sam winchester (thesamsquatch) wrote in welcomethreads, @ 2013-10-31 14:51:00 |
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Sarissa used to love this time of year. Not only was it gorgeous, with the leaves turning into shades of red and auburn and gold, but this was traditionally the time that she got to spend with her mother. It didn't happen often - when your mother was one of the most powerful beings in the world and rules over a court of dangerous and vicious faeries, you didn't get a lot of mother-daughter bonding time. But fall was when Mab's powers were on the rise again, and when the Winter Court was too newly woken up to be much if a nuisance, and that was the best chance Sarissa had to get any time with her. They'd walk along the bared treetops and munched on flowers frozen by frost, or they'd go into the city and Sarissa would tell her of all the progress humans had made since Mab's last visit, and then they'd go to a cafe and sip hot chocolate or go watch a movie while Sarissa tried to prevent her mother from turning anyone into ice. That was all over now. Even if Sarissa found her way back, she belonged to the summer court now. And not just as any member of the court - she was one of the Queens and heir to Tatiana herself. And how could the Queen of Winter associate with the heir of her arch nemesis? No, autumn cannot be the time that Sarissa spent with her mother anymore. She couldn't even enjoy it for its own beauty. Autumn meant the dying of Summer, and the waning of Sarissa's powers. Already she found it difficult to get out of bed in the mornings; she felt weak and sluggish. It was a sunny day today, however, and warm for the season. For the first time in weeks, Sarissa managed to drag herself out of bed, and she decided to take a walk in the woods. This was her domain. Even if it were dying, perhaps she could gain strength from it. --- This had never been Sam’s favorite time of year. When he was young, most of what he’d known was that it was the time of year his mother had died, the time that their lives had changed forever. The holiday festivities, which all the kids around him enjoyed, just made him stick out like a sore thumb because his family didn’t celebrate things normally. He remembered wanting a costume, once or twice, in the days before he’d known that monsters were real, if only because having a cool costume could (in theory, anyway) make him ‘cool’. Then the bubble had been burst, and it was just one more thing that their lifestyle had ruined for him. He didn’t want to dress up as any of the things that he might run into on a hunt, and he didn’t like seeing other kids dressing up as them, either. And of course, the fact that his dad was always away or thoroughly drunk (possibly both) around this time of year when he thought about their mom didn’t help. Sam had never had enough memory of his mother to sympathize or join in, but around this time of year he’d usually mourned for the life that he wanted, that he didn’t have. And then in the last few years, he’d had Jess’s death to mourn. The anniversary of that was always hard on him, but this year was especially weird. Jess was here, but there was a part of him that was still grieving her. Maybe even more deeply for the fact that she was here, that he’d been forcefully reminded of how good things had once been, and how much it had hurt when he’d lost her. But grieving a person when they were right there in front of him didn’t feel right, especially when he just wanted to spend as much time enjoying having her back as he possibly could. Before he lost her all over again, which was bound to happen. It was just a matter of time. It was hard not to think about it, though. Bolt had noticed him brooding before anyone else, thankfully, and had insisted on being taken out for a walk; Sam had been glad to take him up on it. He let the dog lead him through the town, and was a little surprised when Bolt chose the forest, since the park was usually his favorite. The forest was nice, though. Sam hadn’t been out here much since the night he and Jess and Angel had come out searching for Connor, and it had been dark then, but right now he could appreciate the crunch of colorful leaves under his feet, breaking the otherwise quiet stillness. Until he heard a footstep somewhere off to his left. Bolt’s head turned in the direction of it at the same time Sam’s did, pricking his ears-- Sam’s ears didn’t move in the same way, but he listened, too. Instinct told him to be wary, even if there were rarely threats out here. And then he saw a person who also appeared to be out for a stroll, just as peaceably as he was. He would have just let her pass by, but he’d let Bolt off leash, and the dog darted over to say hi before Sam could do anything about it. “Bolt, don’t--” he protested, knowing that it was futile. He jogged after him, slowing down a few paces away when the dog stopped in front of the girl, looking