My brain woke me up and refused to let me sleep till I wrote this. *weeps* Maybe now that it's out of my head, I can go back to sleep. /o\ 'S probably a little disjointed, because again, not so awake when I wrote it.
Rating: R for graphic imagery/violence
Spoilers: 5.01
Summary: It all starts with a body. Character piece focusing on (highlight to read character): Meg
Wordcount:1182
Warnings: Creepy imagery, body horror.
You can't dream in Hell.
Maybe dreams get burned out of you; maybe pulled or ripped or crushed or broken. Maybe demons never had the ability to dream to begin with, and she's remembering a lie. All she knows for sure is this: every time she starts thinking of what might be, what could be if she only stretched hard enough--nothing. Nothing, like a fist around the heart she doesn't have; nothing, like a hand in her lungs, choking off her breath before she breathes it.
You can't dream in Hell, so she doesn't try. But planning, she thinks, planning's different. Dreams are things you hold to yourself for comfort, but plans are things you make happen. Convictions. Beliefs. Truth. She gets away like that: doesn't dream of Earth, but plans it.
Her plan starts with a body.
-
Humans are useless, but they're so much fun. She used to like to play with them: slide into their frames and listen to the way their thoughts would bang up against her, running on in a loop all helpless and soft. They all said the same things after a while, and then she'd keep them quiet in the back of her head, holding their eyes open and caging them in. Whispering mine, now and watching them push at their own stolen hands.
There's such delicious physicality with a body, such power in feeling things. She used to revel in that simplicity: the rough texture of brick under her fingers, the feeling of denim scratching her legs. The way the wind became a different creature, mouthing hungry along her skin, and the way everything alive was so huge, so hot, pulsing with energy. Just waiting for someone to crack it all open and swill it under their teeth.
With a body, you can do that. You can change things--you can reach a hand right out and touch, move and shape things into what you want them to be. You can hold and break the world. You can do anything you want.
It used to make her tight and shivery and wild, that power.
Meg was her favorite body, so she took her name, too. That spiky blonde hair and those devilish brown eyes; she was perfect, and so addictive. She was so powerful in that body.
Then the Winchesters pushed her out of it.
-
You can't dream in Hell. There's just blood and flesh forcing in on you, tainting you and gutting you and choking you. Disease spreads like lace from the mouths of the damned, and your breath gutters slow and hoarse into ashy air.
She presses her mind closed to all that, and plans.
-
Sam Winchester isn't like anyone else on the planet. Maybe it's because he's not human; maybe it's because he's too human. He's smarter than any of them--his brother, for example--but the thing is, he doesn't use it. He sits there with his stupid puppy face and his gentle voice and his big hands spread out like he wants to catch the world from falling, and believes in things.
It's such a fucking waste.
It makes her burn, hot and sharp in her phantom mouth. She's lived in his body. For a few glorious hours, it was hers, and she knows exactly how much potential he has, how much he's shoving down and away. And that, that--that's a crime. Dean Winchester she hates for sending her back, and her hands ache for his throat, but Sam. Sam.
Sam deserves to suffer above everyone for the talent he's not using.
It's coiled in him like a nest of snakes held in the hollow of his chest, the ability to fix it all, to set them free. But he keeps it to himself, cradling and coddling it in his arms like a child he's raising. He sides with angels and that renegade, and he lets them all burn and rot because he's so selfish.
Yes, Sam Winchester's death she's saving up special. She spends each eternal heartbeat of Hell planning, and she knows exactly how it will go.
She'll start with a normal fight, roughing him up a little so he thinks he's got a chance. Hands around his throat and fists in his gut; she'll trip a few times and pretend he's got her, pretend it really is that easy. And he might be suspicious, he might pant and stare and think I don't believe this, but the beauty of it is: he will, because he'll want to.
And she'll have him, right there.
She'll hold him close, then, and listen to his rabbit heart. She'll spread him out somewhere nice, and dig her elbows into his body. She'll peel the skin delicately from his skull with her fingernails; she'll make him swallow his teeth, one by one. She'll break his bones and rearrange his skeleton, fit him wetly together in new ways. Remake him.
She'll give him his brother's heart.
Dean Winchester she'll kill sharp and easy, and first, borrowing Sam's body--limbs off one by one, tongue out and eyes popped, and stomach shredded for good measure, enough so he bleeds out painful and slow. She'll keep his eyes open so he can see it's his baby brother. She'll keep him awake long past the point of lucidity, where he'll forget logic and just believe betrayal.
She doesn't care about his body, but his heart, oh. His heart will be Sam's. By her fingers down his mouth and throat, it'll be Sam's to ruin.
Always has been, in one way or another. You have to love the irony.
And it all starts with a body.
She'll get there, somehow, she promises herself.
-
One night the world opens up, and it's beautiful.
That first moment on Earth? Such a rush. All those frantic human thoughts clot together in her throat, and she swallows them down sweet, and it's good, it's all so good. Everything is good. For a moment she can dream, stretch, reach--she finds the place is full of possibilities. They spread over her like a wall of stars, and she laughs and spreads herself out farther.
At the edge of consciousness, she finds it. There's a girl, a body: a sack of blood and bones and restless stupid thoughts like worms in the rot of her skull. There's a body here, and it's Meg's.
She stretches into it, then--feels cells align, feels herself catch at the join of brain and soul; feels herself pushing pushing till she's filled out every space in it and it's hers.
"Hi, sweetheart," she whispers to it, tasting its lips and teeth. Somewhere in her something shifts sharply and aches, but she presses it down smooth and easy, and smiles. She's missed this power.
She curls her fingers, testing, and lets her lungs expand. Her feet find the floor, and she stands, relishing the feel of bones clicking into place and muscles curling her frame together---the feeling of skin over her skull holding all of her in, warm and whole.
Gotcha, she thinks, and smiles.