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spn_springfling2016-03-16 11:45 pm
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In Troubled Regions by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anactoria for <user site="livejournal.co
Title: In Troubled Regions
Pairing: Sam/Jody
Rating: PG-13
The warning comes over the radio too late. They’re hours from Stillwater, and by the time they get there the hurricane has been and gone, leaving behind empty streets and a mess of dust and rubble like in each of the dozen other storm-hit towns they’ve been through.
The storms come out of nowhere, sudden and devastating, raging for hours and leaving whole communities flattened in their wake. Not so long ago, Sam would’ve remembered the Apocalypse, wondered about demon omens. But Lucifer’s dead and Crowley’s running as scared as anybody else. (Lucifer’s dead. The relief of that still lightens his heart every time he remembers it; makes Dean glower at him and demand to know what he’s got to smile about when they’re dealing with another end of the world.) Even Cas can’t guess what’s causing the storms. Hell, even Billie doesn’t seem to know—or if she does, she’s doing an awesome job of keeping it quiet.
Sometimes, Sam thinks maybe it’s a whole Revenge of Gaia thing, the earth getting sick of all the havoc wreaked on its surface these past few years and shrugging humanity off of its shoulders like so much dust. There’s something almost reassuring about that—the idea of being so insignificant, of all the apocalyptic screw-ups he’s ever made receding into the distance until they look like grains of sand. Not that he’d ever tell Dean or Cas. He toys with the idea of talking to Jody, sometimes—but then he sees how her eyes shine like there’s still hope whenever she speaks with Alex or Claire, and he tucks the idea away again, ashamed of having thought that their lives could be meaningless.
They pull up outside what Sam thinks used to be the town hall in Jody’s truck. Jody kills the engine, and for a moment she sits very still in the driver’s seat, eyes ahead, scanning the empty street. There’s no sign of life, no movement around the building. Any survivors are long gone.
She sighs and turns to face Sam, reaching for his hand like she’s trying to reassure herself. Sam doesn’t have any comfort to offer, so he just gives her hand a squeeze. Her eyes are already tired.
“Police headquarters is on the next corner,” Jody says, indicating the building with a jerk of her head. “You wanna take a look around while I check Donna’s place?”
Sam nods, checks his radio. Doesn’t say, She’ll be fine.
He sifts through rubble in the town jail, checks the uniformed bodies and the ones still in the cells with the quick dispassion he’d learned long before any of this started. There’s no familiar flash of blonde hair in the detritus, though, and that gives him a small measure of hope. He doesn’t find Doug 2.0, either. Maybe they found some survivors and left with them, or maybe they skipped town before the storm hit—but no, he can’t really see either of them dropping their responsibilities and running.
Sam hasn’t seen any kids in town, though. No small bodies, and no lost little voices crying in the ruins. Somebody has to have gotten them out. Organising transport, maybe driving the bus—that could be a job for the cops, right?
He’s probably just giving himself false hope; but these days, that’s better than none.
His radio crackles to life as he leaves the building. Cell reception usually gets knocked out a little before the storms hit, and there’s no telling how long before it comes back.
“Jody?” he says into the speaker. “You find something?”
To his surprise, it’s Dean’s voice that fuzzes over the airwaves. “Nope,” it announces cheerily. “And yep, and you’re not gonna like it. Got word of another storm headed your way.”
“Crap.” Sam sticks his head out the door of the crumbling police headquarters. Looks quiet out there—placid skies, the barest breeze rustling the bushes—but it isn’t like that means anything. “You know how far out?”
“Not a hundred percent, but you’re probably safer battening down the hatches than trying to outrun it. I already spoke to Jody. She thinks she knows somewhere you can shelter.”
Sam raises an eyebrow, can’t resist saying, “So, you called Jody first, huh? Should I be worried?”
He can just picture Dean’s mock-wounded expression. “Sue me, I know which one of you I’m gonna get more sense out of.”
“Asshat. How about you and Cas? You guys gonna get hit?”
“We’ll circle back to the bunker. Should have time to make it. Alex and Claire are already there, so you don’t gotta worry about them. You crazy kids hole up somewhere and—” Sam doesn’t need to see Dean’s face to sense the eyebrow waggle. “—make your own entertainment.”
“Be safe. And stop acting like you’re twelve.” Sam kills the radio, not waiting for Dean’s indignant retort, and heads for Donna’s place.
