driftfleet | voice. a quick sad post.

Entry tags:

voice. a quick sad post.

Who: Sam Winchester
Broadcast: fleetwide
Action: Red Fish
When: after a sad shuffle :C

[Sam's very much subdued the day that Dean vanishes. If he reacts more viscerally to it, to knowing that this Dean was returning to his inevitable death at Sam and satan's own hands, nobody'd know it — he closes himself up in his room, keeps himself distant for a little while. It helps, because it also gets him away from those damned echoes that have begun to snowball. He's tried his best to ignore them, and with Dean suddenly gone... he doesn't trust himself to be anything but stressed at the sight.

Anyway. Um. Best to move forward, right...? Get back into things. Working at the bar keeps his mind busy, as does helping with the garden, and there's also helping with the weird messages from the planet, and — dammit, Sam, get back into things. Fake it 'til you make it. This too shall pass, if you pretend hard enough that you're fine. So he breathes in deep, breathes out, and addresses the fleet.]

My brother, Dean, um. Dean Winchester's left the fleet. I wasn't sure how many people knew him, but...

[A pause.]

Anyone want to talk? I could use something to keep me occupied. Your choice of topic, just shoot. I can be a pretty good listener, too.

[Help me get out of this funk, huh.]

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You in your flannel -- reminds me of a stevedore. [ she's teasing. a little bit of deflection, of course, in the wake of revealing just enough about herself. ]

[He nearly spits his tea, thank you, Peggy.

But he recovers well enough, putting a hand against a smiling mouth.]

Wow.

Not the worst I've been referred to, but thanks. You have a lot of stevedore friends in your lifetime??

Friends? [ oh, she laughs. ] Good God, no. But I'll admit I spend more time than I like getting into trouble at the docks.

[...................... That sounds... frisky....

He raises his eyebrows at her, unsure what best way there is to ask about this trouble.]

[ her laughter is sharp -- almost embarrassed. ] My line of work -- my real work -- sometimes requires poking 'round a few import/export businesses. Determining what people are bringing into the country. And why.

Oh. Right. So illegal smuggling.

Usually in my line of work, we have to try to avoid people in your line of work.

[He laughs.]

You do some pretty... interesting stuff, when you're in the hunter's life.

The same can be said about the life of an SSR agent. [ he's always been so forthcoming with the details of his own work, and so she settles into something approaching honesty. ] Although I'm fairly confident those initials won't mean much to you -- it seems the same agency might've gone by a different name in some iterations of the world.

Once, we had a young man here on the Starstruck who described a very similar organization called the OSS.

[ -- the agency that grew into the cia. ]

Ah - that's right. It was a predecessor to the CIA.

[And there is Sam's geeky brain, what's up.

He smiles sheepishly.]

... I um, have to pretend to be some kind of agent on a semi-regular basis.

Impersonating a federal agent! Must land you in some hot water. [ she should know. ] I've heard about the CIA link, yes. But back home I've learned the SSR instead breaks into two different agencies: the CIA and SHIELD.

Mmm, yeah. I've seen the inside of a cell before, for sure.

Specific differences between the two?

Edited 2016-12-29 01:40 (UTC)

[ calmly, except for a slight edge of irritation: ] Hard to say. I've never known the CIA and I have yet to found SHIELD.

[ a crinkle of her nose. ] But I will. Purportedly.

Oh no.

Future talk.

[He speaks as someone who is so familiar with ~future~ business.

The sympathy is real.]

-- Can you imagine how infuriating it is to live a life of secrecy and discretion, only to find your name fit for a history textbook decades later? It makes one feel a little like a failure, Sam.

[..... He is just gonna. Drink his tea. He raises his eyebrows and looks to the side.]

Um, yeah... I don't really - need to imagine, actually.

Is that so? [ she smiles -- almost playful. ] Tell me, which international incidents have you unintentionally incited for the future?

[ she's serious. commiserate with her. please. ]

[He winces. This topic is not a great one, and it's been - really rough to revisit back home. Usually... people remember Sam as That Guy Who Fucked Everything Up. Sam's slowly come to terms with it, both back home and in other universes (especially thanks to people like Nami - she hardly lets him beat himself up as much these days). It happened. And Sam's figuring out that maybe it's not all on him.

Angels and demons are dicks. Majorly.

But he made mistakes. A lot of them.

The guilt still eats at him at his lowest.

Maybe that's all clearly played on the hesitancy that follows her playfulness. He's not quite playful in return, more shamed than anything, like she caught him red-handed breaking a rule.

At the same time? Fuck it, you know? The books had shown up here. He's explained it before to equally fair and polite company. She's not gonna make him drink demon blood or throw him in a cell, or anything. She may even Get It.]

A prophet wrote an entire novel series on my family's life that kind of, um. Cultivated into how we got - tricked into helping start an angelic apocalypse?

