sixthiterationlogs | 001 ][ I was soaring even higher, but I flew too high

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001 ][ I was soaring even higher, but I flew too high

WHO: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, and You
WHERE: Fountain, Inn
WHEN: 12/20 - 12/21
OPEN TO: Open unless marked otherwise
WARNINGS: None so far

The Fountain - Closed to Dean Winchester

Sam finds the surface of the water himself, hand breaking through to grasp the side of the fountain, fingers finding enough grip to haul himself out with little effort. The air was cold against his waterlogged skin, his soaked clothes wet as they hung from his body, but it only took a few moments for him to push to his feet and take a sharp look around.

The last thing he'd remembered was sliding into the passenger seat of the Impala after meeting back up with Dean what felt like the middle of nowhere. One moment he'd been expecting the familiar feel of the seat, and instead he'd been greeted by cold water and burning lungs as he held his breath.

Had Lucifer gotten in his head again? Was this some way to try and locate him, to try and force him to say yes?

He couldn't possibly know, not for sure, so in the moment he simply leans back against the edge of the fountain, running a hand down the front of his face to press away the water running down from his hair as he tried to think.

The Inn - Open

Sam tries to keep to himself that first full day. He and Dean have things to talk about, plans to run through, before he does anything resembling being social. They don't know these people, and for all he knows? It might not be real at all, just once giant trick of the mind. It's something he's lived through before, and just because it felt, smelled and looked real, didn't mean that it necessarily was real.

His hunger is real enough, though, and so he appears briefly a couple times during the day to find some food. Unfortunately for him, his height and stature make him stick out like a sore thumb, so stealth isn't exactly his forte. He just hopes he can get in and out before he has to answer too many questions.

Sam isn't exactly all that great at turning down someone attempting to start a friendly conversation, though, so it's easy enough to catch him up in one before he gets what he's looking for.

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Thus far, Sam hadn't really been able to make anything even remotely resembling a useful contribution to the town. Not by her standards, anyway. She wasn't a lumberjack or a doctor or a fry cook. Her skills tended toward the more cerebral, especially without access to a gun or bullets. But several conversations with several passers-by at the Inn had finally given her an idea. She was a fucking scientist. It was time to attempt some actual science.

During the late afternoon, before she figured people would start foraging for food, she slipped into the kitchen. Using what she could find in the cabinets and drawers--along with a couple of gnarled potatoes--she'd started constructing a device.

It wasn't pretty.

It wasn't elegant.

And it sure as hell wasn't genetics.

But she figured chemistry was close enough. And she'd seen enough episodes of M*A*S*H to come up with the basics to set up a still.

Potato vodka. That was something she could do. Maybe. Possibly.

It was all still a work in progress. Most of what she'd managed to brew up so far had been pretty much paint thinner. But she had high hopes for today's batch.

Sam realizes pretty quickly that avoiding people is basically impossible, and not something he'd really want to do once he realizes that they're all in the same boat. Dealing with this is gonna work out better if they work together, which is something everyone else has already figured out, and he and Dean are the odd ones out at the moment.

So when he sees someone with a strange contraption making...something, he gives into his curiosity to check it out.

"Hey, what are you working on?"

His tone is genuinely curious as he tries to work out in his mind what it is.

Double takes were normally reserved for cartoons or the Three Stooges. But when Sam looked up and saw the tallest, dreamiest boy, she couldn't help but blink in surprise. Definitely a newbie. He had the new-arrival smell on him, metaphorically speaking. It was all in the eyes--which, of course, she realized was mixing metaphors. But he didn't have the same glazed, exhausted look of some of the others.

Poor guy. He had so much suck ahead of him.

"This," she said, turning back to adjust one of her makeshift valves, "is either going to be a still or the worst pipe bomb in the history of ever."

A pause.

"Aiming for a still."

Suck behind him, suck in front of him. He was used to it.

"I'll cross my fingers for you."

A pipe bomb could be useful for very few things, and accidental ones were never good. Still, she seemed like she knew what she was doing.

"This seems like a place that would need one of those."