up at her hopefully. “Sorry. He’s friendly. A little too friendly, if anything.” --- Sarissa had picked up a few followers on her walk: a family of rabbits, and a deer that had been on its way to the river. Upon catching the scent of the dog, however, they disappeared back into the brush with a soft rustle of branches. She wasn’t as surprised, however. Even with the hardening ground, she could sense the dog and his owner’s presence long before they came into sight. One of the things that came with her new position, she supposed. So when the dog came bounding up to her, she was able to smile and greet him with an affectionate rub of the head. "That's all right," she said, kneeling down to pet him some more. The sight of the dog, so energetic and alive, was a welcome distraction from the fallen leaves and twitchy animals. And animals - the domesticated ones - didn’t always like her; she evoked too much of a wild spirit for them to be comfortable with. This one, however, seem to have no problem, since he was trying to jump up and lick her face. She laughed for the first time in what seemed to be weeks. “He really is friendly. What’s his name?” --- “Bolt,” Sam said with a slight smile. He relaxed, because she didn’t appear to mind the dog. “Partly because he’s fast, partly because he does-- that. Bolts off whenever he feels like it. I thought he’d stopped, because he hasn’t done it in weeks, but I guess he really wanted to meet you.” The dog had a strange way of making friends, but it appeared that he had a keen instinct for a certain type of person. First Sam, who had been in such a distracted, grieving state that their ‘meeting’ had involved him hitting Bolt with his car when the dog rushed out into the street. There was no proof that Bolt had done that on purpose to meet him, but ever since Paige had said something about them being fated to meet, he’d wondered if the dog hadn’t known it somehow. Then, at home, the dog had led him to Amelia. Here, Bolt had drawn his attention to Carl, and now to Sarissa. It didn’t necessarily mean anything, but he found himself wondering whether she was also a little lost (maybe not literally in terms of lost in the forest) or sad or lonely. Those kinds of people seemed to be Bolt’s type. “And I’m Sam,” he added belatedly. “We were just taking a hike, if you want to join us.” --- Sarissa hesitated. She’d come out to spend time with her kingdom, something she thought should be done on her own. She hadn’t even asked Fix to come with her, although she knew he would want to, in order to keep her safe. But walking through the dying woods was getting depressing, and the simple, infectious energy of the dog was raising her spirits. It wouldn’t do any harm to go with them. “Sarissa,” she finally replied, and she got up to her feet. “I’d love to, thanks.” She was dressed for a walk, at least, if not a hike, with a thick hoodie and jeans and a pair of street runners. Despite that, she looked like she was as part of the forest as the trees themselves. --- For a moment, Sam wondered if he should have made the offer. He was just trusting Bolt’s instincts, really, that maybe this person could use some company. But then again, maybe he was reading the dog’s instincts wrong. Or maybe not. She’d accepted the offer, which likely meant that Bolt was right. His own instincts about her mental state were not quite so strong, but there was something about her that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. She seemed like someone who was very at home in the wilderness, but then, he felt relatively the same way. He’d been out in woods like these enough in his lifetime-- hunting and tracking-- to feel relatively at home in the forest. Bolt, on the other hand, stood out from the trees with his multicolored coat, and once he had finished greeting Sarissa, he darted to the nearest tree to sniff, then looked up with his ears pricked to follow a squirrel as it moved through the branches. “I think we talked briefly, before,” he said. He still hadn’t figured out exactly what it was about her that resonated with the forest around her, but he had remembered why she looked slightly familiar. “Didn’t you say this used to be your favorite time of year?” --- "I did, yes," Sarissa answered, turning to study him a little more closely. "Oh, that's right - we talked about holidays in the fall. How's that going? Do you have any Halloween plans?" There was a brittle fragility to her, much as if she were one of the bare branches above the trail, and she walked slowly. But the path was clear before them - even the parts where roots had once poked through the earth and fallen branches had blocked the trail - and her steps were assured. --- “No,” Sam said, with a slight laugh. “I still don’t like Halloween. I can do any of the other fall holidays, but not that one.” He had probably skirted around that when he’d talked to her about it. He tended to sidestep more serious subjects