Fic: Don't Go Out Tonight (6/7)
Fic: Don't Go Out Tonight (6/7)
Summary: The group makes a sudden U turn and goes back to the appalachians to hunt something that might be a headless horseman. Sam covertly tries to keep Chloe from shutting them out.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg (Halloween fun guys!).
Banner by isisizabel
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #12 Orange. The table is here.
A/N: Pretty Chloe/Dean art here that I commissioned from Bri-chan.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Chloe responded with pounding feet as she ran full-tilt for the road. Sam and Dean, with their longer legs, quickly out-paced her. She thought bitterly about the old maxim that you didn’t have to be the fastest gazelle on the Serengeti. You only really had to be faster than the slowest gazelle. She breathed deeply and pushed her legs harder.
If we were on the Serengeti, I would so be the gazelle that the lion had for breakfast.
“Head for the bridge,” Sam yelled as he reached the road and turned toward the ancient structure.
Chloe nodded, too out of breath to respond. Just as she reached the road, Dean turned, grabbed her hand and pulled her alongside him.
She stumbled, unable to match his long strides. In the end, he pulled her most of the way to the bridge.
They crossed from the open road to the sheltered expanse of the bridge, and stopped. Chloe dropped to her knees, gasping air into her lungs at a furious pace, and drew her weapon. Dean leaned against the wall and sighted down his own barrel.
The coach rolled back onto the road, and stopped. Chloe forced her breathing to return to normal, and crawled forward to get a better look at the coach and headless hitch.
“ I don’t think we’re dealing with a headless horseman,” Dean said rhetorically.
“I figured as much.” Sam said. “So the question is . . . what are we dealing with?”
Chloe shrugged.
“Who knows?” She gesticulated wildly. “Dullahan? Headless knight? Cursed priest? Pick any one of those.”
“I think it’s a dullahan,” Dean said.
Sam and Chloe shot each other intrigued looks before shooting a questioning look at Dean.
“I watched Darby O’Gill and the Little People once,” Dean shrugged. “The dullahan in that was a headless driver of a coach like that. He took people to the afterlife.”
Chloe nodded. “If it’s a dullahan, than it’s definitely unseelie. They sometimes do more than just share duties with Charon. They’ve been known to do the Carrie prom night thing and throw pig’s blood. And sometimes they try to take out your eyes with a whip. ”
“Great,” Dean shook his head. “We should have stuck with the Impala. At least we had weapons there. We really played this bush league.”
“Kind of late to regret things,” Sam said.
Dean let out a bitter chuckle, and knocked on the wooden wall of the bridge. “Think this will stop it?” he asked Sam rhetorically.
“It worked with the others.”
“Wonder why?” Dean asked.
Chloe glanced down at the board under her knees, and the seam that ran along its length. “Iron nails.”
Dean nodded, and opened his mouth to reply. However, just then, the headless coachman steered the coach closer to the bridge.
The three of them backed away from the mouth of the bridge. The dullahan dismounted, and gestured for them to come closer. From deep within the hollow where its neck should be, a groan issued forth.
A responding groan issued from on the coachman’s seat. Chloe looked up, and saw a rotting head, with flesh like moldy cheese and eyes that darted around like flies sitting where an ordinary coachman might leave a hat.
She shivered in revulsion as the eyes circled around and locked onto her. The mouth opened, and a single word issued forth.
Sullivan.
Chloe blinked in shock. It knew her name? How did it know her name? Was it expecting her to go with it? To ride the death coach? Was it saying that it was her time to die? Fear clenched at her stomach. As much as she agonized over the way her powers made her feel like a freak - she’d gotten used to the healing aspect of them. Although she’d died a few months back during a hunt gone wrong - that was while hunting. The idea of just . . . dropping dead was unwelcome to her.
Dean’s response was automatic. He snagged her by the shoulder, and hauled her bodily to his side. Then he turned himself in profile, so that he was standing between her and the unseelie fairee. She shivered and wrapped one arm around his waist. His reassuring bulk was comforting to her. Again, she was glad to have the guys with her. Because if that thing was going to come for her, it would have a heck of a fight on its hands. She drew her gun, and held it out, level with Sam and Dean’s, to sight down on the dullahan.
