Brose D'Shield

A Monster By Any Other Name: Part Two - Chapter Forty-One (FINAL CHAPTER)

brosedshield — Sun, 03 Mar 2019 07:53:30 GMT

It's really surreal posting this. We've been writing A Monster by Any Other Name for almost TEN YEARS, and the final Chapter went up yesterday. I've mostly moved to other internet spaces (AO3 and Tumblr, with a vestigal real-ish person account on Twitter) and left this one behind, but it's good to come back and remember when the fic and these comms and all you excellent people who have probably ALSO moved to other spaces were my entire life. Those are good memories and weird/hard memories all at the same time.

Thank you for the wild ride, check out the END of the fic*, and enjoy.

Title: A Monster By Any Other Name: Part Two - Chapter Forty-One (The End)
Authors: lavinialavender and brosedshield
Rating: R
Warnings: please see full list here
Spoilers: none; AU
Pairing: Sam/Dean (yet not incest; AU where they’re not brothers)
Chapter word count: 7,941
Summary: The same old Sam/Dean love story, with a darkfic twist. Sam grew up in a concentration camp for monsters and Dean was raised as an only child and hunter: Together, they make each other human. // Sam was prepared for anything Dean wanted him to do – except become a real.

Masterlist

Part Two: Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-One on AO3

*NOTE: There will also be an Epilogue, but this is the official FINAL CHAPTER of the series.

A Monster By Any Other Name: Part Two - Chapter Forty (SECOND TO LAST CHAPTER!!!)

brosedshield — Sat, 01 Sep 2018 23:55:40 GMT

Title: A Monster By Any Other Name: Part Two - Chapter Thirty-Eight
Authors: lavinialavender and brosedshield
Rating: R
Warnings: please see full list here
Spoilers: none; AU
Pairing: eventual Sam/Dean (yet not incest; AU where they’re not brothers)
Chapter word count: 11,997
Summary: The same old Sam/Dean love story, with a darkfic twist. Sam grew up in a concentration camp for monsters and Dean was raised as an only child and hunter: Together, they make each other human. // Sam was prepared for anything Dean wanted him to do – except become a real.

Masterlist

Part Two: Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty on AO3

A Monster By Any Other Name: Part Two - Chapter Thirty-Eight

brosedshield — Sun, 05 Nov 2017 02:00:32 GMT

Greetings all! The new Chapter for our dear Freak Camp is now available at at our freac_camp community or on AO3. Please heed the usual warnings (I would copy-paste them here, but I don't seen an HTML option on the the new posting editor, and I figured I would try it out.

Hope you are doing well! This may not be the Chapter to brighten your day, but it's a good Chapter, I promise.

Where We Are (I'm Willing To Break Myself) - SPN, Sequel to Hell Shall Not Wash Us Away

brosedshield — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 03:45:03 GMT

I'm aliiiive. And posting my traditional twice-yearly post. This one is with fic.

Is it weird that I enjoy giving people things on my birthday? Anyway, here's something for anyone who might be reading. Link goes to AO3, which is where I exist slightly more these days (but not by much). Hope you are all doing very well and having and excellent end-of-October.

Title: Where We Are (I'm Willing to Break Myself)
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: General Audiences
Word Count: 2128
Warnings: Some discussions of past canonical torture, much more implied than described
Characters/Pairings: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, a puppy (kinda)
Beta Credit: Thank you lavinialavender for always being excellent! Remaining errors are my own.
Summary: After the Great Wall of Sam falls, Sam and Dean end up in a place that isn't really Heaven, and isn't really Hell (they would know...they've been there). This is their story of continuing.

Sam would never have wanted Dean to end up in Hell...but he was grateful.

(Closing story to "Hell Shall Not Wash Us Away")

It doesn't have to be good, it has to be done

brosedshield — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 01:43:35 GMT

One of my least favorite exhortations to myself is “It doesn't have to be good, it has to be done.” That usually means the scheduling sh*t has well and truly hit the fan, and my anxiety is making it hard to do ANYTHING, yet all the things must be done.

I've been saying this a lot lately. Whether my life has become nuts, or my procrastination is getting worse it's hard to say. (Like most things, I feel that reality splits the difference.)

Alllliiiiive! (and hopefully, writing)

brosedshield — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 04:59:00 GMT

Bless my past self, that actually gathered places to which I might want to submit original fiction and put them in a document that was actually easy to find.

Hey folks (if any of y'all remain) how's it hanging? I am still alive (and hoping to be moreso).

So, as of summer, I have a new job that isn't emotionally draining, hectic, and underpaid, and I live in a new place that actually has people my age doing things, and I have a new apartment (which, admittedly, is not as nice as the previous one, but you can't always win the housing jackpot and it is a nice reasonable sort of place) and since Christmas (which is always a rough time on a number of levels) I have actually felt that I can start...doing things and achieving things.

