#John sucks as a father he either raises them away from hunting which gets them killed or | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thegeminisage · 3 years

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hi, sorry for answering you both so late, i am putting your answers together since they are sort of related!

the short answer is, i can’t write a “real” sequel to broken road but the third part of the triptych would be the indirect dean/cas spiritual sequel, except with way more porn. the long answer is:

i just don't think i could write a true direct sequel to broken road set in that same continuity because i don't have anything left to say about john and how he gets along in the real with his family world now that he’s stuck there and they’re all stuck with each other. my main three points of interest that i felt were left unresolved would be the continuation of dean and cas's relationship (more on this in a sec), sam and eileen (ditto), and figuring out if john and mary ever made it work or called it quits for good. so if i wrote a sequel to broken road it would just be a bunch of john/mary stuff that i feel underqualified for because it WOULD involve their sex life and i DO NOT want to write john having sex. them fucking offscreen in broken road was as close as i'm ever getting and even that was weird. and then somehow i’d also have to work sam and eileen into that and it’s not at all related. it would take two fics and i don’t even want to write one. also, i really kind of want to leave the question of john and mary open anyway - i have my own thoughts about how things ultimately end up but i prefer to let the reader imagine what ending they like best, since people have such strong feelings about it. i know that's a little bit of a cop-out and i'm sorry! but it feels beyond the scope of that fic and also a little beyond my scope and area of interest as a writer.

if it helps you any, i imagine going forward their dynamic is a lot like it is in the epilogue, which is part of why i made the epilogue so long, was to give you a good idea of what life is like for them now. but here’s what i imagine might go down after the final curtain call (this is LONG, skip to the section labeled “dean” for the triptych answer):

john & mary:

john continues to suffer and bite his tongue and probably do a lot of complaining and DEFINITELY do a lot of avoiding being alone with dean or cas or dean-and-cas. john was expecting to retire after yellow eyes died so he really wouldn't know what to do with a family that still hunts for "no reason" and i imagine he'd be pretty pissed that they still hunt at all. i expect he and sam would butt heads over that

mary would probably keep attempting to be supportive and keep being bad at it, and spend a lot of time trying to put a brave face on it while secretly dying inside, because she's constantly at war with herself. here she has john back, but not the john she remembers, and spending time with him is difficult because she wants to let herself have him and take comfort in him and also she doesn't want to be anywhere near him because he abused their kids

eventually mary or john or both would have to leave, though mary would come back - in canon she's in and out a lot anyway, she stays for awhile and visits regularly for game nights. i think john would miss the first game night, get one "seriously?" text from mary, and then show back up every week that he possibly could but also not visit unless it would make things worse if he didn't. i don't think he particularly enjoys spending time with his family for a long time, if ever, because much like season 12 mary he came back to a family he barely knew or recognized (and because of what he knows now spending time with dean would be particularly awkward). HIS sons would be getting married to women and retiring and having biological children. this gay adoptive whatever the fuck makes them feel like they are not his sons.

anyway, i imagine john and mary would do much better when running into one another outside of the bunker, on their own separate hunts. they might even take one or two together. there’s probably some very guilty sex in their future at some point because mary is real fucked up. john post broken road does a lot of shutting up but i think around mary he would be the most like his old self. they do this will they/won't they dance for the next decade at least before finally making up their minds one way or the other. i do think they all still go on hunts together sometimes, maybe even with the apocalypse world hunters, and since that's sam's deal john is probably kind of quiet and falls in line and does what's needed without chatting much to anyone. i bet the first few times people don't even realize he's sam's father because he's so quiet. it's his way of trying to apologize to sam and also if he steps out of line when sam is in charge sam would <3 deck him. yes. but yeah i see it being very brisk and professional and awkward, until they all get used to each other again

sam:

as i said earlier the only thing i didn't fix in broken road was eileen, so at some point sam would figure out a way to get her back - since in this verse jack never becomes soulless and chuck never returns and we never get season 15 it's possible she shows back up because she didn't go with her reaper, or because someone fucked up a summoning spell, or sam realized she was in hell and decided to spring her, or she just crawled out on her own like a badass. i think it would be kind of funny if john was involved with her resurrection but maybe accidentally somehow, so it's not like oh sam learns to forgive his dad because john did this really nice thing for him it's more like UGH why did it have to be YOU why are YOU involved in this important thing that has nothing to do with you slkdjfghl but also if you hadn't done it she'd still be down there or something, so, it cancels out. or idk maybe john had to work hard at it or give something up to make it happen. he has to genuinely shut up and be selfless and not fucking complain and feel sorry for himself the entire time, that might be fun too. either way sam would not thank him

(though i do think sam deserves space to explore the fact that he loves john even still, even despite the fact that he also hates him/is very angry with him and always will be. i don’t imagine sam and john ever fully reconcile but i imagine john behaving BECAUSE OF SAM SPECIFICALLY offers sam more catharsis than he thought possible.)

anyway, john would be so relieved to see sam with a woman even if she is a deaf hunter but then it turns out she hates him like sam does so like. sucks to be him! meanwhile sam and eileen get to catch up and he finally has a willing ear (so to speak) that isn’t cas or mary to talk to about this stuff and of course SHE has someone who very much understands what it’s like to come back from hell. part of what i really love about sam and eileen is the way they sort of instantly and intrinsically recognized and understood one another, even across something that resembles a language barrier, and this hypothetical future would be no exception. there’s no way they don’t get engaged inside a year, and much like in the 15.18 fixit they’d sometimes hang at the bunker and sometimes not. i imagine with the apocalypse world hunters going in and out though it’s never exactly empty or lonely there.

whether or not their family unit ever retires and/or moves out of the bunker in this verse is sort of beyond me because my feelings on it change daily but you can imagine whatever you like! however i am adamant that the furthest away from each other sam and dean will ever get permanent-living-situation-wise is next door/across-the-street neighbors. their weird little codependency is part of what i like about them and i have a Whole Thing about not “gentrifying” dean. but for the most part sam would be very much doing his own thing which involves john very little, and healing from his own damage with people OUTSIDE of his blood relatives which he very much deserves. and he has moved so completely past the need to care about john that like john is a backdrop in his life, albeit one with baggage. but mostly he becomes someone to keep an eye on in case he makes trouble, no different than a hundred other surly hunters sam’s known. and he can still be there for dean without his life revolving around dean because now dean has other people there for him too. (i ALSO have a whole thing about sam being in the life for dean specifically, that he’s giving up some or all of adulthood for dean because dean gave up childhood for him - kind of the way someone takes care of their kickass single mom in old age. it’s a guilt/love/debt/devotion sort of thing.)

and speaking of the Eventual future, if babies ever come into this picture (sam and eileen’s, to be clear, dean and cas are probably satisfied with jack, NOT THAT JACK ISN’T ALSO SAM’S CHILD) john is allowed to see them but never unsupervised. i’m picturing like sam and eileen both on their third day of no sleep and sam lets john change a diaper because he’s exhausted and john considers that the best their relationship has been since sam was 6. mary always wanted to raise babies and sam likes her better so she’d get to pitch in with much more enthusiasm (and aw they’d finally get to bond a little more), and dean has raised a baby already so he’d probably try to like help and get waved away a lot like no no raising other peoples babies is no longer your job it’s ok. there is eventually a fight about this

cas & jack:

castiel lives a great life caring for his newly re-graced son and staring at john when he enters or leaves rooms, and i imagine eventually jack gives him his wings back, since he can do whatever the fuck he wants (i'm not giving jack his own section but he also probably keeps acknowledging dean and cas are a couple like out loud which would be fine except for dean is still half in the closet like a skittish traumatized cat so eventually cas would have to explain very gently that nobody was supposed to know that yet and jack should cool it to give dean time to adjust)

anyway i DON’T believe in human cas, i believe he likes being an angel, so he just gets to stay an angel forever and now he has wings too <3 and he can teleport which spooks john in the exact same manner it used to spook dean in s4 <3 except this time cas is being <3 malicious on purpose <3

cas fully won here because like john does NOT want to speak to or acknowledge him much less be in the same room as him so they tend to have a dynamic where like all 6 of them are in the room and cas dean sam mary and jack all talk to each other and john dean sam mary and jack all talk to each other but cas and john do not talk to each other. cas doesn’t have to threaten him or glare at him constantly anymore like all he has to do is look at him. and john is like. man what’s he gonna do. that guy is having sex with your son and there’s nothing you can do about it! so dean doesnt have to be like ok cool it cas anymore because cas has literally won in every possible way. i think at most it’s very much cas being like “if i were trying to kill you, you’d know it <3″ and john can’t return those vibes to sender because then dean would be like ok cool it at his DAD instead. it used to be cas don’t piss off dad and now it’s dad don’t piss off cas. anyway i think that since cas has let dean lean on him so much it would be nice if he could lean on dean a little. again more on that in a minute

dean:

and finally, as for dean...i think he needs a year minimum to dean with people acknowledging he and cas are a couple and another 3 for it not to be weird to say cas’s name in front of his dad. absolutely zero pda in front of john ever but he might like eventually get to the place where he and cas can lounge around together on the couch while they watch movies with the rest of fam and it’s not a big deal. sneak an arm around him at a movie theater. kind of the same vibes as the 15.18 fixit but with less anxiety. because like the worst possible thing (getting outed to everyone) has already happened and aside from the outing itself being completely horrible nothing that terrible even came to pass as a result, so he’s just Adjusting. i think he sort of has to unlearn and relearn his habits - his mediator thing, his defending dad thing. i think there’s a lot of times where he just walks out of a room when shit is too much for him to deal with because he has let go of some of the need to constantly micromanage his family’s interactions to make sure they don’t boil over. michael already took that scenario to the max and mary already dumped john so there’s really not much left to be afraid of. i think he gets told “that’s not your job” a lot and maybe listens more than he used to. and to bring us around to the second question...

i also think dean would get weirdly hung up on the fact that he and cas’s sex life is Not Normal - as in, they fooled around a little and that was it. i think dean would have a huge problem with that. like, obviously he has A Few Hangups About Gay Sex given his history but if you’re a couple you’re supposed to bang on the regular and it’s totally homophobic if he doesn’t bang cas as much as he’d bang a lady he was committed to, right? he’s not gonna give cas less than he gave cassie or lisa, that’s not fair to his best buddy and number one pal!

meanwhile castiel, known asexual, is utterly and wildly neutral to the whole idea except that it’s a way to be close to dean. cas would be just as happy fucking like champions for a six-hour marathon or spending that same six hours curled up in bed together while he plays with dean’s hair. like, same diff. you know that thing about like “cas thinks everything is important he gives the same gravitas to the apocalypse and a nine year old’s birthday party”? like it’s exactly like that with sex and cuddling and sharing a meal together and driving together and watching dumb movies like it’s all time spent With Dean so it all matters just as much.

so we have this conflict where dean is tearing himself apart over the fact that he’s taking a normal human amount of time to “work up” to the whole thing and cas is like. but it’s fine. it’s literally fine. and dean’s reaction to this would be something very offended like hello excuse me i am super hot and fuckable and you don’t WANT me?

if this all sounds familiar that’s because i’ve written similar stuff to it before! if you go to the fic page for broken road, you'll see it's part of a series now (the "triptych"), with my dumb little 15.18 fixit as the prequel. even though continuity-wise these are two totally separate fics i feel very strongly that that fic is the spiritual prequel to broken road, and eventually, a long time from now, after the next @cambionverse fic is done or at the very least well underway, i'd like to write a spiritual sequel. a triptych is three works that stand on their own but also make a more complete whole, so even though these three stories would not be related at all in continuity of where they take place in canon, they each set the stage at a different part of the dean/cas relationship. so fic #1, the get-together, had no sex at all, and it was very short. fic #2, pre-established but just barely, had a little sex in it and it was very long. fic #3 then would be pre-established but like VERY pre-established and have a fuckton of sex in it, and be medium length. i’m ha ha basically writing my own nc-17 porn coda since SOMEBODY won’t do it for me (if you got that joke you’re entitled to financial compensation).

except i actually really do want to tackle this subject myself, it’s stuff i only got to touch on in the other fics because it felt off topic, so in this fic it WOULD be the topic! i really found a groove i like with cas who has almost no trauma around sex but doesn’t care whether or not he has it vs dean who really really wants to have sex but has a minefield of past bad experiences he has to watch out for. and i like writing porn anyway and i didn’t get to write very much these past two fics. i’ve always said that i think dean would snowball (not like that, gross) - it’d take him FOREVER (literally a decade plus) to work up to kissing cas but a fraction of that time to start fooling around with him and a fraction of THAT time to blow him etc etc. the more he does the easier it gets. i feel like it’d be a lot of fun to write.

so, this third fic would not be an official broken road sequel, because there’s almost no plot outside of the porn to speak of anyway, but if what you wanted was to see how the dean/cas went from where it left off, hopefully that will be satisfying in that regard.

i should say, while the third fic would be almost exclusively porn there is one plot element involving ********** that i am not going to talk about on tumblr because it would ruin the surprise. i have told a few people privately and i will tell you if we know each other pretty well but if you know (or guess) don’t tell anyone!

see, the other thing i would want to tackle in that fic is how cas has his own traumas and baggage, even if they’re a little different from dean’s, and i think dean sometimes gets so deep in his own stuff he kind of...not forgets that exactly but forgets how profoundly it still affects cas, because by and large cas deals with that sort of thing a lot more quietly and in much healthier ways than dean does. not that his self-sacrificing ass is the poster child for mental health, but for example cas recognized suicidal ideation in himself and actively worked to keep himself away from situations that would make it worse. he translates his bad feelings into meaningful action (well, he attempts to, even if it usually goes wrong). so he hurts kind of quietly and in late season especially most of the worst moments of his life are behind him (barring jack’s death, which doesn’t happen in this verse). so he’s also further along in his healing process which mean dean kind of forgets how fucked in the head he can be. and in the uh...unusual situation...they find themselves in because of this minor plot, it becomes something that he can’t not notice, that they can’t just not talk about, and cas gets to lean on dean a little, they sort of get to know each other better. so that’s part of the point of that one little plot element. but the rest of it really is porn.

i haven’t started work on the third fic yet - i don’t have a title and my outline is just a bunch of choppy ideas and i have about 2000 words of the middle of the fic jotted down out of context. (it was originally going to be a shorter unrelated thing before i realized how well it tied to what i already had.) i have another obligation to see to before i can get started on it (again, @cambionverse, you should read it if you havent, the concept might sound unappealing but almost everyone who tries it likes it and it’s way better than broken road). so it’ll probably happen a very VERY long time from now! but it IS happening. >:) i just hope after the first two fics in the triptych were so well received that it doesn’t disappoint 🥺

#liz answers asks #anonymous #broken road #liz watches spn #liz loves writing #sorry this is such a long post i got carried away #i'm really excited about that third fic but i am more excited about other things first #but i don't want to get anyone else too excited until i have more concrete stuff bc rn i don't have much confidence in it #when i first conceptualized it i was like 'this is so weird and bad i will have to publish anonymously'#i've moved past that particular bit of self-doubt but only a very small inch lol #12:46pm

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porkchop-ao3 · 3 years

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A Thrill I’ve Never Known (Chapter 64)

Loose Ends

Yep, I’m still alive! Just not spending any time at all writing 😅😬 Here’s another chapter anyway, I hope you enjoy! Also, happy holidays and here’s hoping for a better 2021!!

Tagging @emily-strange and @actuallyhansolo ❤

(All chapters tagged with #ATINK and also posted on Ao3, username PorkChop)

We moved west, staying north, and found a place to camp far from where any Pinkertons were still patrolling. We travelled for hours, all through the remaining hours of the night, through the morning and into the afternoon. We ended up at Cotorra Springs when the sun began to set; it was cooler there and when we found a spot away from any trails, pretty secluded, we decided it was as good a place as any. The rushing sound of the geysers erupting every now and then kept making me jump at first but soon became a somewhat comforting sound. A reminder that no matter what happened, life always carried on, the world wasn't going to stop spinning and fall to pieces just yet.

We set up a small campsite with a few tents and a fire, over which we cooked meat from a deer that Charles had hunted while the rest of us set up. None of us knew how long we would be there but it was clear that we all needed some food and some rest before we even attempted to figure out our next move. We all sat around the fire with our food and little Jack was asleep with Cain by his side; the dog had tagged along with us on our journey, jumping atop the Marston's wagon whenever he got too tired.

"What exactly are we all gonna do?" John was the first one to bring up the elephant in the room, and everyone turned to eye him almost irritatedly.

Nobody spoke up or offered any sort of response, and after a moment, Lenny threw his hat in the ring.

"It's a good question. We can't live like this forever, can we?"

"Course not," Arthur said. He didn't quite snap the words but they weren't untroubled. "We've got a chest full of money on that wagon, we'll… we'll figure out what everyone wants to do and split it accordingly."

"I don't want a penny of that money," Sadie hissed, then spat into the fire, "reeks of Dutch and Micah and dirty betrayal."

"Hey, that implies it was all their money. Dutch barely put a penny in if it weren't from a job we all did together," John scoffed.

"I don't want it either but let's be rational. We're gonna need it," Charles said, looking at Sadie. "We didn't just go through all that only to starve to death at the end of it, all because of pride."

"He's got a point," I agreed. "I don't think any of us should have a problem taking that bastard's money," I added.

"Ain't his money," John shook his head, picking at something stuck in his teeth, "it's our half, fair 'n' square."

"Yeah," I nodded after a moment, but frowned a little. Silence lingered.

"It's obvious none of us feel too good about takin' it," Abigail broke it, stating the unspoken.

"I feel fine," John snorted.

"Me too, for the most part," I hesitantly agreed. Arthur sighed beside me and everyone looked at him.

"For the love of God, not a single one of you refuse that money. This is hard enough, at this point, that money's the only thing that made this possible. Without money, we're trapped, and if we're trapped, we'll end up in the damn ground," he told us through tensely gritted teeth. More silence followed, broken by Susan.

"You're right, Mr. Morgan. This ain't no time for pride and making things needlessly hard on ourselves. We've just gotta take this opportunity to get the heck out of this mess, so I don't wanna hear no bellyaching from any of you," she said sternly, and John nodded in agreement. Lenny took a breath, and nodded too.

"And what're you gonna do Miss Grimshaw?" I asked her softly. She met my eyes across the fire, her brows arching a little in surprise that I'd asked.

"Me? I'm- I'm–" she began hesitantly, and glanced at the others before letting out a breath.

"You ain't thought about it none?" Abigail asked, and Susan turned her gaze to her.

"Quite the opposite," she scoffed a laugh, then patted the side of her hair bun in an attempt at brushing back fly-aways. "Maybe I'm just a little bit ashamed to admit that I've been planning for this for a while."

My eyes widened, and so did most of the others'.

"Oh come on. Please. A woman would have to be foolish to not consider a few back up plans in this way of life. Especially with how things have been the past few months. Even Miss O'Shea had her plans," she added, and my eyes dropped down at her mention. I always felt strange about the whole Molly situation, considering I was potentially the last person to really talk to her.

"You ain't wrong. So what's your plan?" Abigail asked.

"I know a lot of people Miss Roberts, I have options," she chuckled. "But I think I envision a future in moonshine. An old friend of mine's been wanting to go into business together for a while now, I think I'll pay her a visit."

"Which old friend is this, anyone we know?" Arthur questioned.

"No. If you knew her, you'd know exactly who I'm talking about. She ain't a lady you easily forget," Susan chuckled, shaking her head.

"Ain't nothing to do with those Braithwaites, then?" John snorted and Susan rolled her eyes.

"The Maggie I know would sooner hang than have anything to do with those idiots," she laughed. I smiled as I watched her laugh, feeling my admiration for her swell. Susan was a woman I would never be like, and I knew I'd miss her sorely despite all of the times I'd giggled when one of the girls would roll their eyes or pull a face at her behind her back. I knew everyone had a lot of love for her, and I did too.

"What about you then, Lenny?" Arthur asked. "What's your plan?"

"Ohh, I'll be a rolling stone for a while I think, see where life takes me. I’d like to… learn,” he said almost hesitantly, a mild frown puckering the skin between his brows. His eyes lifted and settled on Charles for a brief moment, “maybe, if the stars align, I might just have a chance at making something of myself,” he laughed, but there was an ugly reality behind his words that bittered them slightly, though he kept smiling, and it was no accident that it was Charles that his eyes landed on. The smile that Charles returned to him was one of quiet understanding.

“My father, he wanted me to be a lawyer,” Lenny turned his grin to me, his eyes brightening a little. “From bank robber to lawyer, can you imagine that?”

I chuckled, despite the fact that with Lenny’s intelligence, charisma and articulateness, I didn't doubt his capability.

“Dutch always said I had too much potential to stay robbing banks for the rest of my life,” he breathed, looking down into the fire, the flames reflecting in his eyes, making them shine bright even though his energy dulled a little at his mention. Yet another silence fell across the campfire and I kept my eyes on the young man before me, so full of potential yet held back by so many factors far out of his control, and my heart hurt.

“I think that's the only thing I know of that came out of his mouth and made a lick of sense,” I noted. He looked at me, held my gaze for a few moments, then released a quiet breath.

“Maybe I’ll head to Washington D.C. Try to get a job, or go to school. I don't know about being a lawyer,” he breathed a laugh and shook his head, “but doing something… more than what I have been doing. That’d be good. I think my dad would be proud of that.”

“Your dad would be proud of you already, Lenny. I mean that. You’re a good kid, got a good heart,” Arthur told him, and everyone made a show of agreement, nodding, humming confirmations and patting him on the shoulder.

“Thanks, all’a you, I… it's been quite a ride, ain’t it?” Lenny sighed.

“That it has…” Charles trailed off.

“And I think I’m gonna hit the hay,” Abigail announced, dropping her plate on the ground before rising to her feet. I watched as she very carefully bundled Jack up into her arms. “Goodnight, y’all.”

“Goodnight,” the rest of us whispered softly, as if suddenly we would all wake up the boy, even though he’d been sleeping just fine before.

“I need some sleep too,” John agreed, and it set off a chain reaction, and Lenny and Susan retired to their sleeping spots. Charles drained the contents of his bottle of the beer that Sadie had managed to snag before we all left.

“Arthur, tomorrow night we should…” he said quietly as he rose to his feet, trailing off. Arthur met his eyes and stared silently for a while, then nodded.

“We will.”

“Alright. Thank you,” Charles nodded, then headed towards his tent.

“I weren’t planning on leaving him, not for a second,” Arthur called after him and Charles waved a hand dismissively, smiling over his shoulder at him.

“I know. Goodnight, folks,” he added, then crawled inside his tent to bed down for the night. I glanced at Arthur for some clarification and his eyes dropped to the ground.

“Eagle Flies got captured by the army. I said I’d break him out, I have to, princess–”

“Don't think I’m gonna try to stop you,” I whispered. He turned his head towards me, and I kissed his cheek.

“Thank you. He got caught when I was helping Dutch screw the lot of ‘em over, pretending to be helpful. I gotta speak to him and his father, tell them about what happened with the gang today. Eagle Flies can’t keep on trusting him, getting sucked in by his fancy words just like I did at his age. It won’t do anyone any good in the end,” he explained, and I nodded in agreement.

"You need some help breaking him out?" Sadie questioned. Arthur met her eyes and shook his head.

"Charles has a plan, shouldn't need more than the two of us."

"In that case, maybe there's something you can help me with instead," she said, leaning forwards, elbows on knees. My stomach squeezed a bit at the way her eyes lit with devilish determination. "O'Driscolls. There's a bunch of 'em hiding out over at Hanging Dog Ranch."

"Sadie–" Arthur began, his hand raising.

"With Colm gone and with just a few stragglers left, we can end those bastards for good," she cut him off, her hands clenching into fists. I took a breath and looked down at my feet, pressing my lips together.

"Sadie, I… I don't think we– we just got out of a bad situation, we're doing all we can just to get by–" he began again, and I could feel his tense but careful sympathy in his tone.

"We can finish 'em. We can. This is all I got left now, bringing some kinda justice to those sick bastards after what they did to me, what they did to my husband," she leaned forwards even more, her body tensing up, I could see her from the corner of my eye, getting full of desperation. I sensed Arthur glance at me.

My heart ached. We were finally away from Dutch and I had hoped that it would be the end of Arthur risking his life over grudges. I could handle him going with Charles to break a good man out of prison, I wasn't happy about the risk he was putting himself at but I knew he had to do it. But going to kill O'Driscolls? I was so conflicted. Sadie deserved closure over what happened to her husband, but I didn't want to lose Arthur over it. I couldn't stand it if we came this far only to–

"Please, Arthur. I need someone to ride with me. I can't go in there on my own but if I got no one–” Sadie's voice cracked and my eyes flashed up to her. "You're the only one I trust to do this with me and do it right. And I gotta do it, Arthur, I can't just let them get away with it. Please."

I stared at Sadie, feeling her pain emanating from her in waves, it made the hairs on my arms stand up and bile rise in my throat. My eyes tingled as tears threatened to form there, and Arthur looked at me again. Then Sadie did. Suddenly, I found, it was my choice, without even saying a word.

I nervously toyed with the locket around my neck, and saw Arthur's eyes momentarily flitter down to it.

"Arthur you–" I began after some time, when it was made clear that they were waiting on my blessing. Mine. Like I had any control over anything. "Sadie's done so much for us," I said monotonously, though it wasn't without feeling, "it's clear she needs this."

"Thank you!" Sadie exhaled, and I rose to my feet.

"I need to sleep," I whispered, then stepped over the log I'd been sitting on and headed for the tent I shared with Arthur. "Goodnight."

I climbed inside and laid down on my bedroll, wrapping myself up in the blanket and curling up on my side. I could hear quiet voices outside the tent, a muffled mix of soft tones from both Sadie and Arthur, none of which I could make out as words. It was only a few minutes before cool air filled the tent as the flap was pulled back, and Arthur climbed in beside me. He shuffled around, getting under his own blanket and scooting up behind me, his hand gingerly resting on my hip.

"Princess," he whispered. I made a small hum of acknowledgement. "Are you okay?"

I nodded my head, and Arthur exhaled, then kissed the shell of my ear.

"Talk to me, please."

"I'm sorry Arthur. I'm trying not to put a leash on you, and trying to give Sadie the opportunity to get justice for her husband. All the while I'm worrying any one of these jobs people have you doing'll be the one that kills you. Right when we're finally doing what we've been waiting for," I whispered. Arthur's hand gently drifted up and down my side, his lips still at my ear giving me little pecks.

"I could try to reassure you, but it won't help, will it?" He said softly, sadly. I shook my head. "What do you want me to do instead?"

"Nothing. I don't want you to do anything, Arthur. I can't ask you not to do all these things. That's why I came in here to sleep, cause I know anything I say ain't gonna do any good."

"Are you angry with me?"

"No, I'm not," I breathed, then rolled over to face him. "I'm not mad, I'm worried. And I'll be worried until we're away from here for good. That's it. All I need from you is just to hold me right now, so I can enjoy the time I have with you," I told him, and kissed his chin. He wrapped his arms around me and rested his chin on my head.

"Just a couple more jobs, princess, then it's over. I promise," he told me.

"Please keep your word," I whispered, closing my eyes and nestling my face into his collar.

"I will. I'm under nobody's thumb no more, I do what I want. These things, they're just… they're things I gotta do for my friends. I know you understand that, right?"

"I do. It's why I'm not stopping you."

"I'm real lucky I have you. And that you're like this. You're a good woman," he told me and I chuckled, shaking my head a little.

"You don't have to flatter me, Arthur."

"I ain't flattering. I'm thanking you. Thank you," he said, pressed his lips momentarily to the crown of my head. "I love you."

"I love you too," I replied.

After a few moments of silence, Arthur spoke again. "Can I ask you something? Or shall I let you sleep?"

"Now I'm curious about the question. Go on," I answered.

"Where'd you get that locket from? The one you been wearing since I got back. Looks familiar."

The question surprised me. It wasn't anything like what I was expecting, and I laughed. Then stopped when I considered my answer. My heart was suddenly pounding because I knew I had to address how I had felt while he was away in Guarma.

"It was Susan's," I told him. "She gave it to me."

"That'll be why it's familiar," he mused.

"It has a photograph of you inside it," I added. He was quiet for a moment.

"It does?" He questioned, tone going up a note.

I hummed my confirmation. "I… I was real bad for a while when you was gone. Susan wanted to cheer me up. I haven't taken it off since."

"Did it make you feel better?"

"A little. It was nice to have something of you, at least. But it didn't hurt any less, that you were gone."

"It would've been a comfort to have something of you with me while I was away. I thought about you constantly, I wanted to see your face just once… I didn't even have my journal, with my drawings of you. They don't live up to the real thing but they're something, at least," he whispered, squeezing me tight.

"Let me see them," I whispered, kissing his collar bone. He made a small sound, a sort of hum, sort of sigh.

"My drawings?"

I nodded as I moved back a little to look at him. "I've only seen a couple of your drawings of me. How many have you done?"

"More than you've seen," he chuckled sheepishly, then rolled onto his back, staring up at the top of the tent. I shifted onto my elbow and gazed down at him.

"May I see?" I questioned insistently, his grin widened. He was embarrassed, it was clear. "It's just me," I whispered, stroking my hand over his chest.

"Just you? That's the problem."

"Problem?"

"I'm worried I'll embarrass you."

"Why would I be embarrassed?" I laughed. Arthur sighed and met my eyes.

"Get my journal," he acquiesced. I giggled and sat up, reaching for his satchel that sat by his feet. I retrieved the journal and handed it to him, but he nodded towards me, urging me to keep it. "Take a look, princess."

#rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #arthur morgan #fanfiction #arthur morgan x reader #arthur morgan x female reader #atink #rdr2fanfic

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princess-of-riviaa · 4 years

Text

Inflicting Misery Chapter 4

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Pairing: August Walker x Reader

Summary: After the world of the CIA hears of August Walker’s death and betrayal, you track him down to hear the truth for yourself.

Author’s Note: The previous chapters took place before the events in Mission Impossible: Fallout. This chapter picks up after the events of the movie.

Warning(s): Mission Impossible Fallout spoilers, overstimulation, oral (f receiving), fingering, choking

Word Count: 3,716

You double check to make sure your gun is locked as you step inside the safehouse. It’s quiet--eerily so. Your instincts tell you that someone’s here, that you’re not alone, and the silence tells you that the other person is aware of your presence and doing their best to not make a sound. You move through each room slowly, your gun raised and ready to shoot. The kitchen is empty, as well as the living room and dining room.

You make your way upstairs, but as soon as you round the corner of the hallway, a hand comes up behind you to wrap around your mouth. The attacker’s other hand grabs onto your gun and tosses it down the hall before you can fire. From the size of the body behind you, you know it’s a man. And he’s easily twice your size. You elbow him in stomach as hard as you can but his stomach is hard. He’d expected the blow and easily deflected it. His hand is still tight around your mouth, so you bite down on his fingers and his grip loosens enough for you to escape his hold and turn on him. Your fists are raised before you even take a good look at him--and then you freeze.

The attacker is August. Very alive August. Very hurt August.

For a second, you’re relieved. You’ve been recovering from your accident for six weeks now, but you still lose your breath too quickly. You didn’t have the strength to fight someone off much longer. But your relief quickly turns to something worse.

His face is so scarred and burned that you can’t even speak, can’t blink, can’t fucking breathe because the sight of him in so much pain makes you sick to your stomach and angry as hell. Ethan Hunt did this, you know it. Your boss had briefly mentioned Hunt’s name in the debriefing this morning, before announcing that August had fallen off a cliff and failed to survive the fall--the latter clearly being a lie. He just holds your gaze, daring you to look away. There’s anger in his eyes. You’ve known him long enough to know the anger isn’t aimed at you, but at whoever did this to him, at the world for letting this happen, at himself for god knows what.

You feel yourself begin to dissociate, watching your hand reach out to him rather than feeling yourself do it. He flinches back when he realizes you’re trying to touch his face. You freeze. The coldness in his eyes is replaced by a fear you’ve never seen in him before. You give him your most assuring look as you slowly inch your hand towards him again. This time, he doesn’t move. His entire body is tensed like he’s afraid to even breathe. But he lets you touch him. He lets your fingers brush over the marred skin, the layers upon layers of burned flesh. There’s just smooth skin where the curls on the left side of his head used to be. You’ll miss running your fingers through those curls.

But he’s alive. It could have been his entire body that burned. But it was just his face--and not even all of it. He’s alive, and he’s breathing, and he’s safe.

You pull him against you. When your arms wrap around him--squeezing hard enough that if he were any smaller it would hurt--you don’t think you can ever let go of him again. He hesitates. For an everlasting second, he hesitates. His body is tense under your touch and you don’t know if he’s going to push you away or say something to hurt you. His arms hang limp at his sides. But finally, finally, he hugs you back and you bury your face in his chest. Your senses are overwhelmed with August: the mint/pinecone smell of him, strongest when your nose is buried in his chest hair; the feeling of his thick muscles relaxing against your body and his arms encircling you, pulling you tight against him until every part of you is touching some part of him; the sight of that navy shirt that’s three shades deeper than his eyes and the spots where he’d clearly tried to clean blood out but had stained the material just a shade off from the rest of the shirt; the taste of your heart in your mouth, beating so fast with such immense relief that he’s alive and beside you again; and the sound of him whimpering faintly, barely audible to your ears. His chest rises and falls unsteadily and you know he’s crying as he buries his face into the top of your head. You feel the teardrops fall onto your hair and soak them, but you don’t pull away.