The house beside which Jody’s truck is parked up looks to have escaped the worst of the damage, but it’s empty, front door hanging open, broken windows in the kitchen. No Jody. He finds her a couple doors down, out in the strip of wasteland behind somebody’s backyard. She’s a lone silhouette against the dead ground, feet planted firmly on the earth, looking immovable, like she always does when she’s putting a brave face on something.
Sam comes up behind her, treading heavy enough on the ground to be sure she’ll hear it, and touches her shoulder. “No Donna?”
Jody shakes her head. “Car’s gone, though. So, maybe…” She tips her head back to look at him, offering up a hopeful expression that Sam doesn’t want to argue with.
“Yeah. Maybe.” He pauses. “Dean said he radioed you?”
“Yep.” Jody straightens, gathering herself. “And I didn’t find Donna, but I did find this.” She nods at the patch of ground in front of her, and Sam realizes that the unevenness of it isn’t exactly natural. There’s a regular outline in the earth—and a hatch.
He raises an eyebrow. “What is that, some kind of nuclear hideout?”
“Looks like. You know, Donna told me about the guy who lives here.” She pauses, but doesn’t correct her present tense. “Think she suspected him of being a hunter, back when she first found out the whole monsters-exist deal. Turned out he was just a survival nut, the whole Cold War deal, though I guess it doesn’t seem so nutty right about now.”
“Suspected him of being a hunter?” Sam lifts an eyebrow, bumps Jody’s shoulder with his arm. “You make it sound like a crime.”
“Which about ninety percent of it technically is. Or was. Who knows what the state of the law is right now? We could probably rob the bank on Main Street if we felt like it.”
Sam laughs, looks at his feet.
“Anyway,” Jody goes on. “Shall we?” She holds out her hand, and he sees that there’s a rusty key dangling from her index finger. The sky’s clouding over above them, and Sam hears distant thunder cracking across the sky.
“Yeah. Let’s.”
There’s nobody hiding out in the shelter. Sam isn’t sure he should be feeling relieved about that, but this kind of desolation has gotten familiar enough that any guilt for letting themselves in is a distant, abstract thing.
They find a light that actually works—must be a generator around here somewhere—plus a cot with blankets, and a camping stove, and a shelf with cans of food that might really have been there since the Cold War. By the time the wind has started to howl in earnest outside, they have the trapdoor securely bolted, and Jody’s squinting at the instructions for the camping stove while Sam opens cans of food and sniffs gingerly at the contents.
“I think this one’s okay,” he offers, holding out a can of what seem to be beans and sausages. “I mean, not that it’s up to your usual cooking standard, but…”
Jody shrugs, takes it from him with a wry smile. “Lot of not my usual lately,” she says, and empties the contents into a pan.
Sam watches her, apparently as much at ease here as she would be in the bunker (where she’s the only person Dean allows unfettered access to his kitchen) or in her own home. He doesn’t say, Does that include me? but from the way she looks up and meets his eyes, Jody gets it anyway.
“And hey,” she adds, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “It’s not all bad.”
He smiles back at her and ducks his head. His eye catches on something on one of the bottom shelves, then. It looks like a box of toys—a couple board games in faded boxes, kids’ books with wide-eyed animal characters on the front, a pale blue stuffed rabbit with one eye missing. Sam nudges the box with his toe. “Huh. Monopoly.”
Jody laughs. “Seriously, that was how this guy was planning on keeping sane through World War III? Men have killed for less.”
Sam laughs too, then shudders. “Yeah. I don’t even want to imagine what would happen if we got Dean and Claire at the same table.”
“Mmm. She’s a good kid, but nobody’s that good.”
“Yeah, and there’s no escaping the family when you’re locked in a concrete box.”
Jody nods, but she goes quiet, then, stirring thoughtfully, eyes distant. She stays quiet while they eat, and at first Sam finds himself running over their conversation in his head, searching for clues that he’s said something wrong.
It’s only when she sets aside her bowl of miscellaneous canned stuff and puts her hand on his knee, looks at him with bright, open eyes and says, “What’s on your mind?” that he remembers there’s no point in stewing.
Jody isn’t Dean. She doesn’t simmer and put him off with protestations of ‘I’m fine’ and then explode in a splintery mess of resentment. She rips off the Band-Aid. That’s part of why they work so well together.
