Macabre March Madness: prompt fills

(Sample post) Supernatural, Untitled, Dean, Sam, R, self-harm

Prompt: prompt goes here (provide link if offsite/picture prompt)

Your fic/art/vid here.

Supernatural, "Claire" (Claire Novak, Castiel)

Prompt: Sometimes when you lose a limb you can still feel it.

Ever since that day, Claire feels a lot bigger that she really is. Sometimes she reaches for things with an arm she doesn't have, or turns to look with a head that isn't there. Some days she's sure she can fly.



Cas knows the answer! Pick Cas! Pick Cas!

And that’s great Cas, yes, but first Claire needs to remember how her name is spelled.

Re: Supernatural, "Claire" (Claire Novak, Castiel)

The wings of ink on Claire's skin are a genial touch. Beautiful.

Supernatural, Weighed Down, Castiel, R, self-harm

Prompt: The heart is heavy; in fact everything in this body seems to weigh him down. Castiel has no need for anchors – he’s a creature of flight. Jimmy won’t mind, he can always find him new lungs later.

Jimmy’s body had been bred for him through the Novak bloodline going back generations. Despite how easily he slid into his human vessel, Castiel found himself weighted down in a way he’d never felt before. He was a creature of light and air, drifting through the currents of time and space only seen by himself and his brethren.

Now his wings struggled to lift his vessel from one place to another. His Grace flattened under the flow of blood and flesh. Although this body allowed him to interact with his charge without damaging Dean, it also hindered Castiel, slowing him down until he felt anchored in the Earth. The skilled warrior that he was in Hell had vanished leaving him off balanced

In a motel room, recently inhabited by the Winchesters, Castiel stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror. There was little he could do to alter the outward physical body of Jimmy but he could do something else to remove the anchor tying him to the earth.

With his sword, he carefully cut into himself, watching in the mirror as skin and muscle peeled back to bare Jimmy’s ribs. Heedless of the blood flowing down his body, Castiel reached inside and broke the rib cage apart. With precise strokes, he sliced through veins and tissue to severe Jimmy’s lungs from his body.

As soon as the lungs were removed Castiel felt much lighter. He destroyed the organs, cleaned himself and the bathroom up, and re-dressed. Unfurling his wings, he took off, enjoying how much more freedom he gained and the quickness of his movements.

But it wasn’t quite enough weight gone. There was still a heaviness to his body, his range of motions limited still, and not as precise and flowing as he wished. Perhaps if he couldn’t adapt to these restrictions he would also remove Jimmy’s heart. He wouldn’t do Dean any good as less than one of Heaven’s best warriors.

It would be a simple matter to replace them later when he gave Jimmy back his body. After all he’d rebuilt Dean from a rotting corpse.

Re: Supernatural, Weighed Down, Castiel, R, self-harm

Ewwwww. I wonder if he'll rebuild the body or 'frankenstein' it together....

Supernatural, Negative Space, Sam, John, (Dean), PG, no warnings

Prompt: Dean was born, Dean died at the age of three. So who/what carries Sam out of the house that night? And why does John keep insisting on calling it, Dean? Is Dean even there? Note: This is just weirdness.

__________________________

Negative Space

“Make room,” Dad says.

So Sam makes room, scooting over on the broken-down sofa. He’d like to think there was a breath or a moment of warmth, something tangible and real. But there’s not. Just Sam, settled against the armrest, feet planted on the floor, skinny arms awkward and fingers tangled in on themselves like overgrown thornbushes. Just Sam, and the empty space beside him.

John nods his approval at the table and goes back to work, bending low over the journal and stacks of newspapers. Sam slits a glance to the side. Fights a ridiculous urge to ask, “So whaddaya wanna watch?” of the silence beside him.

In the end, he pulls his feet off the floor, curls in more firmly against the armrest, and reaches for the remote.

--

It’s cold, and dark outside, and the amulet from Uncle Bobby rests heavy in his hand. Dad was supposed to be back today. It’s Christmas and he promised. But he’s not back, and the room is silent without his presence.

“Dean’ll take care of you,” Dad had said, and Sam had to actually physically bite his tongue.

“You’ll be fine for a couple of days.” And he ruffled his hand through Sam’s hair, shouldered his bag, and was gone.

There are two beds in the room. One is Sam’s, covered in books and a few loose candy wrappers. The other belongs to Dean, and is as neatly made as it had been the day they arrived in the room. The poor light from the lamp between the beds falls across the bedspread. Sam looks down at the newspaper-wrapped amulet, and squeezes it slowly in his fist.

Dad was supposed to be back today.

--

“Watch out for your brother,” Dad says, and Sam obediently skirts the empty space where his eyes fall. Doesn’t think about it until afterward, and glances back at the spot.

This is how they move. How they have always moved. Three people moving around each other, the corporeality of one described by the motion of the other two. Motion. Sam moves a lot, has learned to be light on his feet. John buys him soft shoes, reminds him to walk on his toes. Says, “For God’s sake, boy, look where you’re putting your damn feet.”

Sam has learned to make Dean’s shape even when his father isn’t around.

--

There are no ghosts like Dean. That’s what Sam thought it was, for a long time, but it turns out even the most benign ghosts leave evidence. If nothing else, the noticeable drop of air temperature is enough to give their presence away.

Sam knows now that there’s no change in temperature. No spectral images, no ectoplasm or strange odors, no unaccountable sounds. Things don’t move on their own, no unearthly voices whisper from the walls, and Sam has never felt a Presence.

He’s pretty sure Dad hasn’t either.

There’s just this space. At the dinner table, Sam sets a place, doesn’t even realize he’s doing it until he’s halfway through and then he stands there, alone at the table over an open box of pizza, staring at the paper plate and napkin, and the silence weighs down on him. He’s inside a little circle of light and outside the sky is black and the corners of the room are heavy and dark and empty.

He closes the box and puts it in the fridge.

Dad won’t be back for two more days, at least.

--

Re: Supernatural, Negative Space, Sam, John, (Dean), PG, no warnings

--

Sam takes the amulet from the secret pocket in his bag. It’s still in the wrapping, the newspaper worn and faded by the passage of time. Slowly, with fingers grown deft through years of training, he unwraps it, peeling away the tape and paper, exposing the small brass head to the air.

He weighs it carefully in his palm.

“Don’t come back,” Dad had said.

“If you walk out that door, don’t come back.”

He’s standing in the empty dorm room, his bag at his feet. It’s a double. There’s going to be another person here soon.

He paces the room. Seven steps to the window. Fifteen steps from wall to wall.

He doesn’t move around Dean. It takes two people to make that shape. Sam’s new roommate isn’t going to know how.

Dean isn’t here.

--

Jess burns. She burns.

Sam’s never seen anything like it. Can’t remember feeling heat like this, or sickness, or the warmth of her blood where it’s fallen and smeared on his face. She’s on the ceiling and he has to get her down.

He has to get her down.

When strong hands grab him and haul him backwards, Sam chokes in shock and something like horrible, awful relief. He twists violently around, and finds himself staring into a familiar face.

“Dad?” he gasps, but doesn’t have time for more. Can’t manage any more. Is being dragged backwards and down the stairs and suddenly he’s on the lawn under the stars gasping and coughing and heaving up a lung. The roar of the fire goes on behind him.

He gets to his feet with difficulty, staggering a little and wiping at his face, his streaming eyes. Stares up at the house blazing away in the night. Looks at Dad, scowling and glowering with soot on his face, opening and closing big, scarred hands. Sam’s life goes on burning down into nothing.

Nothing.

He says, “Dad.”

His father looks at him, meets his eyes briefly. Sam quails back from what he sees there.

“Both of you come on,” he barks, and Sam glances briefly to his left, to the empty space in the grass, before hurrying to follow after their father.

The Impala squats low in the grass.

Sam’s going to have to ride in the back.

Again.

--the end--

___________________________

Um, this just kind of happened. I can't really explain it.

Supernatural, Untitled, Dean, John, Maryy, Sam, PG

For the prompt John still carries Mary's body around after the fire while traveling with the boys, prompted by dev_earl 


Mommy sleeps a lot. More than Sammy and he's a baby.

You can't play with Mommy now, Daddy says. She resting.

Mommy used to play with him a lot. They played lego and blocks and once they had a teddy bear picnic. He wanted to do that again but he doesn't have Bear anymore. He lost him the night Daddy told him to run outside with Sammy. And he couldn't carry Sammy and Bear so he had to leave Bear behind.

He misses Bear.

He has to sit with Sammy in the back. Mommy sat in the front for a while but now she sleeps in the trunk. Daddy said it was better for her there and she liked it better.

Daddy still won't let him sit in the front though, 'cause it's her spot.

Sometimes, instead of going to hotel rooms, Daddy pulls the car over on the side of the road.

Camp out, he says and he'll clap his hands and he smiles real big like before Mommy was so tired and slept all the time. Daddy'll wake Mommy up from the trunk and turn on the radio real loud and they'll have a dance before she goes back to sleep. Daddy always closes his eyes when they dance and smiles. Then Daddy makes some peanut butter sandwiches for dinner.

He wants to have a turn to dance with her too, but Daddy says he's too little and she gets real tired real fast.

He used to like the Daddy's car. It used to smell like Daddy and gasoline and sometimes McDonald's.

Now it smells bad and he doesn't like it. And Sammy cries a lot. And then Daddy says again Shhh. Mommy's sleeping.

He wishes she'd wake up.

Re: Supernatural, Untitled, Dean, John, Maryy, Sam, PG

Gah!!!!

Looney Tunes, Hunt, Coyote, R, mild gore, thoughts of self-harm

Prompt: Wili E. Coyote finally catches Road Runner.



He picks up the last thigh bone and begins carefully sucking off the few remaining scraps of flesh.

It had been a feast. Just like he'd always dreamed it would be. He'd taken his time preparing the dish, seasoning it and cooking it thoroughly, nice and slow. Then he'd eaten slowly, reverently - savoring every bite, feeling the meat slide down his throat.

Coyote leans back and pats his bloated stomach. He looks at the pile of feathers in the corner of his den. He'd wanted a trophy. He didn't ever want to forget this momentous occassion. He lopes over to the pile of feathers and lays down next to them.

Lazily, Coyote runs his paw through the feathers and settles down to sleep. He dreams as he always does- of the hunt. Of chasing and chasing and never catching. He wakes up staring at the pile of feathers - every shade of blue. Never before had they looked as beautiful as they do now. He begins to cry as it dawns on him that he will never, never hunt again. Oh sure - there are other birds - but none like this.

Coyote gets up, and heads for his back room, where he keeps all of his blades, traps and things that go boom. More than likely, none of them will work anyway. He's died thousands of times, and each and every time Death had laughed at him and sent him right back. He sighs heavily. Somewhere in his collection, there has to be a way out.

Re: Looney Tunes, Hunt, Coyote, R, mild gore, thoughts of self-harm

Be careful what you wish for! Poor Coyote, even in winning he loses.

Supernatural, Devil Inside Pt.1, Sam, Dean, Lucifer, R, gore, blood

Prompt: Lucifer is back in the Cage - everyone is so sure of it. Then why can Sam see and hear him where-ever he goes?