I would like to write more, and it would be nice, also, to write things for YOU, who-so-ever may or may not be reading this: whether you are a long-term follower who wondered vaguely if I had abandoned this journal, or a long-term friend who knew exactly where I was, or a random stranger-and-possible-future-friend.

This may very well be the only thing I write in this space for the next century and a half (hyperbole), but...want to say hi, and let you know all the things in life.

WORK - No longer makes me cry, and is paying me well, and is full of straightforward tasks which I 96% enjoy. There are BONUSES! I'm going to chase one down and get it *glares at it from across the room*

PERSONAL (A) - Slowly but surely I am building a social life. Church, work, writer's group, water fitness, random folks who are cool. I'm working on it. Keeping an eye out for the fabled boyfriend, but, honestly, I would just like friends. And if one was a boy with romantic inclinations, well, I'm not opposed.

PERSONAL (B) - 'Tis Lent, and this year I am doing tiny fasts from many things that are not essentially bad but I know I use as distractions (fanfic, social media, alcohol). It's been a powerful learning experience so far.

WRITERLY - Good, big, challenging things are rolling when it comes to writing. I'm in a comm that encourages daily wordcounts, so I've actually been writing most days, even though I'm not averaging much. Here are some of the projects that are currently rolling:

Freak Camp which I write with lavinialavender is moving (slowly) again, after a long time of me having absolutely no energy or time. The last Chapter went up a few days ago and you can find All Things at freac_camp. The end is in sight, baby!

I'm trying to Clean The WIP folder, which is what you have to thank for Forgettable (and Remarkably So) (SPN) and The Spyder and Mr. Hyde (Marvel). That last one has at least two more Chapters to it, and I have a couple other goodies in the folder that I would like to get out. Both are hanging out at my AO3 (Brosedshield), where you can find most things.

Original Fiction and Publishing - Guys, I would love to see my work in a thing. Like, a paper thing. Or a digital thing. The sort of thing that people pay monies for and I can brag to my grandparents about. I want at least three rejection letters and/or publication this year. So I need to get sending and writing and developing emotional fortitude, and I need to do it quick, given lag-time on reading and response. I'm also in the emotional prep stage for sitting down and finishing/revising Spacefic, which I think is going to be my first solo novel (Freak Camp will aways be my first beloved Monster) unless something jumps out at me.

So, guys. Thats my life, and my hopes and plans for my life. I hoping to make this a more regular thing (though shorter), and I hope you are well.

P.S. I am also knownasbelen (SPN and miscellanea) and starksrockinragnarok (Marvel and comics generally) on Tumblr.

Forgettable (and Remarkably So) - (SPN pre-series, Impala-focused)

brosedshield — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 20:21:15 GMT

I'm alive! And writing even! I'm trying to work on old WIPs in folders, so have a fic! I've probably written a couple things since the last SPN fic I posted here (freac_camp is the exception) but they were Avengers/MCU and I didn't crosspost. Might go back to that. Link in the title goes to AO3 but the fic is also available under the cut. :)

Title: Forgettable (and Remarkable So)
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: General Audiences
Word Count: 1504
Warnings: Honest to Pete, folks, nothing horrible happens in this one
Characters/Pairings: John Winchester, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Impala (Supernatural), Original Character
Beta Credit: Thank you lavinialavender for the lovely beta! All remaining errors are my own.
Summary: John Winchester commissioned the mark off an amateur white witch with a knack for sigils. Folks could see the Impala, get an impression of her, and then wouldn't be able to remember a single concrete detail when she pulled out of sight. It's the reason the Winchesters are so hard to find (and the reason Dean would never change an inch of the Impala).

John Winchester commissioned the mark off an amateur white witch with a knack for sigils. The man was also from a vessel line (though neither of them knew it) and recognized something in John that made him trust when a smarter practitioner would have run.

“I can see what you mean,” he said, ghosting his hand over the Impala’s lean black flank, not quite touching the metal skin. “She’s beautiful, but not exactly unobtrusive.”

“Exactly,” John agreed. “Smart thing would probably be to sell her for a cheap hunk of bolts with a good engine but...Dean! Sit down!”

The witch jumped at the snapped command, more than he would have reacted just seeing the round face of the child who had appeared in the window. “Your kids?”

“Right,” John said, a mix of embarrassment and pride in voice. “That's Dean. I left him back there with Sammy. “

The witch wasn't sure whether John had left his (very young) children in the car because he hadn't trusted they would be safe in the interview with a twenty-something who had turned to the Dark (or at least Grey) Arts, or because he was uncomfortable and unaccustomed to being the sole caregiver. “Your family has lost a lot.”

