a subtle sort of brilliance (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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avandell2007-06-17 10:25 pm
theladyscribe) wrote in avandell2007-06-17 10:25 pm
Entry tags:
In My Hour of Darkness (One-Shot)
Title: In My Hour of Darkness
Characters: Dean, Jo, Sam (some Dean/Jo)
Rating: PG-13 for dark themes, mention of rape, abortion
Word Count: 1522
Summary: “You’ve done nothing, Dean,” he answers vehemently. “It wasn’t your fault.” Sam manhandles Dean over to the passenger side and helps him into the car. “It wasn’t your fault,” he repeats just before he shuts the door.
Notes: Almost three months and I still can’t leave the damned story alone. A remix of my BUaBS dark!fic series – a what-if version that picks up in the middle of Jo’s story. You need to read Keep You From the Gallows Pole and A Face From the Ancient Gallery first for this to make any sense. Title is from “Let It Be” by The Beatles. Kind of written forspn_het_love’s Daddy Dearest challenge.
Characters: Dean, Jo, Sam (some Dean/Jo)
Rating: PG-13 for dark themes, mention of rape, abortion
Word Count: 1522
Summary: “You’ve done nothing, Dean,” he answers vehemently. “It wasn’t your fault.” Sam manhandles Dean over to the passenger side and helps him into the car. “It wasn’t your fault,” he repeats just before he shuts the door.
Notes: Almost three months and I still can’t leave the damned story alone. A remix of my BUaBS dark!fic series – a what-if version that picks up in the middle of Jo’s story. You need to read Keep You From the Gallows Pole and A Face From the Ancient Gallery first for this to make any sense. Title is from “Let It Be” by The Beatles. Kind of written for
spn_het_love’s Daddy Dearest challenge.Keep You From the Gallows Pole | A Face From the Ancient Gallery
Nothing You Can Say to Make Me Change My Mind | All These Places Feel Like Home
In My Hour of Darkness
Nothing You Can Say to Make Me Change My Mind | All These Places Feel Like Home
In My Hour of Darkness
In My Hour of Darkness
The call comes late one night a little over a month after Duluth. Dean looks at the ID and hands the phone to Sam, who frowns but answers anyway. “Hello?”
“Sam?” Jo’s voice is light, breathy, but he can’t tell if it’s because the connection is bad or because she’s scared. “Are you driving?” she asks.
“No,” he says slowly.
“Good.” She pauses. “Are you in the car?”
“Yeah. Jo, what’s wrong?” Dean glances at him, and Sam frowns, gesturing for him to pull over; he does.
“Sam,” she says, her voice shuddering, “I’m pregnant.”
“What? Are you sure? Is it—”
“Yeah,” she whispers, and now he can hear tears in her voice. “I’m sure.”
“Where are you?” he asks. “Are you still in Duluth? We can be there in—”
“Eight hours,” Dean whispers. “Give or take.”
“—Eight hours,” Sam repeats.
“Would you?” she says. “God, Sam, I’m so scared. I don’t know what to do.”
“Yeah. We’ll be there. Just… we’ll be there.”
“Thank you,” she whispers and hangs up.
“What is it?” Dean asks after a moment.
Sam looks away from him and says quietly, “She’s pregnant, Dean.” He glances back at his brother; Dean has turned ghostly pale, his green eyes bright against his white face.
“You’d better drive, Sam,” he says after swallowing thickly. He climbs out of the car, gripping the door like a support. Sam moves quickly and catches him as his knees buckle and he collapses against the side of the Impala. “What have I done, Sam?” he asks. “What have I done?”
“You’ve done nothing, Dean,” he answers vehemently. “It wasn’t your fault.” Sam manhandles Dean over to the passenger side and helps him into the car. “It wasn’t your fault,” he repeats just before he shuts the door. He half-runs to the driver’s side, almost as if he’s afraid his brother will bolt before he can get in. Dean doesn’t move, though, even as Sam peels out, doing a U-turn in the middle of the old highway, heading back the way they came, toward Bismarck, toward Duluth.
Dean stares silently out the window as Sam drives east.
