Authors note: I wrote this for my Apocalyptothon recipient cjmarlowe before the start of Season 5 of Supernatural so technically there are no spoilers. However, turns out I was pretty good at guessing! Cjmarlowe asked for "Supernatural post-apocalyptic survival-fic; AU and/or non-canon apocalypse scenario totally okay. Mega bonus points for having a significant role for the women of Supernatural." I tried to deliver and I've finally got a little time to put it up here!
Enjoy!
When You Are Done
She'd seen something like this once, before she died. On the news, one report of many where SCUD missiles were bombarding a city somewhere, tearing the sky apart with coruscating light, blooming bright with blossoms of livid death. She remembered feeling that distant, removed shock as she saw it; sharp horror that it was happening but underneath, a sweet secret relief that it wasn't happening here.
This was different. The contrails in the boiling sky were the falling of angels and demons burning up like meteors, impacting the earth with nuclear bright death knells. It was everywhere, the noise a solid thing that punched at the gut, the charred scents of destruction cloying and choking as smoke pulled over the earth in a shroud, burying them all. She stared at them as she reloaded another gun, and wrenched her blade from a demon heart and they clawed ragged light across her retinas, glorious even in their destruction. It was a never-ending nightmare where time stretched and twisted to years and back to heartbeat moments, ebbing and flowing in the mind, as survival burned, survival and purpose, driving them on.
It was fight fight fight, shapes in the darkness, friends and foes, blood and bone driving the conflict on. Some cowering before the beasts, others clawing tooth and nail with holy fervor or just focused self-preservation as time warped and twisted around them all. The noise went on forever, the trembling of the earth, the thunderclaps rolling their war-drums over the darkening sky.
It was the end of the world, and a coil of bitter thick roiling smoke tried to overwhelm her, and that fight was hard as she fought enemies she couldn't really see or understand but suddenly could strike down. This apocalypse was a terrible as words of prophecy had predicted and for an ending it went on a hell of a long time. Time enough for her to lie down and reach for death again as a friend.
There were no friends here at the end of the world.
Eventually she opened her eyes, looking up at the unfamiliar silent sky, her hand reaching automatically for a weapon without thinking about it. She had no idea where she was or what she was doing here, with only the dream memories seeming vivid. Now, things seemed ended. The smoke gasped the torment of the earth across stained skies but the noise had finally ceased, and incongruously, she could hear a bird singing in a half burnt tree.
She couldn't stay staring at the sky forever. She pushed herself up, seeing for the first time bodies around her, the sheer number of them making their presence unreal to her mind. But there was someone else moving near her, staggering almost -- an older woman, dark blonde hair tied back, blood streaking her face and with a hardness in her eyes that didn't miss her small movement.
"Who won?" she asked in a dry rasping voice as if she would know.
Because that was more important than remembering her name or stating the obvious of 'holy fuck, that was Armageddon, and here I am'. No, it was important to know who had won.
She didn't know who had won, because behind her eyes, angels still screamed loud enough to tear the air into shreds, and demons exploded, and fire rose up as flesh clawed on flesh. Then it stopped, and those who were left standing, were left standing.
There was only one answer.
"No one," Jess said and the smoke rose up forever.
So it turned out even after the end of the world you could be hungry and thirsty because having a body back brought home the selfish demands of the flesh. Jess had forgotten that, but Ellen, as it turned out her name was after they stopped staring and actually got to talking, had to have been one among the living at the End of the World. She was the one finding weapons among the dead, who appeared to be smouldering their way into grey corpse ash without any help and in defiance of normal physics.
All Jess could think of was a CSI episode she had seen once where they performed an experiment and made a pig carcass smolder its way to fine ash, and it was surreal staring at the flames and remembering.
Flames licking around her body, a cloak of searing heat, Moments of shriveling skin that fought with the shock numbed pain in her gut as she looked down into Sam's eyes and for the first time saw a world end...
"You a Lazarus?" Ellen asked, as she checked over the ammo she was finding, pushing Jess out of her thoughts.
"I was murdered, before," Jess answered as she filled a bag. Lazarus? A new word, now a noun rather than a miracle. She was a Lazarus, raised from the dead to fulfill a purpose. "Then I was here, alive and fighting to stay that way."
"Hmm," Ellen said, her mouth a thin line. She was looking at her suspiciously. "You should be dead again. "
"Guess I'm just lucky," Jess replied a little tartly and then wondered if that was true. "And hungry. What are we doing?"
"I am going to find out what is going on." Ellen replied. She seemed angry and Jess wasn't sure exactly why she was reacting that way. The apocalypse wasn't her fault, and she didn't like the way she was being looked at as though she were a waste of space.