“How does it talk without vocal chords?” Dean whispered just loud enough for Chloe and Sam to hear him.
“How does it think with its head bilocated from its body?” Sam replied.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Dean throw a confused look at Sam, shake his head and turn his focus back on the monster.
The headless creature seemed to regard them for a second, and then moved to the door of the coach. Chloe drew a breath and felt her gut tighten up in fearful anticipation as the headless unseelie opened the coach door. A slight, dark-haired, fair skinned lady stepped from the coach. She walked to the edge of the bridge, and regarded them with a closed expression. Then she deliberately stepped onto the wooden platform.
Chloe looked in askance at the approaching figure. If the iron nails weren’t stopping her, she was probably not a fairee. But what did that make her? If she was consorting with a dullahan, it couldn’t be good.
All sets of eyes were trained on her as she finally spoke to them. “I seek the heir of Sullivan.”
Dean pulled Chloe tighter to him, but otherwise made no outward show that the words had any affect on him. “What do you want with her, Morticia?”
She walked up to them and stared down his gun to look into his face. In the darkness, Chloe thought that she looked slightly familiar, but couldn’t pin down where she’d seen her before.
“My business is with the child who inherited the legacy of Seamus Sullivan.” She studied Dean frankly. “As you bear neither his name, nor his tools, I have no business with you.”
Chloe unconsciously touched the ring that now encircled her left thumb, and met the woman’s gaze evenly. “Why are you looking for me?”
She turned her gaze to Chloe, and with a jolt of awareness, the reporter realized exactly why she looked familiar. Her eyes were just like Gabe Sullivan’s. Chloe gasped, and lowered her gun.
Dean looked from Chloe, to the woman in front of them, and back. His entire face shut down, just like it did when he was playing poker, and the only thing he had in his hand was a pair of deuces. His grip around Chloe’s waist turned iron hard, and his own gun remained trained on the lady with eyes like Gabe Sullivan’s.
“Because Seamus was my brother,” she said. “The sorceress Zatanna spoke to me of a girl child of his lineage.”
Sam and Dean shot each other surprised glances. A look of understanding passed between them, and they slowly lowered their weapons.
Chloe holstered her gun, and stepped forward to look at the woman. “I’m Chloe Sullivan. Seamus was . . . my great-grandfather, I guess.”
The woman studied Chloe’s face seriously. Then, like the sun breaking behind the clouds, her serene, serious face broke into a wide grin. “You look - very much like our mother did,” she said as she pulled Chloe into a strong embrace.
Though Chloe made no move to hug the woman, her great aunt, back she continued to let the woman embrace her. Over the woman’s shoulder, Chloe shot a confused look at Sam and Dean. The boys looked just as confused as she did.
At length, her inner reporter demanded that she find out the story. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. How are you here?”
The woman allowed Chloe to pull out of her arms. She looked at Chloe and frowned. “It’s a long story. One that would take too long, in the telling, I’m afraid. And my time with you is short, little hound.”
“Maybe you can give us the cliff notes version,” Dean said as he walked up behind Chloe and draped his arm over her shoulders.
The woman looked at Dean in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“He’s asking if you could tell us what you can,” Sam said as he walked up to stand next to Dean and Chloe. He put his hand out to rest on Chloe’s shoulder in a show of support.
The woman looked from Sam to Dean before turning to regard Chloe. “You have a very protective family,” she muttered.
Chloe glanced sideways at Sam, and reached up to touch Dean’s arm where it draped over her shoulder. Her great-aunt had called the boys her family. Was that possible? Were they family? She’d said that she felt that way to Dean back when she’d agreed to be his girl. But since then, she’d overlooked to possibility. Because if Sam and Dean were her family - then she’d never be able to walk away from them. Even if things didn’t work out with Dean, the three of them would forever be tied to her through a bond of the heart.
