Post by StoryGirl83 on Sept 21, 2013 22:57:27 GMT -5
Flashback
Flashback
Flashback
Flashback
Flashback
Chapter Ten - Regaining Perspective
Wyatt walked over to Sam and looked up at the picture, a puzzled frown growing on his face. “But Aunt Prue’s dead.”
Sam shrugged. “According to what your grandpa just told me, so is your great-grandmother, but that hasn’t stopped you from seeing her. Maybe she’s taken to haunting her old home.”
“Did you say you saw Prue?” Victor asked in disbelief.
Sam looked at him. “I don’t know. As I said before I didn’t get a clear view of the dark haired woman, but of all the people on this wall, she looked closest to this woman. She easily could be someone entirely different.”
“Prue had the power of telekinesis,” Victor informed him. “She could possibly throw people across the front lawn. But she’s dead. The dead can’t stay around for seven years. That makes no sense.”
Sam shrugged, unconcerned. “So it was someone else. I saw the back of her head and a brief glance at her face, not enough to be certain whom I saw. It could easily have been someone else.”
“But it could have been her,” Wyatt repeated, wanting to know.
Sam nodded. “It could have been.”
Victor looked at his grandsons. “Boys, you know I hate to see Penny, but I think you need to summon her.”
“Why not Grandma?” Chris wanted to know. “I like her better.”
Victor chuckled. “So do I, but if Prue really is in there, then Penny is more likely to know why. Patty might only know that she’s missing.”
Wyatt nodded his head. “Chris and I will get what we need.”
As the two boys headed into the hall, the phone began to ring. Victor walked over and picked it up. “Hello.”
“Another person died today,” Darryl Morris informed Victor without preamble. “Something has to be done. If the boys can’t do it, then is there anyone else at all they can call on?”
Victor looked across the room at Sam. “Darryl, I think I have someone you’ll want to talk to.”
“Someone who can help?”
“Someone who’s going to try whether he can or not,” Victor informed him. “He won’t listen to reason, so we are trying to arm him with as much knowledge as we can.”
“A witch?”
Victor shook his head. “Not magical at all as far as I know, but he intends to continue on this course. Would you mind talking to him?”
Darryl sighed. “Put him on.”
Victor handed the phone to a surprised Sam. “The police contact the boys have. He’s met my girls over a decade ago and knows most if not all of their secrets.”
Sam took the phone, reluctantly. The idea of talking to the police was a little iffy in his mind, but he was trying to trust this family. “This is Sam.”
“Paige’s father?” Darryl asked, confused.
“Who?” Sam looked at the last picture on the wall. “Oh. I guess that explains a few things. No, I am definitely not her father. I’m not even sure I’m older than her.”
“Sam what?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sam replied.
“It does if you want me to talk to you,” Darryl replied.
“And have you try and look me up?” Sam retorted. “I’ll save you the time. On paper I look like a really bad bet, but I know this kind of stuff, and I’ve faced some pretty horrific things, things I hope you have never seen.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Darryl mumbled.
“What was that?” Sam asked.
“Nothing,” Darryl replied. “Victor said you are trying to help get rid of the Manor so it doesn’t kill anyone else.”
“Then, he told you wrong,” Sam informed him. “I am trying to incapacitate the woman behind the fire power and hoping that the others in there don’t mean me any harm.”
“What are you talking about?” Darryl asked confused. “What woman? What others?”
“Well, we’ve only successfully identified one of them,” Sam admitted. “I was able to get a good look, but the two women had their backs to me most of the time. I only saw the woman with the fire power’s face when she tried to kill me.”
“You’ve already tried to enter there?” Darryl asked, surprised. “And you survived?”
“Well, the first time I got stopped by the pint sized owners of the house,” Sam informed him as he watched Wyatt and Chris return with an assortment of large, clear crystals. “But then, I suppose if what I saw is accurate, they may not be the real owners.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sam waved away the question. “Unless someone gets into the building, it’s not important.”
“But you saw something inside the Manor?” Darryl pushed.
“I saw someone inside the house,” Sam corrected.
“Who?”
“Right now, it’s not too important, but one of them was a woman with the power to control fire,” Sam informed him. “I believe she is responsible for the deaths piled on that house.”