It was a little hard not to stare at him. She supposed that was like staring into the sun. Dazzling, but potentially harmful. Still, as she walked around the table, she couldn't stop herself from sneaking peaks up at him, between each of her little adjustments. There weren't as many people her age as she would have liked around this place.

Fewer still who were nice to look at.

"Yeah," she said, tightening a joint that was barely being held together with some tree sap and strings. "I never thought I was some kind of NRA nutcase, but I'd trade a month's worth of potatoes for my old revolver. Our protective ordinance is laughably out-dated."

Finally, she wiped her hands off on the sides of her pants, holding a hand out to him. "I'm Samantha," she said. "Call me Sam. Los Angeles, 2014."

Sam was never particularly good at noticing when a girl had a thing for him, probably because they tended to hone in on his brother over the two of them. That and girls, in general, were always more Dean's thing than his, considering they traveled so much. Sam liked things to be a little more meaningful than that, so it tended to not be on his radar.

"Believe me, I get it. The trunk of our car was basically a mini-arsenal." Not everyone would call it mini, but he'd seen bigger.

Sam reaches out to shake her hand, the corner of his mouth perking up at her name. "I'm Sam, too. Not Samantha, but no one calls me Samuel. United States, 2009."

Cute with a side of awkward. Not that Sam was really one to judge. Here social skills were rusty on the best of days.

She gave his hand a hearty squeeze. Karen and Avery had always been on her case about that. A firm handshake just made it all the more likely that someone might notice she didn't have a pulse. But her women in business seminar had taught her that no one took a girl seriously when she had a weak handshake.

Normally a rock-meet-hard-place scenario.

Unfortunately (fortunately?) she was too human now to give a fuck.

"Huh. Never met a boy-Sam before. Nice to meet you. I mean, under the shitty circumstances."

What the hell did 'United States' mean? That was oddly...unspecific.

The presence of one Winchester was enough to put Bela on edge - she had encountered Dean a few days ago and it hadn't been the best of conversations. Given the choice she would rather stay out of his way, leave him alone to his own devices. Bela didn't want any trouble from him or anyone else. Things were already inconvenient for her without the need to deal with someone from home.

She was seated by the fire when Sam walked into the inn. Bela turned to look at the door to see who had entered, her mouth dropping open with surprise. It was just her bloody luck, wasn’t it? Now she had to deal with two Winchesters instead of one.

Getting up from her chair Bela moved to intercept him, deciding to make herself known there and then rather than trying to escape like she did with Dean.

"I suppose the village couldn’t keep you two apart for very long." A smirk. "Yes. I have seen Dean already."

With Dean being here before him, Sam wouldn't have been super shocked if anyone else he knew happened to be here. He didn't entirely believe in coincidences, but if someone had asked him who he thought he might run into, it wouldn't have been her.

She'd been dead long enough he hadn't expected to ever see her again. They weren't exactly what you would call friends, either.

"Bela?"

His voice is incredulous with surprise, not to mention a touch of disbelief. There were things that could steal people's faces, after all.

He probably wasn't expecting to see her, and Bela puts down his surprise to just that, nothing more. Why should she think anything else? Like with Dean, things weren't exactly good between them.

"Yes." The smirk is still firmly in place. "Have you just arrived?"

Setting aside any other questions for the moment. Bela wants to find out just how long Sam has been in the village. She's also interested to know if Dean had mentioned her to him.

"Uh, yeah. Just yesterday."

He'd arrived like everyone else; wet and confused. Running into Bela wasn't exactly making that any easier.

Or maybe she was a ghost that didn't know she was dead? She seemed pretty damn real, though.

"H-how long have you been here?"

"Almost two months now I think."

Though it was getting more difficult for her to keep track. She may need to ask someone else to help her with it.

"It's been an adjustment to say the least." The polite way to highlight her feelings on being trapped here. "And apparently, there is no chance of us getting home either."

"That's kind of an understatement."

Sam is not quite so polite, though he doesn't use whatever choice words his brother likely did.

"Yeah, well, we've heard that kind of thing before. Didn't stop us then, probably isn't gonna stop us now."

