Eye of the Storm
Disclaimer: Must we go over this again and again? You know the drill. I don't own, you don't sue. Oh, the 'God among insects' line is from the second X-Men movie, more or less. The knife-head bit came from the original Buffy movie.
Review Answers:
The Kiss of Death - Lol, you really want this baby to happen, huh? Well, I can say there's a possible maybe of a defintie possiblity that the baby's going to be born happy and healthy (in other words, you can't know yet, lol).
Spuffyshipper - Thank you, have done (lol, finished a lot quicker then I expected). Yeah, poor Sam, explanations here. Yes, hehe, I can and I have (poor Haley).
FireZombie - Yes! Sorry, had to say that, just glad you didn't suspect Sam of being possessed. Thanks.
EmSyd - Thanks.
Chapter 16: Knife's Edge
Haley sighed, leaning her head against the wall, trying to relax, trying to forget about the baby that was, right now, trying to squeeze itself out of her body. What she wouldn't give to be out of her body right now. Then again, it was probably a bad idea to think that, given her record.
Something jolted her from her thoughts, her whole body reacting with a startled shudder. She closed her eyes, reaching out without thinking, searching for the traces of whatever had caused the sudden shock. Since sharing Sam's mind, for lack of a better term, when he had been abducted by the Demon, she had found it… easier for her to use her empathy, as though she had somehow opened a door. It was still more or less out of her control when it came to her deciding what she didn't sense (in most cases it meant she sensed just about everything), but she could at least control it enough to use it more or less on command now.
Her eyes snapped open, briefly flashing black before returning to normal. She'd been close to the source of the disturbance; very close, like almost right on top of it if the experience had been physical. But then she'd brushed the edge of something evil. Something very evil; the Demon was her best guess.
And if it was blocking her from the disturbance- whether intentionally or not- that meant it probably had something to do with it. It meant that Caleb was probably dead. And if Caleb was dead, did that mean-?
Her thoughts were interrupted as the door opened and, much to her relief, Sam walked back in. If she'd felt up to it, she would've thrown herself into his arms to reassure herself that he was there; in the few seconds between her coming to the conclusion that Caleb had been killed by the Demon, and Sam walking back into the room, she'd almost convinced herself that Sam had been killed as well.
"Feeling any better?" Sam asked. Haley shrugged.
"Define better." She said.
"I'll take that as a no." Sam responded. He walked over and sat down beside Haley, and she nodded, leaning her head against his shoulder. The instant they touched, she gave an involuntary shudder and pulled back, her breath quickening. "What is it?" Sam asked. If she'd been able to, Haley would've gotten to her feet and backed away. Since she couldn't, she had to think of something else.
"I… I think something…" She bit her lip. "No, nevermind. I just need a drink of something, uh…" She looked around. "I think I left the water bottle in the car. Could you go get it for me?" Her eyes didn't betray the dishonesty behind the words, seeming as sincere as always. Sam gave her a warm smile that didn't quite reach his eyes; she may not have noticed if she hadn't been looking for it.
"I'll be right back." He said, getting to his feet. Haley waited until she heard the outside door close before reaching for her bag that Sam had brought in with them earlier. Digging down into it, she found a six-inch bladed knife at the very bottom, and pulled it out, turning back around and waiting for Sam to come back into the room, not really believing what she was about to do.
"We must've left it back at the house, 'cause there was-" Sam was cut off as he stepped back into the room by the sound of Haley's knife sailing through the air towards him. His hand flew up, faster then any human possibly could, and caught hold of the knife, catching it by the blade between his middle and ring finger.
"You threw a knife at my head." He exclaimed.
"And you caught it." Haley said. Actually, the knife would've gone right by his head by about a centimetre, but it came pretty close. And it was all the proof Haley needed.
"But… but you threw a knife at my head." Sam repeated. No, not Sam. She knew that now.
"Drop the act." Haley managed through clenched teeth. "I know who you are." Sam watched her for a minute, a mildly amused look on his face. Then the yellow spread out over his pupils. He tossed aside the knife, giving Haley a rather unimpressed look.
"Well, it took you long enough," the Demon said tauntingly. "And here I was thinking I was going to get through this without a hitch." He gave an exaggerated sigh. "But then, I suppose it is better this way. At least now I don't have to keep pretending."
"Let him go." Haley growled.
"No." The Demon said, a smug smile on Sam's lips. "I like being like this, the… power, the… the strength." He smiled, closing his eyes, as if savouring something sweet. Haley glanced at the knife, wondering if- "Don't." The Demon interrupted her thoughts. Sam's eyes opened, still yellow, and he stared at Haley. "Sit down."
"No." She said stubbornly.
"I said: Sit. Down." On the last word, Haley felt something pushing on her, and she was forced down onto the ground. "There, that wasn't so hard now, was it?" The Demon asked. Before Haley could answer, another contraction started. She squeezed her eyes shut; they were getting closer together. Wondering not for the first time if there was something wrong (aside from the premature labour itself), Haley forced her eyes open, glaring at the Demon.