You’ve worked with August long enough to have gone on several missions together. Most of them were successful, but a rare few weren’t. And you know that when he has hard days or suffers tough losses--like the one he’s suffering now--the thing he needs the most isn’t someone to talk him through it. He needs someone to be there for him, to hold him and stand beside him until he’s cried all of his tears out. That’s not how you deal with your pain, but if that’s how he deals with his demons then you’ll be right there next to him, fighting those demons alongside him.

So you stand there in his safehouse, buried beneath this man’s huge ass arms, looking like a child compared to him, and you let him cry. You let him scream out all the anger and pain and embarrassment and regret that he’s kept bottled up until just now. You stand there, and you fight his demons alongside him.

He calms down several minutes later. You pull away just enough to look him in the eye.

“Tell me what the hell happened,” you say, and the tone of your voice tells him that there’s no way he’s getting out of explaining what the hell is going on.

So he tells you. He talks for what must be a good hour, explaining everything: Sloane sending him on a mission to work beside Ethan Hunt and ensure he doesn’t do anything destructive; having a falling out with Hunt and his team and them turning his back on him; ending it all on the edge of a cliff as he faced off with Hunt, before Hunt pushed him over the edge.

“That’s a beautiful story,” you tell him bitterly. “Beautifully fictitious. Are you actually lying to me right now? After everything? Look around, August. I’m the only one you have left, the only one who knows you’re still alive. Either you tell me the truth or I walk out that front door and never come back.”

He clenches his jaw. “You’re going to walk out either way. Once you know the truth...”

The look you give him makes him shut up.

“Hunt and his men discovered I’m John Lark,” August admits, watching your face as his words register in your mind.

You’ve heard the name. Everyone in your division is familiar with the terrorist who dreams of annihilating half of the world’s population and starting a new world order. August Walker is John Lark.

You raise an eyebrow. “Is that the big reveal? The big secret you’ve been hiding?”

“You’re not surprised,” he realizes. “You knew?”

“You had me edit that stupid manifesto all those years ago, remember?” you recall. “I’ve known about this whole John Lark deal before anyone else did.”

He frowns. “Why didn’t you go to anyone about it?”

“You swore me to confidentiality,” you remember. “If I check that stupid paper for grammatical errors, you’d track down my abusive father and kill him for me. Which you did. So I couldn’t tell anyone. And I knew the story would come out eventually. No one can hide in the shadows forever, not even you, August.”

“You knew who I was this entire time,” August says, still disbelieving.

“You’re August Walker,” you say, “a dangerous man with as much bloodlust as every other person in the CIA. You’ve got the right idea that the world sucks, just crazy stupid ideas as to how to go about fixing it. You’re the first and only person who saw potential in me when I first started as an agent, and you’re the reason I work under Sloane now. You’re the only friend I’ve had in the last six years. So yeah, I know who you are.”

He raises a disbelieving eyebrow. “Friend? Really?”

You shrug.

“I’m not your friend,” he disagrees.

“Well then what--” you begin, but he shuts you up with a kiss. It surprises you to breathlessness.

His hands are suddenly on your hips, your tiny frame swallowed up by his large hands, and he walks you backwards until your back collides with the wall. The kiss deepens as your bodies press tightly together. August crowds every inch of your body and it’s so overwhelming and hot that you find yourself moaning into his mouth. As your mouth parts, he takes the opportunity to tug on your bottom lip before licking his tongue inside your mouth. You reach out for him. Your hands reach for his hair, but he holds your wrists against the wall over your head, keeping you trapped against him.

“You really like pinning me up to walls,” you let out, trying to make a lighthearted joke, but the breathless way you say it has an effect on him.

His erection presses into your stomach as he moves his mouth to your neck. He nips at your ear just enough to make it hurt before whispering, “I really like hearing you moan my name, baby girl.”

“Fuck,” you sigh. The deep baritone of his voice on top of his filthy admissions sets your body on fire. Your hips grind up against him, needing him to touch you. “August, please.”

“Just like that, baby girl,” he says as he adjusts both your wrists in one hand and uses his free one to wrap around your throat. “Say my name just like that.”

“Please, August,” you beg again, too desperate to put up a fight. “I need you to touch me.”

“Be specific,” he tells you as he licks a stripe up your neck. “Tell me what you want, baby girl.”

You love how dirty he makes you feel, how he talks to you like you’re the sexiest woman alive. It does things to you that you can’t explain. And it gives you the audacity you need to voice your desires. “I want to feel you inside of me.”

He hums into your neck, clearly liking the idea as he spreads your knees apart with his leg and presses into against you core. You cry out and begin to grind against his leg. You’re so wet that your heat spreads to his leg as you continue to drip through your underwear. Fuck, there’s too many layers of clothes between you right now.

“Fuck me, August,” you cry out.

He stills and pulls back from you, looking in your eyes for a sign of hesitancy. “You’re sure?”

You nod hurriedly, past the point of words. Fuck, you need him.

He kisses you roughly enough that you feel it in every part of your body. His hands move from your wrists and neck to grab your ass and lift you from the ground. Your legs instantly wrap around his waist. You never break the kiss as he leads you to his bedroom. Your heart races in your chest in anticipation and nervousness. You want this as much as you’re afraid of it.

August is gentle as he spreads you out on his soft bed. He takes his time to take off your shirt and unbutton your jeans before pulling them down with your underwear. As soon as you’re naked in front of him you close your legs and wrap your arms around your breasts. He growls in disapproval and grabs your wrists, holding them above your head. He nudges your legs apart with his own and takes in the sight of you again.

“You don’t get to hide from me,” he says, and his husky voice on top of the look he’s giving you makes your nipples harden with desire. His eyes flick down to your chest and he lets go of your hands so he can grope at your breasts.

“Oh!” you cry out as he wraps his mouth around your right nipple. He runs his tongue over the bud before clasping his lips around it and sucking--hard. Your mouth falls open with a gasp.

His left hand massages your other nipple while his right hand reaches between your legs and cups your heat. His fingers are instantly coated in your wet arousal. It makes you blush, him knowing just how wet you are, but the way he moans in approval before running his fingers between your folds just makes you more breathless. The stimulation on your breasts and between your legs is more than you can handle. You feel your body tighten as your thoughts become blurred.

“August,” you gasp out, knowing what that feeling signals. “August, I’m gonna... fuck, I’m...” You’re so fucked out that you can’t finish your sentence to warn him properly.

He continues to grope and suck on your nipples as he inserts one long, thick finger inside of you. The feeling is foreign, but it’s so fucking amazing that your walls clench around him immediately. He curls his finger inside of you just once. That’s all it takes for you to come undone underneath him. You cry out his name as you cum and your body shakes and spasms through your high.

He pulls away from you when you can breathe properly again. The smirk he’s giving you makes you blush and you want to smack him for it, for gloating in the effect he has on you. “You’re so fucking sensitive, baby girl. This is gonna be fun.”

Before you can ask what he means by that, he inserts another finger inside of you. The stretch is tight and it hurts for a few seconds. He curls his fingers inside of you and the pain quickly turns to pleasure so great that your eyes squeeze shut and you’re reduced to a moaning mess again. His fingers move fast inside of you. It doesn’t take long before you’re gasping and falling over the edge again. You cry out and clutch onto his forearm as you cum for him again. Your eyes water as your body becomes overstimulated.

August, the fucker, doesn’t even give you time to come down from your high before he moves between your legs and kisses your heat. His lips latch onto your clit. By the time you come back to your senses, your body is already writhing against him again. Your hips buck up to his fingers and mouth as he goes all out on you. His fingers move at an inhuman speed inside of you and you realize that he added a third finger at some point. You’re so wet that your pussy makes a squelching noise every time his fingers move inside of you. The noise is so vulgar that your face burns. Sweat sticks to your neck and back as your fingers clench the sheets beside you.

“Please, August!” you beg. Five minutes ago you’d been begging for him to fuck you; now you’re begging for him to relent.

But your words only spur you on and he swirls his tongue over your clit, his lips still sucking hard on your heat. Your legs clench around him as you cum again. Your body spasms uncontrollably and tears fall down your face. You’ve never felt this much pleasure in your entire life. He swallows up every drop of your arousal.

“You taste like fucking heaven, baby girl,” he groans and the sound of that noise falling from his mouth just does the filthiest things to your mind and you’re desperate for him once again. He kisses each of your thighs. “Relax, baby girl, I’ve got you.” If his words don’t have an affect on you, his mouth returning to your clit certainly does. His fingers move inside of you again and it isn’t long before you’re overwhelmed with pleasure again.

“August, please!” you cry out as tears snake down your cheeks. His fingers are moving so fast inside of you, his tongue circling your clit so intensely, that you’re about to cum again--for the fourth time tonight. And he hasn’t even fucked you yet. Your vision is blurred and your body is on fire and the pleasure is so close to turning to pain.

You need his cock.

You need him inside of you.

You need to feel him fill you up to the brim, feel him warm your insides with his seed.

You need him to claim you.

August pulls his mouth away from you and your body twitches, your nerves too overwhelmed and overstimulated to process any input in a normal manner. You open your eyes just enough to look down at him between your thighs, smirking like the fucking devil. “I’ve already claimed you, little one,” he says, and you swear your entire body burns with a blush as you realize that you just said all those things out loud.

“Please,” you gasp, your breaths coming in quick, short bursts.

He rises from the bed and you whimper at the loss of contact. You instantly miss the warmth of his body and the stimulation of his mouth and tongue making you completely soaked for him. He undresses himself slowly, taking his time with every button on his shirt. He’s fully aware you’re losing your mind with every passing second. After what feels like an eternity his shirt falls to the floor. Your eyes rake over his body. You’ve seen him shirtless before but it’s never any less impressive. Your eyes jump all over his skin, not knowing where to look first. The sight of his muscles flexing and jumping in his arms as he unbuckles his pants makes you drip even more for him. And those scars, tiny war wounds he’s gotten from what he won’t say, but a reminder that he’s dangerous all the same--god, if the sight of those scars don’t just make the filthiest things run through your mind. Your hands ache to run through that thick, dark chest hair. He steps out of his pants and you’re already so wound up that you moan at the sight of his cock, hard and huge. Your walls clench as you anticipate the sting you’ll feel as he pushes himself inside of you for the first time.

“Fuck me,” you beg when you see the lust in his eyes, making the room burn with an intoxicating, mind-numbing heat.

He’s on top of you a second later, pushing your legs apart and lining up with your entrance. You close your eyes in anticipation when he pushes the tip in and stays there, waiting for you to adjust to his size before pushing further in.

“You’re so fucking tight, I love this pussy,” he growls as he continues to sheath himself inside of you.

You cry out his name in a whimper, though it’s more out of pleasure than pain. God, the things this man is capable of making you feel... it’s terrifying how intoxicating he is.

At long last he bottoms out inside of you. He wraps his hands around your hips, so tiny in his hands, before beginning to move inside of you.

“Gonna fuck you until you cry,” he promises.

It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before. You don’t know what to compare it to. It’s so much better than his fingers. His tongue on you feels almost as good as this, but the feeling of him inside of you eclipses everything else. His grip on your hips is tight as he bucks his hips against you, his balls slapping against your ass. And, fuck it, your body is so wound up and tired and overstimulated that tears already spill down your cheeks, giving August exactly what he wants. He slows his movements inside of you to a gentle pace. You open your mouth, but nothing comes out, your brain and body too tired to function properly. August leans down and licks the tears that fall down your face. The act is so sweet, yet simultaneously so arousing, that you moan and whine.

“I love the little sounds you make for me, baby girl,” he whispers. Seconds later he’s pounding into you again, turning your whines into full out screams.

His thrusts grow sloppier, the pace quickening even more, and you wonder when he’s going to cum. Your body is at the edge too, but you’ve already cum so many times that you don’t know if you can do it again.

One of his hands move to your throat, squeezing tight enough to keep you from breathing, while his other moves down to circle your clit. Within seconds your body is so aroused that every part of you is tingling. Your walls clench around his cock as you cum. He follows seconds later. His seed is warm inside of you and shit, he didn’t wear a condom, but you’re too out of it to care or really process what all of that means.

August pulls out of you and releases his grip on your throat, letting you breathe again. He lies down beside you and pulls you into his arms. You rest your head against his chest and listen to his heart begin to slow. His fingers run through your hair soothingly. That’s the last thing you’re aware of before you fall into a deep, blissful sleep.

...

You don’t know what time it is when you wake. All you’re aware of is how sore your body is--and that August is gone. You get out of bed, wondering if he’s getting something to eat downstairs, when you notice a post-it note on the bedside table. You pick it up and read:

By the time you read this, I’ll be gone. Don’t come looking for me this time.

--AW

***

Taglist:

@littlefreya

@agniavateira

@hnryycvll

#august walker #august walker imagine #august walker smut #august walker mission impossible #henry cavill #henry cavill smut

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katehuntington · 4 years

Text

Title: In Bad Waters - part ten Word count: ±3400 words Episode summary: Still in possession of the Winchesters’ belongings, Zoë meets up with the hunters on her next case. When it turns out to be a little more complicated than anticipated, she accepts their help in order to make an important deadline. Part ten summary: Zoë and the Winchesters face the aftermath of losing a victim. Especially the huntress takes it hard, and the reason soon surfaces. Episode warnings: Dark! NSFW, 18+ only! Descriptions of domestic violence/child abuse. Drug use/addiction. Angst, gore, violence, character death. Description of blood, injury and medical procedures/resuscitation. Swearing, alcoholism. Supernatural creatures/entities, mentions of demon possession. Descriptions of torture and murder, drowning. Illegal/criminal practices. Mentions of nightmares and flashbacks. Author’s note: Beta’d by @winchest09 and @deanwanddamons. Thanks, girls! Gif isn’t mine. If you are the creator or know who made it, please tell me so I can credit you.

Supernatural: The Sullivan Series Masterlist

S1E02 “In Bad Waters” Masterlist

The black Harley Davidson rolls into the parking lot of the Hampton Inn, followed by the Chevrolet Impala. Zoë hasn’t said a word to Sam since she found Taylor at the Dawlson home. Both of them gave a statement to the local police and managed to talk their way out of an interrogation at the department, Zoë continuing her role as agent Sharon Evans. Without missing a beat, Sam improvised and said he was her partner. They kept the cops in the dark, hoping they will not be making their ghost hunt more difficult than it already is.

Sam also talked to Jeff Dawlson. The poor guy was a mess, but the widower made clear that he was certain that this wasn’t just some ordinary murder. The silence, the windows that didn’t break, the door that didn’t open. He called it a force, something he couldn’t possibly begin to explain. Even for a skeptic down to earth guy like Jeff, this was obviously not from their world. So Sam told him everything about Laura, all that they know. Jeff took it quite well, even thanked them for their attempt to save his wife, but he was devastated, never to be the same.

Quiet, Zoë gets off her bike, takes her laptop case out of the saddlebag and strolls to the entrance. She’s glad no one stole her Macbook when she left it at the terras, the database as valuable to her as John’s journal is to the boys. Sam follows her, watching the huntress as she makes her way to room seventeen; not a single remark has left her lips, yet she keeps a straight face. People passing by don’t notice anything about the strong woman, but Sam can only imagine that this is messing with her.

The huntress slips the key card through the lock and opens the door. As she expected, Dean is obviously present. A KFC bag and several paper wrappings plus an empty bucket that once contained fried chicken are scattered on the bedspread, loud music is blaring on the radio. Dean, who is freshening up in the bathroom, apparently didn’t hear them come in, because he keeps singing along with the song.

“There’s a lot of people sayin' we'd be better off dead. Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them. So I try to forget it, any way I can. Keep on rockin' in the free world!”, he belts out.

His younger brother halts and raises his eyebrows, but doesn’t laugh or chuckle; his brother’s poor vocal skills would have been amusing if the circumstances were different. Zoë doesn’t appreciate his singing either and she slams her fist on the bathroom door. “Hey, Neil Young! Shut your piehole, will ya?” They hear a glass breaking on the bathroom floor and Zoë rolls her eyes while sighing deeply. Wonderful. “Fuck,” Dean curses softly, then sets up a voice loud enough for Zoë to hear it. “Sorry!”

Without responding she walks away from the door and turns down the volume of the radio completely, allowing a deadly silence to hover the room. As Sam picks up the paper wrappings, Dean pops his head around the corner. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asks them both, when he notices his brother by the door. “I could ask you the same thing,” Sam returns. “I let him break in,” Zoë says before Dean can answer. “Didn’t expect you two to be back anytime soon.” He walks out of the bathroom, buttoning his white shirt, since he doesn’t have a change of clothes. “The shower is amazing, by the way. It’s so big and it has this fucking awesome massage setting--” “Something occurred at the Dawlsons,” Sam interrupts.

His older brother halts and looks from Sam to Zoë, who sat down on the bed, staring at nothing in particular, her gaze blank. She can feel his unspoken question and decides to answer. “She’s dead.” Dean expected something like that when he sensed the mood, but it still comes as a shock. He needs a few seconds to collect his thoughts. “Dead as in hit-by-a-car-dead or killed-by-a-ghost-dead?” he asks carefully.

A depressing quietness remains between the hunters. Zoë doesn’t reply; words aren’t necessary. When her eyes meet his, Dean knows enough. The oldest of the brothers breathes out with a sigh and looks away, shaking his head; damn it. “Did you see Laura?” he wonders. “We did,” Sam responds on Zoë’s behalf. “We tried to stop her.” Dean frowns at that. “How did you know Laura was inside the house? So far no one witnessed her actual attack, right?” “I had a vision,” Sam explains.

Both Zoë and Dean look up at him, stunned by his statement. Zoë is well aware Sam had one. But what she didn’t know is that Sam told his brother about his ability, which she presumes, as he just blurted it out like that. Dean however, bites down the mixture of concern and frustration. He tries to ignore the fact his brother shared this information in the presence of the huntress, which they only met a couple of days ago. Filing it under either carelessness, he addresses the other issue: since when does Sam have these visions when he’s awake? “You fell asleep or something’?” “No, this was the first time he had one during the day,” Zoë answers before Sam does.

The comment triggers Dean to snap his head towards her, unpleasantly surprised to learn she’s all up to date with Sam’s powers. Agitated, he glares at his brother. “You told her?!” he exclaims. “Yeah, so? We hunt together, so what’s the big deal?” Sam returns defensively. “You wanna know what the big deal is? If this goes public amongst hunters, some of them might seriously keep an eye on you, Sam!” his brother snaps. Zoë tries to cool the looming clash. “It’s safe with me, Dean.” “That’s not the fucking point!” He counters angrily, focusing on the huntress. “He doesn’t realize how dangerous this could be!” Sam reminds him of his presence. “Don’t talk like I’m not even here, Dean.”

Zoë’s not sure where it’s coming from, but she has the sudden urge to defend Sam. She can relate with the youngest Winchester, she’s going through the same after all. Dean has no idea what these special abilities feel like, how painful and confusing they are, how they wreck their mind. He’s not the one experiencing them. Who the hell does he think he is to tell Sam how to handle this? “Like you have a clue what’s going on,” she jumps in. “I think hunters are the last ones on earth you should worry about.” Dean narrows his eyes at her, reading into her words. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” “Haven’t you wondered where this is coming from?” she looks up at him, waiting for an answer. “Because I for one have never encountered a human being with supernatural powers. Have you?”

Silence. It might not have yet occurred to Dean, though, but Sam and Zoë have thought of it constantly. People, normal, random people, shouldn’t be having visions, period. Zoë is right; It’s not normal, it’s not human.

Dean however, decides to ignore her notification and points his finger at his younger brother in the way a father would do to his son. “You shut up about this,” he warns. “If you wanna talk about it, talk to me. If you share this with anyone else--” “Don’t you treat me like you’re Dad!” Sam counters. Zoë rolls her eyes the moment John is mentioned. She turns to the window with her hands placed firmly on her slender waist. “I am responsible for you and I am the one who has to drag your ass out of trouble when you have God knows what on your tail because of this freaky stuff. As long as Dad ain’t around, I’m gonna talk to you like that. Suck it up!” Dean returns sternly. Sam huffs and grinds his teeth. He hates, absolutely hates it when he’s treated like a child. It doesn’t matter if he’s talked down on by Dad or Dean; he can’t stand it. He's twenty-two for Christ's sake! “No. This is my life, my problem. I’m not gonna listen to you,” Sam sneers, cynically. Furiously, Dean raises his voice. “Yes, you are!!” “Would you two SHUT THE FUCK UP?!”

Both brothers seize their argument and look at Zoë, who turned around to face then. Enraged, she glares at them, her penetrating eyes darting from one to the other, disgusted by their behavior. “How old are you? Fucking ten?!” she asks resentfully. “People are dying and you two are actually arguing over who’s boss and who’s not?!” Sam gulps; she has a point. This is senseless; because both Dean and Sam know that neither of them are willing to admit their wrong. Even Dean seems to be ashamed, his green eyes breaking away from Zoë’s penetrating stare. “I’m gonna be honest with you two. If you don’t get along, that’s your problem, but you’re no good to me if you don’t function together,” she continues, gritting her teeth in frustration. “An innocent just died, Goddamnit!”

They could hear a pin drop in the spacious hotel room. Having enough of the Winchesters’ stupidity, Zoë turns her back on them and saunters to the end of the room. She sits down on the bed, sniffing, then she wipes her nose.

Sam and Dean exchange a look, both noticing how much this is bothering her. So far the huntress seems to be a lot more careless about cases; she’s more the shoot-to-thrill type. She was willing to leave this case in her rear view mirror after all. Dean carefully attempts to find out what’s really going on with the fellow hunter. “What’s wrong, Zo?”

Instead of answering, she just shakes her head. Avoiding their questioning eyes, Zoë folds her hands together and rests her elbows on her knees. For a long while she doesn’t speak, but then she starts to open up, just a little bit. “I was supposed to watch her,” she claims. “Yet I was goofing around and bored, while she got slaughtered.” “This isn’t your fault,” Sam replies immediately, trying to take away the guilt. “It is.” Her piercing gaze moves to meet his. “I should have known, I should have drawn a conclusion from the first two killings, but I didn’t.” “Hey, we didn’t see this coming either,” Dean brings to mind. “It doesn’t matter. Someone lost their life again while I could’ve prevented it,” she states, her voice fragile now.

Sam furrows his brow, confused. Again? What does she mean? With a questioning look, he glances over at Dean and is surprised by what he sees. Compassion, compassion for Zoë. He realizes Dean might know more about her past, after all, he and Dad worked her case and casted out the demon that possessed her. Dean wasn't in a sharing mood when his younger brother requested more details about what happened back then. Sam thought he didn't know more and that their dad kept him in the dark, but now he begins to realize that he simply didn't want to elaborate on it. Is it not his place to tell? Or did that hunt go wrong?

Dean offers some reassuring words, trying to convince her. “Zo, what happened back then was out of your hands.” “Don’t go there,” she warns. “You shouldn’t still be blaming yourself for that, nor should you feel guilty about today,” he presses. “I said: Don’t. Go. There,” Zoë repeats, glaring over her shoulder. Sam glances from one to the other, disorientated, unable to follow the conversation. The oldest of the Winchester brothers isn’t spooked by the threat, however. “Maybe you should step away from the case,” he suggests. “What?!” she cries out, perplexed. “It’s obvious that you’re emotional about this, Zo,” he starts to explain, deliberately getting under her skin. “Emotional?!” She scoffs, fury in her eyes, pressing her clenched fist in the mattress. “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I not allowed to give a fuck about people dying? My mistake!” “I’m just saying that maybe you should let us take care of this one,” he explains.

He might say so, but Dean doesn’t want her to quit. What he does want, is to trigger her. He used the same technique on his brother before and it worked like a charm, it seems like it might just work on the huntress as well. He can sense her blood beginning to boil as she rises to her feet; he really pissed her off this time. “Are you fucking serious right now?! I don’t quit on cases, I don’t take the easy way out!” she yells, pointing at her chest. “You were gonna before you allowed us to help you. So tell me why the hell you’re so worked up all of a sudden,” he bounces back. “No!” Zoë shouts outrageously, her voice hitting a higher tone than she anticipated. “I don’t wanna talk about it!” “It’s been over four years, Zoë. It’s about damn time you talk about it. This isn’t healthy,” Dean pressures. “I just can’t, okay?”

Her voice is suddenly softer now as it breaks, almost begging him to stop. She averts her gaze quickly, but Sam could see her eyes glister. Slowly, he starts to get the idea of what happened back then, remembering the first file in her database, the one consisting of the demon that possessed her. “Zoë, if this has something to do with that Diligo Vesco demon...” he carefully starts off. “Whatever happened, it wasn’t on you.” “My hands--” She holds them up in front of her. “- and his blood all over them. Now don’t you tell me it wasn’t me.”

Confused, Sam cocks his head from Zoë to Dean, who watches the woman with his arms crossed in front of his chest. His stance is still defensive, but his eyes tell a different story, one of empathy. When the huntress spots the confused expression on Sam’s face and turns to Dean as well. “You didn’t tell him?” “I didn’t. Wasn’t sure if you’d be okay with that,” he says.

With a deep breath, she prepares to say the words that bring her so much pain. Words that remind her of that dreadful day, the moment that everything got screwed to hell. Her heartbeat has sped up throughout the conversation, first by anger, but now that she has to admit out loud what went down four years, four months and five days ago, she feels like it’s about to jump out of her chest. A panic attack is prevented when she breathes in through her nose slowly and lets the air flow from her mouth again, repeating it once more while closing her eyes. Then she looks up at Sam and swallows back the tears. She can’t break, she never has and she won’t now. With a trembling voice, she speaks up.

“When I was possessed, I killed my dad.”

Sam’s jaw almost drops to the ground. For a moment he just stares at her, his eyes large, unable to form words. Poor, poor girl. Losing a parent is one thing, but she experienced her father’s murder like she was the one killing. How do you get over that? And just like that, he sees Zoë in a totally different light. Her attitude makes more sense, her eagerness to hunt, her reluctance to new friendships. She lost one of the most important people in her life, no wonder she shut herself in.

Both boys watch her struggle, there’s not much they can do to make her feel better. She walks over to the window and rubs her face. The brothers can’t see the tears run down her cheek, but they know she turned away to prevent them from witnessing her sorrow. She can’t show her weakness, not to them, not to anyone.

Dean notices something about her that he recognizes in himself. The huntress is unable to express how she feels, simply because it hurts too much. It’s easier to stuff it away and sweep it under the rug, hoping that way it doesn’t have to be dealt with, that the pain will slowly fade away over time. But let’s be fair; it doesn’t.

Zoë sighs deeply and takes heart, turning back to them when the tears have stopped falling. “We shouldn’t be talking about me, guys. Our ghost is getting more violent by the hour. We need to stop this,” she reminds them. Sam glances at his brother and their eyes meet. He knows she’s avoiding the subject, but they have to admit there is truth in her words. Laura might be killing someone right now, especially since Sam left the Shire residence unattended. They decide to give it a rest.

“You’re right, let’s get our head back in the game. I’m gonna get the doctor to talk, I won’t take no for an answer.” He grabs his tie from the chair and folds it around his collar as he looks up at Sam, awaiting a follow up from his younger brother. “I’ll check on the Shires and keep you guys in the loop,” Sam suggests. “Sounds good to me. Talk to them too, fire it up a little. Maybe they know more about this. We need more intel to wrap this one up and we need it fast,” Zoë urges, checking her watch and startled to see that it’s almost five o’ clock. “Take the car. I’ll walk, it’s just a block away,” Dean nods at the car keys on the drawer, while struggling with his tie. “C’mere,” Zoë beckons him to edge closer and takes Dean’s tie in her hands. Skillfully, she redoes it, her hands moving swiftly. Dean can’t help to take in her pretty face. Her makeup has run down a little, it emphasizes her frame of mind. Focused on her task at hand, she avoids his unraveling eyes.

“Should I tell them the truth?” Sam proposes. “Not yet,” she tightens Dean’s tie and dares to look up at him. “You try to speak with the doctor first. We're sure he actually knows something, but we aren’t certain about the Shire family. We don’t want to spook them.” “Okay, let’s go then.” Dean picks up his suit jacket and heads for the door. Sam hesitates in the doorway, glancing over his shoulder at the young woman. “What are you gonna do?” “I’m gonna look into Laura, see who she was close to. I can imagine the kid would’ve tried to stay out of that toxic household as much as she could, maybe she stayed over with friends a lot. Could lead to her next victim,” she explains. “We’ll get her, Zo,” Dean assures. “Hell, we will. Taylor was the last one killed by Laura Shire,” she states determined.

Just after she pronounces those words, the door slams and locks. Surprised, Zoë stares at the doorknob, which felt like it was just ripped from her hand. As she slowly turns around, she feels chills running down her spine, the tingling sensation way too familiar. The bathroom light starts to flicker, then the faucet of the sink turns, water splattering on the porcelain. Suddenly the TV flips on, but all broadcasts a disorted image and static noise. She exhales clouds of warm air, her breath condensed, the temperature suddenly changing. It turns ice cold in the room.

Zoë gulps. “Oh, fuck.”

Seems like she doesn’t have to search very long to find Laura’s next victim; it’s her. Anxiously, Zoë searches the room for something iron, but then suddenly the image of the ten year old girl appears in the corner. Her blonde hair looks darkened, her pupils hazed over with white. The nightgown she was wearing the night she was killed is stained with blood. Then her eyes sink deep into their sockets, leaving gaping black holes in her small skull, before her form flickers and suddenly stands right before the huntress. Without an iron forged weapon or anything to use in the huntress’ defence, Zoë stares at the poltergeist for a brief second. This is it; she’s fucked. Even though she realizes the boys can’t hear her, she cries out one of their names at the top of her lungs.

“SAM!!!”

Thank you for reading. I appreciate every single one of you, but if you do want to give me some extra love, you are free to like or reblog my work, shoot me a message or buy me coffee (Link to Kofi in bio at the top of the page).

#Supernatural: the Sullivan Series #Supernatural series #Supernatural OFC #Dean Winchester series #Sam Winchester series #STSS #The Sullivan Series #Supernatural rewrite #Supernatural OFC series #SPN #Supernatural fanfiction #Dean Winchester fanfiction #Sam Winchester fanfiction #Zoë Sullivan #In Bad Waters #Kate Huntington

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holyhellpod · 3 years

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[TRANSCRIPT] 1. Pilot

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Trigger warnings: discussions of death, fridging, child abuse, child death, alcoholism

[Music]

“In one sentence, this is X-Files meets Route 66. Two brothers, cruising the dusty backroads in their trusty ‘64 mustang, battling the things that go bump in the night.”

These are the first two sentences of Eric Kripke’s pitch of Supernatural, dated August 30, 2004. Based on iconic media such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, On The Road, The Odyssey, and The Matrix, Kripke considers Supernatural to be Star Wars in Truck Stop America. He went through over two dozen rewrites of the pilot to get to what we know today: grimy, gritty, horror-filled hero’s journey of the lives of two extremely damaged individuals who don’t really like each other personally or have anything in common, but love each other to death. They save people. They hunt monsters. That’s the family business.

The original pitch for the pilot had Dean informing Sam that supernatural creatures are real and they killed their mum. Sam spent his whole 21-year-long life believing that their father killed their mother, and now their father’s body has been found with Dean as the lead suspect in the murder. Sam has to make the choice to run back to their aunt and uncle’s house in LA where he can spend the summer interning at a law firm before he starts at Stanford, or help Dean fight monsters, and you KNOW which one he chooses.

In the pilot that aired, Sam knows about the supernatural. He and Dean grow up trained as warriors by their father John to hunt supernatural creatures, kill evil, and save people. The plot goes as thus: Sam, a 6 month old baby, is in his crib when an unknown man appears. Mary, Sam and Dean’s mother, walks in. John, their father, comes in as well to see what’s wrong, and finds Mary pinned to the ceiling with a slash across her womb. The house catches on fire, Dean as a four year old takes Sam out of the house, and John follows soon after.

Cut to 22 years later, Sam is a college student at Stanford with a beautiful girlfriend Jess whose resemblance to his mother is, ah, uncanny. He reveals that he’s got an interview on Monday with the law school at Stanford. His idyllic, apple-pie, safe life is interrupted by the appearance of Dean, who asks Sam to accompany him in finding their Dad. That’s the premise of the first season: finding Dad.

Sam makes a deal with Dean that he’ll help on this one last case before he embarks on his life as a lawyer-to-be. Dean takes the deal, but when they realise that John left the case unfinished and skipped town, it’s up to them to follow in John’s footsteps and pick up hunting again, as a fambily. However, Sam reiterates that he needs to be back at Stanford for his meeting that will determine his future, and Dean drops him back. But of course, this is not to be. When he finds Jess pinned to the roof of their bedroom, her womb slashed open, and the apartment starts to burn down, Sam is forced into repeating the history of intergenerational trauma that traps them in the hunting life. The trauma their father inflicted on them is a Promethean circle that leaves no one unscathed.

