Jimmy and Claire Novak (gen); Supernatural
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Jimmy and Claire Novak
Theme set: #5 Epsilon
Title: Believe
Rating: PG
Warning[s]: angst and sap
Notes: Jimmy's life from the moment he said yes to an angel to the moment he ends up in Heaven.
01 - Motion - Claire is somehow a lot more adventurous than Jimmy has ever been, enjoying the twists and turns of things like roller coasters, screaming in the seat beside him in pure joy at the motion while Jimmy mostly just wishes he could throw up.
02 - Cool - That's the way it's always been though, with Jimmy kind of aloof, kind of uptight, kind of professional and Claire the little firecracker at his side, 'cool' in an entirely different way.
03 - Young - Maybe it's because she's still young, hardly a teenager, but Jimmy doesn't remember ever having been like her.
04 - Last - So really, it's the last thing any of them would expect him to do, least of all himself, the day he takes a risk and walks out the door.
05 - Wrong - Jimmy's never made a lot of bad choices in his life, never had that opportunity, and he's so careful to make the right ones where Claire is concerned but this time it's wrong, oh so wrong.
06 - Gentle - His body is suddenly a shell, and Jimmy's voice reverberates in it as he screams at the angel to “Be gentle, just be gentle with her” but the angel isn't, he cuts Claire down quickly with a voice so much rougher than Jimmy's and together they don't look back though Jimmy doesn't need to to know the hurt in his daughter's gaze.
07 - One - You would think that having an angel inside you would make you feel one, together and lasting, but it doesn't and Jimmy thinks bitterly of his daughter and how he had that once, then how he gave it up.
08 - Thousand - Inside a body that is no longer his, tethered to an angel who ignores his presence and a grace that burns at his soul, Jimmy has one way of getting through it - a thousand memories that he calls home.
09 - King - Jimmy had made Claire a fort of pillows and blankets, cavernous for her but he'd crawled inside on his belly, careful not to knock it all to the ground and she had called him King and offered him a horse for his palace.
10 - Learn - Occasionally, Jimmy is shaken from those memories and forced to look out at the world, to learn of things he'd never wanted to know - demons and spirits and Heaven's rot - but none of that is close to what Claire has taught him through his life and he always sinks back to her.
11 - Blur - He builds up a shelter in this way, piling memories on top of memories until the burn of Castiel's grace lessens and the world outside is a blur that is no longer real.
12 - Wait - Here is where Jimmy will wait, until the end which might be death or it might be release - or are both things the same now? - watching Claire as she laughs, as she plays, as she becomes his soul and his strength.
13 - Change - But something changes one day, as he's watching Claire that first day in the hospital - a memory he revisits repeatedly - and she screams but she never screams, forcing the walls of his shelter to tremble and fall, until the real world crashes down around him.
14 - Command - Just like that, the angel is gone, Jimmy is the one in command again and still, all he can think is Claire.
15 - Hold - And just like that, he's holding her again.
16 - Need - There's so much he needs to say to her, to promise her, to give her, but the words dry up in his throat and none of that matters anyway, when the realization hits that he may have left her but she had never left him and even when he does it all over again, she will never leave him.
17 - Vision - He can see her still, even back behind an angel's gaze, as she huddles into her mother's arms and he thinks for a moment that he'll never see her eyes again but she looks, she meets his gaze and Castiel turns them away before their vision can blur.
18 - Attention - The safe haven of memories is destroyed and Castiel's grace burns so hot and angry and pained that Jimmy gives Castiel his full attention for the first time since the beginning and pounds against the angel's grace with every insult Jimmy can think of.
19 - Soul - Jimmy wonders if a soul can tire, because he thinks his has, when Castiel shows him no regard and he has no choice but to start the careful rebuilding of his fortress of memory.
20 - Picture - There's a picture on the fridge of Claire at a petting zoo, a dozen ducks circling her legs while she laughs widely and tosses handfuls of food to them, that Jimmy sits and stares at for weeks.
21 - Fool - What had he ever been thinking, giving that up?
22 - Mad - He tries again to batter Castiel with everything he has - which is nothing at all - and when that doesn't work, he pleads and he shoves memory after memory of Claire at Castiel's grace but so far as Jimmy can tell, there is nothing that moves the other being.
23 - Child - The worst, is that Jimmy did this all for her - his only child - and from the glimpses he occasionally catches of the real world, he doesn't think it helped at all.