"What do you want?" She managed. "How long has he been like this?" She purposefully avoided actually saying Sam had been possessed, like she was holding onto some false hope that he really wasn't.
"Oh, a while…" The Demon said. "Since… about the time when he found out you'd had a miscarriage." He looked down at Haley, and without warning, the knife lifted off the ground and floated lazily back into his hand.
"So… it was you?" Haley asked. "Why did you help me? Surely there was the possibility I'd sense you if my empathy started working again. Why fix it?"
"Because… there was no possibility." The Demon said simply. "Maybe, before I drank from Sam." He smiled; something else he wanted to savour that sickened Haley. "But no, not now. This is the strongest I've been in years, far stronger then your empathy. And I ought to know. After all…" He leaned in close, cupping her chin with Sam's hand and forcing her to look right into his eyes. "… I gave it to you." Haley's eyes widened.
"What?" She gasped out. The Demon let go of her, knowing he had her full attention now.
"You don't remember, do you?" He asked. "I'm surprised. Most don't remember because they were too young. But you… you managed to escape my notice. Your grandfather's doing, no doubt." He smiled. "It took me a while, but I found you. You, like all the other children, I had to test you." At this point he frowned. "You were far older then all the others. Even then, even without the preparations others had had since the age of six months old, I could see the power that you would have. And I had to make sure it was mine." He turned his full attention back onto her. "So I gave you a gift. One that, until very recently, has remained latent, buried beneath the emotions of your grandmother's talent."
Haley's head was spinning. Not literally of course, but this was beginning to sound a little unbelievable.
"While it's true that some of the women in your family inherit… mild empathic abilities," the Demon continued, "yours is different in one way. Unlike your grandmother, her mother, and her grandmother, you can reach for people. You can touch their minds when they are a thousand mile away with a simple thought." A cold smile came to Sam's lips. "All you needed was the proper trigger." Haley stared into the cold, emotionless yellow eyes that had replaced Sam's own brown ones.
"Sam…" Haley said. "When you took him… that was the first time I… experienced someone else like that… I wasn't just experiencing him. I…"
"You were him," the Demon finished for her. "For the very briefest of moments, at the most basic of levels, you adopted Sam's persona, his thoughts and his perception."
"So why can't I feel him now?" Haley asked, lowering her gaze to the floor, her attention mostly there but also still vaguely aware of the baby that was currently preparing to be born. She didn't really know why she was getting into this conversation with… with the thing that had possessed her husband. There, she'd admitted it.
"You can." The Demon said. "He's in here now… he's screaming, shouting, begging for you…" He smiled, another thing to savour. "… oh… he knows… he knows he can't win." Haley looked up suddenly.
"That…" She trailed off, and then started again, "It's not… it never was the baby I was feeling was it?" She asked. "The feeling of being trapped, of fighting to break free, but not winning. It was Sam." She narrowed her eyes. "Fighting you." The Demon gave a pitying laugh, one that didn't go with the young man who had produced it.
"Yes, well… I wouldn't exactly call it fighting." He said. "More like a nasty little insect that I need to swat at every now and again." A brief wait, like he was expecting Haley to say something. When she didn't, he continued. "He screamed for the first couple of days. Screamed, shouted, yelled, cried. Poor boy was absolutely terrified. Felt like he was back in that coffin." Another of those sweet savour-type moments. Haley thought he was getting way to many of those. "Of course, that was partly my doing. It's amazing the various types of mental tortures one can go through within one's own mind."
"You sick bastard." Haley growled.
"Thank you." Was all the Demon said. Haley let out a small sob as another contraction started. Had it really been that long since her last one? For a moment, Haley thought she actually saw concern flash in Sam's demonically-altered eyes. "Does it hurt?" He asked.
"No, it feels like lots of cute little bunnies hopping around inside my gut," Haley said sarcastically. "Oh, no, wait," she now sounded like she'd thought of something important, "that would hurt. A lot. So yes, it hurts." She looked up at Sam, at the Demon. "Why am I even still alive? And why are you even possessing Sam. I thought once you drank his blood we were as good as Apocalypse-ed." The Demon stared down at her for a few seconds. Then he seemed to realized she was serious.
"You don't know?" He asked. "A month and a half to think about it and you still haven't figured it out?" Haley just stared at him like he was crazy. "Do you love Sam?" He asked. Haley did exactly what the Demon had done to her mere minutes earlier. Stared at him until she realized he was being serious.
"What the hell kind of question is that?" She demanded.