John is a hard man. While it’s evident in the first scene that he loves his boys, his grief coupled with his military history twists him into a drill sergeant who works his kids to the bone all in the name of the fambily business. He often puts his own needs above that of his kids, especially Dean, who often acts as the go-between Sam and John. From the very beginning, Sam is positioned as John’s mirror, pulled back into the hunting life when his girlfriend dies just like his mother. Both John and Sam have their lives upended by the death of their significant other, except for Sam, he has Dean, and John had his sons. Bringing them into the life meant leaning on them when he couldn’t handle his grief and the exhaustion of the job himself, but this is a caustic dynamic: your children are not your partners. Dean should not have gone on a hunt by himself at 17 to lay to rest the ghosts of two closeted nuns, when he was closeted himself. John should not have put the burden on Dean to look after his brother while John was away on hunts, because Dean was a child. It robbed Dean of his childhood, forced him to grow up too quickly, and left him with a saviour complex and control issues that he carries well into the last season of the show.

The abuse Sam and Dean suffer at the hands of their father is something that permeates the entire show, all the while the characters apologise for him and little commentary is made on how badly he messed them up. In the pilot, We don’t see him in the present, only in 1983, and then sporadically throughout the rest of the show, notably in seasons one, two, four and five, as well as in the show’s 300th episode “Lebanon”. He is a ghost that controls the fate of these two men, as he directs them where to hunt while at the same time refusing to even show his face in times of dire need. In the episode “Faith”, Dean is dying and John doesn’t make an appearance. In the episode “Home”, Dean calls John scared and crying and begs him to come back to their childhood home of Lawrence, Kansas. Again, John doesn’t show up for them.

There are many moments throughout the show that seem to hinge on one decision, and John’s decision to become a hunter and raise his kids as hunters too is one of them. Another decision is Dean’s choice to die in the last episode. Cas’s choice to partner with Crowley and suck all of purgatory’s souls into himself in season 6. Sam’s choice to settle down with Amelia in season 8.

But it all comes back to the very first decision: Sam deciding to go with Dean to find John. We know now that the demons Azazel and Brady were just waiting for the opportunity to kill Jess when Sam was at his most oblivious and unguarded, which they took after Dean re-entered his life. the repercussions of this reverberate throughout the entire show, most obviously in Sam choosing not to settle down with a woman for the first 7 seasons. But Jessica’s death is the impetus Sam needs to start hunting again, just like Mary’s death was the impetus John had for starting to hunt in the first place.

But actually, with the last episode of the series in mind, another choice is made clear. Dean’s choice to go to Sam.

If the first season would have you believe, Sam Winchester is the protagonist of the series, and Dean is his second in command. He’s one of five main characters throughout season 1, including Dean, John, Mary and Azazel the demon. Azazel begins the narrative by invading Sam’s childhood bedroom and killing Mary, but after the ordinary world of their lives before we hit the call to adventure, Sam is shown as an ordinary guy who just wants to make something of himself. He admits to Dean in some truly spectacular exposition that he swore he was done hunting for good, and that he’s put that life behind him to live safely with his girlfriend and college friends. Of course, being Supernatural, it doesn’t turn out like that.

If you take the last few seasons as gospel, it’s clear that Dean is the emotional heart of the series and Sam exists as his narrative foil. Somewhere along the way their roles got reversed. It’s Sam’s emotional journey we follow throughout the first season. It takes us until episode 4, “Phantom Traveler”, to find something that Dean is afraid of. As the season wears on, it becomes increasingly clear that all he wants is to have his family back together — Sam and Dad, all under one car or motel roof again. Sam, in the Winchester tradition, wants to find Jess’s killer, suspecting that the thing that killed Mary is the same thing that killed Jess. This obsession drives him throughout the first two seasons.

Sam’s motivation in the pilot is laid out clearly: he has to make it back to Stanford on time for his interview for law school. While it’s normal for regular people, it's about as far from the Winchester normal as can be, and that’s what Sam likes about it. It’s normal, it’s wonderbread, it’s safe. It’s freshly baked cookies and a tab at the only bar on campus. It’s your girlfriend in a maid outfit on Halloween, which you still don’t celebrate because it reminds you of what you gave up to be there. It’s getting a 174 on the LSATs but not telling your family because you don’t talk to them anymore, and you haven’t for years. It’s fine.

And then it all comes crashing down, and Sam’s motivation changes. He’s the hero accepting his journey while grieving the loss of the most significant person in his life since he ditched his family at 18 to live in the world instead of saving it from the sidelines. He’s the one our story hinges on, and it’s his reactions we live and die by. When Mary dies, we hardly know her. We don’t know John, either, so it’s hard to gauge how broken up we should be by her death. While I wouldn’t say we know Jess necessarily, we do know Sam, so when he grieves we grieve. The framework through which we view all of these events is Sam’s perspective, even if we do see Dean without Sam. I’m pointing this out because it’s important to know who we sympathise with most, and whose story a narrative is trying to tell. What exactly the narrative is saying is completely dependent on who is saying it.

One of Dean’s defining traits is that he’s great at getting laid. In the original pitch, Dean was supposed to be covered in tattoos and smoking like a James Dean-type. Nevermind that James Dean was queer, as is Dean from On The Road, the character the eldest winchester is named after. Dean chases tail like he’s a dog chasing bumpers, and he’s attractive and charismatic so it works out well for him. He doesn’t take it hard when a woman rejects him, which is something that a lot of men need to learn.

Sera Gamble, staff writer, executive producer, and showrunner of seasons 6 and 7, said about Dean:

“Dean always has a great comeback line, so it’s always fun to write him. Dean’s introduction to us in the pilot was him hitting on his brother’s girlfriend, specifically pointing out her boobs.”

But this is not all Dean is. He’s first and foremost Sam’s protector. In Dean’s second scene of the pilot, Dean is shown to rescue his brother from their house as it burns down, carrying him out of harm’s way. Dean, as the older brother, knows it’s his job to protect his younger sibling. It’s been drilled into him since he was four years old that he is supposed to protect Sam above everything, even when Sam ditched their family. Before the pilot, Dean and Sam hadn’t spoken in two years, and Sam hadn’t seen John in four. But by the end of the episode we realise that Dean hasn’t given up the mantle of protector. He rescues Sam from the building where Jess is being burned alive. First and foremost, Dean will always protect Sam.

At 26, Dean has seen things and done things that no one should see or do. Where Sam is sullen and quiet, Dean is loud and brash, getting into trouble, jumping headfirst into situations he shouldn’t be in. The situations he shouldn’t be in include: a crime scene, a river, a motel room, a haunted shack. Places he should be include the police station, because Dean winchester is many things and one of them is a felon.

We can’t find ourselves sympathising too much with Dean as a main character just yet because we don’t have any attachment to his weaknesses. Yes, Mary died, but she is such a non-character it doesn’t register (unless of course you’ve been through a similar tragedy, then sympathise away). Yes, he loves his car and his guns and his leather jacket, but we find out later that they are handmedowns from John. Dean’s personality is a carefully curated list of acceptable likes and dislikes, inherited from the abusive, alcoholic father John is to him and the woman, wife and mother he thinks of Mary as. In the pilot, Dean is the lovable scamp, but his desperation is lying in wait beneath the mask of finding his father. He wants his fambily back, but more than that, he wants his fambily safe.

We see Sam and Dean’s strengths play out through the episode. In their first encounter with the Woman in White, she possesses the Impala and drives it towards them. They both jump off the bridge, but while Sam clings on, Dean hurls himself into the river. Thus the death-defying stunt ends up a funny gag as Dean drags himself out of the muck, and Sam is positioned as the smarter brother. I mean, he got into Stanford, right? so he’s smarter, right???

Another moment establishes the bulk of their characters in two lines. Sam says, “What I said earlier, about Mum and Dad, I’m sorry,” and Dean replies, “No chick-flick moments.” Within this simple exchange lies the heart of their differences: Sam wants Dean to be okay. Dean would rather push Sam away than offer up his feelings like a charcuterie platter for anyone to pick apart.

From what we know of John, he is a man obsessed. Sam reveals that their whole lives have been based around trying to find the thing that killed Mary. John trained his sons to be hunters from an indeterminately young age, after finding out about the supernatural from various side characters and piecing the rest together himself. From how the other hunters talk about John, he is a master in skill and execution, and Dean and Sam take after him. Sam is smart and coordinated enough to be good at everything, and Dean is naturally gifted in intellect, tactical skill, and weapons. Together they make a formidable team. By the time the show really gets going, John, Sam and Dean are legends in the hunting community. Dean comments in a later episode that he’s famous, and other characters point out the same thing. Characters introduced later know who they are before the boys know who the other characters are and what their connection to John is.

The implications of John raising his sons are hunters are multitudinal. Because Sam and Dean have been raised this way, they have saved a lot of people that otherwise would have died. But it’s at their own expense. They can never live normal lives, and even when they settle down in season 8 at the Men of Letters bunker, the echoes of their loneliness and isolation are still present. That’s why it’s not enough to focus only on Sam and Dean, or introduce more characters just to kill them off, because the brothers are fundamentally lonely and isolated. And the point of any story is to have your characters progress (although in the case of a short story, it’s to reveal something about a character), so when they start out a certain way they need to have outgrown that stasis that they were trapped in by the end of the series. Sam deserved to build a life for himself in the hunting world, with another hunter and/or the queen of hell, making connections and a home for other hunters to stay in and, as one tumblr user says, a monster rehabilitation centre. Dean deserved to outgrow his trauma and simply grow as a character instead of being stuck as an depressed alcoholic with anger issues.

On the surface of the show, Dean is supposed to be Han Solo and Sam Luke Skywalker. But the first thing we learn about Sam to do with his family is that he left them as soon as he finished high school and had a chance to escape. Dean, however, stayed loyal to John and continued hunting. This dynamic of Sam rebelling against the the God figure of their father and Dean’s dependency on their father’s approval continues into the fifth season and parallels the storyline of the angel Lucifer rebelling and his brother Michael staying loyal to God. It certainly is an interesting dynamic, which I just realising as I type this paragraph was repeated in my own family. Me, the youngest rebelling against my abusive father around the time I started watching this show while my older brother continued to live with him, in squalor and destitution. There were no Gardens of Eden in our family, only a hell of our father’s making. My dad loves muscle cars and heavy metal, too, and I haven’t spoken to him in three years.

The motel room they find John occupying before he takes off is something you’d see in a serial killer’s lair. There are articles printed out and stuck to the wall, a line of salt encircling the room, various talismans and charms, and information on the woman in white. From what we see, John lives up to his legendary status, putting together a pattern of strange deaths and disappearances over the course of 20 years for his sons to eventually solve. But we already know by now that he puts hunting above his own children, and it becomes clear as the episode goes on that he is sending them out on hunts that he himself either can’t or won’t finish. He disappears and leads them on a proverbial and literal ghost hunt as they chase him across the country.

The universe of Supernatural started with monsters but encompasses a lot more than that. Kripke’s vision, which personally I think he executed really well, was small town Americana meets monster of the week. It’s ghosts on highways, cannibals in forests, and spirits in lakes. It’s a possessed car on a bridge aiming straight for our protagonists. It’s gas station junk food and driving 16 hours across multiple states on a hunch. It’s sleeping in your car and brushing your teeth at the side of the road because you couldn’t afford a hotel for the night. It’s grit meets slime. It’s real and fantastical at the same time. When I say this show activates the part of my mind that lives for road trips across a barren country through miles and miles of desert, I’m not lying. I used to love road trips as a kid, just staring out the window with my gameboy in my hand and Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill album in my discman. I long for those days.

The lore is one of the most interesting things about the show. in most episodes, the characters are seen to flick through physical books to gather information about what they’re fighting, which seems to take hours if not days. At one point I’m pretty sure that their father figure Bobby digitises his library, but then that’s never brought up again, so maybe I imagined it. There are hundreds of different creatures throughout the seasons, including some the show made up (Jefferson Starships in season 6), others they’ve taken from folklore and legends and put their own spin on. The interesting ways they present creatures, some pure evil, others sympathetic, is one of the reasons I loved this show from the beginning. All I ever wanted to write was urban fantasy, and this show presented it in an accessible way. I grew up in small towns with populations of less than a thousand people, so watching the characters go through small towns, back roads, truck stops and service stations in the middle of nowhere just hit me right where it hurts.

The lore of the woman in white is thus: a husband cheats on his wife, and the wife, in a moment of insanity, murders her children. When she comes back as a vengeful spirit, she finds men who have been unfaithful and murders them. The character of Constance hitch hikes along the road waiting for men to pick her up, and even if they haven’t been unfaithful she seduces them before she kills them. Spirits are shown to have special powers: they can move objects, wield weapons, and kill with their hands or minds. They can also appear and disappear at will, making them hard to fight.

As with all episodes of tv shows, the problem they face is something out of the ordinary. The Woman in White is a ghost, something they’ve hunted before with ease. Sidenote: this show can be summed up as Pru from Ride or Die podcast says, “the Winchester school of boys who fight ghosts real good.” While a normal ghost would be taken out by salting and burning their bones, laying Constant Welch to rest isn’t that easy. Before they can find her bones to burn, she appears in the Impala while Sam is driving. But Sam figures out a plan: drive the Impala through the house she can’t go home to where her children are lying in wait to drag her into the underworld. And the monsters only get more interesting from there.

Now that the show has finished, it's interesting to examine what it could have been. We know what it is: a 15 year long experiment in family dysfunction and queerbaiting. We know it’s about choices and free will. But what could it have been? It could have been more than family dysfunction. Throughout the entire show, the premise has always been about two brothers, and that’s to its detriment, as there’s only so many times they can rehash the premise of brothers betraying each other. The showrunners were so bent on keeping the show about Sam and Dean that they neglected the other storylines that could have proved more interesting and killed off all the characters that were a threat to their dynamic. It could have been about characters becoming their own creators in stepping outside the narrative, usurping their writers and choosing love instead of violence. It could have stayed about found families, instead of focusing solely on Sam and Dean in the last episode, which undid all of the groundwork they’d laid out in the last 7 or so seasons.

But what we have is what we get, and while the show falls down in some respects, especially with regards to its treatment of people of colour and the queer community, it is still a show that I’ve loved since the Howard administration, and something that has changed and improved my life in numerous ways. If I hadn’t started writing Supernatural fanfiction, I wouldn’t have majored in writing, and I wouldn’t have the experience to write four books and some novel length fanfiction. Supernatural has inspired me so much over the years, and I will always considered it kismet that it entered my life. I know others feel the same, and you only have to step into the fandom for a day to realise the impact that Supernatural has on people all over the world. Few shows have had both the gall and opportunity to shape television in the way that Supernatural has and do the things that it has done. Falling in love with it again at a time when I was outgrowing a previous hyperfixation, feeling lost and adrift, and burnt out from writing 150,000 words in the middle of a pandemic, has been extremely serendipitous, and I can’t wait to dissect every single thing about this show.

You can find the show at holyhellpod on Instagram and tumblr, and patreon dot com slash holyhellpod. I’ll talk to you soon.

[Outro music]

#holyhellpod #supernatural #spn #dean winchester #sam winchester #<25 mins #transcripts

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nightwingshero · 4 years

Note

Instead of sending a smut prompt, can I please have a written scene that explains why Jane knows the size of Randy's dick? I feel like that's a mystery that needs to be solved. 👀❤

Okay, but remember: you asked for this. (The puns, Angy! I’m the worst!) I...I AM SO SORRY. EXCUSE ME WHILE I HIDE. DEFINITELY NSFW!!!

“Hurry the fuck up.” I muttered, tapping my thumb against the steering wheel of my truck. “How long does it take you to get ready?”

Patience wasn’t my virtue, it never had been, and I knew that. Really, I did. Jacob would get on my ass for it in training, telling me I needed to learn or it would get me killed. And I did. I could wait for the kill, stake out and observe. That was never a problem for me, not as much as it had been. I was proud of myself for that.

Randy was another fucking challenge altogether.

I had told him, in plenty of time, that I would be here at 6pm sharp, and to be ready to hop in by then. We had a service to attend, and I knew John would note our absence. Pissing off our Herald, or the Father, was not on my things to do today. And yet, here I was, waiting for his ass.

The clock read 6:20 and I groaned, throwing my head back. It would be starting soon, and I knew that even if we had left right that second, we’d still be late. I huffed, throwing the door open and slamming it before stomping my way to his cabin, grumbling the whole way. I let myself in, the dogs barely raising their heads when they saw me. They recognized me well enough to know this was a normal thing, I wasn’t a threat. Well...from what they perceived.

The TV was playing, a movie that I had seen trailers for but hadn’t bothered to go and see, something action related. I could hear the shower running in the bathroom and I rolled my eyes. Of fucking course. A basket of clothes sat on the couch, waiting to be put away and I leaned over to grab the hunting magazine laying innocently next to it. The sound of water stopped as I leaned my hip against the piece of furniture, casually flipping through the pages to see if there were any rifle attachments that I could use and the door finally opened.

“You know, when I say be ready, I mean--”

I turned, closing the magazine to give him a look, but I stop short. My eyes widen as Randy walks out of the bathroom, nothing else but the towel he was using to dry his hair. I fight it, I really do, but my eyes drop down, following the curves of the muscle he had on him, nice and toned to almost perfection, and all the way down a trail of hair that led--

A lump forms in my throat, threatening to choke me as my mouth goes dry and I turn away from him. My hand is making a show of shielding my eyes, even though there wasn’t a thing I hadn’t seen. He didn’t need to know that, though. “Jesus Christ, Randy! Put some fucking clothes on!”

“Hey, Jane. I thought I heard you pull in.” he greeted, cool as ever.

“Randy! Why the fuck aren’t you wearing anything?” I hissed, squeezing my eyes shut.

“In my own cabin?” he scoffed. “Damn, I got some nerve, don’t I? What the fuck are you doin’?”

“Protecting my eyes, dumbass. For fuck’s sake.”

He chuckled, a deep sound from his chest and I fought the urge to clear my throat. “Sorry, just thought you were an adult, not a little shy thing.” I clenched my teeth before whipping around and glaring at him.

His head was tilted a bit, amusement dancing in his eyes as he stared. The towel was wrapped around his neck, and I wanted nothing more than to tighten it. “You’re insufferable. I told you to be ready, you dick. Get fucking dressed and let’s go. We’re late, John’ll kill us.”

“Mmm.” Randy stepped forward, and I swallowed hard as I tried to step back, but met the couch. I could feel the heat from the hot shower radiating off his skin after he got close. “Yeah, well, my clothes are in here. Hadn’t had a chance to put ‘em away. You mind?”

I went to reach behind me, but he beat me to it. Randy leaned forward, reaching around me, our faces close enough that our breaths were mingling. If either of us moved forward just an inch, there would be nothing to separate us. He pulled back, pulling a pair of jeans with him. Straightening, he continued to eye me, and I continued to glare, finding that my only defense against him.

Folding the jeans, he places them over the back of the couch before placing his hands on either side of me, leaning closer yet again. “Late, huh? I mean, if we’re going to be late, what’s the point of goin’? Interrupting would only make it worse, won’t it?”

“What? Fuck no.” I replied heatedly. “Randy, we have to go to the sermon.”

“Yeah, but do we?” he breathed out. “Why’s your face so damn red, Jane?”

Fighting the blush only made it worse, which pissed me off. I hated him, I hated the way he got under my skin, and I was going to kill him. “John wants us there, remember?”

“Unless we got stuff to do. John isn’t gonna miss two Chosen.”

“We don’t have stuff to do, you lazy ass! You just don’t want to go!”

Randy tilts his head thoughtfully, clicking his tongue a bit. Moving one of his hands, his index finger finds the front belt loop of my jeans, and pulls just a tad. “I dunno ‘bout that. I think we got plenty to do.”

“Randy...” I warned as he leaned in even closer.

“Hmm?” He hovered there for a split second, waiting for me to continue, but I can’t remember what it was. Randy doesn’t seem to give a fuck, because his hand slips past the edge of my jeans, clenching the fabric tightly as he yanks me forward.

Our lips meet violently, and its funny to me, because I find that so damn fitting with who we are. We were rough, fighters, and violence was a language we were fluent in. So, the kiss is much of the same nature, and it reminds me who I am, kissing back hard. I don’t waste time playing games, I’m not a subtle person, so I grab him--already semi-hard--and start to stroke him at a decent pace.

Randy groans, and that just makes it worse, because I’m responding to it too strongly. His hips work with me, and I bite his lip with a laugh, because I love the feeling of being in control, of him letting me take control. His head falls back in a sigh, and I can see his Adam's apple move as he swallows. I smirk before I drop to my knees, slowing before taking him into my mouth.

“Oh, fuck.” he moaned, and I can hear the shock in his voice. His hand moves to my hair, pulling and I know my braid is fucked at this point, but I don’t care. I’m trying to take him all in my mouth, but I’m struggling. His tip hits the back of my throat and I choke, not used to it. “Shit, sorry.” he mutters, trying to pull back, but I grip his thighs, the nails digging to stop him.

My pride was my sin, John had told me this. I never really moved past it, I didn’t handle my sin very well at all. And that’s part of the reason I keep going, or that’s what I tell myself. Because admitting everything else was too scary. Even though I knew, deep down, that this was a long time coming, something we had both been fighting, but wanting more than anything.

Finally, I find a good rhythm, adjusting to him the best I could, and I hollow my cheeks, sucking harder. Randy’s grip in my hair tightens, making me wince, but I like it. He’s not moving my head, not pushing my head, just holding on. A warm feeling spreads in my chest, and I shove it away, because I don’t like it. I don’t what to make of it, and the last time I had felt it, it ended badly.

He’s different. Randy is different.

I go faster, relaxing my throat, the sounds coming from him encouraging me. It’s odd that it has such an effect on me, but it sends shivers down my spine and I clench my thighs together, because I never noticed how good he sounds.

“Fuck, I’m gonna cum, Jane.”

He tried to pull away again, but I refuse to give. I want him to feel good, I realize. I want to do this for him. He inhales sharply, tensing and he’s at the back of my throat when he finally finishes. Randy grips the couch for support while I take him out of my mouth, looking up to realize he had been watching the whole time. I wonder if I should have been embarrassed, but I can’t find it in me to be.

I smirk at him, getting to my feet. “Maybe next time you’ll be ready on time.”

“And miss out on that? Nah, you’re gonna wanna come earlier. And besides,” he grabbed my jeans again, undoing them with a smirk of his own. “we got stuff to do, and we’re far from finished.”

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shanastoryteller · 5 years

Text

in another life

(written as a thank you for @another-annon)

Two brothers seperated from the rest, a country limping along, a plaything with a missing eye and a broken heart.

This isn’t fun at all. Truth wants to have fun.

It looks down at the world its created, at he destruction and chaos and pain. It’s not as satisfying as he hoped it’d be.

“Again,” it says, giving a lipless grin as its voice send out echoes, waiting.

Ripples shift and bend, pushing time back to the start.

Roy wakes up crying. That’s not too unusual, so he runs his hands over his face to wipe the tears out of his eyes.

Wait.

His eyes.

He stumbles to his feet, nearly tripping over his feet as he runs to the bathroom. It takes him a moment, staring at confusion at a bare living room, before he realizes his bathroom has moved. What the fuck. He trips in, flicking on the light.

He has two eyes. And he’s young, so painfully young. Is he even drinking age? He sure hopes so, because he really feels like he needs a drink. He runs his hand over his smooth chin, and well, okay, maybe not.

“Roooooooy!” sing songs a familiar voice, and oh no, he really is in the past somewhere. “Wake up, it’s time for breakfast!”

Vanessa as an adult is terrifying. As a teenager, she’s what nightmares are made of.

He scrambles for a pen and paper, throws some clothes in a backpack, and leaves a note for his mother.

Madame, have to go off and save the world. Will be back. Love you.

The first thing he has to do is find Maes, obviously. It’s a bit of a problem that they don’t know each other yet, but he has a solution for that.

He waits until he’s walking home from school, grabs him by the back of his shirt, pulls him into an alley, and shoves him against the brick wall. “I don’t have any money!” Maes says, eyes wide behind his glasses. “Check my pockets, I don’t have anything, really.”

“I’m not dumb, I know you. The second I loosen my grip you’ll have a knife at my throat.” Maes wasn’t so much borne of war as born ready for it. He loses his scared facade and raises an eyebrow. “I know you think about cutting out your father’s throat every time he raises his hand to your mother, that you cheat on all your math tests, that you have a crush on John in your chemistry class, and that you tear pictures of places you’d like to visit out of magazines and keep them tucked in the back of your closet.”

Maes’s curious look has morphed into a fascinated kind of horror. “Who are you? How do you know that?”

“I’m your best friend,” Roy tells him, “and I need your help to stop a war before it starts.”

Maes can’t resist that, so he goes with him. Roy knows how to make money on the road, even as a not quite eighteen year old, and he’s incredibly pleased to teach Maes how to hustle pool instead of the other way around. He’s still better than Roy at poker, even with a decade’s less experience, and that only stings a little.

Eventually, they make their way to General Grumman.

Roy’s not stupid enough to think they can do this on their own. So he gets a little help.

Things move fast after that, because they have to. Stopping a war is no easy task. There’s hunting down the homonculi, finding and killing Dante, finding that damn Ishvalan and Izumi Curtis and telling them exactly what will happen if they attempt human transmutation.

It’s too early to go after the Elrics. But this time, he won’t be too late.

He’s twenty years old and high off his success, off the war that isn’t happening and all the lives they’ve managed to save. Maes is laughing as he tugs him close and slots their mouths together.

For a moment, Roy freezes. He thinks of Gracis and Elysia, thinks of Edward. Thinks of the love that beats beneath his breastbone for his younger lover, for the fire in Ed’s eyes that he wouldn’t be able to tame even if he wanted to.

Then that moment breaks and he’s surging forward, licking into Maes’s mouth and biting at his lip.

That life is gone. That world is gone. This is the one he has, and he’s not going to waste it.

It doesn’t work the same for the others.

Ed and Winry are four and Al is three when they all start getting nightmares about horrors that none of their parents can explain.

Then one day they all wake up, and all the nightmares make sense, and they remember everything.

The first thing Ed and Al do is go to their father’s office. “Hello boys,” he says, and with older eyes Ed can see the way his lips tip up at the corners, the way he softens when he sees them, all these things he hadn’t noticed when he was actually a child.

They both silently crawl into his lap and they each grab a pen. He laughs, leaning back in the chair and letting them scrawl over his notebook.

They know the exact moment he realizes what they’re drawing. He tenses and sucks in a deep breath. “How-”

“If you leave, Momma gets sick and dies. This is the circle we used to try and bring her back,” Ed says, tapping the left page.

“We know more than we did before,” Al says, and points at the circle on the right page. “This is the one we’ll use to bring her back if you leave us again.”

They wouldn’t, even if it might work, they learned their lesson the first time. But their dad doesn’t need to know that.

Hohenheim doesn’t leave, and they don’t tell Trisha what they are, how they’re her sons but not the innocent little boys she thought they were. When she gets a cough and starts feeling dizzy, Hohenheim is there. He uses the philosopher’s stone to heal her, and Ed and Al can finally breathe easy.

Winry’s problems aren’t so easy to fix. Her nightmares don’t stop.

She loves her parents, and she knows their dedication to their duty, to their work. She knows it because she’s just the same, she’s a doctor that’s walked into more than one warzone with her head held high. Even if she tells them everything, tells them that they’ll die in that war - she doesn’t think it will change anything at all.

They went to war knowing that they could die, but believing their work was more important than their lives.

The part of her that’s their daughter wants to hold them close and never let them go.

The part of her that’s a doctor knows where they’re going is where they need to be, even if it kills them.

So she waits, and wonders, as time marches on.

There’s no war.

One day Ed and Al crawl into her window and Al says, “Grumman is the Fuhrer here!”

“Huh,” she says, something dangerously like hope in her chest.

Time passes, and there’s no war to take her parents away from her.

Ling doesn’t get any warnings, like dreams, and he doesn’t even get a nice smooth transition between sleeping and awake.

He’s walking down the hall of the palace, ignoring his mother’s lecture on why he needs to focus on his studies, when he trips, flips before he can fall, then says, “Motherfucker.”

“Ling!” his mother exclaims, “When did you learn how to curse in Amestrian? What are those tutors teaching you, honestly!”

“Sorry,” he says, mind racing.

He’s not the emperor here. He’s not immortal here.

Does he still want to be?

The immortal bit he can take or leave, but the emperor part? Oh, yeah, that he wants.

Roy considers joining the military again. He knows it. He’s good at it.

But in this world, he doesn’t have any sins to suffer for.

“I think I want to be a professor,” he says, head on Maes’s chest. “I can be your army wife.”

Maes laughs and leans down to kiss his forehead. “Whatever you want, darling.”

Ed and Al don’t join the military. Instead they do what they forbade their father to do.

They go traveling.

“Xing?” Ed asks, grinning, “Or Drachma?”

“Xing,” Al says firmly. “At least there I know the language.”

“Well, I don’t know either language,” Winry says, tossing an arm around each of their shoulders. “But I never did get my hands on the Xingese alloys.”

They’re in a middle of nowhere town in Xing when a familiar grinning face swings through their window. “Hello,” Ling says. “I’m making a bid for the throne. Want to help?”

And they don’t understand how Ling knows or remembers, but it doesn’t matter, he’s their friend, and well, their lives have been a little boring.

Of course they help.

“Don’t go,” Ling says when it’s all over, his hand tangled in Ed’s, dark eyes imploring. “Stay here. With me.”

“I,” Ed starts, heart in his throat.

Ling was his first in both worlds, and here, where they’re a little less broken, they fit in way they hadn’t before. But –

“Your general is probably out there, somewhere,” he acknowledges, because he knows Ed, knows what he’s thinking without him having to say it. “You could probably seduce him, if that’s what you want.”

He could, is the thing. But is it? He loved Roy almost more than anything in his old life, more than anyone besides Al maybe, but – the person Ed was, and the person Roy was –

Those people don’t exist anymore.

“Yeah,” he says, “but you’re here.”

It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, but Ling knows him, so he beams, pulling him close for the kind of kiss that’ll leave the servants whispering around them for weeks.

Years later, Ed is in Amestris at a stuffy military function, forced to attend as the Prince Consort of Xing, which is the most annoying title he’s ever held.

“Fuhrer Hughes,” Ling says diplomatically, his hand on the small of Ed’s back.

“Emperor Ling,” Maes returns, and Ed never got to see him this age before, and it warms him to see the wrinkles in the edges of his eyes. “I of course know of your companion. My husband is a huge fan of your work, Prince Edward.”

“Is he?” Ed asks, finally bringing himself to meet Roy’s dark eyes. He looks good. He always looks good, but now he looks better, two eyes and looking younger now than when Ed met him the first time, without all that regret weighing him down. “I’ve read a few of his as well. Mr. Mustang, your strides in flame alchemy are well documented.”

“Thank you, but truly, you and your brother’s grasp of biological alchemy is unparalleled,” he says, perfectly polite.

Roy and Edward sneak glances at each other all night, and they both can’t help but think –

- in another life, perhaps.

#fandom ficcery #fma

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mittensmorgul · 5 years

Text

i obviously did not think this through

So the other day I thought it would be fun to make up my own Essential Rewatch List leading up to 15.01, and boy howdy was I ever wrong! This post is the result of that. Instead of a conveniently streamlined list of important episodes for meta and character development highlights, instead have this 15k word probably-useless behemoth...

I debated not even posting this on tumblr because it’s just so massive. But heck this was a lot of work so here it is.

For reference purposes, I refer a lot to my rewatch notes, but mostly in later seasons. If you’d rather just go to the beginning of my tag for the most recent rewatch, 1.01 is the last post on this page, and then you can just continue chronologically from there:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/s14+hellatus+rewatch/chrono/page/3

If you want to read more about a specific episode, every singe episode is filed on my blog with the episode tag. For example, all posts about 1.01 are tagged like this:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/spn-1.01

To find a different episode, just plug in the correct episode number and voila.

If you’d prefer to skip an episode but don’t fully recall it and just want a quick refresher, every episode is linked on this page of the superwiki. Those links will serve you up a tidy synopsis as well as link you to the transcripts for every episode (linked at the bottom of each episode page):

http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/Category:Episodes

I started out making reasonable, logical entries for every episode, and then... kinda went off the rails toward the end... apologies for how chaotic this might read. Most of it was typed off the top of my head, and I haven’t edited it so apologies for any errors. Under a cut because FIFTEEN. THOUSAND. WORDS.

Good luck.

1.01 Pilot Obviously this episode sets up everything that comes after, and gives us a platform from which to understand exactly how the show’s mythology will eventually evolve. It also establishes a baseline for understanding Sam and Dean and their personal character evolutions and family dynamics. Probably essential viewing in any rewatch...

1.02 Wendigo Like so many early episodes, we learn more about Dean and Sam, and the missing father they’re searching for. And here we get “Saving people, hunting things, the family business” that becomes the motto of the Winchesters.

