Happy Holideans Guys

[righteously]

Who: Dean Winchester, Emma Swan & COMPLETELY OPEN
Where: Literally all over Wonderland
When: Dec 15-24
Rating: R for language, violence, adult themes
Summary: When Emma agreed to acompany Dean on his stupid suicide mission of inevitable death and idiocy, neither of them prepared for the mistletoe. Or, you know, the freaking time travel.
The Story:

The Arrival

They ran out of canned food. All of the stockpiled supplies had been growing steadily more scarce, but it’s probably the cans that finally triggered Dean’s decision to push through with the back-up plan brewing in his mind for the last several weeks. There was beef jerky- god damn, they had beef jerky by the friggin’ score, but with so many mouths to feed, it wouldn't last. There were hunters- actual game, what was left of the animals in the forest and the fish in the ocean were being picked off one by one for sustenance in much the same way that the Jabberwock was picking them off for sustenance.

Soon, there would be nothing. Soon, they wouldn't just have to worry about losing those last few precious lives to the roaming beast, but to starvation. Dehydration. Sickness.

Tom’s been stirring up talk about a second trip to the core, but morale is low. It was a stupid plan the first time around, it’s even more stupid with so many fighters taken out of the game. With so many injuries, with so few extra lives to spare and, more importantly, with the Jabberwock more strong than he’s ever been.

In the end, it’s not a difficult decision to make. Not by a long shot. Too many people are gone already, and waiting for more to go is stupid. He’s not going to do it.

Michael’s there, the Archangel, an ever present beacon of power and possibility, and though things are different now than they were back home- hell, different now than they were years ago in Wonderland’s less horrific years, there was always small part of him that protested the very notion of giving in.

That small part’s been ground to dust.

It’s a no-brainer. Dean says yes.

It’s a small piece to a bigger puzzle, a bigger and, admittedly, probably doomed plan. Cas had been able to take the Jabberwock down in the beginning. It had taken effort, a great expenditure of grace, but he'd been able to slay the beast over and over again to grant them a temporary reprieve. After it swallowed the Vorpal Shield, that bastard ground him into dust. Michael is stronger, though- a thousand times stronger, at least he would be in his true vessel. If they could get rid of it for good together, or, Christ, even just put it down temporarily, long enough to give Wonderland a chance to gather it’s strength, it might fix everything.

If it meant burning Dean out of his body, so be it. If it meant risking losing his remaining lives in the process, he was so far beyond the point of caring.

It would have to be done in secret. The fewer people who knew, the fewer people likely to stop him and the fewer to possibly get caught in the crossfire. He kept it to himself, kept it from Jo, from Sam, from Ellen, from anyone and everyone likely to put their fucking fingers in the mix and make things messy. He'd keep it from everyone if it were feasible, but it simply isn’t. He needs someone to take over in the event it doesn’t work, needs somebody to help him get to where he needs to be, and that someone is Emma.

She had tried to argue against it, tried to use logic to point out why it wasn't worth the risk, but it hadn't lasted long. He had trusted her for a reason; she understood what it meant to be a leader, to go forward and take a chance because the payoff would be beyond worth it if you could pull it off. That didn't mean she liked it. Dean was more than a friend and more than someone to take orders from: he was family now, more like family than just about anyone she'd ever known. Orphans were forced to build their own families, and if they were lucky, sometimes they made a friend like Dean who fit the bill completely, someone who could offer understanding and solidarity like no one else, someone else who knew what it felt like to lose and to grow up too fast and to make the best of what you had.

The idea of this going south and losing him, losing their leader, losing one of the best friends she’d ever had made her stomach drop and her chest feel tight. If it worked, it would be damn near a miracle, though she was hesitant to use the word. She never gave her approval, not really, but she let him know that he could trust her. Trust her to help him through it, trust her to pick up the pieces if it failed or if he didn’t make it back. Meanwhile, she’d spend as much time as she could trying to convince him to take another course, trying to figure out alternatives. She knew what taking the risk could earn them, and she wasn’t going to forcibly stop him -- she respected his decision -- but damn if she wasn’t going to try to get him to change his mind in the eleventh hour.

In the end, they go anyway. Gearing up is a grim affair, done in the silence and secrecy of Dean’s private quarters, tucked away in the back of the refuge. It’s the middle of the night, the civilians and refugees are sleeping. The resistance patrols are circling the small perimeter of the sanctuary they’ve carved out of sweat and blood. They slip through the cracks, through the woods, through the rubble and the dying gardens without a word or a sound. Even footsteps in the grass seem muted in this place.

