Past Hunter meets Current Hunter Who: Gretel and Sam Winchester What: Past Hunter meets Current Hunter Where: Near Storybrooke Coffee When: Early eveningish Warnings: Language? Status: Ongoing
This had to be the weirdest dream of her whole life, and Gretel had had some impressively weird dreams…
One minute, she’d mistimed her duck from a flying iron cauldron and been sent through a second story window. The next, she’d found herself in front of a magically illuminated mural in the middle of a forest she didn’t recognize. She still had her crossbow, her blades, money pouch, and everything else including the cracked ribs from being hit with a three hundred pound oversized kettle- but no brother. After calling for Hansel and following the strangest looking road she’d ever seen into an even stranger looking town, she started to wonder if she’d hit her head too hard on the way out of that window.
After the ‘informative’ chat with a friendly- but very oddly dressed- villager, which included the gift of similarly odd looking clothing, a set of very shiny keys, and a piece of black ...wood(?) plated in apparently magical glass? Gretel began to suspect that she may have actually died.
The villager left her and her new acquisitions standing on a square corner in a confused fugue, one that threatened to turn very quickly into a panic attack the longer she took to wake up.
Sam hadn't been in Storybrooke that long, but in that time he'd discovered his brother was an ex demon (for now at least), his other brother, Adam, and Jo were back from the dead (or almost dead as they were in their time) and Ruby had arrived and turned chaos into....well more chaos. That situation seemed to be under control for now and that freed Sam up to start researching, though he wasn't sure if he was researching ways to get home or ways to get the mark off Dean.
Even research could wait for coffee though and Storybrooke coffee was exactly where he was when he caught sight of the clearly new arrival. The lost look on her face betrayed that about her right away, but the other thing that jumped out at him were the clothes, right down to the leather corset, and the weaponry she had on her. Sam raised his eyebrows and tried to ignore Dean's voice in his head making remarks about the corset.
This was a weird one, even for the things he'd seen before. And if it was weird for him there was no telling how weird it must be for her, judging by the fact that she seemed to be straight out of the dark ages. He sighed a little, research would have to wait a bit longer, as he started to walk towards the woman. "Um hi. Need some help?"
She’d seen him come out from the shop (of some sort), the first other in this weird brain-injury dream besides her mysteriously upbeat greeter- it was hard not to see him, not just because he clearly had eyes for a conversation, but also because he was nearly a foot taller than her. The strange clothes on him registered too, but here, she was the thing that stood out. Then there was the decadent aroma he was accompanied by, wofting out from that shop. Gretel looked at him, then the shop door, then the street around them, rolling her lips in obvious discomfort.
“Apparently,” she breathed somewhere between an answer and disbelief that this was actually happening. Her doe-brown eyes snapped back up to his- they were a deep green or brown, and looked honest. “Am I dead?”
Sam watched her confusion with sympathy, this wasn't an easy transition unless you'd experienced something like this before. Of course she may have, he didn't know a thing about her, but even if she had the initial shock was obviously still overwhelming her.
He gave a soft laugh at her question, but it wasn't unkind. "No, but that was one of my first thoughts when I got here too." He hoped the fact that he wasn't a local and had arrived the same way she had might put her at ease a little.
"I'm Sam." He told her. "Did you just get here?"
It may have been a small comfort, though her brain hadn’t recognized it as one, yet. The phrase ‘when I got here’ stuck out like a warning to a mind that had been shaped by avoiding, diffusing, and escaping traps since she was nine. Or was it six? Still, this Sam didn’t look particularly alarmed. That didn’t mean anything, except that they probably weren’t in any immediate danger. She hoped.
“An hour ago… I think,” she said, looking around again, mostly at the sun to determine how far it had traveled since she walked out of the woods, then back to him. “My name is Gretel…”
What, like Hansel and Gretel? Sam didn't voice the thought, it wasn't exactly a common name but he supposed it might be where she came from, besides she was unlikely to get the reference.
"Nice to meet you Gretel." He watched her still glancing around uncertainly. "Um, do you want to sit down?" He gestured to a table outside the coffee shop. "I could get you a coffee while all this sinks in?"
She caught that glimmer of recognition in his eyes, and wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not. May have been her nerves talking. The pair of them had been recognized in more towns than one. Just never in a town like this... or by people dressed like him. Or when she was by herself.
“Coffee?” The word momentarily pulled her thoughts out of their anxious fog. It hit her right after- the word was also stamped in bright paint on the window of the shop he’d emerged from. Coffee was an extremely expensive delicacy, reserved only for nobility or anyone that could afford a connection in trade from the New World. That must have been what that intoxicating aroma that followed him from the door. Yet another big clue, added to the state of the buildings, the clothes, and everything else that she wasn’t anywhere near Hamburg- in more ways than one.