whenever he could; it wasn’t easy, considering the way everything seemed to be out in the open here, but he’d mostly avoided talking about his life as a hunter. Aside from mentioning the apocalypse to Carol, and a few other offhand… discussions. Jane probably knew more about it than anyone. “I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving,” he said. “And Christmas.” Both of those holidays were far more appealing now that he had things to be thankful for, namely, the people that were in his life here. He was even more thankful for them for the fact that their presence here was so tenuous and could end at any time. --- “You prefer turkeys to chocolate?” Sarissa asked, giving him a faint smile. It was asked casually, although she hadn’t missed the slight edge in his laugh. There was something about Halloween that he didn’t like aside from a bunch of kids on a sugar high. She didn’t blame him, really. Halloween wasn’t a great time back where she came from either. It being the one day of the year when the veil between the mortal and spirit worlds was the thinnest, there were always some sort of mischief going on that most mortals were unaware of. --- “Yes, actually,” Sam said, his smile growing more genuine at that. That wasn’t his reasoning, but that was an excuse he could use to get away from actually having to explain the real reason. But the real problem was that he wanted to explain the real reason, wanted to take advantage of the fact that so many things were out in the open here. He’d been avoiding the subject so much, fairly successfully, but it seemed like he’d reached his limit. “I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth. But also… I’ve just seen too many vampires and ghosts and demons in my time-- and not the kind that can sit around playing nice in a little magical town-- that the whole appeal of the holiday is kind of lost on me.” He was supposed to be keeping his head down as a hunter to avoid attracting trouble, he reasoned, but he was a hunter. He didn’t want to pretend to be anything else, not anymore, because pretending was exhausting. It was growing more exhausting every day as November drew closer, marking the end of his attempt at normalcy. He felt like he was grieving, but he was also tense, as if waiting for something awful to happen-- because awful things always happened around his six month birthday. Inside he supposed he was somewhat rationalizing that if he made it to Thanksgiving, then maybe things would be alright. --- Given how cagey he’d been about the sort of thing he did and what Halloween meant to him, Sarissa was surprised that he would share his feelings about the holiday now. She didn’t think he was lying about it, however. There was just too much bleak resignation behind his words for her to think that he was just making a joke. And if he’d been dealing with vampires and ghosts and demons, she didn’t blame him for the bleakness. “It’s difficult to enjoy the innocence of the holiday when you’ve seen past the veil, isn’t it?” she asked sympathetically. She knew something about that, although she’d never been innocent in those matters. She’d been born to it. Still, she could understand how hard it was to simply enjoy it when she knew what went on behind the scenes. --- At this point, it didn't really surprise Sam that she knew what he was talking about. Even for people who'd never met a supernatural being before, he couldn't imagine anyone could last long in this town without realizing that magic, at least, was real-- not to mention the vampires, ghosts, and werewolves that had become a part of the Storybrooke population. But the way Sarissa said it made him think that she had her own experience with the supernatural. He looked over at her, more closely. "Yeah," he answered. "Sounds like you've had some experience with that, too." --- He was astute - she had to give him that. But someone who dealt with vampires and ghosts and demons had to be. It was a one way trip to snack street otherwise. "There are vampire and ghosts and demons where I came from too,” she acknowledged. "I've been able to see them all my life. I'm one of the few who could." It was the truth: few people, even wizards, could tell a demon or a vampire for what it was of it was properly diguised. Sarissa knew instantly. She just didn't say why she did. --- That was interesting. Sam felt it was better not to ask why she was one of the few who could see them; the circumstances of being chosen for something like that were hardly ever nice. He’d learned from that mistake when he’d asked a couple how they’d gotten started on hunting. Besides, he didn’t feel like going into too much detail regarding his own ‘chosen’-ness, and asking too many questions would likely lead to being asked them as well. “Most people don’t know they exist where I come from, either,” he said. “But I think maybe your ‘veil’ is more literal than ours. They’re around, they just