"We're two halves made whole..."

Sam startles awake with a gasp and Dean stares at him from the bathroom sink.

"You okay, Sam?"

"Yeah, just -" Sam runs his hand through his hair, "just a bad dream."

Sam gets out of bed and gets changed. As he's pulling on a clean t-shirt he catches a glimpse of someone just outside the window. When he looks again, he's gone. "Did you...?" he starts.

"Did I...what?" Dean asks.

"Nevermind. I thought I saw something."

---------

A few hours later, Sam is following Dean out of the diner when he hears himself speaking.

"This is your life now? Following Dean's lead like the good little brother you are?"

Sam whips around, and sees nothing but the door of the diner. He turns back and finds himself staring at his own face. "You're not a follower Sam. You were meant to be a god." Lucifer smiles at him and Sam feels cold. "I know you miss the power. I hear your soul screaming for it every second of every day. It's okay Sam, I miss you too."

Sam takes a step back and says, "No."

Lucifer grins at him"Yes. Forever and always, yes."

---------

Dean hacks off the vampire's head with his machete, and Sam can't move. He's watching himself Lucifer crouch down by the corpse and run his finger over the vamp's bloody neck stump. Lucifer walks right up to Sam, holds a shiny, red fingertip up in front of his eyes and says : "It's in the blood Sam. I'm in your blood. Always. Forever."

"No."Sam says, and Dean looks at him oddly.

"Who are you talking to?"

Sam swallows, "Nobody. Myself."

Dean huffs, "Right." He walks past Sam and says gently, "I see things too. Why do you think I drink myself to sleep? "

---------

Sam tries Dean's coping mechanism that night, but it doesn't help. It just makes him think of the only thing that ever did make him forget. Sam drifts to sleep and his dreams are red. He dreams of blood and power and he wants so badly.

"I can send them to you. They won't even fight. They'll bend their knees, bow their heads and offer their throats to you."

Sam turns away from the voice and clenches his eyes shut.

Supernatural, Devil Inside Pt.2, Sam, Dean, Lucifer, R, gore, blood

When Sam wakes, he's shivering. He looks around and realizes that he isn't in the motel bed he fell asleep in. He's lying outside on the wet, grassy ground.

Sam gets up slowly and tries to figure out where he is. There are trees around him, sparse grass and tombstones. Sam swallows back the bile rising in the back of his throat as recognition sets in. He's in Stull Cemetery.

Sam hears a crow cawing from behind him and startles. He takes a step backwards and trips over something. He catches himself with one of his hands and that's when he sees the blood. His fingers are stained red with it. He sits back and looks down at himself. His black t-shirt is soaked. He touches it with a trembling hand. It isn't the discovery that the shirt is covered in blood that horrifies him. It's the smell. Sulfur and iron and he's repulsed and he's so very hungry.

Sam considers stripping off the shirt, but he's so cold, and he doesn't want to risk getting the shirt so close to his mouth, because he doesn't think he could keep from tasting- "Oh please. You know damn well what you did."

Lucifer is looking down at Sam and he's covered in blood, just as Sam is. He brings his bloody fingers up to his mouth and licks them all clean.

Sam thinks he might puke. He turns away from his other self, away from Lucifer and he's staring right at a corpse. It's neck is torn open. Flesh hangs off of the wound in messy strips. Sam brings a hand up to his mouth. Lucifer laughs. "You had a bit less finesse last night than usual. It's only natural. It's been a long time, hasn't it Sam? Too long."

Sam looks back at Lucifer, and asks, "Why are you doing this?"

Lucifer walks closer to Sam, kneels down next to him and says, "Doing what?"

"You-" Sam starts to say, but there's nobody there anymore. He is alone in Stull Cemetery with a mauled body covered in demon blood.

"Never alone." Sam hears himself say. "Drop by drop you'll let me back in." He can still smell the sulfur stink of the blood on his hands, on his clothes and from the corpse. He doesn't feel nauseous anymore, he just feels so damn hungry. He hears himself laugh.

Sam clutches his hands over his ears and tries to block out the sound of the Devil himself, but he can't."Drop by drop you'll bring me home. Never alone. Never, never, never." He doesn't see Lucifer anymore, but it doesn't matter because he can feel him moving inside.

Sam raises his head slowly, and he sees a group of people approaching. He gets quickly to his feet and pulls out his knife. He tries to block the corpse from view as best as he can. The group - five total, three men and two women walk towards him without saying a word. They're less than three feet away when they all stop, and fall to their knees. They look at Sam with black, black eyes and wait.

Supernatural, Road Trip, Sam, Dean, PG, character death

Prompt: Sometimes it's seemed like that's all he wants, a road that goes on
forever, his brother beside him. They're driving. They keep driving.
They don't stop, not anymore.


Sometimes it seems to Dean that all he wants, all he’s ever wanted, is a road that goes on forever and his brother beside him. If he could have that he wouldn’t need anything else, he thinks, not a home, not hunting, nothing. Just the open road and an eternal trip of the kind they claim to be on when people ask.

“That was a tough one, huh?” he asks, glancing at the passenger seat where Sam sits, leaning against the door. Dean doesn’t expect an answer, doesn’t get one because Sam is sleeping.

It was a tough hunt, a viciously angry spirit that threw them around for what seemed like (and probably was) hours before they were able to salt and burn the remains and dispel the thing. Dean had taken more than his fair share of hits but Sammy… The thing had almost seemed to target Sammy, as if it had a personal grudge against the younger Winchester. When all was said and done, it had been all Dean could manage to sew his brother up.

“But you’re fine now. Well, mostly,” he says aloud, knowing that his voice soothes Sam, keeps the nightmares away. And Sam’ll have nightmares after this hunt; God knows Dean will. “We’re done, though. No more hunting for us.” Sam can’t—his kneecap was shattered by a toss into a cement block and if he ever walks again it’ll be a miracle—and Dean won’t hunt without his brother, not again. “Time to go back and see the things we missed the first time around.” They’ve been to some of the best places to visit in the U S, but never got a chance to really see them, because they were always on a job, always had to clear out almost as soon as they were done.

There’s so much Dean wants to say. He wants to tell Sam that he’s known since long before their visit to Heaven that they were soul mates. He wants to say that he’s always loved Sam, thinks he’s loved Sam since before they were born, that they were always destined for this life. A life of hunting, of fighting monsters and each other only to overcome their problems in such a way that the relationship is made stronger, but he can’t. The words catch in his throat and all he can say is, “Dude, I love this song,” as he turns the radio up. Because that would land him firmly and irrevocably in chick flick territory.

But that’s not the real reason. The real reason is because a part of him knows that the words won’t be heard and to say them now would, somehow, make a mockery of his feelings.

This is the part he ignores as he drives on, singing along to the music issuing from the speakers. This is the part that knows that there aren’t any second chances for Sammy this time; no Crossroads deals, no Heavenly resurrections, no coming back. The part of Dean that keeps him silent is the part that knows he’s already dead. It’s the part that takes over when he finds a bridge support, the part that will never, ever let his brother go anywhere without him. Never again.

They're driving. They keep driving and they don't stop. Not anymore.

Re: Supernatural, Road Trip, Sam, Dean, PG, character death

that is so terribly sad, i guess i didn't see it coming, but...yes, dean would do just that...

The Sound of Music, "Songs They Have Sung", the von Trapp family, G

The hills are alive

--

On the third day, Marta starts crying and won't stop. The adventure has worn off and she sobs for the pink parasol she had to leave behind. Brigitta makes things worse, pinching her when she walks too slowly.

"Come along," says Maria. She takes Marta's hand and her smile is wide and bright as the sky. "Think about how nice our supper will be. Just like a picnic!"

Summertimes and middays are the right times for picnics. Marta is still damp-cheeked when they stop for the night, and the tinned sardines don't make her any happier. Their fire seems tiny, ready to die any moment as if the shadows from the mountaintops are going to crush it into darkness. It's just enough light to see Maria's smile.

"Let's sing," she says but their voices are thin and tired and the echos that trickle back don't sound like themselves.

--

One foot in front of the other. That's all anyone can concentrate on and so no one knows exactly how long she's been missing, no one even notices she's gone until Gretl, clinging to her father's back, asks "Where's Louisa?"

They call and call but only echoes come back, stale as if they've been waiting in the slopes of the hills for centuries. "She's probably just daydreaming and wandered off," Maria says, still smiling. "You know what she's like."

Louisa does have her head in the clouds, everyone agrees. She'll show up later, for supper perhaps. They can't go back and look for her, the path is too steep to walk up again and the mountains seem to close in around them as they go, closing off the path behind them.

--

Everyone else is exhausted, but Maria seems to grow stronger by the day. "Come on, lazybones," she urges them, half dancing up the faded path they follow. "Hurry up!"

Her eyes are the colour of mountain streams and when she sings to encourage them on her voice is clear and free of clinging echoes. She takes off her shoes so she can feel her home beneath her feet, she laughs so loud that the sky fills up with it.

--

They should have reached the town by now. The captain tries to read his maps by firelight but the pages are creased from folding, refolding, and they're constantly in shadow, now, with the mountain tops looming over them. His vision has been in steady decline. He calls for Friedrich to come and help him see.

He calls again and his own voice answers.

--

The mountains are icy cold and every breath they take comes out white clouds, like the air is pulling the warmth from their lungs. Gretl's teeth chatter and nobody speaks.

Maria, with her feet bare and her eyes bright, sings as she leads them on deeper and deeper into the mountains. She tells them, "Join in!" and when they do the echoes are louder and stronger than their voices.

Re: The Sound of Music, "Songs They Have Sung", the von Trapp family, G

OHHH. CREEPINESS. Never trust a nun who insists on singing on hill tops at every possible moment. Gorgeous work! <3

Supernatural, You Can Never Go Home (1 of ?), Sam, Castiel, Ash, R, choose not to warn

Prompt: Dean can’t find his way home.

--

He wakes up in the car, his breath slipping past his teeth in little white puffs as the cold settles in around him. He is alone, and something about that shakes him to the core, loneliness and confusion seeping into his throat and chest and everything just-- feels-- wrong. He needs--

He shivers and pulls himself out of the driver’s seat and onto the road.

And there’s Sam, or who Sam used to be at about thirteen, holding a box of firecrackers and grinning. ”Come on, let’s go!”

The sky lights up with fire and color and the air is July-warm and sticky. Sam puts his arms tight around him, murmurs a thank you that sinks all the way into Dean’s bones, and that’s when Dean knows--

This is heaven.

The sound of gunfire replaces the noise of the firecrackers and he loses his grip on the memory. When he pulls himself out of the reality of the motel room, he’s back in the field but Sam is gone. Dean gets into the car and hears the radio click itself on. ”Dean,” it calls, Cas’ familiar voice breaking through the silence under static. ”Dean, stay on the road.”

”Cas, where’s Sam?”

”Stay on the road, Dean.”

So Dean drives.

Supernatural, You Can Never Go Home (2 of ?), Sam, Castiel, Ash, R, choose not to warn

He sees his brother in a flash-crackle-pop of energy out of the corner of his eye and he gets out of the car, but all that’s left is a warmth in the air--he doesn’t see Sam anywhere.

