That's A Real Life Bronze Age Priestess Sammy
Chapter 20
Please read notes at the end before, for trigger warning.
"I'm not being 'invasive', Muwatti, as you are accusing me of. I was only asking about your god-fighting magical abilities, and why didn't you share something as goddamn big as that. Again. Son of a bitch." Shouted an irritated Dean, while resisting the urge to pull over the Impala, only to scream on top of his lungs at the heavens, and more importantly, at her.
"I do not have magical abilities. I certainly don't have the ability to fight gods. And as far as the telling you part, you have seen my family, did they look like the kind of people who would encourage information-sharing and open-dialogue? If there's something I have decided to not talk about, I bloody well will not talk about it." Countered an incandescent Muwatti, while trying to convince herself that she shouldn't order Dean to drive all of them off the road, and into a really big tree.
"Who was fighting a god? Was this a case? Hello? Am I not audible? Hello?" Asked a thoroughly confused Castiel, currently on the phone, and on the speaker, more accurately.
And an exhausted Sam was trying and failing to fight off his headache, while regretting so much. Especially the fact that he was surrounded by children. Very loud and very immature and incredibly headache-inducing children.
His brother momentarily looked towards him, as if to ask why are you being so damn quiet. Well, of course he's not saying anything. With his track record of putting his foot in his mouth when it comes to Muwatti and the volatile nature of the conversation/interrogation happening around him, and Dean really doing his best to be the bad cop, him saying basically fucking nothing was the best thing Sam could think of doing, thank you very much. Dean made his 'yeah, you're probably right brother' face and decided to drop the subject.
They were on the road once more, just a few hours out of Michigan, and would be driving all night. The media attention over the missing women of St. Alphonso Academy being found safe and sound, was quickly garnering a lot more media attention, which is why they needed to, quite literally, distance themselves from the whole circus. Not the first time they had to do such a thing. They had a good head start and all in all, it should be an easy drive. Or at least, it would have been, if it wasn't for certain emotionally stunted people currently trying to out-shout each other. It didn't start that way at first, since initially things were peaceful and calm. The brothers had realised that they never got the opportunity to discuss the call from the Knights with Castiel. Since he had to keep Muwatti a secret from Hannah and by extension all the angels, he couldn't freely talk to them about her, quite so easily. Luckily for them Hannah seemed to have developed an interest in long baths for some reason, so they're supposed to have almost an hour to talk, where he could step out without making his companion suspicious. Sam had tried to summarise their last two days, since the call with the Knights, when in the middle of it, Dean abruptly snapped at Muwatti about fighting off Calliope, and then she snapped back at him, basically telling him to fuck right off, for thinking he can shout at her for two days in a row. And now Sam could feel a migraine approaching.
"You know what your problem is, princess," said Dean, "You just love being annoying and difficult. But especially love annoying me, which is why you're trying to get out of answering anything."
Maybe that's why the Mark created this weird bond between these two, cause if that didn't exist, they would have definitely killed each other already by now.
"I may be difficult and annoying, but at least I understand the difference between preferring pie as a food and desperately needing it as a substitute for mental stability and emotional comfort."
"Hello? Did I call at the wrong time? Oh wait, you guys are the ones that called me to talk about the Knights, and then proceeded to completely ignore me." If he had the phone in his hand, Sam would've hung up already, after telling Cas that they'd call him later. Unfortunately the phone was in his brother's tight grip, almost to the point of being crushed into pieces.
"Don't you dare say anything about pie. What the fuck could possibly be wrong with pie?" Dean spluttered, barely containing his frustration with the Hittite princess and her distaste for modern deserts.
"I don't like the texture, and it is like way too sweet for my liking." Muwatti retorted back, making her frustration with Dean and his loyalty to his favourite baked good abundantly clear.
"Kinda makes sense," Sam said out-loud, "Crystallised sugar had not been invented when she was around. Honey would've been the sweetest thing she'd ever eaten."
"Shut up Sam. Who genuinely gives a flying fuck about sugar facts, you giant nerd?" Dean reprimanding him.
"Does this look like an appropriate time for a history lesson on food, Samuel?" Muwatti also reprimanded him.
Were they this bad when Dean was still a demon? Did Crowley also get the urge throw himself out of the car mid-drive? Should he call the demon to start a support group for themselves? And after tonight, surely even Cas would be able to join them.
