A/N: My cute cockatiels! I find it hilarious that right after I warn you guys that I'm going to be slower to update than usual, I start uploading new chapters like lightning. The main reasons are thusly: 1) I've basically given up on trying to write anything else until this story is finished. 2) I happened to have a lot of time on my hands the past couple days. 3) I'm finally getting to the point in the story that I've been thinking about FOR LITERALLY MONTHS and now that I know how it all basically plays out from here, my feverish desire to get out this last leg of the story is growing by the minute. It's like when you run a mile in four laps, and the first 3 laps you keep up a steady pace and by the last lap you're sweaty and exhausted, but then you're like FUCK IT, IT'S THE LAST LAP LET'S GIVE HER ALL SHE'S GOT, CAPTAIN and even though you still have a quarter mile to go you just run like the dickens until you drop dead at the finish line.
That's how I run, anyways. And by "run" I mean "jog laboriously and weep."
Also, you guys reviewed the heck out of the last chapter and I feel it's only fair to reward you and further ingrain my Pavlovian training of you. I'm glad to hear that you guys like how the last chapter was written because I'm always nervous about action sequences. In my head I can see a very clear video of what's happening but describing it can be difficult, and I usually want to just write "AND THEN THEY FOUGHT AND SHE KICKED HIS BUTT AND IT WAS AWESOME." So I'm glad to hear it worked and all.
ANYWAY, enjoy this insanely early chapter! I can't promise the next one will be anything near as quick but I'll certainly try.
P.S. For any of you who don't speak English as a first language, there's an idiom that goes "If wishes were horses then beggars would ride." Meaning much like what it sounds like, that wishing is useless. I reference it here and I didn't want anyone to be confused.
The Island of Ogygia
A strange boat washes up on Calypso's shore.
She's on the beach that morning, crouched and playing with the little yellow crab that scuttled out from under a piece of driftwood. She teases it with her finger and smiles at the way it waves its pincers at her. Then she hears something scrape against the sand, and she gets up to investigate.
A small dinghy has been pushed ashore by the lapping tide. A purpling arm hangs over the side, and her heart sinks and her footsteps slow; she'll have to push it out to sea again.
Then she hears a low muffled moan. She quickens and runs to the boat, kicking up sand behind her.
Inside, there's a man lying inside across from the discolored corpse, chapped lips and reddish scruff and his arm strewn over his eyes. His clothes and face are crusted with salt and blood and grime and the whole boat reeks of death.
"Excuse me," she says, leaning over him, throwing her shadow onto his face. "Are you alright?"
The man's arm droops forward, and he rolls his head to the side and coughs. "Begging," he wheezes. "Begging to die. She said I'd beg."
"Can you get up?" she asks. "Come with me into the shade." She reaches in warily and gingerly touches his arm.
He flinches away from her touch and coughs again. "Can't leave Sammy," he says. "Takin' him home."
She glances at the corpse.
Sammy.
"Your friend is dead," she tells him quietly. "You have to leave him here."
The man's body shudders, and his chin trembles. "He's my brother," he cries in a torn sandpaper voice. "I promised him!"
She makes a decision, and slides her hand under his arm. "We'll come back for him. We won't be long. Just come with me and have a drink."
The man sucks in a ragged breath, and lets her pull him up.
…..
They hobble together to her lean-to, her home when she's on the beach. It's not much, but it has everything she needs – a swath of blue striped linen strung between green palm trees, offering shade; clay jugs heavy with clear spring-water; a bed made of dried palms and covered with sheets of soft island cotton. She lowers Dean onto the bed and uncorks a jug, drawing out a cupful of water with a split coconut husk. He takes it with shaky hands and drinks desperately, spilling down his chin and on his tattered shirt.
He hands the husk back to her, and she refills it.
After drinking several cups he blinks and looks around, seeming to come to senses. She breathes a silent sigh of relief, because the truly mad are difficult to treat and often die quickly. Then he looks at her and blinks again.
"You're naked," he says.
She had forgotten. "I wasn't expecting visitors," she explains, and she leaves him to go get a wrap from her clothesline. She picks out a thin pale blue one, because it looks nice on her white skin and lets the warm breeze breathe through. When she returns, the man is standing, looking at her collection of trinkets and shells she keeps in the corner.
"Who are you?" she asks.
He turns, and his eyes stop on her, darting to different points of her – her face, her hips, her feet. He's trying to unravel her, to understand her. It's a look she knows well.
Finally he clears his throat. "I'm Dean Winchester."
No.