John took and released a careful breath. “Too much.”

“I think I can figure out something for your car,” the witch said. “Give me a couple days?”

“Sure, take your time,” John said. “We've got no place we need to be.”

The witch had worked with cars his whole life (and had the engine grease beneath his nails to prove it), and had respect for beauty. Before turning to magic, he had valued balance. He still did, but had come to believe that a well-placed mark could bring prosperity where it was deserved, and pain where karma would work too damn slow, and even save a life (maybe someday even the one he had lost). The solution he came up with in the end was elegant and sleek as the Impala herself.

“You don't really want people not to see you,” he told John as he laid out the plans. “Firstly, that would defeat the purpose of having a cool car, and secondly, a car people don't notice is far too likely to end up in a crash, unless you stick to empty back roads for the rest of the life of the vehicle. So this does something very different.”

John craned his head to look at the plans. They were sketchy charcoals over cheap newsprint, but there was something striking about them, about the angles and loops the man had laid over the recognizable frame of the Impala. He had to squint to keep the whole thing in view. “So what does it do?”

The witch grinned. “It makes people forget .”

John looked up to frown at him. “How does that help us?”

Dean moved past their work station in the witch’s small house that doubled as his workshop and garage, talking a mile a minute in a childish babble that neither man paid attention to. He was toting Sammy on his back like a particularly awkward backpack, and presumably the monologue was directed toward his brother. John absently glanced at his children. When he looked back, the witch had the plans folded and he was grinning even wider.

“Can you tell me what they looked like?” he asked, nodding down at the papers under his hands. “Anything at all?”

John thought. He had an impression of...darkness? And clearly they were on paper...but... No matter how he wracked his brain and thought, he couldn't dredge up a single solid fact about the markings (had they actually been markings? Or more like…a design?) that he had seen moments before. “No,” he said slowly. “I have impressions, but...nothing solid.”

Wordlessly, the witch unfolded the paper. The lines were there again, all charcoals and darkness and sweeping almost-characters.

“Huh,” John said.

“It should work for the whole vehicle,” the witch said. “Folks will see the Impala and get an idea of it and remember it existed, but the second it's out of sight, details like make, model, year, maybe even color, will be gone.”

“That could work,” John said.

“The only trick is that you’ll have to carve it into the frame,” the witch said.

John blinked. “I will?”

The witch folded up the plans, and once again John couldn't remember what they had been written in (drawn in?) or the least detail about them. “Unless you want to forget what your own car looks like,” the witch said, “it will have to be your own hands laying the sigils. Are you up for that?”

“Sure,” John said, sounding far from it. “I've worked on a car or two in my time. That won't be a problem.”

They worked together on carving the sigil into the structure of the Impala, and it took two days of sweat and swearing before it was done. The witch never touched the car or the tools with his bare hands (his work gloves were lined with silk, and other things that kept all kind of spells from sticking), and as the process went farther and farther along, it became harder for him to even look at the vehicle.

“I thinks it's good,” he said as John tapped the last tiny mark into the underside of the roof, beneath headliner they had carefully pulled down. “I'm having a hard time remembering what the outside looks like when I'm in it, so I think it's where you want it. Remember, if you ever need to replace a piece, you'll have to re-lay that piece of marking.”

John nodded. He was exhausted but satisfied. He too could feel the level of safety (anonymity) that now cloaked the car.

(If either man had not been a potential vessel, the mark may not have held. Normal folks can use angelic markings, but only those attuned to Angels can actually feel the markings when they work. That makes the laying of the power all the more secure.)

The Winchesters hit the road the next day. John had paid the witch most of what he had, though that was only a fraction of what the sigil was worth. Years later, he tried to find him again, but without success. No one remembered him or anything about him. It was as though he had vanished into John’s memory and existed nowhere else.

John was a little jumpy with the car at first, hyper aware of the magic now etched into her bones, but the boys made themselves at home in the way that small children do. By the time Dean and Sammy were old enough to carve their initials into the back seat of the Impala (right in the heart of one of the larger swirls of meaning), Dean had already made other markings, shoved small toys into places that they shouldn't by all rights be able to fit, and generally made himself a home. The Impala knew and recognized him. When John began showing him how to fix her up, how to replace and jerry-rig and enhance various parts, Dean had already become part of the spell. Like his dad, he could always remember what his baby looked like, sounded like, and felt like in his head.

(Though John didn't realize it, when he showed Dean how to repair the Impala, he also showed him how to renew the sigil on pieces that had become worn out or broken. Dean didn't realize at first that the small marks he carved into every replacement piece weren't a necessary step in the process of fixing a car. There is more than one civilian driver across the continental USA who has a harder than usual time finding their car in a crowded parking lot, thanks to Dean Winchester.)