24 - Now - Or maybe it does, maybe Castiel softens under the onslaught of memories Jimmy no longer hoards to himself, maybe now Castiel looks at him and sees 'father' and then he sees that the rest of humanity is not so much different.
25 - Shadow - Castiel opens their eyes one day and instead of shadows, Jimmy sees it all, this clear version of the world from their shared eyes and Castiel speaks to him for the first time to ask “What should I do?”
26 - Goodbye - Jimmy is allowed one last moment with his daughter, though she will never know that he stood in her room or that he told her goodbye, before he and angel finally do the right thing and make their last stand.
27 - Hide - When the burn of the archangel hits his eyes, Jimmy tries to hide, to squirrel away in Castiel's grace where he'd been kept for a year, but Castiel had taken the shadows away and whatever had been left, the archangel obliterates.
28 - Fortune - There's a magic 8 ball floating in a white field and Jimmy grasps at it, shakes it and asks “Can't I see her again? Just once?”
29 - Safe - The answer is yes and he sees that she's safe and asleep and he sees that she will move on without him.
30 - Ghost - Jimmy will never move on without her.
31 - Book - This was Claire's favourite book as a child - something she isn't anymore, she grew up so much in Jimmy's missing year - and he places a carefully torn page from it next to her pillow.
32 - Eye - She finds it as she wakes, the page creasing when she rolls over and Jimmy laughs when it sticks to her face, laughs until she reads it and then glances around the room with wide eyes, whispering “Dad?”
33 - Never - Not in a million years would Jimmy ever intentionally hurt his daughter, but unintentionally, he does it every day he can't let go and even the one time that he did.
34 - Sing - They used to sing together, he even got Claire a karaoke machine for a birthday and they drove Amelia mad with it, but now he sings to her with a breeze and no matter how upbeat his tune, she cries into her pillow with no way to make it stop.
35 - Sudden - One day Dean and Sam Winchester show up on his doorstep.
36 - Stop - Claire lets them in, Amelia is out, and Jimmy realizes with a sinking in his gut that Claire called them and there's only one thing they need to say, “Jimmy, it's time to stop.”
37 - Time - The last year and a half have been the longest of Jimmy's life and how is that fair, when his misery drags on and they tell him to stop the one thing that ever made everything worth it?
38 - Wash - Dean tries to talk to him, explaining lost and vengeful spirits, but Jimmy waves him off because he already knows that his soul is dirty and tarnished but the only thing that will ever wash him clean is the light of his daughter's.
39 - Torn - “You're hurting her,” Dean says and Jimmy looks - for the first time he really looks and there are her teary eyes and her down turned mouth - and Jimmy doesn't know what to do.
40 - History - Jimmy leaves for a short while, knowing that while he's gone the Winchesters are thinking up some plan to force him to find his rest permanently, but he barricades himself again in memories, scared to let go in case he forgets them.
41 - Power - The power of an exorcism is to great a thing to hide from and Jimmy tries to resist, to hold to Claire who begs him to let go, let her go, and his love for her and his want to do what she wants is more powerful still.
42 - Bother - Jimmy lets go, he won't trouble Claire again.
43 - God - Jimmy stands in a field and God stands before him and in him and around him, and God whispers to Jimmy in the air all around, “Well done.”
44 - Wall - Jimmy walks along a path of soft grass beaten down the middle of the field but ahead of him, he can see a wall - a million screens piled one atop the other and all of them show the smiling, laughing, crying, sleeping, angry face of Claire.
45 - Naked - This is Jimmy's life, line after line of screens playing these memories, interspersed with Amelia, with Roger, with his parents and school and work and angels, and Jimmy feels naked before them all, intense in his desire to turn back and find the reality of them.
46 - Drive - But he squares his shoulders and keeps on, finds a way through and he walks across the field without looking back.
47 - Harm - Claire has asked him to let go and move on, and Jimmy does, walking until he's left the field behind and entered the woods where a man finds him, saying, “I'm Ash, I mean you no harm,” as if one of them were an alien invasion.
48 - Precious - Ash takes him to a bar where many people mill, a few that Jimmy even recognizes though he can't quite place from where until someone calls him Castiel and Jimmy waists precious little time straightening that out.
49 - Hunger - Jimmy has his own Heaven to go to, he knows that, and though he does long and hunger for the memories that have kept him sane for a year and that drove him mad in six months, he stays among these hunters because he promised that he would move on and she promised to find him when it was time.
50 - Believe - He stays and believes her until the day she walks through the rickety wood door.