Sam gets a motel room for them just outside of Duluth. He leaves Dean there, saying he’ll be back soon, and drives to the address Jo gave him. It’s an apartment complex not far from the docks; the place isn’t in much better condition than the dockside bar where Jo was working, and Sam gets the impression that Jo chose it for the simple reason that the owners wouldn’t ask too many questions. He parks and walks to apartment number twenty-one.
Before he can raise his hand to knock, the door opens, and Jo peers out at him through the crack. “Is he here?” she asks, her eyes darting across his face.
“He’s at the motel,” he says quietly.
She nods once, shutting the door, and he can hear the chain lock slide away. The door opens, and Jo steps aside, allowing him in. She looks tired, worn out, as if she’s gone a few rounds with a banshee after a week-long bender. “You told him?” she says over her shoulder as she leads him into the apartment.
“Yeah.”
“And?” She turns to look at him over the kitchen island. “Coffee?” She lifts ups the tea kettle that was sitting on the stove.
“No thanks.” He pauses. “He hasn’t really said anything,” he tells her. “Hardly said a word the entire drive from Bismarck.”
She nods again as she puts hot water and a teabag into a mug for herself. “I’m sorry,” she says softly, glancing up at him. “I just – I didn’t know who else to call. Mom would have – well, I mean, she’s scary enough as it is when I’m not… I mean, she would have hunted you both down, even though it’s not your fault.”
Sam chuckles a little even though it’s not very funny. “Yeah, I could see that.”
Jo sits on one of the chairs around the little coffee table and gestures for Sam to do the same. “Will you bring him around, or should I go with you?” she asks, bringing her tea to her lips.
“It might be best if you come with me,” he admits. “Dean’s not—no offense, Jo, but I don’t think he’d want to see you here.” He waves a hand vaguely at their surroundings, taking in the rundown apartment and the neighborhood all at once.
“None taken, Sam. Duluth was never supposed to be long-term.” She smiles wryly. “Guess I’m definitely gonna have to find a new place now. This is no town to raise a kid in, especially not this part of it.”
“So you’re keeping it?” he says. She raises her eyebrows at him, as if asking whether she had other options. “I mean,” he starts, “I thought… I’d understand, if you didn’t… No one would blame you.”
She sighs and sets her mug down on the table. “Sam, I scrubbed myself raw every night for three weeks, trying to get the memory of…” She trails off, shuddering. “Anyway, I spent the last month trying to forget it, and then I realized that my period had stopped. It took a lot more guts for me to walk to the pharmacy and buy a pregnancy test than it did for me to sit in that sewer and wait for H. H. Holmes to find me. It took even more than that to finally call you guys.” She shrugs her shoulders a little. “To be honest, I don’t know if I have enough guts left,” she says quietly.
He doesn’t say anything, because what is there to say beyond Oh?
“Can we go now?” she asks suddenly. “I’d – I’d like to see him.”
“Yeah, sure. Okay.” He stands abruptly, too quickly, almost knocking over the coffee table. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I’m moving out soon anyway.” Jo stands, too, and takes her mug into the kitchen, leaving it in the sink. “Shall we?” she says with a lift of her eyebrows.
“Yeah.” Sam tries to smile, but he knows it doesn’t reach his eyes.
When they arrive at the motel, Sam hands Jo the key to the room. “I’ll be at the café down the street. Call me if you need me,” he says, and he climbs back into the car. Jo nods and turns toward the motel room. Taking a deep breath, she moves to the door and unlocks it.
This isn’t what she is expecting to see. Really, she isn’t sure what she was expecting, but some vestiges of the terror she’d felt all those nights ago would not have been remiss. It surprises her that seeing him doesn’t make her shake or feel sick, but maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising because Dean hardly flinches when she walks in the room. Instead, he stares despondently at the television, his eyes open but not even registering the images on the screen.
She sits on the bed beside him. “Dean,” she says softly, as if speaking to a child. “Dean,” she says again, turning his head with her hand so he faces her. His eyes are wide, frightened, and that in turn terrifies Jo, to see him looking more like a lost little boy than a grown man.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, leaning into her touch.
