sam... gadreel (purevessel) wrote in lost_world, @ 2013-12-24 21:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | jack oat, sam winchester |
fancy meeting you here (sam & jack; backdated before the ball)
It was… an adjustment, living in medieval times. Sam had been in the past before, but he’d never really had to acclimate to it before. Not for this long, at least. Though, the lack of modern accommodations was really the least of his problems at the moment. There were the aliens, which were always in the back of his mind, though he’d yet to see one.
The hardest part, really, was adjusting to his supposed ‘role’. He never liked roles. Not that he had a problem with being an innkeeper-- having a roof over his head and access to alcohol was a bonus, actually-- but the fact that it had been chosen for him made it grate on his nerves. Roles being chosen for him always ended badly, and he doubted aliens had any better intentions than demons and angels.
The matriarchal society which slotted him into a certain role wasn’t helping either. He was aware of the history lesson in gender studies that went along with it, and while it didn’t make him overly proud to be male when he thought about the fact that women had been treated like this in his world, this world also proved, in a strange way, that sexism could go both ways. And he disliked it, no matter which way he looked at it. His instinct was to do something to fix it, but it was history… he couldn’t try to rewrite history, that’d be problematic even if it worked. And if it didn’t work… well, he’d come close enough to being locked up or burnt as a witch on his first day here, he didn’t need to draw any more attention to himself.
So he pulled from years of experience in moving about as unnoticed as possible, which usually worked well enough, despite his size. Keeping his head down, literally, seemed to be relatively within the profile for a man of his status around here, so it had been working so far.
But every once in a while, he did draw attention to himself. He was in the market, examining a barrel of apples that were for sale, when a woman approached him-- a hunter, from the look of her garb, but thankfully not one of the ones that had seen him heal Jo in the tavern. He knew that not so much from recognizing her face, but the fact that she didn’t seem to recognize his. He didn’t pay her much attention at first, listening to her with one ear and trying to ignore her as best as possible without seeming too rude, but then her hand slid up his chest.
“Um,” he said, taking a step back. There might’ve been a point in his life when he’d have stayed in place, wouldn’t have really considered a handsy woman to be a problem, but the last time that had happened, he’d ended up drugged and tied to a bed. And he had a distinct lack of power and autonomy in this situation already, less literally, but enough to make him uncomfortable. He took another step back, looking for an escape route, or even better, an excuse to get away from her. “I’d-- I’m really not… sorry, I’ve got to...”
It wasn’t working; he could tell that from the gleam in her eye. It was dangerous territory, going against the huntresses here; he didn’t feel inclined to do it again. But he also couldn’t just let her do… whatever it was she was planning. He eyed the gap between two nearby stalls, and wondered what she’d do if he tried to make a break for it.
---
Jack had found her new job nicely distracting. Kai hadn’t made the trip, or so it would seem. Neither had Evan. Things seemed topsy turvy in a very pro-female kind of way, but it didn’t exactly make her bubble over with happiness. Things were things, and she’d survive. That was what she told herself.
After finishing a box for one of the wealthier families - middle class wasn’t even in its infancy - Jack had a little money to spend. Money meant she splurge. Food really wasn’t that big of a deal, but she opted for a snack or two she could bring home rather than hitting up a tavern. She’d also found a few small blades that she hoped the aliens would send along with her on the next trip; a girl could never have too many silver weapons - yes, she was splurging.
The fruit vendors had caught her eye, as did the bread women. A rough pastry or three. What caught more of her eye though was a tall fellow that looked...familiar. She didn’t move right away because she didn’t know what to make of this guy here and now.
When he got flustered though...she smiled. That was him.
“Hey! Lady - and I’m using that term loosely - touch him again and you’ll find yourself looking for that army to kick my tail..end?” Her nose wrinkled, and her mouth pulled a bit.
“Okay, so that wasn’t my best warning, but hands off. He’s spoken for.” Her voice was even, in a very don’t-test-me sort of way. She’d yet to go for any weapons, and she had a few hidden away. She didn’t pose or posture, but maybe the huntress could tell Jack really wasn’t going to back down. And, possibly believe she wasn’t lying either. The world Jack came from, the job she did, she had to be able to con with the best of them. She even had the FBI, Federal Marshall, and CIA badges to prove it.
----
The interruption was welcome, although Sam wasn't sure it was necessarily a good thing. The other woman's claim on him might save him from this particular awkward encounter, but how was he going to get away from…
Surprise changed to recognition, though that too came with its own surprise. He wasn't used to recognizing people around here. There were a few familiar faces, but not many. He knew there were also unfamiliar faces that were sort of… in his group, so to speak, in that they had also been captured by aliens and were in the same kind of predicament. Those people were potential allies, in the way that Rose and the Doctor had been. And so, apparently, was this woman-- whose face he knew, but couldn't quite place.
It was enough to be going on with, for the moment. He took a step back and to the side, putting his savior between himself and the huntress, and tried to look… like he actually was with her, following her lead. Which wasn't difficult, because following her lead was exactly what he was doing.
"It's alright," he said, in a slight attempt to placate them both. "She didn't realize I was… you know. Spoken for. No problem here, right?"
Much as he appreciated the willingness of this woman to fight on his behalf, he didn't particularly want it to actually happen. For one horrible moment, as the huntress sized up her competition, he thought they really were going to break into a fight right there in the middle of the market-- and this time, he had a terrible feeling Ezekiel might insist on scrubbing everyone's memories of the incident in the name of protecting both of them-- but then the huntress narrowed her eyes, hmphed, and turned away.
Sam let out a breath and relaxed slightly. Not entirely, but just a little. "Thanks."
---
“Mmm. She couldn’t handle you anyway. She probably likes the really quiet ones in bed.” Jack gave him a randy knowing wink before turning to look at the apples. They did look good.
“Should have known the first time I get to talk to one of you boys is when you’re in trouble.” She picked up a juicy red and green bit of fruit then dropped it as if it might have stung her. “Damn. Always a pain in the ass when you look at something that looks so nice and find out it’s turned bad when you get a better look at it.
“So, you’re new.” She turned back to Sam, giving him an examining look. The huntress wasn’t the only one who could size up matters quickly. Yes, being a hunter of the nightly ugly bumping things helped.
