#much it reminded him of argall's

[crystallakec]

HI CRIS....cried a little while drawing this and cried a little more while reading your tags. thank you for leaving these it means so so much to me and I wanted to talk about him a little more😭

even if I want to believe, it's already too late.

[ladylilithprime]

In Sickness

Series: Fluffy Faerie Tales

Fandom: Supernatural

Pairing: Sastimmy/Jamstiel (Jimmy Novak/Sam Winchester/Castiel)

Rating: General to Teen and Up

Tags/Warnings: Half-Fae Sam Winchester, Jimmy and Castiel Are Twins, Sam Winchester Is Jack Kline's Adopted Father, Brief Allusions to Canon-Typical Violence, Sickfic, Castiel Hates Being Sick, Sam Has A Magical Twin

Summary: Living in a magically integrated community had its perks. Unfortunately, immunity from illness was not one of them. Luckily, Cas's half-faerie boyfriend is willing to come stay with him and Jimmy to help take care of him, which leads to a few unexpected revelations about Sam... like the fact that he technically has his own magical twin.

For: @fluffyfebruary challenge!

Prompt: Day 20: Partners

Read on AO3

LIVING IN A magically integrated area had several benefits. The security systems for businesses and homes were backed up by magical wards and some particularly powerful locals whom nobody with any sense wanted to risk making angry. The beaches were protected and patrolled by selkies and merfolk who didn't mind saving the occasional human tourist so long as they didn't litter or try to run off with somebody's pelt. The weather tended to stay reasonably decent unless it was unavoidable, and there was plenty of warning before anything major hit the town.

Unfortunately, being in a magically integrated area couldn't do too much about the spread of diseases. It wasn't just human illnesses, either. Dragons, selkies, dwarves, and merfolk all had their own particular infirmities, seasonal and otherwise. In fact, it was more likely that various illnesses could run the risk of crossing the species barrier, leaving people who might have otherwise been perfectly fine suffering some magically mutated malady.

"It's the flu," Sam sighed as he gently adjusted the blanket covering his boyfriend's legs. "Nothing magical or strange about it aside from you somehow catching the variant we all didn't get vaccinated for."

"Are you sure?" Cas pressed around the congestion in his sinuses. He hated how much he sounded like a whiny child, dismayed at how being ill could reduce him to this even after so many years.

"I'm quite sure," Sam said, handing Cas a tissue. "Dr Argall didn't find anything unusual in her tests, and Adam assured us that the sample we sent came back positive for just influenza."

Adam had actually laughed at them when they had called with the request until a sneezing and tearful Cas had choked out his worries about Sam or Jack catching something horribly mutated that their human blood would make them vulnerable to from having been in him. He hadn't apologized for laughing, but he had at least taken Cas's concern and their request a bit more seriously. That his testing had come back negative for unknown pathogens had helped settle Cas's mind... at the time.

"Don' wanna get you sick," he muttered, blowing his nose obediently. "Y'got th'cafe an' Jack... don' wan' Jack t'get sick...."

"And that's why Jack is staying with Donna and Amelia and Matt for the weekend," Sam reminded him patiently. "He'll probably have a hand-drawn get well soon card all ready for me to bring to you after work tomorrow."

"'M missi'g work," Cas grumbled, scowling at the blanket and decidedly not pouting.

"Jimmy's got the baking covered for now, even though we both know you're better at it," Sam said, unperturbed. "And I have it on good authority that your boss approved your sick leave and wants you to rest and recover at your own pace." He paused, and Cas could hear the smile in his voice when he added, "Consider this proper exchange for when you took care of me after the alicorns."

And it really was that easy for Sam, Cas knew. As a faerie of the Summer Court, Sam tended to calculate the balance of debt on a longer time scale than immediate transactions while being very humanly coy about the exact balance. Or maybe that was a faerie thing, too. Cas knew that Jimmy had asked Mary about it and she had been only moderately helpful in explaining, something about Sam being "more human in his heart, but more faerie in his nature" that didn't make a whole lot of sense at the time.

Thinking about it just brought up another nagging feeling of unbalanced debt. "S'rry..."

"For what?" Sam asked, sounding genuinely bewildered.