"So, we just striking off in a random direction until we meet someone?" she asked a little facetiously. For the first time she realized she was wearing really inappropriate clothing. No wonder she'd been identified as a ... Lazarus. She came back in a mish-mash of favorite clothes. That favorite pair of shoes, with those favorite pants, and the other top, none of which that matched and most of which had a history of blood, fire, or blade now marring their comfort.
"No." Ellen replied looking across the road still drifting with smoke, to houses that looked empty and dead. "We're going to find some gear, pick up a car and then find someone who can tell us where the Winchester boys are. I guess that means John came back too. No wonder it's Hell on earth."
"Winchester?" Jess paused. "Sam Winchester?" She shivered a little as she looked around. It looked worse now there was silence. Eerie and grey with smoke and the smell of burning meat filling the air.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding," Ellen said with a twist to her expression. "You know Sam Winchester?"
"I was his girlfriend," she said. "A... demon killed me." Such a simple way of describing that flash memory of heat and pain.
"The pinned to the ceiling and incinerated girlfriend?" Ellen said slowly studying her a little more. "You know, the reason you survived that last blast without the levels of protection I have is starting to become obvious."
It might be obvious to her, but it wasn't to Jess. "Oh, great."
"Either it's something to do with him, or the fact that you were an innocent Martyr," Ellen said as if everything she was saying was making complete sense. "Like… another shield of armor."
"Listen, Ellen... how do you know all of this? How do you know Sam? What's going on?" Jess snapped out, feeling a bit shaky. It kept nudging at her that this was the end of the world somehow and that was more important.
"Sam ain't who you think," Ellen answered brusquely. "Not any more. But if you were saved and I was saved, out of the hordes of dead from the past and the present living, I reckon that shows he had a lot to do with this. And maybe..."
"Maybe what?" Jess pushed a little impatiently.
Whatever Ellen was going to say she seemed to change her mind. "If they made it, they'll head for Bobby's. That's where they go when they're really hurt. Any hunter will head there for answers. Bobby's the go to guy for demons and angels, and it doesn't get much more demonic and angelic than the apocalypse."
"Oh." Jess had nowhere to go, no other plan to follow. The fields around them were littered with slowly smoldering bodies, reducing themselves to an impossible light ash, covering the world like bitter snow. Nowhere looked familiar. "I want to see Sam," she said finally, not wanting to accept that the odds were her family was dead now and everyone she had ever known.
"Think you might have to form an orderly line on that one," Ellen said. "Let's get ourselves some weapons, some transportation. If we survived, then it stands to reason some of the other side did too. Pick up what salt you can find and any crosses. We'll stop by the church, see what the deal is there. Oh and pick up food, while we're at it.. Gonna be a long haul, Jess."
She figured that much. As far as she could tell, they had all the time in the world.
She had to keep telling herself that she wasn't stupid. She really wasn't. She'd been at Stanford, and that wasn't a cakewalk to get into and if she hadn't been killed, resurrected and subsequently survived the end of the world, then she'd been looking at a successful career and a good life. Right now, she felt pretty damn stupid as Ellen had taken charge, shown her as if explaining to a two year old about setting a salt line and wards.
The only reason she didn't scoff and call her crazy was she remembered catching Sam doing that once, surreptitiously.
"Sam? What're you doing?" she said as he looked at her, half bent over and salt canister in his hands. He looked at her slightly guiltily.
"Uh, nothing?" he replied and he had that puppy dog look about him that made him look so appealingly uncertain.
"Really? It's a whole lot of salty nothing then," she said moving closer, curious now.
He looked sheepish, glancing down at the glittering white crystals. "It's to stop ants coming in," he said, as if aware he sounded foolish. "We used to stay with a friend of the family some summers and he said putting down salt stopped the... ants getting in. I hate ants."
She giggled. "C'mere, you weirdo. I'll protect you from the Evil ants."
He grinned and scooped her up swinging her around. "My hero," he said with a smile and kissed her in a way that made sure salt lines and term papers and the color of the sky were all completely out of her head.
Salt lines. She'd thought it was a joke, Sam just being a little bit weird, because everyone went to college a little weird and came out even weirder. But apparently, these were the tools of survival in a world of demons and supernatural creatures. Salt. Knives of silver. Holy relics.
They collected a trunk full and were an hour's drive away from where they woke before she had the courage to say to Ellen. "If Heaven lost, will any of this stuff work anymore?"
For a moment there was a pang of satisfaction in seeing a look of stunned shock pass over the older woman's face. She hadn't thought of that, that the 'tools' they used might've had the plug pulled on their power source.
"Can't rightly tell," Ellen answered after a long pause. "But a shotgun blast will make pretty much anything hesitate. And salt is elemental, not holy."
The roadside was littered with cars, tossed out of the way by impossible forces. Some of them were twisted and half melted as if a dragon had chewed on it. Jess had to suppress a near hysterical giggle.