And ultimately, she’d be vulnerable to being hurt. Moreso than if she stayed aloof. But looking at Sam standing next to her, and feeling Dean’s reassuring bulk behind her, she realized that it was already too late to go back. Sam and Dean had gotten under her skin, past her defenses, and into her heart.
She’d once said that she was already kind of broken. And that another friend had been really good at getting down into the broken places and making things worse. The boys were also good at finding her broken places. But instead of breaking her further, they were good at mending her and making her stronger.
Chloe nodded in agreement to her great-aunt’s words. Yes, the boys were family. Yes, they were protective. “I know.”
“Very well,” the woman sighed. “My name is Mary Katharine Sullivan. I was Seamus’ younger sister. When I was sixteen, I fell in love with a young man, and we eloped. Only he wasn’t a man - he was of the fae.”
Chloe absorbed the information without comment. Inside, she was a little impressed with the kind of guts it took for a woman like her great-aunt, from that time period, to leave everything she knew, without her family’s consent. To take her destiny into your own hands.
Mary Katharine shrugged. “Fairee women are far more beautiful than I - but not as hearty. The O’Sullivan family has ever been filled with adventuresome souls.”
“Tell me about it, lady,” Dean muttered.
Mary Katherine gave him an odd look, and then shrugged and continued her story.
“My husband tells me that in me he saw someone to share a life of adventure with. I didn’t have much interest in the village boys. So it seemed like the thing to do. I didn’t count on Seamus coming after me.”
In a way, Chloe could see that. Though she didn’t have family of her own, she’d had a very good example of sibling closeness in Sam and Dean. If she’d had a brother the way the boys had each other, she could imagine that her brother would come for her the way Sam and Dean would come for each other.
Mary Katharine shook her head, and closed her eyes in obvious mental pain. “Seamus and I were very close as children. So when I vanished the way I did, he determined to find me. He became -- what you are now. A scholar of the other world. One who used what he knew to help people.”
“In other words, a hunter,” Sam said.
“You have your word for it.” Mary Katherine sniffed at him. “Seamus crossed into the fairee realm to find me. It was . . . very painful to send him away. But I had no choice. By the laws of the fairee - I’d already determined to stay with them. So my brother couldn’t take me with him.” She shut her eyes, and shook her head. When she opened them again, her clear green eyes sparkled with unshed tears.
“I sent him away with the ring you now bear,” She said to Chloe. “And a pledge to lend aide when I can. That pledge is what has drawn me to find you.”
Chloe touched the ring reflexively. Finding family was all well and good, but why come now, when her great-aunt could just send word through Zatanna? And had Mary Katharine set up the headless horsemen sightings just to draw Chloe out?
“Why do I need your help?” Chloe asked.
Mary Katherine gave them a patient smile. “Because there are things that you need to know. We stand at the turning of the year. Soon the earth will sleep. This is the time that your enemies are strongest. And you have numerous enemies.
“The three of you must prepare. In the other world, there is talk of war. I came to warn you, little niece. If this war is to start, the first skirmishes will occur ‘ere the earth awakens in the spring.”
Chloe felt a chill creep up her spine. She nodded in acknowledgement of her aunt’s words.
Mary Katherine gave her a last sad smile. “I must go. The night wears on, and my family will wonder where I’ve gone to.”
“I . . .” Chloe broke off abruptly, at a loss for words over so many shocking revelations. She was brimming with so many questions. Who was this other family that Mary Katherine spoke of? Did Chloe have a bunch of half-fairee cousins? And how could she meet them? What was her great-grandfather like? But she couldn’t figure out how to ask any of them. And in light of things that she’d just found out - she wasn’t sure if any of them were the right thing to ask.
“I wish I could answer all of your questions, but there’s no time,” Mary Katherine shook her head, and slowly backed away. “Perhaps someday I will be able to answer your questions - provided we all live through these dark times. But now is not that day.” She gave the three of them a final parting nod and climbed back into the coach. “Fair thee well, little niece. You have nothing more to hunt here.”
As Chloe, Sam and Dean watched in trepidation, the dullahan saluted them, climbed back onto the coach and steered it away.
