And We Are Ashes: Chapter 6, Part 3
Nov. 12th, 2007 03:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thecatevariWell, I only had 1,200ish words done by midnight, but I decided to plow onward until I had 2K. It's 2:30am and I have 2,005. Ugh. Such a long time for such grudging effort. I'm having a lot of flail about this part again. The problem with interleaving canon and AU is not always being able to tell if this is all making logical sense. There are a lot of balls in the air and I'm terrified I'm dropping them and not realizing it.
25,523 / 50,000 words. 51% done!
Today's Word Count: 2,005
Current Total Word Count: 25,523
Current Project Word Count: 78,750
Estimated Total Word Count: ~100,000
What's bad: That it took me this frickin' long to get 2K today.
What's good: Sam. Sam is a rockin', stand up guy and I love him for it. And Mary, because she is a cold-hearted bitch about everything except when it comes to her kids.
What pleases me:Mary sighs and scrapes a hand through her hair, making a bigger mess of it than it was before. "Sam, I love you. Your father and you and your brother...I would do anything for you. Anything."
"I know that."
"No," Mary disagrees. "You know the bullshit that people think is anything. But when I say 'anything', I mean it. It's not just bullshit. I haven't cut a swath across America killing everyone that gets in my way. I don't like it. I don't enjoy it. But if it comes down to a choice between anyone else in the world or you and your brother, then I pick the two of you. Every time. And I'm not going to feel sorry for that."
"Well, what if I don't want you to?"
"What makes you think you have a choice?" Mary's eyebrows arch. "I'm your mother, Sam. Not your friend. And I don't answer to you."
"No," Sam agrees, "you don't. But I do. And I'm not leaving here until I figure out what Sue-Ann did and stop her from doing it to anyone else."
Previous parts can be found here
"What does that mean, 'blood-gift'?" Sam asks in an undertone as they settle into the creaky folding chairs—ironically, just behind Layla and the older woman who must be her mother. His brain hurts as much as his body; there are so many questions he wants to ask his mother and he doesn't have any real idea where to start. He feels like there's more information here than he's capable of taking in, a tangled web of family that he'd never even been aware of but that the reality of hearing Sue-Ann LeGrange call his mother 'Lillith' has brought crashing home.
Mary makes a face. "It's a formal way of asking for a favor. A favor that only someone in the family can grant."
"So there's no actual blood," Sam persists.
Mary slants him a wry glance and smile. "No, Sam. There's no blood."
Sam settles back into the chair, not entirely reassured but unable to formulate another question before Sue-Ann guides the infamous Roy LeGrange to the stage. Whatever Sam was expecting LeGrange to look like, it wasn't this: a stoop shouldered and unprepossessing, blind eyes hidden behind blacked out sunglasses. His plain white shirt and dark slacks are no finer than Sue-Ann's Sears sportswear, though they're spotlessly clean and pressed.
LeGrange sighs heavily as he moves toward the podium set up at the corner of the stage. "Each morning my wife, Sue-Ann, reads me the news," he says. His voice, while pleasant enough, isn't really that of a trained orator, either; more like someone's trusted uncle, confiding and vaguely tired.
Surprisingly—or not—it does nothing to ease Sam's uneasiness about the whole business. He nudges his mother in the side. "Does he know? That it's Sue-Ann?"
"Jesus, Sam, could you say that any louder?" Mary pinches him in his ribs and Layla's mom turns to glare hot death at him.
"Never seems good, does it?"
The crowd murmurs agreement. Seems there's always someone committing some immoral, unspeakable act." Sam glances at Mary again, but she seems intent on the sermon. "But I say to you: God is watching. God rewards the good and He punishes the corrupt." The crowd noise gets louder; when Sam looks around, a lot of people are on their feet with their arms upraised in prayer, eyes closed or fixed devouringly on Roy LeGrange.
"Mom," he whispers, his unease growing by the second. Mary doesn't look at him. "Mom," he says again, slightly louder. "We shouldn't be here."
