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sorryitsmyfirstdayonearth · 25 days ago

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Are you now or have you ever been (Sam Winchester x female reader)

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Prologue - On the night it happens

On the night it happens, you wonder if this was a huge mistake.

Not the deal itself, no. You could never get yourself to regret that, especially not with Sam sleeping next to you, somewhat peacefully. When he sleeps is the only time he looks relaxed. When he’s awake, he’s always frowning or pressing his lips together, thinking hard or concentrating on something. Rolling his eyes at Dean.

Well, he used to roll his eyes at Dean.

There’s always something weighing on Sam, no matter how much you try to get him to relax, and in the last years, it’s only gotten worse, especially in the last months.

But when he sleeps? His features are relaxed. His skin looks so soft and you want to rub yourself against it. But you don’t want to wake him, not yet.

Your plan, originally, worked around Dean being here, when it happened. Castiel as well, maybe. Bobby would have been good to have around, but he’d died shortly before, and you can’t shake the feeling that if the older hunter had been alive, things would never have gone downhill so badly, so quickly. It’s a childish wish, of course, but one you keep close to your heart anyway.

You look back at Sam, listen to his slow breathing. You remember how he looked when it happened. Pale. Eyes red and glassy. He was shaky. And every few minutes, and then later seconds, he would flinch at something, something that wasn’t there.

Every night, before he had to go to the hospital, you would lie in bed together, and you would run your hands over Sam’s ears or press his head close to your body, hoping that somehow you could stop the devil from talking to him, but it never worked.

Eventually, Dean had gone off to find some miracle cure, but you saw the truth. You saw it then and you see it now. Sam was going to die. He wasn’t eating, wasn’t sleeping. It was only a matter of days. So you did what you had to do.

You run your hand over his cheek. You wish you could watch him like this forever, but time is running out – you can already hear them.

At first you thought about just leaving in the middle of the night, leaving a letter. But now that the time has come, the ugly truth is that you’re too scared. You don’t want to be alone. If you could simply make yourself braver, you would, would spare Sam this. But you can’t.

Sam stirs, slowly at first, and you can see him fighting his way into wakefulness. Suddenly you feel a rush of love and gratitude, that you get to see him like this, one more time. He blinks his eyes open, makes a sound with his nose. Then he notices you in front of him.

“Everything ‘kay?” he mumbles, and it makes you smile. You run your thumb over his cheek, then lean in, press your forehead against his.

“Yes,” you say, and you’re not sure if you’re trying to convince yourself or him. You’re scared for yourself, but you’re also scared for Sam. It’s just you and him now, and not in a million years would you have thought that would ever happen.

You can’t think about that too much, because it will send you into a high panic, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You just have to trust that Sam can somehow bounce back from this, that he is enough of a survivor to keep going, even if he doesn’t want to.

Which is why you now wonder, if you should have told him sooner. You saw no point. Knowing Sam, he would have spent that year doing everything in his power to somehow save you. He might have done something really stupid, and you couldn’t allow that to happen. And in a way, you were hoping to spare him some pain – a year of knowing you were going to die, or being ripped from him out of nowhere, like any hunter could at any point. It seemed like an obvious solution.

But now that Sam will be left all on his own – you don’t know anymore. He is still blinking his way into full consciousness, and you wonder if you can still turn it around. If you can get him back to sleep, and then simply walk out and face what is waiting there for you. But something about the way you answered him or the way you’re looking at him, holding him in the middle of the night, is making the alarm bells in his head go off.

He’s frowning before he’s even fully awake, and that alone makes your love for him fill your chest so intensely and violently that it becomes hard to breathe. Just like that night at the crossroads. You can still feel the dirt under your knees as you sank to the ground.

“For this kind of favor you’ll get a year, not ten,” the demon told you. Your shoulders were shaking from crying but then you felt it. The love. It had never been easier to agree to anything in the world. Sam’s hand goes to your elbow.

“Hey,” he says, voice still raw. “What is it?” You shake your head a little, moving his with it.

“I love you,” you say and then it’s you who’s frowning. “No, that doesn’t cover it. That doesn’t say what I mean it to say.”

Sam’s getting worried now, you can tell. His hands move and he’s pushing himself up, into a sitting position. You follow him, sit up, still opposite him.