The entrance hall and lobby, once a grand affair, is dirty and dingy and cracked. Dean can’t help but to sweep his eyes over it as he crosses the entranceway, doors broken in and swinging wide. They could be fixed, but why bother when the beast would simply break them down again and again?

It’s silent, deceptively so. His hands are tight on his gun as he pauses to listen, ears sharpened by Michael’s burning him dormant in the back of his mind. They’re waiting, saving it, saving his last few minutes with the angel tucked into a space too small for him while Dean steers the ship. As soon as Michael takes over, that energy will explode into something grand and heavenly, something burning bright and overpowering, but not yet.

His jaw tightens, and his eyes flick to Emma. One firm nod signals that the coast is clear, the need for words erased by time and familiarity.

She doesn’t like this any better now that they’re here, but as they cross the threshold, the deal is sealed. There’s no going back now, no chances to duck out and find another option. All they have left is to go forward, to follow through with this stupid plan she has no choice but to go along with. Dean is just as stubborn as she is, and they have a job to do. She couldn’t talk him out of this, but she can help him try to protect everyone here. Try to free Wonderland from tyranny and make it someplace everyone can live again, not just survive.

The signal is enough, and she moves forward with her gun pointed at the floor in a two-handed grip. She’s brought the replica of her father’s sword she managed to pull out of the closets all those years ago as well, sheathed at her hip, but it’s more of a good-luck charm than anything. A comfort. If she’s close enough to the Jabberwocky to use it, then it’ll already be too late. She’ll be dinner, and she’s running out of deaths.

She moves forward through the front foyer in time with Dean, their footsteps slow and deliberate, careful not to break the too-heavy silence that’s bearing down on them. Any moment, she expects that the Jabberwock will pierce it, slice through it like it’s nothing, sense them or smell them and somehow just know that it’s no longer alone. They’re on its turf now, and the beast has every advantage that comes with playing on the home field. Still, it’s not the Jabberwock that makes her stop dead in her tracks when they turn the corner.

It’s the mansion itself.

The cracked and crumbling ruin the mansion has become is gone, lush carpets and whole, unbroken mirrors in its stead. Garlands, holly, doors still on their hinges and none of it looking like its become the stomping grounds for something as ravenous as the predator that’s taken over Wonderland has proven to be. She relaxes her hold on her gun, just a hair, turning her head alone to narrow her eyes at Dean in question. What the hell is going on here?

His brow furrows as it tracks over the garland, over the wallpaper, over everything. Slowly, he looks to Emma. Meets her eye, and tightens his grip on his gun.

Whatever this is, it isn't good.

--

This is a catch-all for both Dean and Emma. They'll have their own subthreads to keep things organized!

Comments

12/19!

[halfwinchester]

Ever since some of the people had gone missing and returned with memories of the future, Adam's made every effort not to get involved, despite some of this mess coming to him in the form of Tom. His place isn't to worry about what's happened to the time traveling ten, or make Wonderland's psychotic breakdowns his responsibility. He shouldn't have to deal with this on top of everything else. Telling himself as much takes the pressure off of feeling so many things at once--worry, dread, curiosity, confusion.

When Blake contacts him and tells him there's something he needs to see, curiosity takes the lead against his will. What does any of this have to do with him?

He throws a winter jacket on and stalks outside as directed, indignant, annoyed that this place thinks it can take the place of Hell and throw his fears and uncertainties back in his face. He's not a part of the future. He's not a part of anyone's future.

Stomping through the trees deep in the forest like this is how he meets his own future self, in a manner of speaking.

He doesn't mean to let himself be caught off guard (what guard does he have, really?), but suddenly there he is, watching his own ghostly images on repeat right where Blake had told him to look. Adam loses track of how many times he watches himself--both of himselves. Long after his feet go numb in his boots, he's still watching. If this is a future, he's undecided whether it's a good or a bad one.

Good, because he can see for himself how strong and collected a version of him can be. Bad, because of muffled screams he causes.

[righteously]

He always thought of Stiles as the greatest tragedy of their time. If he had to pick a close second, if things were just a hair different, or if he and Adam had connected on a deeper emotional level than the neutrality and passive agreement they've reached, he might say differently. It's not that he can't say Adam isn't better than when he first arrived, because he is. It's not that he can say Adam is broken or wrong necessarily, because he isn't. There's just something about the man Adam's become that... were he a younger man, where he the man he'd been at the start, he might be... dissapointed. In himself, maybe, for letting things end up like this, for not taking better care, for not being there more, for not overseeing Adam's recovery a bit more hands-on.