"You think not, son?" Roy LeGrange's voice rings out, louder than before, pointed, and it takes Sam a moment to realize that LeGrange is talking to him.
Sam sinks lower in his chair, ignoring the pain when he does so. 'Um. Sorry."
"No, don't be worry. Just watch what you say around a blind man. We got real sharp ears." The congregation laughs and Sam's face burns hot. LeGrange tilts his head toward Sam, his smile gentle. "What's your name, son?"
Sam glances sideways and his mother makes a go on! face at him. "Sam," he says finally, conscious of all the eyes in the tent on him, aware even more of the prickle of their jealousy, their want, like grubby, grabby hands on his skin.
"Sam," Roy LeGrange repeats, as if turning it over in his mouth. His smile widens. "Samuel. A good, strong name. A Biblical name. Do you know what your name means, Samuel? It means 'God heard'." LeGrange laughs, delighted. "God heard. And he certainly must have, to lead you here today. I want you to come up here, Samuel."
Panic stabs into Sam, though he knows good and well that this is what they came here for. He's got Dean's warnings echoing in his head (Don't trust her. Especially her.) and his mother's own words (If ever there was a family that deserved to be salted and burned…) and he can't move.
"Sam." Mary pushes him gently, her tone anything but.
Feeling as if he's moving along a freezing riptide, Sam gets up and makes his way to the stage. Even the three shallow steps up to the stage leave him breathless and weak and at the top, Sue-Ann takes his arm, giving him a sharp look that he nonetheless can't interpret. She guides him over to where LeGrange waits at the podium and then moves away, vanishing through a curtain tacked up to separate the front of the stage from the back.
LeGrange reaches for Sam, touching his wrist and then carefully fumbling up his arm. "You ready?" he asks, an undeniable excitement charging his voice.
"Look, no disrespect, but I'm not exactly a believer," Sam hedges. Not of this. This…puppet show. Sam looks out over the sea of hungry faces again. Only two of them look real; his mother's, intent and intense, and Layla, trying desperately to hide her disappointment and her tears.
Brain cancer. It's completely inoperable, you know.
LeGrange laughs. "You will be, Samuel, chosen of God. You will be." He turns back to the congregation, lifting his arms. "Pray with me, friends."
The whole crowd raises their arms as well, joining hands—even his mother, though she looks more amused than anything. LeGrange's head tips back a little and Sam can see that his eyes are closed, even behind his sunglasses.
Sam feels like he should feel something. The gathering of whatever power LeGrange—through Sue-Ann—is going to summon, or heat or cold or something. But there isn't anything. There's just him, standing there—looming, really—and feeling alternately like he'd really like to sit down before he falls down and feeling like a first class dummy.
How is this even my life? he wonders, as LeGrange puts his hand on Sam's shoulder and then spiders it up Sam's jaw to rest at Sam's temple, tickling his hair line. It's an effort not to shiver away, though LeGrange's skin is warm, almost cottony.
Then it all changes.
Sam doesn't even know how to explain what happens. One moment, he's standing there feeling gigantic and foolish. The next…it's like the world slips away from him, as if he's falling through misty layers he thought were reality into some cold and gray liminal space.
His knees buckle. He knows this, feels himself falling, but there's nothing he can do to stop himself. There's no pain when he hits the canvas covered planks of the stage. There's nothing. There's nothing at all.
Panic slices through him, the same depthless ocean of terror that overtakes him when he sinks into sleep; the fear that he won't wake up, that he won't surface. The congregation is clapping and cheering and Sam thinks there's something both hilarious and terrible about that.
Through a long, wavering tunnel, Sam looks at Roy LeGrange. His arms are upraised again, this time accepting the accolades of his followers. Behind him…
Behind him is what looks like a ghost.
***
"I'm telling you, Mom, there was something…wrong," Sam insists after the doctor has given him a clean bill of health. "And you can't tell me it's coincidence that on the same day—the exact same day—that Sue-Ann heals me, some other guy who's exactly my age dies from a massive heart attack."