He walks into a house, sees a family several orders of magnitude larger than his own sitting down to a meal, turkey and potatoes and beans and stuffing. A man turns toward an empty chair. ”Happy Thanksgiving, Sam,” he says, and something burns in Dean’s chest.

Sam isn’t there.

Dean retreats into the living room of the house and flips on the stereo, the television, everything he thinks Cas may be able to reach him through.

”Castiel,” he growls, ”Where the hell is Sam?”

No answer. Not when he bangs on the radio or flips lightning fast through the cable channels.

Nothing.

He leaves the house, gets back in the car and starts to drive again, until he sees the heat mirage of his brother again and stops the car on a dime.

He’s alone in the road.

He’s alone.

A dog comes out of nowhere and somewhere deep in his mind he hears Sam, the way his voice had followed him all those years that he was gone, at Stanford, clean and crisp and unmistakably Sam, so that sometimes Dean thought he was going crazy with it, that he needed to be committed.

”Bones! Bonesy!” Sam says now, inside Dean’s mind.

”Bones?” he tries, soft and a little hopeful, and the dog bounds to him, then continues across a parking lot and into an open motel room door.

He follows.

The Odyssey, "Sea Change", Penelope/Odysseus, R, violence & character death, 1/2

Prompt: Odysseus did die out on the wine-dark sea. That doesn't stop him from coming back to Ithaka.

Antinous goes first.

Up in her chamber beside the banquet hall, Penelope hears the son of Eupeithes' shouts turn to screams. She remembers him courting her, boasting of his family and his wealth in a voice deep as the river, but she still recognizes his voice as it gets higher and higher in terror before it's crushed out by the weight of death.

A thread snaps as she keeps weaving.

She hears Eurymachus speak next, full of unearned outrage and blazing with Antinous' typical fire. He would come to her in the late afternoon, bright-eyed and fresh from the hunt, bringing her spoils and silky promises of more if she returned the favour. His arms were always stained with blood, tiny, careless drops left on his bronze skin, and Penelope wonders how much blood is covering the floor when she hears the wet thrust of a weapon being driven through his lungs.

Another thread snaps.

The shouts become indistinguishable in seconds. The men who had been falling over each other for her hand are now just falling. Penelope closes her eyes and listens to the splash of blood, the tear of flesh, and the crunch of bone as the men of Ithaca -- Agelaus, Eurynomus, Amphimedon, Demoptolemus, Pisander, Polybus -- flee down to Hades like goats herded to their nightly pen.

The tapestry is frayed and worthless under her hands, a house half-built and already falling apart.

In the banquet hall, Ctesippus bellows in anger, one of the only voices left in a room full of bodies. The anger is nothing new; Penelope remembers his rage at the discovery of her trick and the feel of his hand, huge and calloused, gripping her wrist before propriety was forced upon him by the others. She rubs at the phantom bruises and feels nothing when she hears Ctesippus' skull being crushed.

Silence falls. Penelope breathes out slowly and waits.

The voice of Leiodes, the suitors' ever-obedient priest, drifts up from the banquet hall, "Please! Have mercy, Lord Odysseus!"

Penelope freezes. She's imagined this moment for years, imagined her husband arriving as a conquering hero and reclaiming his rightful place on the throne, but as Leoides' head rolls heavily across the ground, she wonders what exactly has returned from Troy.

Phemius and Medon are next, good men both of them. Penelope stares at her completed tapestry on the wall and watches the way the corners darken with a strange dampness as the sounds of slaughter fill the house once again.

She goes to the window when she sees movement outside. The man -- her husband -- is in the courtyard, a black-cloaked stranger watched with fearful interest by Telemachus, Eumaeus, Euryclea and the bound traitor, Melanthius.

The suitors' mistresses are there too, bloodstained and sobbing, but to Penelope's ears, their cries turn into the delighted shrieks of the Erinyes as the man strings them up one by one. He doesn't spare them a second glare as they convulse and suffocate, twitching like dying rabbits until their bodies go still, twelve corpses swaying in the breeze.

Beside her, the tapestry grows darker and darker as it is soaked through with water, and Penelope starts to pray.

Down in the courtyard, her husband pulls out a man's intestines with his bare hands.

Melanthius screams, high and dreadful, but Penelope doesn't look away. It's been decades since she's seen her husband or felt his touch against her skin and so she fixes her eyes on his hands -- pale beneath the blood, like she's looking at them through water -- and watches him sever Melanthius' limbs at the wrists and ankles. Her husband stands over him like the shadow of Death itself, black-cloaked and implacable, and Penelope sees him use those pale, skilful hands to slice off Melanthius' ears and nose and carve out his insides like a sacrifice.

He doesn't stop to wipe off the blood before he snaps Euryclea's neck.

The Odyssey, "Sea Change", Penelope/Odysseus, R, violence & character death, 2/2

On the wall, the tapestry starts to drip with water while Penelope tries to calm her racing heart. Somehow she thought he would stop, that he would take his vengeance and be sated, but as he drops Euryclea's body to the ground and advances on Eumaeus, she realises her thoughts were foolish.

The house is heavy with death and blood, and the whole island seems to have fallen silent at the hands of whatever has returned from Troy in the guise of her husband. Taking a breath, Penelope feels her heart return to its steady beat as she watches the man drive his thumbs into Eumaeus' eyes.

Penelope's a prudent woman. She knows she can't fight fate.

Eumaeus drops, howling, and Penelope listens to the drip, drip, drip of water from the tapestry as the man takes a club and reduces Eumaeus' head to a bloody smear at the end of his fallen body.

She almost shouts a warning when she sees Telemachus charge at the man who used to be his father, sword raised and teeth bared, but chooses to stay quiet. War is men's business, after all.

The sword goes through his side, clear and true, but Telemachus stumbles back in shock when the only thing that spills out of him is water. "What-"

The man rips his throat out before he can finish and Penelope watches, numb and wide-eyed, as her son drops to the ground, gasping out his life into the dust. The man steps over his body as though Telemachus is no more than a puddle on the ground and Penelope steels herself when she sees him come back inside the house.

Water pours down the wall, rolling off the tapestry she wove and creeping outwards across the floor as the smell of saltwater fills the room. The noise of the sea grows louder and louder, roaring through Penelope's mind as the man's footsteps get closer and closer, and her chest feels tight when she tries to breathe, like she's underwater again in the lake she used to play in as a child.

The door crashes open like a wave, making the floor shake as though the Earth-quaker himself were present, and Penelope's husband enters.

His footsteps cause no ripples in the water as he walks towards her but Penelope feels something cold start to trickle down her spine.

She keeps her eyes on her husband, on the faceless shadow which came back in her husband's place from Troy, and fights to breathe past the tightness in her chest and the ghostly tang of brine that clogs her throat. The man stops in front of her, his heavy cloak hiding everything but the pale, pale skin of his hands, and Penelope tastes saltwater when she summons up the courage to speak.

"A-are the gods angry?" she asks, and despite the fear filling her heart, she hates that she stammers. "Is this our punishment?"

The man cups her cheeks with gore-stained hands and when he leans in close, all Penelope sees in the darkness is teeth.

"No," Odysseus says, his voice as calm as the water beneath his feet. "This is our reward."

Supernatural, Half Sick of Shadows, Sam, Dean, PG-13, violence, character death(s), 1/?

Prompt: Season 6-ish. Lucifer taught Gabriel everything he knows. In the box, Sam is forced to live out all the AUs and what ifs of his life. What happens when you can no longer determine what of your memories and what of your current reality is actually real?

---

"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.

Dean stares at him, full of accusation. How could you, his eyes say. How could you. And then they close. John Winchester is lying dead on the floor with a bullet hole in his forehead and Sam is still standing, chest heaving, everything, for a moment, still.

He drives to the hospital like a madman (like Dean) and drags his brother out of the car, bellowing for help. Dean is limp in his arms and there’s blood dribbling over his lips and blood on his shirt and blood on Sam’s hands.

The doctors take one look at them and he can see their sympathy, sympathy he doesn’t want or need because Dean is going to be just fine, really, he is.

DOA, he hears one say. Dead on arrival.

And Dean’s dead and the demon’s dead and Dad’s dead and there’s nothing left anywhere, nothing Sam can do. He’s alone and he can’t even turn to revenge. Sam stands alone in the parking lot and the world is suddenly too big, too wide, and empty of possibilities.

(No, he thinks. No. This didn’t happen. He takes a deep breath.

A softer voice, friendly, almost gentle, murmurs, Are you sure?)

**

Ruby’s eyes glow with triumph, exhilaration. “We did it,” she says, “Sam, we did it! Look, look-” Her palms are warm on his face, turning his horrified eyes toward the swirling pattern on the floor. “He’s coming. Finally. Lucifer’s coming.”

The door opens with a bang and Sam turns, eyes and mouth wide. Terrified. WhathaveIdoneohgodwhat-

Dean’s eyes blaze like Ruby’s but with hatred, and Sam quails because the knife in his hand is sharp and deadly and can kill any demon (even him). They look at each other and there is no forgiveness, no understanding, just an angel’s weapon filled to the brim with righteous fury.

He kills Ruby first, twists the knife in her gut and she flashes from the inside, seeming almost surprised that she is dying.

“I’m sorry,” Sam starts to say, but can’t finish it because the knife in his throat severs his vocal cords right along with the rest.

Choking and gurgling on blood, hitting the floor feels like nothing, and he looks up at the ceiling as light begins to pulse in the inside of the church. Dean has already turned away. He won’t even watch Sam die.

(It didn’t happen that way, Sam protests, as blood flows down his throat and into his lungs. It wasn’t like that.

And the voice, he can almost feel a hand stroking his brow, says, Are you sure?)

**

Sam’s pretty sure Dean’s arm is broken. He’s not screaming anymore but he bit through his lower lip and the angle is weird and wrong. They need to get to a hospital but getting to a hospital means opening the door means going through the kitchen and Dad is in the kitchen.

Yelling.

Re: Supernatural, Half Sick of Shadows, Sam, Dean, PG-13, violence, character death(s), 2/?

“He didn’t mean to, Sammy,” Dean says, pants, really. “It was an accident.”

Sam is scared. Dean isn’t scared, but Sam is and he doesn’t know what to do. He feels sick and uneasy and Dean is pale and breathing in these quick little pants and he knows it’s not good. They need to get out.

He looks around the small room for a weapon and goes for Dean’s bag. Fishes through it and finds a switchblade, which he wraps his fist around. “Come on,” he says, tugging Dean’s unbroken arm, trying to be brave. “Come on, we need to go.”

He reaches for the door and unlocks it as quietly as he can, then opens it a crack to peer through. He can’t see anything. Sam holds onto the switchblade more tightly and opens the door the rest of the way.

Their father comes out of nowhere. “Where are you going,” he says, and his voice is rough like gravel, his breath stinks like alcohol. Sam tries to stand up straight, but he’s small, still.

“Dean’s hurt,” he says. “He needs a hospital.”