“You just seem pretty quiet. Worried about Donna?” Not that Sam has any comfort to offer on that score, but it seems like the most obvious answer.
“A little,” Jody admits. She shifts, scooting back on the narrow cot to lean against the wall. Sam follows suit.
The cot’s so low his feet still touch the floor. The toybox on the bottom shelf catches his eye again—and apparently Jody’s, too.
She’s quiet for another moment, thoughtful. “You ever want kids?” she asks, then.
Sam blinks, startled by the question. Remembers Stanford—how possible so many things seemed in the California sunshine. Remembers Jess with her nieces, the Christmas they spent with her folks—how easily she talked to them, how adoringly they followed her around, like a couple of lost ducklings. Sam’s never been like that. He isn’t good with kids like Dean is—doesn’t know what to say to them without sounding awkward, doesn’t have the same papa bear instinct just begging for someone to protect. But with Jess, he could’ve been good. He could’ve learned.
“You don’t have to answer,” Jody adds, and the distant look in her eyes tells him she’s thinking about her own little boy, her husband—the family that was more than just a possibility when she lost it.
Sam shakes his head. “A long time ago,” he says. Back when there was a future; or back before he knew what the future was.
Jody lets out a breath. “Yeah. A long time ago,” she echoes. There’s still that distance in her eyes.
The trapdoor rattles, then, the wind above ground giving a banshee wail. Jody shakes herself, inches closer and pats Sam’s thigh. Back in the room.
“You know,” she says, looking at him sideways. “You’re supposed to stop me when I get all maudlin.”
Sam could argue the point. Everyone needs to mourn, sometimes, take a moment to be quiet with the things they’ve lost. But Jody knows that as well as he does. It’s just that she also knows that sometimes you rip off the Band-Aid, and sometimes you leave it be and don’t pick the scab. Sometimes you cry about the futures that never happened, and sometimes you lock them away somewhere safe inside yourself and live in the one you’ve got. Which in their case is two teenage girls and two grumpy dumbasses in a bunker in Lebanon—and the two of them hidden away below ground, a camp stove and a pile of scratchy woollen blankets to warm them while the storm spends its rage outside.
So, he doesn’t argue. He just looks at Jody sideways, covers her hand with his, and says, “Yeah? How am I supposed to do that?”
She grins and stretches, gets to her knees and crawls up the cot to straddle his legs. “I’m sure we can think of something,” she says. Her voice is deliberately light, and her hand is gentle where she cups the side of his face. Like a candle flame, bright and warm against the darkness, even though a breath of wind could snuff it out, leaving no room for the shadows to creep in.
Sam puts his hands on her waist and pulls her in close, and kisses her until he can’t hear the storm outside anymore.
Pairing: Sam/Jody
Rating: PG-13
The warning comes over the radio too late. They’re hours from Stillwater, and by the time they get there the hurricane has been and gone, leaving behind empty streets and a mess of dust and rubble like in each of the dozen other storm-hit towns they’ve been through.
The storms come out of nowhere, sudden and devastating, raging for hours and leaving whole communities flattened in their wake. Not so long ago, Sam would’ve remembered the Apocalypse, wondered about demon omens. But Lucifer’s dead and Crowley’s running as scared as anybody else. (Lucifer’s dead. The relief of that still lightens his heart every time he remembers it; makes Dean glower at him and demand to know what he’s got to smile about when they’re dealing with another end of the world.) Even Cas can’t guess what’s causing the storms. Hell, even Billie doesn’t seem to know—or if she does, she’s doing an awesome job of keeping it quiet.
Sometimes, Sam thinks maybe it’s a whole Revenge of Gaia thing, the earth getting sick of all the havoc wreaked on its surface these past few years and shrugging humanity off of its shoulders like so much dust. There’s something almost reassuring about that—the idea of being so insignificant, of all the apocalyptic screw-ups he’s ever made receding into the distance until they look like grains of sand. Not that he’d ever tell Dean or Cas. He toys with the idea of talking to Jody, sometimes—but then he sees how her eyes shine like there’s still hope whenever she speaks with Alex or Claire, and he tucks the idea away again, ashamed of having thought that their lives could be meaningless.
