Adventures in solitude, Mario Pucic
Supernatural 86 Ellen/Mary 🎃
The last quiet drunk slips out of the bar while she’s not watching, and it’s almost three in the morning by the time Ellen looks up from a rerun of Gunsmoke and sees there’s just an empty glass at a far table, a faded dollar bill tucked under it. She puts the dollar in her pocket, puts the chairs up, gets tired of mopping about halfway through and leaves the floors under the booths sticky. The dumpsters are frozen shut, so she leaves the trash bags on the lee side where the snow’s the thinnest; she doubts the coyotes will be interested in her garbage tonight.
The trek from there to the house is another icy Iditarod. Jo’s a good girl, and she’s done her dishes from dinner and left her mom half a can of Chef Boyardee in the fridge. Ellen stares at it, unable to even imagine completing the steps necessary to turn the cold tin into a warm bowl, and just shuts the door again.
She’s flat on her back on the couch, thinking about nothing and watching smoke drift silently towards the ceiling, when something thumps against the front door. She glances over in time to see the handle jiggle, and stubs out her cigarette as it starts to turn.
She doesn’t go for the gun safe in the closet. There’s a flat blackness outside the windows that speaks to the early, early hour, and there aren’t too many people with Harvelle keys who’d invite themselves in on the wrong side of dawn. Mary doesn’t look surprised to see Ellen on the other side of the threshold when it swings open, though Dean blinks big green eyes at her, mouth caught mid-yawn.
“Hey, El,” Mary says.
“Hey yourself. Hi, Dean.”
“‘Lo,” the kid mumbles.
Sammy is sacked out cold on Mary’s shoulder, the way only toddlers can be. “I’ve got a couple things to grab from the car,” she says, pulling his chubby little arms from around her neck. “Could you—?”
“Yeah,” Ellen says, already reaching out, and gets Sam settled against her chest as Mary gives Dean a nudge and heads back down the stairs. Sam snuffles in Ellen’s ear, a small whine before subsiding. She rubs his back a little, holds out her other hand to Dean. “You ready for bed, honey?”
“I’m okay,” Dean says, lip poking out. He’s clutching the strap of a backpack too big for him, bent over with the weight, and watching her hold Sam with a sulky frown. “I’m not tired.”
She smiles down at him, a little sad. “What about helping me with your brother, then?”
The two of them are buried in blankets on opposite ends of the couch by the time Mary comes back in. She looks grim. “Brought you a present,” she says, struggling to get her coat off, then bending to pull off her boots. She’s all snow up to her thighs, denim stiff with frost. “Would have taken care of it, but the ground’s frozen solid.”
“I could have told you that,” Ellen says, wondering what else is sheltering behind her dumpsters tonight. “We’ll get it in the morning.”
“I know, I just… damn it,” Mary says, yanking at her laces. “Damn it, damn it—”
“Mom?” Dean says sleepily from the couch.
“It’s nothing, honey. Go to sleep,” Ellen says while Mary stares blindly down at her feet, then jerks her head up when Ellen touches her elbow. “Kitchen?”
Ellen sits her down, grabs an old, open bottle of red from the stove and sets a glass in front of her. Instead of reaching for it, Mary inhales, then covers her face with her hands and breathes wetly for a moment. Ellen kneels on the linoleum to start working the icy knots open.
“We’re okay,” Mary says as the first boot comes off, and that’s familiar. God knows Dean isn’t getting his coping skills from John Winchester, the poor dead bastard. “Just had a little run in on the road.”
“I’m a little surprised to see you this far north, is all,” Ellen says. She tugs off the other boot and sets under the chair. “Thought you guys were making a go in Illinois. Dean started first grade this year, right?”
“First grade,” Mary says, hands slowly falling to her lap. “Right.”
She doesn’t say anything else at the table, just drinks what Ellen puts in front of her until the bottle is empty. She doesn’t resist when Ellen tugs her out of the chair and down the hallway, past Jo’s door with the pink-tinted nightlight spilling out onto the carpet, and lets herself be pushed on the bed and bullied out of her wet jeans.
Ellen gets her an old shirt to sleep in, and strips out of her own stinking bar clothes. Her Roadhouse tee smells like grenadine and menthols.
“I don’t want to put you out,” Mary mumbles from the bed.
“You’re not going to,” Ellen says, peeling out of her bra, and grabs her favorite sleepshirt from the floor: Hard Rock Houston. Bill was a big man; it hits her halfway to the knee. “Budge up.”
They crawl under the cold sheets shivering together, and lie there while the flannel heats up around them. Mary is curled towards Ellen like a question mark, and Ellen answers by rolling in until their legs bump and she’s mostly on her stomach. Mary’s hand creeps out and tangles in the Hard Rock’s hem, and her breath is unsteady in Ellen’s ear.
“El, I—” She’s whispering, like a secret. “God. I don’t want it to be like this. Like my dad all over again. What would John think?”
