FIC: Return (SPN, 800w, gen, outsider POv)
Nov. 7th, 2014 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
citrus_javaTitle: Return
Characters: outside POV, Sam (for me it's always Sam and Dean, in whatever form, but it's not about them)
Rating: gen
words: ~800
Warnings: Spoilers for season 3, between fic and original work, unbetaed
Fandom: Supernatural, also see notes .
Summary: She has many names, there's a lot of road ahead.
She drives her 1978 Pinto through the desert, as the sky goes the same unreal color as the lone gas station neon sign.
There's a lot of road ahead.
Past midnight, she stops at a 24 hour McDonalds and gift shop roadside mini-mall. She and the place don't fit together in the same w orld, but there they are. Hard to tell which one of them is out of place.
She slurps her chocolate milkshake with greedy enjoyment, distracted with thoughts of the work before her, and eats her fries as she gets back into the car.
She doesn't toss the wrappers in the back. There are important things there.
Her neatly folded clothes still smelling fresh, some smelling of live body. She has room to move in them, none of that stretchy, restrictive stuff, and she sure needs the room. Outsiders would tell you, sometimes tell her at toll booths or rest stops, that she is fat, and hairy, and old. Some people call her things for that. She has many names.
The next morning, around ten, as the sun begins to take the day serious, she finds the last bone, a wolf's scapula .
The next day she cleans the bones, setting them together on the bleached sand at it goes warmer, humming as she works, sleeaves a wave of color against the sky. She hums to herself, at times it's easy, throaty sounds, sometimes the tune shapes into something she may have heard playing at some diner, or riffs from home. She likes Nicki Minaj . She smoothes the bones fondly as she works and rubs, almost encouragement . and they meet her halfway , , coming together with tendons and cartilages and blood vessels beginning to beat pleasantly under her patting fingers .
At night, the wolf looks up at her, fur tired but new, the color of the darkening sky. She gets some water out of the back seat and pours it into a flat container for her. It's been baking in the car all day, warm and industrial smelling, but the wolf laps at it, and places her hairy, heavy muzzle, fondly dripping on the fabric of her thigh. She pats the wolf's shoulders, and they rest for a moment. It's been a hard day.
the wolf observes her with new eyes, old, not who she was before, how could she be, after the desert. How would she even know who to be, if she tried, pieces from Whitehorse, Yukon, Alberta, northeast Oregon, Minnesota, hind leg from a meadow at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, nail polished as a talisman, from the Caspian Sea, vertebra from behind a California zoo. She know it can be confusing to try to be some many things, that mean so much for other, not even knowing what . The wolf presses her cheek to her belly, warm and wild, then runs off, surrounded by fresh air and night, and stars, too. In the last of the light from her headlights - trusty Pinto idling, lighting their piece of sand - she sees a flash of change, maybe, the wolf's joy in running now a woman-wolf's joy. She hopes not, wolves are better than people, but it's her body now, again, and it's her prerogative to morph into a woman if that's her thing. No judgment.
she slowly collects the bits and ends of her long day, back aching and hair wisping out of its fastening. Gathers the more dangerous things into bags, sitting on her cooler with a beer, crumbles some leftover treats for the opossums or whathaveyou, coyotes, whoever likes leftover KFC can have it - her small thank you for the desert. hauls the stuff back into her backseat - looking emptier than before.
Time passes, and she is outside a small town in Florida, resting on the hood of her car and humming at the stars, when a man approaches, tall the sort of hungry who doesn't remember he is anymore. His shirt is bloody. Old blood. His blood. Mostly. He exists a black old car that she likes, and in the back seat he keeps something important as well. She can tell he knows better than to approach a woman alone on a deserted road, but he does anyway . She has a rifle, but she is pretty sure she doesn't need it. Yet.
She doesn't often talk with people like him. But there is desperation in his expression that reminds her of some wolves, obsessive persistence, the more it hurts the more sense it makes, brown hair in his eyes like the weight of a head on her thigh. Soft.
she tell him - they don't come back the same.
He says he doesn't care. He says please, just please. He doesn't understand she mans it literally. This isn't a thing she can do for the loved ones. They can come back for themselves, but they're never the same. But she can tell he'd have said please anyway. Hell, who knows, maybe his would be the exception.
She doesn't shoot him.
They drive for the Everglades.