"I'm not telling you anything," Mary answers stubbornly. Her face is closed, eyes evasive underneath sullen lids. "I just don't think we should jump to any conclusions."
"I'm not jumping anywhere. I took a tiny little step and there conclusions were."
Mary shakes her head, mouth twisting. "I knew I should've kept you and your brother from watching so much Buffy. It rots the brain."
"Don't be funny. This isn't funny."
She tosses him his jacket. It hits him in the face. "Oh, it's at least a little funny. C'mon. Let's go."
"Go where?" He drags his jacket off his head and shrugs into it. He knows it'll pass, but he feels so conscious of his movement, how easy it is to put on his coat and what agony it was before.
Mary looks surprised. "We're leaving."
"Leaving? Like…leaving town?"
"That is the general idea," Mary agrees.
He grabs her by the shoulder of her jacket, checking her. Her head swings toward him, a look in her eyes that makes him snatch his fingers back quickly. "Mom, we can't leave. Not like this. If that guy died for me…"
Mary spins around. "Sam, you're being hysterical!"
The plaguing sense of cold that's been dogging him since stumbling from Roy LeGrange's revival tent sweeps Sam from toes to crown. "Did you know?" he hisses, hating that he even has to ask the question. That he has to contemplate that she's capable of this. "Did you know that's what would happen, if Sue-Ann healed me?"
Her glance darts sideways and she twists her fingers in his sleeve, dragging him into the nearest room. Her mouth is pressed to a thin, white line. "You've been through a lot, Sam, so I'm going to leave that ugly little accusation alone. But as it happens, no. I didn't know that would happen. And I still don't know that's what happened."
"But you don't care. It doesn't bother you that someone might have died to save my life."
Mary huffs out through her nose. "No. All right? I don't care."
"How could you? I mean…what have we been doing all this time? Hunting things, saving people…what was that for, if you'd just let someone die to save me?"
"Sam. What do you think I've been doing since you were born?" Mary's voice is quiet and very, very level, her eyes narrowed to glittering slits.
Sam's throat works, but he can't bring any words of it, pinched shut and drier than the Sahara. Finally: "That's not true."
Mary says nothing, leaning against the door jamb with her arms crossed.
"Mom. Please. Tell me that's not true."
"I'm not a serial killer, Sam. Don't look at me like that."
"Then you tell me. Tell me how to look at you."
Mary sighs and scrapes a hand through her hair, making a bigger mess of it than it was before. "Sam, I love you. Your father and you and your brother…I would do anything for you. Anything."
"I know that."
"No," Mary disagrees. "You know the bullshit that people think is anything. But when I say 'anything', I mean it. It's not just bullshit. I haven't cut a swath across America killing everyone that gets in my way. I don't like it. I don't enjoy it. But if it comes down to a choice between anyone else in the world or you and your brother, then I pick the two of you. Every time. And I'm not going to feel sorry for that."
"Well, what if I don't want you to?"
"What makes you think you have a choice?" Mary's eyebrows arch. "I'm your mother, Sam. Not your friend. And I don't answer to you."
"No," Sam agrees, "you don't. But I do. And I'm not leaving here until I figure out what Sue-Ann did and stop her from doing it to anyone else."
Unspoken are the words: You can leave if you want to, but they stand between them anyway like a thrown gauntlet.
Mary's sigh is deep and exasperated, but there's another note to it too, one he can't identify. She buries her face in her hands, fingertips pressing against her eyelids. "Do you understand what you're doing? What you're asking?" Another sigh, softer this time, and she lets her hands fall limply to her sides. "We stand to make a horrible enemy of Sue-Ann and the truth is…" Her voice fractures a little—small enough that she can (and would) deny it, but Sam hears it anyway. "The truth is, kiddo, we can't afford too many more enemies."
Sam smiles. It's weak, but he tries. "Aw, hell, Mom; we wouldn't be Winchesters if we didn't piss people off wherever we go."