Summary: The group makes a sudden U turn and goes back to the appalachians to hunt something that might be a headless horseman. Sam covertly tries to keep Chloe from shutting them out.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg (Halloween fun guys!).
Banner by isisizabel
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #12 Orange. The table is here.
A/N: Pretty Chloe/Dean art here that I commissioned from Bri-chan.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Chloe responded with pounding feet as she ran full-tilt for the road. Sam and Dean, with their longer legs, quickly out-paced her. She thought bitterly about the old maxim that you didn’t have to be the fastest gazelle on the Serengeti. You only really had to be faster than the slowest gazelle. She breathed deeply and pushed her legs harder.
If we were on the Serengeti, I would so be the gazelle that the lion had for breakfast.
“Head for the bridge,” Sam yelled as he reached the road and turned toward the ancient structure.
Chloe nodded, too out of breath to respond. Just as she reached the road, Dean turned, grabbed her hand and pulled her alongside him.
She stumbled, unable to match his long strides. In the end, he pulled her most of the way to the bridge.
They crossed from the open road to the sheltered expanse of the bridge, and stopped. Chloe dropped to her knees, gasping air into her lungs at a furious pace, and drew her weapon. Dean leaned against the wall and sighted down his own barrel.
The coach rolled back onto the road, and stopped. Chloe forced her breathing to return to normal, and crawled forward to get a better look at the coach and headless hitch.
“ I don’t think we’re dealing with a headless horseman,” Dean said rhetorically.
“I figured as much.” Sam said. “So the question is . . . what are we dealing with?”
Chloe shrugged.
“Who knows?” She gesticulated wildly. “Dullahan? Headless knight? Cursed priest? Pick any one of those.”
“I think it’s a dullahan,” Dean said.
Sam and Chloe shot each other intrigued looks before shooting a questioning look at Dean.
“I watched Darby O’Gill and the Little People once,” Dean shrugged. “The dullahan in that was a headless driver of a coach like that. He took people to the afterlife.”
Chloe nodded. “If it’s a dullahan, than it’s definitely unseelie. They sometimes do more than just share duties with Charon. They’ve been known to do the Carrie prom night thing and throw pig’s blood. And sometimes they try to take out your eyes with a whip. ”
“Great,” Dean shook his head. “We should have stuck with the Impala. At least we had weapons there. We really played this bush league.”
“Kind of late to regret things,” Sam said.
Dean let out a bitter chuckle, and knocked on the wooden wall of the bridge. “Think this will stop it?” he asked Sam rhetorically.
“It worked with the others.”
“Wonder why?” Dean asked.
Chloe glanced down at the board under her knees, and the seam that ran along its length. “Iron nails.”
Dean nodded, and opened his mouth to reply. However, just then, the headless coachman steered the coach closer to the bridge.
The three of them backed away from the mouth of the bridge. The dullahan dismounted, and gestured for them to come closer. From deep within the hollow where its neck should be, a groan issued forth.
A responding groan issued from on the coachman’s seat. Chloe looked up, and saw a rotting head, with flesh like moldy cheese and eyes that darted around like flies sitting where an ordinary coachman might leave a hat.
She shivered in revulsion as the eyes circled around and locked onto her. The mouth opened, and a single word issued forth.
Sullivan.
Chloe blinked in shock. It knew her name? How did it know her name? Was it expecting her to go with it? To ride the death coach? Was it saying that it was her time to die? Fear clenched at her stomach. As much as she agonized over the way her powers made her feel like a freak - she’d gotten used to the healing aspect of them. Although she’d died a few months back during a hunt gone wrong - that was while hunting. The idea of just . . . dropping dead was unwelcome to her.
Dean’s response was automatic. He snagged her by the shoulder, and hauled her bodily to his side. Then he turned himself in profile, so that he was standing between her and the unseelie fairee. She shivered and wrapped one arm around his waist. His reassuring bulk was comforting to her. Again, she was glad to have the guys with her. Because if that thing was going to come for her, it would have a heck of a fight on its hands. She drew her gun, and held it out, level with Sam and Dean’s, to sight down on the dullahan.