He sees Dad’s fists ball up and steps back, like he can shelter Dean, but Dean has other ideas. He steps forward, nudging Sam out of the way. “Dad,” he says, “It’s fine, okay? It’s-”

John punches Dean in the face. Not hard, but hard enough. Sam sees red and lunges, and realizes too late that the switchblade was open and Dad is bleeding. He stares at Sam, incredulous, and then says, “You little shit.”

Sam grabs Dean and pulls as hard as he can, and Dean is shoving him too now, saying, “Run, shit, run, Sam, what did you do-“

Their dad stumbles after them, but he’s bleeding, bleeding a lot actually, and they’re out in the open air and then on the street. Dean is gasping in pain and they are so fucked, so fucked.

(No. That never happened. That never – nothing even close happened. Dad wouldn’t-

Are you sure?)

**

“Sam? Hey!”

Sam blinks and turns his head. The car is humming underneath him and Dean is looking at him with something past worry and not quite fear. “Huh?”

“Dude, where were you? I’ve been trying to get your attention for a couple minutes.”

Where was I? Good question. “Somewhere,” he says. “What is it?” Dean’s lips press together for a second, and his frown deepens.

“You’re not scratching,” he says, more command than question. Sam shakes his head minutely.

“No. I’m not stupid, Dean.” I don’t want a head full of hell. I don’t want to be a puddle of insanity on the floor. No, I won’t scratch. Even if it itches. “I guess I just – spaced for a second. It’s not a big deal.”

Dean doesn’t look convinced, but he turns his eyes back to the front, toward the road. “Whatever. I was just asking what you think the deal is with this hunt.”

“Not sure,” Sam says, because he isn’t. Isn’t even sure he remembers what they’re hunting. He won’t say that, though; it’ll only freak Dean out. And everyone has memory lapses, right? It’s just that he can’t quite remember how he got here.

Like a dream. You end up right in the middle of it and no idea how you got there.

Misfits, Literally Not There, Simon Bellamy, others PG, character death

Prompt: After a while, the changes caused by the storm became physical. [Any character]



It started out with sudden asthma, running from the other freaks in the city.

He couldn't breathe and his lungs wouldn't expand. He saw her face in phases like the moon: confusion, concern and then horror as he sank his fingertips into her arms. The world's edges were beginning to turn black.

And then he could breathe again. His knees hit the pavement like dead weight and Simon huffed, staring in disbelief at Alisha whose brown eyes were wide and fearful.

"Wh-what was that?" she stammered, touching his face with her hand and felt cold sweat.

Simon took painful gulps and replied, "I-I don't know."



He didn't experience that again for a while afterward and only appeared so briefly like a flash that he had to get an inhaler.

This time it was his heart.

He'd seen a heart attack once. His grandfather. Simon felt like he was in his body but not, watching as he stood rigid with eyes set at the floor. Nathan shook him, concern overriding his comedic expressions.

"You all right, mate?"

It brought him back. He lurched and his heartbeat returned. Simon looked at Nathan and shook his head.

"No," he pressed a hand over his heart. "I don't think so."



He could see them clearly, opting to walk behind them all, watching. And there was that feeling of being invisible again. Simon looked at his hand and furrowed his brow when he could see himself still.

And then Simon couldn't breathe again. He gagged and coughed up liquid- wiped at his mouth and saw blood. Everything was becoming blurry and he couldn't call out to them.

But God bless her, Alisha turned around when he didn't answer her question.

"SIMON!!!" She screamed and everyone turned around then and called out his name. Alisha rushed towards him. He saw his arms reach for her.

What is going on? he thought, panicked. They held him up as he rasped, legs giving out on him.

Am I going to d-

"Simon? SIMON!"

"Simon, what's wrong?!"

"Oh God, he isn't breathing!"

"Call a fucking ambulance!"

fin.

Re: Misfits, Literally Not There, Simon Bellamy, others PG, character death

Poor Simon! This is still as lovely, and sad, as the first time I read it. Thanks for writing it!

Avatar (James Cameron), Tìreyomyu, OCs, Ewya, R, possession, violence, character death, 1/3

For the prompt: The dead live inside Eywa. But what happens when they want to come back? And with the Na'vi opening their minds up when they connect to the trees, maybe the dead can come back...

Tìreyomyu is Na'vi for 'Life-eater'.

---

'Omasyulang had never particularly wanted to die. She actually wanted to live, live with Pamalore and maybe, just maybe, she would have been content with that. But Pamalore had been killed, butchered, her beautiful self rendered nothing more than food for a palulukan's litter. And before that, both the Omaticaya's elders and Eywa Herself had said, no, you may not have her, too many first cousins in your family lines. Never mind that she would have no children with Pamalore, clan-law was clan-law. And so the angry, angry 'Omasyulang had raged and cried, and then Pamalore was taken from her anyway.

And angry, angry 'Omasyulang, mad with the pain of grief, ran into the jungle, and the People never saw her again.

(At least, not that they would recognise.)

– –

'Omasyulang had, before she got killed that first time (stupid, stupid little hunter, walking into a nantang ambush like she was a child with her first bow), thought that all she wanted was to be with Pamalore.

Death changed that.

All she wanted now was to live. To breathe, to taste, to hear, to see, to feel. She was still so angry, angry, angry, but now she was just another little spirit caught in Eywa's net. She snarled and railed and fought, and so 'Omasyulang kept her sense of self while those around her sighed and accepted and melded together and fell apart until they were just a jumbled, humming cloud of voices in the trees.

Weak, 'Omasyulang spat at them in the way of spirits, you're all weak, but underneath the contempt, she envied them their peace.

Maybe, maybe if she had found Pamalore, it would be fine, she would have her peace, but she never did.

Later, she would tell herself that she panicked about this. Later, when the grief-madness had cooled to pure, cunning-minded survival twisted through with what another person might call guilt. But whatever her latter justification, what happened is this: The being first known as 'Omasyulang fought her way into another's body. A child, barely more than an infant, but she had lived long enough to be considered a person once she had made her first connection with Eywa at the Tree of Souls. The child had a strong will, as most children do, but there was something wrong with her defences. Not strong enough, not developed enough, and 'Omasyulang the hunter was skilled at seeing weakness. 'Omasyulang the hunter had also bonded with an ikran, wrestling with the predator's mind until the two had come to an accord.

A little girl was nothing compared to the fierceness of an ikran, although to her credit the girl tried to fight back. No, no, no, no, stop hurting me, mama want mama MAMA MAMA MAMAMAMA-

Re: Avatar (James Cameron), Tìreyomyu, OCs, Ewya, R, possession, violence, character death, 2/3

– –

The proud parents called their daughter Winatirea, and although the girl grew up strange, they never realised what had actually happened, that their child's body was possessed by two spirits.

But Winatirea knew. She grew up knowing better than to fight, because if she fought too much the Stranger would lock her away in her own skull and Winatirea would never, ever see the sun or the jungle or her parents again. So Winatirea was a good host and didn't fight, and she got to experience the sun on her face and the laughter of her clan, but it was all felt second because the Stranger felt it first. Increasingly, Winatirea got angry at this. Angry, so angry; angry enough that one day when their (her, it's hers) body was in the upper branches of Hometree, Winatirea seized control just long enough that their body staggered and fell off.

Her clan saw her body try and grab hold of something, anything to break the fall, so they knew it was just an accident.

Next time, 'Omasyulang resolved, that won't happen.

– –

Her body's name the next time was Atanakeyan, and that was her first problem; a male name for a male body. Unlike with Winatirea's body that felt like a home, Atanakeyan's body was subtly, uncomfortably off. It was easier when the body was a child (although still odd), but then the body grew, and the proportions got more and more wrong. She was unsettled enough that she was glad that she had forced the boy out at the beginning, because it would have such a struggle to remain in control.

Her ikran didn't know what to make of her. He was bound to her through tsaheylu, but underneath the love there was a wariness, and he had come so close to killing her before she had joined their queues...

She was almost glad when the body was killed in a little inter-clan conflict, a spear through the chest that solved so many problems.

And as the body bled out, 'Omasyulang resolved that next time, she would pick a girl.

– –

Aytanhì's body fit so well, it was like being back in her original one. Which frankly 'Omasyulang felt that she deserved after the effort she put into getting the body. Eywa, 'Omasyulang discovered, might work slow, but work things out She did. 'Omasyulang had to spend so much time hiding that by when she finally escaped again, Hometree itself had changed.

But Aytanhì's body was perfect, perfect, perfect.

Perfect, that was, until the ikrans didn't fly away until she had found hers like they were supposed to, but lunged forward and ripped her open so fast she only had time to scream once.

That wasn't supposed to happen. Next time, 'Omasyulang resolved, she would find a way around that. Somehow, she would make sure that it didn't happen again.

Supernatural, You Make Me Want To Die, Claire Novak,(Jimmy), (Castiel), R, thoughts of death

Prompt: Being an angel's vessel isn't a one-time thing. Claire doesn't age. She wonders if she can die.

You Make Me Want To Die

Death and decay have become mere hopes, wishes that can no longer be fulfilled. Nothingness is what Claire covets, but her most desperate desire is and will forever be out of reach. It was not by a Demon’s hand that she has become so cursed. Eternal life was unknowingly bequeathed to the girl-child by a so-called angel of mercy, one who had saved yet condemned her father’s body to a lifelong servitude of exacting holy wrath in God’s name.

To rescue her father from demon hands, a vessel she had become. Claire, daughter of Jimmy Novak, had accepted the otherworldly being into her flesh, but it had come with a price—-one that she had not known she would be paying.

Regrettably, as so much sand had fallen through the hourglass while under the angel’s possession, her temple made of blood and bone had changed forever more.

Hatred coils in her twisting guts like a poisonous viper now. Her heart leaks mold and mildew, the organ in her chest rotten to the very core. Hatred for all things with fleeting pulses riles her, like no other element ever could. Growth stunted and hopes dead and cold as the headstones and crypts she prowls among, Claire damns those who will one day know Death’s bittersweet embrace. Jimmy’s little girl has become the very creature that the angel Castiel had once smote so many years ago.

But Claire’s conscience died long after her mother's death, after many years left to roam alone.

Now she wields her ageless youth and beauty like weapons, uses them to draw in those who come to mourn the fortunate who have managed to pass on as she cannot. Their screams help to ease her pain, the drink of their blood momentarily aid her suffering. But it is the taste of their flesh that she relishes in; ever hopeful that what is consumed will revert her damaged cells to their mortal origins.

Yet, with each kill, when the light finally fades from her victim’s dulling eyes, the pain and rage continues ever onward. Having spilled her own blood many times over without the needed result, the girl knows that her time will never come. Her eternal torment is quite literally a hell on earth, one that she has forever been tethered to. Angel has become Devil in Claire Novak’s immortal eyes. It sickens her to know that a monster now wears her father’s meat.

But then again, the question remains in the back of her mind, in the ghostly remnants of her tainted soul that still fights to remain something close to human. Between herself and the demon she now calls Castiel, who has become the greater evil?