Cas shrunk down into the couch nest. "Dean..."

Silence, and then Sam let out a long, heavy sigh. "Dean is responsible for his own behavior and, therefore, the consequences of that behavior. His choices are in no way your fault or responsibility." Another moment of silence, and then Sam settled down into the nest against Cas's side. "Honestly, I was sort of expecting him to take things badly. Not to the degree he did, that was an unpleasant surprise, but Dean has never reacted well to someone other than him taking care of me when I'm hurt. Bad enough for him when it was just my twin."

"Twin?" Cas nearly jolted upright, only to collapse back from dizziness. Cool hands gently pressed him back down into the cushions, faintly callused fingers stroking back his hair, and he blearily looked up towards Sam's face.

"It's not the same as you and Jimmy," Sam said gently, his eyes lowered to stare pensively at the blanket to give Cas the space to study his expression. "We aren't in separate bodies having wholly separate experiences. Calling him my twin is just sort of more accurate to faerie standards than calling him an alter or split personality. Emotionally speaking, he's much younger than I am, and he tends to prefer to sleep much more than I do."

"Will you tell us about him?" That was Jimmy, either drawn from the kitchen by Cas's exclamation or simply bringing the bowl of soup he held at the right time. The soup was handed to Cas, and Jimmy took up a position on the other side from Sam where Cas could reach his hand if he needed. "If he's a part of you, then we'd like to know... and if any humans out there can understand magically created twins...."

"Point," Sam chuckled softly. "Alright. You both know I was in the military back in the faerie realms. When I was about eight hundred and sixty years old, there was a skirmish near the borderlands and a rift opened up. I kept my unit as safe as possible, but the rift was into a Hell dimension and several of us were dragged through before it sealed.

"That's when my twin was born, in the fires of that hell dimension," he murmured. Cas exchanged a glance with Jimmy, then reached out and took their boyfriend's hand gently. Sam smiled softly and stroked over Cas's hand with his thumb. "He spent more time awake there than I did, fighting off the demons that threatened our people, killed a number of them... lost all but two of my people when we finally rushed their high command and my twin, uh, basically took over rulership." He ducked his head a bit sheepishly. "So technically speaking I'm King of Hell, albeit more like my twin and I are jointly a king of a hell. Crowley, I think you met him in passing a few times? He's essentially our regent. Dean doesn't know exactly how long I was there, because of the way time worked differently between the various dimensions, and the two survivors, my twin, and I all agreed that he didn't need to know. When his forces busted through, we had all visibly aged, but perks of faerie genetics meant he couldn't tell how much. He assumed it was a hundred and fifty years, and none of us corrected him."

"But it was much longer?" Jimmy asked.

"Upwards of five hundred that I'm aware of," Sam admitted with a wince. "Probably longer. There are chunks of time missing from my memory where my twin was in control and had me buried deeper down to protect me. He was in control when Dean busted through, and... well, the fact that my twin exists at all made him furious, because he's proof that Dean wasn't there to protect me. So he sleeps and only really comes out when I'm in mortal peril. Because I'm less quick to attack than he is, more likely to defend or negotiate than simply... execute."

Silence descended once more as Cas and Jimmy processed this information, broken by Cas needing to blow his nose again. It did somewhat explain Dean's blow-up, even though it didn't excuse it. And it also explained the weirdly irreverent deference Crowley showed Sam whenever he dropped by with the monthly supplies of--

"Tha's why th'cafe gets such a good deal on th'hellfire roast coffee beans and other demonic byproducts?" Cas asked.

"Sure is," Sam nodded. "Yearly tithe, but because of the time difference Crowley brings it by once a month by our reckoning. I have similar deals with other realms to get certain ingredients at a discount."

"Useful," Jimmy hummed. He exchanged another glance with Cas. "Is there a way to tell the two of you apart when you, er...?"

"Swap?" Sam supplied. He shrugged. "I mean, we use different glamour sets due to our different personalities and respective responsibilities... my twin took to the whole 'ruler of a hell dimension' role and tailored his glamour accordingly. Yellow glowing eyes, gold-tipped black horns, black warding marks, claws, articulated bat wings for the intimidation factor...."

