Emily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2011-02-03 11:32 pm
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2011-02-03 11:32 pm
Sam/Buffy - The Thing About Souls
Fandom: Supernatural/Buffyverse
Title: The Trouble with Souls
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
iluvroadrunner6
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sam Winchester/Buffy Summers, Faith Lehane, Willow Rosenburg, Dean Winchester, implied Dean/Bela.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
xoverland Challenge: Romantic Love Circle
24hour_themes Prompt: 14:00 ~ Building relationships, encouraging understanding and love between people, sexual symmetry.
tamingthemuse Prompt: Ebrillade
Content Warning: Spoilers from 515: Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid through Season 6 of Supernatural.
Summary: Sam has a pulse.
Author’s Note: Possibly part of Devil Town. I’m not there yet in the grand scheme of things, but it feels like them. If there is an onslaught of Buffy related fic coming, I blame my canon review. I’ll try not to flood everything with her.
Disclaimer: I don’t own. They belong to Whedon and Kripke. I’m just borrowing and will put everything back where I found it.
Sam has a pulse.
It jack hammers under her hand, hard and fast when he kisses her. It reminds her that he is alive, warm and pressed against her. She slides into his lap, and as his arms come around her, she tries not to think about the fact that a few hours ago there was no pulse. Sam was cold and dead, with empty eyes and holes in his chest. He could shower the blood away, burn the clothes, get rid of all the evidence, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t erase the fact that for a few very long hours, Sam was dead.
She had been too late.
It wasn’t Lucifer, it wasn’t the Apocalypse, it was just people. People who thought they were doing the right thing, and just blew him away without a second thought. Faith and Buffy had pulled up to meet the brothers and the two hunters were coming out of the hotel rooms. The guns were still smoking.
It’s an odd kind of day when Faith has to be the one to hold Buffy back.
That didn’t matter now, however. Sam is back, and he’s here, pulse thumping against her chest. She realizes then that she’s never thought about how comforting that sound can be. She’s used to her partners not having them. But Sam does, and when he slides over her, she never wants to stop feeling that thump-thump thump-thump pressing back against her skin. She’s actually pretty sure she never wants it to stop at all.
When it’s over, Sam curls around her, and she forgets, for a little while, that he was ever gone. Large hands trail over her skin, making her feel even tinier than she already is, and it’s a long, long time before he actually speaks.
“Do you still remember Heaven?”
She shifts in his arms, one hand coming up to brush his too-long hair away from his face so that she could look at him more. “Bits and pieces. Not as much as I used to.”
“Did—” He pauses, and she can tell that he’s focusing, thinking and trying to find the right way to ask what he wants to know. “I don’t think I’m supposed to go to Heaven. All I ever did was cause everyone pain.”
Her fingers find the bottom of his chin, and she tips his eyes up to look at her. They trail over his jaw, keeping close. “Not all pain,” she smiles. “There’s lots and lots of good, too.”
He shakes his head, looking away from her as he rolls onto his back. “The stuff I’ve done—I’m not strong like my brother. I don’t do the right thing.”
“Liar,” she says, moving so that she’s straddling his waist again. “You’re a lot stronger than you think, Sam Winchester.”
He looks up at her, eyes full of gratitude, but disbelief all at the same time. He swallows before reaching up to run his fingers through her hair. “That so?”
“Yeah,” she nods as she settles in against him. “That so.”
***
She doesn’t expect him to prove how strong he actually is.
She still thinks that she can save him, pull him back before he slips away completely. She hopes against hope that in the end, they could all live happily ever after, without any of the consequences.
When it really is over, she runs away.
***
She doesn’t set foot stateside again until Dean calls her, shortly after he finds out that Sam came back without a soul. She hears through the grapevine that Sam’s back—Bela goes against Dean’s wishes and calls her, but she doesn’t push. If Dean didn’t tell her that Sam is back, there has to be a reason. When she finds out that Sam was back for over a year, and conveniently decided not to tell anyone, she understands why.
Then when she hears he doesn’t have a soul, things start making a lot more sense.
She arrives in New York, and Sam is not there, but Dean is pacing like a caged animal. “I hear you got experience with this,” he says, “rensouling people?”
“I don’t,” she replies. “Willow does. But … this is different, Dean.”
“Different? Different how?”
“Because Sam’s soul isn’t just … lost in the ether somewhere? It’s in Hell. Willow’s a pretty powerful Wicca, but I don’t think that she can pull something like that.”