Re: Supernatural, You Make Me Want To Die, Claire Novak,(Jimmy), (Castiel), R, thoughts of death

CLAIRE!!! \o/ SO WRONG, BUT SO RIGHT! <3

Supernatural, Praying Hurts, Raphael, Castiel, violence/creepy stuff

Prompt: Godless is no state for an angel to be, Raphael thinks.

And the voices that filter down to him from the dark voids beyond creation - the voices of older, stranger things - agree.

---

Praying hurts.

His thoughts run together in frozen loops and he can only identify enemies and he knows that he draws more to him when he prays.

(There is only one name that he cares to remember, one name that gives him the courage and hatred to continue this, to bear the pain of prayer.)

It burns and chills him as he begs blessings from the things that have deigned to notice him, and he can feel the lesser, emotional pain that flows to him as Heaven notices and reels back from a prayer they all can hear.

But his sword is strong, his eyes are like fires, and Raphael slays those brethren sent to him, stains his hands with the blood of his brothers.

His sword is drinking the blood, Raphael knows because it has teeth that chew and tear the flesh as it cuts.

Logic collapses around him, but he can fly, and fly he does, leaving screaming air in his wake.

Raphael cares not that he has changed to harbor his new Gods.

Not when he soon has Castiel in his hands, and not when he can share his bounty with the one he hates: death is no fitting gift to give to Castiel, not when the voices inside whisper that they are many, and that they are hungry.

Re: Supernatural, Praying Hurts, Raphael, Castiel, violence/creepy stuff

Once again, I will express how gleefully incoherent your stuff leaves me. X3

asfdsakldhgkjdashgkjlfhakdjghasdgjhskjh! ♥________________♥

Supernatural; life must to exist consume; Adam; R; violence, murder, cannibalism, gore. (Part 1)

Prompt: No Winchester stays dead for long- but Adam's only half.

---

The thing is, he realizes, that he was never meant for this, for the vastness of this vicious, alien creature that tears its way into him.

He is not meant to be Michael's vessel, is too small, and the angel is forced to make room for itself as it crawls inside and curls up like a nest of burning snakes beneath his skin.

Michael hollows him out, until there is only the barest flimsy film of body and soul left to contain it, and Adam can't even scream as everything that makes him anything is ripped straight out of him.

---
He supposes that maybe all of that would have been alright - that all that pain and vicious, tearing loss would have been awful, but acceptable - if that had been the end of it.

It's not.

---
Adam crawls out of the ground, cold and empty, save for a white, sharp-edged light where his heart should be. It feels like Michael, and it hurts.

He considers crying, staying curled up in the wet grass, but the painful light in his chest makes him grind his teeth and get up, makes him move.

It doesn't take long for him to reach a house, and he watches through windows as a family goes about their evening.

He watches the children - two sons, one daughter - play video games, while their parents solve crossword puzzles in the kitchen.

He watches as the wife gets up to send the children to bed, the children disappointed and pleading, but resigned to their fates.

He watches the husband and wife curl up on the couch, watching a movie they don't care about as an excuse just be near each other, like they're just teenagers again.

He watches the husband kiss his wife, before leaving for upstairs, flicking the lights off as he goes.

He watches himself reflected in suddenly dark glass; hair and skin and eyes all bleached white and faded. A trick of the light, he thinks, but as he looks down at his hands, they are pale, nearly translucent, and the light in his chest sparks with pain and purpose.

What happens next is all new, horrifying instinct; walking ghostlike through the house, so silent it's like sound has been drained from him as well as color; the wife's neck blissfully warm under his hands, an aborted scream vibrating against his fingers; blood scalding hot against his skin as he plunges a hand through her belly and up, towards lungs and heart; the metallic taste of blood and flesh in his mouth, the light in his chest singing as it feeds.

When it's done, when he's done, when he sees the wrecked carcass on the floor, bathed in the dim light of the television screen, he is overwhelmed by the brutality of it, the obscenity. He knows he was the one to do it, but he wonders how he ever could.

He runs.

He runs out of the house, across field and forest, and he runs runs runs until he falls. Not for shortness of breath, or exhaustion, because he feels neither (and thinks he might actually be unable to) but simply because he trips.

He stays on the ground, can't get up for the shock, and the light pulses, sated and pleased.

---
The next morning, he washes the blood off in a stream, and in the reflection he can see that his eyes are blue, his hair is blonde, and his skin is pale, but still decidedly pink.

The light in his chest flares a little, and Adam understands what it means.

'Consume, or we will fade.'

And the light seems pretty intent on not ever fading.

---
He steals new clothes from a clothesline; the jeans are a bit too large, the t-shirt a bit too tight, but they're not covered in blood that refuses to come out, so it's a definite upgrade.

He keeps his boots, and pretends they've always been a rusty brown.

---

Supernatural; life must to exist consume; Adam; R; violence, murder, cannibalism, gore. (Part 2)

The pain drives him to kill again a few days later.

All the color has already drained out of him, he makes no sound as he moves and his voice is becoming faint and whispery, and he can feel himself loose substance, becoming light and immaterial, like the wind could just pick him up and carry him away (he stays inside or hides in lee on windy days, because he doesn't want to test the theory).

He hitches a ride with a group of three college girls, heading home for summer holidays, and he sits in the backseat with Linda, while Nia and Leslie watch them with smiling eyes in the rearview mirror.

He feeds them lies about himself while he tries to tear his eyes away from exposed necks and arms and Linda's thighs that are left so tantalizingly bare by how her already short skirt rides up.

The light flares with stabbing pain, and he can't help but fold over with it, arms crossed tightly over his chest, knees instinctively coming up to protect his torso from attack.

"Oh God!" Linda exclaims, and she leans over, putting her warm, warm hands against him. "Adam, are you alright? What's wrong?"

Those are Linda's last words in life, and her blood warms him from the inside as he swallows it down with chunks of liver.

Nia screams, dark eyes wide in the rearview, and in her terror she loses control of the car. She stops screaming as they skid of the road and her head slams hard against the steering wheel, then the driver's-side window.

Leslie, responsible Leslie, struggles with her seatbelt, screaming, and when she finally gets it off her, she opens the door and bolts.

Adam doesn't care. All he cares about is how warm he feels, how alive and solid and painless.

Besides, they're in the middle of nowhere, and Leslie won't find help for a long time yet.

He has all the time in the world for the two warm bodies before him.

---
He drives Nia's car until it's out of gas, then parks it in a out of the way forest clearing.

He buries Nia and Linda there, digs the graves with a crowbar, fills them back up with his hands, and gathers stones to build small cairns on top.

He treats their dead bodies with as much respect as he can, because he knows they deserve it, and because there's a sort of faraway sense of regret in his mind, vague and indistinct.

---
See, the thing is there is this... disconnect in his mind. It's name is Michael, and it doesn't see humans as sentient beings worthy of consideration as anything other than means to an end.

Currently, that end is the survival of whatever is left of the boy that was once Adam Milligan.

But Adam can still reason, even if the light in his chest cannot.

So if killing is inevitable, then Adam can at least choose who has to die.

And it's not as if there isn't a substantial pool of possible victims that would serve the world better in the ground.

---
The first kill that isn't just on instinct is a guy who tries to rape a girl in an alley outside a nightclub. The girl screams and screams and screams in the man's arms , and just keeps on screaming when Adam rips him from her, then bashes his head against the brick wall again and again until his skull is cracked and Adam can reach into it and scoop out the brains and lick them from his fingers.

The girl can't get her legs under her to run away until Adam turns towards her and tells her to.

---

Supernatural, The Weight, Castiel, Dean, PG

The heart is heavy; in fact everything in this body seems to weigh him down. Castiel has no need for anchors – he’s a creature of flight. Jimmy won’t mind, he can always find him new lungs later.

Note: Set in 5.04 Croatverse

-

It doesn't hurt, not exactly. He's not that far gone yet. But there's something there, anticipation, in the bubble and roil of Castiel's stomach as he watches Dean bend his finger backwards. It folds almost in half, the muscle limp and unresisting, the skin soft.

"What the fuck did you do to it?" Dean mutters.

"It has no bones in it," Castiel explains and he lets Dean twist his finger around, touch fingernail to palm. "I didn't think I'd need them."

He can remember exactly where he left them, by the side of a road in Blenheim, New Zealand, as he'd searched through fields of plump grapes for any signs of his Father. He'd felt heavy that day, felt the downwards pull of the dry soil that settled in fine dust over his vessel's shoulders. It had seemed like logic to separate himself into parts, to give up something so insignificant in the pursuit of everything.

"So now you can't pull a trigger," Dean says as he wraps a bandage around the splint. "Great."

Castiel can feel in strength in his other fingers fading, he can feel the muscle softening into formlessness without bone or grace to bind it.

He shrugs and takes another swig from the bottle of whiskey Dean gave him to dull the pain.

-

Spells are less effective than they once were, but weapons are in short supply and so everyone has scars and scabs, red lines in neat rows up their arms. They're in what used to be a supermarket, need a few moments hidden from demons when, "Your turn, Cas," Dean says and grabs Castiel's flaccid arm.

There's no pain, just the sensation of skin parting around the blade. Castiel watches as the capillaries tear open and…

"What the fuck?"

Castiel doesn't have to pull his arm away. Dean drops it in shock, wide eyes on the bloodless gash.

"I can't make the blood move without a heart," Castiel apologizes. "It's all pooled in my feet, if you want to cut there."

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. He'd been in Valdivia, Chile, peering at the ripples on the water and the pounding of his vessel's heart had been so loud, the rush of blood through veins and arteries had been so distracting. It had been much quieter when he'd left the crimson, weeping chunk of meat behind him. And it hadn't taken much grace to push the red cells around their course when he'd needed them.

"Risa!" Dean shouts as he turns his back. "Blood!"

Castiel can't quite see the problem. His feet are almost black, full to bursting with cool, coagulating blood that would work just as well as fresh.

-

His legs are useless now, his body has started to twist and lose its shape, but Castiel still sits in on his fearless leader's war councils. It's hard, to drag himself across the floor like some mollusk or serpent, but he manages. It's no more difficult than anything else he's endured since his grace started to flicker and wane.

"We're running low on supplies," Dean says. He looks at Risa and at everyone else around the table.

"I can do without food," Castiel offers. His voice is quiet, thin: it's harder to drag air through his larynx without lungs than he could have imagined. "It's not as if I have a stomach to keep it in."

That had been one of the last things to go, left oozing bile on the shore of an unnamed Arctic beach. It had been packed with meat that felt like corruption and Castiel remembers the brief feeling of freedom, defiance, when he'd pulled it out and thrown it away. It's a pleasant feeling to hold on to when Dean's soldiers look at him from the corner of their eyes and see something less than themselves.

"Great," Dean mutters. "Next problem…" He doesn't look at Castiel, it's been weeks since he has. He talks about a raid on what he calls 'Demon Kindergarten.'

The talk of slaughter goes on and on. Castiel is bored, and so he relaxes a little, lets his body slide from its chair down onto the floor. He lets go of the faint strands of his grace and lets the skin and muscle of his body puddle around him, the red jellies of his innards shift and squash together.

He feels very, very heavy.

Re: Supernatural, The Weight, Castiel, Dean, PG

Hahahaha oh jeez, Cas. Gross.