“And, you probably have no fucking idea who I am.” Her smirk was good natured; she didn’t seem bothered by the possibility. “It’s cool; different realities, different times, different people. Please tell me you at least are a fellow named ‘Sam.’ If you aren’t this could be very embarrassing.”
----
Sam's eyebrows raised, and he lifted a hand to run through his hair, clearing his throat. She wasn't feeling him up, which made this conversation slightly less uncomfortable than the previous one, but he was nevertheless just as thrown by the conversation. He hadn't even figured out how to respond before she'd changed the subject, and then they were back on much more comfortable ground.
She was someone he knew. Not from here, but from his life, before-- someone he and Dean had met. No… Dean hadn't been there. If Dean had been there, he'd have been having a field day with her kind of flirtatious, teasing mannerisms. But Sam tended to forget Dean's hookups probably even more quickly than Dean did, because he rarely paid them much attention. Her face wouldn't have stuck in his memory if that was the case.
"No, I know you," he said, after a moment of sizing her up in return, tilting his head as he tried to remember how he knew her. "It's been a long time, and… sorry, I've forgotten your name. But I don't forget faces. We've met before, before I came here."
It was really going to bother him if he didn't remember. Maybe if she told him her name, it would come back to him. He gave a slight smile. "Yeah, that's me. I'm Sam."
---
“You’ve forgotten...wow. You aren’t the guy I know then.” Jack offered her hand then realized a handshake here and now would be seen as strange, probably. While she wasn’t one to care if she weren’t playing a role, she didn’t think the big guy wanted to bring any attention to himself. Jack motioned for him to walk.
“That or I make one lousy impression.” The smile was there on her lips; she really wasn’t bothered. It was nice to find someone who knew her. Very nice, even if he didn’t really know her. She spoke in a soft enough voice to keep the conversation between them, but not so soft a voice that he had to be closer than he needed to be. Yes, she did know Sam well enough to know he was a little more peculiar about his personal spaces than Dean might have been. “You do know that there are tests to know if you’re who you say you are. The usual squeeze a twig, test your blood, drink the water, cut yourself type nonsense. If you’re a demon in a Sam suit or a shifter with a Sam face or whatever the fuck you are, you’ll know I’ll end you or hurt you. So, I’m going to forgo the tests for now, and just to let you know, I’m Jack.”
She was leading him away from the more populated market area. This Sam had a little more heft to him than the one she remembered. Oh, that Sam had not been tiny, but this one had a different sort of confidence. He didn’t hunch the same way; it was some what good to see.
----
It occurred to Sam, then, that she might have actually meant that comment about what he was like in bed. That they might have actually… he would have remembered that if it had happened to him, but it could have happened for her. "Maybe not," he said, feeling almost as if he ought to apologize for it, but not really knowing what he was apologizing for. "I've heard there's more than one of me out there. Like you said, different realities, different times, different people."
There were definitely some things that had happened differently with the other Sam, the one who'd come back to life in York. Mostly, though, there were things that hadn't happened to that Sam, or to the Dean that was here. Now he seemed to be the one who hadn't had things happen to him.
He almost lifted his hand to shake hers, and then realized the same thing she did-- and then, right on the heels of that realization, he spotted the tattoo on her wrist. "You're a hunter," he said, gaze lifting to meet hers. It wasn't really surprising, given the way she assumed that he or Dean would be in trouble, and a moment later she confirmed it by mentioning the tests. He also could have worried about her being not human, but a demon or shifter that was trying to trick him would have picked a more familiar face. What was the benefit of using this one? And anyway, like she'd said, if she was a creature of some kind, he'd deal with that when it became apparent. Back to the subject at hand. "I mean, I met you on a hunt, years ago. And I've seen that crest before, somewhere else."
The memory came back to him, then, and when it did, he realized why it had been buried so deeply in his subconsciousness. He gave her a wry smile. "No, it wasn't your fault I forgot. I… wasn't in a good place at the time." But a moment later, he was confused again. He'd started to walk beside her, but he paused, one hand slightly lifted to gesture for her to hold. "Jack. I met you on a hunt, taking out a vampire nest-- North Dakota, right?-- but those were the six months that never happened for anyone but me, so you-- how do you know me?"
---
Jack gave a soft whistle, but her hand did cover the tattoo on her wrist. She had so many, but this one was the only one she knew of that connected her to a family she’d never met. It was precious and special. She didn’t even notice how she held her own wrist, a small sign of insecurity, a rarity in a way. She’d admit to being afraid or not knowing; this was something a little different. Vulnerability?
“Mm? Yeah. I’ve had it for years.” She finally turned to show him the tattoo. Let him have a better look at it. “And, man, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to vampires in North Dakota.” She laughed, her hand still up as she looked at the tattoo in question.
“I met you in Michigan, and it was some tortured ghosts. Then bumped into you again in Vegas - great place for an impending apocalypse actually. Well, not you, but a Sam.” She used her still lifted hand to give him a quick poke in the side if he didn’t stop her.
----
Sam put one hand under her wrist, holding it lightly as he examined the tattoo. He'd definitely seen that before, more recently, and not on her skin. "It's a crest," he said, and looked up at her. "Your family's crest? You're from a family of hunters?"
Just like him, with the hunters on one side and the Men of Letters on the-- that was it, Men of Letters. He'd seen this design in their records, a hunting family that they'd kept tabs on. Maybe not worked with, because they hadn't been big on working with hunters, but his grandfather had said they'd trusted a few of them.
That was about all he remembered, the image and the records of names along with it. He couldn't remember if her name had been in the file or not; he'd been looking for something else at the time, so he hadn't been reading it too closely. Realizing belatedly that it might look a little odd for him to be holding her wrist like this, having her the one looking vulnerable and him watching her intently, he let go and lowered his hand. He made a point to look a little more submissive for the benefit of the people around them, looking down at the ground as he bowed his head a little. If people thought they were behaving strangely, nobody was stepping forward to do anything about it, so he let out a breath.
"Maybe we should keep moving," he said. "Talk about this somewhere where we don't have to… worry about what it looks like." He gave her a slight smile, feeling sure that she could easily come up with a teasing quip about that. "Anyway, no, you wouldn't remember. All of that time got reversed, like it never happened. I'm the only one who remembers it. And I don't remember running into you again, but I suspect that might be more of a… different reality thing."