They pull up outside what Sam thinks used to be the town hall in Jody’s truck. Jody kills the engine, and for a moment she sits very still in the driver’s seat, eyes ahead, scanning the empty street. There’s no sign of life, no movement around the building. Any survivors are long gone.
She sighs and turns to face Sam, reaching for his hand like she’s trying to reassure herself. Sam doesn’t have any comfort to offer, so he just gives her hand a squeeze. Her eyes are already tired.
“Police headquarters is on the next corner,” Jody says, indicating the building with a jerk of her head. “You wanna take a look around while I check Donna’s place?”
Sam nods, checks his radio. Doesn’t say, She’ll be fine.
He sifts through rubble in the town jail, checks the uniformed bodies and the ones still in the cells with the quick dispassion he’d learned long before any of this started. There’s no familiar flash of blonde hair in the detritus, though, and that gives him a small measure of hope. He doesn’t find Doug 2.0, either. Maybe they found some survivors and left with them, or maybe they skipped town before the storm hit—but no, he can’t really see either of them dropping their responsibilities and running.
Sam hasn’t seen any kids in town, though. No small bodies, and no lost little voices crying in the ruins. Somebody has to have gotten them out. Organising transport, maybe driving the bus—that could be a job for the cops, right?
He’s probably just giving himself false hope; but these days, that’s better than none.
His radio crackles to life as he leaves the building. Cell reception usually gets knocked out a little before the storms hit, and there’s no telling how long before it comes back.
“Jody?” he says into the speaker. “You find something?”
To his surprise, it’s Dean’s voice that fuzzes over the airwaves. “Nope,” it announces cheerily. “And yep, and you’re not gonna like it. Got word of another storm headed your way.”
“Crap.” Sam sticks his head out the door of the crumbling police headquarters. Looks quiet out there—placid skies, the barest breeze rustling the bushes—but it isn’t like that means anything. “You know how far out?”
“Not a hundred percent, but you’re probably safer battening down the hatches than trying to outrun it. I already spoke to Jody. She thinks she knows somewhere you can shelter.”
Sam raises an eyebrow, can’t resist saying, “So, you called Jody first, huh? Should I be worried?”
He can just picture Dean’s mock-wounded expression. “Sue me, I know which one of you I’m gonna get more sense out of.”
“Asshat. How about you and Cas? You guys gonna get hit?”
“We’ll circle back to the bunker. Should have time to make it. Alex and Claire are already there, so you don’t gotta worry about them. You crazy kids hole up somewhere and—” Sam doesn’t need to see Dean’s face to sense the eyebrow waggle. “—make your own entertainment.”
“Be safe. And stop acting like you’re twelve.” Sam kills the radio, not waiting for Dean’s indignant retort, and heads for Donna’s place.
The house beside which Jody’s truck is parked up looks to have escaped the worst of the damage, but it’s empty, front door hanging open, broken windows in the kitchen. No Jody. He finds her a couple doors down, out in the strip of wasteland behind somebody’s backyard. She’s a lone silhouette against the dead ground, feet planted firmly on the earth, looking immovable, like she always does when she’s putting a brave face on something.
Sam comes up behind her, treading heavy enough on the ground to be sure she’ll hear it, and touches her shoulder. “No Donna?”
Jody shakes her head. “Car’s gone, though. So, maybe…” She tips her head back to look at him, offering up a hopeful expression that Sam doesn’t want to argue with.
“Yeah. Maybe.” He pauses. “Dean said he radioed you?”
“Yep.” Jody straightens, gathering herself. “And I didn’t find Donna, but I did find this.” She nods at the patch of ground in front of her, and Sam realizes that the unevenness of it isn’t exactly natural. There’s a regular outline in the earth—and a hatch.
He raises an eyebrow. “What is that, some kind of nuclear hideout?”
“Looks like. You know, Donna told me about the guy who lives here.” She pauses, but doesn’t correct her present tense. “Think she suspected him of being a hunter, back when she first found out the whole monsters-exist deal. Turned out he was just a survival nut, the whole Cold War deal, though I guess it doesn’t seem so nutty right about now.”
“Suspected him of being a hunter?” Sam lifts an eyebrow, bumps Jody’s shoulder with his arm. “You make it sound like a crime.”
“Which about ninety percent of it technically is. Or was. Who knows what the state of the law is right now? We could probably rob the bank on Main Street if we felt like it.”
Sam laughs, looks at his feet.