keep to the shadows or disguise themselves and make it possible for most people to live in denial. Until they run into them in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he added wryly. “Which is where I have a habit of being, but I do that on purpose.” He gave a slight smile. “And since I don’t like the costumes or candy, and I’ve never had a house that I could decorate for trick-or-treaters, Halloween’s just kind of wasted on me.” --- "You go looking for them?" Sarissa asked, frowning. He hadn't said it in so many words, but it certainly sounded as if he did - which meant that he was very brave, foolish, or powerful. She didn't feel any power emanating from him, howeve was getting good at understanding that sense now, so it had to be one of the first two. "Why would you do that ?" --- Sam smiled wryly. It was a fair enough question. It wasn’t as if that lifestyle had ever brought him anything but grief, but he’d been raised to it, so he hadn’t ever expected anything else. Except that he expected to be able to save others from living the same hell, expected to keep the world turning and humanity safe from the darker forces that tried to exterminate (or in the most recent case, domesticate) their species over and over. “I protect people from them.” It was probably both foolish and brave, really. He went into it knowing the risks-- and had in fact ended up dying and getting hurt more than once-- but even he and Dean recognized that what they were doing was foolhardy. It was just their life, so they did it anyway. --- "That's admirable," Sarissa remarked, lifting an eyebrow. It was especially so given that he seemed to have no power of his own, other than perhaps awareness and knowledge. And as powerful as those might be, they wouldn't necessarily save anyone's life if a White Court vampire was slowly leaching their soul away. Which brought her to the next logical question. "How did you get involved with it? I don't imagine it's a popular career choice." --- It was, Sam supposed. It was a noble intent, even if it often went wrong. He didn’t have any arguments against that part of it; that was the part that kept him tied to hunting itself, outside of simple loyalty to his brother. There was a drive, a need, to save people, to do the right thing, to shield others against the darkness that had swallowed his family whole. Yet, he didn’t entirely feel comfortable with being admired for it. He didn’t think that was really what Sarissa was doing, thankfully-- she looked skeptical, and he couldn’t blame her for that, especially if she had some idea of what he was up against-- but it still kept him from responding to the comment. He’d never been good at taking compliments, even when it wasn’t really praise. “Runs in the family,” he said. He gave a wry smile. “You could say it’s in our blood.” He looked over at her. “So you see them, but you don’t go looking for trouble? Does trouble find you?” --- Sarissa raised an eyebrow once more. Something in the way he’d phrased that made her think that it wasn’t just a figure of speech. But still she couldn’t sense any magical power from him. She did know that power came in many forms, and not just the ones she was used to, but Sam seemed pretty unassuming so far. Then again, no one would peg her as the third most powerful faerie in her world, either. “Sounds like family dinners would have some interesting conversations,” she remarked. “But no...I’ve been very good about staying out of the way of trouble, at least until recently.” --- Despite his life being somewhat public record here, it seemed to Sam that most people didn’t know who he was. He’d run into the occasional person who did-- Raith being the most notable, and most irritating-- but for the most part, they seemed to just write him off as being the tall guy who worked at the library. He did his best not to burst that bubble, because they were trying to keep their heads low, but it had felt so nice to get secrets off his chest with Jess, that he was somewhat ready to open up, at least when he was one on one with people. He quirked a smile. “Yeah, that’s probably why we didn’t have many of those,” he said. Family dinners for him meant eating with Dean, and their conversational topics could range from whatever they were hunting to… well, anything. Movies. Ridiculous little arguments about whatever it was they’d chosen to bicker about that day. But a lot of the things they said to each other would, indeed, seem pretty weird to an outside observer. “You mean when you showed up here?” --- His family wasn't big on thanksgiving, he'd said. That made sense, for a family of hunters. Their lives probably weren't exactly traditional. Sarissa could believe that they didn't do normal family dinners either. "They're overrated anyway," she told him with an understanding smile. She didn't exactly have family dinners either. "And yes, when I showed up here." And before, too, when she'd finally