Though honestly, like his brother, he too would like some answers from Muwatti. The problem was that these two are just a bit too similar. Especially the quick to react part, alternating between responding with aggression and sarcasm part, really loving to shout part, refusing to surrender or backdown part, and always trying to establish dominance and power over each other part. Or even the most obvious one being, the absolute refusal to share any piece of information, because they have decided they don't want to and you simply don't need to know, and you just have to get over it. Which meant that they were really good at pushing at each other's buttons, all the while being thoroughly unproductive and fully headache-inducing. Safe to say, both love the 'it's fine, I'm ignoring it' approach to emotional intelligence. Or more accurately, complete lack thereof.
Sam could see Muwatti in the rearview mirror, could see her turning her face away from them and out the window, up towards the sky. She continued talking while still looking out. "Why is it so dark outside? Where are those long light pillars?" Sam explained to her that they weren't using the main roads, which would have the streetlights, as they wanted to avoid detection. Instead they were using the less frequently used and rarely maintained backroads. At least there was plenty of moonlight all around them. However that didn't seem to reassure her as he had thought it would. She peeled her eyes away from the glass and turned towards the front, which meant he could see her tense expression quite clearly in the mirror once again. Does the darkness bother her?
"Muwatti doesn't have magical powers." Hearing that certainly made his brother and Muwatti pay attention to the angel on the phone. "Oh, now you guys shut up and finally decide to acknowledge me?" Oh great, Cas is really brining the sass tonight, isn't he? "While she doesn't have magical powers, however as the Alhuesragal and the Tawananna, she had to memorise certain spells." How could he know so much, Muwatti asked. "My garrison were posted outside Hattusa, and would've sensed if you had ever done anything substantially strong. That was our mission, to keep an eye on you and your mother. Mind you, your mother's warding made it extremely difficult, as the empress most certainly did have magical abilities. It was only during the times you were closer to the city walls, could we do a proper assessment. It started around the time you were only a few months old, when either the emperor or the eldest prince would carry you around in their arms near the boundary walls, during their inspections of the capital's defences. You were a very happy baby."
Knowing the angel, both the brother assumed that Castiel must've really thought that it was fine enough thing to share, maybe even a sweet little memory. But the way he said it, it definitely belonged in the creepy category. Sam snuck a glance at the mirror, expecting to see her horrified expression, after hearing how a whole bunch of angels had been keeping an eye on her, throughout her life since she was an infant. However she only had a blank look on her face.
"How much older was Arnuwanda than you?" Dean asked her.
"He was already fifteen and married, by the time I had come along. Telipinu was fourteen and yet to become a High Priest, Piyassili was twelve, Mursili was born ten and half months before and Zannanza was perhaps a few minutes older."
How come there was almost a decade separating the siblings, Sams asked, almost without thinking. The question was directed towards Muwatti, however Cas was the one who answered it. "That's because just before Piyassili was born, Henti and Suppiluliumas had a falling out when he raped her head handmaiden and fathered a girl, who would become Muwatti's head handmaiden, called Ninshubur. They continued working together as the emperor and the Tawananna, but it was clear to everyone that theirs was no longer a relationship of husband and wife. Which is why when the youngest of the empress's children were born one after another, the whole empire was quite scandalised, with half of them thinking that he finally snapped and had assaulted her and the other half thinking that she had committed adultery against the emperor and was trying to pass off her bastards as royal children."
"Why the fuck would you know any of that, Castiel? By the hands of Ishtar, you're worse than the judgemental giant over here." She said, as she aggressively pointed towards Sam.
"Just being outside a city and staring at the walls is incredibly boring, we had to do something to pass the time. Fortunately everyone passing in and out of Hattusa was more than interested in talking about it. Your family really loved being chaotic, didn't they?"
He's not that judgmental, right, he silently asked Dean.
"You have the audacity to say that my family was chaotic, when your familial spats ends with either the apocalypse or the armageddon, you winged dick."
Dean silently replied back to him, 'you kinda are Sammy, just look at how many salads you eat, all the while making sure that everyone around you knows that you eat them'. Fucking brilliant, now his food choices are being mocked as well.
"You should know better than to talk like that, princess. I suspect it's because you're spending too time with Dean."
"Is that dyewara purposefully trying to aggravate me?" She asked Dean, who could only reply with a weak no, not really, and that Cas was just being Cas. "Can we just decide to not speculate about my parents' sex life? Preferably till the end of time." He and his brother wholeheartedly agreed. "You know what, let's just get back to the previous topic of discussion. I finally feel like sharing, if it means Castiel will stop talking about my family. I sucked so hard at the magical spells and stuff. Even during all the festivals, the other priests and priestesses would arrange everything, and I just had to show up at the end and basically perform theatrics. However Anni was the one with real magical talents. She didn't just learn the spells, she was quite adept at creating new ones. And the way she talked about it, her mother's powers were unparalleled. Not that I would know, all of my grandparents were long gone before even Arnuwanda was born. Which is why she assumed that her daughter, her only daughter, would also inherit the generations old mystical talents. Unfortunately, my real talents lay in policy-making and trade negotiations, diplomacy and treaties, and taxes. Which is why I always tried my best to avoid and ignore anything related to magic."
