InsaneJournal

Chuck had seen the way this day started. It had been years ago, but that didn’t mean he didn’t remember it - everything he’d seen in that vision was too vivid to forget, too important to push aside and ignore. So when he opened his eyes and immediately recognized what he was seeing as what he’d seen in his vision, like someone had taken a photograph and pasted it over his normal life, his heart sank - or, okay, it felt more like it shrivelled up and died inside him, because now it wasn’t just dying and leaving Jo behind, it was dying and leaving Jo and their child behind, and he didn’t know what would happen after that, and he was tempted to ignore the path set out in front of him and just bury himself in blankets and Jo, throw the day off-track a little bit, see if it changed anything.

But then his phone chirped like he knew it would, and he answered it and it was Dean, telling him to come down and give him a list of stock they had and what they could afford to trade for weapons... and he said he’d be right down, threw on a jacket and his shoes and scribbled a quick note for Jo - Duty calls, see you later, I love you - and left it on his side of their bed and took off, because if he hurried he could get back before she woke up, he could get back in bed and sleep through this day and it would never come true, it would all be fine.

Dean was in a mood, but what else was new? He did what he had to do, got in and out of there as fast as possible, but when he left it was with a list of things to gather together, which would leave gaps in their stock, and it felt weird to be following his vision so closely, felt weird enough that he stopped walking halfway to one of the sheds, just stood still for a few moments, waiting for time to keep moving without him, set him off-pace a little, and when he felt less like he couldn’t breathe from the deja vu he kept going, moved on and did his job.

Returning to the cabin wasn’t part of the vision. Neither was stopping to grab a handful of flowers (okay, they were pretty much just weeds, but they had big bright yellow blooms on them and they didn’t smell, like, bad or anything, so whatever) on the way back. He grabbed a mug, when he was inside, and put some water in the bottom, shoving the broken stems of the flowers inside and setting it on the counter table near the bed, so she could see them when she woke up, crumbling the note he’d left now that it didn’t matter, tossing it aside - and then he crawled back in under the covers, wrapped an arm around Jo’s waist and buried his face in her hair, and tried not to panic.

-

Things kept deviating from the vision, from there, to the point where he was almost sure it wasn’t going to happen. Maybe he was wrong, it wasn’t today. Maybe it was supposed to be, but he’d altered it. Maybe it would all be okay after all. It had to be, right? He had to be there for Jo - and for the baby.

Now he was sitting in one of the sheds that had been halfway converted into an office, of sorts (which basically meant here’s a desk for you because it still had no electricity, the only light coming in from the windows and the skylight above, and it was all rickety and smelled funny inside but this was where he worked, it was good enough for what he needed it for, anyway), head between his hands while he tried to figure out what to do next.

It was another fork in the road that was this day, another choice between following the vision and deviating from it, except the choice that was the better one was also the one that was supposed to drag him down the path to dying a horribly painful death tonight. He needed to go out and check the salt barrier around the camp, see if it needed to be patched, how much it would take, make an estimate and then coordinate the teams and the actual salt they’d need to get that done. It was important.

But it was also what was supposed to kill him.

He wasn’t sure what, exactly, was going to kill him, though. Because the vision had been his own point of view - dark, salt lines, hearing a sound and moving off towards it, and then death. So, basically, he had no idea what he was supposed to die from - but if he sent someone else out there to do what he needed to do, someone else might die. He wasn’t going to let that happen - he wasn’t exactly heroic, but he wasn’t a total jerk, either.

Ordinarily, he’d have just asked someone to come with him, if he was feeling spooked. Someone with enough gun skill to actually hit something that was coming after him, or something. But this was a vision, this was an almost guarantee that someone was going to die tonight, and he didn’t want to be the one responsible for that. So instead he sent a quick message to Dean (which turned into a slightly lengthy back-and-forth) and a quick message to Jo, and he grabbed the gun he kept in the desk drawer even though he hated it and wasn’t very good with it, and he headed out with his clipboard in hand to go do his job and hope that nothing in the dark was really going to kill him.