run out of luck after eight decades and was forced to turn into he very thing she'd been avoiding all her life. --- “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Sam said. Admittedly, he’d always put ‘normal’ things on something of a pedestal: they were the best parts of life, in his opinion. Regular family dinners, holidays, all the other little things that families did just to be a family, those were the things that he had missed out on and as a result, had always desperately wanted. His family tended to show affection through violently defending each other, which wasn’t something he was going to complain about at this point in his life, but it certainly wasn’t normal. “Family can’t ever be rated high enough. Having dinner together is a nice way of just… being a family. We’ve just never really had any time for that.” Or maybe no desire to, in the case of his father or Dean. At least, he’d thought that when he was younger. It had become obvious, as he’d gotten older, that they had their own reasons for giving up normality: reasons that he’d not been able to see when he was a kid, because their perspective had been impossible for him to understand. Now he was older, and had lived through many of the same things they had, and he definitely understood it. He suspected that Sarissa was just taking the easy out that he’d given her, and that it wasn’t the full truth, but he didn’t call her on it. “This place seems like a lot less trouble, from my perspective,” was all he said, and it was the truth. “Although I’m sure for people with more normal lives, being pulled through a magical portal is trouble enough in itself, even if they’re not in danger here.” --- "I know that I, for one, never really fully appreciated my music collection until I had to build it back up," Sarissa said wryly, adding some levity to the conversation. While Sam seemed to be open enough about talking about his less than traditional family, she didn't want him to be uncomfortable about it. "But I imagine it must be strange to go from a life of hunting and protecting, to...well, normality." Because even with all the supernaturals and fairy tale creatures, Storybrooke was as apple pie and normal as anyone could possibly get. --- Sam hadn’t had that problem; he’d arrived with everything he owned, including the Impala, and a dog that hadn’t even technically belonged to him. Which reminded him-- he glanced around for Bolt and found him a little ways off in front and slightly to their right, sniffing something at the base of a tree. He seemed to be having a grand old time, and hadn’t run off too far, so Sam returned his attention to the conversation. “It is,” he agreed. “Bit of a culture shock, really. But I like normality better. Always have.” --- “Have you had a chance to experience normality?” Sarissa asked curiously. Given what he’d said about his family, it seemed that normality wasn’t exactly...well, the norm in his life. Even she, whose mother was the Queen of Winter, managed to get some sort of normalcy when she moved out on her own. Not that she’d ever been able to bring a boy home to meet her parents or anything of the sort, but such things were trifling. --- “College,” Sam said, nodding. He’d experienced it before college, too, at other people’s houses, but that seemed kind of… pathetic to talk about. Or maybe that was just his lingering guilt and shame of the way Dean had reacted to seeing those memories, and realizing that they were happy ones for him. It didn’t change the fact that they were still some of his happiest memories, in that they were the times he’d been happiest when he was younger. But since they’d gotten back from heaven, he’d tried to remember moments when he’d been happy with his family. There weren’t many-- their lifestyle tended to preclude him from being happy-- but there had been times when he had been content, to an extent, in kind of the same way that he felt content around his brother these days. “I went to college. And then I left.” --- There was so much depth behind those last four words that Sarissa knew it wasn't simply due to getting bored or deciding to drop out. He'd been happy at college; he'd been normal there. And then he had to leave. "What happened?" Sarissa asked with quiet empathy. --- Sam considered that question for a moment, and then shook his head. He appreciated that she was willing to listen, that she'd heard him out even this far, and it wasn't even that he didn't want to tell her specifically. If Jess hadn't been here, he might have done it. But it was just as much her story as his, and he was protective of her right to privacy. People didn't need to know about what had happened to her. "Long story," he said finally. "But the short story is, my old life caught up to me." He gave her a slight smile. "I didn't mean for you to have to hear about my problems when I invited you along, you know." --- She'd taken him as far as he was comfortable