Ellen thinks about that. “Don’t know. And neither do you. Can only do your best.”
Mary makes a low noise. “It doesn’t feel good enough, most nights.”
Ellen remembers the Boyardee in the bridge, feels the uncertain pinch in her belly that could be hunger, or nausea. “Yeah, well. You’ve got my best too, for what it’s worth.”
Silence, and then Mary’s body bends a little more, knees in against Ellen’s hip, her lips close to Ellen’s cheek. “Don’t sell yourself short, El.”
Sup punk – I didn’t know if you want me to make it an ask, but that Obi-wan/Padme falling in love as old people idea I had would still be awesome :-P Happy Halloween!
earlier:
how about star wars canon aU, padme lives and starts the rebellion, but has to sorta stay behind the scenes for obvious reasons, and be all stealthy and shit, and then i guess have obi-wan live or something? b/c i basically i want them falling in love as old ppl, like a “wow i never actually thought about u romantically at all” “but now when we’re both greying and old” “we should totally be together” like i dunno about the details, and how to make it work w/ canon
NEITHER DO I
“I must admit,” she says, “I rather thought you’d grow tired of sand.”
Obi-Wan has a rusted chuckle for that, and hot tea for her hands. She wears thin gloves and a cloak of the same deep color, either brown or red— impossible to tell in the dim light— which falls in folds around her shoulders, a sharp contrast to the startling white of her hair. Outside, the wind scours the desert clean of any sign of her arrival, wailing high and lonely through the bones of a thousand derelict ships.
Inside one of them, Padmé raises his rough clay cup to her lips and takes a delicate sip. “Have you grown to enjoy it, then?”
“The sand?” Obi-Wan eases himself onto the cushion opposite her, wincing a little as he settles. Old stuffing, older bones. “I suppose it’s a familiar enough nuisance. There are few perfect places in this universe.”
“Jedi,” she sighs, her eyes dipping closed. An unaccountably soft smile lingers behind the cup. “It’s amazing how unimaginative you all are. I still have trouble believing Master Yoda hid for years in a swamp.”
“Dagoba is a realm of holy relics,” Obi-Wan protests.
“A holy swamp,” Padmé says, utterly dry. “Ben, my closest friends, my own children had no idea I lived until we had managed the fall of the Empire. Somehow I escaped detection without spending those years nerf-herding in some Forcebarren sand pit.”
“You were never one to stand idly by,” Obi-Wan says, smiling.
She gives him an imperious look. “Certainly not. And I would have said the same of you, long ago.”
He scratches at his beard a little ruefully. “I wouldn’t call myself idle, precisely.”
Padmé sighs, and takes another sip. “Yes,” she says. “Let us talk about the girl.”
The moment Padmé had emerged from her shuttle, Rey had shown her best Jakkan manners and snarled like a rabid porg before darting away to hide. She is currently crouched above them, watching from between gaps in the tangle of wires in the ceiling that make their salvaged ship habitable. Obi-Wan doesn’t know if Padmé is aware, and hasn’t glanced upwards in case it sends Rey scurrying away again.
“She helps me,” he said, spreading his hands. “She was indentured to a scrapper to pay her parents’ debts. There are many such children on this planet, unfortunately.”
“Are there.” Padmé rests the cup on her folded knees, thumbs idly stroking the rough sides. “On Tatooine, you chose to keep your solitude.”
He gives a glib shrug. “Solitude is much easier to keep when one has the faculties. For instance, Rey has proved to be very good bait for the nightwatcher worms. Also, digging latrines.”
“I have not!” the girl in question yells from above them, and Obi Wan looks up in feigned surprise. Her little face is red and scrunched into a furious scowl. “You’re the one who always knocks something over and makes them chase us!”
“That does sound like Ben,” Padmé says, and when he glances back at her she’s smiling at the ceiling. “Hello, Miss Rey.”
“Yes, hello Rey,” Obi Wan says. “Are you planning to join us?”
“‘M not a miss,” Rey mutters, and pulls back into her canopy of mechanical parts.
“But you are being very rude to our guest,” he observes. “Padmé is a dear friend and very important me. I would like to introduce you, so please come down from there.”
Rustling, and a glimpse of narrowed eyes through cabling. “She smells weird,” Rey announces, deeply suspicious, and Obi-Wan sighs.
“It’s perfume, darling,” Padmé says with a hint of laughter. “I imagine it does smell strange if you’ve never encountered it.”
There’s more movement above them, and Rey suddenly drops from an open panel. She crouches there like she might run off again at any moment. “Perfume?” she says skeptically. “The cantina viddiebots use perfume. They don’t smell like you.”
“I told you to never go in the cantina,” Obi Wan says, appalled, and Rey has the temerity to roll her eyes at him.
“It is from a different planet,” Padmé says diplomatically. “As I am. One a very long way away from Jakku.”