Sammy, younger, less mechanically inclined (less trusted) than his older brother, never left quite the same mark. Proximity eventually allowed him to remember the Impala (at the very least, he could remember what a black 1967 Chevy Impala was supposed to look like, and knew the particular Winchester vehicle when he saw it,) but he never had the same instinct for the mark, and could never quite hold onto the image of it clearly. When he walked away from John and Dean to go to Stanford, he may not have been able to go back even if he tried.

When the Impala was dented, crushed, or totalled, Dean rebuilt it from grille to tail to be exactly the same, down to the tape deck (which had its own spiderweb of markings), because he knew that car, and the magic she carried, in his bones. When left with the vehicle, Sam changed things (and felt more comfortable for it) because he had never actually been able to see or feel the spell that had allowed them to vanish. He had just assumed that he (his father, his brother, the Impala) weren’t worth remembering.

(END NOTES)

I learned a new word writing this fic (a case of “There has GOT to be a specific term for that!”) and used one I learned relatively recently, so:

*headliner - that cloth stuff on the top of the inside of a car. This might also include whatever is underneath the cloth. (my casual internet search was inconclusive)

*grille - the front piece of a car that lets air into the engine block. I include this one, because I only recently learned that when you write about cars it has the extra “e” at the end. Technically a different word!

A Monster By Any Other Name: Part Two - Chapter Thirty-Two

brosedshield — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 02:42:54 GMT

As lavinialavender has most aptly added WE'RE STILL ALIVE!

Title: A Monster By Any Other Name: Part Two - Chapter Thirty-Two
Authors: lavinialavender and brosedshield
Rating: R
Warnings: please see full list here
Spoilers: none; AU
Pairing: eventual Sam/Dean (yet not incest; AU where they’re not brothers)
Chapter word count: 9,179
Summary: The same old Sam/Dean love story, with a darkfic twist. Sam grew up in a concentration camp for monsters and Dean was raised as an only child and hunter: Together, they make each other human. // Sam was prepared for anything Dean wanted him to do – except become a real.

Masterlist

Part Two: Chapter Thirty-Two

Losing my mind (finding old documents)

brosedshield — Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:49:36 GMT

So, work is insane. Which it says something about me that I'm posting NOW when work is insane rather than the last age (what, six month?) when work was only trying.

I'm at the point where I'm going through my Google Drive Archive and renaming documents so that they have a consistent title structure. This is a sign of stress.

Anyway, I've realized, going through said document that my memory sucks, because I keep finding things THAT I WROTE (apparently) that I have no memory of writing or posting or anything.

I must make different folders to indicate stories that have been posted versus not. This is what I should do. *stares around somewhat wild eyed and continues organizing trivia while Rome metaphorically burns*

A warm(er) winter day poem

brosedshield — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 05:19:53 GMT

In which Brose attempts to write a happy poem and manages to write a not-totally-depressing poem. That totally counts, right? (also apparently Brose is referring to herself in the third person tonight, have I mentioned that it's been a weird sort of day?)

A winter day without the vicious chill
To which we’ve been accustomed feels like joy.
The sun shines down on me and my silly hat
And I feel warmth instead of biting cold.
I’d just about forgot what warmth felt like.
It’s good, this day. It makes me breathe differently,
As though I could run without falling down.
That isn’t true. The ice remains where cold
Clings, in the shadows where feet have ground it in.
But I can feel the sunlight on my face,
And, remembering the sadness that has passed
Believe that winter too must end in spring.

~

(Note: it's really freaking cold here and I'm sick of it. The end.)

And I Shall Raise You From the Dust (SPN, preseries AU )

brosedshield — Sun, 15 Dec 2013 21:44:29 GMT

Title: And I Shall Raise You From the Dust
Author: brosedshield
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't profit)
Characters: Sam, Dean, John
Warnings: depression
Rating: PG-13 (though that 13 may just be a habit)
Word count: 2474
Spoilers: preseries
Summary: Sam chose to give up his dreams of college, Stanford and normalcy for his family. Now, after a hunt leaves him broken, he gets everything he wants (after he can't want it any more).
Beta Credit: lavinialavender is the best beta and friend a person could ask for :)
Author notes: This is a very odd sort of fic. For one thing, the original draft was written over two years ago and it stayed in the digital equivalent of a dusty drawer for the majority of that time. For another, this is an AU continuation of the AU of an AU, and as such will probably not make sense unless you read Beneath the Trees, Where Nobody Sees by minviendha and also You Get What You Need by khakigrrl, which you should because both fics were so darned good that I wanted to see more. This fic is written with khakigrrl’s blessing, though two years late. I only hope that it does justice to the stories that came before.