"That sounds seriously badass," Jimmy breathed as Cas nodded. Sam's cheeks turned pink, and Cas wondered if he was actually blushing or if he was altering his glamour to make it look like he was. Jimmy must have been thinking something similar, because he said, "I have more questions about how your glamours work if you don't mind explaining sometime, but we wouldn't be opposed to meeting your twin if he wakes up while you're with us."

"Surprised he didn' wake up with th'alicorns," Cas mumbled, blowing his nose again and screwing up the tissue to toss at the trash can.

"Oh, he did," Sam admitted with a grimace. "I asked him to stay back because... well, you two were already having a rough night without adding my semi-demonic and bad-tempered twin into the mix. We might want to have a more controlled and deliberate first meeting if you really want to."

"He's your partner in ruling your hell dimension," Jimmy pointed out with a shrug. "We're your romantic partners. It seems like a good idea that we all know each other."

"But not until I'm not sick," Cas said, sniffling even as he winked. "Don' wanna be mistaken for a threat to your health."

[renee-writer]

Serial Killer Chapter 8 Lallybroch

A/N The wonderful backstory was all my co-writer @ladymeraud. Thank you luv.

Jamie rides a motorcycle to Lallybroch. The house and surrounding land has been in his family since the 1700's. As the only son, by auld tradition, he is entitled to be it's master, it's laird. But that isn’twhere his heart lies.

His nephew and namesake, wee Jamie, hears him coming and trips over himself to get to him. “Clumsy oaf,” Jamie teases as he lifts the excited bairn on to his back. At ten, the lad was almost to big for such a move. “Come let's go find yer mam and da and grandmam.”

“Da is out in the fields but mam and grandmam are inside.” He nods as he enters his childhood home and let’s his nephew down. His other nephews and nieces swarm around him. He vives them each attention before turning to his own mam, Ellen and sister, Jenny.

“Sae my wayward son has finally made it home.”

“Mam, tis work. It has got verra complex.”

“We hear of the,” she stops and turns to her grandchildren,” Out with ye. Adult conversation.” They scatter with reluctance. “the murders. Ye are working that case?”

“I am trying mam. He is a cunning bastard. Ye recall the auld tales of Black Jack Randall?” Both women gasps, Jenny making the sign against evil and Ellen crossing herself. “He reminds me some of him. I need to read the journals written by my great- grandsir James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie. Are they still upstairs?”

“Aye son. But ye canna believe… He is long dead.”

“Of course not mam. I am just searching for anything that will help me solve the case.”

The next morning finds him in the dusty attic, opening the locked chest that contains the journals. He carefully lifts them out. Over 200 years old, they are quite fragile. He sets in to read.

“I meet Claire, the love of my life when she became a ward of my Uncle Column's. He father had been the tutor for the Laird's children. Her mam a midwife. They trained their daughter well and she had some of both sets of skills when she came to Castle Leoch.

I ken'd immediately as did she. We asked right away but Column made us wait until she was 18 before marrying. Our first child was born in the summer, chestnut haired with my blue eyes, Faith Ellen Fraser was a true beauty. Her sister, with her mam's brown curls and whisky eyes, came in the fall of the next year. Brianna Elizabeth Fraser was just as beautiful as her sister.

A year later, we are called back to Lallybroch with the death of my da. My mam and sister are happy to meet my wife and our lasses. Their was growing discontent. Those that wished to see the end to the reign of the protestant king. I keep myself and tenants out of such. Content to be Laird and raise my bairns.

Then he came, a Redcoat Captain by the name of Black Jack Randall. He came for the Crown tax. I was out in the field. Claire tried to satisfy him but he then asked for more then a married woman could give. My wife is nae the meek and obedient type and roundly slapped him. I heard her screams from out in the fields and came at a run. I was able to prevent her molestation but was thrown into Fort William.

Black Jack was in a rage. He strapped my back raw, then he buggered me over and over. I didn’t ken then that Claire and Dougal were in a race towards me with the Duke of Argal to see me freed. To be honest, I just wished to die. Not believing I could ever be a husband to my wife again.

