"I'm Listening"

Doctor/Rose Image by shine-by-comparsion (Ash)


"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." ~Friedrich Nietzsche

1. William had paused outside father’s study, hesitating at the sound of his mother’s sobbing. Not allowed to go in, no one but his father but then, he supposed he shouldn’t refer to it as father’s study anymore. Run off to the Colonies with a low born trollop, already 4 months gone with child. In father’s mind no doubt it was good riddance to his only son William, a rather effeminate child, allowed too much time with his sickly mother and not enough time with the rod. William had often heard talk from the servants about how unnatural a boy-child he seemed, held too close to his mother’s skirts as he was, spent to much time coddled.

The youngest child and only son of a middle-class family in rather poor financial means, held up only by the standing of his grandfather’s good name, William was certainly no ideal heir in his father’s mind. Two elder daughters, one dead of typhoid fever these past three years, another married off at the tender age of 16 to a man of good standing, his mother in her own unusual way had taken to indulging her small son with all his fanciful ways. Books of poetry adorned his shelves instead of books of business strategy, and time spent practicing the piano instead of hunting with his father and the other men of the village. Time spent fantasying about the beautiful vision that was Cecily and no time vulgarly gossiping about barmaids who showed too much skin and talked lewdly.

William drew a deep breath from somewhere deep inside his stomach and raised his trembling fist, intending to knock. He could do it. This was no longer father’s house, father’s domain. William was the man of the house now. For all purposes that study rightfully belonged to him, though he was only a boy of 13 years. One, two, three. He could hear the rhythm in his head, could feel the polished wood on his knuckles, a phantom touch. One, two, three. The door swung open, he had not knocked.

“William dear?” No sign of the tears on his mother’s face, she was calm and composed. Hair pulled back, dress unwrinkled and proper, she even managed a smile at him. He stared at her, feeling a lump in the back of his throat, preventing speech.

“Look at you William, you are a frightful sight. Ink under your nails, not even dressed! We have the ballet to attend tonight with the Underwood’s. Go now, get ready. Less then an hour!”

She pushed at his shoulders firmly to move him. No word was to be spoken between them about what he’d heard. A good woman must always put on a brave face, never reveal to the world her true thoughts. A good man even more so. William needed to learn to be a good man, though it frightened him so. Time to be strong for his mother. He started at his feet as they took the stairs on at a time, all the way through the narrow, winding hallway to his small room. The poetry, a distraction, nothing he could make a life out of, and nothing with which to provide his mother the comforts she’d grown accustomed to.

He traced ink smudged fingers against the binders of the books, letter by letter and stared at the Abacus he’d brought home with him from boarding school when he’d been called to come home at the news of his father’s shaming flight. No secret and William’s cheeks had burned as he waited for his luggage to be loaded into the carriage, the taunts and jeers of his fellow school peers ringing in his mind. His father had been a banker, it was the family trade, and William was intended to take his place alongside his father. He’d hoped not to, the monotony of numbers placing the restraint of words on William’s mind had made him ill, a life of dead dreams and hopes. Numbers didn’t hold any of the beauty that poetry did no flowing curves or heightened emotions. They were dead things. William must now become a carrier of such emptiness, such repression. There was nothing to be made in poems and in beauty in the world, this world of rigid order and time honored rules. Beauty was a hobby, one for women and small children.

William dug his nail into the skin of his finger at the thought, looking away at the drop of blood beading up on the pale skin. Grabbing a napkin he dabbed at his finger. A knock at the door and he bid his manservant enter, a dark haired boy of 16 years. A short time later he stood in the foyer next to his mother to greet the Underwood’s, placing a kiss on the gloved hand Mrs. Underwood held out to him. He looked away from Cecily, who smiled at him in what appeared to be sympathy, lighting up her face with a warm glow. She looked radiant.

“Good evening William,” she said, the sound of her voice almost like music to William’s ears. The sound of it would outshine the music of the ballet that night.

2. The beat of the music rushed in time with the blood flowing through the dancers’ veins that flooded Spike’s sense. The smell of sweat and pheromones, lust and the rush of adrenaline that turned people into fool’s up for all sorts of wickedness. Spike smirked at a pretty young pixie of a girl who was eyeing him, dressed in the kind of faux Victorian style common in these types of clubs this year. Nothing on the real getups mind, the skin shown through the lace and tarted up corsets these birds wore would have frightened proper Victorian ladies into fits. He breathed in the scent of the alcohol wafting off the girl’s pores in waves, and under it, the rushing blood. Fangs itching but he held himself back. Not his pray tonight. Still, might be good for a quick snack.