The poke surprised him, but she got away with it without triggering his defensive reflexes. That was at least partly because he instinctively trusted her a little, being familiar-- more familiar than any of the other faces currently around them, certainly-- but he also tended to be a bit slower when his mind was preoccupied. It got a slight smile out of him, even as the leftover discomfort from the whole awkward situation made him lift a hand to run through his hair, and then lowered it again. "So, you know a Sam, I know a Jack, you just saved me from…well. Good enough to be going on with, I think."
---
“Good plan. And, relax. I’m not going to jump your bones, or any of that. Not that I wouldn’t be exactly against it, but…” Jack laughed, shaking her head. She started walking again. “It’s complicated. I’m pretty sure you got complicated.”
She’d left the crest talk be. If he’d spent much time around her, even if it was in some alternate reality that she’d had nothing to do with, he’d know she was damn good at skipping right over things she didn’t want to discuss. It didn’t mean she wouldn’t come back to it, probably, but she was currently racking her brain to remember what she had said about that particular place on her wrist. She wouldn’t have told him, had she?
“So, how ya been? Got any kids? Any women folk? Men folk - what? you’re from another reality. You could be from a reality in which you’ve got homosexual tendencies, and trust me, big guy, I’ve got no problem with that.” There was no leering, no brow waggling. It was a simple truth. She would be the last one to have a problem with anyone testing or swimming in different waters. She liked swimming in all sorts of waters herself, well, mostly.
----
"Complicated," Sam repeated, and this time he gave a real, genuinely amused smile. It turned wry only moments later, as he thought about the fact that he was essentially dead-- well, maybe not quite so close to death now, but still on angelic life support. "Yeah. I get complicated."
That didn't answer his question about whether they'd hooked up, but… well, if he were going to run into an alternate universe girlfriend of some variety, it could be an awful lot more awkward than this. He didn't intend to make it more awkward by asking. He wasn't going to press the subject of the family crest either; he hadn't gotten to know her well enough to know her particular conversational habits, but he still recognized what she was doing. It wasn't as if she'd invented the concept of avoiding a subject.
"Oh… not that complicated," he said, face scrunching up a bit. "No… no, none of any of that. I mean, there were… women, but…" not anymore, was what he was going to say, except he didn't really want to say that. "And no, no kids. Not for me or Dean, at home, that was… new." He left the question about 'homosexual tendencies' alone, as he usually did when Dean commented on his sexuality, because protesting it seemed almost as homophobic as his brother's comments on the subject. He could tell she didn't mean it the same way, but still-- especially after this particular exercise in being on the other end of sexism, he wasn't inclined to get involved in straight vs. gay. Or male vs. female. Or… human vs. nonhuman, which was relevant to his current situation and had been relevant to his life for a while. He'd just stick to sorting out good and bad. "Michigan, Vegas… what year was that? How long has it been since you've seen me?"
----
Jack gave the big Winchester a easygoing smile; that he didn’t push on a topic was appreciated. Sam wasn’t the most laid back fellow, neither Winchester really was, but she was able to get along with him just the same. Apparently it didn’t matter the version, but then she’d only met the two now. Two out of infinity wasn’t exactly a good sample size as some might say.
“Not at the moment, which hey, with all this crazy shit, might not be a bad idea. I’m from…2008, give or take a month or three, and how long I’ve been at this? I don’t know. I don’t know how long they keep us under.” Jack shrugged; it wasn’t an answer she wanted to give. It simply wasn’t an overly happy or informative one.
She hadn’t realized where she was walking them until they got there. It was her workshop. She was a skilled craftswoman/person/being. She was damn good at making hexboxes, and she used that knowledge and ability to settle into making slightly larger storage containers of the wooden hope chest variety. Not that she stuck with just that. Being a hunter had demanded she work with tools that could travel well and not take up much space, so having a workshop with tools that lacked power cords really wasn’t a problem. This was the sort of challenge she enjoyed.
“Uhm. This is me?” The sign over her door had no words, just intricate wood scrolling that suggested she knew her craft. Of course, she hadn’t exactly done that, but she had pieces inside she’d been working on that proved her capable of making something similar given the time.
“You can come in. I have sack? Maybe goats milk - or at least cheese.” She gave him a sheepish smile then laughed. “I’ve never had the opportunity to ask a guy to my place of work and home - I’m not counting any hotel room or my…” She actually gave a wistful pause and tiny sigh. The lack of her beloved car hit her now and then. “Cougar.
“Anyway,” she shook the small sadness away. It was ridiculous longing for something that didn’t belong. “This is new. And, weird. Wanna?” Her smile was bright and perhaps a little on the proud of herself side. She motioned to the small alley alongside the building that would lead to the living area of her shop. Or the stairs up anyway to the living area.
----
"2008," Sam repeated, again. "Yeah… I think that was around the time I met you. That was an interesting year." It was weird, being so far ahead of everyone. And yet, his future experiences didn't really matter because they were all from other universes where things had gone differently, so their futures were likely to be different from his. Dean's was drastically different, with the kids and all. Jack's was harder to tell, because her life didn't run alongside his in the same way his brother's did. "And no, I meant-- not how long ago, really, but just… when did those things happen for you? The tortured ghosts, and the impending apocalypse in Vegas."
He'd definitely have remembered an impending apocalypse in Vegas. Well, he'd have remembered the tortured ghosts too. "I'm just trying to get timelines straight in my head, as much as I can. They're a bit muddled."
And that was an understatement, but at least he had some experience with conflicting timelines. For instance, remembering the year and a half in which he'd been half topside, half down in hell always gave him a bit of a headache, and not just because of the memory of hellfire and torture. He'd fought to keep reality and hallucination straight, too, so-- in theory, if anyone could sort out the timelines in this place, it might be him. He was going to try, anyway. The whole bit about them being from his past kind of helped a bit in this case, if anything.
"Um… sure," he said. He didn't have a real reason to hesitate, except to consider what he was doing. But he'd followed her this far, so he was willing enough to trust her company. Maybe not the food, though. "That's okay, though, I'm not really all that hungry." Which was also true, too. He'd been shopping more for the inn than for himself. "I work at the inn, by the way, if you need to find me… later on."
