
"Not necessarily," Kevin says from under a pile of parchment.
Dean eyes the prophet with one of those suspicious looks that's becoming regular. Sam can tell from the tone that follows:
"Meaning?"
"I'm kinda surprised you guys haven't figured it out before," Kevin replies, emerging with a shower of sound like shifting autumn leaves. "I mean, Hell's sealed from evil yeah, but there's ways around that."
"Uh, what?" He's got to be kidding. After all the crap they went through to slam the damn gates SHUT?!
"Are you fucking serious?" Dean barks.
There's a pause and Sam watches as the smouldering effigy that is Kevin Tran blinks at them. "It's not like it dangerous," he says. "I mean c'mon we're talking about –"
"I don't wanna hear it!" Dean overrides him. "There will be no cracking open of Hell by ANYONE."
oOoOoOo
There's a clunk from the table in front of them.
Dean and Kevin sit back and look from the length of smoky pearl alicorn lying across their books up to the shaggy, bad-tempered man standing over them.
"My head's on fire," Sam grinds out from behind three days' worth of beard, "I can't sleep without having that fucking dream, and this thing blinds me – REALLY blinds me – every time I go into the repository."
He glares at them and later Dean will swear he saw hellfire winking in his brother's pupils as that merciless gaze found him.
"You are going to crack open the Cage," Sam snarls, "and you're going to do it with this."
oOoOoOo
"Here? You sure?"
Dean miserably eyes the wreaked buildings around them. Nothing good grows here, or ever will, and no people will ever come to reclaim this town and try to make it home again.
It's just as well, he thinks.
Sam is looking around himself like he wants to weep, break things with his bare hands and throw up all at the same time.
"Yeah," he says, hushed like he's in a church, or afraid of being heard, "yeah this is the place."
Kevin looks pretty typically nervous and a little pissed they dragged him along, but it was either this or diaper duty, so he'd left Charlie to is and come with them. Now he cracks open his note book, flicking through dog-eared pages and skim reading pages cascading with ancient languages and symbols that give Sam headaches to look at too long.
"The alicorn should act as a divining rod," he tells Dean. "Just hold the widest part with both hands and, uh, wait."
"Great," Dean says, but does as he's told.
The reaction is instantaneous.
Sam makes a sound like he's being either loved up or stabbed, hard to tell, and goes to his knees, swaying faintly. The alicorn quivers and draws Dean forward. Dean lets it, only baulking when…
"No," he said, low at first but then louder as they get closer and closer to that one tumbled building. "NO, DON'T!"
The alicorn won't be denied. It's almost singing in his hands, its smooth spiralled sides hot as blood against his palms.
It draws him to the very spot, and plunges downwards.
For a moment the world is eerily silent, totally still…
And then everything explodes with white.
oOoOoOo
You'd think, what with being so enormous, that there would be somewhere in the base where Sam could smoke in peace. Somewhere indoors, by one of the fireplaces, with a glass of brandy and maybe a dish of pecans and an armchair so that he could read and have Purlorus Jack on his lap, purring away like a rusty chainsaw.
But there isn't.
Dean is a Parent now, and whenever Sam lights up, in spite of protests that it's not actually tobacco filled with deadly carcinogens, just herbs that help with his dreams and his headaches and the sight – and look, Dean it's not like I'd ever use the ones with the medicinal marijuana around her – Dean will make that face that screams, NOT AROUND MY CHILD SAMUEL DAVIS WINCHESTER GET THEE HENCE so hard that Sam can feel the force of Dean's disapproval.
And so Sam takes his smoking kit and the coveted dead-man-robe and goes up to the observatory to smoke and freeze and blow spiteful, lonely smoke rings.
Only this time he's not alone.
Jo is there, glowing like a second moon, pale and smooth and deceptively serene. She sits on the stone ledge of the observatory balcony, the alicorn across her lap spinning rainbow patterns across her borrowed jeans and blouse and the fall of her corn-silk hair. Sam can see her picked out in glorious, prismic detail, like a figure spun entirely out of silver and pearl, so beautiful and pure it's a little heart-breaking.
"Those smell disgusting," Jo says, turning her dark gold eyes on him. "What the hell is that?"
And the spell is broken.
It's such a relief – unicorn she maybe, but she's still the same obnoxious smartass. Sam grins at her and lights up, cupping the flame against the breeze and then blowing grey shapes at her. Sometimes he sees images in the smoke, feathers and swords and running wolves, and once a crow carrying a leaf in its beak.
Jo watches a skull drift past and blows a cloud of frosty air at it, layering it with silver and blue sparks. She smirks at Sam, and then turns her gaze back to the stars. Sam gets through one cigarette and draws one leg up onto the ledge beside her, rolling a second on the inside of his thigh.
"You ready for tomorrow?"
Jo turns those luminous eyes on him.
"I know what I have to do," she says peaceably. "I'm going to do it." A soft sigh. "I don't think I could stop if I wanted too…"
Sam feels a pang. He remembers talking to her, the night before she died, about how she was planning on quitting the field after the apocalypse of thwarted, on going back to her nursing degree and specializing in haematology. She loved hunting, but hunting wasn't what would make her dad proud and wasn't what made her feel good; helping people did.
You can't be a nurse when you're dead, Sam thinks, but you can't do it when you glow in the dark and leave trails of flowers and stardust wherever you walk.
You can help people though. Sam thinks that's maybe half the reason that Jo forgives them for pulling her down out of Heaven. He's still figuring the other half out, but has a good idea; Dean watches her sometimes like she's a wish come true, in between the times when he isn't watching her and oozing guilt and guilty want.
"We'll be there, you know," Sam says, carefully exhaling smoke. A drift of ashy white horses sweep away from him and down the slope of the roof. "You were never going to do this alone."
Jo smiles some secret smile and says, "I know. I'm not afraid."
Then she leans over and clasps his forearm with one surprisingly strong hand.
"SONUVABITCH!" Sam howls as cold lightning lances up his median nerve. "Jo, what the actual…fuck."
Under her palm a peacock feather blooms across his skin, unfurling like a flower in a time-lapse shot.
"What's this for?"
"Luck," says Jo. "The others already have theirs. Charlie wanted me to put hers on her ass, but Dean told her no."
Sam huffs a laugh, gazing at the new tattoo as it shines out at him from the perpetual dark. "Why?"
"He said she wasn't allowed to copy him," Jo says serenely.
Sam chokes on the next drag.
END OF PART ONE
WILL WRITE PART TWO SOONISH