“Come here often,” she asked, slurring her words and batting her eyelashes in the drunken impression of someone coy and seductive. Looked a bit like she was being poked in the eye of course, she was as inexperienced in the art of flirting as a girl going through her first monthly. First time out probably, getting away from daddy, her childish attempts at rebellion. Too young to be in this club but she was pretty enough the bouncer’s let her in. Too bad the chit never would be getting home tonight.

Ten minutes later he popped out the loo, wiping at his mouth with a bit of lace he’d ripped off that corset she’d been wearing. No reflection, so if there was still blood there, in this lighting probably pass for red lipstick. Wouldn’t stick out too much in this crowd either, boys dressing like girls and fearing nothing; so common in these clubs. Spike loves them, loved the antithesis of all that had been Victorian. Puts it on and wears it well he does, all that lovely repression of their day to day lives coming out in a fire of animal instinct around loud, crushing music and dim lights.

The Jean Genie played on in the background when he spotted her in the crowd. Perfect posture, muscles tensed like a lioness ready to spring into action as she stalked the newly turned vampire out of the club, the lights playing patterns on her dark skin and the new leather of a long flowing coat. Lovely coat that one was, he’d like it for himself. Play up the vampire image quite a bit that would.

The rain was coming down hard and the sky outside was completely black as he stalked her outside the club. Not to close or she’d sense him there. He watched her make short work of the girl, a few kicks and punches, girl hadn’t been a fighter, and the girl was dust caked in the rain. The leather coat whirled around the Slayer as she paused to come down off her high, not even breathing fast with effort. Oh she was going to be a lovely dance alright. The demon was growling with the anticipation to come to the surface, he’d not had a dance like this in such a long time. He pushed it down, little more time, got to have patience. Last one had been over too fast. This was a prey not easily ensnared in the trap. Eyeing her a few more seconds he turned away. Swish. Nerves tensing in reflex, he spun around just in time to catch the stake that had almost ended the game way too soon for his liking. She glared at him with another stake ready.

“Hello luv,” he told her, smirking, human features sliding away.

3. One, two, three. One, two, three. Stop. Start again. His fingers clutched at the wild curls of his hair, harshly. He pulled them back and looked at them, blood all along his fingertips. Screaming in his ears, why would nothing drown out the bloody screaming? No, nothing should drown out the screaming. Deserved this he did. Not mum’s good boy anymore, he’d ripped and he’d torn apart and he’d ruined mums all over the world. The far reaches of the earth. So many mums.

The soul was like a cage, with spike’s set along the bars to pierce and cut at his skin, his mind, can’t forget. Never forget. All those girls, all those sons and all those fathers. Tearing them into pieces and enjoying it, revealing in the pain of others, craving it. Spike. Wretched name for a wretched man. No, not a man, never had been a man. The sods at the party, they were all here, laughing and jeering at him, and one by one being pinned to walls and carpets and ceilings with the spikes he’d so carefully picked out for just that dance.

So many girls like her, strong and golden and pure and tainted too much by him. Hadn’t loved him, how could she have? He was a monster. Taken something from heaven and tried to drag it down to hell with him, drag it into the dark. Her image tormented him, kept him up when he could be sleeping, drowned out the voices of the other victims to assault him with their acts of degradation, his desperation and her despair. He clutched at his knees, shutting his eyes, rocking himself. Can’t think of her, she wasn’t really there, wouldn’t be there.

“Spike.” A hand was almost touching his, soft skin so near and he flinched away, dragging his feet into the dirt and moving backwards more into the dark of the basement. A sigh, he heard a sigh. Why was there sighing?

The hand was back, a punch, “Snap out of it! What is wrong with you? What are you doing here?”

What was he doing here? Where else was he to go? Creatures like him belong down here, in the basement, beneath. Beneath it devours. Devours like he’d devoured lives in his lust and anger. In his game. Ballet dances, he wondered if she’d like the ballet. Thought about it once, taking her, as a date. Wouldn’t have gone, not with him. Had any of them liked the ballet? Pretty little swans all in a row, till Rothbart cast his evil spell. Hurt the girl.

“What? What are you talking about?”

Mumbling, had he been mumbling? Couldn’t think. She was still here, still tormenting him. Why wouldn’t she go away? What would make it stop? Who was he?

“Fine, I’ll go. Don’t know why I’m bothering anyway.”