1.03 Dead in the Water

Sam is shocked to learn that Dean’s good with kids, and how Dean was traumatized as a 4-year-old. Like, dude, he practically raised you, Sam… makes sense he’s good with kids...

1.04 Phantom Traveler Specky the Wonderdemon, who was terrifyingly beyond their pay grade at the time. Kinda hilarious in retrospect… (also first use of Dean’s homemade EMF meter)

1.05 Bloody Mary Aah, Sam is keeping secrets from Dean (about his psychic powers and that he’d foreseen Jess’s death), and we learn ghosts can be attached to items that must be destroyed to banish the ghost.

1.06 Skin ooh Dean, take off that shirt yes… no… wait… stop… you can stop with the shirt you don’t… no please put your skin back on… (no, seriously, we learn A LOT about Dean from the shapeshifter, and so does Sam… There’s a heck of a lot Dean keeps buried. Also a reminder that shifter episodes tend to involve these sorts of buried secret things for Dean. Also Dean’s first “legal death” even if not actual death)

1.07 Hook Man Another ghost attached to an object, Sam’s first flirtation with anyone after Jess’s death, and Dean’s proficiency and innovation in hunting techniques continues to surprise Sam-- with the first use of salt shells for a shotgun.

1.08 Bugs Oh look more first season talking of their different experiences and memories of childhood and especially their very different relationships with John. If you can ignore the bug-related portions of the episode. Also I think still the only time in canon Sam and Dean have used umbrellas.

1.09 Home

Well if you absolutely need an in-depth exploration of the Winchester Family Dynamic as it stood in s1, this is a good baseline episode. Mary’s guilt expressed by her ghost in the house where she died, more exploration of Sam’s psychic powers, and we first see John on screen in the “present day.” Sam also learns it was Dean who carried him out of the house when he was a baby, and uses the exact same line John told Dean in this episode (take your brother outside as fast as you can and don’t look back)

1.10 Asylum So much of s1 was Dean getting orders from John and… following them. We get an interesting glimpse inside Sam’s head (having heard some of Dean’s dark secrets in 1.06) and via ghost interference Sam says some pretty bitter things to Dean (and would’ve shot him if Dean had been dumb enough to hand him a loaded gun. lucky Dean’s smarter than that). But now we have their baseline issues laid out on the table for us.

1.11 Scarecrow Sam is sick of taking orders from John and decides to go find John on his own rather than following another order. He meets Meg hitchhiking, and she tries to lure him in. Luckily Sam realizes Dean is in trouble and goes back to save him. They decide to stick together again. Of course.

1.12 Faith Here we go… the first moment the show realized it had the potential to be something bigger than a MotW horror/fantasy road trip. Dean’s first brush with capital-D Death (in this case, a reaper). The first time in canon anyone suggests that Dean was “chosen by the Lord” for a greater purpose.

1.13 Route 666 Racist Ghost Truck. But also the first time we learn an important difference between Dean and Sam. Sam hid everything about his life from Jess (a woman he was planning to propose to), but Dean fell in love with Cassie over a matter of weeks and told the whole truth to… and she dumped him for it because she thought he was lying to her. That heartbreak goes a long way toward the cavalier attitude Dean puts on toward relationships in general in the early seasons. Tell them the truth and they’ll leave you for it, but he won’t live the lie that Sam was perfectly happy to...

1.14 Nightmare Aah, more of Sam’s powers (darkest timeline edition with Max), and Sam credits John for being a better father… until he sees Dean’s reaction to that comment… and we get that Dean stood between Sam and John’s… lack of parenting skills >.>

1.15 The Benders “Plain old people are often worse than monsters”

1.16 Shadow The return of Meg, who is Up To No Good messing around with scarier demons than good old Specky was. We finally have John in the picture, but he deems it too dangerous for them to stick together, blaming their vulnerability on their care for each other, and just PFFFFFFT how often has the show kicked this notion to the curb? Give it a few more episodes… Sam also expresses his desire to finally get their revenge so he can leave hunting for good and go back to his “normal life.” Dean is crushed and upset by this revelation.

1.17 Hell House Aah, the prank war :’), and the idiot ghostfacers :’). It’s a tulpa.

1.18 Something Wicked Well if you need your heart ripped out with Dean Feels, you’re in the right place. Sam learns even more about Dean’s struggles as a kid under John’s orders, and what “failure” to obey meant to Dean-- that it once almost cost Sam his life. Sam gets a better idea of the burden of guilt and the weight of responsibility that Dean has carried for far, far too long. And Dean gets a bit of closure, finally killing the shtriga.

1.19 Provenance Sam gets to unburden himself a bit from Jess’s death and make a real connection with a wonderful woman who gets a real peek into the reality of their lives and the supernatural. Still, he walks away, and completely loses touch with her for like… 7 years...

1.20 Dead Man's Blood Sam and Dean are sick of blindly following orders, and sick of wild goose chases. And they demand answers from John. We learn about vampires for the first time, and are finally introduced to The Colt, which will take on so much significance over the seasons that it’s RIDICULOUS. A weapon Mary heard bedtime stories about as a child, now become real to be used to get their revenge on the demon who killed her? Which will resurface again and again to either become their hope or destroy their hope… so much baggage attached to a single gun.

1.21 Salvation So much plotting, but the demons get their way and get the Winchesters separated and set up. Sam fails to shoot the demon with the Colt and John is captured.

1.22 Devil's Trap As the title suggests, this is where we learn about the Devil’s Trap. And see the “single step” exorcism performed (not the two-step Specky exorcism from 1.04). Dean rejects John’s orders and “wastes” a bullet from the Colt to save Sam’s life. But it’s still all a trap, because the demon is possessing John. Dean realizes it when John is NOT FURIOUS that he “wasted” that bullet. It nearly kills Dean, and Sam refuses to kill John in order to kill the demon. The demon escapes, the Winchesters have one bullet left in the Colt, and then they’re run over by a demon-possessed semi trucker.

2.01 In My Time of Dying Dean’s second brush with Death (again, reapers). He learns a lot while mostly dead that unfortunately he won’t remember for a long time (until 4.15, to be precise) about reapers and their powers (manipulating reality, etc.). Sam is desperate to save Dean, and John trades his life (and the Colt) to the Demon for Dean’s life, lays one HELL of a burden on Dean-- either save Sam, or you’ll have to kill him. No further details, just that horrific fact which Dean will try to shield Sam from as long as he can, which will (as per usual) probably only make things worse when they eventually come out. Dying wishes on this show SUCK DONKEYS. Remember that when we get to 5.22...

2.02 Everybody Loves a Clown Spoiler alert: nobody actually loves a clown, especially not Sam. But heck Dean driving the soccer mom minivan is priceless. And we’re introduced to Ellen, Jo, and Ash at the Roadhouse. Sam and Dean are like… whoa there are actual hunter gathering places? And begin to uncover just how sheltered and weird their lives have been, even for hunters.

2.03 Bloodlust like 1.15, “sometimes people are the worst monsters,” with a generous side helping of “sometimes monsters aren’t actually monsters.” Dean gets to question a lot of what he was taught his whole life by John, via the proxy of Gordon Walker and his hate-on for vampires. But Dean realizes there’s a limit to killing everything not-human… the beginning of the era of “killing what deserves to be killed and not just anyone will do”

2.04 Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things Zombie. Considering Jack’s longtime fascination with zombies, and how 14.20 ended… possibly relevant thematically on several levels… Girl resurrected by a dude for love (she didn’t love him in life… but was basically a “soulless person” as a zombie, as we will come to understand in later seasons). It’s a terrible idea to try and bring back the dead… >.> But this is all wrapped up in grief and how Sam and Dean each deal with grief in their own ways, and how they don’t really understand how the other is processing John’s death. In the MotW language of the show, zombies are about grief for the past and an inability to express it or move past it. They’re just emotional baggage (like shapeshifter eps reveal hidden truths and vampires are about revenge)

2.05 Simon Said More special children affected by the demon exhibit psychic powers… Sam is unsettled by the mind control, but unlike Dean he’s immune to it… He’s scared he’s gonna turn “evil” (and this is the first hint he gets that Dean might feel the same, based on the horrific dying promise John extracted from him that we still haven’t heard, and which we’re reminded is clearly weighing on Dean anyway)

2.06 No Exit Aah, Jo. They hunt the ghost of HH Holmes with her and learn some terrible things about their father’s history-- that he probably played a part in Jo’s father’s death. We also learn Dean sleeps real funny in chairs...ow it just looks so dang painful :’D (but they do comeuppance real well on the ghost…)

2.07 The Usual Suspects I love this just for the structure of the episode, showing us Hunting with Sam and Dean 101-- how to avoid arrest and imprisonment edition. This just gives us so much insight into how well they work together as a team, and the degree to which they’ve developed code words and references and how they are able to craft seamless backstories in the event a hunt goes south. It’s just… delightful.

2.08 Crossroad Blues The introduction of Crossroads Demons. And the first confirmation to Dean that John did indeed sell his soul for Dean’s life. Uncomfy revelation. The demon offers Dean a deal… his father resurrected and ten years to enjoy his company before Dean’s soul would end up in Hell instead. Dean declines. But their arsenal of weapons against demons (and the newly-introduced Hellhounds) grows to include goofer dust.

2.09 Croatoan Aah, a terrible time was had by all… the demons are scheming, creating demonic viruses and testing Sam’s immunity to them. But of course Dean and Sam don’t know that… Dean’s comment as they leave town: “I'm already starting to feel like this is the one that got away.” And ends on a cliffhanger of Dean about to tell Sam what John told him in 2.01.

2.10 Hunted Sam is enraged Dean would keep that from him, and wants to seek out more Special Children to learn what they can, but Dean wants to hide out and bide their time for safety’s sake. And maybe it’s just because I was in my 30’s when I first watched this show, but Sam pulls what I still think of as one of his signature childish moves and runs away in the night. But down that path lies revenge against the demon, so of course Sam runs into vampire-adjacent Gordon Walker. We learn more about how the Winchesters work together, the secret code word “funkytown,” and that sometimes they actually get the authorities to work in their favor. They’re good at manipulating the system...

2.11 Playthings Ghosts, Hoodoo that wasn’t to cause harm, but to protect against the ghost. Sam gets spectacularly drunk and makes Dean promise to actually kill him if he goes bad. Yikes. We also have the “why does everybody think we’re gay,” and Sam’s reply of “you’re kinda trying too hard to be butch” that Dean… doesn’t have a response to. Sam gets to SAVE somebody (he puts a gold star in his book as proof he’s not turning evil yet)

2.12 Nightshifter This is one I recommend actually watching… another shapeshifter (not a mandroid), so uncomfortable truths time. Sam lies thinking he’s protecting someone from danger, but it just drives Ron into even WORSE danger (and gets him killed). Everything about this hunt goes sideways, except they do actually kill the shifter, but now they’ve got the FBI on their tails. This is Winchesters Scrambling In A Tight Spot nirvana.

2.13 Houses of the Holy The first hint that the show… could possibly someday include angels, but they’re still on the BS list by the end of this episode. We learn more about Sam’s belief in God, Dean’s utter disdain for the idea of God, and the fact that Mary had believed in angels. Dean witnesses something he can’t explain, and Sam points in Dean’s direction when asking, “That’s Michael, right?”

2.14 Born Under a Bad Sign From holy to Hell… Sam is possessed by Meg, who leads Dean on a wild goose chase and does some pretty horrific stuff with Sam’s body. >.> They learn about the antipossession charms from Bobby (and probably get the tattoos shortly after this). Dean still refuses to kill Sam even when he begs (though we learn it was Meg testing or goading all of them).

2.15 Tall Tales We’re introduced to the Trickster (who’s even tricking them about his actual identity). Sam and Dean are completely bamboozled until Bobby shows up and points them to what’s really going on. There’s a lot of fun stuff about Sam and Dean’s relationship and how they see themselves and each other in here, though. And of course we know who the trickster actually is, which makes this all so much more interesting in retrospect… bit of comeuppance and lessons learned.

2.16 Roadkill An interesting take on a ghost MotW episode, where one of the ghosts doesn’t realize she’s dead, and how Sam and Dean work with her to save them all.

2.17 Heart Sam’s first actual sort-of-relationship with a woman. Who happens to be a werewolf… oops. There’s a lot of Sam Pain in this one, and Dean feeling like he’s failed in protecting Sam, yet again. But we are introduced to werewolves, which take on the monster meta shorthand of exposing or understanding their own inner monstrousness.

2.18 Hollywood Babylon And it’s Dean’s turn to have a little fling, where their concept of a “vacation” is “deal with mysterious haunting and death on a movie set.” And like in 1.12, this all comes about because some dingdong thinks he can do whatever he want. ALSO! The true monster of the week here… IS A WRITER. A writer who is furious that his story was trashed, and produced into something unrecognizable as his actual writing. I think this one might be HIGHLY relevant to 14.20, just for that. For the deadly tantrum of a writer who didn’t get his way. (plus the brilliance of Dean going from complete noob to the best PA in the history of Hollywood in like… a day… he’s just that good :’D)

2.19 Folsom Prison Blues In doing a favor for their father’s marine corps buddy (so the ghost of John hangs all over this one), they deliberately get themselves arrested and put in jail. Dean fits in there just as well as he did as a PA. He’s… really just that good at acting. Now I have Green Onions stuck in my head and I want a milkshake. And a donut.

2.20 What Is and What Should Never Be DJINN. aka the monster meta signal of deep personal introspection. What we learn about Dean in this episode is just heartbreaking. What he would wish for (Mary alive, Sam happily at Stanford Law School engaged to Jess) and the consequences he’s willing to endure for that to be a reality (his own life’s work negated, where everyone assumes he’s a drunk and a thief and a loser).

2.21 All Hell Breaks Loose: Part One Dean just wanted pie. Instead Sam gets taken by demons. We finally find out what the demon wanted with him (sort of). Sam plays in the Demon Hunger Games, and loses at the last moment… (Dean gets to feel what it’s like to have a psychic vision, and hates it)

2.22 All Hell Breaks Loose: Part Two Dean sells his soul to resurrect Sam for the bargain price of one year before he’ll be dragged to Hell. Well learn about Samuel Colt’s Hellgate, which can ironically be unlocked with the Magic Kill Anything Gun (the Colt). In retrospect, this was just the beginning of the larger narrative arc of the Apocalypse, where Azazel released Lilith (along with a lot of other demons) to get that party started now that they had their hooks in Dean’s soul, but hey, at least Azazel won’t live to see it all happen (Dean finally shoots him with that last Colt bullet, rendering the gun useless but at least it did what they needed it to, with an assist from John’s ghost).

3.01 The Magnificent Seven The Seven Deadly Sins, the introduction of Ruby and her Magical Demon Killing Knife. Dean tells Sam he can’t be saved because if he breaks his deal, Sam would die.

3.02 The Kids Are Alright We meet Lisa (who Dean had a fling with years earlier) on Dean’s “relive his greatest hits before he goes to Hell denial roadtrip.” And Dean thinks he has a son for a hot minute (he does not, but he likes the kid anyway). Weirdness with them will ensue until they finally get to move on with their lives in s6. >.> But we’re introduced to our first fairie-adjacent creatures: Changelings. And Sam learns Ruby is actually a demon...

3.03 Bad Day at Black Rock Sam lost his shoe. We learn about curse boxes, Sam and Dean learn that John kept a secret storage unit full of weird and possibly dangerous stuff. But also some relics from their childhood-- Sam’s soccer trophy, Dean’s first sawed-off shotgun. And if that isn’t shorthand for the fact they had very different childhoods, I don’t know what is. Anyway, we meet Bela, and are entertained by good luck going bad… kinda the theme of s3?

3.04 Sin City more demons, we learn more about bigger plans they had for Sam, and Dean comes THIS CLOSE to actually considering letting a demon go… but Ruby helped Bobby make the Colt work again, and Sam kills both demons.

3.05 Bedtime Stories A pseudo-ghost of a girl trapped in a coma acts out fairy tales as a cry for help. Dean doesn’t want to kiss a frog. The pie is poisoned and Dean has to fight the big bad wolf… I swear that all makes perfect meta sense.

3.06 Red Sky at Morning Bela again. And like the ghost they’re hunting, we learn she got her revenge against a family member. The first use of the name “Castiel” in the spell to summon the ghost’s brother’s ghost so they could splish-splosh each other out of existence. That’s… all you really need to know.

3.07 Fresh Blood Gordon Walker, vampires, and vengeance. Taken to an extreme. Dean basically throws himself into danger because what does he have to lose if he’s already destined for Hell? But he’s beginning to crack, and Sam’s getting pretty desperate to get Dean to admit he’s scared and do something to save himself. Gordon’s desire for revenge gets him captured by a vamp and turned… and Sam ends up beheading him with razor wire. Yikes… so much for that revenge, eh?

3.08 A Very Supernatural Christmas Yuletide fun and eggnog. Pagan gods they end up killing with a Christmas tree. But they do reach a personal emotional plateau with Dean’s whole “half a year to live” clock ticking down.

3.09 Malleus Maleficarum Witches. Ruby. And a demon who knows Ruby leading a coven of suburban housewives who believe they’re just doing something harmless and not slowly selling their souls to said demon. Ruby saves Dean’s life, earning his reluctant gratitude for the time being, but not exactly his trust. This is the first we learn of Lilith, the demon apparently leading all the rest of them. Dean also learns that demons are just human souls that have been tortured in hell, and that’s what awaits him after he dies.

3.10 Dream a Little Dream of Me VERY IMPORTANT EPISODE. African Dream Root, which mimics the sort of djinn-dream experience. Dean has to literally confront his demon self. For the first time he admits he didn’t deserve any of this, any of what John put him through. And he admits to Sam that he is scared of going to Hell. Oh, and Bela steals the Colt, aka the only weapon they have against Lilith.

3.11 Mystery Spot If 3.10 was about Dean’s internal trauma, 3.11 is about Sam’s. The trickster puts him through a time loop forcing him to relive endless Tuesdays, and Dean dies each time and he wakes up again. The power to do this is just… insane. Just when they think they’re out, Dean apparently dies “for real,” and it drives Sam on a six month long rather terrifying revenge mission. Only to finally come face to face with the trickster again after having proven the horrific lengths he’s willing to go to in order to save Dean. Also a very, very important episode. Trapped eternally in someone else’s looping story and forced to act it all out endlessly? Yeah. That’s not 14.20 at all >.>

3.12 Jus in Bello very nearly the series finale. They work with Ruby after FBI agent Henriksen discovers they weren’t lying about the supernatural and they exorcise him from demon possession. Dean gives him The Talk about what’s real, and refuses to sacrifice someone to perform Ruby’s spell that would supposedly save them all and kill all the demons. Everyone lives… for a little while, at least. At least Sam and Dean are marked among the dead, so they won’t have to worry about law enforcement chasing them for a while, but Ruby holds this over them (in addition to losing the Colt, if they’d just listened to her everyone would still be alive… in theory… she’s really good at this manipulation thing!)

3.13 Ghostfacers And interesting perspective to see what Sam and Dean would look like uncensored and unbound from the traditional episode format, and through the eyes of other people.

3.14 Long-Distance Call Crocotta. Dean is lured in by John’s voice over the phone, believing it might be a ghost situation, and that John may have a way to save him from Hell. It’s all just a trap that leaves Dean feeling even more hopeless, knowing he can’t expect John (or anyone else) to save him from this.

3.15 Time Is on My Side Sam gets desperate, and we have another mention of zombies… which if you’ll recall, signals grief and desperation and an inability to let go of the past. Which kinda defines Sam’s state right now. Dean tracks down Bela to retrieve the Colt (but it’s long gone, and Bela’s about to be dragged off by hellhounds herself). Sam tracks down Doc Benton hoping to get him to share his secret for immortality as a last desperate attempt to save Dean. But Dean doesn’t want to live like that, killing other people for their organs as his would wear out, just to keep himself out of Hell. And honestly good for him because ugh.

3.16 No Rest for the Wicked Dean’s seeing through the veil, able to see demons’ true faces, and the hellhounds that are on their way. They steal Ruby’s knife and go after Lilith, and fail completely. Dean’s dragged to Hell, and Sam’s immune to Lilith’s powers.

4.01 Lazarus Rising CAS GRIPPED DEAN TIGHT AND RAISED HIM FROM PERDITION. Honestly if you don’t know the meta import of this episode, this list ain’t gonna help you.

4.02 Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester We really learn about the Apocalypse, the seals breaking that will eventually free Lucifer. Supposedly the angels want to stop them from breaking… and Dean and Cas have their first real conversation about all of this. And this is the episode my tag for God comes from, “If you say mysterious ways, so help me I will kick your ass.” Dean’s already set himself up with Cas to defy God.

4.03 In the Beginning Angels can send you back in time! Dean sees Mary and John’s relationship, the death of Mary’s parents, and the fact Dean talked John into buying the Impala AND now feels responsible for having lured Azazel to Mary in the first place… he witnesses the deal she makes to bring John back that would effectively shape the entire narrative on both sides of this episode. The things we do for love… Cas told Dean to stop it, and in the end tells him he never could’ve stopped any of it. It is what it is. It’s the first instance of Dean getting this glimpse at the bigger picture, and taking away his OWN lesson from it rather than the one he was supposed to learn…

4.04 Metamorphosis Dean finds out about Sam working with Ruby to exorcise demons with his psychic powers. And the inevitability of falling victim to those psychic powers plays out in the MotW, the rougarou who gives into his hunger. Sam promises to give up using his powers lest that happen to him.

4.05 Monster Movie A straightforward, black and white case. A shapeshifter (so buried truths), but this one becomes Hollywood movie monsters trying to give the monsters a happy ending… essentially trying to rewrite his own story. Sound familiar? Dean gets the girl, at least. I love this episode.

4.06 Yellow Fever Dean vs his own fear, compounded by the fear of a ghost who infects him with ghost sickness, inflicting his own suffering on Dean. This was Dabb’s first episode, and as such, is definitely worth watching for the themes, and what Dean is truly afraid of-- i.e. of going back to Hell and being tortured by Lilith, of Sam being a yellow-eyed demon. The rest is just awkwardly fun watching Dean squirm.

4.07 It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester Sam breaks his promise not to use his powers when Samhain rises. We meet another angel- Uriel- who isn’t as fond of humanity as Cas. Sam meets Cas, too. But this is truly the episode where Cas begins to differentiate himself and show his doubts in Heaven’s orders. He warns Dean that bigger tests are coming, but he doesn’t know what they will be yet. This is still the true foundation stone of Cas’s entire personal character arc for the entire series, when he went from maybe-three-episodes-then-dead interesting side character to 11-years-and-counting truly a Winchester.

4.08 Wishful Thinking I love this episode… you can’t just wish for what you want without consequences. This was like primer-level Cosmic Consequences stuff.

4.09 I Know What You Did Last Summer Dean learns what Sam was up to while he was in Hell being tortured by Alastair (conveniently the antagonist in this episode), why he trusts Ruby now, and voluntarily works with Ruby to save Anna-- a woman who hears angels talking. This is effectively continued in:

4.10 Heaven and Hell Where Anna remembers that she’d been an angel who fell from Heaven by choice, removing her grace to experience life as a human. Which… is kinda important a concept to know exists… >.> Heaven (and Cas) judge her harshly for that choice, and yet… there’s just too much just go read my rewatch notes from this episode at the very least.

4.11 Family Remains They think it’s a ghost but it’s not a ghost. All you need to know is this is the episode they wrote on a dare to see if they could write an episode that the network would refuse to air ever again. They were actively trying to write the worst possible episode they could imagine, and this is the result.

4.12 Criss Angel Is a Douchebag

Sam had a thing for stage magic as a kid, but now he runs around with a demon. The concept of “will we be in this life until we die or it kills us” and “what would life even look like to us if we were actually to grow old” is batted around for possibly the first time.

4.13 After School Special

From contemplating retirement to flashbacks to high school. Another look at Sam and Dean and who they are as people, and how their very different childhoods shaped them into who they are now.

4.14 Sex and Violence Dean’s Siren was a dude. (oh, and the director of this episode? whose last episode was 6.15? is directing 15.03, so maybe worth a peek...)

4.15 Death Takes a Holiday Dean vs Death again. The return of Tessa the reaper from 2.01, and Dean finally remembers. They save Tessa, save a seal, and capture Alastair, but discover they’ve been manipulated into doing it by Cas/Heaven. Heaven loves its manipulations… Pamela the psychic warns Sam that what he’s doing, despite his intentions, is not good. He ignores that advice. At the very least read my rewatch notes for this one. >.>

4.16 On the Head of a Pin There is absolutely too much going on in this episode to sum up in this post. Read my rewatch notes, read the superwiki, watch the episode. This one is huge, for Dean and for Cas.

4.17 It's a Terrible Life Heaven’s Grand Manipulator, Zachariah. Or he thinks he’s pretty grand… he’s really not all that good at his job

4.18 The Monster at the End of This Book CHUCK. The inevitability of destiny, or at least his attempt to write that version. In this episode, all of Chuck’s plans go according to plan… until Dean drags him back into the story and forces a different ending. (and we learn Sam’s demon blood drinking is so distasteful to Chuck he didn’t even include it in his books) Remind you of anything? Like, oh, 4.22, or 5.22, or 11.23, or 14.20? Yes, this episode is the key to everything.

4.19 Jump the Shark Since Adam will reportedly be back in s15, watch this one and understand Dabb’s exact intention in creating the character in the first place-- literally as a decoy who never existed with any narrative weight of his own, as a ghoul (a creature that feeds on the dead and takes their shape). I wrote about this one recently, so I won’t waste space repeating myself here.

4.20 The Rapture CAAAAAAAASSSSSS. He gets dragged back to heaven for disobedience, and is tortured back into obedience. Obviously this one is huge for Cas as a character, and for Dean’s relationship with him. But they both learn about why Sam’s powers were getting stronger, and are not pleased...

4.21 When the Levee Breaks Sam’s detoxing from demon blood until Cas lets him escape. Cas rounds up Anna and has her sent back to Heaven for her own round of torture/reprogramming. And Dean and Sam have her Big Falling Out that drives Sam to do the horrific… however good his intentions are, what he’s doing is still bad.

4.22 Lucifer Rising The grand manipulation is unveiled. Dean talks an angel into rebelling from Heaven to stop the apocalypse, but they’re still not in time to stop Sam from breaking the world. Chuck… is less than fully helpful, despite Cas literally volunteering his own life to protect Chuck. Pretty sure this is a critical episode for rewatching. Chuck’s mostly pleased his story is going to plan.

5.01 Sympathy for the Devil Ugh, no we do not have sympathy for the devil on this blog. Chuck recruits his biggest fan to deliver cryptic messages to Sam and Dean. Dean learns he’s Michael’s true vessel, destined to be his tuxedo for the apocalypse. Cas returns without having a clue how he’s even alive. And it’s all Chuck’s doing… even if we don’t know that yet.

5.02 Good God, Y'All

The apocalypse is in full swing, and the Horsemen are coming out to play. In this case, War manipulating people into destroying each other. Cas sets out on his mission to find God and convince him to help stop this mess. We learn Dean’s amulet had the power to find God all this time, and they’d never known it until now. Convenient!

5.03 Free to Be You and Me Just watch it already, you know you want to. Defines Dean and Cas’s relationship for years to come, though. Plus Sam learns he’s Lucifer’s destined vessel. I’m sure that will all go fine…

5.04 The End I know most people will disagree with me on this, but the only useful meta takeaway from this episode is the same as one from 4.17: Dean doesn’t learn the lessons he’s “supposed to.” He makes his own lessons. There is literally zero other relevant information to take from this episode, aside from it being Cas who saves him from it. Watch if you enjoy it… but literally nothing about it is any more real than the djinn dream in 2.20 or the dreamroot dream in 3.10, and it’s all been rendered irrelevant by later canon anyway. Especially by 14.20 and that moment Dean refused to play Chuck’s game anymore.

5.05 Fallen Idols More John baggage disguised as an old god. Worth watching just to hear poor Consuela the housekeeper wail about Abraham Lincoln killing Mr. Hill, and Sam being attacked by Ghandi.

5.06 I Believe the Children Are Our Future Dabb’s second gag on the fandom… the antichrist. Dean admitting Cas is his friend. :’)

5.07 The Curious Case of Dean Winchester Dean gets to be an old man for a day.

5.08 Changing Channels Just watch this one, read about it, whatever. Refresh yourself on it. The trickster is unmasked as the Archangel Gabriel, and he’s attempting his own ploy to force Sam and Dean to “play their roles.” They convince him they’re not gonna do that, but to break out of the endless loop of literal television shows he’s forcing them to act out for his own entertainment (and sort of to teach them that lesson), they’ve got to do more than just refuse to play their roles, they’ve got to best him at the game. Kinda like they’re probably gonna have to do with Chuck in s15.

5.09 The Real Ghostbusters Oh, speaking of Chuck… here have a Supernatural fan convention, and a key piece of information on what actually happened to the Colt after Bela stole it. But most importantly, Dean gets to yell about how much he doesn’t appreciate the story of Supernatural.

5.10 Abandon All Hope… They find the Colt, and Crowley, and discover it never would’ve worked against Lucifer anyway, and then promptly lose the Colt again. Lucifer gets to stare down Cas and Cas doesn’t blink, Meg’s hellhounds kill Jo and Ellen, and really everything’s kinda bleak. Lucifer raises and binds Death.

5.11 Sam, Interrupted WRAITH, aka a monster that uses mind altering venom to “cook” her victims to perfection, so like a djinn and other mind-altering, perception-altering creatures, when they sneak up on you unawares, things get… complicated. Massive insight into the essential character of Sam and Dean.

5.12 Swap Meat Body Swap. That one time Sam was actually Gary.

5.13 The Song Remains the Same More time travel, Sam’s second resurrection, we finally meet Michael face to (Young John Winchester’s) face. Mikey seems pretty confident in his “destiny.” Dean’s second warning to Young Mary about her death is wiped from her mind. Contemplation of Cosmic Consequences: it’s better never to be born if it means stopping the Apcoalypse-- clarified in 12.23-present that… nope, definitely worse. “Team Free Will” coined. Watch this one. It’s the stage on which all the s12-present Family Dynamics will be set.

5.14 My Bloody Valentine We learn Heaven set up John and Mary, that they couldn’t stand one another before Cupids intervened and made them “the perfect couple.” I’ve written a lot about the effect the Horseman Famine had on all of them-- especially Dean and Cas, with the reminder that s5 was the season of “lol nope” to the category of beings attempting to manipulate all of them, including the Horsemen. Important just for all of that (and Edlund’s confirmation that Cas’s cravings were actually his own, and that my read that he was being a shifty liar blaming it on Jimmy was correct-- Cas does have his own human cravings, going all the way back to this point, that he was ashamed of, or terrified of, or both...) As well as Sam’s struggle against demon blood addiction, and his fear of and gradual acceptance and internalization of his own powers)

5.15 Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid ZOMBIES. ZOMBIE PIE. JODY MILLS. As I’ve said above, zombies are grief and unresolved baggage from the past, and in this episode, the denial was so strong even the normies in town were willing to accept the return of their dead loved ones, clinging to them until they “turned” and devoured them… the Mary parallels, Karen’s talk with Dean about what we do for the people we love… this one’s important.

5.16 Dark Side of the Moon Dabb, and our first look at the structure of Heaven, and how human souls see the place. Probably one of THE most misunderstood episodes in the entire series. Please see everything I’ve ever written about it for reference. FINALLY they toss out the toxic, worthless samulet. (which we literally learn in 11.20 that chuck “switched off” and INTENTIONALLY rendered worthless, because it suited his plotline and amused him). Still think this is vital to understanding Dabb Era overall.

5.17 99 Problems We see what it looks like when Dean gives up, loses hope, and is about to do Stupid Things™. Cas too. Probably useful just for that.

5.18 Point of No Return We finally see Cas really let loose on Dean, and admit what he gave up because he believed in Dean. Because Dean asked him to. Dean nearly gives in to destiny, but because of Cas, because of Sam, he fights through it. Zachariah and his manipulations end (getting stabbed in the face tends to end that sort of thing). Also the irritating return of Adam only to be the meatsuit for Michael when Dean refuses. (and we learn the truth about Adam-- that everything ghoul!Adam told them had been a straight-up manipulation, and Adam only ever cared about his mom. by the time he learns the truth, it’s too late for him, the gullible idiot vs the power of propaganda)

5.19 Hammer of the Gods The return of Gabriel, aka Loki, and a ton of other pagan gods Lucifer will slaughter. Interesting in light of Gabriel’s return in s13, and because of the mirror of Chuck in each of his archangels. And the Winchesters win another angel to TFW.

5.20 The Devil You Know Crowley’s good at manipulation, but again proves himself to be… mostly trustworthy (as long as they’re all working toward the same end). And re: manipulation, Sam gets a glimpse of just how thoroughly his entire life has been manipulated by demonic forces, which… relevant to the revelations of 14.20 vs Sam’s persistent faith in God despite everything.

