#i thought i'd begin posting links to my word garbage because it keeps happening

[andr0leda]

THE CHOICE

What will you choose? Will you live to regret it?

Pre-Sidestep Era, Rangers have a cameo at the end | ~2,400 words CW: violence, guns, blood, strangulation, light stabbing, but no one dies! [READ ON AO3]

You wouldn't be able to say how long you've been standing here. Staring at the desserts through the smudged glass door of the freezer. Could be two minutes, could be twenty. It was around two am on this uncomfortably hot night when you walked in here but you're not sure what time it is now.

The only thing that you are sure of is that the finalists are rainbow and cookies & cream.

The cookies & cream have little cookie pieces that you discovered that you really like a couple weeks ago, but the fun mascot of the rainbow seems to beckon you, the spectrum of colors blending together when your eyes slide out of focus.

The tinny radio in the convenient store is tuned to a station that's playing looping easy listening music. The budget fluorescent lighting buzzes faintly overhead, one flickers occasionally, and you wonder, in a distant sort of way, if you have entered a liminal space. It's possible you need to sort out your sleep schedule.

You open the freezer door and the brisk air whispers over your face, the tubs are cold in your hands, but it doesn't seem to be helping you decide any quicker.

You are staring unblinkingly into the black lifeless eyes of the cartoon mascot on the rainbow ice cream when you hear it.

The intent before the voice. You step back until you're against the aisle behind you, hidden from the front of the store.

“Money. Now,” gun, raised.

Gun held up to the level of your head-

No, not your head. The head on the shoulders of the young teen behind the counter, they’re only a year younger than you are supposed to be. They are terrified.

You are terrified. There’s five-

No, there’s only two thieves and only one gun.

You’ve gone up against worse odds.

You put the ice cream tubs on a shelf and move to the end of the aisle, silent. Your hoodie has been up since you entered the store and you pull the collar of your turtleneck up over the bridge of your nose to cover the lower half of your face.

At the end of the aisle you pause, the door is only a couple feet to your left, you know you’re silent, you could make it. If you chose to make a run for it.

The cashier is trembling trying to put the cash and cigarettes into the backpack, they are clumsy in their terror and the thieves are getting impatient.

You chose no to run.

Red and black at the level of your eyes catch your attention, you take a bottle of cola off the shelf, a glass one. It flips easily over itself in your hands, as you weigh it up, weigh your options. The one with the gun seems fresh to this, plan already forming in your mind.

Your heart-rate picks up, the adrenaline before a fight is reassuring in its familiarity.

Fuck it, you step out from behind the isle and shout “Hey!”

The armed thief turns his whole torso, including the hand with the gun, towards you and away from the cashier, like you knew he would.

You have already thrown the bottle and it explodes on impact, opens up and scatters sugar coated glass, knocks the gun out of his grasp. It hits the floor and spins away and you're already running.

Your knee lands in the second guy's chest, throwing him hard into the aisle behind him, packets and tins tumble off the shelf.

The first, nursing the hand that formerly held the gun, swings at you with his less dominant hand. You kick him in the solar plexus and he crashes into a display to the side of the counter, a tower of sunglasses landing on top of him and he’s down but not out.

The second, still currently has the use of both his hands, and they are closed fist and coming for you. You dodge, spin on reflex, strike him under the ribs, kick him into the shelf opposite the one he was in before.

You know he’s going to take out the knife and lunge at you so you duck, easily, as he slices open packets where your neck was. Contents spilling down onto the linoleum. You tackle him to the floor of the aisle and it only takes one hit to get him to stay down. You stand above him full of some wild, unnamed thing, heartbeat racing.

The first is finally managing to extract himself from the heap, so you move back to the front of the store. He‘s slow, fishes out his own larger knife and you’re grinning behind the black fabric.

You grab his wrist with one hand, put your other into his nose hard enough that it cracks, and he falls boneless back into the mess and everything becomes silent. A wet heat slowly drips down your knuckles. You have won.

The cashier is knees to chest behind the counter, shaking. You don't get too close.