Notes:
Yesterday I was present at a reading of a story from Women Who Run With Wolves, which IU haven't read, but this can sort of be fic for - I couldn't find the story or its origins online - but it made me cry , and I needed it, the story. And wanted it as part of SPN, it felt like the missing part, the female characters I want ri read/watch in SPN. I want to be her some day. I loved that her world was just simply not so much about men (though then I went and wrote her relating with men still). I adored having a character like that even imaginable. I so often feel like - I'm supposed to already be able to do things, handle the world, be OK - and I'm only going to have less and less agency as time goes by . There are not a lot of opportunities waiting for me - and in the future, not even the opportunity to be exploited for being young . I so very much want to take a road trip, long and elaborate and wonderful, I hopee I ever get to . It's comforting to have a story about someone who gets to do that, have all that amazing agency, boundaries, and do something beautiful and meaningful, while also being old, fat, hairy and a woman.
Characters: outside POV, Sam (for me it's always Sam and Dean, in whatever form, but it's not about them)
Rating: gen
words: ~800
Warnings: Spoilers for season 3, between fic and original work, unbetaed
Fandom: Supernatural, also see notes .
Summary: She has many names, there's a lot of road ahead.
She drives her 1978 Pinto through the desert, as the sky goes the same unreal color as the lone gas station neon sign.
There's a lot of road ahead.
Past midnight, she stops at a 24 hour McDonalds and gift shop roadside mini-mall. She and the place don't fit together in the same w orld, but there they are. Hard to tell which one of them is out of place.
She slurps her chocolate milkshake with greedy enjoyment, distracted with thoughts of the work before her, and eats her fries as she gets back into the car.
She doesn't toss the wrappers in the back. There are important things there.
Her neatly folded clothes still smelling fresh, some smelling of live body. She has room to move in them, none of that stretchy, restrictive stuff, and she sure needs the room. Outsiders would tell you, sometimes tell her at toll booths or rest stops, that she is fat, and hairy, and old. Some people call her things for that. She has many names.
The next morning, around ten, as the sun begins to take the day serious, she finds the last bone, a wolf's scapula .
The next day she cleans the bones, setting them together on the bleached sand at it goes warmer, humming as she works, sleeaves a wave of color against the sky. She hums to herself, at times it's easy, throaty sounds, sometimes the tune shapes into something she may have heard playing at some diner, or riffs from home. She likes Nicki Minaj . She smoothes the bones fondly as she works and rubs, almost encouragement . and they meet her halfway , , coming together with tendons and cartilages and blood vessels beginning to beat pleasantly under her patting fingers .
At night, the wolf looks up at her, fur tired but new, the color of the darkening sky. She gets some water out of the back seat and pours it into a flat container for her. It's been baking in the car all day, warm and industrial smelling, but the wolf laps at it, and places her hairy, heavy muzzle, fondly dripping on the fabric of her thigh. She pats the wolf's shoulders, and they rest for a moment. It's been a hard day.
the wolf observes her with new eyes, old, not who she was before, how could she be, after the desert. How would she even know who to be, if she tried, pieces from Whitehorse, Yukon, Alberta, northeast Oregon, Minnesota, hind leg from a meadow at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, nail polished as a talisman, from the Caspian Sea, vertebra from behind a California zoo. She know it can be confusing to try to be some many things, that mean so much for other, not even knowing what . The wolf presses her cheek to her belly, warm and wild, then runs off, surrounded by fresh air and night, and stars, too. In the last of the light from her headlights - trusty Pinto idling, lighting their piece of sand - she sees a flash of change, maybe, the wolf's joy in running now a woman-wolf's joy. She hopes not, wolves are better than people, but it's her body now, again, and it's her prerogative to morph into a woman if that's her thing. No judgment.
she slowly collects the bits and ends of her long day, back aching and hair wisping out of its fastening. Gathers the more dangerous things into bags, sitting on her cooler with a beer, crumbles some leftover treats for the opossums or whathaveyou, coyotes, whoever likes leftover KFC can have it - her small thank you for the desert. hauls the stuff back into her backseat - looking emptier than before.
Time passes, and she is outside a small town in Florida, resting on the hood of her car and humming at the stars, when a man approaches, tall the sort of hungry who doesn't remember he is anymore. His shirt is bloody. Old blood. His blood. Mostly. He exists a black old car that she likes, and in the back seat he keeps something important as well. She can tell he knows better than to approach a woman alone on a deserted road, but he does anyway . She has a rifle, but she is pretty sure she doesn't need it. Yet.
She doesn't often talk with people like him. But there is desperation in his expression that reminds her of some wolves, obsessive persistence, the more it hurts the more sense it makes, brown hair in his eyes like the weight of a head on her thigh. Soft.
she tell him - they don't come back the same.