He's passed this ghost half a dozen times now. The first time was interesting. The rest, he passed as casually as a man flipping through infomercials at three a.m. in a motel. Now, there's an addition to the seen that makes him slow to a stop, hands in his pockets, and watch again.

The past version of Adam stands stock still, watching it all unfold. So enthralled with it is he that he doesn't even notice Dean approach, just a few yards off. Finally, after minutes of this, he decides to speak.

"You know, there's always been this kinda... debate over the meaning of strength." His lips twitch in consideration, and he tilts his head like he's thinking about that debate, like he's thinking about what he's saying. Just... casually pondering on it while Adam's future ghost slowly but surely drowns his demon alternate. "The whole... doing what needs to be done thing versus the whole emotional strength doing what's right thing. People tend to quote whichever one works for whatever they're trying to accomplish at the time, I guess. Means justifies the end, end justifies the means, road to hell's paved with good intentions and yellow bricks or some crap."

[halfwinchester]

You know...

Spoken so calmly, like Adam should be a part of the conversation and not so bewitched by the sight of furious black eyes that the sound of Dean's voice makes him jump, feet slipping in the snow. Dazed, he whirls on Dean, and it is Dean or someone colder and harder who looks exactly like him, though in the moment Dean seems like more of a ghost than the ghosts themselves. Adam's mouth hangs open in surprise, ragged breath misting the air in a white cloud.

He has the insane urge to jump in front of the scene and hide it from view, which is stupid because Dean's clearly already seen. The other man doesn't even look surprised.

It's an uncomfortable sensation, like he should feel like he's having a dream where everybody's naked, but he knows that these two people aren't him, they're not real. What's more, the ghosts aren't exposing something to be ashamed, not the way Adam watches them. The effects of Hell, being afraid, cowering at those who want to take something else from him... those are things to be guilty about.

Dean is the one who says the word out loud. Strength. Adam sees himself winning, and that's what strength means now, isn't it? Being better. Better than the thing that wants to hurt you. This sensitivity to weakness is a seed now, growing already, and it's partly why he swallows and holds himself back from asking about the time travel right off the bat.

"Is that what I'm looking at? A yellow brick?"

[righteously]

His fingers are numb, there in their place in his coat pockets. Frozen from the cold, from the snow, from the constant back and forth of carrying this or that, and they curl into fists inside the rough material. His legs are spread, though, feet planted sturdy a shoulder's width apart, and he doesn't shake. Doesn't shiver. Doesn't react to the dropping temperature around them. He just stands, eerily threatening in his own right somehow, just by existing. Just by the weird and unappealing vibe he's throwing off of him like radiation, killing plants and animals and happiness and hope.

Or maybe that's all in Adam's head, because by all accounts, he's not a particularly intimidating figure, is he? He's not even approaching, what's to be scared of? Maybe the holster in his thigh- there's no gun in it. What's a holster without a gun? Where's the gun?

Dean's eyes flicker at the question, they drop down to the scene playing out before them again and study with dark intensity it for a long couple of seconds. He shrugs, then, out of the blue, breaks away from that statue still for a too-casual twitch of the head and raise of the shoulder.

"Maybe," he concedes lightly. "Maybe things get so bad, you think the only answer to staying alive is to kill threats before they're threats. Maybe you're smart like that, in a world where all hell's breakin' loose, because you've been through hell and you'd rather burn the world down then go there again. Wouldn't blame you. Been there myself."

He ambles closer then, legs bowing out, gait casual, snow kicking up and leaving disruptive, disgusting footprints in otherwise pristinely blanketed snow. "Maybe you've got voices in your head- outside your head- telling you to be a soldier. That the only way to be whole is to be strong. Maybe you're listening to broken records, hell, maybe this is the first golden brick down the road to good intentions."

He slows to a stop three, maybe four feet in front of Adam. Stands in front of that flickering, repeated projection. "Maybe all you need to see is the kinda man you know, deep down, you don't wanna be. But hell, what do I know? I'm just a jackass with a sack of crap I plan on sticking in a hole."

[halfwinchester]

Dean's always been an intimidating figure, even before Adam had met him when he'd just been a concept with a name, a warning passed along by angels. He had a half-brother, they'd said, John's other son, someone who would try to stop Adam from doing whatever it took to be with his family again. He'd been a threat, even then. Another betrayal by a father he'd thought had stopped surprising him, not unlike how the two must have felt finding out about him. He's a threat now, but not because Adam worries this strange Ghost of Christmas Future will turn on him, but because this is still Dean he's talking to. Dean's got one foot on a landmine built out of his emotions and he probably doesn't even know it.