“How does it talk without vocal chords?” Dean whispered just loud enough for Chloe and Sam to hear him.
“How does it think with its head bilocated from its body?” Sam replied.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Dean throw a confused look at Sam, shake his head and turn his focus back on the monster.
The headless creature seemed to regard them for a second, and then moved to the door of the coach. Chloe drew a breath and felt her gut tighten up in fearful anticipation as the headless unseelie opened the coach door. A slight, dark-haired, fair skinned lady stepped from the coach. She walked to the edge of the bridge, and regarded them with a closed expression. Then she deliberately stepped onto the wooden platform.
Chloe looked in askance at the approaching figure. If the iron nails weren’t stopping her, she was probably not a fairee. But what did that make her? If she was consorting with a dullahan, it couldn’t be good.
All sets of eyes were trained on her as she finally spoke to them. “I seek the heir of Sullivan.”
Dean pulled Chloe tighter to him, but otherwise made no outward show that the words had any affect on him. “What do you want with her, Morticia?”
She walked up to them and stared down his gun to look into his face. In the darkness, Chloe thought that she looked slightly familiar, but couldn’t pin down where she’d seen her before.
“My business is with the child who inherited the legacy of Seamus Sullivan.” She studied Dean frankly. “As you bear neither his name, nor his tools, I have no business with you.”
Chloe unconsciously touched the ring that now encircled her left thumb, and met the woman’s gaze evenly. “Why are you looking for me?”
She turned her gaze to Chloe, and with a jolt of awareness, the reporter realized exactly why she looked familiar. Her eyes were just like Gabe Sullivan’s. Chloe gasped, and lowered her gun.
Dean looked from Chloe, to the woman in front of them, and back. His entire face shut down, just like it did when he was playing poker, and the only thing he had in his hand was a pair of deuces. His grip around Chloe’s waist turned iron hard, and his own gun remained trained on the lady with eyes like Gabe Sullivan’s.
“Because Seamus was my brother,” she said. “The sorceress Zatanna spoke to me of a girl child of his lineage.”
Sam and Dean shot each other surprised glances. A look of understanding passed between them, and they slowly lowered their weapons.
Chloe holstered her gun, and stepped forward to look at the woman. “I’m Chloe Sullivan. Seamus was . . . my great-grandfather, I guess.”
The woman studied Chloe’s face seriously. Then, like the sun breaking behind the clouds, her serene, serious face broke into a wide grin. “You look - very much like our mother did,” she said as she pulled Chloe into a strong embrace.
Though Chloe made no move to hug the woman, her great aunt, back she continued to let the woman embrace her. Over the woman’s shoulder, Chloe shot a confused look at Sam and Dean. The boys looked just as confused as she did.
At length, her inner reporter demanded that she find out the story. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. How are you here?”
The woman allowed Chloe to pull out of her arms. She looked at Chloe and frowned. “It’s a long story. One that would take too long, in the telling, I’m afraid. And my time with you is short, little hound.”
“Maybe you can give us the cliff notes version,” Dean said as he walked up behind Chloe and draped his arm over her shoulders.
The woman looked at Dean in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“He’s asking if you could tell us what you can,” Sam said as he walked up to stand next to Dean and Chloe. He put his hand out to rest on Chloe’s shoulder in a show of support.
The woman looked from Sam to Dean before turning to regard Chloe. “You have a very protective family,” she muttered.
Chloe glanced sideways at Sam, and reached up to touch Dean’s arm where it draped over her shoulder. Her great-aunt had called the boys her family. Was that possible? Were they family? She’d said that she felt that way to Dean back when she’d agreed to be his girl. But since then, she’d overlooked to possibility. Because if Sam and Dean were her family - then she’d never be able to walk away from them. Even if things didn’t work out with Dean, the three of them would forever be tied to her through a bond of the heart.