They got me home where my stubborn wife, mam, and sister refused me the comfort of death. I came fully back to myself when Claire placed my red haired blue eyed son in my arms. I dinna even ken William Dougal was on the way. Claire was focused on my recovery and dinna wish to burden me with it. It was all I could take and I swore revenge on the British. I mustered a regiment and we went to join my grandsir, the Old Foxes, men. This keep my name off the rolls and, saved Lallybroch at the end.

We fought several battles but, before the last battle, the devastation that was the battle of Culloden, Claire sent word that she was with bairn again. I recalled myself, withdraw my men, and we marched home. Alexander Malcolm was born and we prepared for the future. We hid all the valuables, planted extra crops, and prepared as much meat as we could. And we waited. I waited to see if that demon Black Jack had survived, Claire awaited the birth of what turned out to be twin lasses, Iona Claire and Elizabeth Janet.

We were able to keep Lallybroch, though times were lean. We all worked the land, paid our taxes, like good subjects, and raised our bairns. The last, Fergus Claudel was born the year Faith turned 16.”

Jamie looks up and stretches. The last journal finishes the tale, written by his eldest son, William, tells the rest of the tale. The Fraser’s had lived to a ripe old age and seen their grandchildren’s children. Jamie was buried in his kilt by his wife. The only thing that weighted on his mind was the lack of knowledge about what had happened to Black Jack.

What had happened to Black Jack? This new demon shared some of the characteristics of this menace that had stalked his family 200 years ago. But, it can't be the same man, can it?

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Okay -- I’d like to post a CORRECTION to this paragraph, that I wrote, above:

Finally, there’s the fact that Ophelia was being hastily buried in the churchyard – even though that was strictly forbidden for suicides. The younger gravedigger thinks that’s because Ophelia was a privileged noblewoman, and getting special treatment. The older gravedigger reminds him (and the audience) that not all people who die by drowning are at fault… 

I went back and reread that bit (which really should be included in the list of evidence that Hamlet is a black comedy -- in the script, the two gravediggers are named “First Clown” and “Second Clown.”

Anyway, it’s the elder gravedigger who argues that Ophelia committed suicide, but in the process, reminds the audience that it shouldn’t be counted as such. I’ll just quote that bit:

Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here stands the man; good; if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,--mark you that; but if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.

So, he’s arguing that because Ophelia went into the water, she must have committed suicide -- but we, in the audience, who’ve just witnessed Ophelia’s madness just a few scenes earlier (even ignoring Queen Gertrude’s suspicious behavior), know that Ophelia did not “go to” the water, because she was (at the very least) so lost in madness that she fell in accidentally.

(Anyway, I also saw a clip YouTube from a history show that said that drowning accounted for 40% of all accidental deaths in Elizabethan England -- precisely because of all the times people had no choice but to go to the river banks to collect water or to wash their clothes. And this little speech from the gravedigger is a great character sketch on Shakespeare’s part: this old man has spent so much of his life digging graves that he has a whole lot of opinions about people’s deaths, but has lost touch with the facts of how they live their lives).

Now, I’m not one of those people who stan Shakespeare in everything he wrote (a few of his plays are just hot messes), but here, I do agree that he’s at his peak with this one, with what characters know which, (or should that be which know what?), and telling us the story of what happened, not through some Authorial voice on High, but many different limited points of view.

This is the literary criticism hill I have chosen to die on.

There has been a half-complete version of post on my Dreamwidth journal under a “Private” filter (my eyes only) here since 9 December, 2018, just waiting for me to get the energy and mental focus to write an essay outlining all the textual evidence in Act 4, scene 1 (Ophelia’s “madness” scene). But at this point, I don’t think the required energy for that will ever come – at least, not for the long essay format.   So I’m just going to post my conspiracy theory Thesis Statement here:

Ophelia did not commit suicide – she was murdered. By Queen Gertrude (probably).

And I can’t help but wonder how this play would be taught and performed if this interpretation were the standard one Here’s a bit of a presentation by Shakespearean actor and scholar, Ben Crystal, on his interpretation of the “To be, or not to be?” soliloquy, and how he no longer thinks Hamlet was suicidal at that point in the play, either (though he was, earlier on): Ben Crystal talks about Original Pronunciation, 20 July 2017 (it’s at a point about 40 minutes in to the whole thing). So what if suicide is not a recurring theme of the play? How does that change things?