One, two, three. One, two, three. Footsteps. Taught to dance that way he had been. One, two, three. Women in long dresses full of lace, no skin. Poetry in motion. He swayed back and forth, fingers tapping into his skull. One, two, three.

1. Growing up on a ranch in a backwater planet was a hard life, not saying it wasn’t, but it was an honest life. Folks minded their own business when the going ons wasn’t any of theirs, and helped out when it was needed. The life might not have been the fanciest, might not have been anything worth noting in whatever books the Alliance liked to hold up their standards to, but it was how Mal had been raised and he intended to fight for it.

Mama had cried her heart out the day Mal had enrolled, clutching her old beat up bible to her, only book she deemed proper to have in the house. Only book she set store by anyhow, and Mal got up every Sunday morning with her to listen to the Preacher Man who set up shop in an old abandoned house 20 miles away. Travelers liked to pass through every now and again, not so honest men who made a living through thievery and the like, but Mal liked to listen to their stories after the service. Night he left his Mama he stopped and listened to one such man, preaching on the merits of Old Earth and talking himself into a right snit about unification. After the man had drowned himself into a daze of words and beer Mal looked at the old man sitting next to him. Man didn’t even turn to look at him but the words had been meant for Mal’s ears all the same, “No one ever goes into battle thinking God is on the other side.”

Well Mal certainly wasn’t thinking God was on the Alliance’s side. He figured if God had meant for them all to live the same, he’d have started out the terraforming that way. Heard once that Old Earth had been moving towards that, cultural togetherness or some such thing as that. Figured if it had been meant to happened, it’d have happened already. Wasn’t right, big government types who can’t be bothered to send fancy medicine or food to poor planets wanting to come in and tell them how to live their lives.

First time Mal’d been up in space it was in a beat up old vessel, best the Browncoats could afford. Met Zoe during that trip, first woman he’d ever seen take up a gun and shoot at the man beside her talking trash about women soldiers. Knew then he wanted her in his platoon with him, a woman that didn’t take no shit and gave back what was given to her just as good. Reminded him of his Mama.

Five years working his way up the ranks, watching friends and fellow soldiers die, turn coward, or just plain loose themselves to their senses. Wasn’t glamorous, fighting. He’d take to wondering about the lives of the men he killed but never enough to stop fighting. Not for a cause he believed in, not for anything. Send letters to his Mama, sometimes he’d get a reply, other times he wasn’t sure she even read them. Went back to see her only once after the war, putting on a brave face at their lose, all the while a torn up mess inside. Stayed for a week and then left on the first transport ship out of there. He couldn’t hold to listening to his Mama’s preacher no more, and she couldn’t hold to the lose of her boy.

2. People are the same no matter where you go. Doesn’t matter if they had some big fancy schooling Mal hadn’t needed, money Mal would never see that he wasn’t stealing for some one else, or a house big enough to hold two Serenity’s. All reacted one of two ways on the wrong side of the gun. Some begged, and wasn’t that a barrel of fun, listening to a man sniveling for his life. Mal hated it, hated when it pricked at his insides and when it interfered with the job he was doing. Crew needed to eat, parts needed to be bought when the ship needed fixing. But a man that wouldn’t fight back wasn’t always a coward, just sometimes a man begging for the most precious things in his life. Mal knew the feeling, only difference was, he weren’t the begging type.

The other type stood and fought and they were the easier one’s to do a business with. No hard feelings in the end, they knew the score. Some were good men and if Mal were still the praying type, he’d pray for the men he’d been holding a bullet for. Others weren’t and Mal didn’t bother giving a thought to them. One less bad man in the ‘verse wasn’t going to do it any good, but neither would it do any wrong.

The Doc was a conundrum he hadn’t seen before. Certainly no yellow bellied coward, breaking little sis out of an alliance hold and giving up a fancy position and a hell of a lot of money to do it. Not the killing type though, couldn’t even hold the gun steady enough, probably would have succeeded in shooting his own foot before he’d shot the alliance scum holding the girl hostage. Boy held certain morals that Mal, even in his youth, ain’t never held. Wouldn’t have even been able to put down a rabid dog. Perhaps that would be why he let them stay, boy’d get himself and little sis caught within a week. Told the preacher he needed the fare, some of the crew fancied he just wanted to piss off the Alliance. Well, truth be told those were swell reasons, but they weren’t his. Ain’t never seen a prissed up, stick up the ass Alliance boy sacrifice like that and it was something. Wasn’t going to admit to it though.