“It’s alright,” she says.
“No. No, it’s not.” His voice is rough, broken, and there are tears in his eyes. “I could have killed you, Jo. And I couldn’t stop it.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Dean.” She moves closer to him, sliding her hand from his cheek down to his arm and laying her head against his chest. He stiffens, and she squeezes his arm reassuringly. “I don’t blame you.”
“But you should.”
She lifts her head and looks him in the eye. “No, I shouldn’t.” She holds his gaze for a long moment and then lets her head fall back to his shoulder.
“What will you do, Jo?” he asks after a while.
“I don’t know.” She looks up at him. “Is it alright if I keep it?” she asks, brushing her fingers across his face.
“Do you want to?” His voice is soft, the lost little boy inside a grown man, and it hurts Jo to see it.
She smiles a little. “I think so.”
“Do – do you want me to – to stay with you?”
“You don’t have to.” And then, because he doesn’t look convinced, she says, “I don’t blame you, and I’m not going to force you to do anything.”
Dean nods, and she thinks that maybe he understands. He cautiously puts an arm around her and slides it down her arm to rest on her lower belly. “So you’re sure?” he says, and she’s not certain whether he’s asking if she’s sure she’s pregnant or sure she wants to keep the child or sure she doesn’t want – doesn’t need – him to stay.
“Yeah,” she says. “I’m sure.”
He nods again. “Okay.”
She smiles and puts a hand on top of his. “Okay.”
******************************************************************************************************************************************
A/N: So is it at all pretentious to remix your own story? Because that’s definitely what I’ve done. I’d been thinking about it some recently, about how I might have done it differently if I went back to it. And thenspn_het_love had the Daddy Dearest prompt, and I thought “Here’s my chance to retell the story, with Dean finding out early on.” So I wrote it, and while it may not be exactly what elanurel and misskatieleigh had in mind when they declared the prompt, I’m happy with it.
And if I had to choose a theme for this story, it would definitely be “It is not Dean’s fault.” Because that’s the most-repeated phrase throughout the story. And it’s true. It’s not Dean’s fault, and nobody will ever blame him.
The call comes late one night a little over a month after Duluth. Dean looks at the ID and hands the phone to Sam, who frowns but answers anyway. “Hello?”
“Sam?” Jo’s voice is light, breathy, but he can’t tell if it’s because the connection is bad or because she’s scared. “Are you driving?” she asks.
“No,” he says slowly.
“Good.” She pauses. “Are you in the car?”
“Yeah. Jo, what’s wrong?” Dean glances at him, and Sam frowns, gesturing for him to pull over; he does.
“Sam,” she says, her voice shuddering, “I’m pregnant.”
“What? Are you sure? Is it—”
“Yeah,” she whispers, and now he can hear tears in her voice. “I’m sure.”
“Where are you?” he asks. “Are you still in Duluth? We can be there in—”
“Eight hours,” Dean whispers. “Give or take.”
“—Eight hours,” Sam repeats.
“Would you?” she says. “God, Sam, I’m so scared. I don’t know what to do.”
“Yeah. We’ll be there. Just… we’ll be there.”
“Thank you,” she whispers and hangs up.
“What is it?” Dean asks after a moment.
Sam looks away from him and says quietly, “She’s pregnant, Dean.” He glances back at his brother; Dean has turned ghostly pale, his green eyes bright against his white face.
“You’d better drive, Sam,” he says after swallowing thickly. He climbs out of the car, gripping the door like a support. Sam moves quickly and catches him as his knees buckle and he collapses against the side of the Impala. “What have I done, Sam?” he asks. “What have I done?”
“You’ve done nothing, Dean,” he answers vehemently. “It wasn’t your fault.” Sam manhandles Dean over to the passenger side and helps him into the car. “It wasn’t your fault,” he repeats just before he shuts the door. He half-runs to the driver’s side, almost as if he’s afraid his brother will bolt before he can get in. Dean doesn’t move, though, even as Sam peels out, doing a U-turn in the middle of the old highway, heading back the way they came, toward Bismarck, toward Duluth.