There wasn't a whole lot to remember about her from when he'd run into her before-- which was mostly his fault, he really hadn't been nearly as friendly and easygoing at the time, not all that willing to hang around and chat-- but he did remember the car. He remembered it mostly because she'd seemed to care about it in much the same way Dean had cared about his, and that comparison had-- at the time-- been absolutely heartbreaking, since his brother had been dead. Which was also why he decided not to mention it now.
"I mean, I guess I'm sort of your… something, now," he said lightly, with a small smile. He put his hands into his pockets and moved into the alley. "So hanging out in each other's workplaces, or whatever, won't hurt our cover. If we ever needed to use it again." And if some other woman tried to feel him up, he certainly planned on it. He was wary enough of the native people here, he didn't need anything getting any more-- well, complicated. The word she'd chosen for it was perfect, really.
----
“Yeah, my barwench of a something.” Jack gave him a wink, pulled a key from a pocket, and opened the side door. He could see into the workshop area, which flowed easily enough into the store - it really was an all in one. The kitchen area what there was was downstairs as well as most of the sitting room.
The loft above wasn’t overly fancy, and it was certainly what some would call cozy while others would call way too fucking small. Jack was used to limited space and lack of room for personal possessions. A small set of shelves held small journals - she wasn’t rich enough to have large volumes of anything. Most were small leather bound books that let her take notes. She did have a bed, just large enough for her and not very slept in. Two chairs crowded the loft area somewhat without making it claustrophobic, and a wardrobe fit into a corner somehow.
“So.” She settled into one of the chairs, grabbing a nearby candle and lighting it with a flint all in one smooth motion. “Have a seat.”
----
Sam took the other chair, still looking around as he did so. It was an interesting place, part workspace and part living space, and the combination of tools and journals was familiar and comforting. It spoke to an organized personality, dedicated to her work. He could relate to that.
He rested his elbows on his knees, weight forward and ready to stand quickly, though he didn't really expect her to try to hurt him. Something more… forward was more likely, but he wasn't expecting that either. She had assured him as much, at least, and after all these years he was still a relatively trusting person. Still wanted to believe the best of people around them, wanted to believe that they'd be honest with him. Didn't mean he wasn't looking for the lies and deceptions, couldn't spot them if they happened, and would deal with them if they did. But until she gave him a reason not to, he was willing to give Jack the benefit of the doubt.
"So," he said, and then he did call her on the evasion-- the most recent one, anyway. "You haven't answered my question." Technically, there was more than one question she hadn't answered, but he let her interpret that how she wanted. He was more interested in the timing and timelines than the family crest, though he wouldn't have minded having his curiosity satisfied on that point either.
----
“Which?” Jack didn’t move the rug that was under them. She didn’t need to show him what was under it. Nor the larger trap that had been worked into the ceiling of the workshop/main shop under them. He probably did see familiar protection symbols that flowed with other sorts of woodworking on the walls and furniture.
“You’ve had a few.” She smiled at him. “Also, not sure why you’re trying to settle timelines. Time’s a little tricky, and so is reality hoping. If reading the Exiles and Excalibur didn’t teach me anything else, timelines can always be fucked with and never work the way we want them to. Same with alternate realities. Well, that and biological physics - because that’s a thing - is so very different in comic book world.” She nodded, not feeling at all ashamed for her geekery. Not even a little bit.
“I’d say accept what you’ve got in front of you as is. Don’t try to rectify if it’s not causing any problems or misunderstandings. You’re a new Sam. You’re older, wiser, and you finally grew into your hair.” She laughed, reaching over to tousle said physical attribute - it wasn’t a far reach with the way things were situation and how he sat. She didn’t try to get too close and didn’t try to stay in contact too long with him, but she was the tactile sort. She liked physicality, of being in literal touch with someone or thing. Whether he let her, that was up to him. Whatever the choice, it was highly unlikely Jack would take offense.
----
Well, that was one way of handling it: to make him specify. Sam's mouth quirked slightly at one corner. "About when you met me," he said. "Michigan and Vegas. What year, or approximately how long it was before you got here." The timeline of alien abduction… well, it wasn't accurate to say that it didn't matter to him, because it did. In the big picture, it mattered a lot more than sorting out the differences between their worlds. But he'd already gotten the impression of years having passed, not including the time they couldn't account for. "And here, have you been here since around the time Dean arrived? Were you in York, too?"
So many things seemed to converge on York, it seemed. He'd never even thought twice about the place until he'd arrived here, but for some reason, York and the aliens were connected somehow. He would have thought it was just Dean and Jo's world, but Rose and the Doctor had mentioned it, too. Or at least the Doctor had.
He straightened up and away from the hand in his hair, but there was still a faint smile around the edges of his mouth, even as his brow furrowed in slight consternation. He wasn't concerned with the symbols on the wall or under his chair, none of which appeared to be affecting the angel inside him, but he could have done without the touching. If not for the fact that it was combined with being called older and wiser, it might have felt a little condescending, in much the same way he felt when people other than Dean called him Sammy-- like they viewed him as a child. He didn't always mind not being taken seriously, sometimes it was an advantage, but she was right, he was older. And at the moment, he wasn't entirely comfortable in his own skin, which made other people in his personal space less welcome than they might have been normally. He was finding that having the angel under his skin was using up a lot of his tolerance for that kind of thing.
"You seem to have gotten to know me better in your world than I got to know you," he said. "You really think I'm the type to accept anything that easily?" He raised a hand and rubbed at his forehead. "I'm older, sure, but I don't think I'm really all that much wiser in that respect."
He knew it was complicated, and didn't care. He'd tackled enormously complicated situations and problems before, it was pretty much what he did for a living. "Maybe we should all get together and do it properly, you know, like a hunt-- pins and yarn connecting notes on the wall and all that." It wasn't a bad idea, except for the fact that they were being monitored by aliens. In this case, it was probably best to play their cards close to the chest. Plus, "But I bet it'd all disappear the moment we shifted realities again, so never mind."
----
“Mm, yeah, no York.” Jack gave him a soft smile, her hands resting in her lap for a moment. Yet, soon, she was slipping off her boots and curling up in her chair. She wasn’t a tiny thing, quite a few inches taller than Jo and built a little sturdier. Yet, she managed.
“I think Jo and I are from different timelines and realities. At least that’s the feeling I get. As I said, 2008 or there abouts, in Vegas. Michigan not long before that. Was happy you found Dean again, but ...it might have been 2009. Time’s a bitch when you are dealing with possibility of the world as we know it crumbling down in massive destruction.” She gave him a weak smile and a shrug.