3. Mal took a while to warm to people, always had. Zoe’d been the first he’d ever gotten close to without cause to know her well first and she’d been the last. Serenity didn’t feel as much like home without Wash, without Book. Without Inara. Wash had been as flighty as the ship he piloted but he’d been a good man, a good husband to Zoe. Mal had no cause to be looking for a new pilot, not now, probably not in the future. River was an able pilot well enough, given enough room and enough peace that she didn’t go off in the head and crash them. Happened once or twice, almost. Both times Zoe had stood there calmly looking as if she was ready to give up fighting.

Mal hoped Book was up there with his God. Still didn’t hold with that, God had abandoned him and his crew one to many times, but for Book’s own sake he hoped it. Never learned too much about the man, always had been something shifty about him, but he’d been crew and Mal always held loyalty above any other virtue. Even Jayne had quieted down enough to hold his hat in remembrance of the preacher and ain’t that a miracle when Jayne was respectful.

 Inara, that wasn’t ever going to work and they both knew it. Oh he’d be there in a flash again she ever needed him, but there wasn’t any cause that she should anymore. She’d been given a full pardon for her part in their doings wasn’t a big one, but a Companion’s position held sway. Couldn’t help pissing her off before she left, one more comment about rich men’s beds and she’d stormed off in that graceful way of hers. Hell, maybe that’d be the last time he saw her. Maybe it wouldn’t be to bad, she twisted him up inside to much.

Won his victory finally. Stuck it to the Alliance in places that needed sticking and it’d been a grand long time before many people started looking at their government with anything like trust again. Had to be done though, people needed to know. Mal held no regret for his actions, couldn’t. Won his victory, but still lost the war. Oh not a big war, not cold battles in the middle of desert planets were everyone is freezing and dirty and hungry. But he’d lost, three of his crew, gone and most ain’t coming back. Still, River was getting better, slowly and painful, she still had moments where she’d be doing things she shouldn’t, or seeing things that shouldn’t be seen, but she wasn’t as fitful. Wash and Book had liked the girl, they’d have been glad to see it. Glad to know in their ways they’d helped. And Simon and Kaylee were as happy as Jayne with a new gun, and Mal’d live a long time before he ever forget some of the scenes he’d walked into. Making up for lost time, those two, now that the boy’d finally gotten his head out his ass. Time would mend; scar tissue was the saying, covers the wounds left behind with scar tissue. Serenity would start to feel like home again.

1. The visions scared her. Every night she prayed to her God to be set free, to be a good girl. She didn’t understand why she was tormented with this affliction, this devil’s curse. Her father could barely look at her, the fey child his wife had produced, first an unwanted daughter and later a cursed one. Predictions of what was to come in childlike drawings of a toddler, the innocent words of a small girl. She flinched and cried when he beat her, cowered and ran to hide in the attic when he threw angry words at her.

Her God frightened her as well. Images of fire and brimstone, shrieking devils laughing as they painted murals from the blood running through her veins. Guts and innards hanging from rafters in cruel designs. Her fate awaited her, she knew it. It was her destiny, one she couldn’t escape. Like Cassandra’s ill fated visions of Troy’s destruction she saw her life, her long life drawn out before her. He would come for her, the handsome vision of the devil, a deceptive angel face. The blonde temptress woman with him, manipulative and fair. And later on, her own sweet and lovely poet. Images of destruction and madness. But Drusilla learned not to take heed of Cassandra’s ill fate, ran from it. Maybe if she was innocent enough, pure enough, her God would listen to her prayers. The convent brought rigid order to her chaotic life that she craved and for the first time she let herself go, let herself feel contentment. The visions almost stopped. She screamed loud enough to wake the whole convent the night she had a vision of her own degradation. She felt the first stirrings of madness set in right before she met her Angelus.

2. She punished herself quite frequently. She enjoyed her punishments, the masochistic tendencies of the Catholic saints and Martyrs she had admired in her youth imbedded deeply into her own being, her own demon. Pain was a sweet pleasure that brought her into sharp focus, the pain of others, pain of her own flesh tearing, burning, and mending itself back together. Blood was a sweet music that only she could hear, souls leaving the empty, barren bodies of her victims and going up, up to join with the stars. She would name them, all the names of her victims, everyone she remembered.