"A very simple one, actually." The Demon said. "Do. You. Love. Him?" Haley glared at him, and he gave a smile. "Fine, if you won't answer on your own, I suppose a little incentive is in order." Before Haley could so much as think, the knife in the Demon's hand had moved. Just not to where she had expected. "So, are you going to answer my very simple question? The Demon asked. "Or would you rather me push this knife a little deeper and watch your husband choke on his own blood?" Haley couldn't believe that she had just put Sam in danger simply because she was too stubborn to answer a simple question like that. "Well, Haley? Sam doesn't have to be alive for me to continue to use his body." She saw a thin line of blood just beneath Sam's chin, a warning where the knife edge had cut a little too deep; it wasn't enough to do any real damage, but definitely the incentive required.
"Yes." She said quickly. "Yes, I love him." She gave the Demon a level glare, and he smiled using Sam's lips, lowering the knife.
"That was nice of you, although Sam may disagree. He might've welcomed a release. Poor boy's going out of his mind," his voice was a mockery of concern. "And I should know; I'm in there with him." Haley glared at him. "Hmmm… tough crowd. Okay, tell me this Haley." He looked down at her swollen belly. "Would you say you love Sam, or the baby more?"
Haley was caught off-guard by the question; it was even stranger then the last one. She just hoped the Demon wasn't about to make her choose between one of them.
"I… I don't know. I love them both the same." She said. And that was the honest truth. The Demon nodded.
"Yes, I thought as much," he said. "You see, that's why I'm stuck possessing your overly-vocal husband instead of now inhabiting a body of my own." Haley's brow furrowed. "Still don't understand? I needed your heart's blood Haley. It's kind of hard to drink all of it when there are two who hold it with them." A second. Five. Ten. That's how long Haley stared at him before it finally dawned on her. "Finally figured it out? Good. I'm stuck in this… primitive form… because you can't make a simple decision on where your heart lies." Before her eyes Haley saw the blade knife in the Demon's hand bend as easily as a noodle, like what one often heard about happening to spoons.
"So… that's why I'm not dead yet?" She asked. Sam's lips twisted into a malicious smile.
"I can't be sure the blood will work if the baby is dead, and it will be dead if I kill you, so yes, that is why you're still alive," his voice was cold, emotionless. "So yes, that's why you're not dead, yet. But don't worry," he leaned in close, so close Haley could feel his breath on her face, there noses almost touching, "I plan to rectify that problem as soon as I get what I want."
As they stared (glared) at each other, the sound of a car engine reached their ears. The Demon turned away from her, listening to the car.
"Don't go anywhere." He said, like she wasn't in the process of giving birth and barely able to stand, and then he left without another word.
As soon as he was gone, Haley crawled back over to her bag. She knew she didn't have long; whoever was outside (she prayed it wasn't anyone she knew) would be dealt with quickly, and then the Demon would be back.
She found a journal tucked in between a sweater and a pair of jeans; it was one she and Sam had begun keeping when they'd given John's back. Haley had been sure to copy an exorcism down in case of emergencies, and this definitely qualified as an emergency.
Laying the journal flat in front of her, open to the page with the exorcism, Haley began to chant in Latin under her breath. At some point, not long after she started, she felt the resounding shockwaves of death echoing towards her empathically, but she ignored it, continuing the exorcism. The words fell easily from her lips, like they always did when she got caught up in an exorcism like this.
She came to the end of the exorcism faster then she expected. Looking up, she was startled to see the Demon standing right there in the doorway. He clapped, a mocking look on his face.
"Very nicely done." He said. "Although, as you've no doubt noticed, quite ineffective." He held up his hand, looking down at the body he was possessing. "I felt it… so did Sam. Really got his hopes up, only to have them cut down like kindling." The look on his face told Haley he found it amusing. "Perhaps, before, that might have worked. But I'm far stronger now. I had to be; without the added strength of Sam's blood, I never would've have been able to possess him in the first place." Haley's eyes widened at that. "Yes, that's right." He smiled, a frightening, power-hungry smile. "You're all powerful in your own way, but Sammy… his power… it's beyond anything I could ever hope for. He is a god among insects…" He sighed with distaste suddenly. "And yet he tethers himself to this… humanity. He could stand by my side, rule there with me when I return to power. But he's a coward. He runs and hides when he should accept his gifts; use them as he was meant to."
Haley just stared at him. Sam was afraid? Was that true? She knew he used to have trouble accepting his gifts, but he'd still used them. Was he really afraid of them? Afraid because of something a demon told him?
She let out a sudden cry as she felt something very close to pain coupled with her contraction. The Demon stared at her, a hungry look in his eyes.
"It's starting." He said ominously. Haley let out a shaky breath, closing her eyes, tears beginning to trail down her face, as much from fear as from pain. Unless Dean suddenly came and kicked down the door, she couldn't see anyway possibly way she was going to get out of this.
-;-
A/N: I know this chapter is mostly filler, but I fell into what I like to call 'Storyteller Mode', where the characters tend to talk a lot about past experiences but the plot itself doesn't go forward very much.