She had a horrible feeling that she was on the verge of some sort of breakdown. Her thoughts were flying and random; they shied away from her death, and from the sense memories of blood, fire and a defiant rage in an endless battle. They tumbled like the smoke rising up from every corpse around them. She probably should offer to drive but right now, her thoughts were too random.
"Where's this Bobby guy live?" she asked, grateful for the four-wheel drive as they took a detour off road to bypass a crater. Ellen seemed as grimly focused as ever.
"South Dakota." Ellen answered, looking at the road straight ahead.
"You really think he'll be alive?" Jess said after another mile. The odds were against it. She had memories of the world being filled as the dead returned to battle once more, choosing their sides and of all the dead like her, and the living, the only ones left there was her and Ellen.
"Girl, if Bobby Singer didn't make it through the apocalypse then we might as well find ourselves a decent grave right now and go and get comfortable," Ellen said as if this was a self-evident truth.
"I don't even know what he does. Or what Sam does now," Jess said. "He went away for the weekend and...."
There had been that brother of his who seemed secret and Sam only ever mentioned when drunk, or sometimes when he wasn't sleeping well he called out his name. He never wanted to talk about him, or his family much and she hadn't pressed, figuring it hadn't been a brilliant home life from his scars. There had been times she'd wondered about abuse, but Sam hadn't been touch shy with her.
"There was a brother. He hadn't seen him for years? Turned up and..."
"Things all went to hell," Ellen correctly predicted. "Yeah, Dean had that sort of effect." Her hand clutched the driving wheel in a white knuckle grip. "You start feeling sorry for yourself, I'll tell you their story. That'll put any drama in perspective."
"It's a long trip." Jess pointed out. "Not like there's much traffic to worry about."
Ellen actually cracked a small faint smile and Jess blinked in shock. It was all the more startling for its complete absence until this point.
"Okay, good point. Guess I've got nothing better to do." Ellen admitted. "Okay, well you gotta understand, the Roadhouse was a hunter bar and after a few drinks, the stories that'd make your hair curl would come tumbling out..."
Jess settled back to listen. Maybe Sam would be at South Dakota, maybe he wouldn't, but they might find someone else on the way. Surely other people had survived the final battle.
Despite everything, here and now at the end of the world she had returned to how she had begun: a hunter, with a hunter's reflexes and instincts. A fighter who had come risen like a phoenix out of her own ashes, and taken a righteous revenge on the creatures that had spawned all of this...
It sounded a lot more dramatic when she thought of it like that, bearing no resemblance to the fear and stupid panic that sometimes kicked in during a fight for her life. It didn't say much about the shitty aftermath of walking through streets of the dead, as they burned slowly away around her leaving the air acrid, or having to get into a store and sew up a couple of nasty gashes on her newly resurrected body before she sat down and tried not to cry.
"Mary! Come on, girl; stop feeling sorry for yourself in there. I ain't got all day."
Her shotgun was in her hand automatically, trained on the earthy looking woman who came in through the storefront. She seemed completely unconcerned.
"Who... who are you?" she stammered out, looking at her. She looked familiar somehow.
"And there I was thinkin' I'd made more of an impression," the woman replied. "I met you once, honey, but I must've had terrible manners, I didn't introduce myself at the time, what with you bein' dead an' all. No excuse. Call me Missouri."
"...I don't think I know you," Mary replied. How had she survived? She was no fighter.
"No girl, I'm a psychic," Missouri answered the unspoken question. "Wouldn't be much of one if the Apocalypse didn't rattle my cage some, would I??"
"A psychic. I remember, Sam and Dean..." The images came blurred to her mind.
"Those poor boys," Missouri shook her head. "Poor, poor boys of yours. " She sighed again. "They didn't stand a chance."
Mary sat up. "What? Are they..."
"Oh, honey, I didn't mean that, no," Missouri answered as she picked up medical supplies without even looking, but seeming to select with great precision nonetheless. "No, I was meaning, with Heaven and Hell both backing them into a corner and taking shots at them both, like shootin' fish in a barrel."
"So they are alive?" Mary pressed. "And John?"
"Now, normally I could tell you right away," Missouri said calmly. "But, right now things are soaked with energies. Heavens, I may be stronger now, but that don't mean I can find a needle in a field of haystacks. Now, are you comin'?"
Mary blinked. "Coming where?"
"You didn't think we were going to stop here, did you, girl?" the black woman remonstrated, as she headed out of the shop, and Mary decided to follow. "We have places to go. People to find. I'm all packed and ready. Considerin' you died here some time ago, you've got your clothes there you're standing up in and that's it, honey. We can pick up things on the way."
Mary looked at the bus that was parked out front that Missouri was heading toward. "Like what?" It seemed a little excessive.