She didn’t remember them all. Reality got mixed up with visions, dreams, imaging’s and longings. She wasn’t always aware. Her feelings were lost in a sea of violence, a sea of twists and turns. Her sweet William, her grounding force, he didn’t understand. She needed to go where the paths lead her, towards her own destruction; there was no use in running. Pain followed her desperate path back to her maker, her Angelus, her God. Her devil. She had known the sickness that Prague would bring her, the mob that would hurt her, burn her as a witch and the dark creature that she was inside. She had known what Sunnydale would bring, her own loses, her own sweet William gone to the light that still held him in its unyielding grip. Her Angelus, gone one last time from her. Neither should try to run from their destinies, she must put them back on the path, no matter how much it would tear her up inside. The parts that no one could see.

3. She eagerly awaited her own destruction. Her life would be a long one. A long, sad tale of madness. Long after everyone she had loved and hated, taught and hurt had passed on to the veil between the worlds, that unknown illusion to even her own prophetic mind, she would be on the earth. Never a nurturer, she would kill and destroy and be for all the world a death reaper to every soul she passed and came across. Putting Spike on his path would lead to his death, a death that would earn the poet his long elusive redemption, but a final rest none the less. She liked the thought of an endless sleep, one from which you never woke, were never disturbed. By life’s cold realities, by harsh nightmares. Peaceful dreams and sleep. She would wait long and hard, living in her hell of its own creation and perhaps at the end, she would get her own kind of peace.

Last one for the night, lol. I’m not to overly happy with the second one. I’ve forgotten a lot of B&S.

1. He had a crush on his sister’s husband. Not physically attracted to him, though Robert was a gorgeous man, and not even romantic feelings to go along with that. He was happily married to Scotty and romantic feelings towards a guy whose brother he’d been with gave him the creeps almost as much as the thought of Justin/Rebecca had been when she was their sister. No, this didn’t happen till after, long after that. After Robert had his heart attack. He wasn’t even sure if he could call it a crush. But all the bad thoughts he’d ever had about the man were forgotten and suddenly Robert became one of the most important people in his life. Not just his brother-in-law, not just his boss, but a moral compass. He wondered how that had happened.

2. He’d had sex with a girl once in college. He knew he was gay by then, had even come out all to his family. (Thank you Kitty!) But he was drunk enough and she was butch looking enough that the idea didn’t seem so bad to him. It was wet and awkward and they both woke up sore the next morning, not able to look at each other. He threw up when he got back to his dorm room later on that afternoon. Three months later he saw her again. She handed him a pregnancy test. He looked at her, saw the frown on her face and took her to the clinic. Years later, trying and failing with Scotty to have a child, he thought about it. Thought it was a punishment from a God he’d never quite believe in.

3. After Scotty had stormed off during the disastrous dinner that he’d planned with Jason, Kevin thought about it. Thought about cheating. That was what he did. He cheated. Things got to deep, too emotional, he started to run. And he’d loved Jason, he truly had. Still did. Scotty was both new and old all at once, fun and happy and everything Kevin wasn’t. He was stability and need. Jason didn’t need him. Jason had his God. He thought about it for hours after Jason had left, thought about calling him. Thought about what might happen. He thought about Jason going off on a mission and leaving him again. Leaving him waiting beside the phone, like some army wife waiting to be told her husband had been killed. He found Scotty the next morning. He thought he might need someone that needed him as well.

On to Connor. :P

1. He had no family. They weren’t dead; they were as alive as he was. But he didn’t talk to them and they didn’t talk to him. The first time he almost gotten mauled by a dinosaur he picked up the phone and started to dial his mum. He put it down before he finished the number. She wouldn’t care. Too caught up in her life with her new husband; her new baby. Every time he almost died he would do the same thing, start to dial and put the phone down before he finished. One time he completed the number and put the phone down after the second ring. When he got back from the year in the past he finally finished calling her, and an unknown woman picked up. His mother had moved a while back and didn’t even think to contact him with her new number. She’d probably never even known that he was missing.

2. He’d started falling in love with Abby when he started living with her. It didn’t take him long. He’d never loved a girl before, never been quite so near one as he suddenly was with Abby. Everything they did was strange and foreign and she wasn’t quite what he and Tom and Duncan’s idea of an ideal woman had been. (Princess Leia was close). She was snappy and argumentative and she hated when he left his used towels on the floor of his own loft part of the flat. But she was real and vibrant and he wanted to spend every day with her, for the rest of his life.