Her eyes widen, and her throat squeezes tight. "You're Dean Winchester? Lucky Dean?"
The man laughs sharply, bitterly. "Please," he says, "don't call me that."
She nods. "If you're Dean, then I'm afraid that…" She licks her lips and summons her strength. "I have to take you prisoner. Poseidon's orders."
He raises an eyebrow.
"You are now my prisoner," she informs him.
He eyes around skeptically, gesturing one hand to the lean-to, the beach. "This is a prison?"
She looks around at the beauty before them, the calm lapping water on the maple-sugar sand, the shady oasis and sparse hardy grasses, the glossy-feathered finches picking at ripe sun-kissed seedpods, and she knows that he cannot see the lonely way the island sits in the middle of the sea or the way the birdcalls sound like sad voices in the night.
"Yes," she answers.
Dean rubs the back of his neck. "May I ask whom I have the pleasure of being imprisoned by?"
She does not want to give him her true name. It will sound cold and distant, and she wants to be warm and familiar and a friend. So she tells him, "I have had many names. You can call me Anna."
"Anna," Dean repeats.
She likes the way it sounds in his voice.
He smiles a little and steps forward. He's taller and larger than her, and he seems to size her up. "Anna," he says with false pleasantry, "you seem like a nice girl and all, but I have to get going. I promised Sam I'd get him back to England and that's a promise I intend to keep."
"I'm a Nereid," Anna blurts. "I can keep you here by force!" She conjures up a small purple flame in hand and blooms it, letting it snap and crackle inches from his face.
Dean steps back, hands up, wariness in his eyes. "Alright. Alright."
They stand there for awhile, the purple flame flickering, and Anna meets his stubborn gaze with her own uncertain defiant one.
Eventually she puts out the flame and lowers her hand, and quietly says, "We have to bury your brother, Dean."
Dean's mouth twists tight. "No," he tells her. "I'll do it myself."
…..
This island is the strangest prison Dean's ever experienced.
He supposes it would be worse if he could feel things anymore, but these days he's mostly just numb. He wishes he could return to England and raise his son, and he knows it's the only thing he has left to live for, but then if wishes were horses Dean would have a whole fucking ranch. So he lives in Ogygia instead.
It's a pleasant island.
He and Anna spend time on the beach, swimming and chasing the lizards that burrow in the sand. They collect seashells and pretty rocks, and Dean finds the tiniest little starfish and they dry it and Anna pins it in her hair. She teaches him how to tame the finches and lure them into your hand; she teaches him what fruits and berries are good and which are poison. They pull in nets of fish together and dry them over a spit and eat like kings. They don't wear much clothing, as there's no one to see them. Anna wraps a loose cloth around her or goes naked and Dean is content with a pair of linen shorts she sewed him. She has a loom farther inland and she dyes and weaves the fabric herself, though he's sure she could magic it. They hike up to the freshwater spring in the forest and collect water in buckets; it's cold and tangy where it comes up from the ground.
Months pass. Dean grows browner and his hair grows blonder, but Anna's skin stays white as ever and her hair remains dark henna red.
Sometimes he talks about Sam or Cas or his other dead friends, and she listens. She asks little questions but never the big ones, which he appreciates. She never talks about her past and he doesn't press, but he leaves a space there for her to speak it if she wants. The days are hot and thirsty and the nights are thickly warm, and sometimes they sleep out on the sand and gaze up at the stars and wait for the tide to wake them. Other nights they fall asleep together in Anna's lean-to, too warm to touch but close enough to hear the other breathing.
Often Dean goes out to the place where he buried Sam, marked with a crudely fashioned cross. When he comes back, Anna can somehow always tell, and she sits him down in the lean-to and gives him wood to whittle and tells him stories about Yellow Squid and Blue Whale, which as far as Dean can tell are nursery rhymes for Nereids or something. She makes chirpy high voices for Yellow Squid and silly deep voices for Blue Whale to make him laugh, and soon Dean knows the stories so well that he can do the Blue Whale parts himself. But then he realizes it's funnier if he says the squeaky Yellow Squid lines and Anna tries to make her girlish voice low, and that's how they do it from then on.
Dean pitches his best falsetto. "But Blue Whale, I can't sing! the Yellow Squid cried."
"Then clap your hands," Anna booms, "the Blue Whale replied."
Dean can't help but smile at the faces she makes for her Blue Whale voice.
"And Whale sang and Squid clapped, they made music together, and they stayed best of friends forever and ever." She rests her head on Dean's shoulder and sighs. "The End."
