AN: Wow, the response to these oddspots has been pretty cool. I mostly thought it was going to be hurled cyber fruit. Anyway, skipping way forward now to a little something I wrote in the aftermath of Swan Song. Sam's just taken that final plunge into the Cage...and wakes up somewhere he didn't expect.
Runs in the Family
He woke in the dark…
But on a couch, with a laptop screen blaring blue and white light at him from a wooden coffee table and welter of paper across his lap.
His first thought was surprisingly Dean-like.
Oh, God, how much did I drink last night?
About then, common sense kicked in and he realized he wasn't hung-over.
The flash of memories was so hard and fast he curled in a reflexive ball and bit down on his sleeve to keep from crying out.
Blood, blood in his mouth, on his hands, pungent and tainted and filling him up with ancient, awful power. The rush, the buzz, the lurking terror that filtered slowly away and then consumed him when he looked into the angel's eyes and said, "Yes."
Ruthlessly, he shoved it all away, shoved it all down. Now was not the time.
But still: falling into a pit of doom with your younger brother and a pair of angry archangels was in no way conducive to waking up on a comfy sofa in…
He sat up and looked around, taking in the sofa, it's matching armchairs, the coffee table, the rich cream carpet and the hand-knotted rug on the floor. There were pictures on the walls in silver frames, an antique-looking liquor cabinet stocked with elegant bottles and beautifully cut crystal glasses, light refracting off their multi-faceted surfaces from the street light that filtered in through the tall windows. Each of those was framed with long tie-back drapes – which in turn, perfectly complimented the lounge suite.
In this dim, but exacting light, he could make a tiny replica of a Napoleonic cannon on the carved mantle that framed the fireplace, a Venetian mask and two brass candle sticks shaped like rearing griffins on the top of the walnut paneled piano, a set of plates with stylized portraits of Greek heroes on them lined the middle shelf of the laden bookshelves that seemed to contain everything from photo albums to a modest DVD collection and stood next to a wide flat-screen and stereo system.
It was…a beautiful home. Small, but rich, well lived in; each ornament seemed hand-picked, and though beautiful, had to fight for space and notice with the myriad of photographs, not all of which were framed. Whoever lived here did well, loved their home, and it showed.
Of course, there was still the question of how he got here, and the relative opulence of the dwelling made it inherently suspicious to him.
Cautious, he gathered the papers sprawled across his knees and set them on the coffee table next to the computer, before getting to his feet and circling the room.
It was, of course, the pictures that caught his attention and effortlessly held it.
Mostly, because they were of him.
He stared, transfixed, at his own image. He stood in graduation robes, age eighteen he guessed, grinning from between Dean – and his father. There was another, in a matching frame, with him again, and Dean and Dad, but this time there were three other people with them; a blonde woman that he recognized with a start as Kate Milligan, and beside her a tall, gangly boy that was Adam at what must have been twelve. There was a girl standing next to him, in matching graduation robes, who's dark eyes, dark hair and angular features he didn't recognize, though his eighteen-year-old self and her were arm in arm, grinning like they'd been handed the world on a plate.
Breathing hard, he looked at the rest of the photos; at the ones of him growing up alongside Dean and the girl, and later it seemed, Adam. There was one picture of the four children together; Dean smiling with one arm around Sam and the other around the little dark-haired girl. Adam, who looked to be barely two, was on Sam's lap. There were others of the four of them sitting on the hood of the Impala; Dean eighteen, elated, with his siblings ranged around him.
Another next to that, just Sam this time, with a girl sitting beside him in a diner's booth; Sarah Blake in a wool coat and scarf, her hair in braids and her smile bright. There were others of the pair of them; in the snow by a lake, on horseback in a stand of trees, at a family picnic, with that unfamiliar dark-haired girl – older now – in what looked like an art gallery, with friends in a restaurant, in formalwear with a…with a wedding party.
Holy God.
Dean's wedding.
His big brother in a suit, Jo – oh, God, Jo – glowing in a white gown, wrapped in his arms.
Dad was there too, and Bobby, and Ellen. Pamela was in one of the bigger photos along with Caleb, Rufus, Ash, Pastor Jim…
Sam fought to breathe…especially when the first picture he found on the piano was of he and Dean clinking champagne glasses, grinning, while Dean cradled a tiny, pink-faced bundle in an equally pink blanket.
What…what was going on?
He backed up, taking a few unsteady steps. The movement brought him level with the couch again, and he noticed for the first time that there were three doors out of the room.
The one to the right was open and offered a glimpse of a wood and ceramic kitchen. The sliding double doors behind him were half open, showing him an eight-seater dinning room. The third led to a darkened hallway and, with rising anxiety and no small amount of trepidation, Sam stepped down this hallway. He crept, breath rasping, down to the door at the end of the hall…and without quite knowing why, gently eased open the door.
It was the master bedroom. Sam froze in the doorway, staring.
There was a wicker laundry basket with a pair of familiar jeans hanging over its lip, a closet filled with half-recognizable clothing, both male (oh, God) and female, and a pair of sneakers in one corner, laces still knotted, that were his size exactly.
And on the bed was a long, curved figure, her hair a banner of black silk across the downy whiteness of the bed linen.
Sam swallowed hard.
On cat's feet, he went round the side of the mattress and gently, fingers barely a breath away from her skin, brushed the hair from her face.
His breath caught in his throat.
"Sarah…"
AN2: Yeah, its weird. The backstory is big and bad and convoluted and more than I can feasibly put into an author's note without making it longer than the text itself.