5.21 Two Minutes to Midnight Cas is effectively human. Bobby sells his soul for Death’s location, and Pestilence falls to teamwork. Cas learns the value of a shotgun. Dean has pizza with Death, who WANTS him to succeed at locking Lucifer back up and explains exactly how to go about doing it. Sam thinks he can overpower Lucifer if he gives in and says yes.

5.22 Swan Song Sam was not totally wrong in 5.21. Cas resurrects Bobby, and explodes and is resurrected (again!) himself. Sam drags two (2) archangels into the cage and is promptly pulled out (only missing one critical bit…). Dean… actually tries to live up to at least one of Sam’s dying wishes, and it basically ruins his life for the next year. Chuck is a smug, self-satisfied bastard who pats himself on the back for a story well-told before flapping off and proceeding to write variations on his original fic using his favorite characters. >.>

6.01 Exile on Main St. All I can hear is Dean’s heartbreak and anger that Sam had been “alive” for a year and forbade anyone from telling Dean that he wasn’t actually suffering tortures in Hell all that time. If ever there was a YIKES moment on the show, this is it for me. This one’s probably good to watch just for the setup of soulless!sam and s6 in general.

6.02 Two and a Half Men Dean’s even good with monster babies. And after a year of unsettled living with Lisa, he’s more duty bound to protect them than he is wanting to stay because he’s actually happy there. Sam is a creepy hunting machine.

6.03 The Third Man CAS! But heck he’s acting shifty, but so’s Sam, and Dean’s feeling even more alone now. The introduction of the concept of Angel Marks on souls, the Profound Bond, and biblical weapons. And the war in Heaven, and the seasonal antagonist stepping up into Michael’s shoes: Raphael.

6.04 Weekend at Bobby's BALLS. Woodchippers trump everything. We discover that burning a demon’s human bones will perma-kill them, and learn a bit of Crowley’s backstory.

6.05 Live Free or Twihard Dean becomes a vampire for a hot minute. We learn there is a vampire cure that works as long as they haven’t had human blood yet. And we learn something really, really is wrong with Sam...

6.06 You Can't Handle the Truth Dean is now 100% positive that something is horrifically wrong with Sam, and is distraught that nobody else seemed to know it for a YEAR.

6.07 Family Matters Cas figures out what’s wrong with Sam and promptly becomes even shadier around the Winchesters. We meet the Alpha Vampire. And vampire eps are about revenge, right? There is a LOT of shady going on here.

6.08 All Dogs Go to Heaven weird dog episode that I always forget exists between rewatches.

6.09 Clap Your Hands If You Believe… hands down the best soulless!Sam episode. You fight those fairies! I’m still waiting for another fairie episode where Dean can still see them and nobody else can :’D. Just watching Sam try to logic his way into being more human is educational about the struggle to be human in general.

6.10 Caged Heat Family betrayal, Sam and Dean nearly get fed to ghouls, Cas would rather be with them then fighting his war in Heaven. Angel blades can kill hellhounds. They finally entrap meg into working with them instead of always trying to kill them >.>

6.11 Appointment in Samarra I think this is still in my top five favorite episodes ever, and one I think everyone needs to rewatch. Dean and Death episodes usually are. And in this one, Dean IS effectively Death for 24 hours. But there is a LOT in this episode, from Death “testing” Dean on multiple levels-- forcing him to make choices AND process the consequences of his actions and how it affects other people… this is a big one for the cosmology of the SPN universe and Dean specifically. Even in Dabb era.

6.12 Like a Virgin Dragons are a thing. Eve pops over from Purgatory.

6.13 Unforgiven Sam’s soul/hell flashbacks start when he goes poking at the wall, but he keeps poking anyway. Giant spider people. Eurgh. But unfortunately the whole “web of lies unraveling” thing kinda fits.

6.14 Mannequin 3: The Reckoning The haunted kidney episode. But Dean finally breaks it off with Lisa (again… >.>)

6.15 The French Mistake We actually learn something about the angel wars… sort of. We also learn AU’s are actually real. (this was also the last episode the director of 15.03 directed, so probably worth watching if they’re bringing him back after all these years…)

6.16 ...And Then There Were None Monster Possession is apparently a thing now. The last of the Campbell hunters die (that was a quick trip through the family dynamics there >.>). The main takeaway here is from Rufus’ funeral: Life’s short, and it’s not worth carrying guilt and regret (takes them a really REALLY long time to actually internalize it with each other, but at least they got the spirit)

6.17 My Heart Will Go On Cas just lying to their faces, creating an alternate timeline just to generate souls as a power source (the specific number of 50k souls comes up, and will come up again in 6.20, as the number of souls Crowley “loaned” Cas at the beginning of the war in Heaven, with the suspicion that Cas was attempting to “buy his way out of their deal”, but the plan fails and he’s forced to put everything back… but he does ensure Sam and Dean both remember the entire experience, but we get an idea of the extent of the power angels can actually wield.

6.18 Frontierland Dabb has referenced this one several times during his era, but again, the history of the Colt is involved, a Phoenix, and Dean in a cowboy hat. We learn even the other angels think Cas is up to something super shady. But it’s their first real moment of hope.

6.19 Mommy Dearest Eve uses Mary’s face to torment Dean, we learn Crowley is not dead, and Cas… has been doing shady things with him. Cas is again effectively human for an episode.

6.20 The Man Who Would Be King Well this is where everything both falls apart and comes together. This episode makes sense of the entire rest of s6, as painful and sad as it is. If you only watch one episode from s6, it should probably be this one.

6.21 Let It Bleed Dean’s worst fear comes true, and people he cares about but leaves behind for their own protection are used against him. Not just by bad guys, but by Cas. Ouch. Still incredulous that Dean did recognize HP Lovecraft, or even make a Metallica reference at the mention of “Call of Cthulhu.”

6.22 The Man Who Knew Too Much Sam putting himself back together. Cas tearing things apart.

7.01 Meet the New Boss That one episode where it looks like Cas will be the unwitting bad guy and s7 will be about saving him, until it’s really really not. That whole exchange between Dean and Cas about forgiveness and finding some way to make it up to him, though… that’s what will carry us through the bleak middle of s7 and generate the grief arc for Dean in the meantime.

7.02 Hello, Cruel World It looks like Cas is really, truly gone, and all Dean has of him is his trenchcoat. And we’re stuck cleaning up his oozy black mess for the next 15 episodes before getting him back again. Sam’s Hallucifering all over the place and finds a connection to reality through squeezing the scar on his hand, which will become a symbol in show for reconnecting with reality for him for years to come.

7.03 The Girl Next Door Sam thinks pie and cake are the same. In their own respective messed up mental states, Sam thinks Amy is worth saving, Dean doesn’t trust that and kills her. Let the guilt ensue.

7.04 Defending Your Life A good setup of Sam and Dean’s issues for s7.

7.05 Shut Up, Dr. Phil I can’t believe they melted Tula’s painting. But it takes a couple of bickering witches for them to finally get a hold on the Leviathan, so that’s something.

7.06 Slash Fiction Aah, going back to the beginning as a trap for Sam and Dean-- the Leviathan using the Supernatural books to lay a trail case by case from Sam leaving Stanford (Crowley will do the same in 8.22, and the end of 14.20 gave a lot of people the impression there will be a similar progression in s15… but honestly that’s really only sustainable for a single episode, but this may be relevant for like… 15.01-02). Also, Dean finds it satisfying to behead himself (or the leviathan version of himself)… so yikes.

7.07 The Mentalists I love this one just for the Dean feels. He’s really hurting.

7.08 Season Seven, Time for a Wedding! Sam’s love-spelled. Mind control is always a terrible thing. Demons trying to game the system and cash in on deals ahead of schedule. So that’s a thing.

7.09 How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters I love this one. Poor Dean. This is the first time he’s actually felt good in like… ever. Too bad it’s from monster goo.

7.10 Death's Door Bobby :’( And Dean essentially falls apart.

7.11 Adventures in Babysitting Vetala. Which only Dean knew hunt in pairs, so hunter after hunter had been falling victim to them, including Sam. Meanwhile Dean finally got a decent nap.

7.12 Time After Time Dean gets booped back to the 1940’s to hunt with Eliot Ness. Still, they defeat Chronos, yet another god whose prophecy will be tossed aside by the Winchesters.

7.13 The Slice Girls Dean accidentally has a monsterbabby, Sam kills her. Amazons.

7.14 Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie Just watch it. This is the only episode in the entire series that just… is purely good and fun. Sam has to confront his fear of clowns, Dean faces a villain who was blamed for his brother’s death when he was just a kid and his parents should’ve been doing their jobs instead. I mean...

7.15 Repo Man The guy who was trying to lure back “his demon” exorcised during the Apocalypse era, by continuing his murder spree. Sam loses to Hallucifer by acknowledging his existence as separate from Sam’s own subconscious. There’s… a lot in this episode. At least read my rewatch notes.

7.16 Out with the Old Sam eventually succumbs to his Hallucifering, Dean nearly succumbs to a pair of toe shoes. Peter Yankit of Johnson Lane nearly succumbs to a cursed porn magazine. Cursed objects are fun.

7.17 The Born-Again Identity CAAAAASSSSS! He’s back, even if he doesn’t remember who he is. Dean tries to break it to him slowly, but instead unburdens a lot of his personal hurt over Cas’s actions to the oblivious “Emmanuel,” And Cas tells Dean his feelings are completely understandable. This is setting up the entire rest of Cas’s arc, probably through the end of the series. This is what motivates him, his need to repent. And He gets a start by taking on Sam’s trauma, healing Sam.

7.18 Party On, Garth An alcohol spirit enacting personal revenge, and despite all evidence, Sam continues to doubt Dean’s theory that Bobby is somehow still around. Dean’s season-long grief-drinking becomes a punchline, and Dean’s literally the only sober one in the final fight scene.

7.19 Of Grave Importance Yep, Bobby is a ghost, been there all along. Also, ghosts can sort of… cannibalize each other? For their power? whatever, moving on.

7.20 The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo CHARLIE.

7.21 Reading Is Fundamental KEVIN. But also CAS! Is awake but not quite himself and in full denial mode, like he was awakened against his will before he was done cooking >.>. we learn a bit more about prophets as we see Kevin awakened to serve the Leviathan Tablet.

7.22 There Will Be Blood more manipulation, and the Alpha Vampire is back, so we get a double whammy of manipulation/deceit AND revenge. The alpha vampire cooperates with the Winchesters. So does Crowley.

7.23 Survival of the Fittest Cas doesn’t want to fight, but in the end he steps up. They get the Leviathan, Dean and Cas are beamed to Purgatory, and Sam’s left alone and pulls a Sam. He runs away from reality.

8.01 We Need to Talk About Kevin Dean comes back from Purgatory without Cas, but with a vampire friend… so s8 is about Dean making pals with revenge. This will fuel his arc for a good long while to come until he can finally make his peace with it. It affects his interactions with Sam for most of the first half of the season… because while Dean was fighting for his life, Sam was… pretending to be a normal guy and ignoring everything else. Including Kevin.

8.02 What's Up, Tiger Mommy? The push to do something drives them to seek out the Demon Tablet with the promise of closing the gates of Hell forever at Kevin’s suggestion. Plutus, the God of Greed is the baddie in this one, if that’s any sort of meta statement on their overall plan to take this particular course of action… the narrative basically condemned their plot before the season even started. Hubris, ahoy. But we also find out why Cas ran away in Purgatory-- to protect Dean. And why he wanted to stay-- guilt and penance.

8.03 Heartache Oh, a case where a curse is passed on to others after death? And the original death didn’t actually end the curse as intended? Nice.

8.04 Bitten I love episodes were we see Sam and Dean through other people’s eyes. And this one, an episode where we learn new things about werewolves (remember: an examination of inner monstrousness).

8.05 Blood Brother I’d point out the agony of Winchester Secret Keeping being toxic, but since we’re largely out past that by the end of s14… *shrug emoji*. Dean helps his vampire friend get revenge against the vampires who killed him. Double revenge! And Sam… does not like Benny. But we know exactly why DEAN does… he literally saved Cas’s life in Purgatory, despite repeatedly wanting to leave Cas behind. He saved Cas for Dean.

8.06 Southern Comfort Garth again, and his serenity is basically there to point out how toxic Sam and Dean are by comparison. The spectre that possesses Dean to leech off his vengefulness has zero effect on Garth. But Dean gets out his feelings of anger that Sam never looked for him in Purgatory, so that’s on the table to provide drama for years to come.

8.07 A Little Slice of Kevin CAS IS BACK AGAIN! But he has no idea how he got here (he’s been mind controlled by Heaven again, and is desperately trying to make amends, but is literally blocked from doing so at every turn, which is a tidy mirror for what Chuck’s done to the entire story since… forever… so this is probably a must-watch episode, or at least read my notes on it.

8.08 Hunteri Heroici This one’s fun, until it’s owie, and then sad. Magical powers don’t save the day, they only end up hurting people. Cas desperately wants to make amends, but he is afraid to face what he’s done. Instead, he just gets manipulated even harder. At least read my notes for this one, too.

8.09 Citizen Fang Oh, manipulation moves directly to the Winchester brothers, no heavenly interference required. Vampires again, but this time Dean again sides with Benny, but against Sam… who again refuses to hear the truth and pulls another Sam. He forgot the lesson that sometimes it’s not the monsters being monstrous, and it’s important to kill the RIGHT monster, not just the convenient one.

8.10 Torn and Frayed Just like the episode sounds… Cas goes to Dean for help, and then brings Sam onboard and asks them to stow their crap. By the end of the episode, Sam and Dean will have resigned themselves to being on their own again because Cas is… something is not right with him...

8.11 LARP and the Real Girl CHARLIE! Fairies! Dean does one (1) fun thing for his birthday. But this is about using a book to manipulate events to suit the Bad Guy’s whims. Sound familiar?

8.12 As Time Goes By Sam and Dean meet their grandfather, fill in a huge gaping hole from their past, and discover their legacy, the Men of Letters, and the Bunker that will become their home.

8.13 Everybody Hates Hitler Yep. It’s true! Nazi necromancers, and another new ally in Aaron. They settle in to the bunker.

8.14 Trial and Error They take their first steps toward closing the gates of Hell, killing a Hellhound. I wrote about this one recently, so go read that. :’D

8.15 Man's Best Friend with Benefits another weird dog episode

8.16 Remember the Titans Prometheus, Artemis, and Zeus. Curses passed down through families to fall on innocent children. And Zeus is delighted because it causes even more suffering.

8.17 Goodbye Stranger oh the agony. We see what it took for Heaven to control Cas, and what it took for Dean to break through to him, only to fall to yet another mind whammy by the angel tablet. Of course Dean takes this personally, abandoned again. Definitely watch this one. Read the notes. All that.

8.18 Freaks and Geeks In case anyone missed the point, we have manipulation and vampires. And Dean reminding everyone that finding the truth is important (let’s not be so bloodthirsty that just anyone will do).

8.19 Taxi Driver The second trial, the horror that Bobby’s wrongfully been in Hell all this time, and Sam is stranded in Purgatory until Benny shows up to escort him to the portal. Sam finally gets why Dean’s loyalty to Benny never wavered. He was literally willing to die for Dean. This guilt will carry Sam into the third trial eventually but for now...

8.20 Pac-Man Fever Let’s look at Dean’s guilt/fear. That he’s failed to protect Sam and won’t be able to save him from the trials. Fear is a terrible thing. But we have djinn AND dreamroot, so all the false realities.

8.21 The Great Escapist This is still among my favorite episodes, but Cas finally begins fighting for himself, and we uncover the extent of Heaven’s duplicity, and meet Metatron, aka Chuck Lite. Definitely watch or at least read.

8.22 Clip Show Aah, I mentioned this one back in 7.06. This is Crowley’s turn to use the boys’ history against them, but instead of manipulating them, they trap him (at the beginning of 8.23, after whoopsie accidentally freeing Abaddon because of Crowley’s manipulation distracting them from their job…) We learn that “curing a demon” is a thing.

8.23 Sacrifice Cas is so embittered by his experiences with heaven that he refuses to believe Metatron is lying, and thus falls victim to the worst manipulation yet. Sam’s dying from the trials, Cas is human, and angels fall. (and also some of the worst, most toxic relationship stuff between Sam and Dean, which contributes to all of that, along with their hubris to think this was a good idea in the first place… I mean it’s literally what the big bad of s9 did to Heaven so why were they trying to do the same to Hell again?)

9.01 I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here Cas is human, confused, and alone. The big bad is basically Diet Chuck, and Dean is manipulated into doing a Terrible Thing to save Sam that will strain their relationship for the rest of the season. (Don’t worry, Sam will return the favor in s10 >.>) Buckle in for a season all about manipulation by more powerful cosmic forces but with all new levels of guilt over having caused these problems in the first place!

9.02 Devil May Care Abaddon makes a play for the role of big bad, but will ultimately lose the title to Metatron.

9.03 I'm No Angel The Worst Possible Take on Human Cas. Mostly I ignore this episode.

9.04 Slumber Party Oz. Dorothy. Wicked Witch of the West. Sam’s angel possession gets a bit tricky… Direct mind control instead of the manipulative sneaky kind we usually see. and CHARLIE. The Winchesters lives are directly compared to Dorothy Baum’s, where her “fictionalized” version didn’t even come close to describing the horror of her lived reality. (also that one line swap incident that still pisses me off… and pissed Robbie Thompson off enough to write a whole SCENE in 11.04 they couldn’t screw around with like that… “god helps those who help themselves”)

9.05 Dog Dean Afternoon oh look another weird dog episode

9.06 Heaven Can't Wait the Best Possible Take on Human Cas. Well, while Dean’s still being held hostage against telling the truth to him about the angel possessing Sam… and not being able to just bring Cas back home with him. :’)

9.07 Bad Boys Sam learns another major lesson about just how much Dean was manipulated into lying to him his whole life, and another look at what Dean has given up over the years to protect Sam. The origin of my “the story became the story” tag.

9.08 Rock and a Hard Place Breaking vows is frowned upon. Vesta. And Dean tries to tell Sam about the angel possessing him, but he’s prevented from doing so. And he’s really beginning to realize just how bad a decision this may have been...

9.09 Holy Terror Cas is back in town. He can’t stand by when he might be able to help, but again Gadreel (because now we know that’s the angel possessing Sam) refuses. Gadreel is lured in by Metatron, and things for Sam go from bad to worse. Cas steals another angel’s grace because he had no choice. And Gadreel kills Kevin and runs off. All of a sudden, Dean’s alone.

9.10 Road Trip Just when Dean can finally tell the truth to Cas, Cas isn’t human anymore. They literally never got to actually just BE. Crowley poughkeepsie’s Sam into kicking Gadreel out. Abaddon is becoming more of a problem. Probably at least read the notes on this one. At the end, it’s Dean that “pulls the Sam” and runs away. Which is interesting because they’re essentially gonna swap narrative roles for like… the next season and a half. Buckle up. Things get rocky >.>

9.11 First Born And definitely watch this one. Cas and Sam bonding hour, while Dean goes off with Crowley and is manipulated into taking on the Mark of Cain so he’ll be able to kill Abaddon for Crowley… (and for everyone else, but mainly for Crowley).

9.12 Sharp Teeth Sometimes family can be a werewolf pack. And Garth is now part of one of those, but there’s still zero monstrousness in Garth. As Dean’s beginning to wonder if he should regret taking the Mark (just as Cas wondered if he should regret cannibalizing grace… which he said made him barbaric)

9.13 The Purge A genuinely altruistically intentioned monster, or at least one who attempted to use her monstrousness for good. But her blind spot was her brother, out there just devouring whatever he wanted and not wanting to play by the rules of society or worrying about staying hidden and safe. Plus, DONNA. Even if she doesn’t get to play a big part in the monster hunting.

9.14 Captives We learn more horrors about the s6 angel war from Bart, and pushing Cas toward siding more and more with humanity and against all the heaven nonsense (until he’s manipulated back in DIRECTLY by Metatron and his magic typewriter… but that’s four episodes in the future yet). Linda Tran gets a bit of revenge for being held prisoner for half a year anyway...

9.15 thinman ghostfacers, back to face their own ghosts. If you like getting hit in the face with anvils...

9.16 Blade Runners Crowley’s addicted to humanity. Dean finds his own addiction in the First Blade. And we get our first glimpse of the darker side of the MoL.

9.17 Mother's Little Helper Misha directed it, and it’s got one of the most beautiful scenes in the whole series (Sam freeing the stolen souls, but Dean drinking and playing pool ain’t half bad either). Soullessness, which Sam handles on his own, and learns the truth of how Abaddon infiltrated the MoL.

9.18 Meta Fiction A MUST WATCH. Writers lie. Read my posts. What makes a story? Seriously, Metatron is just Chuck with training wheels.

9.19 Alex Annie Alexis Ann Vampires. More revenge. This time for stolen childhood and lost family. Plus Jody, and the first seed that would become Wayward. Dean is also beginning to succumb to the Mark’s darker urges.

9.20 Bloodlines Dabb’s idea of a joke, I’m pretty sure.

9.21 King of the Damned Well, Abaddon’s dead, at least. Time trave wtf’ery. Dean is… not okay...

9.22 Stairway to Heaven Sam and Cas pop culture road trip. The level of Metatron’s manipulation becomes horrifically apparent. And Cas gives up his army because he refuses to kill Dean. (also Dean really loses it at the end…)

9.23 Do You Believe in Miracles? Crowley reveals the truth about what the Mark is doing to Dean, and we see the final truth when Dean wakes up as a demon.

10.01 Black Demon Dean Part 1. Bad karaoke and random murder. Cas is languishing because of stolen grace, and Sam is off the rails interrogating demons for Dean’s location.

10.02 Reichenbach Demon Dean Part 2. Cas struggles to teach Hannah about humanity, Sam struggles to find Dean.

10.03 Soul Survivor Demon Dean the conclusion. Cas hugs the demon outta Dean. Er… that’s what happened, pretty sure. But he’s still got the Mark.

10.04 Paper Moon More fun with Werewolves: Siblings edition. While Dean struggles to come to terms with his own literal inner monster...

10.05 Fan Fiction Just watch it. And read my rewatch notes for it. I mean, it’s about rewriting the story. And Chuck shows up at the end and gives it a “Not bad.” Probably kinda relevant.

10.06 Ask Jeeves Supernatural: Clue edition. With a shapeshifter that Bobby had known about for decades. Buried secret things again.

10.07 Girls, Girls, Girls Our first real introduction to Rowena. :’) She’s not a friend in this one...Hannah finally gets a taste of humanity through her vessel’s grief and pain, and decides that it’s wrong for her to remain in her vessel. She returns to Heaven, and Cas is left to ponder how he affected Jimmy’s family (since Jimmy’s long dead now) by his possession.

10.08 Hibbing 911 DONNA AND JODY. Donna gets “the talk,” in a vampire case, and finally gets to prove her mettle as a hunter.

10.09 The Things We Left Behind Cas has found Claire Novak, and does what he can to help her. She’s been taken in and manipulated by an unsavory character, who Dean kills in a fit of mark-induced violence (granted he was surrounded by dudes who wanted him dead, but it was still upsetting and mirrored his nightmare from the opening scene). The burger date. (go ahead and watch it)

10.10 The Hunter Games More Claire drama, but this time she stops it. The Longing Retcon. Cas uses emoticons. And Dean nearly kills Metatron while demanding he tell him how to cure the Mark. Things are getting kinda desperate on that end… All Metatron says is “the river ends at the source”

10.11 There's No Place Like Home OZ. CHARLIE. At least read my watch notes. I’ve been banging on about this episode since it aired. But at the very least read the last round of watch notes. Possibly relevant again because of how it was relevant to Chuck and Amara in 11.23 (yes, this is basically how Dean saved the universe).

10.12 About a Boy Dean gets zapped into a 14-year-old version of himself by a witch. Plus: the mark disappeared for a few days, probably giving him a mini-vacation from enduring it and refreshing his control a bit.

10.13 Halt & Catch Fire ghosts in the machines… plus a John reference that is reinforced when a clip from this episode is reused in the horror movie trailer in 14.04 (so skim my rewatch notes for that if you’re still following along for that sort of thing… post 14.13… *shrug emoji*)

10.14 The Executioner's Song Watch it. Read the notes. This is a big one. Free will-wise.

10.15 The Things They Carried Khan worm: homoerotic sweat lodge edition.

10.16 Paint It Black Worth it just for Dean’s confessional scene. At least read my rewatch notes.

10.17 Inside Man We learn some interesting things about Heaven, Cas gets Bobby’s help to break in and talk to Metatron, they sneak him out, steal his grace, and have their leverage over the one person who might know how to cure Dean AND get Cas what’s left of his own grace back… Meanwhile Rowena tries to kill Dean, and he has a heart to heart with Crowley about what Family really means. Definitely watch, or at least read my notes. A lot happens in this one.

10.18 Book of the Damned CHARLIE. And the wtf’ery of the Styne family begins >.> Sam has a good chat with Charlie about his own life. Metatron leads Cas to another book containing his grace and then escapes with the demon tablet. Family dinner. At least skim my notes on this one. (basically anything with metatron is probably relevant to Chuck stuff…)

10.19 The Werther Project Watch this one. I just wrote notes on it. The beginnings of an interesting relationship between Sam and Rowena (yes that started in 10.18, but this is where it gains weight in Sam’s own subconscious). Dean confronts himself in his own vision about the burden he’s laid on Cas (to kill him if he goes off the rails again). There’s a lot of emotional baggage in this one, too. But seroiusly-- watch this one for the Sam and Rowena stuff, because Rowena… isn’t even really there…

10.20 Angel Heart Claire, and Cas’s finally laying to rest his baggage associated with the Novak family. Dean and Claire finally bonding. Dean and Cas went to the Hot Topical.

10.21 Dark Dynasty w. t. f. (if you want to be pissed off, give it a watch)

10.22 The Prisoner If you just want the comforting revenge portion of the program, just watch this one instead. Or if you can’t bear to, at least read my notes on it.

10.23 Brother's Keeper Whoopsie, Dean kills Death. Whoopsie, Sam doesn’t stop everyone else from executing the spell to cure the mark. Whoopsie, that releases the Darkness. Also for people who don’t “see Samwitch,” uh… please note that this is a major inciting incident in Sam and Rowena’s relationship-- she’s being held prisoner to complete this spell, and literally kills the only person she ever loved for it, on Sam’s order… (technically…), which will fuel the ongoing antagonism of early s11. Their relationship isn’t fluffy. It’s built on this mutual pain.

11.01 Out of the Darkness, Into the Fire Amara. I think a lot of s11 is gonna be relevant thematically to s15, but...

11.02 Form and Void I think a better focus of “what is relevant thematically” will be found by looking at Dabb’s episodes and influence over this season… I’d start a rewatch with this one, and the introduction of Billie, who will become Dabb’s in-show avatar as he takes over the reins.

11.03 The Bad Seed Rowena finally undoes the spell she’d cast on Cas. but they’re all traumatized. Please at least read my notes on this one, too.

11.04 Baby This episode sets the new tone for Sam and Dean’s relationship going forward. They are more open with one another, and the main drama isn’t them hiding things that eventually blow up in their faces like it had been in the past. There’s still elements of that, but things never really go back to the toxicity of s9 and s10 after this. Ghoulpire.

11.05 Thin Lizzie Fake haunting at Lizzie Borden’s house, Amara eats souls.

11.06 Our Little World Cas is clearly struggling with PTSD, hiding in the bunker until he spots Metatron by chance and finally gets upset enough to go after him. Dean’s first confrontation with Amara outside of his Darknado Vision, and she… tosses him aside like a used tissue. Sam’s still having visions of the Cage and still thinks the visions are coming from God… >.>

11.07 Plush Donna! And haunted masks! Foreshadowing that Sam’s about to confront Lucifer in the cage-- creepy clown in the elevator.

11.08 Just My Imagination Sam’s childhood imaginary friend was actually real.

11.09 O Brother Where Art Thou? Dean is yoinked from a park by Amara to have a chat about how they’re destined to become one and all that creepy nonsense, while Sam decides to go directly to Hell to talk with Lucifer and doesn’t wait for Dean. Granted, Rowena has been manipulated with lies from Lucifer in this scheme… but she’s about to learn how bad a decision that was. Dean does get to see just how casually Amara can destroy angels, though… which will become relevant it...

11.10 The Devil in the Details Where Dean tells Cas to run if Amara isn’t actually dead… but Cas is convinced he’s useless by the end of the episode and says yes to Lucifer. Owwwwww. At least read my notes on this one. They’re from last week...

11.11 Into the Mystic We meet Eileen, and I just wrote notes about this episode a few days ago. Banshee, which feeds on broken hearts, Dean’s told he’s pining for someone, and is concerned that Cas doesn’t seem himself… >.> He’s also asked if he wants to know the secret to a long and happy life… “Follow your heart” (and he confesses his powerlessness in Amara’s presence to Casifer) https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186891847375/1111-into-the-mystic-heck-ive-written-a-lot

11.12 Don't You Forget About Me Wayward! Family learning what it means to be family. Vampires-- so the element of revenge, but this time it’s the vamps seeking revenge on a human.

11.13 Love Hurts Quareen. A monster that basically feeds on obsession, toxic “love.” For Dean, that manifests as Amara trying to rip out his heart. I mean… this is the episode he confesses to Sam that he can’t control himself in Amara’s presence, and Sam reassures him it’s not his fault. And he explicitly says it’s not love. It’s horrifying to him, because this episode, this monster, had nothing to do with love, but with possession and control.

11.14 The Vessel What a wonderfully apt and layered title. Thus begins Dean’s s11 “pining for Cas” arc, where his entire focus shifts to Cas after unburdening his Amara issues onto Sam in 11.13. I also consider this episode to fall definitively into Dabb Era. Probably goes for episodes back to 11.10, but this is where that shift is truly evident to me. Definitely watch this one, read my notes, etc. etc.

11.15 Beyond the Mat https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186962895400/1115-beyond-the-mat-jerry-wanek-directed (just read my notes, this is a Dabb co-writing credit episode)

11.16 Safe House Maybe I should just start copying my rewatch notes here for every episode… https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186963627365/1116-safe-house-more-blasts-from-the-past-in-a

11.17 Red Meat You should just watch this one, and remember this episode isn’t glorifying the codependency between Sam and Dean, it’s shattering it… It’s werewolves, after all (inner monstrousness brought to light) and read some of my past notes on it.

11.18 Hell's Angel The first half of the episode is just a lot of talking, but hooboy.. Rowena is back from the dead and we learn more of why she seeks out power-- self-preservation. Worth watching just for the second half, the failed Poughkeepsie scene, Dean’s heartbreak and fear for Cas, and Amara’s shock that with Cas standing between them, she doesn’t seem to have any affect over Dean at all…

11.19 The Chitters For a MotW episode, I think this really captures on a meta level what Dabb intends for the whole series. It’s worth watching for itself, but have my notes as to why: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184690946610/weve-finally-hit-1119-on-the-tnt-loop-this

11.20 Don't Call Me Shurley Chuck, and Metatron. I think everyone really needs to watch this one, just to remember how absolutely shady Chuck was. Basically from here right through the end of s11, if you pay attention to these episodes, nothing about 14.20 is the least bit shocking...

11.21 All in the Family Just like 11.20...

11.22 We Happy Few Just like 11.20 and 21

11.23 Alpha and Omega Do we not all think s14 is gonna end on a similar thematic note? Minus all the cliffhangery stuff?

12.01 Keep Calm and Carry On I can picture Dabb rubbing his hands together preparing to run the narrative in loops ad infinitum until he gets word they’ve got one season left to wrap it up. Worth it for the Dean and Mary and Cas. :’)

12.02 Mamma Mia https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184126233100/cass-flashback-to-his-time-hunting-with-mary-as (written recently…)

12.03 The Foundry The companion notes to the link in the last episode: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/187007192830/1203-the-foundry-yes-ive-already-written

12.04 American Nightmare If you haven’t noticed, I’m just pasting rewatch notes links now… >.> https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184740345285/im-watching-1207-on-the-tnt-loop-and-yeah

12.05 The One You've Been Waiting For See the link at 12.04 (Dean also killed Hitler)

12.06 Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox see the link at 12.04 (Also Billie is in this one, so of course I think it’s important to the ongoing Dabb Era narrative)

12.07 Rock Never Dies see the link at 12.04 (Lucifer’s nihilism laid bare, no different from Michael’s in s14)

12.08 LOTUS The episode that brought us Jack. Well, eventually… I’m putting these notes here, even though they also cover 12.09: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184761652205/so-the-tnt-loop-has-continued-into-s12-and-after

12.09 First Blood (see above, plus Billie, plus Cas laying it out on the table what he will do because he loves the Winchesters... he does a lot of pining for Dean)

12.10 Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets Nephilim, Lily Sunder, Human souls as angelic power sources, the deceptions of heaven (and love versus obsession again). https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184762915965/last-ep-on-the-tnt-loop-today-1210-reminders

12.11 Regarding Dean Watch this one, 100%. But also have my whole tag for this episode… I haven’t actually made rewatch notes for it recently, apparently? Which is a shame, because we have Sam working with Rowena, Dean riding Larry BEFORE losing his memories to a curse. There’s a lot of excellent character stuff in this one, for all of them.

