vanillafluffy: (Keep the Faith)
[personal profile] vanillafluffy
Title: Seen and Unseen 4/?
Authored by: [livejournal.com profile] vanillafluffy
Pairing: None at the moment
Rating/Work-safeness: pg-13ish
Approximate word count: 2100
Disclaimer: I own only the neurons and electrons I composed this with
Summary: Dean doesn't trust their new acquaintance, but in his attempt to learn more, he may have given her the ammunition she needs to do something drastic.


Seen -- Dean Winchester



"She's some kind of weirdo, Sam," Dean tells his brother as they're finishing dinner at the cafe across the road from the motel they're bunked at. He doesn't have to say who: they got to the motel as the woman from Eddie's Bar was leaving the front office with a set of keys, John's truck parked out front. Watching her scramble in and drive over to a unit had made him grit his teeth...Dad's truck without Dad was just...wrong.

"She's okay," Sam says with a shrug. "I thought the way she handled herself when Psycho shoved her was pretty cool."

"What's she doing with Dad's truck?"

"Bobby wired us the money a week ago," Sam reminds him. "So what? We asked him to sell it, remember?"

"I know that," Dean says, impatiently pushing away his empty plate. "But why did she buy Dad's truck, out of all the trucks out there? What was with that Jedi mind trick she pulled on Sweeney? What's the big deal with that samurai sword of his?"

"I don't know," answers Sam, who doesn't seem overly concerned by the coincidence. He's lingering over his meal as if it's fine cuisine instead of heartburn on a plate. "So she bought the truck from Bobby and she's got history with Sweeney. So what?"

"What about her history with Dad?" Dean belches---meatloaf with onions---and drums his fingers on the table. There are antacids in his duffle; tonight, he'll need them.

"What are you talking about?" Sam regards him, forehead furrowed in perplexity.

Dean smiles without humor. "While you were in the bathroom primping, Samantha, I called Ellen. She says this McGill broad was in there a week ago, and ordered a round for the house in Dad's memory. She used to send mail to him there. Sounds like there's some history to me."

Sam doesn't react to the jibe. "You think...her and Dad?"

At least his brother is listening to him. "Her? No way. Dad could do better that that," says Dean dismissively. "But that doesn't mean they didn't know each other. I don't remember anything about a Nancy in his journal, though, do you?"

"It's not exactly Dad's little black book," Sam points out. "He didn't put anything in there about the Roadhouse, either." He's finally finished his chicken-fried steak, and Dean wants out of the narrow booth. He's too jumpy to sit still any longer. His stomach is grumbling; the blue plate special was anything but.

"We'll have to go through it again when we get back to the room," Dean decides, sliding out down the bench. It's not like he thinks Dad was any kind of celibate after Mom died---he witnessed John making his moves on all kinds of ladies over the years, scamming them for everything from drinks or a tank of gas to better grades during parent-teacher conferences. He needs to know where Nancy McGill fits in. "'Cause, dude, this is too much of a stalkery coincidence to me."

The Impala is waiting by their room, because Dean hadn't gotten around to putting chains on, and there's been five inches of powder since they checked in an hour and a half ago. It doesn't show any signs of easing up any time soon, either.

"What the hell is that?" Dean grabs Sam's arm as they get closer to the half-circle of rooms around the parking lot. Most of the rooms are dark. A few show lights faintly visible behind drapes drawn against the chill wind outside.

One window glows with blue-white light, the pattern on the curtains a lighter shade of blue. It's lit up like someone's arc-welding in there.

"That's her room, in case you hadn't noticed." Even as Dean speaks, the light winks out, and he blinks, the after-image still seared blue into his retinas. "Still think there's nothing going on?"

"That was freaky," Sam admits as a much fainter light comes on.

"Let's go pay a call on Dad's old pal," says Dean, striding toward the room in question.

When the McGill woman opens the door, Dean sniffs. There's a faint fragrance in the room, some kind of air freshener or incense. "Nice to see you again," she says, and steps back to let them in. Her expression reminds him of a little jingle he heard back in childhood: "Never smile at a crocodile..." He hasn't thought of that in years.

"Is everything okay?" Sam asks her. "There was a weird light, we thought there might be a fire..."

"No fire," she says. "Not even any smoke."

