ficlets: NCIS and Supernatural - het, PG
May. 13th, 2010 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tigriswolfTitle: way of the westward wind
Fandom: NCIS
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: takes place just after season 4’s “Grace Period”
Pairings: implied het
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 310
Point of view: third
She watches. Of course she watches. He is unfinished business, the one who got away, the one who could have been—would have been, if things twisted a slightly different way.
She wonders, sometimes, when he’s done something recklessly stupid and almost joined her, if in another world, he died on that roof instead of her. What might have been, then.
It’s selfish, but she’s glad she died instead of him. Didn’t have to try living without him, with the memory of his blood on her face. She came so close with that damned plague, stayed as long as she could, and having to bury him—
“He’ll blame himself,” she tells Paula. “He always does.” It’s not an admonishment, but a warning. It’ll hurt, watching him beat himself up over something that’s not his fault. She’s not quite used to it—doubts she’ll ever be—but Paula’s new.
Paula nods, wiping at her eyes. “I couldn’t—I shouldn’t have been alive.”
Kate smiles at her, gently rubbing at her arm. “I know.” She does. She survived a great deal before Ari’s bullet took her down. So much of that surviving was because of Tony.
“Can we…” Paula takes a deep breath. “Can we help?” she asks after a moment. “Or do we just watch?”
“We just watch,” Kate tells her quietly. “And it’s awful. And I don’t know why we’re here instead of moving on to whatever comes next.”
Paula sighs, nodding her head. “So it’s Hell, then?”
Kate’s actually considered that before, during some of the closer calls. “No, I don’t think so.”
They watch their unfinished business, the one who got away, the one who could’ve been someone special, and they wish—
But it doesn’t matter. They can only watch and wait and wonder what it’ll finally be that he’s unable to survive.
Title: illachrymable
Fandom: Supernatural
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: spoilers for everything aired; future!fic
Pairings: implied one-sided non-incestuous het
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 580
Point of view: third
Notes: the title means something you are unable to cry over. Make of that what you will.
There is a book she reads sometimes, to remember. It isn’t the only of its kind, but it was the first, all those years ago, when a prophet dreamt of two brothers. It spawned a whole series, spin-offs, a television show, and three blockbuster movies.
They are a franchise now, like the superheroes. Bigger than Batman, and wouldn’t Dean like that?
No, she thinks. He’d rather everything be left hidden, ignored. He’d rather no one know his name than everyone think it’s just a story.
The movies end differently, of course. The books kept on after their story came to its conclusion. Some people thought they went on too long, way past when they should have stopped. But she knows that fiction is different from fact, and no one would have been happy with the actual finish.
She sure wasn’t. And she wished it could have gone differently. She still wishes that, when she starts at the beginning and reads Woman in White to the final page, when Dean stands beside his brother outside a burnt apartment and Sam says brokenly, “We got work to do.”
It’s not the same. She’s one of the few left who knows they were real, those Winchester boys. She’s one of the few left who ever met them, who survived the encounter, who remembers what’s real and what’s myth.
Kids dress up like Dean and Sam Winchester for Halloween. Pre-teens swoon over their actors, and there’s a booming line of action figures, and she can hear his voice in her head, Sam marveling at what all has happened in the decades since.
She knew them. She nearly killed Dean, and she was there when he looked Death in the face and made a promise he never intended to keep.
She reads the book sometimes, the one where the Winchester patriarch traded himself for Dean, her first appearance in their story. It’s different written down; Dean came so much closer than the prophet let on with his words. But she could never have taken him. Only her father had the strength to reap Dean’s soul for good.
She was there when Death did, when he held out his hands to the Winchester brothers. She watched as the brothers exchanged glances, a whole world of conversations in a heartbeat, and she closed her eyes while Dean smiled and Sam nodded, and she didn’t follow as her father led them home.
She didn’t follow. She can’t follow. Death ordered her to stay, and she does, reaping those who need reaping, until only a handful of people remember the actual men anymore.
And this woman in front of her is the last. One hundred and five years since Rosie met the Winchesters, since Dean carried her out of a burning building, and she looks the reaper once called Tessa right in the eyes.
“He didn’t feel the same,” Rosie tells her with a sad smile, and she can see the baby girl Dean saved. “He never would’ve.”
“I know,” she says, placing a hand on Rosie’s forehead. “Go home now.”
After Rosie passes on, she looks around the room, at the shelves lined with books, outdated movies, DVDs that don’t work anymore. She walks to the first book of the series, the one that began it all, and she lets her fingers trace over the cover illustration, the drawing that looks nothing like the men she knew.
Come home, daughter, Death says, and she wonders if they’ll be waiting.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-13 05:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-14 03:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-13 07:33 pm (UTC)!!!!
Sorry, should I get more coherent? I loved this. The wistfulness and the sense of times past and misunderstood hit very hard for me. Gorgeous job.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-14 03:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-13 09:37 pm (UTC)(and because it's polite to introduce oneself before one starts stalking, hi, I'm faithunbreakable from over at ff.net.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-14 03:44 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for reading!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-13 10:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-14 03:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-15 11:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-16 03:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-17 12:00 am (UTC)beautiful!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-17 04:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-17 01:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-17 04:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-17 04:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-17 07:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-18 01:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-17 10:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-18 01:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-17 11:57 pm (UTC)But in all seriousness, this is a lovely, poignant look at Tessa. I find it bittersweet and oddly fitting that she must stay so long as one person lives whom the Winchesters saved, as if she's a sort of witness to all they've done and the lives they've touched. I love that she knows the real truth and even empathizes, in her aloof way, with how she knows they would have preferred to be remembered - or not remembered, as the case may be.
I *adore* the idea of the boys dying together, passing on and leaving in peace. I need a vision like that even more, after the season finale. Gorgeous piece, my dear. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Cheers ~
Erin
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-18 01:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-18 12:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-18 01:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 05:51 am (UTC)And Rosie too!!
Thanks for sharing!!!
<3
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-22 03:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-27 10:44 pm (UTC)I'm *flailing* everywhere now!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-28 01:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-07 11:28 pm (UTC)But it doesn’t matter. They can only watch and wait and wonder what it’ll finally be that he’s unable to survive.
I LOVE this. Never thought about Kate and Paula keeping tabs on Tony after death, but the entire premises is fabulous. (God, their respective deaths still get me, you know? Kate for what it does to the team, and Paula's for being so self sacrificing/incredibly badass at the same time.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-08 12:59 am (UTC)