"You're welcome to try, Sam. I doubt you'll get very far."

Just pointing out the facts to him. It wasn't a dig at his abilities but he may take it that way.

"Countless others, including myself have tried to find a way out. Do you really think I'd still be here if there was a way home?"

Clary was very short when compared to Sam, standing only a few inches above five feet. She blinked when she came face to face with him in the kitchen and decided that she was going to borrow his height if she could.

"Hey." She hadn't seen him around though Clary also hadn't spent a great deal of time outside of the inn since the cold snap. "Do you think you can help me reach something in the storage room?" She stepped around the counter and looked up at Sam with a friendly smile. "There is some cured meat on the top shelf and I'm starving. I also can't cook to save my life so it's that or wait until Kate or someone who knows how to cook comes around."

Her stomach hated the idea of waiting for food.

"I can point you too it."

"Yeah, sure. No problem."

It wasn't the first time someone had taken advantage of his height, and it sure wasn't going to be the last. Besides, Sam hadn't figured out how to best adjust to life here, so helping a nice young lady seemed like a decent place to start.

He gestured with a raising of his hand. "Lead the way."

Clary was thankful that he wasn't one of those tall jerks who like to watch short people struggle to reach high places. Those people are just mean.

"Yeah. It's right over here." She walked into a small storage room and pointed to a sack that was resting on the top shelf. There was usually a step latter in this room but Clary couldn't find it which meant that it was either lost or someone had borrowed it for the day.

"Thanks. I don't have a Snickers and I would have gotten very irritable without you." She was grumpy when she was hungry. "I'm Clary. Have you been here long?" She would have definitely remembered someone as tall as Sam; unless he spent most of his time sitting down.

Sam prided himself on not being a jerk, so it all worked out.

He followed her into the storage room, lifting up on his toes so that he could get a good grip on the middle of the sack in case it was heavy, and then easily hauled it down.

"Seriously, it's no big deal. Where do you want it? It's kind of heavy."

After he got directions he began walking that direction with the bag as he answered her. "Sam. And no, got here yesterday actually."

"I can take it. It's just going on the counter." It wasn't terribly fair away and, while Clary appeared very small and slight, she had some measurable upper body strength at her disposal.

Once the bag was down she began to quickly rummage through it. She wrapped a bit of the food into a cloth and pushed it into the pockets of her pants. This wasn't the first time she had taken some meat to go. When she was finished, she turned back towards Sam with a friendly smile, holding out a bit of the cured meat to him. "Thanks. Here. The soils of our quest." Even without Simon around, Clary was always a little bit of a dork.

"So, Sam? You probably have a lot of questions. That or you're used to getting swept away to strange worlds via a well, at which point I have a few questions." She smiled, making sure that he knew that she was partly kidding. Humor was really Clary's way of dealing with a lot of this.

Since he made the swim up to the icy surface Dean's made a regular ritual of making trips two to three times a day down to that fountain to see if Sam managed to draw the short stick too. Not like it's out of Zachariah's area to dangle Sam's livelihood to get him to say yes. Dean's already seen what happens if he says no, and even though he's not exactly running with open arms straight to Michael, keeping eyes on his brother was the only thing that mattered. Even when he wasn't around. They might be weak when they were together, but with them separated and Sam detoxing it was worse to have distance between them.

By now Dean's already given up hope, one too many trips into the sleet and not enough alcohol to numb everything, he's been in better situations. Even with Croats roaming the streets and Chuck rationing provisions. Sam not being there, not knowing, that was the worst part. Might as well be walking around in Italian Loafers and the douchiest fucking white suit he's ever seen.

When Sam breaches the water, Dean already called it quits for his third drive-by of the day. He's halfway to the Inn when he hears the movement, ice crunches under his boot. Even if it's some other victim, he's better off going to see what the hell well brought in. This place is the pits, but maybe he could offer something more than cheerful stupidity and attempts to acclimate.

When he sees Sam, that all changes, Dean doesn't run so much as lunge forward with huge gaps between both legs to meet him at the ridge of the fountain and it doesn't take a genius, there's no mistaking the hair, the shoulders, or the sheer stupid size of his limbs.