This is hilarious---'Demon Kindergarten' oh my god---in one of those there-is-no-difference-between-laughter-and-terror kind of ways. Very disturbing. (Very good.)

Supernatural, Sleepwalker, Sam, Dean, R, Dark, bloody imagery 1/2

Sleepwalking is dangerous with dreams like Sam's and Dean's.

Sam's nightmares are never the same.

*

Dean is dying and the hellhounds are scratching his face in long stripes of flesh, exposing the white of the bones underneath: the flat plates of the skull, the curve of the jaw, his white, regular teeth. Sam knows it's a nightmare because, when it'd happened, the hellhounds had left Dean's face oddly untouched. Only the drops of blood across his pasty skin had shattered the illusion that Dean was only sleeping when Sam had finally closed his eyes.

*

Sam's back is cold and his left leg is asleep, and the open door lets in a colder draft of air that makes him shiver.

"Dude," Dean says, "it's not like the bathroom is an improvement from the rest of the room."

Sam stands up, alarmed and ashamed. He tries for a smile that falls against the paleness of Dean's face, his red-rimmed eyes, and the tension around his mouth.

"Next time, at least bring a pillow," Dean says quietly before going away.

Sam, hands on the sink, shakes the pin and needles from his leg.

*

The demons in Sam's dreams are in every face he's ever met. Their eyes are black as ink and shiny like obsidian; their lips are turned upward in all-knowing smiles. They are teachers, and passers-by, and roommates and friends and prom dates and all the people he'd considered friendly. They walk alongside him: a sea stolen arms and misleading words that block Sam's path.

*

Sam's pancakes are drowning in syrup and his coffee is weak and too hot.

Dean lets his fork fall on the plate with a muted clank, food untouched. He looks outside when he says, "Maybe, we should hang a bell around your neck."

"Maybe," Sam says and swallows a forkful of too sweet food.

Dean throws a glance his way and there must be something on Sam's face that's either funny or terrifying. His throaty, loose, hysterical laugh draws the attention of the other loner patron.

When he can talk again, tears in his eyes, Dean says, "God, we're so screwed."

Sam nods and sips his coffee. Dean's face had terrified him too.

*

Certain nights, the dreams are hot like fire, an impenetrable wall of heat and light that dance a yellow and red dance. Sam's consumed with thirst, lips dry with the need to look at the other side, his limbs frozen in place with a sense of revulsion. He stands, perpetually caught in not knowing, face burning and back chilled, arms and hands alive with flames.

*

The poke on his shoulder is gentle. When he opens his eyes, Sam only sees wallpaper on the wall. The floor is hard under his ass. The blanket he's wrapped around smells of his sweat, the texture rough around his naked ankles.

"You awake?" Dean asks and Sam looks up and wants to say he's sorry for putting the panic on Dean's face, but he only nods and purses his lips at the shadow of a bruise on Dean's neck.

"You were hell-bent on going outside," he says by way of explanation, then pats Sam's leg and stands up.

Sam is chilly even under the blanket, the floor hard under his ass.

"Do you think it'll get better?" he asks.

Dean doesn't answer for a long time. Sam holds his breath, lets it go only when Dean says, "You're only stressed, Sam. It'll get better."

Sam goes for breakfast that morning, brings back pie and strong, black coffee.

*

Re: Supernatural, Sleepwalker, Sam, Dean, R, Dark, bloody imagery 2/2

Tonight, Sam's dream is red and heavy with the scent of blood. It flows so easily past his tongue, rich and sweet. He's so thirsty and no water has ever sated him like blood does - did. Past the shame, past its wrongness, it had always filled him thoroughly.

He can let himself keep this, only in the dream, only here, for once, where he doesn't hurt anybody, where it's not a shame anymore. He drinks until his belly is full with it, and he can imagine his face, the smears of red on his chin when the blood's just too much for Sam to swallow it all and falls in rivulets on his hand, and on the floor.

The body under him goes slack, finally, but it's just a demon - a demon in a dream - and Sam eases it on the floor, one hand under the head so he can keep drinking.

Sam hates this dream the most.

*

Dean always dreams of hell whether he remembers it or not. Unlike Sam, he doesn't move from his bed, but the sheets are soaked with sweat in the morning, soft and wrinkled.

Tonight, Alastair is draining all the blood from the memory of his body. It's slow work, methodical, drop after drop through a spiral-shaped tube. It only stings a little when he thrusts it inside the fat vein at his neck and it's only mildly discomforting when Alastair wraps his demonic lips around it and sucks until Dean's blood drips steadily from it and forms a puddle around his feet.

It's not one of Dean's favorite ways to die. Alastair can draw it out for a long time and even though it doesn't hurt that much, it makes his body unresponsive and weak too heavy too carry. It makes his lips say things he'd rather keep secret and his eyes see things that can't be possibly here.

Alastair knows it, of course, and he smiles satisfied, and he eases him gently on the floor, a hand under his head. Though Dean's vision is hazy and hell is spinning fast above him, he swears he sees Sam's face.

Another hell trick, Dean thinks, before his lids get too heavy.

*

Eyes closed and brain muddled with sleep, Sam wonders where his nightly wanderings have brought him this time; he strains his ears, reluctant to really wake up and deal with the world just yet, but the room is silent over the noises coming from the street.

Probably, Dean's still asleep. Good, he needs it.

--

Seer, Cassandra+others, PG-13, bloody imagery, 1/2

Prompt: Cassandra sees.

I have actually not written anything for Greek Mythology in a long-ass time. This was an interesting first experience.

Cassandra sees.

Superimposed upon this world she sees the future, creeping and crawling and pressing its inexorable self upon the present.

She sees a withered black thing reach up with long, long arms and yank a young boy down to the ground, stuff his body in its great gaping maw the size of its entire body. She screams and points, trying to warn them, but they look at her with scorn.

Crazy Cassandra. You’d pity her if it weren’t so hard.

The future turns and looks at her with its huge white eyes, hungry. The future is always hungry.

The boy topples screaming from the roof and now it is his mother screaming. You cursed us, she yells, turning on Cassandra, groping for a rock to throw, her face streaked with grief. You are a curse. Get away, death-omen.

Cassandra sees the black thing put its arms around the grieving woman and hold her close. It will have her too, before long.

She goes.

**

The snakes in the temple like her. She lets them wind around her arms. There is no future for them, no present, no past. It is a relief.

She supposes she is grateful for the peace.

Around the priests, though – that one watching her with lust will die in a fire. She can see his skin melting and dripping to the floor. That one loitering in the corridor will fall in love with a woman who will scorn him. She can see him holding his beating heart in his hands, blood streaming from his eyes.

There is no beauty to these visions. Perhaps there was before. She can no longer remember, just as she can no longer remember what it was to see only the present without its future hovering over.

Cassandra has always seen.

Her brother Hector comes to find her, lays a hand on her shoulder. He smiles at her, and she tries not to see the way it stretches too wide, blood pouring over his chin, his nose smashed back into his face. Cassandra, he says, Come. You shouldn’t disturb the priests. Mother wants to see you.

I don’t want to see her, Cassandra wants to say, but what comes out is Hector, please don’t die.

He laughs, his rich, full laugh. His ribs are bare, all the flesh scraped off in ribbons. I don’t plan to, he says, and shakes his head a little. Don’t worry, little sister. You don’t need to worry.

But then he can’t see the future hovering over his head, hungry and waiting.

**

Andromache lets her hold her child. Astyanax soothes her, his soft noises and clear eyes cutting through her second sight. He tugs her hair and babbles non-words with delight. Andromache smiles.

He likes you, she says.

I like him, Cassandra says, and does not look at Andromache with her arms heavy with chains and her face heavy with sorrow, aged beyond her years. He is a beautiful child, she says, and leans down to kiss his forehead.

Her mother comes in and hovers around her, and Cassandra ignores her in favor of the child. Her mother thinks she is insane, as everyone does, but doesn’t treat her with kindness – more with wariness and fear.

She looks down at Astyanax and starts with a small cry, because there is a black creature at his feet, tugging on them. No, she says, sternly, no, you can’t have him.

Cassandra? Says Andromache worriedly, and as she watches Astyanax’s body crumples, his blood spraying up into her face.

She screams in surprise and fear, and her father bursts through the door and says, Paris is home, Paris has come home, his voice full of joy.

Cassandra covers her face with her hands but she can still see it, still see.

All of them, she says, all of them.

Andromache hands Astyanax to a nursemaid and embraces her. The chains clink as she moves, but her body is warm. Shh, she says, Cassandra, it’s all right. Come, let’s go see your brother. Come.

When she pulls her hands from her eyes, Astyanax is gone, and his future gone with him. Her mother and father are staring and she tries to collect herself. Yes, she says, shakily. Yes, I will see Paris.

Re: Seer, Cassandra+others, PG-13, bloody imagery, 2/2

**

She walks like an old woman down the hall with Andromache at her side. She can hear Hector talking, but he doesn’t sound happy, he sounds angry. She shies back and Andromache urges her forward. It has been years since she saw Paris, and she’s not sure what to feel.

Paris has not always been kind to her. But he is her brother.

The great oak door swings open and she steps inside.

There is a woman with him, and she is beautiful. She looks nervous, too, slightly uncertain, but she is beautiful. Paris is looking at no one but her.

The room is soaked with blood.

She stops. What is it? Andromache asks, but Cassandra cannot answer. There is blood running down the walls. The tapestries are torn and ragged. The air smells like smoke and there are corpses on the floor, thick as carpet, bloated, mouths gaping, entrails strewn as vultures pick at their eyes. The black things that summon death crawl among them, mouths wide and dark, cackling silently, and they are dead, all dead, blood ankle deep on the floor-

She screams. Paris is perforated by spears, his dead eyes staring, mouth gaping wide. Hector’s neck is broken, his head bent to the side, blood coating his front. Everywhere red, everywhere death, everywhere the stench of rot and decay-

And the woman, the woman with Paris that Cassandra doesn’t know, unchanged. Her dress white. Her face clean.

Except her hands. Her hands are red and dripping.

Her! Cassandra cries, It is her, she brings death, death is with her, she’s going to kill you all, look, look!

The woman with Paris looks scared. He covers her face, turns her body into his. By all the gods, he says, can someone stop her?

No she says, no, I won’t stop, I won’t, I won’t be silent, why are you so blind!

Because they are, not to see this, not to understand that this woman with the white dress and the red hands is their death, is the dark future she’s been seeing, might as well be a black thing with gaping jaws and white eyes.

But they are blind.

Cassandra – she sees.

Supernatural, Untitled, Dean, R, Character death, gore, mentions of het

Prompt: Listen: Dean Winchester has come unstuck in time.



Dean dies again. Forever. Always. It’s a half step to the right, tearing pain down his side as the shrapnel digs in. He’s lived this moment and died this moment enough times to know how many bits of shrapnel force themselves under his skin at once, feels the notches where they’re going to be and where they are still, sometimes, shiver with anticipation at the moment that defines them.

This death is as meaningless as the others. He has died, he will die, he will live.

.

Listen.