“I’ve been through a York maybe, but when I hear ‘York,’ I think of candy, the Big Apple, and Shakespeare or Renaissance drama of some sort.” She did run the gamut on reading and information. Well, nonsupernatural stuff.
“Also, not to burst your bubble, big guy, but hunting here may not happen. I’ve been a few places now that the whole finding something to hunt isn’t doable - there’s nothing to hunt. No magic, witches, demons, angels, ghosts, none of it. May not work here, and if you’re thinking hunting the overseers, working all this like a job, may be a little difficult too. They’ve got the Doctor or did, and if they can capture him, we may be a little outclassed for now in the tech department.” She wasn’t saying never, but she was giving him the info on why waiting and biding time might be a better idea.
“I don’t know how long I’ve been traveling with the group, or more how long Dean’s been traveling. I think he joined in Electric City like many of us, but I can’t promise you anything. We haven’t exactly had any face time here; if he’d known me, noticed me, think he’d have said hi by now.” She still didn’t seem to mind that a Winchester didn’t know who she was. She’d been traveling alone for a while before she’d gotten into this particular pickle; she could handle going it alone again.
“Though….” she was still thinking, “it’s possible that whatever we worked on would end up in someone’s room on the ship - there’s an alien ship, if they keep taking us back there - had all our shit. Well, mine and my friend’s. Gives me reason to believe that it could happen again. I’m just full of happy news, aren’t I?” She gave him a lopsided smile, just a hint of apology.
----
No York. Well, that was interesting-- he wasn't the only one from a reality in which York wasn't significant. "The Duke of York," Sam said with a slight smile. "Yeah. I don't have any personal association with it, either. My timeline and reality are different from hers too, I think."
Which meant that they were also different from Dean's, but he didn't say that. It was still something that felt vaguely awkward and unsettling to him, to be from a different world than his brother, but ultimately it didn't matter. There was a Dean here who needed a Sam and there was a Dean at home who needed him, too, and working to get out of this mess would be best for both of them. And it was his turn to avoid the subject of his brother, and getting him back, as he finally placed the time that she’d met him, but he did offer one piece of information. “It’s been a while since your time, for me. It was 2013 before I got here.”
A hint of amusement appeared on his face, and his smile widened slightly. "Nothing to hunt?" he said, shaking his head a little. "Aliens, Jack. There are aliens that kidnap people from their worlds and timelines. Not the first ‘alien’ abduction I've investigated--" he made the air quotes with his fingers as he said alien-- "And it probably won't be the last. The ones before weren't actually aliens, and maybe these are ‘aliens’, too." There were the air quotes again. "They're certainly not from my world, so they're aliens in that sense. But they're taking people, holding them hostage, and God knows what else. Even if they're not killing people, at least not immediately, that's a case in my book."
It occurred to him, belatedly, that the aliens could have taken Jack's form-- a familiar enough form to make him trust her a little, to talk about hunting, and unfamiliar enough to ease his suspicions about tricks-- and used it to find out what he was up to. He reached for the angelic consciousness in his mind, in the way he'd learned to do, and it responded immediately and outwardly unnoticeably, showing him an angel-eye view of the person in front of him. She seemed to be just that-- a person, a human being, not an alien. Then again, Rose had said they were capable of perfect mimicry: what if that mimicry could extend to the molecular level?
Oh, well. If the aliens were monitoring him, they'd probably heard him talking to Dean already-- maybe they'd faked Dean, too, and Jo and the kids and everything else-- so they'd already know he wanted to hunt them. Really, they should've known that from the moment they took him, if they had done any background research on their subjects. So either his attempts to hunt them would provide them with some kind of interesting scientific data, or they were confident in the fact that he wouldn't manage it. Or both.
Didn't really matter, in the end. He was going to try anyway, and he was going to risk telling his potential allies about it. If Jack was real, she might be able to help him. If she wasn't real, if she was spying on him for the alien overlords, then he would probably find out soon enough. Well, he'd wanted to meet one of them face to face, hadn't he? But maybe, if he was being observed, he should do something that would give them a false lead on the path he was on, or… the paranoia from earlier came back to him, then, and reminded him that if the angel was part of the alien plot, then they’d already had a look inside his head. Sometimes, though, he just had to do exactly what his enemy knew he would do and make it work for him anyway. Trust nothing, question everything, except his own instincts.
He had gotten a bit lost in his own thought, though he was still watching her, paying attention with half of his mind. He'd also leaned forward again, thoughtfully-- elbows on his knees, chin and mouth pressed against his clasped hands. His attention came back to the current moment when she smiled apologetically, and he lifted his head enough to show her a smile in return. "Oh, don't worry. I'm not expecting happy news."
All in all, he'd taken most of this in stride. Dean being here, some version of him, made that easier. But things in Sam's mind were fairly simple right now: he'd chosen to live instead of finish the trials, chosen to live by being possessed rather than going peacefully with Death, so he had known that his life wouldn't be easy. That it would be an endless, uphill battle, and as tired as he was, he’d chosen to fight it anyway. He'd chosen, for the first time in his life, not to reach for the end anymore, because Dean needed his brother just to be there in the battle with him for as long as it lasted. Sam still didn't want it to last much longer-- he'd spent most of his thirty years doing this job, fighting these kinds of wars, he was more than ready to be done-- but he wasn't going to quit, not yet. He'd find the energy and the willpower to stay in it as long as Dean was at it, and then… well, he really didn't know what came after, whether there would be any life left for him or not. But Death would be waiting for him eventually, one way or the other, even if he had to come for Sam on an alien planet.
----
Jack just smiled. It wasn’t like she would expect him to simply accept that these were aliens. She’d found it hard to believe at first, but then she’d been riding on a ship surrounded by stars. She did not question just how alien they were. She settled back in her chair, watching him as he watched her. Her brow rose as he grew quiet, but she didn’t try to guess what was going behind those pretty hazel eyes. No, she just waited.
“Good. My real question for you is ‘how do you begin this job?’ Where do you begin?” If she’d known what he was thinking, she probably was only feeding ito his concern that she was just a ploy/pawn in some game. Though if she’d known what he was thinking, she’d also make a point of just how narcissitic it was; in the grand scheme of these particular things, he was not that important.