Dean stares silently out the window as Sam drives east.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sam gets a motel room for them just outside of Duluth. He leaves Dean there, saying he’ll be back soon, and drives to the address Jo gave him. It’s an apartment complex not far from the docks; the place isn’t in much better condition than the dockside bar where Jo was working, and Sam gets the impression that Jo chose it for the simple reason that the owners wouldn’t ask too many questions. He parks and walks to apartment number twenty-one.
Before he can raise his hand to knock, the door opens, and Jo peers out at him through the crack. “Is he here?” she asks, her eyes darting across his face.
“He’s at the motel,” he says quietly.
She nods once, shutting the door, and he can hear the chain lock slide away. The door opens, and Jo steps aside, allowing him in. She looks tired, worn out, as if she’s gone a few rounds with a banshee after a week-long bender. “You told him?” she says over her shoulder as she leads him into the apartment.
“Yeah.”
“And?” She turns to look at him over the kitchen island. “Coffee?” She lifts ups the tea kettle that was sitting on the stove.
“No thanks.” He pauses. “He hasn’t really said anything,” he tells her. “Hardly said a word the entire drive from Bismarck.”
She nods again as she puts hot water and a teabag into a mug for herself. “I’m sorry,” she says softly, glancing up at him. “I just – I didn’t know who else to call. Mom would have – well, I mean, she’s scary enough as it is when I’m not… I mean, she would have hunted you both down, even though it’s not your fault.”
Sam chuckles a little even though it’s not very funny. “Yeah, I could see that.”
Jo sits on one of the chairs around the little coffee table and gestures for Sam to do the same. “Will you bring him around, or should I go with you?” she asks, bringing her tea to her lips.
“It might be best if you come with me,” he admits. “Dean’s not—no offense, Jo, but I don’t think he’d want to see you here.” He waves a hand vaguely at their surroundings, taking in the rundown apartment and the neighborhood all at once.
“None taken, Sam. Duluth was never supposed to be long-term.” She smiles wryly. “Guess I’m definitely gonna have to find a new place now. This is no town to raise a kid in, especially not this part of it.”
“So you’re keeping it?” he says. She raises her eyebrows at him, as if asking whether she had other options. “I mean,” he starts, “I thought… I’d understand, if you didn’t… No one would blame you.”
She sighs and sets her mug down on the table. “Sam, I scrubbed myself raw every night for three weeks, trying to get the memory of…” She trails off, shuddering. “Anyway, I spent the last month trying to forget it, and then I realized that my period had stopped. It took a lot more guts for me to walk to the pharmacy and buy a pregnancy test than it did for me to sit in that sewer and wait for H. H. Holmes to find me. It took even more than that to finally call you guys.” She shrugs her shoulders a little. “To be honest, I don’t know if I have enough guts left,” she says quietly.
He doesn’t say anything, because what is there to say beyond Oh?
“Can we go now?” she asks suddenly. “I’d – I’d like to see him.”
“Yeah, sure. Okay.” He stands abruptly, too quickly, almost knocking over the coffee table. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I’m moving out soon anyway.” Jo stands, too, and takes her mug into the kitchen, leaving it in the sink. “Shall we?” she says with a lift of her eyebrows.
“Yeah.” Sam tries to smile, but he knows it doesn’t reach his eyes.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When they arrive at the motel, Sam hands Jo the key to the room. “I’ll be at the café down the street. Call me if you need me,” he says, and he climbs back into the car. Jo nods and turns toward the motel room. Taking a deep breath, she moves to the door and unlocks it.
This isn’t what she is expecting to see. Really, she isn’t sure what she was expecting, but some vestiges of the terror she’d felt all those nights ago would not have been remiss. It surprises her that seeing him doesn’t make her shake or feel sick, but maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising because Dean hardly flinches when she walks in the room. Instead, he stares despondently at the television, his eyes open but not even registering the images on the screen.
She sits on the bed beside him. “Dean,” she says softly, as if speaking to a child. “Dean,” she says again, turning his head with her hand so he faces her. His eyes are wide, frightened, and that in turn terrifies Jo, to see him looking more like a lost little boy than a grown man.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, leaning into her touch.