Mary chokes and then her smile wakens, slow as the tide.
Today's Word Count: 2,005
Current Total Word Count: 25,523
Current Project Word Count: 78,750
Estimated Total Word Count: ~100,000
What's bad: That it took me this frickin' long to get 2K today.
What's good: Sam. Sam is a rockin', stand up guy and I love him for it. And Mary, because she is a cold-hearted bitch about everything except when it comes to her kids.
What pleases me:Mary sighs and scrapes a hand through her hair, making a bigger mess of it than it was before. "Sam, I love you. Your father and you and your brother...I would do anything for you. Anything."
"I know that."
"No," Mary disagrees. "You know the bullshit that people think is anything. But when I say 'anything', I mean it. It's not just bullshit. I haven't cut a swath across America killing everyone that gets in my way. I don't like it. I don't enjoy it. But if it comes down to a choice between anyone else in the world or you and your brother, then I pick the two of you. Every time. And I'm not going to feel sorry for that."
"Well, what if I don't want you to?"
"What makes you think you have a choice?" Mary's eyebrows arch. "I'm your mother, Sam. Not your friend. And I don't answer to you."
"No," Sam agrees, "you don't. But I do. And I'm not leaving here until I figure out what Sue-Ann did and stop her from doing it to anyone else."
Previous parts can be found here
"What does that mean, 'blood-gift'?" Sam asks in an undertone as they settle into the creaky folding chairs—ironically, just behind Layla and the older woman who must be her mother. His brain hurts as much as his body; there are so many questions he wants to ask his mother and he doesn't have any real idea where to start. He feels like there's more information here than he's capable of taking in, a tangled web of family that he'd never even been aware of but that the reality of hearing Sue-Ann LeGrange call his mother 'Lillith' has brought crashing home.
Mary makes a face. "It's a formal way of asking for a favor. A favor that only someone in the family can grant."
"So there's no actual blood," Sam persists.
Mary slants him a wry glance and smile. "No, Sam. There's no blood."
Sam settles back into the chair, not entirely reassured but unable to formulate another question before Sue-Ann guides the infamous Roy LeGrange to the stage. Whatever Sam was expecting LeGrange to look like, it wasn't this: a stoop shouldered and unprepossessing, blind eyes hidden behind blacked out sunglasses. His plain white shirt and dark slacks are no finer than Sue-Ann's Sears sportswear, though they're spotlessly clean and pressed.
LeGrange sighs heavily as he moves toward the podium set up at the corner of the stage. "Each morning my wife, Sue-Ann, reads me the news," he says. His voice, while pleasant enough, isn't really that of a trained orator, either; more like someone's trusted uncle, confiding and vaguely tired.
Surprisingly—or not—it does nothing to ease Sam's uneasiness about the whole business. He nudges his mother in the side. "Does he know? That it's Sue-Ann?"
"Jesus, Sam, could you say that any louder?" Mary pinches him in his ribs and Layla's mom turns to glare hot death at him.
"Never seems good, does it?"
The crowd murmurs agreement. Seems there's always someone committing some immoral, unspeakable act." Sam glances at Mary again, but she seems intent on the sermon. "But I say to you: God is watching. God rewards the good and He punishes the corrupt." The crowd noise gets louder; when Sam looks around, a lot of people are on their feet with their arms upraised in prayer, eyes closed or fixed devouringly on Roy LeGrange.
"Mom," he whispers, his unease growing by the second. Mary doesn't look at him. "Mom," he says again, slightly louder. "We shouldn't be here."
"You think not, son?" Roy LeGrange's voice rings out, louder than before, pointed, and it takes Sam a moment to realize that LeGrange is talking to him.
Sam sinks lower in his chair, ignoring the pain when he does so. 'Um. Sorry."
"No, don't be worry. Just watch what you say around a blind man. We got real sharp ears." The congregation laughs and Sam's face burns hot. LeGrange tilts his head toward Sam, his smile gentle. "What's your name, son?"