“I could understand why they would claim a group of people all from the same time, but why different ones from different ...everything?” She laughed softly. “What is the purpose? Also, why claim people who are definitely fiction for others? You’ll meet them. So, why do it? Then you get into the whole ‘if they’re here, what are we?’ issue. Maybe.” She sat up and leaned in, eye to eye.
“Sam Winchester…” Her lips parted as if she were going to say something, then she laughed softly at something and sat back, shaking her head. “Never mind. Look, dude, I’m not going to try to stop you - I couldn’t even if I wanted to. You’re going to do what you think is best, and it might be best. Just don’t push yet. We’re not there. We don’t have access to the info we need to even begin to fight back if that’s what you’re aiming to do. Okay?”
----
The problem with aliens wasn't that Sam didn't believe they existed. Scientifically and mathematically speaking, it was extremely likely that life existed on other planets. The idea that they might abduct people from Earth was a bit less likely, but also not impossible. He'd been to heaven, hell, and purgatory already; why not space? Why not another planet?
No, that part he could wrap his mind around. The problem with the word 'alien' was that it told him nothing, except a vague point of origin-- well, a point of origin somewhere that wasn't Earth. He was an alien here, but he wasn't the alien that was the problem. So 'alien', while true, really wasn't enough of a word to explain what they were dealing with.
"Working on that part," he said with a slight smile. "But step one is realizing there's a case to be had, and I figure it out from there." He had some ideas. As he'd said to Dean upon his arrival, he'd have liked to get one of these aliens tied up and have a chat with it, but that wasn't likely to be easy. And that was something he didn't want to broadcast, not because he was really all that suspicious of Jack, but because the more times he said it aloud-- the more chances there were for the plan to be overheard by someone, or something.
His theories about her other questions, though, he was willing to share. "Well, they're into science, supposedly," he said. "Maybe they're doing… an anthropological study. Making comparisons of our lives in different universes. Studying how we react in different realities. Maybe that information is useful to them somehow? Maybe we're the… I don't know. The canaries in the mines, or the monkeys that they send into space-- they put us into different situations so they can figure out if it's safe for them. Or maybe it's something else entirely."
She was advising caution and patience, and he could understand that. But, "How are we going to get information if we don't push?" he countered. "Have you seen anyone try before? Did something bad happen to them, is that why you're warning me away?"
There were risks, always, he knew that. But if there was anything he'd learned in the last few months, it was that he was capable of more than he'd ever thought possible. Not just him, but anyone. If you knew how, you could walk into hell and take a soul up to purgatory, to Earth, then send it to heaven. He could cure demons and kill hellhounds. Maybe there wasn't going to be a tablet for the aliens, but the simple belief that he could figure it out, combined with the fact that he was looking at this place with fresh eyes, might get him farther than anyone had so far. Dean had hoped he'd show up with a plan, with the cavalry, and he didn't want to let his brother down.
----
“That is the problem isn’t it? What happens if they don’t like what you’re doing? Actually, they may kick you off the island, and that’d be a real bitch. Not because you’re out in space or maybe you’re back home, but because you’re leaving everyone behind. The ones who care about you. Hell, they may put you away in a lockbox, keeping you fresh until they need you again or until forever. We may never know what happens to the ones who push when it’s best to wait and watch.” Jack shifted in the chair, rearranging herself so that she was comfortable again.
“It may simply be an ant farm situation, even if the ant farm is nine kinds of fucked, but it could be something more. They may be using us to figure out if we are worth taking over, or easy to subdue. Right now, I’m going with they got the better tech, and we know at the beginning and usually for the rest of the showdown, the side with the better tech wins.” She shrugged.
“Here’s the issue, Sam. There should be someone in that bed right now. And there isn’t. That someone didn’t make the trip. Why? Beats me. You want a case; there’s one. Why am I not looking into it? I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to find out that someone’s not coming back.” Jack wasn’t sure she was ready for Kai to never return.
----
That was a fair enough point. Much as Sam wanted to get home, he wanted to get them all home. He didn't like the idea of his brother back home without him, but neither did he like the idea of leaving this Dean, and all the rest of them, behind to deal with this. But all the same, if it came down to choosing who to leave behind… this group had managed without him. He wasn't sure that Dean would, back in his own world and time. His brother had been messed up enough by watching Sam go through the trials; having him be abducted by aliens was probably the last thing he needed just now. So maybe that was why he would push, harder than anyone else. Maybe that was why he'd be the one to manage it.
Or maybe that was why he'd end up being one of the ones locked away by the aliens or left out in space somewhere to die. At least the latter was less likely to be a problem, with an angel inside him. Even that wasn't hopeless.
"If they want to take over our worlds, they should be observing us in our own realities," Sam said. "They can't possibly get enough information for that just from observing abducted individuals. Even if it's a large group of us… although, does anyone have an estimate of how many of us there are?"
That was something he was interested to know, whether in the interest of figuring out what the aliens were up to or not. Of course, it was probably impossible to estimate, particularly if there were multiple groups, being shifted to different realities at different times, without ever overlapping. The scale of this could be massive, and he was just a tiny cog in the system. But sometimes that was all it took to throw the whole system out of balance.
Her attempts to caution him for his own safety weren't likely to dissuade him, but the next thing she said did give him pause. He didn't understand what she meant immediately, but he looked over at the bed, and then back at her. And then… he understood. He wanted to ask more questions, but first, "I'm sorry," he said, and he meant it. His expression was genuinely sympathetic. "Separating people seems to be a theme. Did you… lose them on the trip to this world, or the one before, or the original abduction?"
----
“I don’t know how big the group is.” Jack’s eyes narrowed; she wasn’t exactly aware of him as she thought. “It fluctuates. At least twenty. But, that’s possibly just us; there could be other groups out there. Other people being tested.
“You’re right; it would make sense to watch us in our usual environments, but you find the true essence of a person when you push them, usually very far out of the person’s comfort zone. I’d say keeping us moving is a good way to do that.” She had yet to sound like she was angry or arguing. This was a debate of sorts. The Sam she knew had usually been the one to have such discussions with.