And ultimately, she’d be vulnerable to being hurt. Moreso than if she stayed aloof. But looking at Sam standing next to her, and feeling Dean’s reassuring bulk behind her, she realized that it was already too late to go back. Sam and Dean had gotten under her skin, past her defenses, and into her heart.
She’d once said that she was already kind of broken. And that another friend had been really good at getting down into the broken places and making things worse. The boys were also good at finding her broken places. But instead of breaking her further, they were good at mending her and making her stronger.
Chloe nodded in agreement to her great-aunt’s words. Yes, the boys were family. Yes, they were protective. “I know.”
“Very well,” the woman sighed. “My name is Mary Katharine Sullivan. I was Seamus’ younger sister. When I was sixteen, I fell in love with a young man, and we eloped. Only he wasn’t a man - he was of the fae.”
Chloe absorbed the information without comment. Inside, she was a little impressed with the kind of guts it took for a woman like her great-aunt, from that time period, to leave everything she knew, without her family’s consent. To take her destiny into your own hands.
Mary Katharine shrugged. “Fairee women are far more beautiful than I - but not as hearty. The O’Sullivan family has ever been filled with adventuresome souls.”
“Tell me about it, lady,” Dean muttered.
Mary Katherine gave him an odd look, and then shrugged and continued her story.
“My husband tells me that in me he saw someone to share a life of adventure with. I didn’t have much interest in the village boys. So it seemed like the thing to do. I didn’t count on Seamus coming after me.”
In a way, Chloe could see that. Though she didn’t have family of her own, she’d had a very good example of sibling closeness in Sam and Dean. If she’d had a brother the way the boys had each other, she could imagine that her brother would come for her the way Sam and Dean would come for each other.
Mary Katharine shook her head, and closed her eyes in obvious mental pain. “Seamus and I were very close as children. So when I vanished the way I did, he determined to find me. He became -- what you are now. A scholar of the other world. One who used what he knew to help people.”
“In other words, a hunter,” Sam said.
“You have your word for it.” Mary Katherine sniffed at him. “Seamus crossed into the fairee realm to find me. It was . . . very painful to send him away. But I had no choice. By the laws of the fairee - I’d already determined to stay with them. So my brother couldn’t take me with him.” She shut her eyes, and shook her head. When she opened them again, her clear green eyes sparkled with unshed tears.
“I sent him away with the ring you now bear,” She said to Chloe. “And a pledge to lend aide when I can. That pledge is what has drawn me to find you.”
Chloe touched the ring reflexively. Finding family was all well and good, but why come now, when her great-aunt could just send word through Zatanna? And had Mary Katharine set up the headless horsemen sightings just to draw Chloe out?
“Why do I need your help?” Chloe asked.
Mary Katherine gave them a patient smile. “Because there are things that you need to know. We stand at the turning of the year. Soon the earth will sleep. This is the time that your enemies are strongest. And you have numerous enemies.
“The three of you must prepare. In the other world, there is talk of war. I came to warn you, little niece. If this war is to start, the first skirmishes will occur ‘ere the earth awakens in the spring.”
Chloe felt a chill creep up her spine. She nodded in acknowledgement of her aunt’s words.
Mary Katherine gave her a last sad smile. “I must go. The night wears on, and my family will wonder where I’ve gone to.”
“I . . .” Chloe broke off abruptly, at a loss for words over so many shocking revelations. She was brimming with so many questions. Who was this other family that Mary Katherine spoke of? Did Chloe have a bunch of half-fairee cousins? And how could she meet them? What was her great-grandfather like? But she couldn’t figure out how to ask any of them. And in light of things that she’d just found out - she wasn’t sure if any of them were the right thing to ask.
“I wish I could answer all of your questions, but there’s no time,” Mary Katherine shook her head, and slowly backed away. “Perhaps someday I will be able to answer your questions - provided we all live through these dark times. But now is not that day.” She gave the three of them a final parting nod and climbed back into the coach. “Fair thee well, little niece. You have nothing more to hunt here.”
As Chloe, Sam and Dean watched in trepidation, the dullahan saluted them, climbed back onto the coach and steered it away.