He says he doesn't care. He says please, just please. He doesn't understand she mans it literally. This isn't a thing she can do for the loved ones. They can come back for themselves, but they're never the same. But she can tell he'd have said please anyway. Hell, who knows, maybe his would be the exception.
She doesn't shoot him.
They drive for the Everglades.
Notes:
Yesterday I was present at a reading of a story from Women Who Run With Wolves, which IU haven't read, but this can sort of be fic for
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-11-08 04:39 pm (UTC)The tone to this is gorgeous, and the agency your narrator describes to her creations (and its transbordered origins, with bones from so many places), as well as to spirits and bodies others might need to ressurrect is so refreshing, and true, and important.
I love that she loves Nicki Minaj--and even more so, that it's a non-sequitur, an aside. I love the wolf and its pieces, its labor to be or seem so many pieces; I love her thoughts on its potential future transformations, its choices. I love this: Outsiders would tell you, sometimes tell her at toll booths or rest stops, that she is fat, and hairy, and old. Some people call her things for that. She has many names. And I love that she has many names, and that those given her are included and owned, even in their untruth/limitedness. I love this line, too, which says so much about her as well as the approachee: She can tell he knows better than to approach a woman alone on a deserted road, but he does anyway.
This is the kind of fic that you want to read a few times, you want to linger in the language, experience all the bright, arresting phrasings that you'll miss if you skim, the way you are wont on a screen. It's a fic you want to remember--which is good, because you won't have a choice. It makes itself memorable. <333
And I love your author's note, and am really curious about Women Who Run With Wolves now.
Thank you for this piece, bb. <333
no subject
Date: 2014-11-27 11:52 am (UTC)Thank you, so much, thank you. You don't know how much this means for me.
this fic.. I had this sense, this magic thing I saw, and needed and wanted, and wanted to eshare too - and was pretty sure was not going to get through and no one would get, it was so... fleeting and unknown for me as well...
And when I thought seriously no one would get it, perhaps no one even read it - o - you got it so deeply and saw things there that I hadn't realized and o, THANK YOU....
I love
that you noticed so many things about it... so many little choices and things I was trying to do.
I love that she loves Nicki Minaj too, and thank you for what you said about transbordered bodies, I wouldn't have known to say that, to conceive of it the way those words bring forth; - and thank you for your choice of excerpt, it's spot-on, better than my summary by far.
Her names - I wanted to play on the, you know, the Gandalf thing, the character who has so many names cause they're important in many places and ways - I wanted to combine that with the heartbreaking realization I had some years ago, that social disempowerment would in most cases be part of a road trip, like it or not, no escape, that it's so often a white straight men thing for a reason, and the texts I love that try to break that are working against something, oppression travels with you. I was trying to figure out a way to convey through her POV - she runs with some scary crowds, perhaps oppression riding shotgun is not that different from other scary companions... and I figured she'd know these meanings her body (etc) holds because she'd be told - like everybody - and it came together. ...
Regarding the agency - she must know - at least by now- that she is both saving but also - not- because - really - this loving worrk of hers, its compassionate aspects - towards who could she be compassionate but who that being is then, the others - the wolf cannot be "fixed", be like in the past - who would she be? How would she be completely each of those tthings she is from? But she also can't be other or completely disconnected from them, she is built out of them... I used to have a notion that it was a bad idea to, say, tattoo someone's name on myself (not that I have) - because if we broke up or such, I wouldn't then, be able to go back to being "my original " and "clean", you know? But leaving or returning isn't "un-becoming" and original isn't a concrete thing... - marks much greater influence my life and my me - making them visible has meaning, but is not the difference between changing back and not being able to. And it's maybe OK - re Dean - there is grief to be had fro that beloved Dean that has been. but reverting isn't necessarily being new, free or exactly able- Dean was not - moving forward can have elements of those things... IDK As Sam, I would probably most insist about Dean not being in hell - any Dean, whatever that means - Sam's world is much more concrete with closed categories - still, I believe he would choose that - even if it meant never getting Dean - his Dean - back, letting go for a possible chance to magic his own Dean back somehow... kinda different from the way Dean was about Sam's addiction. Dean, I suspect, would have also chosen to get Sam back - but more out of a sense of urgency and a sense that if he disregarded the identity chick talk, and if he disregarded the warnings, charging through would be ok - and then he would have had to come to terms with Sam being different after. He probably would have found a way to be guilty about it.
no subject
Date: 2014-11-08 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-09 09:51 am (UTC)And sorry it took me some time to reply - I was a little overwhelmed
(though it was very meaningful!) with people's responcens to the story :-)-
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