"Sammy?!" Hope's for people that haven't been let down as many times as he has. "Jesus Christ. Sam??"

The fountain feels cold against the back of his head, but the ground is even colder beneath him, the black scrubs he was wearing drenched and not nearly think enough. His arms wrap around himself as the shock of the cold weather finally hits him solidly, followed quickly by the sound of his name. Twice.

"Dean?"

He looks up, blinking droplets of water from his lashes, and tries to stand even as his body starts to shiver against the chill.

Yeah, the kid picked the wrong season to show up, just like he did. Even though when he left home it was still spring or something like it. Dean's never got around to asking anyone what's up the time in this joint. Since he arrived he's spent most of his time alone, just digesting everything.

On one hand, getting snatched up out of the apocalypse by an invisible force is a fucking vacation compared to what they've got to deal with back home. On the other, there's no telling who's responsible for this, maybe the devil himself.

Dean brings Sam in closer, while simultaneously reaching down to snatch up his welcome bag. "Let's get you someplace warm," Dean remembered his trek from icy water to the inn. His own rescuer wasn't a brother, but he didn't pull any punches when it came to the terrain either. This happens all the time, would normally bother him. Another phrase they look for when it comes to working a gig. This time it was the last thing on his mind.

It wasn't uncommon for there to be a new face among the crowd, and unlike newly arrived villagers, the daze in his eyes was at least tempered (if it was there.) He had a footing, which so many lacked at first. Matters were explained to him and he was making the effort to be social. It was why Margaery didn't have as much concern for him, enough that she would hover and offer the usual bits of comfort that she could, towels and tea. Instead, she smiled at him kindly and nodded to one of the chairs beside her.

There was a basket at her feet filled with linens and clothes, things that needed to be repaired but were better done in the company of others, if only to relieve boredom. It was a picture of domesticity, the life she had made for herself and the routine that she had managed to build.

"Has the shock worn off yet?"

It was there, sure, but not because he was particularly still shell-shocked from the existence of this place and his arrival. Instead, it was simply the lack of modern technology he was slowly learning to adjust to.

It wasn't that he didn't have some idea of what to do, he just had to get used to it. His brother was probably having a harder time.

"Does it ever?" It seemed almost teasing in reply. He wasn't sure if the shock would ever wear off completely, but time had done stranger things.

She was grateful to come from a world that didn't have much in the way of technology to begin with. Even some of the things here were already beyond her comprehension. All she had to adjust to was working with her hands, having no servants or attendants here. Now, it seemed strange not to live her life as she did in the village.

"Perhaps not completely, but you become adjusted to it." Desensitized? Was that the term? "Most of the day, you have to work, hunt or whatever else. By the time you return home, there isn't very much to think about beyond what you need to do tomorrow." She wasn't doing a very good job of comforting, she knew that.

"When I first arrived, we didn't have crops or stables of animals. Everyday was a struggle to have enough food or firewood. It's different now, but it is still instinct for me to think about that rather than where we are."

"There could always come a day when that could change. In an area as small as this, we'll have to be careful."

He wasn't used to living like this, but that didn't mean he couldn't, and he was a strategist as well. He could see what they had and what was outside and get an idea of how quickly things could change if something went wrong.

Fortunately, he was used to things could sideways, so it didn't stress him the way it might bother someone else.

"You've got a good group here, though. It seems like everyone works together well."

"It could. There are a number of things that could change." The element of chaos in the world was always there. Even when it seemed there were small answers being given to them, that chaos returned and changed what they thought to be true. It wouldn't be long for someone to eventually snap under that pressure. So far though, everyone held themselves together fairly well.

He seemed to be in control of himself though, for someone that found himself in a strange realm with a number of questions and no answers. There was always something about a person, an indicator that they had been through this before. Bela had it, now Sam did as well.

"We have had time to build our community over the course of a year. I'm Margaery."

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001 ][ I was soaring even higher, but I flew too high

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Inn

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fountain / closed

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The Inn

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