“Are you ok?” because that's what you’re meant to ask.

No, is what you hear.

You try to send them feelings of safety, of relief, but they just break apart against the wall of blinding fear. You’re not sure what those things feel like anyway. So you pull down the mask instead, show them your face, try to wear something reassuring instead.

“You’ll be ok,” because that's what you’re meant to say. They just look up at you with big brown eyes, so scared.

They aren’t ok so instead you tell them, “You’re going to make it out the other side of this.” You flip the knife you took from first so you’re holding the blade, hold it out to them to take, offer them the weapon of those that wanted to hurt them.

You don't know how to say out loud what you want this to mean.

What you want this to mean to them? Or to yourself?

They look at the knife for a long moment before they take it.

Before a noise behind you startles them, and you look over your shoulder to watch a third larger man walk out of the bathroom.

You yank up your mask, how could you be so fucking stupid.

You stand in front of the cashier who gets under the counter to hide.

He is built, muscles just as strong as the walls around his mind.

Fuck.

You shake out your hands, ignore the ache of oncoming swelling, take up a stance, you haven’t had a proper fight since-

You don’t know where the gun is.

He takes in your pulled up turtleneck, his guys out cold on the floor and drawls, “You want to play hero?”

“I just wanted my fucking rainbow ice cream you son of a bitch.”

You see the gun on the ground when he does, and you lunge for it, kick it hard and it slides away and under the shelves.

He strikes faster than you expected but you still turn and duck and kick him in the back of the knees. He buckles, but turns just as quick and you’re too close to avoid his fist and you catch it in the ribs. Punching the air from your lungs and you stagger back. He is up again, too quick.

Or are you just too slow?

No.

You’re gasping under cold fluorescent lights, past a fractured rib, slow is not acceptable, if the unit does not meet directive standards it will be recycled-

No.

You straighten up, through the pain in your ribs and snarl, underneath the fabric so that it reaches your eyes, so that he can see.

He sneers at you, and you run at him, using a freezer box to kick off, you deliver a punch down across his face that sends him reeling and you are alive.

So you punch him again, and again. And you dodge and sidestep and punch him harder.

Feel your knuckles open up, feel adrenaline rush to your head in exhilaration.  

And this is where you slip up. Literally, on the spilled guts of the coke bottle.

He has already grabbed you by your jacket front to slam you down onto the freezer boxes hard enough that you hear it crack. He wraps his gold ringed fingers around your neck, and you feel the cold caress of the freezer seeping into you as you struggle. You bring your forearm down to buckle his elbow and slam your forehead into his nose, he doesn't let go. Just straightens his arms and looks down at you, a warped smile on his cruel features, and he squeezes and-

And How Dare HE.

He recoils and you know at once that you couldn’t have spoken that, you couldn't get air past your throat for a noise let alone words.

His smile is gone. He’s afraid now, afraid of what will happen if you get back up.

You always get back up.

You release your death grip on his wrist to pull your knife from your hoodie, flick it open and bury it into his guts.

His hands vanish from your throat and you gasp down a wretched sound.

Gripping the edge of the box you bring your legs up between you and launch him off.

He’s flung backwards, clips the end of an aisle and goes down, spits out a curse, clutches a scarlet hand to his side.

You get up, unhurriedly in a way you know unnerves him. You don't wipe the blood dripping down your forehead and that unnerves him too. His shields decay with the panic. You see yourself in his mind's eye, a dark silhouette looming above him back lit by the flickering fluorescent light above you.

Your breath pants out in half gasps, half growls, past the bruising in your throat. You’re not sure whose blood drips from your knuckles and off the blades drop point.

He manages to stand only to receive your right hook to his jaw and he’s down once more. He doesn’t try standing again. Instead scrambles back towards the bathroom, leaving a fragmented red streak behind.

He’s not fast enough.

The cheap wooden door splinters as you kick him through it. You sink the knife into the door frame and stand over him, sprawled onto the dirty tile floor. You put a heel hard onto the side where you put your knife and he screams.