“Tell me,” he says, hoping to understand, needing to understand. You try to take a deep breath, but it’s hard with how terrified you are.

“One year ago,” you explain with a shaky voice. Sam’s gaze moves from you as he looks back and forth, trying to remember what exactly happened a year ago. “I couldn’t let you die, Sam.”

His eyes go wide, back to you. He understands. He always understands. He’s the smartest person you know. Him in that hospital, hallucinations of Lucifer driving him mad. His sudden healing, that you all assumed had something to do with Castiel remembering who he was, but none of you ever understood.

Sam grabs your wrists. Anger. It’s understandable.

“What did you do?” he asks. You open your mouth, but then there is a noise and you spin around. A scratch low on the outside of the motel door. You turn back, trying to focus. You take Sam’s face in your hands, because now you need him to hold you here. The tears are coming, and you can’t stop them, but you breathe in, calm yourself.

“I… don’t regret anything,” you say and now that understanding, realization is slowly dawning on Sam, his eyes are filled with terror. A loud growl on the other side of the door that Sam doesn’t seem to hear, but it makes you flinch. “I would sell my soul a thousand times if it meant you would be okay.” Sam’s hand goes into your hair, desperation making him hold on to you.

“No, that’s impossible,” he says. “No, no, no.”

His voice is so desperate, so sick in fear and grief that it breaks you open all over. Another bang on the door, a heavy body throwing itself against it and you can’t help but look there. Sam moves, eyes going towards where his bag is, his knife, his gun, but you grab his arms, hold on to him.

“Please,” you gasp, new tears spilling out of your eyes. “Please don’t leave me, Sam.”

He balances there, on the precipice of fighting or staying. He’s lost someone this way before, someone he loves, and he knows the horrors awaiting you. But you beg again. Beg him to stay and hold you. And so he does.

The door flies open with a bang and then it’s quiet. A breeze dances in and you don’t look there, don’t look at them. Instead you focus on Sam with everything you have.

“I love you so much,” you say, voice barely a whisper. Sam tries to say something. His hands are grabbing your arms, then your legs, your face, he can’t settle on anything. He doesn’t know how to keep you here.

“You’ve made me so happy,” you continue, because you need him to know. Need him to understand. “And I need you to keep going, Sam. Don’t let it be for nothing. I need you to keep fighting.” You want to kiss him and you start pulling his face in.

“I love you,” you repeat, because with the panic hammering away at you it’s the only thing you know is true. “I love you, I lo—”

You are ripped off the bed so violently that later on, Sam hopes that’s how you die – neck broken from the pure power of the hellhound leaping on the bed, grabbing you with its sick maw and tearing you down the side of it with it. Quick and painless.

Sam is thrown back, head hitting the edge of the sideboard. He doesn’t faint – he isn’t afforded that luxury. But he disappears into blackness for just a few seconds, an explosion of blood making its way down his neck and into the fabric of his shirt. He’ll find that shirt, weeks later, bunched up somewhere in his duffel, the stain a dark brown, and yet he is reluctant to throw it away, because it’s the last shirt he ever got to hold you in.

He leans over, for a second thinking the impact of metal against skull will make him throw up. He needs to grab a knife, he thinks, but then he hears a sound so sick and violent coming from the other side of the bed that there is nothing he can do but scramble over, more crawl than anything.

He’s not sure if the hellhound passes him and he doesn’t care, because then he sees you.

It’s bad. You’re on your front, head turned to the side, one arm at an angle that it shouldn’t be at. Sam crawls to you and he hopes, prays, begs that when he rolls you over, lifts your upper body into his lap, that you will somehow be alive, somehow return to him. Your blood stains the front of his shirt and his face when he presses it against yours.

“No, please,” is all he can say, and: “Come back.” All other words fail him. Your open eyes stare at the ceiling, but they no longer see anything.

Now Sam is well and truly alone.

#supernatural #spn #fanfic #sam winchester #gadreel #spn fanfic #sam winchester x reader #sam winchester x you #gadreel x reader #gadreel x you #are you now or have you ever been #aynohyeb #sorry's fics

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kittyprincessofcats · 1 year ago

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ICJ Ruling

Okay, let's get into this.