“And I suppose you know how to fix it,” Darryl wanted to know.
“There were others in the house,” Sam informed him. “One of them appeared unable to do anything other than avoid the woman with the fire power. If they have all been in there for seven years, I imagine he has a pretty good idea of what he can and cannot do. The other is a woman who seems to be able to use something to put some sort of shield in front of her. While I was watching, every time I saw her use that, she reached up just below her neck, so I think maybe she has some sort of magical amulet on. In addition she seemed to have pretty firm grasp on a telekinetic power, if you know what that means.”
“Of course, I do,” Darryl replied. “You have met the Halliwells right?”
Sam looked at the two boys setting up the crystals in a circle. “Yeah, why?”
“Well, Prue had that power and then Paige had a modified version of it,” Darryl informed him. “Chris has that power and both boys have the modified version of it. From what I’m told, the girls’ grandmother had it, too, but I didn’t know her. She died a few months before I met any of them.”
“If I am understanding them correctly, I’m about to meet her,” Sam retorted, his eyes fixed on the two boys. “That isn’t why I am talking to you, though. Is there anything you can tell me about this that might help me?”
“If you saw inside that house, you might well know more about this then I do,” Darryl informed him.
“Well, tell me what you do know,” Sam requested, “because I don’t know what I will need to know. I am not used to doing things without my brother, and I don’t want to get used to it, but I’m probably going into that house without help.”
“What about those inside?” Darryl asked.
“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “I think it is perhaps all the one woman can do to hold off the woman with the fire power. I don’t know if she will be able to help me or not.”
Darryl sighed. “All right. I suppose I should tell you what I know.”
The day had finally come. Darryl wasn’t sure if he was glad or sad. Leaving San Francisco meant leaving behind a lot of memories and leaving behind a lot of people. It wasn’t just the Halliwell sisters they were leaving behind. There were two sets of parents, his and Sheila’s who still lived there. There were friends. Sometimes it seemed like the only people he talked to outside of his family were Piper, Phoebe, Paige, and Leo, but they weren’t. There were memories, so many memories.
There was the fact that he didn’t want to end up like Andy Trudeau. Andy had been his friend and his partner, but for Andy the girls had come first. More specifically, Prue had come first. A choice between Andy’s job on the force and protecting Prue had been a no brainer. He’d turned in his badge. A choice between almost certain death and once more protecting Prue and her sisters had cost Andy his life and he’d known it going in. Andy had asked him to protect those girls, too, but there was only so far a man could take a promise. They had become dear to him, but he had his family to think about.
And there was the line. Had it been only him, Darryl didn’t think he would be standing here, ready to leave San Francisco. He might not have always been happy with them. Sometimes he was extremely angry with them, but he believed in what they were fighting for.
“Hold hands,” Sheila Morris directed her two sons. “Hold hands.”
“Why are you running?” Darryl teased his sons.
The boys, Darryl Junior and Michael, Dare and Mikey for short, laughed and smiled as they slowed down.
Behind them the door closed and a stream of light came out of the sky forming into Leo behind them. “Darryl!”
“Oh,” Darryl stopped and turned around. “Leo.”
“Leo!” Sheila exclaimed startled.
“Where’d you come from?” Darryl wanted to know. “How did you get here?”
“A little help from magic school,” Leo informed them, brushing it aside as unimportant. With what he was dealing with, it rather was. “Look, we need to talk.”
“Listen, Leo,” Darryl responded, “I am done talking, man.”
“It’s not just about the girls,” Leo interrupted. “It’s about Sheridan.”
Darryl looked at Sheila before asking, “What about Sheridan?”
“I know she’s investigating the girls,” Leo admitted, “but whatever you do, you’ve got to keep her away from the house. Something big is gonna go down soon.”
“Are they okay?” Darryl asked, suddenly worried.
Leo’s face was worried. He opened his mouth and shut it, again.
“Leo, what is it?” Sheila asked, concerned about the girls, too.
Leo didn’t answer directly. Instead he said, “Look, I know you’re stuck in the middle of this, and for that, I’m sorry, but we need you to keep them away from the house until this is over, for Sheridan’s sake, for everyone’s sake. I gotta go. Take care.” With that, Leo turned and left.