[He... sips his tea. Pauses. Winces a smile.]

Don't worry, we, uh, stopped it. So it's okay.

[ it's not that she doesn't believe sam. more like -- what sam's saying is very difficult to believe. it speaks to kind of cosmic bitterness that she can't even access. a level of fubar that she's only flirted with.

peggy drinks her tea and takes a moment to digest what he's trying to tell her and... ]

Stopped it?

[ she starts with the cheeriest note, such as it is. they can work their way down from there. ]

[Ahahah. Ha. Sigh. He turns the chair a bit, sitting on it backwards with his arms perched on the backrest.]

... Um, yeah. The angels - were tired of waiting for God to show up again, and wanted to start the apocalypse. It would in theory create a paradise in the end where everyone would go, sooner or later. But in order for it to happen, Lucifer had to be released from Hell and fight his brothers. It'd have destroyed millions... billions of people.

[He shifts, frowning.]

In order for us to stop all that, we had to lock Lucifer back up in his cage.

Or else our asses were kissed goodbye.

[ peggy carter is not a religious woman. oh, certainly, there was a plethora of spiritual education options back at st-martin's. but (young troublemaker that she was) she was more likely to be caught behind the school chapel experimenting with cigarettes than in the pews themselves. and then war broke out, and she began to wonder how anyone carried their faith them through something so horrible. but this isn't faith that sam was discussing -- he spoke about these things as though they were tangible. real. undeniable. ten bloody yards beyond a question of belief.

she sighs. offers a slow shake of her head. ] Shit -- [ she doesn't swear often, but when she does? it sounds sincere. heartfelt. ] You'll need to give us a moment to process something like that.

[ peggy stands. she fetches herself a second cuppa. ]

[Aw, man. He is patiently riding out her moment of processing.]

... Sorry, that was a lot. I should've... gave it in pieces.

Sometimes I just forget what normal sounds like.

I rather thought I'd overcome 'normality' years ago -- [ witnessing project rebirth. the red skull. the horrifying power behind the tesseract. but then zero matter blew all of that out of the water. as if that wasn't enough, there's everything she's learned since arriving here.

but it's all very different to hearing someone discuss biblical matters so frankly. ] And then you come swanning in, [ her tone is hard. but it's more like armour than a weapon. ] Talking about bloody angels and Lucifer and -- God.

[ as if coming to terms with loki hadn't been difficult enough. ]

I know, I know. Kind of too straight-forward.

[He sounds apologetic, at least, turning the cup in his hand absently.]

This was all pretty insane to me... uh, a decade ago. I was just a college kid at the time. I mean, I knew monsters existed, but - biblical stuff... If you told me I'd be trying to stop the devil I would've assumed you needed a mental hospital.

But - ever since then, there's always something to deal with.

[ she drags her palm across her face. pinches the bridge of her nose on the way down. three -- two -- one. if she can accept the insanity inherent to other worlds whose shoulders she's brushed up against since arriving in the fleet, why can't she accept his? it's the vernacular: he speaks in concepts that have always held a strange and unreal status stretching back to childhood. like hearing certain legends are true. somehow, even accepting that stefan was a vampire is easier than this.

but she's nothing if not determined. peggy tops up her cup and returns to the table -- face drawn, but not distant. ]

So when did that something switch over from monsters to the divine?

[ there's still a significant trepidation in her voice. but peggy is willing to at least try and understand. ]

[He bites his lip, remembering Jess' words, back in Adstring.

Even now, he tries to remember. Tries to not close himself off. It's just... friggin' hard. And it's a landmine of events he has to carefully pick through. At least the beginning is easier; time and distance helps a lot.

Just say it, man. It's been years. You're better now. And you're in outer space.]

Well...

Demons have been a thing, but we never really knew that there were angels. When I was in college a demon who'd been tormenting my family a long ways back came to drag me back into the hunting life. [He'll just. Leave out Jessica dying horribly. And his mother dying horribly. If it doesn't come up, it's not needed, right? He swirls the cup just a bit, taking a sip.] Turns out I was destined to be involved in the whole Apocalypse thing. They couldn't have me going into law school.

I learned about angels, uuum... A few years later?

[Oh! His eyebrows raise, and he motions with a hand.]

One of my closest friends was the first one I met, actually.

[ -- she's got a marvelous urge to fall into old habits. stern expressions and steely questions, as though wanting to interrogate him. if he's feeling observant, this urge of hers is betrayed in how tense her fingers are when they're braced against the tea-cup. her shoulders square. her gaze is sharp. she doesn't mean to treat him like a culprit on the other side of a holding cell table, but when she's feeling most uncomfortable she only has training to fall back on. ]

Well? [ curt. ] Were there wings? A brilliant halo?

[ she doubts it. but sarcasm buys her more time for belief. ]

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