He’s angry, angry under the skin where it won’t show and oozing out with every word, and he’s not sure even what he’s angry about.

Reply all? Try three month delays

brosedshield — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 03:57:35 GMT

I feel that one of my New Year's resolutions should be to NOT be a horrible replier to comments (seriously, i was just going through FC Chapter 24 comment, and realized that all of them had been there SINCE THE END OF AUGUST. That is un-acceptable).

My only defense is that October and November were both insane and Ch. 25 has taking up December's let's-get-FC-stuff-done brainpower (let's be honest, September was just normal procrastination...or something so horrible that I've blocked my memory of it, not sure which). It's not a good defense, but at least it's honest.

I hope you guys are doing great, and aren't too weirded out by getting replies from ages and ages ago. And if I've MISSED replying to something, please be aware that I think you are cool, I just suck at replying. But I should work on that.

The end! *she says decisively*

All You Think You See (Are Two Guys in a Cemetery) (SPN S5.22)

brosedshield — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 05:10:24 GMT

Title: All You Think You See (Are Two Guys in a Cemetery)
Author: brosedshield
Disclaimer:Don't own, don't profit
Characters: Lucifer (possessing Sam), Michael (possessing Adam, but let's be honest, he has no lines so basically just the implied presence of Michael)
Warnings: brotherly angst and thinly veiled grumpy headcanon
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~1200
Spoilers: S5.22 "Swan Song"
Summary: A little glimpse into Lucifer's head during Swan Song. Also known as my personal headcanon that it wasn't just two guys in a cemetery.
Beta Credit: Once upon a time lavinialavender saw it, but that was a long time ago, I make no promises that I have not destroyed the good work she did.
Author notes: I wrote this actual-facts ages ago when the episode actually aired, but the attempt to make it a complete story with all the parts has failed. SO HERE, you see my semi-grumpy headcanon (S5 was rough, guys, rough in the best ways, and I miss it).

The weedy little Lawrence, Kansas cemetery didn’t look like the kick-off line for the Apocalypse, but Lucifer and Michael showed up right on time in the denim and Winchester dress code.

Lucifer had briefly considered stopping for a Sam-sized white suit—formal dress for his meat suit, just to emphasize the difference in class between himself and Michael —but between slaughtering five or six of Sam’s childhood associates to test his control over Sam’s body and soul (listening all the while the boy writhed in futile despair, a small pleasure before the great battle) there hadn’t been sufficient time to stop at a decent tailor’s for what was, essentially, a petty (if pretty) symbol of their differences.

Another petty difference (and one that Lucifer greatly enjoyed) was the height disparity between Sam and Adam. Granted, that small pleasure was almost overwhelmed by the charge from finally meeting Michael again, from the distant impact of Sam throwing himself against the cage of Lucifer’s consciousness, but he still enjoyed looking so far down on his big brother.

Angels didn’t exactly have height, more like presences. And big brother Michael’s presence had always been a shade greater than Lucifer’s, even when they two —plus Gabriel—had been like white phosphorus flares against everyone else’s tea-lights.

Sam probably didn’t appreciate the sensation. He’d been taller than Dean since high school, taller in this way at least than the rest of of the world, but Lucifer could savor it anew. Last time he had been face to face with Michael, millennia ago, had been the hour his brother made it clear he would stand with the human filth. The hour he proved beyond shadow of a doubt that he loved their absent, deluded, obsessed Father more than his little brother. Hadn’t Lucifer only hated the humans because his adored Father loved them so much more than he had ever loved his first-created angels? Hadn’t he made the demons—tortured, filthy little stains on existence, carved from the flesh of the very human his father had loved so much more—to show that he could twist even his father’s work to suit a more appropriate purpose. That he, more than every other angel, could defy.

And damned, he had defied, which had brought them here. No tea-light angels or demons in this place, in this moment as two brothers confronted each other again. Both sides had fought for this battle, prepared the ground with blood, blackmailed and tormented the hosts so that Michael and Lucifer could meet in this particular weedy little graveyard to kick-start the chain reaction of slaughter and glorious battle that would utterly crush the dominance the humans claimed over this gorgeous world.

But not a celestial or demonic being had the balls to intrude on this moment. Because, no matter how much the angels might imagine this was the end of their long, thankless stewardship; and the demons—stupid, expendable mockeries of the filthy swine—thought he would give them this world and an end to the eternal Hell he had created for them, in truth, this moment was about family. The pain of someone you trusted to watch your back and guard your sleep stabbing you in the wing and casting you down into nightmares.

This was about brothers.

To the casual observer, it wouldn’t look like much. Just two angry men in matching denim jackets, pacing a slow, connected circle around a weedy little graveyard in the ass end of nowhere. Even their dialogue wasn’t that interesting, just two damaged people saying things that they had rehearsed to themselves a hundred times. Even through hatred and well-honed grudges, the words had to be said. They had to give each other the chance that neither believed would be taken.