12.12 Stuck in the Middle (With You) Watch this one. Cas is family. He loves them. This is the point I became frustrated with myself because there’s a huge gap in my hellatus rewatch notes that I thought I covered and apparently… did not… I don’t have recent notes to point you toward for convenience...

12.13 Family Feud Rowena gets her revenge on Crowley for making her kill Oskar in 10.23. Too much time travel wtf to even bother mentioning anything else.

12.14 The Raid The lengths Sam will go to to have any sort of relationship with Mary… including lying to and manipulating Dean. Vampires… and the Colt, and Sam finally kills the Alpha Vampire.

12.15 Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell between the Crowley and Lucifer drama, Sam kills the Alpha Hellhound (essentially). A lot of other deceptions and lies come to light though, and Cas disappears off to Heaven and from just one call, Dean’s already concerned about him. https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184853801830/still-on-s12-in-the-tnt-loop-and-heck-s12-looks

12.16 Ladies Drink Free (covered in the notes linked in 12.15) Werewolves, and an actual werewolf cure.

12.17 The British Invasion (covered in the 12.17 post) Eileen is back for her last real episode.

12.18 The Memory Remains https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184854556715/that-last-scene-of-1218-where-sam-and-dean-are

12.19 The Future https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184875554515/i-find-it-endlessly-fascinating-that-i-can-rewatch (this post covers… most of the rest of s12 and loads of s13)

12.20 Twigs & Twine & Tasha Banes (see the link in 12.19)

12.21 There's Something About Mary Mary is being stripped of her will. And Free Will has been what this show has been about… forever. And what will be recontextualized in the wake of 14.20.

12.22 Who We Are And here’s where Mary’s will is restored to her.

12.23 All Along the Watchtower The proof of the spiral narrative. But also the point writing this post that I’ve determined this is all probably neither useful nor interesting to anyone other than myself, and I lose the ability to simply discuss these episodes individually anymore. From here on out, it becomes a weird blur of everything. This post is already over 14,000 words long and I still have 43 more entries to make, and I have no idea how to convey the meta import or Character Development highlights from this point forward. I don’t even know how to eliminate most of these from a watch list of essential character and meta points. So I’m just gonna… wing it…

13.01 Lost and Found Watch this one for the soul-crushing agony, and our intro to the Nougat.

13.02 The Rising Son Jack is nearly manipulated by the Kentucky Fried Demon

13.03 Patience Our second Wraith. Watch it for, if nothing else, Dean shouting down Sam about Cas.

13.04 The Big Empty TFW in group therapy with a shapeshifter. Cas vs the Empty, defending his life with a statement that he wants to live, but… again he is unclear on his mission going forward.

13.05 Advanced Thanatology Must watch for Billie, for Dean’s complete loss of hope, and Sam’s inability to “fix him” with things that worked in the past.

13.06 Tombstone Yeehaw! Cas is Dean’s big win.

13.07 War of the Worlds Michael has been effectively “playing God” in the AU. The first rumors that Rowena is actually alive after 12.23, and Cas is captured by Asmodeus, who manipulates the Winchesters into thinking Cas is still at liberty… That’s probably all you need to know. >.>

13.08 The Scorpion and the Frog https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184946657745/so-im-still-out-ahead-of-the-tnt-loop-but-i (this also covers 13.15)

13.09 The Bad Place Wayward!

13.10 Wayward Sisters Wayward again!

13.11 Breakdown Donna! Wayward part 3! And the reminder (via Vampires) that not everyone who has a brush with the Supernatural will feel compelled to pick up a life of hunting.

13.12 Various & Sundry Villains Zombie! (which makes it relevant to Jack stuff even indirectly) Rowena! And Sam giving Rowena what she needed to protect herself, which honestly is what she’s been seeking since her introduction in s10. Sam. Just handed it to her. Let that sink in. Maybe watch the episode. It’s fun, anyway.

13.13 Devil's Bargain Heaven sucks. The bits about Sister Jo describing the feeling of weakened grace allowing her to feel a little bit human is relevant to our interests, though.

13.14 Good Intentions Watch this one. It sets up Cas’s special power to strip memories from a human mind, and the results of that. And Dean’s wishy-washiness about just telling Cas he’s wanted, not just needed.

13.15 A Most Holy Man (see 13.08)

13.16 Scoobynatural Dude… it’s scoobynatural. just watch it because you want to.

13.17 The Thing this post covers 13.17-13.20, for convenience’s sake: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184996231285/so-ive-watched-four-more-episodes-since-my-last

13.18 Bring 'em Back Alive (see above)

13.19 Funeralia Billie and Rowena, Sam’s “destiny” to kill Rowena, and Castiel’s forgiveness by Naomi in Heaven as she explains how badly heaven is broken and shows him to the door, knowing he won’t stay. This is a must watch.

13.20 Unfinished Business Revenge doesn’t fix anything.

13.21 Beat the Devil https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185000752455/still-watching-s13-and-1321-is-owie-but-im

13.22 Exodus (see 13.21) https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185000920730/dean-in-1322-so-close-to-ready-to-letting-all

13.23 Let the Good Times Roll (see 13.21) But I have a list for this episode… maybe just read my tag starting with the posts I made on May 19, 2019… https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185002926095/1323-vs-1420-lets-start-with-1323-jack-tell and https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185003462010/1323-was-so-ridiculous-i-mean-dean-basically

14.01 Stranger in a Strange Land At this point, I think everything is at least tangentially relevant… I mean look at this nonsense: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185004920575/on-to-s14-and-one-of-dabbs-big-pet-themes-for

14.02 Gods and Monsters https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185014835950/aah-only-18-more-episodes-to-go-and-48-hours-to

14.03 The Scar https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185016627975/aah-1403-power-doesnt-fix-anything-dean-is

14.04 Mint Condition https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185018115175/im-gonna-lump-1404-and-1405-together-here-for

14.05 Nightmare Logic (covered in the post linked for 14.04)

14.06 Optimism https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185030339610/1406-jack-im-already-writing-isnt-that and https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185030940270/jack-vs-zombies

14.07 Unhuman Nature (see that first post in 14.06)

14.08 Byzantium https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185042798280/omg-wait-literally-in-1408-while-theyre-all

14.09 The Spear https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185043896890/haaaaa-1409-and-michaels-speech-at-the-end

14.10 Nihilism Not rewatch notes, but a post made after the episode aired: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/182171684160/were-working-on-the-power-of-love

14.11 Damaged Goods https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185047861195/the-boxes-of-1411-omfg-a-demon-trapped-in-a-box

14.12 Prophet and Loss https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185048948905/aah-1412-tony-you-cant-you-cant-do-this

14.13 Lebanon https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185050918250/ive-been-holding-off-starting-1413-because-i

14.14 Ouroboros aka the point where I firmly believe they were 100% sure s15 would be the final season, and began actively setting up the endgame. (I mean I think they knew well before this, but this was where the turn happened narratively) https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185052705595/i-wrote-a-little-about-1414-earlier-today-in

14.15 Peace of Mind WHEEE! My delightful personal vendetta against Chip, the MotW, the direct Chuck parallel who even called himself a god, and who manipulated everyone else around him to make HIMSELF happy… like seriously, major definitely must rewatch. https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185074234960/mittensmorgul-once-again-in-1415-cas-is (I wrote so much about this episode it’s ridiculous)

14.16 Don't Go in the Woods https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185056380525/so-i-started-watching-1416-intending-to-write

14.17 Game Night (see 14.16)

14.18 Absence https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185065385445/1418-and-1419-both-will-require-additional

14.19 Jack in the Box (see 14.18)

14.20 Moriah Writers lie. I think this is now officially my favorite episode of the series…

#s14 hellatus rewatch #spiders georg of the tnt loop #how the heck else can i tag this one i mean YIKES if any post ever qualified for the tag #too many episodes to tag them all #it is definitely THIS one yikes #and i never ever tag my posts this but #supernatural meta #destiel #samwitch

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fightevilandthengetblownup · 5 years

Text

FIC: God Is A Woman

—

“Of course. I’ll meet you there.” Jo forced her voice to remain calm and even as she responded to the other hunter’s call requesting an extra set of hands on the hunt they were currently investigating. It had taken all of her willpower not to let the excitement bleed through as she finished up the conversation, nodding even though the other wouldn’t be able to see it at all as they agreed to meet up at a hotel in Spring Green, WI in the next day. “I’ll call you when I get to town, okay, see you there, bye Sam.”

As soon as she’d hung up, Jo had let out an almost too girlish squeal and lept to her feet, dancing about the room uninhibited. Pumping her fists up and down in excitement, she’d spun a few circles before the sound of a quite cough had frozen her in place, turning to stare at Grey’s bemused look like a deer in the headlights.

The other raised a brow at her, question clear on his face.

Coughing herself, Jo tugged and straightened her rumpled top from her improtu celebration, blushing slightly.

“So, what was, uh, all that about?” The question came softly, but brought a giant grin back to her face as she felt the excitement bubbling back up again.

Jo bounced a bit before rushing over to hug him in excitement before bouncing on her heels. “Dean and Sam need an extra set of hands on a hunt.”

“And that’s worthy of that level of excitement?” Grey’s voice was a little more stoney than before, and she knew it was at the idea of her hunting with the pair again. He was still not comfortable with it after what had happened so long ago, but Jo got it. She knew what his fears were, but it wasn’t worth either of them fighting about it. “Anything special this time?”

“It’s at The House on The Rock!”

“Where?”

“Just one of my bucket list places!” Jo’s smile hadn’t dimished at all, wrapping her arms around one of his and latching their fingers. “I’ve been dying for a reason to go there, and now Sam says there have been massive, massive storm signals coming from the area, as well as the place which is like always open is suddenly closed this week for ‘renovations’ when it hasn’t been changed in decades.”

“Couldn’t they just, you know, be doing renovations?” Grey asked simply, his other hand rubbing at the back of his neck when she’d used the phrase ‘bucket list’, but Jo didn’t have time to worry about that right now if she was going to make the drive to meet the brother’s that evening. “I mean, if it’s that infrequent I’m sure it needs some work.”

“Yeah, but it’s closed every seven years for renovations on this very first week of Spring.” Jo raised a brow at him, as if what she said was going to have any serious implication in it. Clearly, something happened every seven years, and given the importance of the number to some cultures that made it even more likely something was going on.

Grey still looked a little puzzled, but he just shrugged a shoulder and wrapped his unheld arm around her shoulders in a hug. “Well, I guess if you’re that excited to see the place you’d better make sure you get whatever you’re hunting finished quickly and safely so you can enjoy yourself.”

That had made her giggle as she hugged him back before racing upstairs to pack up her hunter’s bag as well as a few old hunters journals from her father and a few of those other hunter’s who never returned to collect them or who’s possessions were sent to the bar without them. Never knew when one of those would come in handy on a hunt of something unexpected. As she’d turned to leave her study, Jo found herself pulling one of the few fiction books she kept in there off the shelf and shoving that in her bag as well - who knew, maybe the guy was onto something?

It took her about an hour to pack, get her required farewell kisses and give Nana the biggest hug she could before Jo was on the road towards Wisconsin.

—

Her foot jiggled as she sat, knees crossed, atop the bed watching the older of the brother’s pacing about the room like a wild animal in an enclosure while the younger one was at his laptop, typing away.

It wasn’t that Jo didn’t find herself suffering through these awkward lulls on hunts, but this waiting around at the very start was unusual for her. Usually this wouldn’t come until the last day or so of a hunt if not hour while waiting for just the right time to strike or for the right hour of the day for the spirit or monster to appear. It was not usually in the first few hours of a hunt upon rolling into town. Clearly her and the brother’s had two very different hunting styles, and giving a sigh as she kicked her boots off with a heavy thud, she didn’t even try to look apologetic at the glare she got from Dean.

“What is the matter with you?” He growled the words out, pacing pausing for a moment before her as he asked the question.

Jo shrugged a shoulder as she flopped back onto the bed itself. “Just waiting for you two to have a break through. How did you know you needed an extra pair of hands if you don’t even know what you’re after yet?”

“Look at the signs, Jo, whatever we’ve found it’s big.”

Jo shrugged again, hands stetched out and just barely missing reaching the pillow at the other end - damn her short stature disallowing her access to grab it to hide beneath. Groaning, she muttered, “Yeah, big.. but you’ve got no clue what.”

“God, don’t you have a monster to call and be all gross with?” Dean’s words were just as harsh, and Jo shuffled an inch higher to grab the pillow off of the bed she would be sharing with Sam for the duration of the hunt, throwing it dead on at the other. He paused in his pacing at the impact, turning to look at her in mock outrage before tossing it back at her with just as good aim.

There was a cough right as Jo made to toss it back, stopping the both of them as Sam was looking at them over the top of his laptop, face illumated with a blue glow but the bemusement and annoyance clear across his face at their childishness.

“Really you two? Really?” Sam asked, eyes darting between them as if he took his eyes off either of them for too long they’d start up again. “How about you make yourselves helpful instead of fuckin’ around?”

Dean was the first one to straighten up, scratching at the back of his head before moving over to the table without a backwards glance and cracking open one of the hunter journals Jo had brought with her. He’d already read John’s Journal back and front a million times and not once had he written anything about the tourist attraction they were investigating. Then again, they hadn’t been able to locate or link any deaths specifically to the building over the years aside from the odd accident or heart attack, nothing too suspicious or out of the ordinary. Only the routine, almost ritualistic closing of the facility in the first week of Spring every seventh year since 1963; and looking back the weather of those times were always unseasonably stormy like it was now, all centred around the small tourist attraction between Spring Green and Dodgeville.

Jo for her part just sighed at the loss of at least some entertainment, and tossing up joining the pair in their research, decided instead to dig out her battered old copy of one of her favourite novels out to start re-reading again instead. The spine was cracked and the outer cover had already broken off and almost every one of the browned pages inside had the old scars of a dog-ear from previous read throughs.

That was how they continued for a few hours, both brother’s around the kitchen table of their hotel room - several journals spread out across the tabletop as Dean appeared to compare anything any had written on storms and their related meanings, as well as any monsters or demons that had significance with the number seven; while Sam had only stood up for the bathroom or to collect another beer for him and his brother as he continued to plunk away on his laptop, occasionally muttering to himself or throwing out the name of a monster or ritual here and there - while Jo had crawled up to the top of the bed and was about to start chapter five of her novel between sips of her soda and bathroom breaks of her own.

Flipping the page as the chapter began, Jo found herself sitting slightly straighter as she read through the next few pages as the protaganist and the slightly antagonistic other protaganist made their way to the very location that the trio was currently investigating. The words about places of power, places of importance, of a god’s historical draw to places of flamboyant excess and admiration, of almost pilgrimage like locations… Pouring through the next few chapters quicker than she had the first four, Jo didn’t even hear Sam asking what she’d like from the Chinese takeaway for dinner as she flicked back and forth between the section she was currently up to and some of the past scenes, the storms precursing the arrival of Mr. Wednesday looming over the prison, the airport and the town.

“Jo? Dinner?” Sam’s voice was able to finally jolt her, or perhaps it was his firm hand on her shoulder, from her thoughts with a slightly concerned look on his face.

“Hey, what..do you guys know about gods?”

“You mean God-god? Left the building ages ago, why?” Dean asked around a mouthful of egg roll, beer in his free hand to wash it down.

Jo rolled her eyes, and flicked one of the old dog ear flaps down on her current page as she shut her book and sat it infront of her while Sam busied himself with grabbing out whatever it was that he had ordered her for dinner. “Not that God, Dean. I mean like gods, other gods.”

“Well, they all fuckin’ suck.” The eldest replied, taking a swig of his beer without thought. There was a second she thought before he seemed to get what she was asking, where his throat had been working around the fizzy liquid before tightening and choking slightly before he dropped the drink. Staring across at Jo, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, frown fully in place. “And the last time we happened upon more than one..was in some massive storm to this kinda way.”

“Yeah, the other gods were all getting together to bitch about the Apocalypse, your point Jo?” Sam asked, holding her kung pao chicken out to her with one of the dinky forks from the hotel rooms cutlery drawer. “What, you think a bunch of gods are hanging out at some weird tourist place?”

“I actually kind of do.” Jo replied, taking the plastic container but holding the novel up with her other hand. “I know this might sound crazy, but maybe there’s some fact in fiction, you know?”

Neither brother appeared to know what she meant, and sighing Jo cracked the lid off of her dinner’s container and fished out a large chunk of battered, fried and sauced chicken before breaking into a summation on the appropriate chapters of one of her favourite novels around more bites while each of the brother’s dug into their own dishes with thoughtful looks on their faces.

As Jo finished her description, she looked across at each of the other’s with curiosity clearly on her face. “So.. would it be crazy?”

—

It was everything she’d hoped it would be. The lights reflected and bounced off of the mishmash array of items - some genuine, most not - that crowded the displays as the three of them passed.

The place was like a kalidescop of a very twisted child’s sun-hazed day dream…if that child was anything like Jo had been as a child, and only that kind of one.

Once the boys had gotten on board with her idea, it had taken only an hour or two to assemble from the mishmash of items they knew would take out a god - each of the brother’s carrying blessed wooden stakes dipped in the blood mix they’d found most effective over time, while they had outfitted Jo with The Colt under the direct promise not to let it out of her hands for even a second - before heading under the cover of darkness to the building. Jo’s heart had caught in her throat when they’d gotten the front door opened and she first spotted the glowing lights illuminating the entry foyer.

Everything was as she’d always dreamed it would be, feeling as if the man who had put the place together had a direct path to her childhood fantasies and dreams. The whole place glowed in soft red lights or the twinkle of fairylights. Occasionally the darkness or crimson glow would be broken up but bright whites in piercing directed lighting that broke through the dark patches, or from the glowing green irradiated elements in some displays. The displays themselves were beyond her wildest dreams - walls of armour and weapons, both real and fake tied together in a dazzlingly disjointed and lovely way, lined the paths they followed into the depths of the building. She was almost certain she heard Dean’s own gasp at some of the oddities, and bit back a smirk when she heard Sam make a noise when they progressed through the Infinity Room and through the Autonomous Instrument rooms alike.

As they made their way along the fake cobble stones, the dim lighting around them reflecting off of the fake-wet stone floor below them, Jo knew the next turn would put them face to face with the Nautical Room and the giant sea battle within.

“What the fuck is this place?” Dean’s voice was harsh and caught as they entered the next space, eyes wide and almost fearful as they looked up at the massive whale and kraken in their deadly battle.

He had already hurried them through some areas where there had been the display full of creepy porcelian dolls, but Jo had hoped he would lighten up after the eleven-barrel gun display, but seemingly he was still caught and disturbed by the oddity of the space rather than the wonder she knew she was feeling.

Ever since they’d entered the building, Jo had felt a strong sense of calm washing over her - as if nothing could hurt her, nothing could go wrong and all would be okay - which she’d originally attributed to the building itself and fullfilling her childhood fantasy to visit the attraction; however the further into the building, the closer to the room she suspected would be where they would face whichever god was currently camping out at the place, the more peaceful she had felt - the nervous adrenaline of a hunt fully washed away.

In contrast, both of the other hunters had begun to become more and more aggitated, uncomfortable and downright unsettled the further they went. If it had been any other day, Jo would have teased the pair of being spooked by the creepy displays, but something told her that it was all connected to what they were there to face down rather than the space itself.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Jo breathed the words out as she proceeded to lead the way along the walkway beside the massive sculpture. She felt like the could reach out and touch it, even though the gap was far too large to achieve such a task, fingers twitching with the instinct in the hand that wasn’t holding the Colt at the ready. “This is…”

“Horrifying? Unsettling? Disturbing to the highest degree?” Sam cut over her, hands tight around his stake as both other hunter’s followed her along the passage - the massive whale giving way to tentacles before the head of the kraken at the other end of the design came into view and the small dark door with only a simple black and gold plaque upon it to one side as the path lead up towards the returning gangplank walk back out of the Nautical Room.

“Beautiful.” She responded instead, moving towards the door as if in a trance of the soft feelings, the warmth and love and adoration and strength and belonging she could feel pulsing out from behind it.

Dean’s arm stopped her, wrapping around her waist right before she could close her hand around the handle leading into the room, a disturbed look on his face. “I don’t think we should go in there.”

“Why on earth not?”

“It feels… off?”

“You’re crazy, Dean, it’s just a door.”

“But it feels wrong, can’t you feel that? Something is telling me not to go through that door, Jo.”

“And something is telling me I need to go in there. Plus, it’s the Carousel Room, that’s where the gods met in the novel. If the god is anywhere, it will be in there.” Jo responded just as harshly to Dean’s gruff and growling tone with her own, but her eyes were focussed on the door itself the whole time, drawn to it like a moth to flame. “I am supposed to go in there.”

“Jo, I feel the same as Dean. Whatever is behind there, whoever is behind there, is bad news. We need to all be prepared for it.” Sam replied gently, however she could see a cold sweat on his brown and along his neck, and there was a shake to the hand he held the wooden stake in - as if terrified or out of his own control, she couldn’t tell. “I’m not sure we should even be here any more. Maybe… nobody is dying, we shouldn’t even be here.”

“Don’t be silly, this is fine, let’s go!” Jo found herself saying forcefully, jerking from Dean’s arm and twisting the knob of the door without another thought - she could feel this would all be fine, nothing was going to hurt her in that next room, everything was good - and pushing the door open with a loud creak.

—

The first thing she saw upon entering the space was the 20,000 glittering lights sparkling above the slowly spinning carousel top, the dancing lights illuminating the space in a warm soft glow and drawing her in. It was as beautiful as she dreamed it would be from when her father brought back some blurry photographs from a stop in on his way home. It had been a promise to take her there for her birthday that year, but John Winchester broke that promise among others. Her eyes were blown wide in awe, a wash of emotions hitting her as she moved slowly into the room from the darkened doorway and the darkness that filled most of the room where the small bulbs lights couldn’t quite reach.

The next thing was the horses looming from the walls and the carved, beautifully designed, wooden angels that hung from the ceiling coming out from the darkness behind them - the old faded golden paint to their wings and the horses bridles glinting in the warm glow. It was as if the wooden figures were drawn to the strange carousel as it continued it never ending slow rotation, spinning like a never ending top in the last seconds before it would tilt to the side, wobbly and slow but elegant all the same, frozen in its own axis for the last possible times.

The very last thing she noticed was the circular table sat befor the carousel, drapped in a luxurious looking red silk table cloth and decorated like something out of her favourite television show, an eleaborate centrepiece made of human and animal skulls, interwoven with flowers of all varieties and the odd bird feather - crows plumes inky and irridescent in the light, peacock plumes with their glowing eyes, bright colourful feathers from the tropics and South America and Africa littered amongst the darker, duller feathers from the more muted and retiring European birds - with elogngated canddles standing tall and proud amongst it, the warm candlight lighting up the beautiful faces of the women that sat around the table.

As Jo found her feet moving forward against her volition, she could feel the two others following reluctantly, their looming presence keeping her from panic as she realised this had been a bad, bad idea and not one of her own making.

“Who forgot to lock up behind them? Morrigan, my dear, you were the last to arrive.” The liltingly melodic voice was slightly rough around the edges as the angular-faced woman from the right hand side spoke. Her hair looking blonde in the closest golden light of the candles and lights of the carousel, but in the shadows appeared a darker brown, as if shifting in the wavering lights itself rather than one distinct colour. Her face was a mix of sharp angles, thin but poised lips in a somewhat harsh smile, and her frame appeared to be draped in furs above the gold-woven dress beneath. Intricate patterns, and not-quite-Celtic-knots were visible in the design as Jo’s eyes ran over her quickly. “I thought we agreed at the 21st meeting not to bring any mortals after the Wutong Sheng derailed our entire meeting with those-”

“Freyja, we do not speak of that meeting, you know that.” The words came from the older looking woman towards the left, her skin glowing a dark, rich brown in the candlelight as she rose from her seat at the table. Something about her words made the thudding of Jo’s heart quiet down, that peaceful feeling washing over her again in a way that was terrifying her now as she took in the seven figures sat around the table. Her hair was long and dark, and the warming tone of her voice as she seemed to smile softly as she approached Jo felt like a trap; she too was draped in an intricate dress, yet so different to the rigid and tight style of the goddess she had called Freyja’s - folds upon folds of silk fabric were splattered with whites, pinks and blues that seemed to move under the dim lighting as she apprached, golden chains wrapping her neck, her arms and her waist in turn.

The goddess, because Jo knew there was no other word for her, reached a hand out for her chin as she reache the three hunters, tilting Jo’s eyes up to stare back into her matching brown ones. “Besides, I do not believe these three are mere mortals-” Her eyes cut from Jo’s to the men standing on either side of her, stakes held tightly in their hands yet appeared to be frozen in the preparing stances they had started before the women had acknowledged them. “-In fact, if I am not mistaken, all three of these have been touched by all of you at one point or another. Especially you, Morrigan.”

“No human is touched by me and stands to talk about it, Erzuile, don’t be daft.” The palest of the women said, her hair a vibrant golden-red in the candlelight as she appeared to be filing her black painted nails from her position at the table. Jo’s eyes widened slightly having heard both goddess’ names, a shiver running down her spine when she realised just how correct Dean had been to be reluctant to enter the space. The Morrigan at least did not appear to be looking towards them, disinterested in acknowledging their presence over resolving whatever issue she was seeing on her hands. “Now, lets just dispose of the men, pick who gets to draw the prayers from the woman and let us continue with out meeting.”

“Now see here!” Dean’s voice cut over the goddess’ with a deep growl, feet moving forward towards the table with great trouble, from what Jo could see as the goddess before her continued to hold her jaw carefully, almost motherly which made Jo shudder again recognising that facet of the Vodou goddess’ faces. It looked like he was wading through mossases as he approached the table, stake held firmly in hand as he glared towards the bored redhead. “You bitches are done with your little meeting here and are going to take it on the road.”

“I don’t think so, fear beag.” The Irish lilt of her voice was clear as day the more she spoke, and Jo tried to pull back from the Vodou goddess before her.

There was a moment when Jo thought she’d be struck down or dumb, or trapped in the other’s hold for as long as the goddess demanded, and then there were two large, familiar hands on her shoulders and the hand dropped from her jaw as she stumbled back into Sam’s hold. Erzuile studied Jo for another moment before her gaze went to the other hunter’s as he moved between Jo and her, somehow towering in stature over the god but dwarfed all the same by her presence.

“What is with you god’s thinking you rule this world any more?” Dean gritted his teeth, jaw held tight as he approached the table, not concerned by the goddess behind him as both Jo and Sam had her in sights. He stalked towards the gap at the edge of the circle that was where the door lined up to, looking around the table at the mix of women collected. Jo could tell from the range of emotions crossing the goddesses faces that some were bemused by his words, other infuriated, and that redhead Goddess of Death and Fate dressed in all black and crows feathers shimmering in the lights still appeared completely bored by his outburst. “Didn’t you get the memo, you’re obsolete and- and- …Kali?”

The last word got a reaction, for sure.

Six women’s voices called out the Goddess of Destruction’s name as each head turned whiplash fast towards the diminutive looking Indian woman at what could be perceived as the centre of the table across from the gap Dean was filling. Her red lips were pursed in displeasure as she looked straight back at the man who’d been involved in saving her from the massacre at the Elysium Fields so many years earlier.

“Dean Winchester, how not a pleasure. And I see you there too Sam, don’t think you can hide in the dark with that obnoxiously large frame of yours.”

“Same to you, Kali. You remember the last time we crossed paths?” This time Sam spoke, stepping forward as the Vodou spirit mother returned to her seat at the table beside the redhead and another dark haired goddess, hair as long and straight as the night and a speculating look on her face. The hunter approached to stand beside his brother, and Jo found herself staying put on the edge of the light watching quietly in fear that something may just go horribly wrong from her mistake at opening the door, at giving into the temptation and feeling the goddesses presence obviously were flooding her with. “Now, we just want to confirm you don’t have any humans stuffed away for sacrifice and just what you… Ladies are doing here this evening so we can all part on good terms. We do not want a repeat, do we Kali?”

There was a tense moment of silence, and Jo could see the flames of the candles on the table rise up in a furious flash, larger and more powerful than they should be able to achieve as the goddess rose to her feet, added in height by her heels and her intimidating presence alike as the shadows flashed around her, her hands glowing with fire likewise as she raised a hand to point at the pair.

The moment passed though without more than the glow of the flames, dying down to normal on the candles and disappearing from her hand completely as the Hindu goddess lowered her arm. “My debt to you both is repaid. You will leave here unharmed.”

“And the rest of his questions?” Dean grunted, stake still held tightly in his hand as he looked about the group.

“Oh the only humans in this building are you three.” The words came from the youngest looking goddess, barely looking as if she’d be legal in this day and age as she flipped her honey brown hair over her shoulder and looked both men up and down with a hungry gaze. Her body was covered in a Grecian style dress of the sweetest blue color Jo had ever seen, and delicate silver and gold arm bands wrapped around her upper arm and neck with leave designs like the Roman Emperor’s crown. There was a second before she began pouting, looking towards the Indian goddess beside her. “What do you mean they’ll leave? Can’t I please please have even one of them? They’re both so… Yummy looking.”

Jo could smell it in the air as the goddess spoke, the smell of flowers and blossoms and sex and desire and what she thought strangely smelt like the scent of charcoal and fresh paper. It was intoxicating, and blinking her eyes rapidly to dispel the effect, she could see that both the other’s appeared to be getting impacted just as much by whatever power the goddess possessed.

“Aphrodite, I said they would be unharmed. I owe the pair of them a debt and I will not have you seducing the pair of them and make a liar of me.” Kali spoke softly, the cut of her words underlined with a sharpness that was clearly there if not in the gentle tone of her words. Her eyes however seemed to spark as she watched the two hunters struggling under the Love Goddess’ power. “Perhaps one day you will be unlucky enough to cross their path again, as I have been. Now, the two of you, leave.”

There was a gesture of the woman’s hand that had the pair of brothers spinning on their heels with matching snarls, before being propelled back towards Jo as if they were unable to control themselves. It wasn’t until they were a few steps before Jo that Dean seemed to manage to lock his knees and dig in his heels, shouting loudly, "Hey, Jo comes with us too.”

“Oh no boys,” The words were practically purred by the woman, a dark smirk across her blood red lips as Kali locked them in place beneath her force. They could stop themselves moving but they could not move much else. Jo lifted a foot, testing if the same was being pressed upon her and looked surprised when she could take a step without any resistance. “Your little friend is owed nothing, and you have already gotten a two-for for saving my life during that unpleasantness. The girl will be judged upon, claimed, and that goddess will determine her outcome. Come forward, girl, so we can see you.”

At that, Jo could feel the opposite of the pressure away her friends had felt, her body being drawn towards the empty spot at the table as if pulled by an invisible rope or one of those cow pulls from the old stage shows, her feet scrambling to follow and keep herself upright. Her fingers twitched, the cold metal of the Colt giving her a comforting thrill from its holster at her hip.

“State your name, my dear,” The long, dark haired, dark skinned woman wearing what appeared to be golden circlets around her head with large, rectangular crown or headpieces at the back of her head in the same thick gold spoke quietly but with command to her. She sounded like the howl of a pack of dogs, rough, loud and with a tight tone to the back of her throat that made Jo's skin crawl. A beautiful face, but something felt off beneath it to her. "I promise us ladies don't bite."

Jo bit down on replying, crossing her arms under her chest and looking back at the other hunters imploringly where they were stuck, frozen at the edge of the carousel light. Dean looked furious when she caught his eye, giving her nothing, but Sam just looked at her uncertainly and shrugged his shoulders. Looking back at the collected goddesses, taking in the curious looks as she turned back to them, Jo let out a short breath. "Jo, Jo Harvelle."

"Well, Jo Harvelle, you've brought a little conundrum to this table you see. We haven't had mortals at our gatherings in almost 400 years, 392 to be exact," The goddess replied, her hands crossed on the table top in front of her. Her hands were dripping in gold and turquoise rings and bangles, the lithe arms covered by black and white sleeves reminiscent of Mexican or earlier styles. Her ears were adorned by graphic scorpions made out of gold as well. "Many of our fellow goddesses had left our gatherings in the first 21 meetings due to disputes over your kind, and many declined to return when we voted to remove the temptation for squabbling such as your beautiful, tragic self my dear."

"Yeah well, I'd happily leave if it made your meeting easier." Jo grumbled, biting her bottom lip as she looked about the table. Sighing at the bemused looks that got, Jo ran a hand over her hair before sighing again. "Okay, I've worked out we've got ourselves love, death, destruction, sorcery and an amalgamation of various elements so far, right?"

"What a quaint way to describe us all. Who do you think is who, darling?" The Morrigan looked up at Jo from her left, a smirk on her lips as she seemed to look consideringly. The Irish woman reached a hand out, stroking Jos with a knowing expression. "I see my claim on you now, sliced right through you it seems. How beautiful."

Jo shuddered at that, jerking her hand back from the others grasp getting a laugh in response. Rubbing at her hand, the blonde scowled down at the knowing look. "Well, you're The Morrigan clearly, goddess of Death and Fate amongst other things. If the Morgan Le Fay connection is to be believe, a nasty piece of work too, parson my saying."

