river_meimei | SPN AU some more

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SPN AU some more

Nothing in room 919 is something Tig will have seen before. Everything that's here comes from Milliways; River brought nothing here but the (ghost of the) clothes on her back, and she got rid of those a few days into her stay.

But the style of it -- the framed posters on the walls, the duvet in swirls of blue and purple, the heap of semi-matching pillows on the papasan chair and the dance bag tossed in a corner -- will be wholly familiar. River picked these decorations, and she picked them to make this room hers.

Of course, there are a few new touches. The salt line surrounding the room, for instance. (The holy water in Poland Springs bottles, the iron horseshoe on the door, the devil's trap painted under the rug -- but only the salt is an obvious anomaly.)

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It's all so normal. Tig is torn, once again, between the urge to smile and to cry.

It's so River.

And it's precisely because it's so River that the salt, which is not, catches her eye. She recalls vaguely the hours staring at screens, the couple of books she'd found in the library-- sulfur smell, ghosts in my house, A Guide to Demonology and Witchcraft. She'd felt so stupid.

River doesn't need to see her looking at the salt to know it's noteworthy. To know it's weird.

I think I know what took you.

River spends a lot of time these days pretending very hard to be normal, to be fine, to be not weird or edgy or afraid. But she knows how much she's faking it.

"It's a protection," she says, looking at the salt rather than her girlfriend. "Salt. A lot of stuff can't cross the barrier unless you break the line."

"I learned that here. There's a library with -- a lot." That last is a little wry, because it's a significant understatement.

Tig, in contrast, turns her head when River speaks to look right at her.

"Stuff," she repeats, faintly.

A slight quirk of her lips, though even she can't tell whether it wants to be a smile. "Is it better than Seattle? A lot of what they had ... wasn't very helpful."

Admittedly, Tig doesn't know what helpful really means, in a non-finding-River context.

"Demons."

River glances over, with her own quirk of the lips. (It's about equally successful.) "I haven't tried Seattle. But, um -- probably."

"Yeah."

Tig nods slightly.

"I guess I still wouldn't know what's ..." She swallows. "What's true, and what's not."

"I know some. Not all the details yet, but some. I was looking for precautions first."

She leans in for a quick kiss. It's light, and soft, and it says I'm still here as much as anything. "I'll tell you it all tomorrow, unless you want it now."

It's an honest offer. She's willing to tell it now, too.

But I want to sleep, Tig said. And River's not all that tired (and, to be honest, she has trouble falling asleep a lot of the time these days) but the idea of curling up around Tig -- a real, warm, solid Tig who's really here -- and closing her eyes and being held sounds really, really appealing.

I'll tell you it all tomorrow. Tig is notoriously bad about waiting for tomorrows.

But maybe she'll think it over as she reaches for River's shoulder and kisses her back, harder and longer.

Oh. River's hand slips into Tig's hair, and she lets her eyes close -- she can; they're here, they're behind salt and iron and shut doors -- and turns into the kiss.

Yeah, this is pretty appealing too.

Some time later, they have made it to River's bed and are curled up there, Tig with her arms around River's waist and her chin tucked against River's shoulder. (She is wearing River's pajamas, ones she doesn't recognize exactly but that look and smell like her.) Maybe treating your missing-presumed-dead girlfriend like a giant teddy bear isn't the most dignified thing in the world, but it feels terrific.

Tig can tell, or thinks she can, from the particular hush in the air around them, that it's quite late by now-- she meant to be asleep, and she thinks for awhile she was, but she's drifted back awake and that's all right with her.

She doesn't want to cry.

Or at least she doesn't want to cry right now.

Softly, she whispers,

"Mm?"

River's awake; she's the kind of awake where she knows she won't fall asleep for a while yet.

But right now, she has absolutely zero desire to move out of this bed anyway, and away from the comforting familiar warmth of Tig wrapped around her. She must have been this relaxed sometimes over the past few months, she's certain she must have, but she can't remember any times.

There's light from a table lamp, warm and buttery; Tig finds it a comfort right now, actually, even if it's partially responsible for waking her up. (She doesn't know whether it is or not.)

"I wanted to know," she whispers.

"If you could tell me about it. I can wait until morning."

...Right now?

It's ridiculous, and it's so very Tig it makes her heart hurt.

"Now's okay," she whispers back. She'd tighten her arm around Tig, but she's feeling too comfortable to move even that much.

"What'd'you want to know?"

Tig, on the other hand, is perfectly positioned to tighten her arms around River; and that is what she does.

"I want to know what happened to you." She can hear her voice going faint.

"I want to know what-- got us."

River can tighten her arm after all, she finds.

She's silent just for a moment, studying the ceiling and the slice of wall and door she can see from here. It's washed with dim, shadowy gold from the lamp. (River appreciates, these days, being able to open her eyes and see exactly where she is. She knows this level of anxiety is probably not healthy, and she also knows she's not willing to turn off that lamp any time soon.)

"Some of it's guesswork from later," she says softly, to the ceiling. "I was dreaming, and -- I'm not sure what really happened and what didn't, for all of it."

"There was this guy, this demon -- he looked just like a really smug guy, but his eyes were yellow. Like, sunflower yellow, not jaundice. And he was talking about how I was special" -- the word is as quiet as the rest, but a deep underlying bitterness slips in for an instant, despite her control -- "and he had all these plans. And then I was fighting, only I wasn't, and I couldn't move -- I don't know what really happened. I just, I tried to wake up, and I couldn't, and then I did, but it wasn't in your room."

"It was this -- ghost town. All empty buildings. I don't know how I got there. I still don't."