sharing, apparently. It was too bad - he seemed to have so much sadness in him, despite his friendliness, and it seemed to her that he could do with someone he could talk to about it. But despite her fae nature clamoring for more information, she gave him an understanding smile. "I'm a rehab nurse," she said with a wry smile. "Listening to people while taking calming walks in the forest is kind of what I do." --- “Yeah?” Sam asked, starting to smile. She was good at this whole empathy thing, so he wasn’t really surprised to find that she’d made a career of helping people. Empathy was useful when hunting, too, although he didn’t always get a chance to help people by listening to them. Sometimes he couldn’t help people at all, no matter how much he tried. “So I guess you’ve worked with a lot of people who’ve had a hard time of it, then. I know a lot of people have had it even worse than me.” He took a deep breath. “And calming walks in the forest do help. I have a lot of bad associations with this time of year, not just Halloween. All the stuff that went down to make me leave Stanford… it was right at the beginning of November. And usually I’m out fighting something and not paying much attention to the date until it’s right up on top of me, sometimes not even then, but when I’m living the slow apple pie life in Storybrooke, it’s a bit different.” --- "Yeah, there's a lot more time to think about things, isn't there?" Sarissa agreed. With the onset of winter and her general lack of energy to do anything other than curl up under the covers, she'd had a lot of time to think, too, especially about what this time of year meant to her. "My sister died on Halloween," she said quietly. It wasn't something she normally would have shared with anyone, but it had been on her mind more and more as the day came up. "This will be my first one without her." --- Sam nodded. The time to think was nice in some ways, not so nice in others. He wasn’t used to actually having to deal with Halloween or any of the anniversaries of deaths he grieved; there usually wasn’t time. Half the time he didn’t even notice what the date was, while he was hunting-- he noticed the changing of the seasons, and occasionally the odd holiday decoration in a store, and he and Dean usually did something for Christmas, but that was about it. He’d gotten to the point where he didn’t visit gravesites (most of his loved ones didn’t have those, anyway) or do anything special to remember them except keep moving on, keep fighting, keep trying to prevent others from having the same fate they’d had. Here in Storybrooke, he’d started noticing fall almost as soon as it had started. He’d noticed Halloween decorations, and there was lots of talk about costumes and celebrations on the network. And here, there was Jess, still alive and well, whose face he saw every morning when he woke up. He was still afraid she’d disappear at any moment, especially now that this terrible season was coming around again. Everything awful happened this time of year. And not just for him, either. He looked genuinely sympathetic, almost sorrowful, at the mention of her having lost her sister. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Losing family is really, really hard.” --- "It is," Sarissa said quietly. Maeve might have been a murderous, manipulative psychopath, but she was Sarissa's twin. Whatever she'd done, they were family. Sarissa already had little of that. She pulled herself away from her thoughts and gave him a faint smile. "Doyou mind if we find a place to sit for a bit?" They'd been walking for a while now, and Sarissa was getting tired. At this rate, she probably won't be able to even get out of bed by the time the winter solstice came. --- Sam didn’t have anything to add to that, but he maintained a quiet, sympathetic silence for a while as she was lost in her thoughts. His own train of thought had turned to his brother, and the feeling of losing him multiple times-- so many times now that he couldn’t specify one particular date as being the day his brother died-- just because the conversation had brought out a sympathetic sense of grief and loss in him. He wondered which he was more afraid of having to endure again, losing Jess or Dean. It was difficult to compare the two, because they meant such utterly different things to him, and both would tear him up quite a bit. He was glad to be distracted from those musings by the request to sit down, and nodded agreeably. He looked around, spotted Bolt sniffing around a small outcropping of rocks, and pointed to it. “How about over there?” he glanced over at her. “You alright?” --- "Yeah, I'm fine," Sarissa replied, giving him a small, reassuring smile. "I've just been feeling under the weather." She went over to the rocks and took a seat. Up until now, her command over this world had been subtle and barely noticeable: the deer that had been by her side when Sam and Bolt had encountered