Dean is seven years old and Sammy is a sleepy bundle of toddler on his hip, the crown of his head digging into Dean’s pelvis. Dad’s asleep in the front seat, the radio tuned to the white noise hysterics of an evangelical preacher, only the sharpest of his words clear through the static. Dean can’t sleep, can never sleep this time. He keeps watch over his family, lets them sleep.

A semi drives past on the highway, shaking the car down to it’s bones, waking Dad even while Sammy mutters in his sleep, covers his head and goes deeper down.

“Hey, kid,” dad says. “Get some rest.”

“Okay,” Dean says, said, will say.

.

Dean is in hell, will be in hell, is always in hell.

“My boy,” Alistair says. “I’ll twist you around until you don’t know which way’s up.”

He looks nothing like the forms he will take. He is all forms of himself; infinite cruelty and space and time, a cloud of poison smoke, a rain of knives. He has many arms.

“The only thing you’ll know is how to come back to me.”

.

Dean drums his fingers on the steering wheel, singing loud until he feels the burn deep in the back of his throat. He is happy, was happy. He no longer remembers why. It doesn’t seem to matter.

The road in front of him is narrow and straight, the glare of the sun reflecting off dirt and sand and pavement and nothing at all.

.
Dean opens his first can of beer, listening to the soft hiss it makes as the tab pops off.

“You earned it,” Bobby says.

“No big deal,” Dean says, his chest secretly burning with pride.

“Your first kill is a big deal,” Bobby corrects, leaning himself against the nearest car with a sigh. “Especially when you saved my ass doing it.”

“It was nothing,” Dean says. He’s drank this beer before but he still shivers at the taste every time, he always will.

.

Dean is making love, will always be in this bed with this girl with a name he can’t quite remember and freckles across her stomach. She puts her fingers under his chin, lifting his face to the light.

“You keep doing that,” she says.

“Doing what?” Dean asks, like he doesn’t already know.

“You look so far away sometimes,” she tells him, is always telling him, the moment spreading into vastness like a smear of paint over Dean’s entire life. “It’s like you’re not even here.”

.

Dean’s house is burning, but the floor is always freezing against his bare feet until he makes it outside and feels the wet, curling blades of grass between his toes. He’s safe, like standing on the sofa away from the hot lava while Mommy vacuums. Sammy is heavy in his arms, his face screwing up into the frown that means waking up, that means crying.

Dean knows his mom is dead even before his dad comes out of the house, the edges of his clothes singed, soot dusted over his shoulders. He wishes his dad wouldn’t hold him quite so tight. She’s still alive, somewhere, just like dad is dead, his face white and empty in a hospital bed while the heart monitor screams, announces his death with a great catcall. Ding dong the hunter’s dead.

Sammy wakes up and cries and dad takes him, rocking him back and forth.

.

Re: Supernatural, Untitled, Dean, R, Character death, gore, mentions of het

Listen.

Dean’s hands are inside a man’s torso, his fingers feeling over the delicate cage of his ribs, feeling along the curves where they’re easiest to break, counting them. The man keeps screaming, making Dean lose count and he has to start all over again, from the top. Flesh dissolves beneath his touch, the man’s heart beating on display, his intestines slowly unwinding and the shining coils falling like snakes.

“This is what you were made for, Deano,” Alistair says, his voice twirling through Dean’s ears, leaving words in his head. “You’ll always be here.”

.

Dean is sitting on the couch, remote in hand, both his and Ben’s feet illegally on the coffee table while Lisa is at work. There’s a roast in the oven that Dean is trying not to burn but will fail, cooking the soft underside of the meat to the glass pan.

“And if he makes this kick the Packers win,” Ben explains.

“Right,” Dean says, trying to ignore the fact that if any of these pampered gym rats ran into so much as a ghoul they’d be dead in a few seconds.

“We want the Packers to win,” Ben says.

“Gotcha,” Dean agrees.

Normal, he is normal, was normal. Normal people watch football and don’t wonder how well the quarterback would do against a wendigo, would actually pay more to see that than the football game. Normal people don’t wonder what color his insides are, if the steroids changed the size of his organs, what they would feel like in his hands.

Ben smiles, will smile, did smile shyly at Dean over his shoulder, and Dean smiles back.

.

Dean is digging his grave in reverse, hands with no calluses cracking open the wood of his coffin and unbroken fingernails sifting away the dirt. He pushes his toxic, acid hands before him, clearing his path through the dirt until his face touches sky and he takes the deepest breath he has ever, will ever take.

.

Dean is dying, again, for always; his clothes and his skin shredding under the onslaught of a hellhound. With every tear the beast comes more into focus, becomes more there. A snarling mouth hovers over his face, saliva and blood, his blood, dripping from raggedly sharp teeth.

Dean sighs out his last breath. He will go, was going, is always going back.

spn, a week from next tuesday, sam & dean, canon character death

Prompt: Mystery Spot. Sam can't face a future where he never sees his brother alive again. At least in the time loop, he gets one more day with Dean. And another day. And another day.

- — -

The trickster almost ends it, but he didn't intended for it to round out that way.

Sam stops looking for the rabbit hole that may lead them out of Broward County after Dean dies for the three hundred and forty-first time. Some days he gets as few as five minutes before dean trips over the lip where the shag carpet meets the bathroom's curled up linoleum. there's blood, it soaks into his hands, into the whorls of his fingertips as he holds the dead body. Dean. And then.

And when your looks are gone and you're alone—

Dean shoots out of bed, another day to start on this case, and Sam rides it out, no commentary on the song, catches the bottle of hot sauce before it shatters on impact. He stopped explaining it weeks ago; it took too long and what did it matter if Dean knew he was going to die? They'd lived that hell for months now. Every few weeks, they make it until nightfall, past gargling mouthwash in the molded bathroom, dressing in the motel room that had never seen better days (it was built to be a rat trap), breakfast at the diner with the regulars who Sam knows by name even as they stare at him, beady eyes brimming with unease at the strangers. Sam convinces Dean to take the day off, leave the case be for a bit, and they sit in the park, play cards, tell each other bullshit stories about girls they'd never been with and hustles they never quite managed to pull off.

Dean lasts a full twelve hours once before his heart gives out during a late night stop off at the only bar in the county. Sam grins over the body, takes Dean's lax hands and holds onto them until the bones break, until they're back in bed.

Two years in, Sam walks with ease down the streets, like something out of his old dreams of a safe life in California. Dean teases him about keeping to a clock no matter what they do. Sam just nods and keeps moving, sure to tell Dean some tidbit about their life together or his life when they were apart. Eventually, Dean lets Sam slip back in even though he prefaces everything with The Deal and he's only getting into this because Sam needs to know. They shrug, they talk, take the flyers, pet the rowdy dog.

Dean tells Sam that he took a class at OU before he met Cassie, that's how he met Cassie. Dean stops in the street and gives Sam an incredulous look after Sam says, "I miss that girl." That day, Dean dies on the steps of the city courthouse from a fall after researching "the case." Sam stumbles down next to the tearing skin and fractured bones. He waits, hand splayed out over the head wound that is seeping blood and cracked bones.

spn, a week from next tuesday, sam & dean, canon character death (2)

What were the things you wanted for yourself?

Time stops, or slows to a stop as Dean chews on the pig-in-a-poke daily special and Sam raises his mug to sip on his cup of coffee.

The regular customer, plain joe of a guy with nothing more to offer than a request for the pancake and syrup special, morphs into the sarcastic son of bitch trickster snapping his fingers so that Sam pulls in a large mouthful of stale decaf as if he had never paused.

"You should have found me almost a year ago, Sam. Tried of eating at this place, damned pancakes never done in the middle."

He shrugs. "I wasn't looking. Figured it was you back when you ordered the strawberry syrup."

The trickster looks perplexed as if he had hoped Sam failed at the task, not that he'd never set out to search at all and then accidently figured it all out only to not give a fuck.

He cuts the trickster off. "If you're trying to teach me a lesson, you failed. He's already been here a year past the deal. I win."

"Was it a game?"

"Isn't it always?"

The trickster scratches his hairless chin, rocks back on his heels. "You plan to live here indefinitely, taking nips and sips of days in small town Florida where anything and everything — that I've made sure of — will kill Dean every few hours."

"I suppose." Sam had past up nonchalance a few months ago when the nightmares disappeared and now there is nothing. A void but for darkness, Dean, and then the dying.

"I don't deal with crazies, Winchester, can't teach 'em a thing. I had you pegged for a bloodhound type who wouldn't give up until he could truly save his brother, instead you've settled for this." The trickster pans the diner with his eyes, disgust and confusion marring his smooth face.

Sam only smiles, motions to the frozen Doris, as if she will see him and slide over to top off his cup. "You do know how this all started, so why did you expect anything less. I saved Dean, and this place is as good as any other."

"He dies daily, Samuel. Is this not crystal clear for you? I'm ending it. Letting Lillith take her due. This is just another hell."

"Go ahead and try," Sam chirps. He's grinning now, teeth stained brown, one loose and another broken. "You don't know hell, can't say I do either, but this isn't it."

The glean of obsession mingled with terror radiates off of Sam with ease as the trickster backs away, snapping his fingers so that the day continues. When Sam looks through him with a smile, a wave, and a "have a great Tuesday," no one turns around and everything continues as it should be. Cal, Doris, and Mr. Pickett cut-up as Dean nibbles on his bacon. Sam can't contain his grin that stretches across his face, resembles a clown without the make-up. Dean raises an eyebrow but lets it pass without comment.

Dean dies an hour later, hit and run by a beige sedan. Sam cradles his head and tells him to wait just a few more minutes even though they have all the time in this world.

Black Swan, if you really want to conjure up a ghost, Lily, Nina, Thomas, PG-13 (1/2)

Prompt: Nina isn't dead. She can't be, because Lily sees her reflection in the mirror perform a flawless brisé. "You'll never be as good as me," she says. "Never."



The company takes a week off--out of respect, Thomas says, as if he ever respected her--but they can’t afford to change the program. The costumes have been made, the set constructed.

“Please, Lily,” he says. “You’re the only one who can do this. For the company.” He doesn’t call her his little princess. He doesn’t dare.

They take another week to rehearse. Some of the dancers have left. (Not out of sadness for Nina; mostly superstition. The show is cursed. The company is cursed. Beth, and then Nina, and who is next? Not me, they say, not me.) The replacements are brutally trained up, but the real pressure is on Lily and everyone knows it.


Lily dances the black swan like she’s trying to erase the memory of Nina from everyone’s mind. She is fierce and aloof and alluring; everyone watches her, hating how they love her. Thomas circles her in the rehearsal room, looking for flaws or vulnerable places to put his teeth.

“Good,” he says at last. “Very good.”

Dancing the white swan is harder than she thought. Nina always made it look easy, delicate like a music box ballerina. Lily just looks nervous. She watches Thomas’ frown get deeper until she stumbles and falls. Someone laughs. It sounds like Nina.


Lily stays late to practice, picking her way through Act Two a step at a time. She hums the music, hisses the counts under her breath. She tries to be fragile, intrigued, afraid. That is when the lights go out.