“I’ve never had coffee…” she admitted, mostly to herself, in quiet exasperation.
"You've never had coffee?" Sam repeated, before mentally kicking himself for not putting two and two together about the time period she was clearly from and the availability of 'luxury' items. "Of course you haven't. Well we should fix that, if nothing else it might actually take the edge off the whole situation." Of course it may have had the opposite effect but Sam had forgotten what it was like to not be accustomed to caffeine.
The ‘of course you haven’t’ was sticking out in her mind as she doggedly tethered herself to his shadow, heading toward the shop. Working through it wildly in her head, none of the explanations for this whole thing made sense- anything that came close was way weirder than even she could fathom. Maybe Hansel would’ve taken to it more in stride, but he was always willing to accept strangeness quickly- usually in order to get rid of it. Gretel was the one who had to figure things out, and right now it was giving her a massive fucking headache.
“So…anyone can just buy coffee here-” she started again, but her words fell away when she walked into the wall of gorgeous-scented air. Heady and clean and savory at the same time, without a hint of wood smoke, sour ale, burned meat, or bad body odor that came with every enclosed establishment she had ever known. Gretel actually stopped in her tracks, her lips falling apart in a small breath. “...you’re sure I’m not dead?”
Sam smiled at her reaction. It was kind of wonderful to see someone experiencing even just the scent of coffee for the first time. It was so commonplace now such a reaction was rare. "Yup anyone." He told her, before ordering her a cup. "Still not dead." He assured her.
He guided her over to a table and sat down opposite her. "So, where did you come from?" He asked her.
She’d thanked him under her breath, still not entirely convinced he was right about this not being some kind of weird afterlife, but the pungent beverage he handed her was enough of a distraction to help her work through it. She held it close to her nose as he led the way again, and followed suit into one of the daintiest chairs she’d ever seen. The collection of items she’d been given was set down by her boots, for now.
“My brother and I were in Hamburg,” she told him, while still keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings- and him. “Dealing with a particularly nasty coven that’d enslaved the local clergy. One hit through a high window, and I found myself here...” She finished off the short explanation with an experimental sip from the coffee. It was hot, and much more bitter than the aroma betrayed- which was surprisingly euphoric. “Fuck me, this is good…”
Sam narrowed his eyes a little at the mention of a coven. "You and your brother are...hunters?" He asked her carefully. The fact that she'd offered up the information so readily was confusing, hunters generally weren't so forthcoming, but he didn't know what else they could be to be dealing with a coven.
He couldn't help but laugh at her exclamation upon tasting the coffee. "Yeah, it is." He took a sip of his own coffee which was still warm thanks to the to go cup it was contained in.
“I saw you recognized my name,” she told him flat out with a nod. “It’s not exactly uncommon-” She and Hansel had one hell of a reputation, especially after Muriel and the Blood Moon. They were arguably the most recognizable pair of witch hunters in their region. “Though I had no idea our reputation had reached this far… however far that is.” She took another sip, not completely aware that she was doing it. Her mind was on other things, even with the super decadent treat right in front of her nose. “Obviously really damn far.”
Sam looked puzzled for a moment when she said he'd recognised her name. "What? Oh, that's just cos it's the same as in this kids story, Hansel and Gretel." He said after another sip of coffee. "Can't say I know of any hunters named Gretel by reputation." ....who have a brother.....and kill witches.... Sam's train of thought led him to the conclusion that most people probably wouldn't jump to, but most people hadn't met Dorothy from Oz. "And that's exactly who you are, isn't it? Gretel from Hansel and Gretel."
Gretel’s turn to look puzzled- not that it wasn’t a common look on her for the majority of this conversation.
“Yes, that’s exactly who I am,” she said, not particularly confident that she was grasping his entire meaning. She set her coffee down on the table, studying his face a little harder. “You know my name from a story...about children. But not for our reputation? Tell me the story.”
Sam set his coffee cup down and shifted in his chair. "Uh, okay. Hansel and Gretel are taken into the woods by their father, they come across a house made of candy and the old woman who lives there turns out to be a witch who tries to fatten Hansel up so she can eat him. Gretel manages to trick her and knocks her into the stove instead, killing her." Okay so he skimped on the details a bit but the essential components were there.
Gretel just stared at him, somewhere between uneasy and just trying to process the whole thing. Eventually her lips rolled in on themselves, tasting coffee residue, but not enough to distract her from the weird conversation.