After millennia apart, Lucifer knew Michael wasn’t coming back for him. Hell, Castiel had been able to drag Dean out of the pit. Just once, Michael could have tried to breach the Cage. Not that he would have gone. Hell, after all, was a choice, the price of walking away from their Father, the bastard who had always made the choices too hard, the sacrifices worth the gain. Of all the things Lucifer was proud of making, it was Hell. Pure betrayal, a shot of rage, and a heavy dose of pain had made a heavy infusion that had done such delightful things to his followers, human and angel alike.

Lucifer and Michael stared at each other in their matching bodies, not a single soul or presence in human sight. They paced, and they were, on one level, two men in matching clothing staring each other down. They looked inches from a drunken fistfight or a general brawl. But beyond the surface, beyond the reality that the human mind could conceive, Lucifer and Michael were so much more. They were angelic, fallen and fearsome, vaulting their wings over the rich glowing earth where the dead rested without peace, twitching in their graves. In the distance, watching, like a rabid crowd in a football stadium, the hosts of Heaven waited, fiery swords (no slim silver blades in this sight, but true swords like had leveled Sodom and Gomorrah and taken the lives of every firstborn in Egypt), while the hordes of Hell, breathing labored in their human hosts, readied their cheap, infernal weapons and put their faith in their champion, their master, their fallen Father.

Lawrence, Kansas may have seemed abandoned, lacking either black-eyed henchmen in cheap suits, or grey suited figures bearing silver sticks. No one would be stupid enough to ride into the heart of that moment, the calm before the hurricane hit, the stillness between pre-shocks and 9.3 on the Richter scale. No, the backup team for Michael and Lucifer waited in the wings, states away, watching as the power built that would blow the roof off this popsicle stand.

Where “popsicle stand” is defined as a hundred thousand years of human existence.

Where “blow the roof off” means finally, we will be free, free at last from every burden, even if we are so destroyed that Death himself is buried in the rubble.

That was the plan, and it was such a bad plan that everyone had rather begun to like it, because when there were no other options, it was kind of nice to go down swinging. Free will had fallen by the wayside the day one brother told another to go to Hell, and at this point not a soul was stupid enough to walk into that, to spit on Lucifer and Michael together in the hour they had come at last to kill each other. No one would volunteer to be the first to die when Fate and God, hosts and hordes, were pushing united in that one direction.

They were two celestial beings, wings half-spread through a dozen dimensions, their flaming swords hovering on the edge of the worlds, their power so awesome that if there had been a witness to their true, white phosphorus forms at that moment the unlucky soul would not have stuck around to listen to the “Do not be afraid, vermin, I’ll make it quick,” but would run for all they were worth. Lucifer and Michael were world-makers, servant and ex-servant of the God Most High. Nothing could stop them; nothing would even try because nothing but a hero with a death wish (or a conviction) would confront the sheer, burning, unflinching, unforgiving power within them, even temporarily contained as it was by two guys in a cemetery.

That’s what they thought.

And then they heard the Impala.

Nanowrimo 2013: Nov 2

brosedshield — Sat, 02 Nov 2013 22:25:55 GMT

Hi guys. So, vanishing, this is apparently what I do. The Marvel Bang I last mentioned in June went out with a whimper (though I still have all my notes and outlines, but it simply wasn't going to get done and at a certain point I decided that attempting it was going to burn me out faster than it would result in rewards). It's been nice looking at all the fics that have flowered from it, though. Seriously, if you enjoy Marvel-ness, check out marvel_bang.

I have already signed up for my next writing project, and I hope to God (praying is good, so maybe I should be doing that more) that I can do it because I REALLY WANT TO.

It's Nano. Nanowrimo, that is. But instead of writing a new novel, I'm focusing on Spacefic because that baby has been sitting around on my computer since last summer and it's damn good and I want to write it. And I SHOULD write it. But there's always the little questions of time, focus, and motivation.

{authorial wibbling and summary ahead} Spacefic, so called because I am horrible at titles, is my Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics fic IN SPACE. It started out life as a J2 knotting/mpreg/shipwreck and quickly developed its own direction, mainly because Jensen Ackles is very tall and that was creating a character dissonance. No, really, it stopped working, until I changed their names and allowed them to be something other than the pretty boys they had originally been. The fic is about characters striving to succeed in a society that would rather impose impossible or expectations on them (then again, what society doesn't?), about aliens that have advance terraforming and biochemical manipulation technology and very little art, about a world where what we could call rape is institutionalized and standardized for certain segments of the population, about someone being far too smart and far too determined to have an easy life when they're the gender that is expected to sit pretty and spread it's legs.