“Mm.” The hunter nodded at the condolence; it was appreciated even if she wasn’t getting worked up about it. “I don’t even know if we’d be together here, honestly. I took her on as an apprentice of sorts. She was something, and it isn’t some hunters gone wild lesbian pillow bash either.” Jack laughed, teasing him a little. She could imagine his brother would have such visions in his head.
“We got used to sleeping in the same bed a few planets back. And, the last place I saw her was on the ship, as in space ship. I don’t know what she could have done to upset them, so this could be a simple test. Another person who’s missing had been kept out of the planet shift for a bit once; he came back.” She shook her head, leaving out just what had changed about Evan when he did finally show up. “Maybe she’ll show up, him too.”
----
Twenty or thirty was believable. Sam had met less than half of them, if that was the case, but he still had time to do that. Assuming, of course, that they kept him here.
"Well," he said with a slight smile, "They can consider me pushed. Then again, my comfort zone is a lot bigger than most people's." He really only had one weakness: one button that could be pushed, and most of his enemies were keen on pushing it. If the aliens were interested in seeing what happened when he was separated from one Dean but put together with another… well, they likely had plenty of data on that already. If they didn't want him pushing, they should probably keep a version of his brother around-- but on the other hand, if they wanted to manipulate him into pushing harder to suit their purposes somehow, all they had to do was take Dean away from him. That tactic had been used on him before. Maybe he was interesting simply because he'd been manipulated so many times, learned so many lessons from it, that they wanted to see how he would take this. Whether they could successfully mess with him despite the fact that he would more than likely see it coming. "Wonder if that makes me a prime test subject, or a terrible one? Maybe I'm the control group."
He could control for… complacency, he supposed. No matter how many times he was pushed, he had come back around to the fight. Some people, like Jack apparently, could be stopped from pushing fairly simply. Maybe they wanted to see what it would take to get Sam to give up, even when he had chosen to fight when he had practically no fight left in him. Well, that was a nice ominous thought.
His eyebrows raised, and his mouth quirked up in surprised amusement. "That really wasn't what I was picturing," he said, and it was the truth. "Dean's the one that has trouble distinguishing reality from porn." He lifted a hand, ran it through his hair, and left it there, curled in his locks at the back of his head. "Well, if I get onto the ship… or get any further into this somehow, I'll look for her. What's her name? And his?"
----
“Mm mm.” Jack sat up. “You get your own missing people. I’ve got mine. Also, you’re not going to get far on that ship. If you get there.” She stood and started looking through the journals.
“You probably think I don’t care, that I’ve thrown in the towel. Waiting is not the same as inaction.” She pulled a journal out and tossed it to him. “My notes on the ship.” If he took it, he’d see she’d broken all she’d seen up into bits and pieces for analyzing. She’d put in diagrams, drawings, descriptions. She’d gone at it as if she were stripping down her Cougar or sidearm, down to the nuts and bolts and pieces/parts the best she could without actually seeing a diagram or the whole damn thing.
“Two floors were all we had access to. The doors opened for anyone. They were bigger inside than you’d think - the living quarters. They were smart, forced us to ask for our food rather than let us prepare our own. They knew enough to have no surprises in that area too. All my shit was in my room, same for others. They roamed freely, and by they I’m talking one crazy assortment of ‘aliens’.” She used his own air quotes.
“Read it.” She grabbed another journal and tossed it his way. “The planets we’ve been on.” He’d get as detailed info as she could fit into one small journal. The double pupils, the vampire bunnies, the zombie ducks, the literally colorless 40s, the islands.
----
"You just told me to work that case," Sam pointed out. "Anyway, what's the harm in telling me their names? Then if I run into them, I can find you to let you know. Or send them your way."
He hadn't meant to insult her, but she did have a point-- he did kind of think that. Then again, he wasn't the only one making assumptions. "There's also a difference between talking about doing something and rushing off unprepared," he said with a slight smile. "Which I'm guessing is what you think I'm planning to do. Then again, you met me at an… interesting time in my life. So I guess I shouldn't really be surprised that you'd think that."
He'd made a lot of impulsive, ill-advised decisions in the years she'd come from. The year before Dean had gone to hell, the time he'd been gone, and even the year following that. Something similar had happened in her world, he assumed, because of what she'd said: that she'd been glad for him getting Dean back. If Dean had been torn away from him, even if it hadn't happened in the exact same way, it would have had a similar effect. If there was anything that seemed relatively consistent across universes, it was his relationship to his brother. Dean was still Dean in all the ways that mattered to him, and he was still Sam. At least, he hoped that Dean saw him that way.
The more information she threw at him, the better prepared he felt. He took the journal from her and went over the diagrams of the ship in detail, committing them to memory. In the back of his head, he thought he could sense that the angel was examining them too. He listened to her while he looked, and when he was passed the journal with the world information in it, he looked through that, too. Skimming, but memorizing, noting down essential details. It was a talent he'd had for a while.
Looking up from them finally, he grinned at her. "This… this is great work, it really is." The more information he had, the better. "I'm glad to see someone's been taking notes."
----
“Yeah, yeah, use my own words against me.” Jack rolled her eyes as she sat back in her chair. “I’d like to say I am doing what I do, Sam. I wait. I watch. I act. I’ve seen hunters rush into battle like real idiots, trying to be heroes, and maybe I just want to wait on this one.” Her hand lifted.
“I know it’s stupid, and in this case there’s no fucking logic. I should be hunting them. Should be looking for them, and I’m not making a hell of a lot of sense. As if I could just will them into being around the corner; that’s all they are, just around the corner. They’ll pop out and surprise me, or some shit like that. It’s ridiculously fantastic, and I know I should get off my ass and do something.” She groaned and stood, making her way over to a shelf, it wasn’t far. Jack pulled a small parcel out and walked back, flopping down in the chair with a hint of grace that suggested she knew how to fight on a more trained and disciplined level. Not that she had a belt in anything. She opened the parcel, and inside were small sweets - a type of cookie. Or something very like.
“Want?” Jack didn’t think he’d take one. He was more of the eat to live type, and maybe he spent enough time around her to know she had a penchant for chewing ice or enjoying a baked good now and then. Well, a baked good, a cheeseburger with extra everything, a milkshake, fries, and then some. It was a wonder she wasn’t a rolling butterball sometimes.