3. He thought about killing Helen when he saw her again after Cutter died. He didn’t have a gun, couldn’t really use them anyway, and he would have gotten his neck snapped in a second if he’d tried to stab her. When they were stuck in the past, he would sometimes pass the time by imagining how Danny had stopped her from killing the first humans. Had he killed her himself? Had she died in some natural disaster? Were they both still grappling it out somewhere, sometime? Sometimes his thoughts about it got so elaborate that he would move away from Abby, take a walk somewhere. He didn’t want to be near her when his thoughts turned towards revenge. He didn’t want to taint her.

I had a few other thoughts but I had to narrow down three. *Is nervous*

1. Dad sometimes left for weeks. He would leave money for whatever motel, apartment that the boys found themselves in but sometimes it wasn’t enough. Money could go by fast and Sam was growing up fast. Dean stole some money from wallets the first couple of times till he got caught. After that it would be hustling in pool halls, sometimes the quickest easiest jobs he could find. By the time he was 17 he was faking ids for better jobs.

One time Sam wanted to go on a school trip that would cost a lot more then Dad had left or Dean could make. He was working in a bar at the time pretending he was over 21. Nothing special, not the bartender, just a waiter that didn’t get many tips for the job but a lot of compliments from the women, sometimes men, who frequented the place. It wasn’t unusual for passes to be made, suggestions that Dean could make a little more money. He tried it only once. Brought the costumer to the small alley behind the bar and started to make out with them. The money would have been enough for Sam’s trip and some new parts he needed for the Impala. But it was wrong, it felt wrong. Dean had slept with a lot of people he didn’t know, women who expected nothing from him and vice versa, but this made him feel to vulnerable. Too scared. He walked away without the money. Sam’s disappointed face when he didn’t go on the trip with his new friends has never left him. It was in a memory of things he couldn’t do to make his brother happy.

2. Dean had a lot of talents that most people would never expect of him, even his brother. He’d taught himself to cook when he was seven. He started out small at first. Canned soup, grilled cheese, scrambled eggs. He didn’t do it for himself. Dad wasn’t a good cook, had never needed to learn. Sam couldn’t live on burnt food and cereal. Dean remembered what it was like when his mother cooked and he tried to replicate that. Eventually he moved beyond simple, childish food and started to look for recipes of all his mother’s favorite food. Roast chicken with stuffing, steak with onions and mushrooms, cheeseburgers with barbeque sauce instead of ketchup. He would make these things for Sam on special occasions, but the one thing that never came out right was the strawberry pie. While his dad and Sam would enjoy it, he would push his own piece around the plate. It tasted like ash in his mouth. The ashes of the life his mother hadn’t finished living.

Everything she had ever wanted for him he never did. Before he dropped out of high school his science teacher for whatever town they had been living in, the names blurred together after years of constant moving, offered for him the chance to be in the local science fair. Dean only ever got barely passing grades, he wasn’t unintelligent but he didn’t care most of the time. What good was an education going to give him hunting? His mother would have loved for him to be in the fair. She had wanted nothing but the best for her children. College and good jobs, a great family life. He told the teacher no. That night he built a home made EMF meter from scratch out of an old busted walkman. He called it Mary in his head.

3. When he got back from hell he stood naked in front of the mirror in Bobby’s bathroom for hours, staring at the handprint on his shoulder. The only scar left on his body. The only story left on his body. All the scars had been memories of the life he’d had, reminders to be proud of. Or to learn from. Not all tales were good. Not all were things he would have chosen to remember.

The hook shaped scar on his hip from when he was in New Orleans, shortly before he’d set out to find Sam. The hunt there had been more difficult then he’d let on. The victim, a 20 something Spanish woman named Nina had been fun and kind and determined to help him get rid of her pesky problem. He’d protested but she’d been so insistent that he let her help. That had been a mistake. He had checked up on her son a few times after that, until he’d met Michael, the child he’d had to use as bait in the Striga case. He couldn’t after that; he was a reminder to the boy who needed a normal life, not one of a hunter. Sometimes in the mirror he would look and see blood running from his eyes. Bloody Mary’s mirror was broken but it would never truly go away.

He’d wondered if Castiel had known that. If he had swept away all the bad memories of his past life just as easily as he had swept away hell. If he knew that Dean needed the reminders in his life, to be stronger, better next time. To never fail again.

Ok Anne. Tudors only Anne, not RL Anne obviously because having personal canon about her is a little weird to me, lol.

1. She didn’t go to heaven after she died. Nor did she go to hell. It wasn’t purgatory either, not the place that the priests talked about, the place of being washed clean of their earthly sins. In fact it wasn’t so unlike earth, unlike England. The first time she saw Elizabeth she wondered if she had really died. Maybe the Tower, Henry’s madness, her own fleeting pain as she felt her head being disconnected from her body, maybe it had all been a terrible dream. She ran to Elizabeth, intending to hug her close. She felt coldness descend upon her after she passed right through the child.