Pairing: Jimmy and Claire Novak
Theme set: #5 Epsilon
Title: Believe
Rating: PG
Warning[s]: angst and sap
Notes: Jimmy's life from the moment he said yes to an angel to the moment he ends up in Heaven.
01 - Motion - Claire is somehow a lot more adventurous than Jimmy has ever been, enjoying the twists and turns of things like roller coasters, screaming in the seat beside him in pure joy at the motion while Jimmy mostly just wishes he could throw up.
02 - Cool - That's the way it's always been though, with Jimmy kind of aloof, kind of uptight, kind of professional and Claire the little firecracker at his side, 'cool' in an entirely different way.
03 - Young - Maybe it's because she's still young, hardly a teenager, but Jimmy doesn't remember ever having been like her.
04 - Last - So really, it's the last thing any of them would expect him to do, least of all himself, the day he takes a risk and walks out the door.
05 - Wrong - Jimmy's never made a lot of bad choices in his life, never had that opportunity, and he's so careful to make the right ones where Claire is concerned but this time it's wrong, oh so wrong.
06 - Gentle - His body is suddenly a shell, and Jimmy's voice reverberates in it as he screams at the angel to “Be gentle, just be gentle with her” but the angel isn't, he cuts Claire down quickly with a voice so much rougher than Jimmy's and together they don't look back though Jimmy doesn't need to to know the hurt in his daughter's gaze.
07 - One - You would think that having an angel inside you would make you feel one, together and lasting, but it doesn't and Jimmy thinks bitterly of his daughter and how he had that once, then how he gave it up.
08 - Thousand - Inside a body that is no longer his, tethered to an angel who ignores his presence and a grace that burns at his soul, Jimmy has one way of getting through it - a thousand memories that he calls home.
09 - King - Jimmy had made Claire a fort of pillows and blankets, cavernous for her but he'd crawled inside on his belly, careful not to knock it all to the ground and she had called him King and offered him a horse for his palace.
10 - Learn - Occasionally, Jimmy is shaken from those memories and forced to look out at the world, to learn of things he'd never wanted to know - demons and spirits and Heaven's rot - but none of that is close to what Claire has taught him through his life and he always sinks back to her.
11 - Blur - He builds up a shelter in this way, piling memories on top of memories until the burn of Castiel's grace lessens and the world outside is a blur that is no longer real.
12 - Wait - Here is where Jimmy will wait, until the end which might be death or it might be release - or are both things the same now? - watching Claire as she laughs, as she plays, as she becomes his soul and his strength.
13 - Change - But something changes one day, as he's watching Claire that first day in the hospital - a memory he revisits repeatedly - and she screams but she never screams, forcing the walls of his shelter to tremble and fall, until the real world crashes down around him.
14 - Command - Just like that, the angel is gone, Jimmy is the one in command again and still, all he can think is Claire.
15 - Hold - And just like that, he's holding her again.
16 - Need - There's so much he needs to say to her, to promise her, to give her, but the words dry up in his throat and none of that matters anyway, when the realization hits that he may have left her but she had never left him and even when he does it all over again, she will never leave him.
17 - Vision - He can see her still, even back behind an angel's gaze, as she huddles into her mother's arms and he thinks for a moment that he'll never see her eyes again but she looks, she meets his gaze and Castiel turns them away before their vision can blur.
18 - Attention - The safe haven of memories is destroyed and Castiel's grace burns so hot and angry and pained that Jimmy gives Castiel his full attention for the first time since the beginning and pounds against the angel's grace with every insult Jimmy can think of.
19 - Soul - Jimmy wonders if a soul can tire, because he thinks his has, when Castiel shows him no regard and he has no choice but to start the careful rebuilding of his fortress of memory.
20 - Picture - There's a picture on the fridge of Claire at a petting zoo, a dozen ducks circling her legs while she laughs widely and tosses handfuls of food to them, that Jimmy sits and stares at for weeks.
21 - Fool - What had he ever been thinking, giving that up?
22 - Mad - He tries again to batter Castiel with everything he has - which is nothing at all - and when that doesn't work, he pleads and he shoves memory after memory of Claire at Castiel's grace but so far as Jimmy can tell, there is nothing that moves the other being.
23 - Child - The worst, is that Jimmy did this all for her - his only child - and from the glimpses he occasionally catches of the real world, he doesn't think it helped at all.