Dean sets aside his whittling and puts his arm around her shoulder. "Squids don't have hands, you know."
"Yes they do." Anna nuzzles into him and wraps her arms around him. "They have two long tentacles, longer than the rest, and at the ends they have round sticky hands."
They sit and watch the tide ebb out together, and the sun sets before them in the indigo sky.
"Anna," Dean says, "you have to let me go back to England."
Her arms tighten on him.
"I have a son there," he tells her. "I have to be there for him."
"I can't," Anna whispers.
Dean turns his head to look her in the eye. "Can't, or won't?"
She gazes back at him with her big brown eyes, and then presses forward and kisses him.
They make love in the lean-to, and it feels almost inevitable. There's too much loneliness and companionship between them for their lives to unfold any other way, and it's good, if a little hollow. She's a beautiful woman, naturally beautiful, bare and unafraid, and she's soft and gentle and caring. Her mouth tastes sweet and Dean thinks her hair smells like lilacs and ginger blossoms.
The next morning they pack up and travel inland for the rainy season, to a cave that Anna calls her "forest home." The forest around them is lush and dense with life, and the large cave offers shelter from the tropical monsoons. She's carved a chimney out of the rock and they light fires fed with fragrant cypress wood, and they roast the wild pig Anna spears and sleep together on a bed of quilted furs and dried moss. In the darkness when the wind howls outside and Anna snuggles up against him Dean can almost believe he is happy.
When the emptiness in his gut tells him otherwise, Dean wakes Anna up with a kiss and makes love to her again, trying to drown out the silence of his heart.
….
A year goes by.
Dean asks Anna from time to time about leaving, but she never gives in. She tries to distract him with whatever's handy, planning expeditions down to the beach for shell-collecting or up to the jungle for tree-climbing adventures. They learn to imitate monkey calls and Dean teachers her checkers with some colored rocks and a board drawn in the dirt. He finally tells her the story of how he was born in North Carolina but a marauder killed his mother when he was four, and he spent the rest of his childhood being raised on a pirate ship by the most infamous pirate of them all. He tells her how he looked out for Sam and the mingled pain and pride he felt when Sam ran away to England to become a doctor. He tells her about his father's disappearance and Jessica's death, and how he dragged Sam back into the life that would eventually kill him. He tells her about burying his father and finally killing Yellow Eyes. He tells her about Sam getting caught and sold to the authorities by Gordon and condemned to the galley, and how Dean bribed his way into taking his place, the agonizing months of slavery that followed, how he escaped during a bloody shipwreck and reunited with Sam. He tells her how they set sail for England for the last time.
"And then Cas came aboard." Dean draws a line in the sand with a charred stick. "And everything changed."
Anna watches his face, even though he doesn't meet her eye. She always acts like his stories are engrossing. "And you became friends?"
Dean pushes the sand with his stick. "Not at first," he admits. "And not just friends."
She trails her fingers softly across his arm. "Brothers," she whispers.
Dean shakes his head. "No. Different."
She doesn't say anything, just keeps her hand on his arm.
"You remind me of him, a little." Dean sets down his stick and props his elbow on his knee and looks at her.
She nods. "We're both Nereid. Born of the sea."
"Are you guys – are you guys actually born?" he asks, curious.
"Well, we are created," she explains, "and we are created as grown beings, but we experience... a youngness. In our first years we are young, and we don't know anything, and the older ones teach us about the world."
"Yellow Squid and Blue Whale," Dean comments.
Anna smiles. "Exactly!"
And then Dean doesn't know where it comes from but the words suddenly bubble up in his chest and he blurts, "He said he loved me, Anna."
Anna tilts her head slightly and slides her hand down to cover his.
"The last thing he said to me was that he loved me." Dean's throat tickles and he looks down to the sand. "And it sounded… like he meant it."
She twines her fingers through Dean's. "Did you love him back?"
Dean closes his eyes, and his face heats up.
"You don't have to be ashamed, Dean," she whispers. "Love is not easy. You should be proud."
"I'm ashamed because…" Dean swallows tightly. "Because he gave his life for me, and the last thing I said to him was 'Don't speak to me.'" He gives a painful half-chuckle and opens his eyes again. "Some love, huh?"
Anna kisses his shoulder. "The last words aren't important," she tells him. "What's important are the words you meant the most."
Just so we're clear –
This is good, so good, so fucking good.
When Dean falls asleep that night, Anna's hand on his heart and her red hair fanned around her, he wonders if she only said that to make him feel better, and hopes that somehow it's really true.