Sometimes she wasn’t there at all. Sometimes she was nowhere it seemed, just thoughts, floating outside reality. Sometimes she saw Henry. Sometimes she saw his thoughts, his regrets, and his anger. She never saw him regret what happened to her. She saw the future, life long after she and Henry had passed. When she was able to speak to him that one time, drawing up the phantom image of Elizabeth, the phantom image of herself, she smirked at her victory. The victory which one day he would come to realize, not so long after he had passed. When she left him there, calling for her to come back, she finally felt herself let go.

2. She had hoped until the time the blunt axe had struck her brother’s head from his body for his pardon. That their father would save his only son, his heir. She knew he wouldn’t save her, wouldn’t look at her. Deep down she knew it. He was a cold man, one who had no use for a daughter that had been disgraced. Had climbed so high only to fall so low. So low as to be locked in the cold Tower, waiting, just waiting, for the day when all her sins and all her pains and joys would be judged. She worried. Worried that all she had done in her life, all her work, would be for naught, would condemn her. Good intentions, all good intentions, washed away down a blood encrusted road to hell. She had not been a nice woman, or a modest one. But George, her lovely George, he had been innocent. Innocent of the crimes of which he was condemned and therefore, some mercy, some act of kindness should surely be extended for him. It hit her like a knife in the stomach when he died, the wind being knocked out of her, hallucinations of blood running along the cracks in the floor, as she sobbed.

3. She had envied. She knew that. She had envied her sister’s simple marriage, her sister’s simple life. Her brother’s affairs she had envied. She had even envied Brandon’s closeness to Henry, their friendship. She had envied the sons of other mothers, she had envied their lives. She had climbed high, her ambitions all fulfilled. The light at the end of the tunnel, the crown, the influence to promote change. Change in the world, the church, and people’s lives. She envied the sometimes boring, mundane existence of peasants, their love filled marriages. She wanted and envied with the same quiet minded intensity that she had once envied Katherine of Aragon.

I’ve forgotten a bit of Dollhouse so some of it might be non-compliant with canon.

1. He doesn’t know what they mean but he has dreams at night. Dreams about Sierra. He’s not sure why he does. He doesn’t dream about anyone else. He doesn’t imagine anyone else lying close to him at night, lying with him, touching without clothes on. He wonders if anyone else has dreams. About Sierra. About any of the females in the Dollhouse.

2. He joined the army fresh out of HS. He hadn’t been particularly book smart, hadn’t gone to college like his two older brothers and his sister. A rift was caused between him and his somewhat pacifist family but then 9/11 happened. He stays two years in Afghanistan and his mother sends him a letter every day. Till shortly before he leaves, a letter comes from his father saying his mother passed away in a car accident. He’s distracted from his mission shortly after and two of his fellow soldiers are killed.

3. Every day after the world goes to hell he thinks about the child he and Sierra have created. The one he’s never met. He imagines them as a happy family, healthy and whole in a time when the world was chaotic but right. Not this burnt out husk of a life that everyone leads now. He wants that more then anything and it’s what keeps him fighting, fighting to right the world.

Now I have gotten the Rose one. :P

1. The human version of Ten explained his life after she had left him. Every single bit of it. His childhood, the hundreds of years  he’d spent before he met her. He explained what happened to Jack and what she had done as the Bad Wolf. Sometimes she would wake up at night after dreams that she couldn’t quite remember, dreams that she thought she couldn’t, or shouldn’t have. Worlds burning, paths crossed out in blood and tears. A world where she had died going into the void. Sometimes she wondered if she would age. The time vortex had been in her. What had happened to Jack could happen to her. She smiled the first time she saw a wrinkle that hadn’t been there before.

2. Sometimes she wondered what her life would be had she never met the Doctor. Would she have ended up like her mother? String of bad relationships, never finding that person that made her want to be more then she was, live and see the world beyond the view of a simple shop girl. She thought maybe it would have been an easier life, certainly a quieter one. But the stars and planets and knowing that life moved on was better then life without ever having known him, even if it was a short one.

3. She used to see Jack as a child. She didn’t know him of course then, he was just the funny army guy in the oversized coat that would watch the children from the park bench or the sidewalk. The parents noticed eventually. They chased him away, accused him of being a pervert, but she would still see him a few times after that. Eventually she stopped and part of her was convinced she’d made him up. She didn’t remember for years till one day, long after the battle with Davros, she looked at her own little Jack playing in the park and saw a man watching from a park bench.

