Fic: World Enough and Time = episode 1
Author: Seraphim Grace
Fandom = Supernatural
Pairing = Castiel x Dean (god is love in all it's forms) Sam x Ruby and Canon Female Character,
Rating = NC17
spoilers = season 4 ep 9-18
AUish - set in the world of american gods and sandman but also the spn universe, I just stretched it a little
Notes - Sam Centric, title from Andrew Marvell
suggested by [info]keire_ke
betaed by [info]bellajayd who deserves more praise than me for this - she's certainly doing more work
Episode 2
In which Sam starts to realize just how high a price the Darkness demands for it's service.
Soundtrack: Faith no More - Ashes to Ashes.
Concrete, Washington has one thing to recommend it, a wishing well that actually works.
It's a job that should be routine: find the source, remove it before someone gets killed, and leave before the dust settles. But Heaven has no rage like a love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned and Sam finds himself struck by lightning in broad daylight where the Darkness cannot protect him.
Death is quick and relatively painless.
Sam wakes up with a start, sucking in breath like he hasn't had the chance to in ten years. The town is different, wrapped in a fog thick enough to pull around him like a blanket.
The sky is leprosy grey.
In the window of a shop beside him, the lettering advertises a fundraiser for Alchemilla Hospital. He didn't think Concrete had its own hospital. The ad talks about an upcoming coffee morning and asks for knitted baby caps. Sam feels lost even as he rubs at his head, where he was sure the lightning struck.
When he breathes out, he exhales a cool mist.
He can hear a dog whining in the distance.
Ahead of him is a girl in a black dress, her long black hair is loose about her shoulders, and she looks back at him, and then runs, barefoot, through the streets. Seeing no one else around, and hearing the ghost of her laughter, Sam gives chase.
When he reaches the alley that she vanished into, she is gone.
He can still hear the mockery of her laughter.
It sounds a lot like Jess' used to.
He runs faster, past the garages, past the dumpsters, and the remains of someone's vomit and he thinks if he can run just a step faster, just a breath, he might catch her. Because it's Jess, it has to be.
Just as he reaches the end of the alley a metal gate, with wire lattice panels, slams shut with a metallic clang and a dog leaps out from nowhere. The Darkness catches it as if it's nothing and then there is blood, splashing hard and hot across his face, and the echoing ghost of Jess' laughter.
***
The little girl perches on the garden wall singing "Oranges and Lemons" as she kicks her legs back and forth.
She doesn't have Lilith's demeanor of being old woman in a child's body who's only playing at being young, this girl clearly is a youth. Sam doubts that she's older than six or seven. She looks like Wednesday Addams, in a blue pleated dress and two long black plaits on either side of her head.
"Oranges and lemons sang the bells of St Clemens," she sings as she continues to clack her feet, one after the other in perfect black patent leather shoes and bright white socks, against the stone wall. "You owe me five farthings said the bells of St Martin's." Sam crosses the street so he's next to her. She doesn't stop singing, moving the head of the doll in her hands, "When will you pay me said the bells of Old Bailey?"
"Excuse me," Sam says, stopping beside her, even as tall as he is he's only level with her knees, which are a pale stripe of skin between skirt and sock.
She ignores him, continuing with her song, "When I get rich, says the bells of Shoreditch."
"Excuse me," Sam repeats.
"When will that be, say the bells of Stepney." She is ignoring him.
"I do not know," Sam finishes the rhyme, "say the great bells at Bow."
"I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," the girl says and then, raising her head like an empress at court, she continues to sing but he doesn't know these lines, "two sticks and an apple say the bells of White Chapel."
"I'm looking for a girl, she has black hair. I think she came this way."
"You mean Jess?" The child laughs, "you won't find her. Not here, she'll be at the lighthouse," she smiles to herself like it's the best possible joke, "your Father's quite late, sing the bells of Aldgate."
"She's called Jess?"
"Stupid head, you have to finish the rhyme or the dark things will come," she looks around warily, "you don't want the dark to come, do you? And maids in white aprons sang the bells of St Catherine's." The girl is derisive, and mocking. "Oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clemens."
"What happens when I finish the rhyme? Will I find Jess?"
"No," she answers calmly, "You've got to go to the lighthouse, she's waiting there, but the rhyme," she jumps down off the wall, though it must be seven feet high, out of sight, leaving him with the last lines of the rhyme. "Here comes the chopper to chop off your head, chip-chop chip-chop and the last man is dead."
He hears the rustling of her running through the grass and she is gone.
***
The bells ring out in a cacophony, each one starting at a different time from a different direction in the fog.
Sam feels like he's been walking for hours.
Time doesn't seem to feel right in this place, like sound, it is dampened by the ever present fog.
She collides into him like a football tackle, a mess of curls and stained fabric, "Run!" she shouts pulling him by the hand, "the dark is coming, run!" She has him in a death grip and isn't letting go, pulling him so hard he has to run to keep up with her. "Run!" She repeats, "we've got to get inside!"
She fumbles at the door of one of the houses with the key, scratching the lock before she manages to get it open, pulling him inside as the bells toll. She wedges the door shut. All the other doors in the hallway are nailed closed with great boards over them. "Come on," she says again, "the dark is coming. You don't want to be caught in it."
She has a nest under the house, hidden behind the washer and drier, piled high with stinking blankets and abandoned food wrappers. She is spindly grey and smells of sour milk. Her hair is matted and she guides him into her nest and in the back of his head the darkness whispers, "Won't you come into my parlour said the spider to the fly."
Sam wakes to the feel of the woman's hand over his mouth. She has a hooded lantern on the floor between them, and her the index finger of her other hand pressed to her lips.
So, he listens.
There are soft even footfalls outside, a weight landing on metal grills and behind him, there is the sound of metal dragging against metal. It's as if someone is walking patiently, listening, and then pulling a point behind them.
He must have been snoring if she is so adamant that he be quiet. She nods seeing that he understands and lays one of her blankets over the lantern so that her little nest is shrouded in black.
He is suddenly hyper aware of the sound of the knife dragging on the concrete in the street, the footfalls, the erratic beating of her heart and the sickly sweet stink of her.
He can't help but think that the footsteps are coming closer.
Sam sinks back into the foul smelling blankets, feeling safe, arrogant in the Darkness, and goes back to sleep.
He wakes this time to a wet mewling followed by a terrible splash. Then he hears footsteps, slowly climbing the stairs out of the basement they're hiding in.
Whoever the woman is, she's gone.
The walls are tainted with rust and corruption and the floor tiles are lifted in places.
There is a bloodstain and mess of meat all over the open floor.
Written across the wall in some dark liquid, thick brush strokes is a message.
in my restless dreams i see that town,
you promised you'd take me there again someday
but you never did
well i'm alone there now
in our special place
waiting for you.
The message is punctuated by a bloody handprint. A woman's handprint.
He knows the handwriting, he'd know it anywhere, it belongs to Jess.
Sam opens the door but instead of the foggy street of the town he has found himself in it's the Chinese restaurant and Wes is standing there looking lost and a dark haired girl who looks at him without recognising either of them.
"I'm not done with you yet," the Darkness whispers in his ear, and it has Jess' voice and it's as if she is standing behind him, draped along his shoulder, reaching up on her tip toes so that her mouth is right beside his ear, "My dear, dear Sammy-boy."
And running through his head is the rather jaunty tune of "Oranges and lemons."
***