her; the path that smoothed out in front of them to ease their walk. Now, as she sat, the stone shifted around her, turning itself from just a pile of rocks to a stone chair that carefully cradled her. --- Sam had been lost in thought for a lot of the walk, and he’d been paying more attention to her and Bolt than his surroundings: in a weird way, he’d started to trust that Bolt would alert him to anything in the general vicinity that needed his attention, and even things that didn’t. His instincts had started to tune in with the dog’s: even if he wasn’t looking directly at Bolt, he somehow knew when his ears pricked to attention. It was similar to the way he worked with Dean, knowing what Dean was doing-- or would do-- without having to glance at him. But even as broody was he currently was, he couldn’t fail to notice the movement of the rocks in response to Sarissa’s presence. He’d been about to sit beside her, but then stopped. There had definitely been something his instincts had been trying to tell him about her, but they hadn’t been warning signs, exactly, so he’d been willing to overlook them for the sake of a nice walk and conversation. Now he raised his eyes to her face to examine her more closely. Yes, there was definitely something about her… a sort of wildness, despite how relatively normal she looked at first glance. “So, totally normal until you showed up here, huh?” he said, after a moment. That wasn’t exactly what she’d said, and he knew it-- she’d said she’d stayed out of trouble til she’d gotten here, although he’d suspected even that wasn’t the case. He wasn’t accusing her of lying so much as simply pointing out that there was a bit more she hadn’t told him. --- “I didn’t say that,” Sarissa said quickly. In fact, she hadn’t lied to him at all. As a faerie, she was incapable of lying - but that didn’t mean she couldn’t keep things to herself. The shifting of the stone to better adjust to her comfort, however, pretty much blew her cover as just a normal, human transplant. Sarissa hadn’t even consciously done it; the rock had just conformed to her as if it could feel her wishes. And now she had a hunter looking suspiciously at her, and the pleasant, casual conversation they’d been having was suddenly gone. She grimaced. “I’m a faerie,” she admitted, although she didn’t go so far as to confess that she was heir to Queen Tatiana herself. “I just stay to be as normal as I can.” --- There were shades of grey with withholding truths, and Sam recognized that. He didn’t mean to be accusing about it, but to be perfectly honest, it had unsettled him a little. He hadn’t looked into her very deeply in the database that Charlie had made, he’d mainly only used it to look up the vampires and werewolves and others that they’d flagged as potentially dangerous-- but he remembered, suddenly, where else he’d heard the name before. It had been a while, but when she mentioned faeries, the pieces connected in his head. “That’s right,” he said. “Fix said you were the… Summer Queen of the faeries, or one of them. That was awhile back, though, before I’d actually talked to you, so I didn’t make the connection.” He paused, and then sat down on the bigger rock nearby. “He was asking me about fighting the supernatural. Offering to help. But that’s his job, not yours?” Getting used to the way things worked differently here, or in other worlds, was still a bit weird sometimes. He remembered the fairies he’d encountered a year or so ago, while soulless. She was different from the ones he’d met. “And that’s why you don’t like this season, isn’t it?” --- He was exceedingly clever, and Fix talked too much. Perhaps that wasn't fair; Fix had a job to do, and he knew how to do it than Sarissa did, so she shouldn't criticize. It was just disconcerting to find out that this hunter knew more about her than she realized. Sarissa still wasn't comfortable with her role as Summer Lady, and the fewer people knew about it, the better. "Fix's job is to protect Summer," Sarissa admitted. "And that often means fighting other supernatural creatures. I didn't realize he'd talked to you about it." --- "It was awhile back," Sam said. "Not long after I got here. He was talking about hunting vampires pretty publicly, and I'd already gotten chewed out for doing something similar, so I warned him, and we got to talking. That's really all he's told me, honestly." It didn't take a mind reader to see that it made her uncomfortable to hear that he knew who she was. In this case, as in most, the knowing actually eased Sam's mind and made up for the fact that he'd been taken by surprise by the demonstration of her faerie power. "I haven't been doing my job here, and from what I've seen, he hasn't needed to either. I'm hoping it stays that way." --- "Me too," Sarissa said quietly. Halloween was coming up: the one day in the entire year that she could be killed. She and Fix had already hadn't precautions for her protection, but