You feed him back his own fear, the terror of the cashier, feed him your own horror from somewhere dark and deep, until you see it consume him, until it’s up to his eyes. Then with a bloody hand you smash the back of his head into the tile.

And it's over. It’s a mess, it’s-

Five bloodied soldiers dead on the cold tiled floor of a gas station in desert Nevada, painting the walls red-

No. It’s just three unconscious thieves in a convenient store.

You take a deep breath through your aching throat, and pull the knife from the frame. The soft looping music of the radio drifts back into your awareness. Then exhaustion creeps back, you feel more tired than you were holding the ice cream. You can feel a headache forming at the base of your skull and you’d rather spend what little money you have on a smoke, or several.

Stepping over first on your way to the counter you pick one of the almost stolen cigarette packs and drop it by the register.

You’re opening your wallet to get your only twenty dollar note with red and aching hands when the cashier says.

“Just take it,” they’re looking directly at you like you grew a second head, they're standing up now, white knuckling the knife you gave them, like an anchor, a lifeline. It’s the first thing you’ve heard them speak.

You check upstairs to make sure they're going to be ok. You’re startled to see they’re wondering the same of you. They're having a hard time processing the deadbeat mess that stood for half an hour in front of the frozen desserts with the brawler that just took down three guys and possibly saved their life.

Was it really half an hour?

“And don’t choose rainbow, my boss changed the dates. Take the cookies and cream instead” they say, voice no longer shaking. Cookies & cream is their favourite.

“Thanks,” your voice is almost unrecognisable, you’ll have a necklace of bruises for sure.

"No, thank you. I don't know what would've happened but you probably saved my life." A hero , they think, their hero.

And you don't know what to say to that so you just thank them again and tell them they should probably call an ambulance for the guy bleeding over the bathroom floor. Then you take the cigarettes and the ice cream and you leave.

You go home, rest your split and swollen knuckles, hold the frozen tub against your violet throat and eat your dessert.

It was a good choice.

***

Marshal Charge stands in the Rangers Headquarters kitchen, arms crossed and staring at the tv mounted on the wall.

“Chen, have you seen this?” she throws over her shoulder, eyes not leaving the screen.

Steel looks up from cutting fruit to see grainy footage showing a figure in black kicking a larger man into a convenient store shelf. Text rolls across the bottom of the screen that reads, “Citizen hero takes down 3 armed men in attempted robbery.”

He continues with making breakfast, “we already deal with too many vigilantes.”

Anathema walks past him, “but this one’s weird,” she steals a strawberry to which Steel makes a face.

The Marshal turns and looks back for the first time in a while, eyebrow raised.

Anathema just looks pleased that she’s hooked an audience, “I looked into it, the full security footage shows them staring at the frozen desserts for like 35 minutes before they take down 3 guys with what I believe to be a variety of martial arts. Their reflexes seem unnatural too,” she steals another strawberry and Steel frowns harder.

“There's a point where the guy pulls down their mask to calm the cashier, but when the police questioned them all they would say was that they ‘couldn’t remember’ what the masked person looked like,” which is said sarcastically, her disbelief evident. “They just seem… interesting,” she finishes.

Steel throws the strawberries into the blender before she can steal a third, “Los Diablos is interesting enough.”

“Hmm,” comes the reply from the Marshal, a small smile hidden in the corner of her mouth as she watches the footage again. The figure appears to move faster than they should. Her smile grows wider.

#Fallen Hero #fallen hero fanfic #sidestep #or well pre-sidestep #Ramona Chase #fhr #fallen hero: retribution spoilers #i thought i'd begin posting links to my word garbage because it keeps happening #full content warnings are on the site #saraparilla writes #now and no one is as surprised as me

[pinbitch]

oooh the femverse the end you're working on sounds so interesting! i'd love to hear more about it

turns out i did not post this but actually saved it to my drafts 😳

anyway

once upon a time amy sammywitchester did this art and my little brain went bzzzzzzz! because i have always thought the end was great but i never really enjoy it that much cause there’s no sam, so why not do femverse endverse with added sam

so we have present day dean coming across her future self, who happens to have their little sister locked in a cell, and their little sister happens to have the devil locked in her head.......