She's never told this, not since Cold Oak. Tiny bits, but never the real story.

It feels distant, like somebody else is talking. She feels divorced from herself.

Antigone nods slowly.

She hears all this as if it were another ghost story, another web account, although the specificities of abandoned rural properties and catalogues of crimes committed in particular rooms are replaced with a sort of ... abstract ... like looking into murky water, or reading a strange poem.

Soft, "What happened then?"

"There were a couple other people there. Our age. They'd just show up, like that, all of us, one or two at a time."

"And we'd all have dreams of the yellow-eyed guy. I never got a name for him. Everybody I knew about, anyway. He'd just -- keep showing up. Talking, smarming, trying to wear you down." All of this is quiet and level and a little distant; all of this is to the ceiling.

"There weren't any working phones, or computers, or anything. Just buildings. And I --" Her voice shifts here; a little more emotion creeps into it, not quite successfully suppressed. "I wanted to leave, but there was this forest around town, they said it was demon-infested, and one kid, Charles -- I think it really was. We were pretty much stuck."

Tig strokes River's side gently with her fingertips, the far side; her arm is still holding her close.

River folds her free arm across her stomach -- more to the point, along Tig's arm, and curls her hand loosely around Tig's bicep.

She's not sure which of them the gesture is meant to comfort.

"Yeah. Pretty much."

I wish it hadn't happened. Tig finds herself thinking this with the pained repetition of a prayer.

I wish I wish I wish--

You can't make everything bad undo itself, even if the wishing cuts into you like something real.

"What," and her voice fails.

"He wanted--"

River stops for a second. Just that second.

And rephrases, to the ceiling, soft and matter-of-fact. "He had this grand scheme. The demon. We were all special, he said, and he had this whole vague grand prize thing. The last one would win it. The last one alive."

"He'd talk at you in your dreams. Try to persuade us to fight each other, to, to compete. Some people listened."

I killed three people.

I killed people. With my bare hands.

I didn't want to but they came at me and I didn't want to die--

She says, low and steady, "And then I died."

"Oh--"

I always knew you were special. She's not sure who the past tense is for-- it fits either way.

She also knows she can't protect River in her dreams. She can't even protect her own.

"River." It's soft, and grieving, and full of love.

River's eyes close involuntarily at the tone.

"That's all.

If she holds her any tighter it'll probably start to get uncomfortable.

She whispers,

River's startled to find that her eyes are wet.

She just feels numb. It's only facts; she can keep them at a distance, and think about the right words to say, and not let herself feel a thing. It's what she's been doing this whole conversation. It's not so hard.

But somehow, her eyes are wet.

"I got you killed," she whispers back, and her voice cracks up into something high and crumbling at the end. It's not what she meant to say.

"No you didn't," she says, a little more vehemently than may be necessary.

"River-- no-- I was sticking my nose where I shouldn't, in exactly the wrong place. I wanted to find you but it wasn't your fault--"

She shakes her head firmly, though the sound in River's voice is bringing tears to her own eyes.

"How could it have been your fault?"

River opens her mouth to answer, but she finds that the words have stuck somewhere behind the lump in her throat.

The tears are overflowing now, soaking chilly tracks into the hair at her temples, and she can't make them stop.

Tig feels horrible.

"River--"

And now she's crying too, soft quiet tears she can't stop, and she's hugging River and laying her forehead against her shoulder to try to disguise that she's crying.

"Shh ... shhh." She can be steady in her embrace and the touch of her hands, even if she can't in her voice, or in her heart.

"I'm okay," she manages to gulp out, choked past coherence. "I'm okay, I'm sorry, I'm okay--" and it was supposed to be quiet crying, if she couldn't make herself stop she could at least do that, but when she pulls her hand away from Tig's arm to scrub away the tears, the simple inhalation she intends turns into a shuddery gasp, and then it's all over; she's sobbing.

Tig, hearing what she's heard-- she doesn't understand it, maybe it's the hour but it still seems like a dream-- doesn't judge. (She's still crying herself, after all; it would make her a big fat hypocrite.)

She just holds River close.

She'll hold her as long as she needs her to.

It'll be a while.

It's been months since River had anyone to hold her when she cried, months in which she never told this story to anyone; this has been building a while. And it's the middle of the night, when defenses are low.

(And River hasn't been sleeping so well. It wears you down.)

But there's only so many tears you have in you. Eventually, gradually, River's sobs quiet to exhausted sniffles.

She's twisted even closer to Tig now, cradled in a tangle of limbs and sheets and hair. Her cheek rests against a thoroughly wet patch of pillow, and she desperately needs a tissue -- but not quite enough to move away to reach for one, just yet.

Tig, for her part and despite her own tears, wouldn't dare move now.

If she does, this dream could crumble.

(Maybe you can't fall asleep in a dream; that ought to make her feel better.

She's already done it once, and is drifting towards a second time.)

She can't really tell if it's morning, but it feels like morning. Tig takes in her surroundings, of which the most notable feature is River.

She woke up next to River.

And it's because of that, and despite the dried up tear-tracks streaking her cheeks, that Tig begins to smile.

In a very soft, very firm voice-- the tone she usually reserves for serious points of geopolitical import-- she says:

"If they do pancakes around here ... I'm really going to think this is heaven."

River's lips twitch.

"Bananas and everything," she promises, that suppressed laughter bubbling under her voice, and pulls Tig in for a kiss, just because she can.

It's Tig, and she's here, and in spite of why she's here and in spite of everything, right now, River almost feels like everything's really going to be all right.

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SPN AU some more

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