Dean glances around for clues of what she's been up to. There, on the bureau is a blob of wax from a small scented candle, not enough to account for the light they saw, that's for sure. Near the wax is a smooth blue stone the size of a fat marble, a miniature bottle of booze and a rose that's seen better days. Some kind of altar, obviously, which begs the question of what she's been summoning.

"I was hoping I could get another look at that sword of yours," he says, fake polite smile pasted to his face. The roll of suede is visible over by an old duffle bag and a bedroll spread out beside the bed. Sam notices it, too.

"You know, they expect you to sleep in the beds," Sam says, tone teasing. "It doesn't cost extra."

She shrugs. "Bed's too soft," she says. "No big deal. At least the heater works." She looks over at Dean. "Be my guest."

In good light, the sword is much brighter than Dean remembers from Eddie's bar. The blade is bronze, and there's Japanese writing on the hilt, which reminds him of something. He has Dad's journal tucked under his jacket, and pulls it out to see if he can solve the nagging sense of having seen the symbols before. He hears her sudden intake of breath at the sight of the book, and fights an urge to hide it.

"You said you met Dad when?" Sam asks her. Points to you, bro. Keep her distracted, because I know there's something in here...

"Bike Week, back in '94," she replies. "He was in town on business, and I was there feeling nostalgic. I used to be a Harley queen myself, back in the day...when I was about your age. Ran into him in a bar, literally, and we got to talking."

"He picked you up in a bar?" Dean is incredulous. Dad must've been drunk on his ass to hit on this sorry-looking dame.

The crocodile smile again. Creepy. "Kinda hard to say who picked up who," she answers. "Being Bike Week, you can't hardly find a motel room for any amount of money, so after he bought me lunch, I invited him home." Another shrug. "We kept in touch. He dropped in from time to time, when he was in the area."

Sam's asking her about Bike Week, but Dean stops paying attention, because there it is: a strip of paper with a rubbing of the engraved symbols on the hilt, and under the slip in John's bold scrawl is the notation: "Japanese sword, 16th century. Demon-Killer. In the possession of Steven Sweeney, who thinks it's a samurai sword."

Demon-Killer.

Dean doesn't think he's made a sound, and he knows damn well he has a good poker face, but when he looks up from the journal, the McGill woman is watching him. "Yeah," she says, although he hasn't uttered a word. "I know what it is."

"And what are you going to do with it?" he demands harshly.

"Do?" She smirks a little. "Maybe I'll lend it to those folks at the diner over yonder to help them cut that horsemeat meatloat of theirs." Dean feels his queasiness intensify all of a sudden, and tells himself it's the power of suggestion, nothing more---and he might even believe it, if he hadn't witnessed Psycho Steve reduced to incoherent begging.

That prompts a snicker from Sam. "You should've had the chicken-fried steak, like me," he tells Dean, as the older Winchester hastily wraps the sword in the supple suede again, trying not to think about his churning stomach.

"Right," says the McGill woman dryly, "because mad cow disease can take years to develop."

Sam gets a chuckle out of that, but Dean's uneasy stomach decides it's had enough. He drops the sword and bolts for the door, scrambling outside just in time to blow chunks in the snow. "Get away from me!" he snaps when Sam puts a hand on his shoulder. He straightens up slowly and glares at the bitch, who's standing in the doorway of her room, looking at them. Not the crocodile smirk, but like she's studying him.

It isn't until they're back in their room and Dean's on the can, doubled up with cramps that he realizes what he's done. He set the book down on the bed when he rolled the sword up again instead of putting it back under his jacket.

Nancy McGill has their dad's journal.


0000
0000

Unseen -- Mr. Mojo Risin'

Spending time with John's journal is almost like spending time with John, his energy crisp on every page. Nancy turns the leaves gently, scanning scribbled notes that reflect more than twenty years spent researching the bizarre and uncanny. There's no organization to it; notes about Sumarian demonology are page-to-page with John's description of a "Nessie". A ritual for banishing kobalds appears between a sketch of some Native American cave drawings and an invocation in Hebrew (complete with phonetic rendering) for---

Nancy's eyes fix on John's jagged script. She reads the paragraphs carefully, then powers up her laptop to confirm the details.

It's ancient magic, and the references she consults all warn of the inherent dangers. The word "hubris" recurs frequently. Looking from the book to the results of the painstaking research she's done, housed in her own much tidier, better organized Book, Nancy is convinced that if she could only combine the two workings...