That got another laugh, that tinkling sound like wind chimes in the breeze. "Oh but you are clever aren't you? Who else do you recognise, darling girl?"

"Freyja, Norse goddess of War and Sorcery, controller of Folkvangr, beauty beyond compare and fierce in battle-" Jo jerked a head towards the woman draped in the furs sat to Jo's right, and getting a glass of wine raised in response, "-Erzuile and I have already spoken, the Vodou reflection of womanhood" The gorgeous woman smiled benevolently at her, a twitch of her lips when the women all managed to heard a snarl from the men's direction.

"So far so good, who else do you know, dear?” This time it was the Norse woman who spoke, the lilt somewhat similar to the Morrigan’s but the roughness in her voice compared to the fake saccharine tone of the Irish goddess’. Freyja’s eyes were fixed upon Jo as the blonde shifted uncomfortably under the stares.

“Well, Dean called her Kali, so I’m assuming that is the goddess of Destruction and Demon killing, correct?”

“You wouldn’t be wrong. Filthy little things.” Kali responded herself that time, Jo’s eyes jerking to meet hers with a look of surprise at the fire to her.

“And beside you is Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of Love, right? Or did I mishear you and misunderstand the, uh, effect she had?”

“I love a bright girl, especially when it doesn’t match the outside!” The Greek goddess responded to her words, hands holding her chin as she leant forward, the candlelight making her eyes glow and her face seem almost otherworldly in it’s beauty. No wonder the Greeks were so enamoured by her. “What did you smell? I know the green-eyed cutie back there will definitely want to know. I so love squashed down feelings.”

Jo blinked in surprise, back straightening and her jaw clenching as she pulled her arms around herself and refused the small part of her, that little girly part that had held a crush so long ago, that wanted to turn back and meet Dean’s eyes at that accusation.

“Was that like the love potion in Harry Potter? Providing the scent of love?” Jo raised a brow across at the young brunette goddess who let out her own laugh, that was almost painful to hear from how beautiful it was, and nodded her head. “It just..smelt like home. And flowers.”

“You are mine, I can tell already.” Aphrodite responded, leaning back in her chair with a wide smile as she looked around the table at the rest. “The girl is in love. She’s head over heels, heart-eyes and besotted but beyond that it’s deeper than simply your sexual desires and lust or familal ones, you two, she’s completely and utterly mine.”

The way the goddess was talking made Jo extremely uncomfortable, as did the significant glances she sent towards the Vodou woman and the almost Aztec-looking goddess beside her. She could hear one of the men behind her make a noise, almost like he was in pain or didn’t wish to hear what the goddess had to say, and the flush Jo could feel creeping up her cheeks turned a brilliant red at realising that both men were going to be stuck listening to whatever these goddesses were going to be saying regarding her.

“Perhaps now, ‘dite, perhaps now she is purer of love but you know as well as I she is a lustful sinner.” The dark haired woman spoke up, the gold glinting off of her jewellery as she shifted to look across at the Love Goddess with a sharp, toothy smile. Her long dark locks appeared to disappear below the table as the woman stood upright, her black and white dress with designs and patterns reminiscent of the old designs of ruins all across it. “You know as well as I, she is covered in lustful desires, carnal relations and the stain of each vice she gave into.”

“Oh one little infidelity means nothing!”

“It means everything, and you know it.” Her voice was a sharp growl as she slammed a fist upon the table top, making Jo jump and stare in confusion at the words.

“Excuse me, but I..I haven’t cheated before.”

“Dont worry, you don't remember that, but you can't get the stain of it off of you without the correct penance,” The goddess turned her eyes back to Jo, making her suck in her breath at the sheer suggestion of what that comment could mean, as well as the way her eyes raked across Jo’s body as if she could see each and every handprint, set of lips and more that had ever touched her skin. “I haven’t introduced myself, my name is Tlazolteol - goddess of Vice, Lust and Filth - and you, sweet girl, are all mine.”

“I don’t-”

“You don’t crave a man’s touch as much as any of your other desires? You don’t give in to your lustings every chance they’ve confronted you since your resurrection?” The goddess pinned her with a look as she moved from her chair and slowly made her way around the table to Jo’s side, running a finger along her neck and down her clavicle before Jo slapped the bejewelled hand away. Laughing, that harsh sound making so much more sense as Jo realised exactly what animals were so frequently sacrificed in penance to this goddess, Tlazolteol tilted her head to the side thoughtfully. “You may not remember your first truly, nor the additional sin behind that monster you gave into, but you remember how it felt give into him, do you not? His hands on your neck, your hips, the blood and the carnal desires it fulfilled? That scratch, the itch being taken care of finally. That little dark corner inside you coming to life in the act, relishing in the pain and the sin of it all.”

Jerking further away, stepping back until her legs hit the back of the Norse goddess’ seat instead, Jo stared in abject horror at the woman’s words, eyes darting over to where both other hunter’s were watching. She could see the absolute fury on Dean’s face - clearly misinterpreting the goddess’ words to mean her current man rather than his brother, and knowing that she would need to explain herself before he drove back to Duluth to tear the shadow apart - as well as the understanding disapproval upon Sam’s face. She couldn’t tell which was worse.

Turning her attention back to the grinning goddess, Jo felt her hands moving without her telling them to, the Colt withdrawn and pointed at the goddess squarely between the eyes as she stared her down. She could see the gunpoint wavering from the shakes in her arm as the fury at this all being brought up, brought out of the little box she had shoved it so far back within her mind, and in front of her friends nonetheless swamping her.

“Ah yes, and here comes my domain.” The Norse woman in the chair Jo was against spoke up now, the scent of heady ale hitting Jo’s nose as she twisted her head slightly to look down at the brunette goddess. “That desire to fight in such a noble cause as defending her own honor. And that love for war and fighting. Such a wrathful girl, isn’t she ladies? Can any of you deny she is hungry for the fight, to go to war against anyone and everyone?”

There was a general murmuring around the table, and Jo found herself stepping a few feet back from the table itself as the Aztec goddess had moved to return to her own seat, taking the crawling feelings away with her while the warmongering goddess spoke. Jo looked back towards Sam and Dean, frowning when she noticed they had turned to one another and appeared to be speaking quietly. That never meant anything good, but she doubted they would be able to stop whatever entertainment she was providing to the collected women before they had had their full.

“I definitely will not deny that, Freyja, but you know that it is mine and not yours that she is moreso.” The head of the table was speaking up now, the Indian goddess speaking calmly over the quiet that had spread across the table with a bloody smirk. Kali tilted her glass, dark red like wine but Jo had an inkling it was not infact made from grapes that filled the glass, towards her before adding. “She is a weapon for and shrouded in destruction of everyone, including herself. Jo Harvelle will tear apart anything that brings her and other’s happiness, and burn it all to the ground before she is done, and you all know this.”

“But there is love there! True love!” Aphrodite cut in again, pointing a finger directly into Kali’s face, waggling the digit back and forth. “All that may be true, but you can see it in her heart! She’s mine, she practically bleeds love every second of the day and you know it.”

“For a monster, Aphrodite!”

“What does that matter, Tlazolteol? Since when does that count as a sin?” The younger Greek shot back, glaring across at the dark haired woman with all the hatred she could muster behind the sweet looking face. “You know as well as I that that is not specifically wrong. Her heart is full and light, and you all know it!”

“Daughter.” The seventh woman finally spoke, and Jo found herself looking at her for the first time. There was a clear relation between the two women, however the one who spoke seemed so much more matured than her willfully glaring daughter. Her dark brown hair fell like waves about her face and as she turned to look at Jo who was still trying to step back from the table towards her friends, the brightest, widest smile of all of them formed. Her own garb was simillar to her daughters, but also had a scarf wrapped around her neck and holding the remainder of her hair back like a Muslim headscarf but without the concern for concealment. “You are behaving like a child when you are not even the youngest prsent. The girl is behaving even better than you, weapon aside.”

As if those were the magic words, Jo looked back down at her hand, frowning when she realised she still held the gun in her hand, but looking back up around the table, she felt no desire to return it to it’s holster just yet. Tilting her head at the woman, Jo asked quietly, “And who are you?”

“I am Innana, child. I am one of the oldest of our creation, and the reflection of the female power you weild so well. I’ve seen how well you have used that power - the underestimating, the compulsion to protect, the desire to befriend and take care of - to your advantage.” Jo felt herself flushing under the woman’s comments, feet shuffling back towards the other hunter’s before something forced her to stop and she felt that same tug back towards the table, but unable to tell which of them was doing it this time. Innana smiled softly at her, hands resting calmly on the table top. “I am also the goddess of Justice alongside that Power. And you certainly seem like one of mine, my dear girl. You have used both like a weapon on those you hate and those you love alike.”

“I haven’t-”

“Those two back there are a prime example of your yeilding of such power, child. One of them is compelled to protect you after your dealings with his possessed body so long ago, he still feels the guilt of being unable to stop the words that his mouth said and the touches his hands made, that he couldn’t fight it off for you - and you have used that beautifully to your advantage, to protect what you believe in and what you care for.” Jo’s blush got worse and worse as the goddess continued to speak, heat rolling off of her as if she were about to be set alit like the goddess of Destruction did her hands earlier, and bit down harshly on her lip until it bled to avoid shouting in frustration, anger and restentment at such claims. Innana stared blankly though in the face of Jo’s hatred, before continuing, “And the other? You know why he does what you say. He must do you right, must rectify the injustice he dealt to you in past with your taking the blows for him. He’s indebted to you forever, my girl, and you use that debt like the powerful weapon it is.”

“I..”

“Mother, you’re wrong-”

“No, the little tyke knows nothin’, I’ve already had my claim and mine is the final one!”

“She is a hunter, she is destruction walking-”

“Odin strike you all down, that means nothing but her desire for war!”

“-but she is covered in them, the echoes of her lus-”

“Quiet the lot of you!” The shout from the one woman who had remained quiet since the brothers had moved from the table spoke up finally, her hair dark and now curled in a natural halo around her head, obsidian dark in the twinkling lights as she stood up with a loud scrape of her chair. Erzuile stared, her face the ragefilled look of some of her many facets as she caught each and every one of the other goddess’ eyes, pausing on the Morrigan for a long moment while the redhead refused to meet her eyes to start with. As her look finally lifted from the last’s face, the dark skinned goddess’ face transformed back into that gentle, motherly look as she moved around the table towards Jo again.

Jerking backwards from the group, midway between the congregated and growling pagan’s and the brothers who had finished talking and were standing with stakes at the ready prepared to drive into the next goddess to get within arms reach after all of that. Jo knew the feeling, and found herself raising the Colt to the other’s face as she approached, that calming smile making Jo’s hand shake with the compulsion to lower her arm but fighting tooth and nail through it to remain.

“Now, dear, no need to point that at me. I have the answer to all of this fighting, and to your leaving this room untouched.” Erzuile’s words sounded soft and Jo felt the longing for her to be right pulsing through her at their meaning. In the background she could hear an objection, but could not determine which one had made the phrase as the Vodou woman reached her. “You’ll put that gun away like a good, good girl, won’t you Jo?”

It was like a command, and before she knew it, the gun was holstered on her hip and her hands were empty as she stared back at the woman, fear creeping along her spine at it.

“That’s a good girl. Now, I want you to think very carefully, will you?” Jo felt herself nodding before she could stop herself, and an icy chill went down her back as she remembered the last time, so long ago, that she felt the same compulsions and controls happening, but shook the thought away with a shake of her head as she focussed upon what the goddess had to say. “You have a friend in New Orleans, a Voodoo dealer, correct?” Again, she found herself nodding, though this time under her own control as her eyes widened in surprise and understanding. “Yes, that friend is very key here, as you have many of their spells and receive so many items you follow and recite from them, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do..”

“And as an active practitioner and believer in myself, your friend has also extended this control and practice upon yourself.” Erzuile’s smile got wider as she spoke and could obviously see the realisation dawning in Jo as Jo took a small step back to stand between the two brothers. “You’ve been praying to me for years, Jo Harvelle, and I have granted your prayers each time in full. You are a loyal and devoted discipile of my works, and I hope you to continue as such.” Jo bit down on her lip tightly at the goddess’ words, the knowledge that the person she considered at least a close accquaintence if not a friend had endoctrinated her against her will to a facet of the Vodou religion so subtlely.

“Now, I want and need this to continue, and as such I will be sending you and your friends, unharmed as Kali has dictated, back out on your way.” The warmth in the woman’s tone was so motherly, so caring, so loving, like the mother-facet of her prayers which Jo had on occasion found herself saying over and over when preparing the protecting hexbags for herself and her friends as they were needed, never once questioning the words she knew to recite. It was like a warm hug, a tight embrace holding her and squeezing away any of the roughed edges from the other goddess’ treatments. “So, you three are going to turn around and be on your way. We enjoy ourselves every seven years-”

“The lucky number related to womanhood.” The tallest of the brother’s finally spoke again above a whisper to his brother, his hand not holding his stake reaching out to hold onto Jo’s elbow lest she be pulled away from them again. Jo glanced up at him, noticing for once the dark shadow lurking in his eyes when they made eye contact and biting down the sick feeling that perhaps goddesses were not like demons, and did not truly lie.

“Very good, Sam Winchester, you are very insightful if not naive. We meet up every seven years since 1480, and we will continue to meet in future.” The stern look she gave to Sam made Jo want to shudder, before it was turned to Dean who looked like he was being held back with some invisible force from simply stabbing his stake into the woman before them with all the power he could muster. “We do hope not to see you at our next meeting, now be on your way.”

---

That was the last thing Jo heard before she saw the front doors of the House on the Rock closing before her. They were outside in the cold, crisp night air, and the heat on her cheeks from the experience was doused with the icy look from Dean as she stumbled a step back into Sam’s chest.

“What the fuck-’

“Dean. No.” Sam gritted the words out, interrupting his brother before he could begin on what was sure to be an extremely devastating rant at the accusations that had been thrown about by their quarry. “We shouldn’t have heard any of that, that was our fault it happened and we do not get to hold any of that against Jo. Demons, angels, monsters and gods all lie, look at Gabriel for fucks sake. So, no.”

Dean stared for a long moment at her, brown and green equally pained and hoping for an excuse, any excuse, to grasp on rather than to discuss any of what those pagans’ had had to say. The fact Sam had provided them the perfect one settling heavy in both their stomachs before the gaze was broken by Dean’s sharp nod.

“Okay, you’re right Sammy. Lets get back to the motel and get some fuckin’ sleep and pretend this was all a horrible dream, aye?”

“Sounds good, Dean.” Sam replied, his hands rubbing Jo’s arms comfortingly as she watched the older hunter turn and head towards the Impala without another glance back at her. Biting her lip, she was surprised when Sam tapped her shoulder and dragged her gaze up to him, “That goes for you too, Jo. None of that was your fault, and if you want to talk about it you can, otherwise? We can pretend this hunt never happened.”

Jo thought it over for a moment, worrying her lip between her teeth as she looked up into the earnest face, noting the slightly pained look to his eyes as he stared down at her, before nodding. “Thanks...thanks Sam.” She turned, wrapping an arm around his waist in a tight hug while they heard the roar of the Impala start up behind them. “You too you know? We’re all good you and I, right Sam?”

There was a quiet pause, as the only sound around them was the whistle of the wind at the hilltop and the rumble of the Impala before Sam gave a short nod, a true smile gracing his face as he replied. “Yeah, you’re right, we’re all good. And by the way Jo, family calls me Sammy.”

---

#CA #jopov #cc

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welcometoyournewhell · 5 years

Text

Suck it Up, Sammy

A/N: I don't believe the content is too touchy, but for some it may be. Talks about olden beliefs of twins (and other births that involve more than one child) and albinism.

This was done on the phone and I apologize in advance.

Sam and Dean are stuck with a toddler after a failed hunt. After the youngest fights his brother on every option of removing the child from their grasp Sam finds himself a father.... and is anything but happy about it.

___

Dean grunted as he trudged down the steps of the closest thing to a childhood home he had; Well.... with the exception of Baby. He and Sam were laying low at their adopted father's house until they figured out what to do with the results of their last hunt.

A town went insane over a line woman having albino twins, and a line cult made it their mission to execute these "demonic entities". It was like something out of older times. If a woman bore more than one child, she was that of an animal!

God forbid her children didn't look an "acceptable" way, they were the children of Satan! A single mother and her toddlers had just moved to a small town in Texas before they became a target for a small group of religious cultists.

The only survivor of the night was a three year old girl who was practically mute. While Dean was trying to figure out if she had any relatives or where to send her, Sam was having a pity party for himself, blaming himself for the family's death.

He'd had the visions, he'd had the nightmares.... but he didn't know the needed details to save these people. When he freed the small girl from her bonds.... something came over him and he just.... wouldn't let her go.

She'd panic if he'd try to anyway. They ended up bringing her with them to a few hunts on their way back to Bobby's as Sam shot down every option. Finding her family, almost impossible. Adoption home, chance of abuse or the group finding her. Foster care, a bunch of possibilities and the same group. The church, that one Sam actually smacked his brother's arm.

"Who do you think was just hunting her, Dean?!" He didn't mean that town but Sam had a point. There were too many stories about abuse came with Nun hood. There was no way Bobby would raise her go through the same shit he'd gone through with John and the boys.

So it was either him or Sam being a dad and risking a child's life and putting then through the same hell they went through.... or a previous option.

Well Dean made it clear he wasn't looking to be a father, and Sam wasn't budging. Last night was the final straw. Bobby interrupted there fight and pretty much told Sam.... he was a dad now.

"Not gonna put her somewhere safe, she's your job now. I ain't raising her Sam, and your brother sure as shit ain't. She likes you, she's you responsibility." In which, Sam tried to fight back but the old man made it clear, it was a home or Sam, end of discussion.

Dean was already enjoying being an uncle. Oh the cute outfits and bibs. Sure, she was able to eat with out a bib but.... it was Batman! He spent all his cash on toys, clothes, pull ups, and anything else he thought was cute.

Honestly, it was the only reason he wasn't giving into Sammy's puppy eyes. The younger brother had been wallowing on self pity, trying to talk Dean into another plan for the kid. Dean would ignore him or simply state, "It's a stepping stone Sam. You can be the dad you always wanted dad to be. ", or " It'll get your mind of Jess, dad, and everything else." Normally it was the first one that shut the other up.

They'd spent about a month with her now, and she was slowly starting to get used to them. She was still clinging to Sam like a life line though.... but she was letting Dean and Bobby hold her now too. "Alright kiddo, pancakes, " the eldest hunter asked. Bright blue eyes blinked before looking up to the man holding her.

"I think she'll like them. Gonna have to get used to them." Bobby frowned a bit before shaking his head. "You seem excited about this, why don't you be daddy?" Sam was in bed still, trying to ignore the title. "Because, I'm uncle material. Besides, she'd um... kind of be a bit of a, that. Not like Sammy's getting any anyway."

He bounced her up a bit more before kissing the platinum curls. "Besides, she likes Sam better. Probably should get her into a child psychologist though. She's got some damage." He tapped her little head with a smile. She didn't smile back. She'd looked either sad, come fused, or scared the whole time they'd had her.

"Aint we all? How about a name first? Need something to put on those papers." They should have raided the house for her birth certificate and social security number. "Yeah... the number is still going to be an issue. But not like she's driving any time soon, are ya? "

She was holding on of Sam's forty night shirts to her face as Dean kissed her head. Bobby finished some pancakes before passing his eldest a knife and fork. "What's the knife for, " he asked. "Well look at her mouth." Oh, not for him. "But I'm serious about the name. Even if she has one... she can't write or talk."

Green eyes looked up to blue. "Maybe those magnet shapes? She could spell her name." They didn't know how old she was though. "Dean she's either two or three. She may know her name but.... probably can't spell it." Crap. "Well how about Xena, huh? Like the warrior princess?"

"We're not naming her Xena." Ah, his highness was awake. "'Bout time you joined us sleeping beauty," Bobby grumbled. "I'm twentysix Bobby, I'm too young to be a dad." The older man sighed. "Boy, you lived else where you'd have been one at thirteen. God forbid the olden days."

Blue eyes lit up before the shirt was dropped and small hands reached for the younger Winchester. "Besides, think she's claimed you, " Dean commented. Sam looked at her with sorrow before picking her up and setting her on his lap. Well... trying too. Small arms hugged around his neck, giving him a morning hug.

He sighed as he hugged back. She'd already grown on him, but he couldn't do this! "I don't know what I'm doing though." Bobby laughed as he set a plate down for him. "Well no kidding, no parent does Sam!" Dean was still cutting up pancakes before drowning them in syrup.

He moved closer to his brother before getting the girl's attention. "Just be what dad wasn't, and Bobby was." It was that simple. "You'll figure it out, " Bobby sighed as he rolled his eyes at Dean's response. "We're gonna have to go back down and get her papers, " Sam grumbled as he took a bit of his food.

The girl didn't want the pancake offered, she wanted the big one her new daddy was eating. She opened her mouth and just looked at him like.... "give". The brunette pointed back to Dean. " That's yours." But, she wanted daddy's. Once more the mouth opened.

The younger Winchester sighed before taking the fork from Dean, who happily took care of Sam's plate. "I say we just get her a new number, change her name, and keel her the he'll away from the screw hole." Bobby sighed. "Brother's right. Besides, she's still adjusting to you. Leaving her here or taking her with you isn't an option. "

She looked at Sam, but didn't open her mouth this time. Ignoring Bobby, he huffed. "You just wanted mine!" Dean laughed a bit. "You ain't eating it now. Take a bite, then see if she wants it." The younger looked at him in disgust. "You drown it in syrup Dean." Bobby was getting annoyed with this. "Enough. Sam, eat the damn pancake before is scare her more and force feed it to you."

Enough said. Sam took a bite, baby took a bite. Soon enough the plate had been filled again and emptied again before small fry yawned. She fussed when Bobby came after her face with a damp cloth though.

Sam brought her up to the shared room to change her and put her down for a nap. As he did, Dean was put on dish duty. "I gotta get more food. Another mouth too feed, and Zeus is running low on kibble." The older quirked a brow. "Could have told me last week when I was going baby crazy." The old man sighed. "Just, make sure your brother doesn't do anything stupid."

It was maybe twenty minutes before Same came back down with a small bundle pressed to his chest. She already had favorite toys, and a giraffe blanket Dean found on clearance was one of them. Setting her down in the play pen, the new dad laid back on the couch with a sigh.

"Could be worse, she could be like.... an infant." Not helping. Sam shot him a glare before covering his face with his arm again. "We're putting a kid's life in danger Dean. How can you be happy about this?" The other patted his leg as to make him move. Sitting down, he found himself a foot rest.

"Well.... it's sticking with us and we protect and teach her.... or not knowing what happens to her."" His brother uncovered his face again while sitting up slightly. "So, put her though the same hell? Schooling, social life?" Dean rolled his eyes at the last one. "We're in a new day and age. She can do school online, you have a laptop."

"Money, " Sam fought. "Sammy, we've been getting by for yesrs. For someone who didn't want to her going anywhere else, you really are trying to get rid of her. " Was he? Guilt washed over him as he sighed. "Guess I'm just stressed, and scared, and anxious." He squeaked when there was a poke to his foot.

"Maybe Sammy just needs some time with his favorite brother? " Oh no, the smirk. Sam tried to yank his feet back, but to no avail. His laughter filled the room as he yelled and squealed for his brother to stop. "Dhehhean! Whehehr're too old fhahaor this! "

The older smiled. "Too old to cheer you up?" Sam was louder than the documentary on the television. He bounced around in his seat, trying to get away. "Nahhaha! D-DhehehaHEAN!" Starting princess hair spread across a throw pillow as the older brother moved to the younger's toes.

"Aw come on Sammy, I'm just helping you relax. Maybe de stress a little?" Dean had a shit eating smirk on as he destroyed his brother. It got a bit better and worse as he moved up the moose-like legs. Gasps and shrieks were heard from the younger as fingers dug into the back of his knees.

For Dean, it was like trying to stay on a Bucking Bronko bull ride, or something similar. Sam was physically meaker, but he had some powerful strength in his body. "Shit, ghehehet ahahahway!" Taught and skilled fingers dug into smaller thighs before hands tries to pull at them.

"Sammy, language. Your going to give her a potty mouth!" They really needed a name for her. "Yhahhaour ghahahaoning thahahao whahake HER! DEAN!" Sam shrieked when his brother started to tickle his navel. He shoved, swatted at, and tries to knock off the other. "I'm not going to wake her, but you are. Lower your voice Sammy."

"Sthahahaop chahahalling mhehehehe thahahat! No, get away get awahahahhahay!" Hiccupy shrieks and giggles poured like music from the younger as his armpits were messed with. Tears started to come down Sam's red face as he shook his head and tried desperately to get Dean off him.

The torment stopped as a moose toy hit the older in the head. They both looked over to see a small being just looking at them with tear filled, cranky eyes. They disturbed nap time! "Hey, that wasn't nice," Dean fake pouted. "Neither was waking her and tickling me to death, " Sam growled before shoving Dean back towards the other end of the couch.

The dad stood up before taking his cranky little moose and trying to lull her back to sleep. As he did.... curiosity came over Dean. He stood up before putting the moose toy back in the pen and walking over to the two. Sam stepped back warily. "Don't even. I will drop her," he hissed.

Green eyes rolled before the other tries to find a little foot. "No, I'm curious about something." From when he saw her before the murders, sue was a pretty giggly kid. She talked a lot too. She was scared into silence, so to speak. Sam said it was a form of turama, but maybe he could still get a little giggle out of her. Hell, he just wanted a smile!

But daddy stepped back again. "What are you doing? Leave her alone. Dean, she's trying to nap." The other rolled his eyes. "Here's an idea, let me try this and stop nothing about being a dad and come up with a name for her." Blue eyes rolled before a little head shot around to see what was touching her.

She honestly looked like a sleepy, little puppy. "You ticklish," the uncle asked. She simply pulled at her foot and turned back to sleep on her daddy. "Dude, I told you, leave her be." The older sighed. "Name, Sammy. I just want her to smile. Didn't your extra college classes tell you laughter is the best medicine or something?"

The taller huffed. "That's not how turama works Dean." Okay, so both baby and daddy were cranky. "Well.... who's pull up am I changing first? Her's or your's?" Both were un amussed. "Aw, look Sammy; She's already acting like her daddy!" The other scoffed a bit before turning to walk back up to the bed room.

"Aw, come on Sam! You have no humor." Before the other was fully upstairs he yelled up again. "You don't name her soon, I'm calling her Xena or Ivy!" That caused the other to stop. "Really, not Barbra or Selena, " Sam scoffed. "She can be your little Batgirl." Dean smirked. "Ain't passing the buck that easily."

He thought for a moment. "So Sammy needa tickle therapy for a name, crankiness, and new dad syndrome? Coming right up! " Foot steps pounded through the house along with yelling and shrieks of surprise and laughter.

By the time Bobby got home, he was met with the sight of a cranky toddler who opened her arms to be taken away from the sleeping bafoons. "These idjits keep ya' awake, huh? " She clung to him before sighing in relief; It was nap time.

The older hunter looked over his boys before rolling his eyes, this would be there hardest job yet.

#supernatural #oc #dad sam #bobby #dean #sam winchester #dean winchester #bobby singer #tickle #tickling #ticklish #tickle fight #tickle fanfiction #tickle fanfic

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shadowhunterdownworlderhybrid · 5 years

Text

Because you took All of me

Summary: I don't have one 😂

Normal Dean, Standford Sam

Dean been cold for the past three days since Sam left for Standford

He couldn't really help it you know?, Everybody leaves him, Mary, Sunny , Bobby and now Sammy. His baby brother that meant the world to him. Dean spent his whole life protecting him defending him trying his best in raising him

Dean whole life was built around mainly Sam, the light of his day when he returns to a shitty motel exhausted from a hunt, his savour whenever he was gonna give up and die when he was badly injured, Dean only got back up for Sam, not for John not for Bobby

But for Sam, the only person who meant something to him in this fucked up world

But now, that person was gone. So what is Dean living for now?, Sammy doesn't need him he's in Standford getting the Normal life he wanted so bad. So what was the point of living? Why did he still get up when he was always on the verge of dying what was so important that he still got up?

Dean opened the door to his new motel room dropping his duffle bag on a chair as he went straight to his bed falling face first letting out a soft huff, he was beat and grimy with the dried up blood on his face. Dean was drifting off to sleep untill the sound of his phone was ringing through his ears, Dean groaned wanting to kill who ever was calling him

The older Winchester digs into his pocket pulling out his old flip phone not bothering to look at the caller ID "what?" He said tiredly rubbing his crusty eye "and this better not be prank phone call, I'm too tired for this shit I will seriously hunt you down and cut off your head" Dean voice was cold and bitter, the threat wasn't a bluff either "first words perfect" a soft voice said from the other side it was oddly cheery but the voice, clicked in Dean head right away

It was Sam.......

Dean went quite, he didn't want to say a word a voice in the back of his head was yelling at him to hang up "Dean?" Sam voice echoed in his ears. Dean didn't answer it's not like he could.... He was hurting on top of that he was straight up tired so he wasn't in a talking mood

All Dean could do was say one thing that was to familiar for him "Go to Sleep Sam, you've got class in the morning" Dean voice was low and bitter, Sam didn't get a word out before Dean hung up on him

The phone was now on silent a set lazily on a dresser next to the bed

Dean sighed dropping back down on the bed he doesn't even remember sitting up, a couple of bones cracked in Dean's body, it didn't hurt, it actually felt good

Dean was out as soon as his dirty face hit the pillow, he dreamed that night, dreamed that Sam never went to Standford that he didn't leave him alone with there alcoholic revenge wanting father. They were together as brothers, probably a little more at the same time

Dean misses Sam but he'll never admit it

Not to John

Not to anyone

Then again people didn't really give a shit about Dean feelings not even Dean himself but he did have a reason Sam the reason was always Sam the choices he made was always for Sam

Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam, that's all his father ever said nothing about Dean only Sam

'Sam is the only thing that matters'

It's been a total of two years now

And Dean hasn't talked to Sam, hasn't called or texted it's not like Sam did either

The only time the younger Winchester called was on Dean's birthday wishing a happy 28th birthday like today, today was January 24th the Day Dean Winchester was born. Dean didn't give a shit about his birthday not like John did either. The only way Dean celebrities his birthday is getting drunk having sex drinking more, sex, drinking,sex, drinking, sex

The pattern doesn't stop

Dean been awfully cold and quiet, he never said a word not even when he's drunk, you must been wondering how Dean picks up chicks well simple..... He doesn't, they come to him as if they were horny teenagers so he didn't really have to do much. He just used them as if they were a warm mouth to him

But he's pretty they use him for the same reason so it's a win win no matter what as long as he doesn't knock a girl up on his birthday he's just fine.

Dean was laying in bed looking at the ceiling, his once light green orbs were now a cold hard green it's not like he really minded. Dean had more scarres over the years mostly because he got caught off guard all the freaking time which caused him to have a really nasty one going across his back then mixed with John's beatings of Dean not talking

The pain was worse, some bruises were still healing. Some women would ask what happened to him but all Dean would do was give them a cold hard stare, they knew they didn't want to know if Dean did that

Dean let a soft sigh looking over to the brunette that he finished with an hour ago before getting up and getting dress. Dean tied his boots before grabbing his leather jacket and leaving the apartment that the girl lived in

All Dean thought about was getting drunk again

So he did, he went to the Same bar that the nice brunette picked him up at. She was surprisingly kinky for such a little thing she was 22 and sweet Dean sorta felt bad for not leaving a note but it was to late now. Dean downed another shot of whiskey the liquid burning his throat and to Dean, it felt amazing Dean has never drank this much in his entire life Dean hasn't had this much sex in one day, he's pretty sure he's running out of seman

Number of alcohol? Probably 78 he lost count when he reached 50

Sex? Probably somewhere in the 80s? All he knows is that his dick hurts so probably that's why

Dean was tired, tired of life tired of his asshole of a father that he still respects no matter what, and a bitch of a brother that decided it was alright to ditch him for the normal life

Dean was done he was absolutely done

He didn't need to call the bartender to refill his cup the nice young looking man just did, he sent Dean a sympathatic smile, probably because he saw the look on Dean's face

Cold dark and tired, in other words he looks like shit

Dean put the small shot glass towards his sweet plumb lips ready to drink it but it was suddenly taken from him "I think you've had enough" a voice said, Dean let out a deep sigh he didn't give a shit. Old Dean probably would've but this Dean? He didn't give a shit he just looked at the bartender but the voice had a different plan "don't even think about it" the voice was threatening soon enough an arm was wrapped around Dean shoulder, Dean didn't care enough to hit it off he's already been raped why not again huh?

Dean was really drunk so he couldn't really fight back that day.... Let's not mention how he got money when he was little.....

"turning into Dad I see....." Then it hit like a truck 'Sam' he thought Dean didn't say anything "you reek of sex" Sam started again

What was Sam doing in Ohio shouldn't he be in Standford being a smart ass while becoming a lawyer?