“Sam, when you start looking,” she didn’t say ‘if,’ “I want to help.” It was sort of off her ass. She had her reasons for wanting to be there, some of them were simply that she knew she should be looking and she cared about these two particular missing types. There were other reasons, but she didn’t know this Sam well enough to say right out. She wasn’t even sure it would matter.
----
"I'm not judging you," Sam said, sincerely. "I'm really not. You've been stuck in this place for a long time, too long. That's enough to make anyone conflicted, at the very least."
He could see how someone might want to wait and see what happened, rather than risking consequences. Maybe, there were even reasons why people would want to stay. If they had someone here with them who they didn't have at home-- which for Sam was Jo, although it was really more about the fact that his brother had Jo, and there was a big part of him that would have loved to be able to stay in a place where he could watch them have children, raise them, grow old together. But he knew all too well that it wouldn't be real. There was another Sam who was supposed to be at this Dean's side and he was supposed to be at home with his own Dean. Knowing that there was a world where it was possible for his brother to make a family would just have to be enough. It was enough.
"I'm newer to this, and that probably means that I still have more hope of getting out. Maybe that's naive, maybe it isn't. But if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that you've got to hold on to hope. Even if it never comes out the way you want it, it still keeps you going." He smiled slightly. "That's a bit cheesy, isn't it."
He shook his head, but smiled his thanks for the proffered cookie. He hadn't paid much attention to her eating habits-- a part of his mind might have, at the time they'd met, rejected anything that reminded him of his brother because it was too painful, or maybe he'd just been too focused on the hunt to notice it to begin with-- but it didn't change whether or not he wanted the food himself. He liked feeling healthy, and he craved that feeling most of all when he was at his unhealthiest, emotionally or physically. Emotionally he was alright at the moment, all things considered, but there was that pesky business of barely being alive except for the angel in his system-- he was taking absolutely nothing about his health for granted right now.
Closing the journal, he looked at her intently, gauging her emotional intent behind saying she wanted to be there, even if he didn't know the specific reasons. He didn't quite understand what he saw, but after a moment, he nodded. "I'll keep in touch with you," he said. "I don't know how this is going to go down, exactly, but… I have a feeling that whenever it comes to actually doing something about it, we're all going to end up right in the middle of it."
----
“Sam, you’re a good egg. A little cracked, but who isn’t?” Jack gave him a slight smile, wrapping the tasty treat up again to be nibbled on later.
“I know you’re not my Sam, not that he was my Sam, but I could trust him. The Winchesters were pretty reliable, so I’m going to work on that assumption, even if assuming makes an ass out of you and me.” She got up, hiding away the treat and grabbing another journal off the shelf.
“I don’t know what kind of set up you have, but money isn’t easy to come by for menfolk round here, or so it seems. I don’t want you catching shit for having things you shouldn’t.” She offered it to him.
“It’s not like what we have.” It wasn’t; the journal was small, leather bound, made up of scraps of paper, some with ink marks. Yet, all in all it was still useful for notes. “But, you might want to scribble while you’re here.” Hunters liked taking notes, which explained why she had the journals to share with him in the first place.
----
A little cracked. That was a bit of an understatement, but it made Sam smile, nonetheless. "Well," he said. "'Your' Sam is the second-- well, assuming you are from a different world than Jo and Dean-- version of myself that I've heard about since I got here, but based on the way everyone's been acting towards me, they must be a lot like me. So…" He paused. "I don't know where I was going with that. I think I was trying to say that you can trust me. Although, a lot of people who trust me get hurt, even though I don't want them to."
He was old, now; probably older mentally than he was physically, so the acknowledgement of his being bad luck for the people around him came out more as resignation than anything else. He was just being honest, not wanting to mislead someone into thinking he was safe. He wasn't, especially with the relatively unknown angel riding in his subconscious. Not that he needed an angel around to give him bad luck.
The expression on his face hadn't changed, but he'd looked briefly down at his hands. He looked up again when she moved, and was surprised when she offered him the journal. He started to smile, one corner of his mouth at first, and then the rest of it followed after.
"You sure?" he asked. Sentimentally, he was pleased by the gift-- heartwarmed, even. Especially because she was attempting to save his ass from the native folk, yet again. "I mean, yeah. Thanks. This is really nice of you."
----
“Eh. Luck is luck. What we make of it is bad or good.” Jack shrugged. She’d never had really awful luck, but then she’d never had really great luck. She hadn’t learned all of the Winchesters’ backstory, but she had guessed it wasn’t the prettiest. She’d seen the reactions to her own history, and was sometimes surprised at how badly people reacted to it - they actually thought she’d gotten a bad deal. As far as Jack was concerned, her life hadn’t been bad. Sad, aggravating, but not bad. The way Sam Winchester looked now and then…
“Dude, it’s cool. I’d hug ya, but you seem a little gunshy on the touching. I don’t get that.” She gave him a smile and a wink to show she wasn’t bothered or hurt by it. “Well, I do - ya never know what the fuck someone’s got hidden on ‘em. Or what they’ll do once they’re close.
“But, the hug is still offered. You look like you could use one.” Her smile softened, and for any innuendo or libido she might throw out there, she really did mean a hug. Of course, were he up for more, she’d be hard pressed to say ‘no’ Kai or otherwise. A girl could have a long standing crush after all, even a hard hearted hunter.
----
"Well… I'm a little gun-shy on being felt up in the marketplace," Sam said with a slight smile. It was more than that, but that was all he was going to admit to right now. Hugs, though, were within his comfort zone. "I suppose I probably could use a hug."
He set the journal down for a moment and got to his feet, because hugging would be awkward sitting down. With a small, slightly self-deprecating smile, he held out his hands around waist-level, palms up.
A corner of his mouth quirked, and his head tilted slightly. "Although I should warn you, I am carrying a hidden weapon or two. I won't use them unless you make me, though."
---
“You know, talk like that could make a girl think things.” Jack’s smile turned to the not so innocent side of things, but said smile was soon gone in honest laughter as she stepped forward to give him a hug.
Her arms wrapped around him easily enough, and her hands did not wander into areas they shouldn’t. Well, not completely. She was a little curious to see if he had a blade at his waist or back; he’d feel stiff bits in her clothes - they could be mistaken for boning of sorts. Very oddly shaped boning.
She didn’t say anything. Just hugged tightly. Sometimes hugs healed; there were clinical findings that hugs certainly helped.
----