“Actually, Hansel knocked her in… after I stabbed her,” she said, her voice slightly distant. “...and that’s the whole story you know? Nothing beyond that?”
Sam watched her reaction carefully but she wasn't giving much away. He nodded slowly. "That's the whole story, obviously with some minor variations on detail." He reached over and picked up his coffee, taking another sip. Obviously there was more to this by the way she asked that question and the fact that she was decked in weaponry. Clearly the killing hadn't stopped with one witch, but he sure as hell hadn't heard any other stories about them.
Gretel’s words struggled. There were too many of them trying to get out of her mouth at once, that they all crammed at the front of her thoughts and gelled into a mess of unintelligent blah. Her mouth opened as if to speak, then stopped for an awkward breath. She found her eyes went anywhere but his face, because his intensity watching her was hard to ignore. In their search for anything that might knock her back into reality, they fell on a calendar on the wall.
“Well.” Her voice had been uncertain before, now it was wavering in similar shock. “That might explain it… When I woke up this morning, it was August… seventeen thirty.” Not April, 2015. Explained a lot, actually. Also opened up a shitload of new questions.
Sam followed her gaze when she started to speak again, seeing the calendar on the wall as she had. He raised his eyebrows when she said where she'd come from, or when as the case may be. "Seventeen thirty?" He said as he turned back to face her again. "That's a pretty big jump." As if jumping realities wasn't a big enough stretch for most people, Gretel also had to deal with 285 years of technological and human advancement.
He wanted to help her. Maybe it was just the part of his nature that wanted to help people or maybe he felt a sort of solidarity with her because of the similar life paths, even with what little he knew of hers. "Okay. Aside from plying you with caffeine, is there anything I can do to help?"
Gretel actually snorted, a laugh that was almost completely humorless- not directed at him, but into the palm she’d just put over her face. As if she could just rub away the fever-dream she’d woken up in. The other hand joined in, rubbed her eyes, then both dropped with a defeated sigh.
Where do I even start? she wanted to say, but ended up biting her cheek instead. Her eyes gravitated back to Sam’s face- at least there was honesty there, a true desire to help her, without a hint of the usual ‘strings’ she often sensed attached to such offers. She didn’t trust him completely, of course- she didn’t know him. But he was apparently her best chance so far.
“Who are you?” she asked, finally settling on one direction out of millions she had to explore. “I mean...that didn’t sound right. Tell me about you, first,” she corrected with an apologetic wince. “I know that doesn’t seem like it has anything to do with helping me, but it’d make me feel a little better to not just see you as Strange-but-Generous Future Giant.”
That threw him a little. Of all the things he could've expected her to ask that wasn't one of them but he supposed it made sense, especially in their line of work. You didn't just accept that people were trustworthy or inherently good. They had to prove it somehow or earn it. Though usually as far as Sam was concerned they deserved the benefit of the doubt unless they proved otherwise.
"Um, alright." He ignored the future giant comment. "I told you my name's Sam, I'm from Kansas in the United States...which I guess means nothing to you...America, then." He rambled a little. "My brother and I are hunters as well, I have been since I was 9. Our father raised us in the life." He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, he wasn't exactly comfortable talking about himself. "I...there isn't much to tell beyond that. What else did you want to know?"
A few things clicked into place when he disclosed that he- and his brother, apparently- were cut from the same ilk as she and Hansel, and it gave a possible hint as to why she had ended up in this place. Now if she could find her brother…
Gretel’s eyebrows popped up, fixing him with a knowing look. “Somehow I doubt ‘there isn’t much else to tell’ if you’ve been hunting since you were nine,” she told him, but she understood. She understood very well why he automatically kept the cards close to his chest. “You said America… is that where we are now?”
Sam smirked involuntarily at being caught out by his half truth. "Okay, so there's kind of a lot to tell but nothing that isn't just details. I gave you the important points." Well most of them anyway. The fact that he'd been brought back from the dead more than once, started the apocalypse, ended the apocalypse and currently had an almost demon for a brother weren't things he felt were essentially topics of discussion. Not for right now anyway. Maybe if she got him drunk sometime. On truth serum. Anyway.
He nodded at her question. "Yeah, we are. Maine to be exact."
The word ‘Maine’ produced no familiar glimmer in Gretel’s eyes- in fact, they looked more confused, but she was trying to play it off and nodded anyway. “Right. Maine.” Moving on.
“I need to find my brother… that’s important,” she told him in all seriousness. “He has a condition- well, more than one- and if he’s wandering around here looking for me, things could get ugly fast.”