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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-- 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. ]

[He blinks at that, familiar with being at the other end of an interrogation.

But he can't really blame her; he's also given a shitload of interrogations himself.]

Unfortunately not. They're kind of dicks, actually.

But they do have wings. [Er, had. They burned away a few years ago. Anyways.] You can't see them with the human eye, but they're there. Usually they're a big ball of celestial energy and require human vessels in order walk the earth - otherwise their voices are too powerful for human ears to process.

[She may be familiar with this way of talking - Wilkes spoke with that sort of matter-of-fact focus; he's better at talking about this as if it's research, something he can educate her on more than his own terrible journey.]

-- And you're entirely certain they're...angels?

[ look. loki and thor are sorta-gods (as far as she understands it) but are actually more like aliens. she doesn't put it past these 'angels' to be anything more than just that: science, poorly explained.

regardless, she feels a kind of gratification that they've found a way to discuss this matter as plainly as they both can manage. plainly, but gradually. ]

Because I've heard of a few extraterrestrial beings claiming to be deities. [ -- and then there were reinhardt's tales of blue angels. ]

Oh, yeah, definitely. I deal with both. Angels and deities, I mean. In my world, the archangel Gabriel hid out from Heaven by pretending to be Loki. He kind of had a lot of problems with the whole Lucifer and God thing. Y'know. Family... drama.

[He sips.]

... Haven't met any aliens back home, but I'm open-minded.

[I slept with a few on a waystation, though.

... Accidentally...]

Edited 2017-01-03 03:37 (UTC)

Apparently, in my world, Loki's simply a pretentious self-involved bastard. [ and thor's gorgeous. but you didn't hear it from her. ]

But -- ultimately -- an alien. [ she gives her head a shake. swears under her breath. ] Well, what does this make you? Really?

[ because he's talked about predictions and destinies. doesn't really stack up to this myth of the simple hunter that he's been spinning all this time. ]

Oh, yeah, he was in mine, too.

[When he stops at that question, looking confused for a moment.

He blinks, rubs the back of his head, clears his throat.]

Uh, me?

... I'm... a hunter? From Kansas?

[ a stony look. she wonders if it's the truth -- or if he simply doesn't want to say anything beyond it. reconsidering her approach, she backpedals a little. ]

Alright. Fair enough. Tell me more about these books you mentioned. [ it's not a question. it's much closer to an order, though it's one he's free to refuse. ]

[He smirks a bit, leaning and playful.]

I refuse to tell you my deep dark secrets, agent. And I can handle a good waterboarding.

[ oh, lordy. she'd rather not admit to herself how exceedingly charming she finds the joking mixed in with the bravado. no, not bravado. legitimate bravery, however slim, in the face of uncomfortable conversations.

peggy clears her throat. despite the words that follow, there's something light-hearted just beyond her expression. ] Sam Winchester. [ ... ] I could do a lot worse than waterboarding.

[He looks exceedingly confident and certain when he smiles back, smooth and with practice; trained, like he's smoothly made his way through many a situation with just the dimples and clothes on his back.

Mischievous, even, contrary to his usual polite and formal demeanor.]

... I think I could take it.

[He could most certainly take it. And it's not a mark against Peggy's efficiency, either.

He's been in Lucifer's dogbowl, and he's still here.

It counts for something.]

But I guess since we're friends and I'm not a fugitive being held by this SSR, if you give me something a little stronger than tea, I think maybe I got a few more answers in me somewhere. Maybe a story about the time I was nearly done in by Bloody Mary. Or the time I met Prometheus; he was a pretty good guy.

Edited 2017-01-03 04:49 (UTC)

[ oh, what finesse! he might have made a fine agent for any office, she decides, when she watches the crook of his smile. paradoxically enough, it's the notion that he's laying bare his ability to play a person that causes an uptick in admiration. she considers her cup of tea, considers him, and then considers the bottle of almost-whiskey she's got stashed in her locker. ]

I might have something. [ her nails tap against the table. ] Wait here? I don't exactly stash it in the kitchen.

Hey, go for it. I've got nowhere to go in particular.

[He sips his tea, nearing its doom.]

Don't tell Nami I'm drinking, though; I work the bar tonight, and I don't think this is what working the bar is supposed to be. Even if it sounds like it goes hand-in-hand.

[Also he just - really would like to drink.

And forget that nagging thing the silence brings in, that reminds him his brother is gone.]

There's no need to worry. I can't say I talk with her much -- and I think I can handle a lie or two.

[ peggy pushes away from the table. ] Make yourself useful while I'm gone. Clear the cups. Or rinse them -- we might as well keep using the same bloody ones.

[ and with that very eloquent order given, she disappears down the hall. ]

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