Sam glances sideways and his mother makes a go on! face at him. "Sam," he says finally, conscious of all the eyes in the tent on him, aware even more of the prickle of their jealousy, their want, like grubby, grabby hands on his skin.
"Sam," Roy LeGrange repeats, as if turning it over in his mouth. His smile widens. "Samuel. A good, strong name. A Biblical name. Do you know what your name means, Samuel? It means 'God heard'." LeGrange laughs, delighted. "God heard. And he certainly must have, to lead you here today. I want you to come up here, Samuel."
Panic stabs into Sam, though he knows good and well that this is what they came here for. He's got Dean's warnings echoing in his head (Don't trust her. Especially her.) and his mother's own words (If ever there was a family that deserved to be salted and burned…) and he can't move.
"Sam." Mary pushes him gently, her tone anything but.
Feeling as if he's moving along a freezing riptide, Sam gets up and makes his way to the stage. Even the three shallow steps up to the stage leave him breathless and weak and at the top, Sue-Ann takes his arm, giving him a sharp look that he nonetheless can't interpret. She guides him over to where LeGrange waits at the podium and then moves away, vanishing through a curtain tacked up to separate the front of the stage from the back.
LeGrange reaches for Sam, touching his wrist and then carefully fumbling up his arm. "You ready?" he asks, an undeniable excitement charging his voice.
"Look, no disrespect, but I'm not exactly a believer," Sam hedges. Not of this. This…puppet show. Sam looks out over the sea of hungry faces again. Only two of them look real; his mother's, intent and intense, and Layla, trying desperately to hide her disappointment and her tears.
Brain cancer. It's completely inoperable, you know.
LeGrange laughs. "You will be, Samuel, chosen of God. You will be." He turns back to the congregation, lifting his arms. "Pray with me, friends."
The whole crowd raises their arms as well, joining hands—even his mother, though she looks more amused than anything. LeGrange's head tips back a little and Sam can see that his eyes are closed, even behind his sunglasses.
Sam feels like he should feel something. The gathering of whatever power LeGrange—through Sue-Ann—is going to summon, or heat or cold or something. But there isn't anything. There's just him, standing there—looming, really—and feeling alternately like he'd really like to sit down before he falls down and feeling like a first class dummy.
How is this even my life? he wonders, as LeGrange puts his hand on Sam's shoulder and then spiders it up Sam's jaw to rest at Sam's temple, tickling his hair line. It's an effort not to shiver away, though LeGrange's skin is warm, almost cottony.
Then it all changes.
Sam doesn't even know how to explain what happens. One moment, he's standing there feeling gigantic and foolish. The next…it's like the world slips away from him, as if he's falling through misty layers he thought were reality into some cold and gray liminal space.
His knees buckle. He knows this, feels himself falling, but there's nothing he can do to stop himself. There's no pain when he hits the canvas covered planks of the stage. There's nothing. There's nothing at all.
Panic slices through him, the same depthless ocean of terror that overtakes him when he sinks into sleep; the fear that he won't wake up, that he won't surface. The congregation is clapping and cheering and Sam thinks there's something both hilarious and terrible about that.
Through a long, wavering tunnel, Sam looks at Roy LeGrange. His arms are upraised again, this time accepting the accolades of his followers. Behind him…
Behind him is what looks like a ghost.
"I'm telling you, Mom, there was something…wrong," Sam insists after the doctor has given him a clean bill of health. "And you can't tell me it's coincidence that on the same day—the exact same day—that Sue-Ann heals me, some other guy who's exactly my age dies from a massive heart attack."
"I'm not telling you anything," Mary answers stubbornly. Her face is closed, eyes evasive underneath sullen lids. "I just don't think we should jump to any conclusions."
"I'm not jumping anywhere. I took a tiny little step and there conclusions were."
Mary shakes her head, mouth twisting. "I knew I should've kept you and your brother from watching so much Buffy. It rots the brain."