"Like people of course," Missouri replied, as if that was obvious. "There are people out there. We're like weeds the human race; you never quite stamp us out. We'll all be heading the same way, Mary girl."
Mary was finding this very disorientating, being known by someone who she only dimly remembered. "Where're we going?" She wanted to find John, to find her sons. Perhaps her father and mother were still alive, as everyone had come back. "I'm not going anywhere without good reason."
Missouri fixed her with a penetrating gaze. "You're a hunter, girl. Them as we'll be pickin' up will need the sort of help you can give 'em."
Mary shook her head. "I hadn't done that for years, I wanted to be normal."
The older woman snorted. "What you do can't change what you are in the bone, honey. You got chosen, your whole family. It was in your blood and more than that -- you went for a poltergeist after you had passed yourself, and won. Got to be something in your soul for that. Now, time's a wastin'. South Dakota's a fair way, even before all this."
"South Dakota..." It sounded like she should know who or what was there but couldn't place it.
"Trust me," Missouri said. "If your boys or John are alive, that's where they will be heading. Everyone will be heading there one way or another."
Mary wasn't sure what she meant by that, but instinct agreed with what she was saying, so she got into the bus, and took the driver's seat. How hard could it be to get there? A few days tops and then she would know what had happened to her family.
"Give me one good reason why I don't just shoot you now?" Jo couldn't believe that she had been relieved to see another person, even her.
"Oh, please, so I made it out of Hell. It's not the first time someone has managed it." The English accent was fast losing its novelty. "In fact, everyone made it out, so what's the problem?"
"The problem is you tried to steal my truck!" Jo shot back as they drove through drifting smoke. "There's just been the fucking apocalypse and the first thing you do is to steal the one truck that belongs to someone still alive!"
"Don't be such a drama queen. I said I was sorry." Bella tossed her hair back and Jo was privately glad to see the wince from the woman's injured shoulder. "It was the only vehicle that was stocked up and ready to go. You threw water in my face!"
"Holy water," Jo corrected gritting her teeth. "You know, now I've met you I'm even more amazed Dean didn't kill you on sight. And that you didn't go demon."
"The hordes of Hell were too busy with our rugged handsome piece of hellhound puppy chow meat to focus on the likes of the rest of us," Bella said with that flippant tone that really wound her up.
"Damn you, bitch, you stole the Colt. He wouldn't've gone if not for you!" She nearly hit another crashed car and cursed.
"He made that deal ahead of meeting me, sweetheart," Bella said with saccharine sweetness. "He's not the sharpest knife in the box. Why are you defending him anyway? I thought you and he... well, the whole hunters-in-love fantasy didn't even get off the ground. Bonding over the still cooling body of a monster, having mad passionate life affirming sex every night... was that how it went?"
Jo found her blood boiling. "Shut the fuck up. I take it back, you are a demon!"
To her surprise, the mercenary laughed. "I think you'll find I was always this annoying even before I went to Hell. It's a talent I've honed over the years."
"You're a goddamn genius at it," Jo said. "Why are you coming anyway?" Why had she agreed to bring her along? Partly because she had walked the streets for three days and found no one except for her in the decimated town.
"What else am I going to do? Besides, I heard some things in Hell," Bella answered evasively.
"What sort of things?" Jo asked and cursed as they bounced in a pothole. "Shit."
"Did you know Dean started this?" Bella said and that was enough. That was fucking well enough. She slammed on the brakes.
"Get out! You lying bitch, get out!"
Bella just looked at her with that supercilious expression. "Oh, really? And you know I'm lying how? It's the truth. Dean was the first Seal. He was the Righteous Man. Not his daddy. Do you know how hard it is to get a truly Righteous Man into Hell?"
"The other hunters thought it was John Winchester," Jo said, thinking despite her anger. She'd been ready to blame him, wanted to blame him and even that association had soured her taste for Dean. "Why are you even telling me this?" she said finally. "The Apocalypse has happened, our asses have been kicked and there's not that many of us left."
"More than you'd think," Bella said. "Couple of us in a small town? Think how many that would be in a city. From all eras of history as well, and from each side of the border. We've got corporeal demons and angels and all the others. I want to be with a group of people who are well trained in putting them down and you're heading towards other hunters, right?"
Jo had to agree to that. "Yeah. If my mom made it, she'd head to Bobby's. So would any hunter worth his salt."
"So, you better not waste time being touchy about things and trying to throw me out," Bella suggested, sitting back. "It's going to take a while to get there with you swerving all over the road."
Jo breathed out slowly through her nose. You'd need the patience of a saint not to hit the woman. How the hell Dean had managed it she didn't know. She turned the ignition again.
"Bella?"
"Yes?"
"Shut the fuck up."