"I wanted to see you, it is your birthday" Dean had to chuckle at that, because it was his birthday? Ha! Hell no "Dean i'm serious" Dean didn't groan he didn't even roll his eyes he just ignored him, Sam downed the shot that he took from Dean setting it back on the bar table , Dean slapped a 20 dollar bill on the table hitting Sam arm off leaving the bar while Sam chaced after him "Dean!" Sam yelled grabbing his arm Dean shot him a cold glare "Dean...... What happened to you?, You were never like this" Dean rolled his eyes " Dean, why are you like this? Your usually happy when you see me" Dean didn't say word

Sam eyes turned puppy like which sent a harsh twist into Dean chest like old time "Why?" Dean said his voice was raspy and rough, he hasn't talked in two years what'd you expect? It was calm to so Sam knew that wasn't good "Why am I like this?, Seriously Samuel your wondering WHY?!" Dean shouted the last part which made Sam flinch

He knew Dean was really steamed with him if he called him by his full first name

"I don't know Sam probably because you LEFT!, YOU DITCHED ME FOR STANDFORD. DID LIFE SUCK SO BAD WITH ME THAT YOU WANTED TO GET AWAY FROM ME?!" Dean yelled that made people look his way, Sam looked away his heart hurting "then what Sam? You wanted to get away from hunting? That's it? Well guess what you can't escape this life Sam trust me I've tried I had a chance once but I ditched it for you! Because you've always came first I'm different BECAUSE all of me went with you when you walked out that door!" Dean screamed "Dean..... I'm sorry......" Dean shook his head "No Sammy. It's too late for sorry" Dean said as hot tears blurred his vision walking away from his brother leaving his dumb forward.

Part 2?

#dean winchester #wincest #sam winchester #spn #spnlove #spnfic

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huntershelper25 · 5 years

Text

The Path of the Chosen: Chapter 4

PotC: Ch 4

Summary: Brooke is a 21 year old girl who’s life is flipped upside down when she receives a phone call from someone she hasn’t heard from in years. This phone call leads to events that cause her to get sucked back into the lives of two young men whom she hasn’t spoken to in years. Her life is never the same. Along the way she learns a secret about herself that not even her father had known. She is forced to face her destiny. Which path will she choose: duty or family?

A/N: I suck at summaries. I started writing this fic YEARS ago. It was posted here on Tumblr, but I have made some edits recently and have decided to repost it. This requires some introduction though. I had a thought one day of what the show would look like if there was a female character that was brought in that actually stuck around for longer than a season or two. And because the thought wouldn’t go away this story and Brooke were born. I had a lot of good feedback the last time I posted this years ago so I decided to repost it for my new followers with some edits.

Disclaimer: There is a LOT of direct quotes and scenes from the show. Especially in the first few chapters. I do not own any of it. I only claim the character of Brooke and how she fits into the story. All else is credited to the writers and copyright holders of the show Supernatural.

Warning: There is some smut thrown in randomly for the first 5 chapters as flashbacks to establish timeline, character building, and relationships, but after that the smut dies off. Also, let’s just assume condoms are implied. They aren’t mentioned, but let’s assume they are used.

Pairings (through entire story): Dean/Brooke (OFC), Sam/Brooke (OFC)(in later chapters)

Word count: 1700

Previous Chapters:

Masterlist

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter Four

She awoke the next morning with the inevitable headache of someone who downed half a fifth of whiskey in less than an hour. As she walked to the bathroom, change of clothes and toiletries in hand, she could hear Bobby snoring away down the hall.

A blinding pain shot through her brain as she flicked on the bathroom light. She stood there blinking for a minute or two, allowing her eyes and her hangover to adjust to the blinding light. She set her things on the toilet seat and stood to examine herself in the mirror. Her two-day old makeup was showing its age. Her eyeliner had decided to finally dislodge and smudge down her cheeks following the trail her tears had taken the night before and her foundation was nearly nonexistent and flaky. She sighed as she took her disheveled self in. She hardly recognized herself anymore. In just two days she had gone from a young, almost pretty girl with such life, to this mess. She hated what she saw in the mirror: a helpless, scared, pitiful girl who couldn’t hold herself together, everything that she was not.

“Pull yourself together.” she told her reflection, “No one is going to hold your hand through this, you’re in this alone now, so suck it up.”

Brooke watched as the girl in the mirror turned from a frightened child into a determined young woman. Satisfied with what she saw, but still unsure of how long it would last, she turned to take a shower.

After she quickly and quietly showered, dressed and put fresh makeup in place, she made her way slowly and quietly down the stairs.

She hadn’t forgotten her plan to leave and start her life anew, but she wanted to do something nice for Bobby before she just took off on him. So, she cleaned the kitchen and straightened things up a little bit. Tossing empty whiskey bottles in the trash and giving things a good dusting. As she put an unopened beer back in the nearly empty fridge, she remembered that she had planned on doing some real grocery shopping. She looked at the clock and saw that it was 8 AM. There had to be a store open somewhere. So, she quickly made a list of what she knew Bobby ate and headed out the door.

After some driving around town she finally found a tiny family run market that was open. As she walked through the automatic doors, she grabbed a shopping cart and instinctively headed toward the produce aisle. She smiled when she found herself surrounded by apples and carrots, knowing full well that Bobby would not eat this, but she grabbed a few apples anyway.

She ran into a few employees stocking shelves, obviously surprised anyone was in the store at this hour. She politely smiled and walked by, not wanting to start up any small talk. She wanted to get this done with and get out on the road to her new life as fast as she could. The less time she spent idling in this one the better. However, you can’t escape the cashier. She sighed when she saw the ear to ear smile of the young gal that stood at the register as she approached.

“Hi there. Did you find everything alright?” she asked as she slowly began to ring things up.

“Yeah, thanks.” If she kept her answers short, she may get the hint.

“Haven’t seen you around before. You new in town?” she continued to scan and bag at a glacial pace.

“Just visiting.”

“Oh? Who? I know just about everybody here in Sioux Falls.” This time she paused. Brooke’s patience was running thin with this one. She made a note to herself to avoid small towns as she searched out her new home.

“Just my uncle, who’s expecting breakfast when he wakes up so if you wouldn’t mind.” Brooke gave her a quick smile, which seemed to do the trick because the girl nodded and hurried up the rest of the transaction.

Bags in her arms, she walked out to her car, as she was about to unlock the door, she caught a flash of pink out of the corner of her eye. She turned to see a little girl, not much older than seven dancing around saying, “Please Daddy? Please!” Brooke’s heart sank as she saw her dark curls bounce around her tiny little face, and saw her fierce green eyes smile up at her as she waved when she caught Brooke looking. She reminded Brooke of herself.

She looked up at the father, who was also waving with a “What can ya do?” look on his face. He too had dark curls and green eyes, just like her father. She tried to conjure up a memory of her own that resembled this interaction, but she couldn’t. She and her father didn’t see much of each other when she was that age, much less ever have that kind of relationship. She learned at a very young age that when Daddy came home you left him alone.

She used to stay with Aunt Julie whenever her dad was off on a hunt, who to this day she didn’t think was actually her aunt. When he would come back, he would be either injured or in a bad mood. He would shut himself up in Aunt Julie’s study and not come out sometimes for days. She remembered the first time she had entered without knocking. She must have been six:

She had just made a batch of yummy cookies and wanted to share them with her father. She slowly opened the sliding doors leading to the study and slid into the room without making a sound. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the walls had been covered in photographs and newspaper clippings depicting some very terrible things. She remembered them because they had never been there before.

Her father was at the desk with his back to her. She slowly walked towards him captivated by all the photographs. As she drew closer she saw a picture of her mother on the wall directly in front of him, she only knew her from photographs he had shown her, it made her smile, but not for long. Alongside her photograph were newspaper clippings and more photos depicting her mother in gruesome circumstances; lying on the floor in a precarious position, covered in blood. She gasped and dropped the plate of cookies.

Her father spun around in surprise, “Brooke, what are you…” then he followed her gaze to the photos of her mother and his expression changed from surprise to anger. He walked around from behind the desk and escorted her out of the room, his grip on her arm tighter than it had ever been. “How many times have I told you to never come in here!” The first time he had ever raised his voice to her.

“But Daddy, why do you have pictures of Mommy like that? What happened to her?” tears welling up in her eyes, rubbing her arm where he had grabbed her.

“That is not of your concern. Stay out of this room!” and he slammed the doors in her face.

She knew now that he thought anger and firmness would protect her from the truth and keep her curiosity at bay for fear of angering him again, but that day shaped their relationship, from that point forward she always feared angering him. She never fully trusted him with anything. Whenever he would come home, she would steer clear of him and let him do his job. They never had father-daughter moments, they never bonded. They were just two people who coexisted. When she became old enough to help him on hunts, once John had convinced him to allow her to, she became his soldier, his partner, not his daughter. A partner he never fully trusted. She could never seem to move fast enough, think sharp enough, or aim sure enough for his satisfaction. He left her behind more often than not.

It pained her seeing this father-daughter interaction and not being able to conjure up her own memory with her father. She gave them both a quick smile and quickly unlocked the car and got in.

She pulled up to Bobby’s just as he was walking out the door.

“Let’s go.” He motioned towards the tow truck the second she got out of the car.

“Good morning to you too,” She said as she heaved one of the grocery bags into her arms.

“Put that stuff in the house and let’s get a move on.”

She gave him a quizzical look as she walked past him into the house. He seemed a little nervous about something. She peeked out the window as she set the bags on the counter and saw him almost pacing by the truck. She became a little concerned. Bobby almost never showed his panic. He always managed to appear calm in even the direst of situations. She quickly put away the perishables and left the rest for later.

“What’s the deal, Bobby? Why so in a hurry?” She asked as she locked the back door behind her.

“I’ll tell ya on the way.” He watched her walk around the back of the truck to the passenger side, a contemplative look on his face, before he opened the driver door and got in.

They sat in silence as he pulled out of the driveway and drove through town, a look of determination on his face. Every few minutes he would look over at her like he was about to say something and then turn back to the road.

“Bobby, seriously, you’re starting to scare me a little. What’s going on?” Brooke finally asked as he pulled onto the freeway.

He sighed and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Sam called. They found John, he was possessed by the demon,” her heart stopped, “It didn’t stick around for long, but it apparently did a number on them all before it took off. They were on their way to the hospital when they were hit by an 18-wheeler. Sam didn’t give me too many details, just that we need to get the impala from the impound lot before anyone sees the arsenal they got in there. We’re meeting Sam at the hospital on our way.”

She turned and looked out the window. They couldn’t be that hurt. Sam was up and around enough to join them at the impound lot, so they had to be fine… right?

She started fidgeting in her seat as they pulled off the freeway and started following the signs to the hospital. The entire drive she had wanted to call Sam to get the full details, to find out if everyone was okay, but she didn’t want to be stuck on the road feeling helpless if the news had been bad, so she refrained.

She was about to explode when they pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. She saw Sam standing just inside the automatic doors and leapt from the truck before Bobby had come to a full stop. It took every fiber of her being not to run across that parking lot. She walked at a controlled steady pace, listening to her heart pound in her ears. He was up right, standing on his own. He didn’t seem to be using the wall to hold himself up. That was a good sign. As she drew closer his face began to come in to focus. She saw the swelling of his eye, the busted lip, and the multiple cuts on his face. He gave a crooked smile when he saw her, but it wasn’t his smile, she could tell it was for her benefit, the pain in his eyes gave that away.

The three of them had always been a tight knit family. They cared for each other more than anything in this world. They would each die for one another without hesitation. Brooke knew that Sam was feeling a thousand times more fear and anxiety over this than she could even imagine. When she was within arm’s reach, she wrapped her arms around his waist. She thought maybe more for her sake than for his, she wasn’t sure, all she knew was it didn’t seem to make a difference for either of them.

“How are they?” she asked as she pulled away.

“Dad’s okay, a little beat up, but okay,” he started to fidget a little and avoided eye contact.

The smile he had given her as she approached, the way he hugged her tighter than normal, and the way he was avoiding her gaze already answered her question, but she had to ask, “and Dean?”

He didn’t answer, but the look he gave her told her everything she needed to know.

#supernatural #supernaturalfanfiction #supernaturalfanfics #dean winchester #sonfanfic #spnfiction #sam winchester #spn

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beckmorchaud-blog · 6 years

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Huntress, Chapter One: Even as I Wander

4,600 words

Characters: Dean X Female Hunter

Warnings: Some Violence, Profanity, Blasphemy, Angst, self-doubt, a little self-loathing, Sex (mentioned, implied)

Future Warnings: I don’t know where this is going yet. so be prepared.

AN: Please excuse any grammatical errors- grammarly is new to me and still learning how to navigate it. Also, please excuse any Tumblr faux pas.. I’m a newbie to this format (tumblr that is)

#1: Even as I Wander

I had driven nearly 22 straight hours south to New Orleans for this job, falling fast first into the first hotel mattress $60 could buy in the big easy. The mattress was cheap, the sheets a bit threadbare, but it was a bed more substantial than most toddlers’ and that was better than what was in the back of my 15-year-old station wagon most nights. I slept hard, despite the massive metal springs pressing into my sides and the loud sounds of sex through the thin hotel room walls, and woke up at 9 in the morning, a full twelve hours after I had arrived.

I staggered across the rough brown and beige carpet, my feet dragging in my caffeine-free state of mind as I moved to the bathroom to take care of my morning. I caught a sideways glance at myself in the cracked bathroom mirror and found my jaw-length black hair sticking out in every possible direction. my face skewed disgusted, and I flicked the light back off for the time being and took care of my business.

Outside of the room, the coffee pot stood waiting. I set it to brew and sat down on the edge of the stiff mattress. I pulled my phone from my bag and checked it. Four missed calls and three text messages.

'You in town yet?’

'Where are you?’

'I’m in room 129-’

'Dammit, Badger, the hell are you?’

I groaned and glanced at the coffee pot. The last text was only 20 minutes old, and very likely the last one that would be sent before Dean Winchester raised the alarm, and my phone was blown to kingdom come with calls and texts from every hunter this side of Poughkeepsie

. I leaned over and picked up my room key and texted Winchester the number on the tag. I grabbed a loose hair tie from the front pocket of my duffle and pulled up the crown of my hair, hiding the mess, just in time for three sharp knocks to roll across the door.

“Goddamnit, Winchester,” I mumbled under my breath, standing and crossing to the door. I was still wearing the black sabbath tee shirt and black basketball shorts I had fallen into bed wearing the previous evening when I slung the door open to Dean Winchester. I had to admit, though as sometimes adversarial our relationship had been since our first meeting, he was a particularly beautiful specimen of the male of the species. Standing at just over 6 feet tall, he brooded in my general direction now, his eyebrows heavy over surprisingly soft green eyes.

I had known the Winchesters, Dean and his father John, for about three years. I had started hunting things when I was only 16 after my parents and two younger brothers had been murdered by demons. By the time I had met John, and Dean four years after that, I was neck deep in the shit like any worthwhile hunter. John had gotten on my case more times than I could count on hunting alone. Solo female hunters were rare- rarer still were ones my age who hadn’t grown up in the life. John had pulled me out of the fire a few times since then, and Dean a few more, most recently a Werewolf hunt in Omaha I’d gotten sucked too deep into the previous May. I’d returned the favor usually, lending a hand or a few hours of research when needed but I hadn’t seen either of them until the phone call I’d received three days ago.

I had been wrapping up a hunt in Augusta, Maine when Dean had called me. Despite what the Winchesters seemed to think, I was more often than not, just fine on my own. Dean had explained his Dad was on his own hunt and not answering his calls at the moment, but he needed a hand in Louisiana. I had asked for three days, but managed it in two. I had a debt to repay.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked gruffly.

“Sleeping, the fuck does it look like I’ve been doing?” I asked, returning his tone and gesturing a hand down my body.

“You said you’d call when you got into town-” he says, pushing his way past me into the room. It’s evident from the disarray within the four walls that I did nothing but change into my pajamas, sleep, and since waking, turn on the coffee pot. Winchester helped himself to a chair by the large curtained front window, spinning it on one leg to straddle the back. He didn’t continue his thought.

“Slept instead,” I said, shrugging. “22 hours, straight through. Think I deserved it.” I told him, pouring myself a cup of coffee. I held the pot up in offering. He nodded.

“Sure-” he said. I handed him the cup I had intended for myself and poured another, not pausing to let it cool before taking a long slow sip, “but it pisses me off.”

“Because you care or because I’m a chick?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him. He stared back at me as if insulted, and I ignored what I saw in his eyes. “That’s what I thought,” I said when he didn’t respond.

“Bullshit,” he snorted. I rolled my eyes and took another long sip of my coffee.

“How’s your dad?” I asked, changing the subject with less finesse than I would have liked.

“Fine. On a hunt for about two weeks now…What have you been up to?”

“Hunting,” I said, staring lovingly at my mug.

“Anything else?” he pressed. I didn’t get him.

“Can I have a goddamn cup of coffee?” I snapped, raising an eyebrow. He held up his hands as if warding me off.

90 minutes later, my hair combed and jeans replacing my basketball shorts, Dean, and I sat across from each other in a corner booth at a greasy spoon diner about a mile down the road from the motel. Dean was chewing a cheeseburger, not dissimilarly to how a cow eats it’s cud. I had one myself, but my bites were smaller, and I was more focused on the newspaper clippings he had laid out in front of me.

The first article detailed the grisly freak accident death of a young woman three weeks prior. According to the report, it had occurred in the basement of the county courthouse. Dean had backed up this article with five more, all detailing similar deaths on the same block.

“Vengeful spirit?” I asked him.

“Spirit of some kind, I’m thinking, yeah,” he said over a mouthful of masticated beef. I wrinkled my nose.

“Attractive, Winchester.”

“Eat me, Badger.”

I raised my eyebrows at him and plowed on, completely unphased.

“Any chance of catching one of them at the morgue?” I asked, before taking the next bite of my burger.

“Probably- the latest one was only three days ago- which is when I decided to call you for a hand.”

“History?” I asked.

“Haven’t looked too hard into it yet- the addition on the courthouse used to be the pauper’s lot for the county, and before that, was the gallows.”

“Great…” I muttered, looking at the articles again, “So the likelihood of finding whatever it is tying this bastard to the courthouse is highly unlikely… but I’m curious why the son of a bitch only started in recently- I’ll have to look into the records and see if there’s been anything particularly nasty before the first.”

“So how have you been?” he asked, returning to his line of questioning from earlier that morning.

“Fine. Hunting.” I said as I had before, taking a huge bite of my own cheeseburger. He raised one eyebrow at me.

“What?” I asked shortly- I was now the one talking with my mouth full. He snorted.

“That’s all?” he asked, chuckling lightly and leaning back in the booth. I shrugged.

“What else do you want me to say?”

“Seeing anybody?” he asked. He wiggled his eyebrows at me. I rolled my eyes in return.

“When exactly do we have time to ‘see’ anybody?” I asked, throwing up air quotes and wiping my mouth with my napkin. He laughed, his head tipping back in a way that made something stir in my belly. I damped it down quickly. Dean Winchester was, in a word, a slut, and while I could absolutely see why he thought this was funny as I had never worked a job with him and not had him take off with some chick from a bar at one point or another, I didn’t really want any part of that action myself.

“Can we concentrate on the job?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him. He held up his hands in surrender. He motioned to the waitress who had served us before, and despite the fact that it was breakfast, asked what kinds of pie they had. I picked up one of the articles again and began to pretend to read.

Once upon a time, I had held a large torch for Dean. a dozen or so hunts later, however, during each of which Dean had managed to pick up some chick in a bar, I was pretty over it. He was a flirt, but I saw through him. He was just as dark and twisted most days as I was- the life had taken his mother, and his brother, who it seemed just couldn’t hack it, and had returned to civilian life before I’d met him.

Dean buried his angst in booze like most of us, women like some. He tended to flirt with me, but I’d been burned enough times by him to brush him off. The very first hunt I had joined Dean and John on, Dean had nearly gotten me into bed- only to be distracted by a red-lipped and busty brunette while I was in the bathroom and taking her back to his room instead. I had been heartbroken, truth be told, and had been much more careful with what I let him get away with since then. I made every effort to squash my feelings anytime they rose up.

As much as that was true, watching that man dig into a mixed berry pie was borderline pornographic. I couldn’t help watching as he closed his eyes, thick lashes against his cheeks as he raised the fork to his mouth and wrapped his lips around the juicy deep red morsel. A small, dense noise, escaped his throat. I tried not to drool and looked away, chastising myself internally.

Scouring the fragments in front of me, I looked for anything particularly odd that might stand out and found nothing of note. I pulled my laptop from my bag as the pie show continued across the booth and booted it up. I checked Myspace for new messages as Dean ordered a second piece of the pie and then moved on to a bit of research into the history of the courthouse.

“So it looks like the current courthouse was build in 1914, to replace one that had burned down two years before,” I told him, “14 prisoners of the jail, also located where the new addition is, were killed in the fire when deputies failed to unlock their cells when flames broke out.”

“Classic,” he said, around a mouthful of pie. I continued.

“I’d have to find out if the library has microfiche to find out anything about the prisoners and if this goes back further than we realized.” he swallowed.

“I’m thinking flashing some badge down at the courthouse might work.”

“Press probably,” I agreed, “Puff piece on the new addition for some bullshit architectural rag?”

“Works for me,” he said. He flagged down the waitress, and before he could stop me, I snapped my laptop shut and paid.

“I can buy my own breakfast-” he said, a bit indignant.

“Can you also wipe your own mouth?” I shot back. He grabbed a napkin and wiped his mouth as I slipped the laptop into my messenger bag and got up.

“We should change,” I said, considering the hunter-uniform we were both wearing…

“What’s wrong with this?” he asked. Dean had on a black tee-shirt and gray chambray work shirt under his jacket, with jeans.

“A little hunter-casual don’t you think?” I said, raising an eyebrow. He considered.

“Maybe,” he said, considering.

“You look like shit, Winchester,” I told him and turned to go to the door.

“Wish I could say ditto on that, Browning,” he said, returning my manner. But his eyes weren’t hard like I was attempting to make mine. They remained the usual placid green they always were, and I was confused. I stared at him for a moment, my brow furrowed as I tried to discern his tone.I didn’t want to admit I knew precisely why I was giving him such a hard time this time. It had been four months since I’d seen him last, and I hadn’t been nearly half as standoffish as I was now. Even with his whoring, Dean and I had settled into a kind of uneasy ribbing sort of friendship over the last three years. But I knew precisely why this time was different. I turned and walked out the door.

FOUR MONTHS EARLIER

I could feel the werewolf’s breath on my neck, hot and smelling sour as it sniffed me. My knife was yards away, and I was pinned three feet off the ground. I cursed myself internally- I should have called for help the moment I had realized this was the work of more than one wolf, two days ago- instead, I hadn’t made the call until I realized there were more than five. I’d left a voicemail for John Winchester, another for Bobby Singer but hadn’t gotten a callback.

Motherfucker! I thought as the werewolf leaned it’s head back and bared its teeth. I pressed my eyes shut and braced for the sensation of tearing skin and ripping flesh. Instead, a crack split my eardrums, and I felt hot liquid and slime splash onto my face. The werewolf released his grip and collapsed, and I fell on top of him, my head cracking against the floor.

“Son of a Bitch,” a voice said casually as I blinked away the stars in my eyes. A hand was held out in front of me, and I took it, pulling myself out of the blood and viscera to come face to chest with my savior.

“Fuck, Dean, thanks,” I said earnestly, wiping my bloodied hands on my jeans, “I thought I was hosed.”

“You were,” he replied gruffly. He slipped the gun back into the holster hidden inside the waistband of his jeans, shed his coat and the button up he wore over a faded green tee-shirt and started wiping at my face. “Waited long enough to call in the cavalry, by the looks of it.”

“Yeah, definitely fucked up on that count.” I took the shirt from him with a nod of thanks and began wiping away the fragments of werewolf head from my face and torso. “Speaking of, I thought I called your Dad?”

“You did. Dad was busy,” he said with a shrug.

“Well, I appreciate the heroic rescue,” I said, once again with earnest.

“Would be better if I didn’t have to,” he replied. The words had a bit of sting, but they were said teasingly.

“Hey, I’ve saved your ass a few times,” I said, wapping him on the arm with his own bloody shirt.

“Name Five,” he said, taking it from me and balling it up. He surveyed the bodies around him. I had dropped six of the werewolves in the pack, but I’d run out of ammo, and the seventh had gotten the drop on me. He pushed out his chin appreciatively.

I chuckled.

“Colombus, for starters,” I said, rubbing the back of my head.

“That’s One.” he nodded, “Want a drink?”

“I’d love one.”

We ended up in a dive bar on some random side street. I’d cleaned up the rest of the apparent gore in the bathroom with rough brown paper towels. The water that had come out of the tap had almost matched. When I returned, two tumblers sat on the bar in front of Dean. I climbed, literally, on top of the bar stool and he slid one of them to me.

“So you took on seven… by yourself,” he said. He made the same slightly impressed face and took a sip of his drink.

“Nah, I purposefully took on six. The seventh was the prize in that particular box of crackerjacks.” I took a long haul from my own glass and motioned the bartender over with a small smile and a nod. Dean snorted.

“Well that’s impressive, Badger, gotta say.” I shrugged.

“Isn’t that why people call me ‘Badger’ in the first place?”

“Too goddamn small to be that fearless,” Dean agreed, raising his glass to me in a toast. I lifted my own and tapped it to the side of his and nodded with a small smile before downing it. “Holy shit, take it easy-” he said, putting a hand on my arm. I shuddered and then chuckled.

“At what number of werewolves solo do I get to drink three jacks up without you pulling that face?” I said, motioning for my third. He raised a single eyebrow.

“Nine. min.”

“What’s your record?”

“Eight.”

“And how many jacks did you down after that one?”

He paused. “Point taken. Five.”

“There you have it,” I laughed. The alcohol was beginning to take hold, and I cracked my neck as my muscles loosened. I pulled the bartender over, and slapped a fifty on the bar, “Keep ‘em comin’ for me and my friend?” I said, tilting my head in Dean’s direction. The bartender nodded, and I spun on my seat to face Dean as my glass refilled.

“Well here’s four.” I raised the glass and took a long sip.

Dean flashed me a lopsided smile and something inside me melted just the tiniest bit.

I don’t know how much later it was when Dean literally picked me up off the sticky floor of that bar room.

“Pummee down-” I whined.

“You’re drunk,” he grumbled. I struggled but not much. It made the spins worse. “Hold still,” he grumbled. I whined in reply.

He slid me gently into the backseat of his Impala.

“Throw up, and I’ll kill you,” he said, and I waved a hand at him.

“Jussa spins,” I told him, laying a hand over my eyes.

“Yea, sure,” he replied with a chuckle and climbed into the driver’s seat.

The next thing I knew, Dean was rifling through the pockets of my jacket as I laid in the backseat.

“Quit feelin’ me up-” I said with a giggle, “Or don’t. Yeah, don’t. Like it.” he snorted a bit of laughter.

“I’m looking for your room key.” I patted the breast pocket on my coat and grinned, bleary-eyed, back at him, propping myself up on my elbows.

“Comman geddit,” I said with an exaggerated wink. He shook his head and then fished it nimbly out of my pocket with two fingers. He pulled on the ankles of my boots and swept me up, carrying me toward the room I’d rented for less than fifty dollars. I swept my arms around his neck, nuzzling him and kissing at him, too drunk to stop myself. He smelled like leather, whiskey, and gunpowder, but under that was something cleaner, like salt water, and I was intoxicated on that alone.

“Stop, Badge,” he mumbled, lifting a knee to support me as he used one hand to unlock the door and push it open.

“You know you want me,” I soothed. He didn’t respond. He laid me down on the bed and pulled my boots off my feet, “That’s more like it,” I smiled, and licked my lips.

Dean pulled back the covers on the bed, then pulled my jacket from my arms.

“C’mon, baby, I’ve wanted this for three years..” I cooed. He picked me up again and then slid me between the sheets, and pulled them up to my chin.

“Sleep it off, Badge,” he said. He leaned down, and I reached for his neck again but got caught in the blankets. He kissed my forehead softly, and a small sound escaped my lips, “We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”

In the morning, I had been embarrassed enough not to want to see him at all, but, with a pounding head, I opened the door to my room at ten the next morning when he knocked.

“Morning sunshine,” he said, setting a fast food bag down on the small table near the window.

“Mmm-” I responded, closing the door firmly behind him, shutting out the light. I went for the bag as quickly as my hungover legs would carry me and ripped it open along the side. I grabbed two breakfast sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil and plopped down on the floor next to the table to unwrap them.

“How much of last night do you remember?” he asked, leaning against the table, taking the third and fourth sandwich out for himself.

“Whiskey- lots of whiskey.” I moaned through a mouth full of English muffin, egg, and bacon.

“And then?” he pressed. I glanced at him, and he was looking at me intently. I looked back at my sandwich.

“Fell off my bar stool. You carried me out. I got nothin’ after that.”

“Huh,” he said. I glanced at him, seeing how much he believed. The truth was, I remembered every godforsaken word I’d uttered, and the only thing worse than the embarrassment was the idea he was going to give me holy ol’ hell for it- tease me about it. As good of a job as I generally did at squashing any Dean Winchester cravings, I didn’t think I could stand for him to give me shit about it.

But he didn’t. I didn’t think he believed me one bit, especially as I could feel a heat rising in my face that had to be evident even in the darkened motel room. I could see suspicious boiling under the surface of his eyes, and something else- something I couldn’t quite place.

Dean didn’t bring it up again, and while we hung out, and watched a few cheesy movies on cable in my room, neither did I. I left the next morning, told him I would be in touch.

“Good, Don’t be a stranger.” he’d told me. He’d kissed my forehead again before I’d climbed back into the driver’s seat of my old station wagon.

But I hadn’t called. I didn’t have the balls.

PRESENT

“Well that was pointless,” he said as we exited the courthouse, trotting down the white front steps and

“No EMF, No sulfur, and as far as I can tell, no signs of anything amiss at all- I think the courthouse might only be a connection the victims shared, rather than the source,” I stated, more for myself than for him. I knew he knew this already.

“I say, we take a break, relax for a while back at the hotel, and start off with some FBI family and friend interviews in the morning,”

“Dean, it’s 2:30 in the afternoon,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. He shrugged.

“Eh. It’s been a while, I want to catch up with you,” he said smoothly. My eyes narrowed further as I climbed into the passenger seat of his Impala.

“Why?” I asked flatly.

“Haven’t heard from you since Omaha. Don’t know many chick hunters,” he told me, turning the engine over.

I was immediately suspicious. I became even more so when he followed me to the door of my motel room rather than going to his when we arrived back at the motel.

“I take it you’re serious?” I asked, a bit rhetorically, slipping the key into the lock and pushing the door open. I entered the room and flipped on the light, tossing my sportcoat across the bed and forcefully kicking the heels off my feet.

“About what?” he asked, taking off his own jacket and laying on the back of a chair before sitting in it.

“Catching up?” I said. I pulled the pins from the nape of my neck, holding the shortest bits of my hair up and keeping my professional disguise intact. I turned my head over and shook out my hair. I heard Dean sigh behind me, and flipped my head up, glaring at him. “What is WITH you?” I asked suspiciously.

“With me? What’s with you?” he fired back, a bit defensive, “ I’ve been nothing but nice, and you can’t stop being a raging bitch.”

I opened my mouth to fire back and paused. He was right. From the moment I’d woken up that morning I had been nasty to him. I blew out a long breath and considered for a moment how I wanted to proceed.

“Fine, Ok, you’re right,” I said. I thought that would be sufficient, but Dean didn’t seem satisfied.

“So what is it?” he asked again, pressing.

“What is what?” I asked, legitimately confused.

“The thing that crawled up your ass and died.”

“Eat shit, Winchester.” I told him, stripping off my pantyhose, putting runs in them as I pulled on the nylon too hard, “Now who’s being a bitch?”

“You admitted you were a bitch; I just want to know why” he demanded.

“I-” I groaned and threw my hosiery in the trash can next to the bed. I stared at him for a long moment. I couldn’t tell him the truth, which it was my way of keeping him at arm’s length. I didn’t think accusing him of sexism- “if a guy were giving you this much shit would you be as pissed?” type of thing was an excellent bet either. I was stuck.

“Fuck you.” I finished, mumbling.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, and with a single fluid motion, he was out of the chair and across the room. I backed up, my posture defensive. The words hadn’t sunken in, only the actions. Dean grabbed me around the waist and pulled my body tight against his, pressing his mouth firmly to mine.

I stiffened against him, eyes open. The move had stunned me, but not quite as much as how soft those lips felt against mine despite the fierceness of the pressure. My eyes closed and I felt myself kissing him back, my lips parted as his tongue pressed gently against them. I lost myself for what felt like hours, and then an image popped into my head. A busty brunette with red lipstick in a dive bar outside of Chicago.

That’s when I hit him.

#dean winchester #supernatural #fanfiction #deanx #spn #dean winchester fanfiction #supernatural fanfiction #huntress #dean winchester smut #supernatural smut

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