it would definitely throw a wrench into things if a baddie showed up all of a sudden. "So how is normality working out for you?" she asked. "What are you doing with you time now that you don't have vampires to hunt?" --- “Working at the library,” Sam said, smiling. “Taking care of a dog. Spending time with the people I have here. Totally mundane by comparison, but really nice.” But he liked it. He had a feeling that at other points in his life, he would have ended up very restless by slowing down this much, but that wasn’t the case now. His home world had been safe, for the moment, with the leviathan threat vanished along with their leader, his brother, and Cas. He’d been totally alone and at a loss for what to do. This place had given him his family back and allowed him the time and space to enjoy it, at least for now. He was all too willing to stop and appreciate it. He’d be more than okay with spending the rest of his life like this, he thought. “What about you?” --- "Working at the hospital," Sarissa replied. "There isn't much call for a rehab nurse, so I've been working in the ER." She gave him a rueful smile. "Even there, it's pretty quiet. Small, sleepy towns with a supernatural presence just doesn't see as much action as John Hopkins or Chicago General." She was feeling a little more at ease with him again. She was still put off that he knew more about her than she realized, but it was probably something she should get used to. Power like hers wasn't something that could be hidden for long. --- “Funny, isn’t it?” Sam said, slightly amused. “With this kind of supernatural presence, I never would’ve expected Storybrooke to be even remotely safe. I guess we’ve just gotten lucky and only gotten the types that are willing to observe the peace treaty.” For now, anyway. He always added that mentally, because having absolute faith in any supernatural being was beyond him at this point. Even though he liked Angel a lot, there was still a part of him that refused to entirely trust him. But that said, he’d thought there had been a part of him that refused to trust Ruby, too, right until the end. He was aware of the fact that his trust might be stronger than he liked to believe, despite his experiences. “But I’m glad of it,” he said. “I’m sure my luck will turn again at some point, but I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.” --- It was funny - so many people here were clamoring to get back to their own worlds, but she and Sam seemed to be content here. In fact, Sarissa would be quite happy to stay here permanently. She wouldn't have to go back and face Queen Titania, or deal with her mother's disappointment. She could have the quiet, normal life she'd always wanted - as normal as it could be when animals talked to her, anyway. One such animal came to her now: a grey squirrel with a bushy tail that scampered up her stone chair to chitter into her ear. Sarissa frowned and stood, and the rock she'd been sitting on melted back into its former shape. " I should go," she said. "But it was very nice meeting you." --- Sam stared at the squirrel, and then got to his feet as well when she moved to leave. “Everything okay?” he said, somewhat doubtful that she would actually tell him. He could have sworn, though, that the squirrel had talked to her and that she had understood it. That was weird even by his standards, but on the other hand, it fit right in with the whole wildlife faerie spirit thing she had going on. Raising a hand to run through his hair, he added, “I mean, don’t let me keep you. But it was nice to meet you, too.” --- "It's fine," Sarissa assured him, but her smile was distracted. "Perhaps we can talk another time." And with that, she followed the squirrel into the bush. The branches moved aside for her entry, and as soon as she stepped through, they closed behind her again, wiping away any sign that she was ever there. She hadn't even left any foot prints. --- Sam didn’t quite believe her, but he didn’t press the subject. He watched her go, and noticed for the first time the way the forest reacted to her as she moved through it. He moved over and knelt down to examine the ground (Bolt, curious dog that he was, came over and sniffed for a few moments as if trying to be helpful) and then slowly reached out to touch the branches that had moved. They didn’t do anything to him; they appeared to be normal, regular branches now that Sarissa was gone. Disconcerted, Sam turned away, and took a different route back to the town anyway. He didn’t think the forest would bother him, but for the moment it had ceased to be a calm, peaceful place. He was ready to be back in the town, even though he’d been somewhat running away from it when he came out here. Things had gotten weird enough here for just a few moments that the town seemed, ironically enough, more sensible by comparison. Not quite the dose of reality he’d been looking for, but it would have to do. |