“Anyway,” Jody goes on. “Shall we?” She holds out her hand, and he sees that there’s a rusty key dangling from her index finger. The sky’s clouding over above them, and Sam hears distant thunder cracking across the sky.
“Yeah. Let’s.”
There’s nobody hiding out in the shelter. Sam isn’t sure he should be feeling relieved about that, but this kind of desolation has gotten familiar enough that any guilt for letting themselves in is a distant, abstract thing.
They find a light that actually works—must be a generator around here somewhere—plus a cot with blankets, and a camping stove, and a shelf with cans of food that might really have been there since the Cold War. By the time the wind has started to howl in earnest outside, they have the trapdoor securely bolted, and Jody’s squinting at the instructions for the camping stove while Sam opens cans of food and sniffs gingerly at the contents.
“I think this one’s okay,” he offers, holding out a can of what seem to be beans and sausages. “I mean, not that it’s up to your usual cooking standard, but…”
Jody shrugs, takes it from him with a wry smile. “Lot of not my usual lately,” she says, and empties the contents into a pan.
Sam watches her, apparently as much at ease here as she would be in the bunker (where she’s the only person Dean allows unfettered access to his kitchen) or in her own home. He doesn’t say, Does that include me? but from the way she looks up and meets his eyes, Jody gets it anyway.
“And hey,” she adds, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “It’s not all bad.”
He smiles back at her and ducks his head. His eye catches on something on one of the bottom shelves, then. It looks like a box of toys—a couple board games in faded boxes, kids’ books with wide-eyed animal characters on the front, a pale blue stuffed rabbit with one eye missing. Sam nudges the box with his toe. “Huh. Monopoly.”
Jody laughs. “Seriously, that was how this guy was planning on keeping sane through World War III? Men have killed for less.”
Sam laughs too, then shudders. “Yeah. I don’t even want to imagine what would happen if we got Dean and Claire at the same table.”
“Mmm. She’s a good kid, but nobody’s that good.”
“Yeah, and there’s no escaping the family when you’re locked in a concrete box.”
Jody nods, but she goes quiet, then, stirring thoughtfully, eyes distant. She stays quiet while they eat, and at first Sam finds himself running over their conversation in his head, searching for clues that he’s said something wrong.
It’s only when she sets aside her bowl of miscellaneous canned stuff and puts her hand on his knee, looks at him with bright, open eyes and says, “What’s on your mind?” that he remembers there’s no point in stewing.
Jody isn’t Dean. She doesn’t simmer and put him off with protestations of ‘I’m fine’ and then explode in a splintery mess of resentment. She rips off the Band-Aid. That’s part of why they work so well together.
“You just seem pretty quiet. Worried about Donna?” Not that Sam has any comfort to offer on that score, but it seems like the most obvious answer.
“A little,” Jody admits. She shifts, scooting back on the narrow cot to lean against the wall. Sam follows suit.
The cot’s so low his feet still touch the floor. The toybox on the bottom shelf catches his eye again—and apparently Jody’s, too.
She’s quiet for another moment, thoughtful. “You ever want kids?” she asks, then.
Sam blinks, startled by the question. Remembers Stanford—how possible so many things seemed in the California sunshine. Remembers Jess with her nieces, the Christmas they spent with her folks—how easily she talked to them, how adoringly they followed her around, like a couple of lost ducklings. Sam’s never been like that. He isn’t good with kids like Dean is—doesn’t know what to say to them without sounding awkward, doesn’t have the same papa bear instinct just begging for someone to protect. But with Jess, he could’ve been good. He could’ve learned.
“You don’t have to answer,” Jody adds, and the distant look in her eyes tells him she’s thinking about her own little boy, her husband—the family that was more than just a possibility when she lost it.
Sam shakes his head. “A long time ago,” he says. Back when there was a future; or back before he knew what the future was.
Jody lets out a breath. “Yeah. A long time ago,” she echoes. There’s still that distance in her eyes.
The trapdoor rattles, then, the wind above ground giving a banshee wail. Jody shakes herself, inches closer and pats Sam’s thigh. Back in the room.
“You know,” she says, looking at him sideways. “You’re supposed to stop me when I get all maudlin.”