Again, he reins in the urge to throw a screen up between this blood relative of his and his private moment. This is situation is just alien enough to make him pretend everything his normal; he shifts, drawing one foot back until his sole finds hard-packed snow, until he can steady himself.

"That's a lot of 'maybe's for someone claiming to be from the future." He watches Dean warily, but not without curiosity. "Aren't you? From some time years from now?"

Maybe a normal nineteen-year-old guy who's never met a monster and never believed in them would run away from all of this, hands over his eyes, but the time for denial is long past. He has to accept the fact that Dean is talking to him about how someone so broken can live their life in a place that's just as upside-down as their sense of humanity, that he must know things about what's going on with the ghosts. That he must know things about Adam that not even he knows about himself.

"I thought time travel was supposed to give you perspective so you can dole out fortune cookie advice."

[righteously]

Dean may be prodding tender wounds, but he's in such a state that he's beyond the capacity to care. Adam could explode right now, could tear the forrest down limb from limb, and Dean would watch him do it with an absent sort of interest and his arms folded across his chest. The bottom line is, while they have something of a relationship in the future, it's lacking the silver lining Dean applies to people. It's lacking that ceremonious, sparkly cloud of family he's been known to grace people with, and it's been lacking all the passion and love that goes along with it. Where he's from, Adam doesn't give much of a shit, and Dean intentionally tries not to give a shit about anything at all, and they build a working, functioning relationship out of it. It's hard to define, not quite friendship, not quite brotherhood, not quite... anything, it simply is, and that's exactly how Dean treats it now.

"Some time, yeah." He agrees absently, tilting his head. Not really all that interested in backing up his claim with specifics or proof; Adam can believe him or think he's full of shit, and it's no real skin off his back either way. "Doesn't mean I'm here to Fairy Godfather you through all your bullshit personal problems. I've got a whirlwind of other more important crap to deal with that don't got a single damn thing to do with whether you take the red pill or the blue pill, kid. I just figured I'd give you a little food for thought while you freeze your jewels off ogling a snapshot of the shades-of-gray asshole you end up being."

[halfwinchester]

Adam narrows his eyes. Cheery. But then, this is the same prick with his head up his ass who saved everyone else except Adam and his family, and who preened about it in the aftermath.

"I didn't ask about that, or your bullshit important problems," he says evenly, cold, because Dean seems to have a fondness for throwing around crap with one hand and using the other to point at other people for doing the same. "So I guess we're even. Maybe you should take your own advice for once and deal with your own stuff first. Doesn't look like you're doing much of that in the future."

This isn't just a game one person can play. Adam's got an equal share in the "I don't give a shit" lottery, and the last thing he's going to do is sit back and take crap from some hypocrite dirtbag he doesn't even know.

If the future's burning, then it's burning, and he wouldn't be surprised if it's partly to do with Dean.

[righteously]

Dean from Adam's time might press his point, might really fight to make sure Adam understands everything- the future, how he's valued, how it's important that he be the kind of man is mother would be proud of, how he's sorry. This one, though, this one doesn't particularly care. He's been dodging people from the past ever since he arrived here, and the only reason Adam was a temporary exception was that he didn't particularly pull at any sensitive heartstrings or demand answers that Dean wasn't really interested in giving.

"Maybe I should." He responds, shrugging absently, hands still in his pockets. He does have a lot of work to do. "But you know, good luck with your whole light side, dark side angst path. I tell you, you were a real stick in the mud that first year."

He huffs in amusement, shakes his head, and turns back toward the way he'd come from.

[halfwinchester]

He remembers what it was like when the novelty had worn off of having a flesh-and-blood father and the disappointment had settled in, before disappointment had become resignation when John failed to keep in contact. It'd hurt, but he'd adapted.

And he remembers what it'd been like to sit across the table from Zachariah alone, completely alone. It's the same feeling he has now, only it's a feeling that's become old hat now.

This is nothing new. This is just what life is when Heaven is far, far away.

It's why he turns away before Dean's finished, dismissive. Dean had had his chance to talk years ago and almost everything he'd said then had fallen through in the time since. Having some future version of Dean pull out his soap box like this and run his mouth off from on top of it is something he can do without. "Thanks for the opinion piece, but we both know you like to lay it on thick."

Thick and steaming with crap, just as when he'd tried to say that family doesn't leave each other behind.