"Don't be funny. This isn't funny."
She tosses him his jacket. It hits him in the face. "Oh, it's at least a little funny. C'mon. Let's go."
"Go where?" He drags his jacket off his head and shrugs into it. He knows it'll pass, but he feels so conscious of his movement, how easy it is to put on his coat and what agony it was before.
Mary looks surprised. "We're leaving."
"Leaving? Like…leaving town?"
"That is the general idea," Mary agrees.
He grabs her by the shoulder of her jacket, checking her. Her head swings toward him, a look in her eyes that makes him snatch his fingers back quickly. "Mom, we can't leave. Not like this. If that guy died for me…"
Mary spins around. "Sam, you're being hysterical!"
The plaguing sense of cold that's been dogging him since stumbling from Roy LeGrange's revival tent sweeps Sam from toes to crown. "Did you know?" he hisses, hating that he even has to ask the question. That he has to contemplate that she's capable of this. "Did you know that's what would happen, if Sue-Ann healed me?"
Her glance darts sideways and she twists her fingers in his sleeve, dragging him into the nearest room. Her mouth is pressed to a thin, white line. "You've been through a lot, Sam, so I'm going to leave that ugly little accusation alone. But as it happens, no. I didn't know that would happen. And I still don't know that's what happened."
"But you don't care. It doesn't bother you that someone might have died to save my life."
Mary huffs out through her nose. "No. All right? I don't care."
"How could you? I mean…what have we been doing all this time? Hunting things, saving people…what was that for, if you'd just let someone die to save me?"
"Sam. What do you think I've been doing since you were born?" Mary's voice is quiet and very, very level, her eyes narrowed to glittering slits.
Sam's throat works, but he can't bring any words of it, pinched shut and drier than the Sahara. Finally: "That's not true."
Mary says nothing, leaning against the door jamb with her arms crossed.
"Mom. Please. Tell me that's not true."
"I'm not a serial killer, Sam. Don't look at me like that."
"Then you tell me. Tell me how to look at you."
Mary sighs and scrapes a hand through her hair, making a bigger mess of it than it was before. "Sam, I love you. Your father and you and your brother…I would do anything for you. Anything."
"I know that."
"No," Mary disagrees. "You know the bullshit that people think is anything. But when I say 'anything', I mean it. It's not just bullshit. I haven't cut a swath across America killing everyone that gets in my way. I don't like it. I don't enjoy it. But if it comes down to a choice between anyone else in the world or you and your brother, then I pick the two of you. Every time. And I'm not going to feel sorry for that."
"Well, what if I don't want you to?"
"What makes you think you have a choice?" Mary's eyebrows arch. "I'm your mother, Sam. Not your friend. And I don't answer to you."
"No," Sam agrees, "you don't. But I do. And I'm not leaving here until I figure out what Sue-Ann did and stop her from doing it to anyone else."
Unspoken are the words: You can leave if you want to, but they stand between them anyway like a thrown gauntlet.
Mary's sigh is deep and exasperated, but there's another note to it too, one he can't identify. She buries her face in her hands, fingertips pressing against her eyelids. "Do you understand what you're doing? What you're asking?" Another sigh, softer this time, and she lets her hands fall limply to her sides. "We stand to make a horrible enemy of Sue-Ann and the truth is…" Her voice fractures a little—small enough that she can (and would) deny it, but Sam hears it anyway. "The truth is, kiddo, we can't afford too many more enemies."
Sam smiles. It's weak, but he tries. "Aw, hell, Mom; we wouldn't be Winchesters if we didn't piss people off wherever we go."
Mary chokes and then her smile wakens, slow as the tide.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-25 10:04 pm (UTC)Because she IS the baddest momma bear in the forest. *nods* The position she was put in... because of the backstory you gave her, it's so much worse than John's. He was forced to trade his children's childhoods and probable happiness for their safety, and Mary has had to trade EVERYTHING for their safety, including lives.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 01:57 am (UTC)