Sam could argue the point. Everyone needs to mourn, sometimes, take a moment to be quiet with the things they’ve lost. But Jody knows that as well as he does. It’s just that she also knows that sometimes you rip off the Band-Aid, and sometimes you leave it be and don’t pick the scab. Sometimes you cry about the futures that never happened, and sometimes you lock them away somewhere safe inside yourself and live in the one you’ve got. Which in their case is two teenage girls and two grumpy dumbasses in a bunker in Lebanon—and the two of them hidden away below ground, a camp stove and a pile of scratchy woollen blankets to warm them while the storm spends its rage outside.
So, he doesn’t argue. He just looks at Jody sideways, covers her hand with his, and says, “Yeah? How am I supposed to do that?”
She grins and stretches, gets to her knees and crawls up the cot to straddle his legs. “I’m sure we can think of something,” she says. Her voice is deliberately light, and her hand is gentle where she cups the side of his face. Like a candle flame, bright and warm against the darkness, even though a breath of wind could snuff it out, leaving no room for the shadows to creep in.
Sam puts his hands on her waist and pulls her in close, and kisses her until he can’t hear the storm outside anymore.
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Just lovely all around. <3
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Everything about this is so perfect that I can hardly believe it. Usually, I'm not a big fan of (post-)apocalyptic AUs, but in this context it felt right somehow. What particularly stood out to me was the brilliant dialogue (with great character voices!) and the gorgeous, slightly worn quality of your prose, which seemed like a translation of S11 Sam's features into images and sound.
My favourite lines (well, all of them really, but especially the following):
He sifts through rubble in the town jail, checks the uniformed bodies and the ones still in the cells with the quick dispassion he’d learned long before any of this started.
“Suspected him of being a hunter?” Sam lifts an eyebrow, bumps Jody’s shoulder with his arm. “You make it sound like a crime.”
“Which about ninety percent of it technically is.”
Jody isn’t Dean. She doesn’t simmer and put him off with protestations of ‘I’m fine’ and then explode in a splintery mess of resentment.
This was a real treat to read, thank you so much for writing and sharing! <3
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“I mean, not that it’s up to your usual cooking standard, but…”
Jody shrugs, takes it from him with a wry smile. “Lot of not my usual lately,” she says,
Says so much, with a can of beans! This whole story is like that. So many connections, so much about family, about hope, about finding common ground, and you've woven it in with the present situation effortlessly. And how much do I love the way you've drawn their extended family? SO MUCH. I want this for all of them. Even in this bleak landscape, the idea of it brings me comfort. (And I love the "revenge of Gaia" idea. After all the humans and angel and demon nonsense, the earth does deserve a do-over!)
Love the contrast between the way Sam relates to Jody and how he's had to learn to deal with Dean. ♥ Yet, I still feel the love between the brothers. "Stop acting like you're twelve." :D :D
Her voice is deliberately light, and her hand is gentle where she cups the side of his face. Like a candle flame, bright and warm against the darkness, even though a breath of wind could snuff it out
*happy sigh*
This is really so very much my happy place, in every way. Thank you so much. I'm floored! (Also DONNA IS NOT DEAD, I believe this, okay?)
I just don't even want to stop typing this comment, even though I have to go to work—I want to roll around in this story and buy it breakfast.
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I'm so happy you liked this, especially the little hints of Alex and Claire and Dean and the world around them.
Love the contrast between the way Sam relates to Jody and how he's had to learn to deal with Dean. ♥ Yet, I still feel the love between the brothers. "Stop acting like you're twelve." :D :D
♥ I love writing about Sam and Dean, but also, both Sam and Jody deserve someone they can be peaceful and (relatively) baggage-free with, right?
I really enjoyed writing this -- thanks so much for the wonderful prompt! :D
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Love this so much that I am going back to re-read it like a zillion times over.
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Also this There’s something almost reassuring about that—the idea of being so insignificant, of all the apocalyptic screw-ups he’s ever made receding into the distance until they look like grains of sand. was a genuine ouch moment, in the best possible way. I love the complexity of Sam, and the contrast Jody presents - the little bit of hope that she gives. It's such a lovely combo.
Like a candle flame, bright and warm against the darkness, even though a breath of wind could snuff it out, leaving no room for the shadows to creep in. Wonderful ending as well, captured exactly that note of melancholic hope and strength that both of them have separately and with each other. Beautiful.
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Thanks so much! That's really what I love about the pairing, so I'm glad it came through. ♥
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