Dean’s lips press into a thin line as he considers that, trying to find some way around the elephant in the room. He takes a breath, before looking down. “I can’t manage him on my own, Buffy. I can’t—I can’t have eyes on him all the time. Especially when he doesn’t sleep.”
Buffy’s eyes close, and she doesn’t want to do this. In fact, seeing Sam without a soul is the last thing she wants to do. She wants her Sam back. But beggars can’t be choosers, and while Buffy never considers herself a beggar, she’s still not a chooser in this situation.
“Fine. I’ll do it.” She turns and starts to walk off. “But if he winds up with broken bones, don’t blame me.
***
Sam without a soul isn’t a monster.
There’s no demon inside him, walking and talking in his skin. There’s just a guy who probably knows right from wrong, but doesn’t really care either way. It’s annoying more than anything else, but Buffy knows how to keep him in line. If he doesn’t respond emotionally, she just has to kick his ass to keep him in line, and for the most part it works pretty well. Except when he tries to flirt with her.
He tries to push ahead on a hunt, and she shoves him back. It takes a few hits to get his back up against a tree, and instead of acting pissed, or annoyed, he just grins.
“Almost forgot how hot that was.”
She shoves off, rolling her eyes as she moves to keep tracking the werewolf in question. “Not now, Sam.”
“Come on, Buffy, it’s not like we haven’t done it before,” he says as he follows her, his long stride allowing him to catch up and slip in front of her. “I’m still me. And having a soul clearly isn’t one of your priorities.”
She stops as that goes through her like a bullet to the heart. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You and Spike slept together for months before he got his soul.” He gestures to himself. “Same basic principle, but at least I have a pulse.”
She hesitates for only a minute, before her fist swings out and she catches him across the jaw. Sam drops like a sack of potatoes, and she knows it’s going to be a pain getting him back to the Impala, but it was better than having to listen to him talk. Dean catches up with her, and he looks over her shoulder at his brother’s unconscious form, then frowns back at her.
“What happened?”
“He pissed me off.”
***
She meets up with Willow in Cleveland, shortly after Castiel axes Crowley. She’s not one for lots of tears, and she certainly isn’t shedding any for that particular demon. There are bigger, more important thoughts spinning in her head, and when she flops down on Willow’s couch she has more questions than she does answers.
“Can you do it?”
“Can I do what?”
“Can you put Sam’s soul back?”
Willow hesitates for a moment, before tipping her head back and forth. “Not yet, but I’m still working on it. The situation is just a liiiiittle bit more complicated than your normal, average re-ensoulment.”
“I know.” She’s quiet for a long time. “I’m not sure if you should.”
“What?” Willow frowns, sitting up a little more. “But—it’s his soul. Soulless Sam only leads to an unhappy Buffy.”
“Yeah, but Soulful Sam might break him,” she sighs. “I want Sam. But I don’t want to kill him with this.”
“We can’t leave his soul in Hell, Buffy. It’s bad enough that it’s been in there as long as it has.” There are reasons why Willow is her best friend, and this is one of them. “He needs his soul.” She reaches over and places her hand over Buffy’s. “We’ll figure it out. One little baby step at a time.”
She nods for a moment, before inching closer and curling into Willow’s arms. Willow is right. She knows Willow is right. She just wishes that she wasn’t too impatient for baby steps.
***
Sam gets his soul back, and he forgets.
Death comes through in a way she doesn’t expect, and Sam sleeps for almost two weeks straight. Willow says that his body probably needs time to adjust to having a soul again, and Buffy waits. She waits to see if this crazy idea of Dean’s actually works and Sam is really Sam again.
Then it's about two in the afternoon, and Sam opens his eyes, he looks at her, and it’s like the past year and a half hasn’t happened. He smiles sleepily, one hand reaching out for her to pull her closer. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she smiles back, sliding in bed next to him, and sliding her arms around his waist. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks. I think.” His hand comes up, brushing his fingers through her hair, one large hand brushing against the side of her face and pulling her closer. He doesn’t remember. That much she can tell. She isn’t sure if she should be grateful or angry that he doesn’t feel the same weight that she does, but for the moment, none of that matters. She has Sam again. He’s warm, real and pressed against her in a way she hasn’t felt in a really long time.
“I missed you,” she whispers, pushing up to brush a kiss to his lips.