Oh, that's the reason why she has been so abrasive this whole time, it suddenly dawned on Sam. The Bronze Age princess was definitely not the kind of person who'd want to talk about her shortcomings, especially when it was related to her mother. From what he has been to make out, the empress wasn't the kind of woman who hid her disappointments, particularly when it came to her children.
"Well, Henti's the one who named you 'father's strength'. So the way I see it, it's really her fault that you turned out more politician than a goddamn magician." Dean pointed out, who seemed to have completely let go of his previous irritation with her. A bit too easily, Sam thought. Is it because of the disappointing the overbearing and over demanding parent, for whom every failure and mistake is a matter of life and death? Which he has to admit, he gets it as well.
"Are we back to ignoring me again?"
Seriously. There must be a reason. Why is everyone in his life such a drama queen? It's like he simply attracts them and has been collecting them all his life.
"Now that I think about it," continued the newest addition to his weird as hell menagerie, "my extra special magical blood should have totally helped in accelerating my abilities. However it fucking did not. The only thing it has done, as far as I can tell, is like make me a target for angels and demons. Which is just brilliant, I tell you."
Is it just him or has she started using the words 'like' and 'totally' a lot now? Guess that's what happens when one spends nearly two days hanging arounds teenagers. It definitely did wonders over her ease of use of slangs in her conversations. And for the past few days, her vocabulary was improving as well. Pretty soon she would be able to handle idioms as well. Not that he'd ever say any of that to her. Muwatti would absolutely get Dean to punch him, for daring to speak about her in such a condescending manner. And his brother would definitely do it without even being ordered to do so.
"Despite not having your mother's prowess or mastery, you certainly could put on quite an impressive display, when you wanted to. I still recall the amount of energy you had managed to generate, when you had summoned most of the Egyptian pantheon."
Why did she need to do such a thing, he asked aloud, remembering what had happened back at the school's basement. Which seemed to make Muwatti laugh, though it sounded a lot like a snort. "You're been positively gagging to ask about that this whole time, haven't you Samuel?" What can he say, except guilty.
"That's because she had - "
She interrupted the angel to shut it, pointing out that she can tell it herself. "I had arranged for the poisonings of Pharaoh Ay and a few years later, of Pharaoh Horemheb. And I couldn't have their gods trying to save either of them, basically ruining all my plans. Which is why I needed them as far away from Waset as possible, which is now called Luxor, I think."
"The poison didn't just keep them in unimaginable agony for the whole time, but when death finally came for them, and their bodies were being prepared to be mummified, it was found that their internal organs and flesh could not be properly preserved, effectively ruining the entire mummification process. Scarring their very souls, ruining them in the afterlife itself."
"Why would you do something like that?" He asked her, doing his best to not look at her reflection in the mirror.
However Dean was a lot quicker at figuring out than him, since he answered the question, "Zannanza. You did all of that for him, right?"
Muwatti leant forward, with her arms crossed and resting on top of the seat, her chin resting on her arms. Her right elbow barely touching his left shoulder. He knew that because he turned around to see it himself, which also meant he couldn't avoid looking at her face anymore. She wasn't looking at either of them, but at the road ahead of them, with a blank expression. "No matter how much I tried, I could never prove that it was them who were behind Zannanza's disappearance, behind his death. But I knew, I just knew that they certainly played a part. They definitely took joy in our pain. Not that proving anything would've made a difference, since I couldn't very well drag them to a court somewhere. The most that could happen was that we would go to war against them, and atti already did that. He defeated them, humiliated them, vanquished their army, conquered their territories in southern Syria. Atti avenged his son by doing things his way. But none of it was enough for me." She turned away from the road and looked at him, right in his eyes, making it impossible for look away. Did he want to look away? He was the one who asked her after all, doesn't seem right to avoid it all now. Doesn't seem right to avoid her. "How could it? I lost the most precious person in my life and they rejoiced over that, Sam. They thought we deserved it, because we dare thought to create an alliance between our people and our countries, to put an end to the generations-long hatred and violence and war. So I avenged my twin by doing things my way. It's just that the end of their lives, didn't necessarily mean the end of my rage."
Another similarity between these two, Sam thought, they certainly know how to hold a grudge.
Mention of rape and assault. No graphic depiction.