it’s called it is what it is and here’s how it starts:

Dean wakes up with her face in the dirt. It’s not the first time, definitely won’t be the last, but considering she went to sleep in a motel room that would have been comfortable if it weren’t for an aching absence of Sam, she’s definitely got a problem here. Grunting slightly, she clambers to her feet and gives her surroundings and then herself a quick once over. She’s uninjured, and behind a chain link fence in an alley, surrounded by garbage cans open to expose the mulch trash becomes after a really long time. Someone’s spray painted the word “judgement” over and over on the walls and the cans and even across the dirty windows of whatever business backs onto this yard.

It’s weird.

Weird, but not immediately life threatening. Except maybe the smell. Dean breathes through her mouth to keep out the worst of it. There’s something almost sulphurous about it, but she shoves that observation way back to the part of her brain she doesn’t visit. Don’t think about Hell don’t think about Hell don’t think about Hell.

As a distraction, she performs a rapid clothes-and-weapons inventory. She went to sleep in boxers and a sports bra, but now she’s fully dressed, including her leather jacket and boots and her hand flies involuntarily to her chest and yes, her amulet is still there too. There’s knives at her ankle and her hip, and the familiar weight of her .45 tucked into the back of her pants. Either she’s lost some time or someone wanted her prepared.

A couple years ago she would’ve vaulted over the fence —Sam probably still would— but now Dean isn’t gonna risk landing badly and making her knee do that really fucking painful thing it does sometimes so she picks the padlock on the gate.

Beyond the alley, the world is strange. The yard of judgement looks normal in comparison. Cars abandoned in the street, plants claiming every crack in the sidewalk, some doors hanging open, and one building a few blocks over reduced to rubble. Everything is so quiet. Dean doesn’t know where she is but it’s definitely a city, and no city should ever, could ever, be this quiet.

She’s beginning to think she’s in some deep shit.

She’s immediately proven right when she turns and sees “croatoan” emblazoned in messy capitals across a nearby storefront.

“What the fuck?” Dean mutters, pretending Sam is beside her; raising her eyebrows and making a don’t-look-at-me kind of shrug. All pretending does is hurt, but Dean does it anyway, just for a moment. Then she drags herself back to reality. Or what’s probably reality but might be a really funky Djinn dream. Who knows at this point?

It’s not as good as Sam at her six, but Dean still feels a damn sight better once her gun is in her hand. Of course, if Sam weren’t a fucking liability at the moment she could have both. If Sam hadn’t gone and justified every single one of Dad’s fears then they’d be wading through this shit together.

Dean shakes her head a little, as if that will clear her thoughts of her sister. It’s fucking embarrassing how much fucking time she thinks about fucking Sam. There’s no way Sam spends this amount of time worrying about what Dean is doing, if Dean is safe, if Dean is gonna make another stupid mistake and blow up the planet. Right now Sam’s probably thinking about too-expensive conditioner, or salad, or where to get her next hit—

That’s not fair. Sam left to get clean. Sam fucked up worse than probably any human ever has in the history of everything, but she’s serious about staying on the wagon.

Dean takes a deep breath, and is suddenly reminded why she’s been breathing through her mouth this whole time. The sulphur stench is stronger out here and she can’t help choking on it. Several loud hacking coughs split the silence. They even echo. Dean has well and truly declared her location to anything listening.

#an ask and an answer #supernatural #sam winchester #fem!sam #dean winchester #writings #demonloverbrady #i am very sorry for the delay my brain moved it into the ‘posted and forgotten’ pile #but yeah i’m a very slow writer so who knows if/when this gets finished #but i do have the shape of it in my head #it’s........nasty #it is very mean #it makes me sad to think about #because at the end of the day future fem!dean and canon future dean don’t have very different plans at all #however #i do love writing present dean thinking horrible things about sam with the knowledge that she’s gonna regret it SO MUCH very soon #that’s literally the main appeal of writing this for me lmao