“Jakku is far away from everywhere,” Rey points out. “So why are you here?”
That is the question, isn’t it. Rey watches Padmé curiously and Obi Wan is curious too, in a sense, but he has known where this is leading since he realized a ship was inbound, and feeling a gentle sense of impending melancholy for weeks. Nostalgia for things not yet lost.
“I have been asked to investigate a vision,” Padmé says, turning her eyes to his. “Of a master not quite as lost as he seemed, and his new apprentice, hiding in the shadows of a war long finished.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about the ‘prentice stuff,” Rey says.
Obi Wan smiles at Padmé. “We weren’t. It appears we have been discovered anyway.”
“We can take her,” Rey says confidently, and Obi Wan is startled into a laugh.
“Of that I am certain,” Padmé says. “But you could also come with me.”
“Where?” Rey asks, suspicious again.
Padmé is still looking at Obi Wan. “Oh, many places. Coruscant, certainly. Perhaps Chandrila and Kashyyyk. Bespin when you’re older, I know many of the other apprentices like it.”
Obi Wan stares at her. “Other apprentices?”
“There are several, yes,” Padmé says. “I’m afraid I can’t give you exact numbers. More seem to appear every year.”
“And other masters have also arisen?” Obi Wan asks. “But from where?”
“There is only one master,” Padmé says. “For now, at least.”
“Oh,” Obi Wan says, seeing it unfold in gruesome detail in his mind’s eye. “Oh, no. Is he really?”
“I don’t need another master,” Rey declares. “Obi is bad enough!”
“And I am quite a bit better than the alternative,” he says, mostly to himself. “A child teaching children. There’s no chance that could end badly.”
“He would remain your sole master, I expect,” Padmé says to Rey. “But you would have fellow students, friends. A new home at the center of the galaxy. What do you think about that?”
Rey doesn’t have to think very hard about it at all. “With you and Obi?” she says, making a face. “No thanks.”
She disappears into the bowels of the junked ship and Padmé ducks her head, biting back a grin as Obi Wan glares in affront at Rey’s retreating back. “Luke was such a sunny child,” he says. “I don’t really know what went wrong with this one.”
“Luke was raised by two generous, loving parents,” Padmé tells him, shoulders starting to shake with suppressed laughter. “Whereas Rey appears to have turned out exactly as I imagined any offspring of yours might!”
“… she really does detest him, doesn’t she,” Padmé says, watching Rey grind her darling grandson’s face into a flower bed. She’s half his size, the poor boy, but vicious in a way Padmé’s spoiled little Ben has minimal experience with.
Obi-Wan sets his cup down on their finely-worked table, next to a gently-steaming pot and plate of sandwiches. It is proper tea, not the kind reconstituted from the last dusty insides of a faded tin, which even an ascetic should appreciate more than he seems too. “I wouldn’t say that,” he says. “I think she likes him.”
They’re sitting close together, his hand over hers, her head on his shoulder. “Hm,” she says. “And is showing it by destroying my gardens? Even for you, that is remarkably unperceptive.”
“What?” Obi-Wan protests. “The play-fighting? It seems tame, compared to what we got up to in the creche.” A piece of paving stone pries itself free and wavers menacingly into the air. “No permanent injuries, please!” he calls down to them.
“That explains so much,” Padmé murmurs, closing her eyes.
“Stop it! I’m telling Grandmother!”
“She doesn’t care! She thinks you’re spoiled!”
“Am not!”
“Are so!”
“Still,” Padmé says. “A little humiliation might be good for him in the end.”
‘viddiebots’ are VD-bots and nightwatcher worms are a thing
☑ zebra please for ✉
1) i have no idea what this prompt was originally from/for
2) @annundriel and @marsastronomica have been filling my dash with detroit: become human art and what was I supposed to do, not write about the robot murderboys????
3) does RK900 have an actual name or nah
“God fucking– could you just speak? Out loud?”
It’s Designation “Reed, Detective Gavin” asking, so RK900’s aural subroutine automatically filters the question out in favor of continued analysis of the blue fluid splashing diagonally across a store display in front of him. The venue sells several hundred types of android hardware modifications; this particular table is devoted to synthetic genitals of varying sizes and models— some clearly zoologically-inspired, some from human mythology and popular culture.
“Hey, chips-for-brains, I’m talking to you!”
Subtle Yet Powerful Nature Inspired Tattoos That Perfectly Blends Into The Skin
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This Shredded Teriyaki Duck Donburi is a beautiful bowl of tasty goodness, slow cooked duck leg served over rice and a host of other goodies.
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i thought a surge had tripped the living room breaker but it was actually my asshole cat stepping on the power strip off button
a comedy in three acts
the face of a criminal, caught in the act
i thought a surge had tripped the living room breaker but it was actually my asshole cat stepping on the power strip off button
a comedy in three acts
kototyph 