First of all, I get the frustration at the court not ordering a ceasefire. I was disappointed and frustrated at first too, since a ceasefire was the biggest and most important preliminary measure South Africa was requesting - and of course we just all want this horror to finally end for the people in Gaza. So I get the frustration and disappointment, I really do.

However, I do think this ruling is still a major win for South Africa, Palestine, and international law as a whole and here's why:

The court acknowledged that it has jurisdiction over this case and completely dismissed Israel's request to throw out the case as a whole. It will now determine at the merits stage (that will probably take years) whether Israel is actually commiting genocide.

The court acknowledged that Palestinians are a "distinct national or ethnic group and therefore deserving of protection under the genocide convention". Pull this out next time someone tells you "there's no such thing as Palestinians, they're all just Arabs".

The court acknowledged very unambiguously that "at least some" of Israel's actions being genocidal in nature is "plausible". South Africa has a case, officially. Israel is accused of genocide, in a way the ICJ deems "plausible", officially. This is huge. (And seriously, how freaking satisfying was it to hear all of those genocidal statements by Israeli politicians read out loud and used as justification for this rulling?)

The court might not have ordered a "ceasefire" in those words, but they did order Israel to "immediately end all genocidal acts" (which includes killing and injuring Palestinians) and submit proof that they actually did. How are they going to comply with this ruling without at least severly reducing or changing what they're doing in Gaza?

In fact, this wording might actually be more appropriate for a genocide (vs a war), as author and journalist Ali Abunimah notes on Twitter:

He's completely right. Israel lost today, by overwhelming majority (I mean, 15 to 2? I heard people predict the rulings would be very close, like 9 judges vs 8, but instead we got 15 to 2 (and even 16 to 1 on the humanitarian aid). Holy shit.) The court disimissed almost everything Israel's side of lawyers said, while acknowledging that South Africa's accusations are "plausible".

And this is important especially because of Mr Abunimah's second tweet there^. Because the question is, where do we go from here?

This ruling means that Israel is officially /possibly/ commiting genocide and that should have huge international consequences. The rest of the world now HAS to take these accusations seriously and stop arming and supporting Israel - and if they won't do it on their own, we, the people, have to make them. This is THE moment to rise up all around the world, especially in the countries most supportive of Israel (the US, the UK, Germany): Protest, call your representatives and demand a ceasefire and an end of arms deliveries to Israel.

We now have a legal case to back our demands: If Israel is, according to the ICJ, "plausibly" commiting genocide, then all of our governments are, according to the ICJ, "plausibly" guiltly of aiding in genocide. And we need to hold that over their heads and demand better. We need to do that right now and in huge numbers. Most politicians only care about themselves and saving their skin. We have to make them realize that they could be accused of aiding in genocide.

(As a German, I'm thinking of Germany here in particular: After South Africa's hearing, our government dismissed their case as having "no basis" - how are they going to keep saying that now that the ICJ officially thinks otherwise? Over the last months, people here have been arrested at protests for calling what's happening in Gaza a genocide. How are the police supposed to legally keep doing that now that the ICJ has officially deemed this accusation "plausible"? I used to be scared to use the word "genocide" at protests or write it on my protest signs - not anymore, have fun trying to arrest me for that when the ICJ literally has my back on this one 🖕🏻.)

So yeah - don't be defeatist about this, don't let Israel's narrative that they "won" (they didn't) take over. This might not be everything we wanted, but it's still a good result. Don't let what the court didn't say ("ceasefire"), distract you from the very important things that they did say. Let this be your motivation to get loud and active, especially if you live in any country that supports Israel. Put pressure on your governments to not be complicit in genocide, you now officially have the highest international court on your side.

#ICJ #ICJ ruling #ICJ hearing #South Africa vs Israel #Free Palestine #Palestine #Palestinian genocide #Gaza #Germany #I get why Palestinians are disappointed and I don't want to devalue those feelings #(but maybe this can give you hope)#But thinking about this as a German this is huge #Most politicians and people here still deny (or at least strongly doubt) that there's a genocide happening #Calling it a genocide is seen as an 'extremist' position #And some of our politicians have been borderline gaslighting us and calling anyone who calls it genocide 'crazy'#So I'm just feeling immense vindication and a newfound fearlessness and motivation to be louder and more active than ever #and I hope others here feel the same #I hope the quiet masses stop being scared to say something now

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