He closes his eyes into the kiss, pushing her back onto the bed, and the rest of the world falls away.
Title: The Trouble with Souls
Author:
iluvroadrunner6Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sam Winchester/Buffy Summers, Faith Lehane, Willow Rosenburg, Dean Winchester, implied Dean/Bela.
xoverland Challenge: Romantic Love Circle24hour_themes Prompt: 14:00 ~ Building relationships, encouraging understanding and love between people, sexual symmetry.tamingthemuse Prompt: EbrilladeContent Warning: Spoilers from 515: Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid through Season 6 of Supernatural.
Summary: Sam has a pulse.
Author’s Note: Possibly part of Devil Town. I’m not there yet in the grand scheme of things, but it feels like them. If there is an onslaught of Buffy related fic coming, I blame my canon review. I’ll try not to flood everything with her.
Disclaimer: I don’t own. They belong to Whedon and Kripke. I’m just borrowing and will put everything back where I found it.
Sam has a pulse.
It jack hammers under her hand, hard and fast when he kisses her. It reminds her that he is alive, warm and pressed against her. She slides into his lap, and as his arms come around her, she tries not to think about the fact that a few hours ago there was no pulse. Sam was cold and dead, with empty eyes and holes in his chest. He could shower the blood away, burn the clothes, get rid of all the evidence, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t erase the fact that for a few very long hours, Sam was dead.
She had been too late.
It wasn’t Lucifer, it wasn’t the Apocalypse, it was just people. People who thought they were doing the right thing, and just blew him away without a second thought. Faith and Buffy had pulled up to meet the brothers and the two hunters were coming out of the hotel rooms. The guns were still smoking.
It’s an odd kind of day when Faith has to be the one to hold Buffy back.
That didn’t matter now, however. Sam is back, and he’s here, pulse thumping against her chest. She realizes then that she’s never thought about how comforting that sound can be. She’s used to her partners not having them. But Sam does, and when he slides over her, she never wants to stop feeling that thump-thump thump-thump pressing back against her skin. She’s actually pretty sure she never wants it to stop at all.
When it’s over, Sam curls around her, and she forgets, for a little while, that he was ever gone. Large hands trail over her skin, making her feel even tinier than she already is, and it’s a long, long time before he actually speaks.
“Do you still remember Heaven?”
She shifts in his arms, one hand coming up to brush his too-long hair away from his face so that she could look at him more. “Bits and pieces. Not as much as I used to.”
“Did—” He pauses, and she can tell that he’s focusing, thinking and trying to find the right way to ask what he wants to know. “I don’t think I’m supposed to go to Heaven. All I ever did was cause everyone pain.”
Her fingers find the bottom of his chin, and she tips his eyes up to look at her. They trail over his jaw, keeping close. “Not all pain,” she smiles. “There’s lots and lots of good, too.”
He shakes his head, looking away from her as he rolls onto his back. “The stuff I’ve done—I’m not strong like my brother. I don’t do the right thing.”
“Liar,” she says, moving so that she’s straddling his waist again. “You’re a lot stronger than you think, Sam Winchester.”
He looks up at her, eyes full of gratitude, but disbelief all at the same time. He swallows before reaching up to run his fingers through her hair. “That so?”
“Yeah,” she nods as she settles in against him. “That so.”
***
She doesn’t expect him to prove how strong he actually is.
She still thinks that she can save him, pull him back before he slips away completely. She hopes against hope that in the end, they could all live happily ever after, without any of the consequences.
When it really is over, she runs away.
***
She doesn’t set foot stateside again until Dean calls her, shortly after he finds out that Sam came back without a soul. She hears through the grapevine that Sam’s back—Bela goes against Dean’s wishes and calls her, but she doesn’t push. If Dean didn’t tell her that Sam is back, there has to be a reason. When she finds out that Sam was back for over a year, and conveniently decided not to tell anyone, she understands why.
Then when she hears he doesn’t have a soul, things start making a lot more sense.
She arrives in New York, and Sam is not there, but Dean is pacing like a caged animal. “I hear you got experience with this,” he says, “rensouling people?”
“I don’t,” she replies. “Willow does. But … this is different, Dean.”
“Different? Different how?”
“Because Sam’s soul isn’t just … lost in the ether somewhere? It’s in Hell. Willow’s a pretty powerful Wicca, but I don’t think that she can pull something like that.”