I love this story, it's funky and odd and DAMMIT I haven't worked on it for a year and it still reads GOOD, I still read part and think "Damn, I like that, I like that a lot" (which let me tell you does not happen all the time with all the fics" and I'm terrified of fucking it up giving it the Nano treatment where often as not I want to get as many words as possible as fast as possible because life gives us limited time and I need to USE it when it's available BUT I don't want to fucking it up.

But, then again, I've not fucked it up for an entire year by not writing more than a handful of words, and THAT'S not going to work either.

My goals are many. Two that seem equally unlikely are 1. to reach the 50,000 words of a Nanowrimo novel and 2. to actually finish the story. All three sections, all the scenes, have it DONE (this last would actually fullfill my very last New Year's Resolution from last year, which is another compelling reason that I wanted to work on this Nano. The last, of course, is the one that I think is most likely, and that is to double the amount of words I have. Strictly speaking, that would be 37k and change, but if I can get in 30k this month, 1000 words per day, that would be pretty damn good. I'm sure that no matter how bad the word, if I added another 30k of them, then the story would be much farther along.

I want to finish this story guys. I want to polish it up, and freak out about it, and actually SEND it to someone. I want my rejection letter, because I know that this can be great, and while I don't know who's going to really really want a semi-slash A/B/O fic done really really well (yeah, modestly isn't always my strong suit, but this claim has been backed up by those folks who have also looked at the first Chapter and more so it's not just me). So, yeah, that's my Nano.

On a side note, I have a hard time telling people about this story (and I'm NOT really telling people that I don't know from Internet and fandom things, simply because I LOVE A/B/O fic and feel really squicky when I think about telling other people about that fact if I don't already know that they have an open mind and fandom kink. I ALSO have a hard time telling people about this story because ARG. Any time I try to write the summary it comes out sounding very very very very very steriotypical, and it IS but it's just this horrible-cheesy sounding romance and I CAN'T PUBLISH IT.

Maybe one of these days I'll be able to write it down for all you lovely folks, and then I'll actually be able to put it on Nano. Maybe.

In other news, I have actually been able to donate to Nano this year because YAY JOB (though just between you me and the ether sometimes the job is not so much yay. Life balance: never easy. I feel very accomplished and happy to have finally given back a little to an organization that has brought me years of novel-writing pleasure and motivation. Yay!

That is all for now, but also, I am brosedshield on Nanowrimo as well, if anyone wants (and knows how...I'm still somewhat confused, though that may be because I haven't tried as hard as i would have to) to find me :)

Happy noveling! (whether or not you are actually writing anything doesn't have anything to do with this salutation, btw. Happy living, in any case.

Talking about writing is kind of beside the point...(SHS and life update)

brosedshield — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 17:05:38 GMT

And So, I don't know if I've mentioned it here (sorry, I've been Tumblring lately, and working, so LJ has somewhat fallen to the wayside...I still check! But clearly I haven't been writing things...then again, did I do all that much before?

Good news! Work is good, but busy (it's the kind of job where the contract says "will work SOME nights and weekends", and then you have a good excuses to laugh). Work on The Monster progresses slowly (see above, with the working MANY nights and MOST weekends). Also moving into my new apartment. Yes, I know, I've been here since December, but I'm STILL moving in. It takes far longer to move into a place than I expected. Maybe because historically, my idea of "moving in" to a place was cramming my clothes in the available drawers, putting my computer on the desk, getting sheets on the bed, and spreading the rest of whatever I may have over the most convenient floor space. I've DONE that. :P Maybe "settling in" would be a more accurate phrase. I have the dream of having a place for everything and everything in it's place, but until that seems like an actual possibility, it's so much easier to surf Tumblr (and so much more fun to write and eat) in the evenings.

BUT! I have also signed up for a new thing, the marvel_bang, because it looked like fun, I had an idea, and it would be dearly nice to FINISH something (A Monster By Any Other Name clearly desires to be Shogun-length before it stops growing; Spacefic* has stalled from lack of time and an idea generator that has skipped to a species-collision sequel, and is more fascinated with the world than getting Natl and Jaron from point Yeah, you're cute but I'm busy to romance novel; Happyland (which I had vague ideas about revising) is stalled stillborn because, jeesh, I have to REVISE A LOT*).

I'm excited and nervous about my story so far, which is an Avengers High School AU. I have an outline and words written! But I'm really really nervous too.

{In which there is much authorial wibbling about plot, characterization, and OH SHIT why am I experimenting with a new POV style on a deadline? Oh, right because otherwise I probably never will...}

Things that make me happy: is basically that I'm writing this and can see an end. Without giving too much away about the end, I got this idea because of something that happened in Bruce Banner's comics canon, so it's nominally about him being an oppressed and un-cool teen really cutely in love with Betty, Coach Ross's daughter. Which is all well and good, but my favorite character in the Avengers is Tony, soooo, it may also be about him kind of being in love with his best friend Steve. And I love, love, LOVE reading ensemble fic, so I....may be trying to do that too?