Good one. :P

1. After the first time she met the Doctor it took months for her to feel regret. He had frightened her and what happened with Lance still stung. But she was more observant now, she noticed things more. She would find herself typing in The Doctor in internet search engines, looking for strange incidents in the news. After her father died she began to look for him. Eventually she came to find the same man whom Rose had found in season one. He showed her pictures of Nine and she concluded that he was a nutter. That was not the tall skinny pretty boy alien she had met. By the time they met up again she was almost at the point of showing badly drawn flyers to random strangers asking if they’d met this man.

2. She would wonder sometimes about her fake lover from her experience in the library. She would imagine their children, as real children and their life as something real. But then the Doctor would take her on a new adventure, some new planet and she’d push those thoughts to the back of her mind. He still needed someone to stop him from going to far and after all, the TARDIS wasn’t much of a home for children anyway.

3. The Doctor knew the moment she passed away. Sometimes it was trial and error, he would never learn to drive the TARDIS correctly it seems, and sometimes he would be a few days or months to late. One day he got the correct date right. He stood outside her nursing room door and watched her, contemplating if he should open up her mind. But he left. He never knew she caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye.

Hmmm good one. :P

1. Mitchell had been a virgin when he died. He joined the army right out of his teens and before that he’d been too afraid to talk to the village girls and much to frightened to pay a prostitute. His first sexual encounter included Herrick, who brought the girl and his first meal to him. Since then he’s had trouble keeping seperate sex and blood.

2. He had never intended on living with George. It just sort of happened. George needed a place to stay and he couldn’t be around vampires if he wanted to kick the blood addiction. George would be a good crutch. At first they stayed in run down inns and motels, till George found them jobs at the hospital and they saved up to rent Annie’s house.

3. He felt sorry when Lucy died. Not because he loved her but because that meant that maybe there was no forgivness in the universe. That people wanting to pay penance for the wrong they’ve done don’t get a happy ending. He wondered if she was in the waiting room with Annie.

Lol, thank you for not being evil. :P I appreciate that. You know this might end up slightly biased cause of my shipping though right? :P

1. James hated being an only child. It was lonely and boring and Godric’s Hollow didn’t have a lot of wizarding children he could play with. He practiced Quidditch all by himself while his parents watched because they were to old to fly. He would play with the muggle children sometimes but football wasn’t exciting to him and he felt left out when they talked about things like television, cinema, and books he hadn’t read. To compensate his parents spoiled him and as such as a child he wasn’t very social.

When he started Hogwarts he was determined not to be alone anymore. The first friend he made was Sirius and not quite knowing how to impress someone he showed off to him when Snape and Lily showed up. But what really bonded them at first was their love of cauldron cakes. His tendancy to show off to impress people continued for a while and as a consequence he came off as arrogant and rude to others.

2. He didn’t fall in love with Lily until seventh year. He liked her in fifth year but it wasn’t anywhere close to love. At first it was a joke and then it became a habit to ask her out. The first few times she said no it hadn’t stung, but eventually he started to wonder what was so wrong with him that she didn’t even want to give him a chance. After all, she’d given Snape a chance.

He fell in love with her after she said yes. Not over anything big, not because she said yes. He fell in love with her because she understood how important his friends were to him. He fell in love with her because she didn’t mind when sometimes she wasn’t the first one he came to with a problem. He fell in love with her because she forgave him for some of his stupid mistakes.

3. He and Sirius and Regulus would sometimes, at night at Hogwarts play Quidditch. He didn’t particulary like Regulus but he knew that Sirius loved his brother and so he tried to include him in things. He hoped that Sirius would be able to stop Regulus from following in the Black family’s footsteps. When Regulus stopped coming to the Quidditch meets and started to hang around more Junior death eaters, he would take Sirius’ mind off of it with anything he could think of, pranks, sneaking into Hogsmeade, random runs around the forest as Padfoot and Prongs. He never forgave Regulus for breaking his brother’s heart, but he saw him once before he died. They sat down and had a conversation in the Hog’s Head, it was short and Regulus left shaken. He died a few days later.

And…one more, short one. He could draw. Because someone had to draw the Marauder’s Map and for some reason, I wanted it to have been him.

And hmmm, didn’t end up all that bias actually, but then, the shipping was always more on Sirius’ side anyway, lol.