Dean’s lips press into a thin line as he considers that, trying to find some way around the elephant in the room. He takes a breath, before looking down. “I can’t manage him on my own, Buffy. I can’t—I can’t have eyes on him all the time. Especially when he doesn’t sleep.”
Buffy’s eyes close, and she doesn’t want to do this. In fact, seeing Sam without a soul is the last thing she wants to do. She wants her Sam back. But beggars can’t be choosers, and while Buffy never considers herself a beggar, she’s still not a chooser in this situation.
“Fine. I’ll do it.” She turns and starts to walk off. “But if he winds up with broken bones, don’t blame me.
***
Sam without a soul isn’t a monster.
There’s no demon inside him, walking and talking in his skin. There’s just a guy who probably knows right from wrong, but doesn’t really care either way. It’s annoying more than anything else, but Buffy knows how to keep him in line. If he doesn’t respond emotionally, she just has to kick his ass to keep him in line, and for the most part it works pretty well. Except when he tries to flirt with her.
He tries to push ahead on a hunt, and she shoves him back. It takes a few hits to get his back up against a tree, and instead of acting pissed, or annoyed, he just grins.
“Almost forgot how hot that was.”
She shoves off, rolling her eyes as she moves to keep tracking the werewolf in question. “Not now, Sam.”
“Come on, Buffy, it’s not like we haven’t done it before,” he says as he follows her, his long stride allowing him to catch up and slip in front of her. “I’m still me. And having a soul clearly isn’t one of your priorities.”
She stops as that goes through her like a bullet to the heart. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You and Spike slept together for months before he got his soul.” He gestures to himself. “Same basic principle, but at least I have a pulse.”
She hesitates for only a minute, before her fist swings out and she catches him across the jaw. Sam drops like a sack of potatoes, and she knows it’s going to be a pain getting him back to the Impala, but it was better than having to listen to him talk. Dean catches up with her, and he looks over her shoulder at his brother’s unconscious form, then frowns back at her.
“What happened?”
“He pissed me off.”
***
She meets up with Willow in Cleveland, shortly after Castiel axes Crowley. She’s not one for lots of tears, and she certainly isn’t shedding any for that particular demon. There are bigger, more important thoughts spinning in her head, and when she flops down on Willow’s couch she has more questions than she does answers.
“Can you do it?”
“Can I do what?”
“Can you put Sam’s soul back?”
Willow hesitates for a moment, before tipping her head back and forth. “Not yet, but I’m still working on it. The situation is just a liiiiittle bit more complicated than your normal, average re-ensoulment.”
“I know.” She’s quiet for a long time. “I’m not sure if you should.”
“What?” Willow frowns, sitting up a little more. “But—it’s his soul. Soulless Sam only leads to an unhappy Buffy.”
“Yeah, but Soulful Sam might break him,” she sighs. “I want Sam. But I don’t want to kill him with this.”
“We can’t leave his soul in Hell, Buffy. It’s bad enough that it’s been in there as long as it has.” There are reasons why Willow is her best friend, and this is one of them. “He needs his soul.” She reaches over and places her hand over Buffy’s. “We’ll figure it out. One little baby step at a time.”
She nods for a moment, before inching closer and curling into Willow’s arms. Willow is right. She knows Willow is right. She just wishes that she wasn’t too impatient for baby steps.
***
Sam gets his soul back, and he forgets.
Death comes through in a way she doesn’t expect, and Sam sleeps for almost two weeks straight. Willow says that his body probably needs time to adjust to having a soul again, and Buffy waits. She waits to see if this crazy idea of Dean’s actually works and Sam is really Sam again.
Then it's about two in the afternoon, and Sam opens his eyes, he looks at her, and it’s like the past year and a half hasn’t happened. He smiles sleepily, one hand reaching out for her to pull her closer. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she smiles back, sliding in bed next to him, and sliding her arms around his waist. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks. I think.” His hand comes up, brushing his fingers through her hair, one large hand brushing against the side of her face and pulling her closer. He doesn’t remember. That much she can tell. She isn’t sure if she should be grateful or angry that he doesn’t feel the same weight that she does, but for the moment, none of that matters. She has Sam again. He’s warm, real and pressed against her in a way she hasn’t felt in a really long time.
“I missed you,” she whispers, pushing up to brush a kiss to his lips.
He closes his eyes into the kiss, pushing her back onto the bed, and the rest of the world falls away.