“Hey . . . Leo?” Darryl couldn’t do anything except watch Leo leave. When he was gone, Darryl turned to look at Sheila. “Sheila, baby . . .”
“No, Darryl,” Sheila protested at once. “You promised.”
“Baby, I . . .” Darryl tried to find the words, “I can’t just leave them high and dry. Look, there is nothing more important to me than you and those kids, nothing, but if we’re about building a better future for our family, then I have to help the sisters. Isn’t that what they’re fighting for?”
“Please, promise me this’ll be the last time,” Sheila relented.
“I promise,” he agreed.
By the time Darryl had reached the Manor it was surrounded by SWAT. Sheridan was already dead. There was nothing he could have done to save her. He managed to reach Agent Keyes before SWAT was sent in. “I wouldn’t go in just yet if I were you.”
Over the walkie-talking he heard, “Awaiting your go command. Over.”
“He listened to me but it turns out there was never a good time to go back in,” Darryl informed Sam sadly. “A lot of good people lost their lives that day.”
“I was told that you had planned to move out of here,” Sam commented. “What happened?”
“I actually did move,” Darryl admitted. “We got all the way to the state border and I got a call from the chief. He wanted me to come back. I turned him down.”
“Then, how did you end up back here?” Sam asked confused.
There was silence on the other end for several seconds before Darryl spoke again. “That night we stayed at a motel in Nevada. The boys wanted to watch a movie, but Sheila wanted to check the weather report first.”
Sam was surprised to hear Darryl chuckle on the other end. “Did I miss something?”
“According to my wife, whenever something bad happens with the Halliwell sisters, there are major weather problems,” Darryl explained. “Well, we actually got snowed in our motel that night, so I guess maybe she had a point. However, that isn’t what got us turned back around. Before the weather report was a news report on what happened. With so many dead, it was making national news. I’m sure you heard all about it.”
“I think I was trying to enjoy a normal life, trying to avoid any mention of my less than normal family,” Sam informed him thinking back to a time before all this had happened, when he was still in school, when Jess was still alive, when he and Dean had nothing in common. It had been a time when he hadn’t the slightest inkling of what he was about to be up against. When these women where more or less getting ready for their deaths, he was in the first weeks of school busy getting ready for school tests and dates with Jess. How ironic that when their journey was ending, his was about to begin and now their journeys, for better or worse, were crossing.
“Makes me think of Piper,” Darryl commented. “She dearly wanted a normal life without . . . demons and all the evils of the world.”
“Can’t say that I blame her,” Sam admitted. “I have learned that I’m never going to be normal. It literally is in my blood to be abnormal.”
“Sounds like you have a lot in common with those girls,” Darryl commented.
Tammi pulled Ruby up to a sitting position from the floor. She chuckled and looked at Sam. “She didn’t tell you?” Turning back to Ruby she continued her little speech to her former follower. “Pretty mortifying I guess. She was one of mine. I turned her out a long, long time ago.” She supported Ruby’s sagging head as she continued, her voice rising. “Ruby here was a witch. Of course that was when you were human.”
Dean gritted his teeth and glared, surprise still showing in his eyes from where he was pinned to the wall.
Sam looked at the two surprised from where he was pinned to a different wall. He wasn’t sure what surprised him more, but it was probably the fact that at some point Ruby had been human when now she was only vapors that possessed someone.
Tammi through Ruby to the ground, surrounded by debris of a bookcase broken in the fight. She looked down at her with mock sympathy. “Didn’t want your friends to know that all those centuries back you sold yourself to me? Embarassing,” she gave Ruby a half shrug with a half frown, “I guess. But don’t worry love, no secrets where you’re heading remember?”
It had taken the distraction of a witch that Tammi had betrayed to give Dean the chance to use Ruby’s knife to stab Tammi and free the three of them. Elizabeth, the witch, had not been so lucky.
When they were back in the hotel, Dean had to know more, probably because he more than Sam had accepted where that year would end. It had been a long time before Dean had told him anything about the conversation.
“Wacky night,” Dean commented to Ruby as he stepped off the sidewalk around the motel toward her. “So let me get this straight, you were human once, you died, you went to hell, you became a. . .”