“I’m still here!” she shouts, voice echoing in the space.

The lights come back on. In the mirror, Nina is dancing the black swan pas de deux behind her.

“It’s not your fault,” she says, flashing a smile from behind blood-red lips. “I’m just better than you.”

Thirty two perfect fouettés en tournant. Lily counts them all.


The next day, Nina is at rehearsal. She stays in the corner, silent, arms folded. Lily can’t stop looking at her, doesn’t stop until Thomas snaps his fingers an inch from her face and bellows at her in French. Why is she not focused, does she not remember how little time they have, would she like someone else to dance the white swan for her?

Nina’s shoulders shake with laughter, one pale hand pressed over her mouth.

At the water break, Nina slides up behind her, whispering advice in her ear. “Your carriage is wrong. The white swan is always afraid, but it is a queen’s fear. She is not strong; that doesn’t make her weak--”

“Leave me alone!” When Lily turns around, Nina is already gone. The other dancers turn away.


Lily does not sleep well that night. She dreams that she is dancing the prologue. Instead of Rothbart, it’s Nina waiting for her, wrapped in a cape of glossy black feathers. Nina takes her by the hand, guides her to the edge of the stage. “If you were really the swan queen,” she whispers, lips brushing Lily’s ear, “you could fly.” She pushes Lily into the orchestra pit.

Lily wakes up, gasping for breath, and stares at a room she doesn’t recognize. Her clothes are strewn everywhere, all the drawers of her dresser pulled out. She can’t find any of her black leotards, only the white one that she saves for laundry day. She pulls her filthy hair up into a bun and runs to the subway station.

She makes it to the rehearsal room with a minute to spare. Thomas turns around when the door opens. He makes it as far as “good morning”; he stops before he can say the wrong name.

Nina is back in the corner, chin held high and haughty. Lily wilts steadily under the pressure of her stare, until she’s flinching from the prince and practically fleeing across the room back to Rothbart.

She jumps when Thomas puts a hand on her shoulder. “Beautiful,” he says. Lily turns away, looking for Nina. Nina is looking at the floor and frowning.


Lily doesn’t have the energy to clean up when she gets home. She kicks through the piles of clothes until she reaches her bed and curls up beneath the covers. Nina is already there, waiting for her.

“I don’t like it when we fight,” she whispers. “I just want you to be perfect.”

“I know,” Lily says.

Nina’s hands are cold.

Black Swan, if you really want to conjure up a ghost, Lily, Nina, Thomas, PG-13 (2/2)

There are not very many private dressing rooms to be had, so Lily gets Nina’s along with all her other inheritances. The broken mirror has been replaced. Sitting on the dressing table are a pair of diamond earrings.

Nina’s smile flickers in the mirror. “For luck,” she says.


It’s opening night. Lily’s costume and hair are a struggle, refusing to lay how they should. By the time she gets to her makeup, she’s running out of both patience and time.

“Here. Let me.” Nina curls her fingers under Lily’s chin, tipping her head back. She takes the sponge delicately out of Lily’s hand and starts smoothing the makeup over her cheekbones.

“Close your eyes.” She brushes shadow over Lily’s eyelids with her fingertips. She adds mascara, quick flicks of the brush, before taking a step back to look at her work. “One more thing.”

Nina’s kiss is all teeth and control. Lily yields, back arching against the sure pressure of Nina’s hand. Nina steps back so suddenly that Lily staggers; Nina turns her to face the mirror with a hand still on her waist. Lily’s color is high beneath the white paint, her mouth flushed a bitten pink.

“Look at you,” Nina says. “Perfect.”

There is a hurried knock at the door; Thomas opens it without waiting for permission. “Are you ready?”

Both girls smile.

Nina says, “Yes.”

Lily says, “We are.”

(sorry for the double comment, LJ is being really annoying right now)

Prompt: The Uchiha curse is this: the Uchiha see things. Things that others swear aren't there.
Now Sasuke is back in Konoha. It's supposed to be their happy ending, Naruto and Sakura insist.
But he sees things, again.

There are shadows. There’re always been shadows, he thinks, or maybe he just doesn’t remember it another way, like he doesn’t quite remember his mother’s smile, or the weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder, or his brother’s…

“Sasuke?”

The sound of Sakura’s voice makes Sasuke flinch, and he tries to hide it but the hurt that flickered in her eyes tells him he didn’t do a good job at it. He forgot she was there, which is stupid of him because she’s always there, she or Naruto. Never both of them, they’re not allowed.

She pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. “What are you looking at?”

Her tone is casual, but he knows she’s worried. She’s looking at him, always looking at him and he bends under the weight of it, but it’s also warm like sunshine after rain.

“It’s nothing,” he says.

She presses her lips together, joins her hands in her lap. She doesn’t believe him. She’s always been so smart, maybe the smartest of them.

His attention is caught by a movement at the corner of his eye. He forces himself not to turn his head to follow it. The shadows have always been sharper when he uses the Sharingan, darker somehow, but now they’re permanently like that, like they’re getting closer every day. He wants to ask Sakura how his eyes are, if they are their usual black, but he bits back the words. He knows the Sharingan isn’t on; he also knows it’s useless to ask Sakura whether she sees the shadows – no one never does, only the Uchiha.

“Sasuke?” He blinks and sees that Sakura is standing. “I have to go now. Naruto will be here soon.”

“Alright,” he says, looks for something to add, something that will make her lose that worried frown. “Have a good day.”

“You too.”

She walks slowly to the door like she’s expecting him to hold her back, hoping for it. She stops with her hand on the handle.

“Sasuke?” she says, still facing the door. “It will be okay, you know that?”

“I know,” he says. “Konoha won’t lose an asset like the Sharingan. The bloodline is too precious.”

She sighs, quietly but he has sharp hearing. It wasn’t what she meant.

“Good bye.”

And she’s gone, leaving him alone in his room, his prison. It’s comfortable, as far as prisons go, looks a lot like his old room from before actually. There are ninjas guarding the door, the window, the roof, but he can easily pretend they’re not here. He can ask for scrolls to read, as long as it’s not related to ninjutsu, he has food and water, more than he’s used to, more than he needs. It’s not enough to distract him from the shadows, though. They swarm about in the corners, stretch on the ceiling like they belong here. It’s like they’re waiting.

Naruto, Look Into an Abyss part 2, Sasuke, Sakura, Naruto, PG13, no warnings

As announced, Naruto comes one hour later. Naruto isn’t silent and cautious like Sakura, he chatters the silence away, too loud, moves too much. He doesn’t look at Sasuke as much, too, instead he looks through the window and comments on what he sees on the street, like Sasuke has turned blind and can’t see it by himself, he lays on his back on Sasuke’s bed and points out funny shapes on the ceiling, making up weird or obscene stories. He never sees the shadows.

Suddenly, as Sasuke is observing a long shadow making her way through the ceiling, a pillow hit his face and obscures his vision. He pushes it away, twists his mouth in annoyance. He didn’t see it coming – stupid, he feels too safe with Naruto in the room.

“Hey, bastard, are you listening to me?”

Naruto is lying on his stomach, pushed up on his elbows and for once he’s looking at Sasuke, intense as only he can be.

“I’m tuning you out,” Sasuke says, “as everyone who want to keep their sanity intact would do.”

Naruto studies him for a moment, his face unusually serious. “You’re being weird,” he says bluntly, “even weirder than usual and that’s saying something.” He purses his lips. “Sakura is worried.”

He uses his elbows to crawl to Sasuke, twists himself into a sitting position.

“You know we won’t let anything happen to you, right? It’s over, you’re back. You’re back,” he repeats, leans a little so he’s looking Sasuke in the eye.

Sasuke stiffens. Too close, he’s too close, it’s like Sasuke can’t breathe. He and Sakura, the way they focus on him, he’s never understood it. It’s stifling him, but when he didn’t have it he could feel the cold in his bones.

The shadows move quickly on the walls. It’s like they’re mocking him.

“What the fuck are you looking at? Sasuke!” Naruto grabs him by the shoulder and shakes, hard enough to make his teeth rattle. Sasuke clenches his fist with the want to punch, but he sees it in Naruto’s eyes, that naked fear, and for the first time he’s afraid too.

“I don’t know,” he whispers.

“What can I do? Tell me what to do.”

Naruto’s fingers are digging in Sasuke’s shoulders. One of the shadows grows so wide on the wall behind Naruto, it looks like it’s going to engulf him, eat him alive.

“Nothing,” Sasuke says, uses as much bite as he can, and that’s a lot. “Just leave me alone, moron. Can’t I have a moment of peace? You’re always on my back, breathing my air.”

Sakura would be hurt, but Naruto just huffs and lets go of Sasuke. He slides off of the bed.

“Fine, you prick. Sakura will be there in the morning. Don’t know why we fucking bother. You ungrateful ass.”

Sasuke doesn’t ask Naruto to stay longer. Naruto leaves and slams the door behind him for good measure, but Sasuke knows he’ll be back. For now, though, it’s him and the shadows, the one on the wall that Sasuke is pointedly not looking at but is aware is there.

There’s a rustle. Sasuke doesn’t want to turn but knows he will have to. He’s tired of the shadows, they’ve been there his whole life and he’s exhausted, wants to scratch his cursed eyes out, would rather not see than having to look at them again.

The pressure is too much, finally. Sasuke slowly turns around, makes the moment last because he hopes against all hope that he won’t see anything but a white wall.

It’s there, of course. It’s bigger than him, bigger than the room, almost. And there’s something new, something unexpected, two bright red eyes, standing out against the dark. It sees him.

Avatar (James Cameron), oh best beloved, OCs, PG-13, possession, character death

Prompt: The dead live inside Eywa. But what happens when they want to come back? And with the Na'vi opening their minds up when they connect to the trees, maybe the dead can come back...


Once in a generation, this thing happens. A daughter is born among the People who hears the voice of Eywa everywhere. She will serve the tsahik when she is grown, her family thinks, and perhaps become tsahik in her own time. These things do not happen. This is how it happened with Bright Shadow.

When she was old enough to understand the bond, Bright Shadow went to the clan's Tree of Voices. She twined her braid with the tree and opened the ears of her mind to listen. She heard the cries of the dead, louder and clearer than the voices of the living. They filled her up until her own self overflowed and part of it was lost.

She returned to her clan knowing things that happened long before she was born, things not held in the history songs. She laughed at things no one said, answered questions that no one asked. It took her clan many days to know what the matter was, and days more to accept what must be done. It did not feel like help, this thing they must do.

In the meantime, what was left of Bright Shadow fought with the ancestors inside her. They wished to ride her as with an ikran, only with less love. Bright Shadow cursed them all for thieves. She drew her knife and maimed her braid so they could not leave her and harm another. She laughed at them, though it sounded more like tears.

That night, her sisters took the long knives and went to the place where she slept. In the morning, we gave her back to Eywa. She thanked me, before she left us.

I tell you this so that if this happens in your time, you will know what to do.

Re: Avatar (James Cameron), oh best beloved, OCs, PG-13, possession, character death

I will never not love this. Just, ohhhh, the poor girl with all the dead in her mind, and then the cutting of her queue...I heart this.