“It’s alright,” she says.
“No. No, it’s not.” His voice is rough, broken, and there are tears in his eyes. “I could have killed you, Jo. And I couldn’t stop it.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Dean.” She moves closer to him, sliding her hand from his cheek down to his arm and laying her head against his chest. He stiffens, and she squeezes his arm reassuringly. “I don’t blame you.”
“But you should.”
She lifts her head and looks him in the eye. “No, I shouldn’t.” She holds his gaze for a long moment and then lets her head fall back to his shoulder.
“What will you do, Jo?” he asks after a while.
“I don’t know.” She looks up at him. “Is it alright if I keep it?” she asks, brushing her fingers across his face.
“Do you want to?” His voice is soft, the lost little boy inside a grown man, and it hurts Jo to see it.
She smiles a little. “I think so.”
“Do – do you want me to – to stay with you?”
“You don’t have to.” And then, because he doesn’t look convinced, she says, “I don’t blame you, and I’m not going to force you to do anything.”
Dean nods, and she thinks that maybe he understands. He cautiously puts an arm around her and slides it down her arm to rest on her lower belly. “So you’re sure?” he says, and she’s not certain whether he’s asking if she’s sure she’s pregnant or sure she wants to keep the child or sure she doesn’t want – doesn’t need – him to stay.
“Yeah,” she says. “I’m sure.”
He nods again. “Okay.”
She smiles and puts a hand on top of his. “Okay.”
******************************************************************************************************************************************
A/N: So is it at all pretentious to remix your own story? Because that’s definitely what I’ve done. I’d been thinking about it some recently, about how I might have done it differently if I went back to it. And then
spn_het_love had the Daddy Dearest prompt, and I thought “Here’s my chance to retell the story, with Dean finding out early on.” So I wrote it, and while it may not be exactly what elanurel and misskatieleigh had in mind when they declared the prompt, I’m happy with it.And if I had to choose a theme for this story, it would definitely be “It is not Dean’s fault.” Because that’s the most-repeated phrase throughout the story. And it’s true. It’s not Dean’s fault, and nobody will ever blame him.
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*hugs*
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As for what else happens, well, Jo moves to Chicago and has the baby and names her Glory. And Dean and Sam do what they do best and stop by whenever they can (which is fairly often, considering).
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I loved this part, “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, leaning into her touch.
I'm not sure why, but it was just so sad and perfect. Very nice job.
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That was one of my favorite parts, too.
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It's actually really fascinating to explore this whole untaken path of your BUaBS dark!fic universe. Like an AU of an AU.
I really liked it, and even though this is labelled as a one-shot I would be really interested in more.
Great job!
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It's actually really fascinating to explore this whole untaken path
That's what I was thinking. ;) Plus, when I first wrote it, I really thought hard about what Jo would do - to be honest, I seriously considered her having an abortion, but then I decided that she'd be more likely to keep the child. And then I had to decide if she'd tell anyone or not.
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So, so</I< happy! Now don't get me wrong as I said I loved the original version, but man was it sad...This makes it a bit, I don't know, optimistic I guess. And I;m liking that. Thanks for sharing :)
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And "optimistic" is a good word for it. I mean, it's not gonna be easy (nothing ever is for them), but it's gonna be okay.
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Excellent glimpse into the world you've established.
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Lovely..
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As for Dean thatcreepystalker, well, it just felt right that he would try to be there if he knew, but would never actually interact with either Jo or their little girl.
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This is (in my opinion) one of my best series, and I love getting comments on it. The first story in this series really took me by surprise as I was writing it, and then the second one just kind of accosted me until I wrote it down. It still kind of gives me chills, even though it's been over a year since I wrote it. :)
*tear*
(Anonymous) 2009-09-04 05:14 pm (UTC)(link)It´s really nice...well, nice might not be the right word here but I hope you get what I mean.
The way you describe the characters is just awesome - i love that Sam is kinda being the older brother in this one and i love Jos explanation of why shes gonna keep the baby and obviously i love the little lost boyinside the grown man.