24 - Now - Or maybe it does, maybe Castiel softens under the onslaught of memories Jimmy no longer hoards to himself, maybe now Castiel looks at him and sees 'father' and then he sees that the rest of humanity is not so much different.
25 - Shadow - Castiel opens their eyes one day and instead of shadows, Jimmy sees it all, this clear version of the world from their shared eyes and Castiel speaks to him for the first time to ask “What should I do?”
26 - Goodbye - Jimmy is allowed one last moment with his daughter, though she will never know that he stood in her room or that he told her goodbye, before he and angel finally do the right thing and make their last stand.
27 - Hide - When the burn of the archangel hits his eyes, Jimmy tries to hide, to squirrel away in Castiel's grace where he'd been kept for a year, but Castiel had taken the shadows away and whatever had been left, the archangel obliterates.
28 - Fortune - There's a magic 8 ball floating in a white field and Jimmy grasps at it, shakes it and asks “Can't I see her again? Just once?”
29 - Safe - The answer is yes and he sees that she's safe and asleep and he sees that she will move on without him.
30 - Ghost - Jimmy will never move on without her.
31 - Book - This was Claire's favourite book as a child - something she isn't anymore, she grew up so much in Jimmy's missing year - and he places a carefully torn page from it next to her pillow.
32 - Eye - She finds it as she wakes, the page creasing when she rolls over and Jimmy laughs when it sticks to her face, laughs until she reads it and then glances around the room with wide eyes, whispering “Dad?”
33 - Never - Not in a million years would Jimmy ever intentionally hurt his daughter, but unintentionally, he does it every day he can't let go and even the one time that he did.
34 - Sing - They used to sing together, he even got Claire a karaoke machine for a birthday and they drove Amelia mad with it, but now he sings to her with a breeze and no matter how upbeat his tune, she cries into her pillow with no way to make it stop.
35 - Sudden - One day Dean and Sam Winchester show up on his doorstep.
36 - Stop - Claire lets them in, Amelia is out, and Jimmy realizes with a sinking in his gut that Claire called them and there's only one thing they need to say, “Jimmy, it's time to stop.”
37 - Time - The last year and a half have been the longest of Jimmy's life and how is that fair, when his misery drags on and they tell him to stop the one thing that ever made everything worth it?
38 - Wash - Dean tries to talk to him, explaining lost and vengeful spirits, but Jimmy waves him off because he already knows that his soul is dirty and tarnished but the only thing that will ever wash him clean is the light of his daughter's.
39 - Torn - “You're hurting her,” Dean says and Jimmy looks - for the first time he really looks and there are her teary eyes and her down turned mouth - and Jimmy doesn't know what to do.
40 - History - Jimmy leaves for a short while, knowing that while he's gone the Winchesters are thinking up some plan to force him to find his rest permanently, but he barricades himself again in memories, scared to let go in case he forgets them.
41 - Power - The power of an exorcism is to great a thing to hide from and Jimmy tries to resist, to hold to Claire who begs him to let go, let her go, and his love for her and his want to do what she wants is more powerful still.
42 - Bother - Jimmy lets go, he won't trouble Claire again.
43 - God - Jimmy stands in a field and God stands before him and in him and around him, and God whispers to Jimmy in the air all around, “Well done.”
44 - Wall - Jimmy walks along a path of soft grass beaten down the middle of the field but ahead of him, he can see a wall - a million screens piled one atop the other and all of them show the smiling, laughing, crying, sleeping, angry face of Claire.
45 - Naked - This is Jimmy's life, line after line of screens playing these memories, interspersed with Amelia, with Roger, with his parents and school and work and angels, and Jimmy feels naked before them all, intense in his desire to turn back and find the reality of them.
46 - Drive - But he squares his shoulders and keeps on, finds a way through and he walks across the field without looking back.
47 - Harm - Claire has asked him to let go and move on, and Jimmy does, walking until he's left the field behind and entered the woods where a man finds him, saying, “I'm Ash, I mean you no harm,” as if one of them were an alien invasion.
48 - Precious - Ash takes him to a bar where many people mill, a few that Jimmy even recognizes though he can't quite place from where until someone calls him Castiel and Jimmy waists precious little time straightening that out.
49 - Hunger - Jimmy has his own Heaven to go to, he knows that, and though he does long and hunger for the memories that have kept him sane for a year and that drove him mad in six months, he stays among these hunters because he promised that he would move on and she promised to find him when it was time.
50 - Believe - He stays and believes her until the day she walks through the rickety wood door.