It's crazy.

No crazier than the rest of this mad plot, Nancy argues with herself. Her first priority, after all, is to get into Hell itself. Figuring that out took her a couple months; she's finally gotten a ritual which should, in theory, locate his soul, if that anthropology professor-slash-good-witch in Texas knows what she's talking about. There are still details to be ironed out there. She's proceeding under the premise that if he's in Hell, she'll find him. If she's wrong, it'll be one short-lived rescue attempt, that's for sure.

After she get in there, if she gets in there, she has to destroy the demon. Demon-Killer is a formidable weapon, but it's only as good as the hand that wields it. There's still ample room for failure. She may not survive the battle.

Then there's the matter of releasing John from Hell. The old working she's counting on for that needs a rag, a bone and a lock of hair---she has all three. There are documented cases of the cantrip being used successfully to reanimate hanging victims in the twelfth and thirteeth centuries; usually the victim wound up missing a finger or toe. She's adapting it to fit the circumstances---all she has to do is return John's spirit to the presence of these things, and Michael has agreed to be there to take him to the reward he's earned.

With all that can go wrong in the process, it would be wicked folly to complicate it further. Especially when all her sources agree that failure could leave him as badly off as he is now.

If it failed.

The thing is, the rag-bone-hair ritual will reanimate a body...which she doesn't have, of course. But the working John has documented would provide a body, and if she could fuse the two---

Nancy gnaws her lip and stares at the page, wishing she could ask John for advice. The drawback to the procedure he's outlined is, it animates a body without a spirit. If she was to place the relics inside the form...it would mean she'd have to return his spirit and animate the corpus almost simultaneously, perform all but the last phrase of the first ritual, all but the last phrase of the second, then the location ritual...assuming she returns successfully from the underworld, she'll conclude the rag-bone-hair spell and the other one before Michael can remove John's spirit.

For a long time, she sits there, thinking, debating with herself. Would resurrecting John be the right thing to do? Or would that count as double-crossing an angel?

Five to one, baby
One in five
No one here gets out alive, now
You get yours, baby
I'll get mine
Gonna make it, baby
If we try



0000
0000


Previously in the John-Nancy 'verse....
http://vanillafluffy.livejournal.com/135447.html The Girl From Cassadaga
http://vanillafluffy.livejournal.com/138894.html The End of an Era
http://vanillafluffy.livejournal.com/140653.html What Fresh Hell
http://vanillafluffy.livejournal.com/146321.html Seen and Unseen, Part One
http://vanillafluffy.livejournal.com/146652.html Seen and Unseen, Part Two
http://vanillafluffy.livejournal.com/148999.html Seen and Unseen, Part Three

=====================

My apologies for having taken so long to update. Originally, I thought this was going to be a trilogy consisting of the previous three installments, but as I got into it, I realized otherwise.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-27 07:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ultraviolet9a.livejournal.com
I love the details you give about the rituals etc. I love how Nancy interacts with Dean because yeah, i think he is a bit like that. You know, if she ain't pretty and all that. And i love your Nancy. I'm quite positive we should be talking to Kripke about her so he can turn her into canon. *sigh*

Can't wait for more!

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-27 07:49 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
I love the details you give about the rituals etc.
It *has* to make magikal sense; I won't write hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo.

I love how Nancy interacts with Dean because yeah, I think he is a bit like that. You know, if she ain't pretty and all that.
...and thinking something along the lines of, "There are no ugly women at closing time."....

And I love your Nancy.
Thanks! She's an amalgam of several women I've known in my life, including my favorite feisty aunt (whose name was, ironically, Mary).

I'm quite positive we should be talking to Kripke about her so he can turn her into canon. *sigh*
Imagining that interview is good for a giggle. Let's see, I need a trenchcoat, a fedora and a set of brass knuckles...where are we going to get the horse's head?

Can't wait for more!
I've had to iron out some POV issues...like I said, this was originally going to be a shorter arc. I knew before I started where it was going to end up, but I had to wait for my subconscious to cough up a few details. Now I know where the conclusion is going to be; the next arc is going to be titled "Known and Unknown".

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-27 09:58 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ultraviolet9a.livejournal.com
I'm pretty sure that some people aren't as thorough in their research though. So finding writing like yours makes it even better.

