InsaneJournal

[Narrative.]
Who: Wren
What: Narrative & wrapping things up
Where: Supernatural, at a crossroads
When: Nowish
Warnings/Rating: Nope

Hours spanned and spanned, quiet grew quieter, and Wren had plenty of time to do what she'd planned. She'd read, studied, asked questions. She'd talked and she'd talked, and she finally felt safe enough to do what she'd been working up to for months and months.

Immortality.

But not for her. Non, she didn't need to live forever. She didn't want to live forever. Non, non, and even less lately, when she was a thing between walls. Nothing, and that was what she'd learned on that snowy field of dreams that the hotel had gifted her with. She was a blank, a thing that mattered because she mattered to someone else. And this, this was for that someone else, for someone that mattered more than her. It didn't occur to her that he might not want it. It didn't even occur to her a little bit.

It was a gift, and she was foolish enough to think it was a gift for him, and not something ribbon-wrapped for herself.

She set out, sundress and sweater, tights and boots, and it wasn't very practical. But she'd never been practical, this girl raised in a white clapboard house, ocean waves and sticky heat, and she remembered her childhood with each step through dusty halls and into the door that she'd come back to again and again in recent weeks. Here, here, she'd found what she needed, and she knew the door well now.

She didn't like it very much, the door. But the Hunters were helpful, always willing to talk to a pretty girl, and she'd spent a lot of time in wood-paneled roadhouses, learning, learning, and she was a sponge, soaking up details, and learning all the bad, bad things that she didn't want to do.

And now, now she was going to do precisely what all those really, really helpful men had told her not to do at all.

She had a little box in her hand, wooden, something that played a song she remembered her maman humming. It was a new little box, pretty, a little cello painted on the top, and it fit in her palm. Small, and it was finger-warmed, and she waited until dark, and then she waited a little longer.

The one that came was male, pretty, but she didn't notice that, not beyond a surface understanding of what made someone attractive. Pretty, and she only cared that he could give her what she wanted. The little box was buried at her feet, and her fingers had dirt beneath the fingernails, and the man smiled warmly, and Wren didn't trust that smile.

His eyes were black, black, orbs that were darker than the maw of night around them, but he smiled, and his teeth were pearl and ivory, tucked behind pink lips that were tongue-wet.

Wren talked. She talked, and she talked, and she talked. Fingers hiking up the hem of that sundress, and one foot leaving scuff marks in the dirt at her toe.

And the man smiled. He complimented her, told her things men always told her. The words were empty nothings, but Wren was attentive, wide-eyed grey. Ultimately, the deal was struck, and Wren didn't think her own soul mattered. Oui, he could have it. When she died, he could have it. What did it matter, and it wouldn't, not once she was dead, a thing rotting in a box somewhere. No Luke, and no children, and what did she care where she went.

She smiled a little too much, a little too pleased, and the man smiled wider, more teeth.

And still, still, still, she didn't realize the mistake she'd made. The little girl who didn't trust men, she'd put her faith in a box and a demon, and that wasn't really smart.

There was a small bounce to her step when she turned. Home, and there was peace beneath her ribs. He would be safe, safe, Luke, and that was all that mattered.

The man laughed. Over her shoulder, and she heard him, and she just walked faster. Done, it was done, and she would go home, and she would make soup, and she would hug the children. She would wait for Luke to come home, and she would lose the fear that had been filling her up and up and up.

She stepped out of the door, into the hallway, back into New York.

And then, the girl in the sundress, she forgot.