“Yeah,” Ruby admitted without any emotions. She turned and started walking away.
“How long ago?” Dean asked before she got very far.
Ruby stopped. “Back when the plague was big,” she informed him without turning around.
“So all of ‘em,” Dean tried to reason it out, “every d**n demon, they were all human once.”
Ruby turned around slowly to face him. “Every one I’ve ever met.”
“Well, they sure don’t act like it.”
Ruby shrugged. “Most of them have forgotten what it means, or even that they were. That’s what happens when you go to hell Dean. That’s what hell is, forgetting what you are.”
From listening to the two Halliwell boys talk he had a feeling that while every demon Ruby had ever met had been human at one point, that was not true of every demon this family had dealt with. Of course that was assuming that Ruby was even telling the truth. She was pretty good at lying. If he had needed any proof of that, St. Mary’s Convent had been it.
Ruby circled around Lilith’s body, a look of awe on her face. “You did it. I mean, it was a little touch-and-go there for a while, but . . . you did it.”
The blood pouring from Lilith’s head and then the rest of her body came out in a steady, deliberate stream, too steady and too deliberate.
Sam watched first the blood and then Ruby, suspiciously. Something wasn’t right here. “What? What? What did I do?
You opened the door,” Ruby informed him in an almost giddy voice. “And now he’s free at last. He’s free at last!”
Sam refused to believe his own ears. “No, no, no. No, he . . . Lilith . . . I stopped her. I killed her!”
In an excited voice, Ruby began quoting. “And it is written that the first demon shall be the last seal. And you bust her open. Now guess who’s coming to dinner.”
“Oh, my god,” Sam gasp.
“Guess again,” Ruby smirked.
The sounded of pounding, Dean trying desperately to get in to his little brother, could be heard by both of them. It was ignored.
“You don’t even know how hard it was!” Ruby announced. “All the demons out for my head. No one knew. I was the best of those sons of *******! The most loyal! Not even Alistair knew! Only Lilith! Yeah, I’m sure you’re a little angry right now, but I mean, come on, Sam! Even you have to admit . . . I’m . . . I’m awesome!”
“You *****!” Sam exclaimed, thrusting his hands at her, trying to use his powers. “You lying *****!” He dropped, clutching his head instead.
“Don’t hurt yourself, Sammy,” Ruby warned. “It’s useless. You shot your payload on the boss.”
“The blood,” Sam decided, “you poisoned me.”
“No,” Ruby knelt in front of him. “It wasn’t the blood. It was you . . . and your choices. I just gave you the options, and you chose the right path every time. You didn’t need the feather to fly, you had it in you the whole time, Dumbo! I know it’s hard to see it now . . . but this is a miracle. So long coming. Everything Azazel did, and Lilith did. Just to get you here. And you were the only one who could do it.”
“Why?” Sam needed to know. “W-why me?”
“Because . . . because it had to be you, Sammy,” Ruby replied without making any sense. “It always had to be you. You saved us. You set him free. And he’s gonna be grateful. He’s gonna repay you in ways that you can’t even imagine.”
That was when Dean finally broke in.
Ruby stood to confront him. “You’re too late.”
“I don’t care,” Dean announced as he pulled out the knife and advanced on her.
Seeing what his brother was planning, Sam stood and grabbed her from behind, keeping her from escaping as Dean stabbed her.
Ruby flickered from the inside, then crumpled to the floor, dead.
“I’m sorry,” Sam told his brother, broken, used.
Sam gulped. Ruby had been a witch once. And from what he understood, she wasn’t a very nice one either. It was only in retrospect that he had truly tried to figure her out. She had led him down a very dangerous path and she had tricked him into doing things he never should have done, but he was still the one who had done them.
Though he had demon blood flowing within his veins, it wasn’t there naturally and it wasn’t there by his choice. Ruby’s hadn’t been natural either, but it had most certainly been there by her choice. On the other hand the Halliwell sisters were not demonic, and so far as he could tell they were fighting on the same side as he was.
Sam sighed. “Thank you.”
“For what?” The confusion in Darryl’s voice was obvious.
“You reminded me of a few things I’d forgotten and of things I hadn’t really thought about,” Sam informed him. “So tell me about what happened this afternoon.”