And yes, that's Dean I guess in a nutshell. In this aspect at least.

Your aunt must be absolutely cool.

I've had it here somewhere...hold on...*looks around for the horse's head* Nope, no, i don't have one after all. But why not put one whole live horse in his office? It'd wreak more havoc, i'm sure. :)

And i'll be waiting for the next arc eagerly.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-27 04:26 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
My kingdom for a horse! We may have to improvise.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-27 04:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ultraviolet9a.livejournal.com
Yei, let's improvise. We could make a horse out of clay and bake it. (i would have suggested dough but i really like cake so there wouldn't be enough of it to put in Kripke's office. Though of course if we ate the body there'd be a horse's head alright, no?)

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-27 05:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
Either that, or we need to find that diner and see if they still have the head, or if they baked it into the meatloaf!

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-28 12:18 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ultraviolet9a.livejournal.com
Hmmm...that'd make the diner French, wouldn't it? And oh god that meatloaf... it gave me heartburn and i was only reading about it.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-28 05:38 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
*grin* "Would madam care to try the panne du chevaux this evening? It is tres fresh---it lost in the 2:30 at the track just this afternoon!"

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-28 12:26 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ultraviolet9a.livejournal.com
*laughing like mad* "Mais oui! I zust love ze suggestion! Could you add also some tres fresh snails?" (Oh god, I do love the way French sounds, I do, but I'm not sure I agree with all culinary choices.)

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-28 03:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
"But of course! Ze slugs, I mean, snails have been drowned, er, marinated in the finest domestic beer...."

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-28 04:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ultraviolet9a.livejournal.com
"Oh...marinated snails! What year is ze fine domestic eh...beer?"

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-28 07:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
It was left over from our Y2K kegger has aged since 1999.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-29 04:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ultraviolet9a.livejournal.com
*lol* I think i've run out of clever things to say! You win! I give up! :)

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-29 10:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ultraviolet9a.livejournal.com
Hear, hear, the victory is yours!:) (now i'll just take my consolation prize and leave...*wraps John Winchester up with a nice ribbon. Only a ribbon really, and starts walking away whistling inconspicuously*)

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-27 08:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] agent-of-kaos.livejournal.com
OH, I have been SO waiting for this! Why do I feel kind of like an addict who has just gotten a fix?
Spending time with John's journal is almost like spending time with John, his energy crisp on every page. Nancy turns the leaves gently.. *is nostalgic* yeah....

(OH, if Dean only KNEW!!!)

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-27 04:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
OH, if Dean only KNEW!!!
Are you kidding? Dean would freak. In glorious, living Technicolor.

Heh heh heh....

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-27 01:34 pm (UTC)
tabaqui: (johnbychar_cohen)
From: [personal profile] tabaqui
Ooh, not nice, not nice at all. And i don't think the boys are going to be happy *one bit*.

*shudder*

And you go get the book, Sam - prolly she can't whammy you.
*also not nice*
:)

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-27 04:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
*grin* The boys have NO IDEA.

Dean's freaking thinking that she's going to run off with it, while Sam sensibly points out that she *isn't* going to disappear in the middle of a blizzard, for crying out loud.....

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-27 02:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] starhawk2005.livejournal.com
heartburn on a plate

*lol*

Nice! I feel sorry for Dean, heheh, but we can't let him spoil Nancy's plans... ;)

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-27 04:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
Not that he knows what her plans are, but yeah, he's going to have a very Dean-like response in the next bit.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-28 01:08 pm (UTC)
vaznetti: (john in winter)
From: [personal profile] vaznetti
"Right," says the McGill woman dryly, "because mad cow disease can take years to develop.

ha!

I like the way this is developing -- really interesting, and it's cool to see Nancy through Sam and Dean's eyes. And they are going to have to get the journal back -- although I loved the comment on how much of John is present in it.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-28 03:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vanillafluffy.livejournal.com
The next bit is going to be Nancy's POV, so we'll get her impressions of Sam and Dean. For years, she's listened to John talk about them, so until now, she's only had that to form an opinion from. What she thinks now that she's met them...let's just say, she doesn't *always* agree with John.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-02-20 10:24 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] anakin415.livejournal.com
all I can say is outstanding

(no subject)

Date: 2007-02-21 04:15 pm (UTC)

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