There's a lot of firsts in this fic for me, and the sheer number of them is kind of freaking me out. It's not like I'm writing anything COMPLETELY outside my comfort and preference zone (I mean, I'm not experimenting with second person future tense or anything *dofts hat to David Brin* or stream of conciousness *edges away from To the Lighthouse*) but I'm REALLY REALLY used to writing third-person REALLY limited, if-you-sneeze-and-mess-up-the-pronouns-it's-first-person with two characters and a handful of supporting characters. And now there is ensemble fic.

And I'm also used to knowing the canon really well (or being able to as lavinialavender about something I may have forgotten) and for this fic the only canon to which I'm being faithful (or as faithful as one CAN be when one is writing the characters into a high school AU when most of them didn't grow up in the same time period/planet, and probably didn't go to high school where they WERE) is the movie-verse. But I'm stealing ideas from the comics verse right and left, and not really keeping track of WHICH comics verse, mainly because I've seen them first in fics that I read, and THEN going to marvelwiki or something. Which makes me nervous that people will hate the finished product because I've broken their precious baby creatures, and my best defense will be "Dude, I just stole it without researching, sorry it sucks" which is, you must agree, a REALLY BAD defense of breaking favorite characters.

Well, okay, no one I'm breaking would be a FAVORITE character because they clearly don't appear in enough fic for me to get a feel for characterization, but you know what I mean.

And THEN there's high school. I went to high school, I swear I did, but before that I was homeschooled, so high school was less an academic advancement and complex social testing ground than my FIRST exercise in social interaction. All those thing most people do in kindergarten because school is new and scary and confusing (be waved off tearily by parents, miss the bus home, cry after school) I did freshman year. Someone asked me where I was from, ORIGINALLY, because they thought I was a foreign exchange student (I still can't decided if that was a joke-rumor someone spread on purpose or if they were honestly confused because I was 1. new, 2. funnily dressed, and 3. spoke oddly *coughbettercough* compared to my peers). I never really understood why I should be intimidated by seniors. Sure, they were older and we didn't interact a lot, but they were just...people). Anyway, I spent most of high school not giving a fuck what anyone thought of me (people have to be important to me before I care they think on more than an abstract level), burning through classes and being in ALL THE CLUBS. I'm aware this was not a typical experience. So even my LIFE canon is suspect.

Plot is also an issue. I like plot. Plot makes the bones of a good fic. Granted, some fics don't need bones (jellyfish are very pretty, and pack a wicked sting, when written right) but I like them. And, in spite of having A FREAKING OUTLINE, do you know how odd that is? I feel like my plot is...vague.

It's because I want to write about ALL THE PEOPLE, at once, but I don't want to write a 100k fic because the wordcount minimum is only 10k and I WANT TO FINISH IT, OKAY? It's going to be bigger than 10k, I'm guessing/hoping around 20k, but thing are progressing in a way that's kind of *handwavey*.

I need someone to tell me that it's not going to suck. I need someone to tell me that my fic can be fine, even if it ends up being more of a chocolate-covered grasshopper (which just enough hard outer plot to keep all the delicious squishy bits inside). If you'd like to lie to me and say that, it would be fine with me :)

OH AND. It's going to be hard to describe, because I think it's DIFFERENT than many many high school AUs. For one, there's no main pairing. It's circling around Bruce, who loves Betty, but that's...circling and angsty (mutually unrequited love/liking because of Reasons), but Tony and Steve are kind of pre-slash, but they're NOT, kinda, because of reasons (i'm trying not to give things away in case anyone actually gets this far :) and....yeah. So it's gen, but with a lot of swirly swirly love interests.

I hope that when it's done (and it WILL be done, dammit!!) it works and is pretty. And if not, may it be a good learning experience for other things. Amen.

~*~*Depending on who I talk to this is either a original (ex-RPS) Alpha/Omega knotting-and-mpreg alien romance-fic in SPACE or a science fiction romance about societal expectations and sexual oppression in a tri-gendered alien species. You can pick your poison. :D

*Happyland was my first (and only completely successful Nano, in that I actually FINISHED it. Not the wordcount, that is, the STORY. Though it got trippy at the end. At some point any Nano of mine degenerates into porn and random deus ex machina characters with long term agendas that were COMPLETELY UNCOVERED. Heartless, the random character of Happyland, totally deserves his own longish story and should stay out of Desdemonia's) long thing, and first and-so-far-only High School fic (though I didn't know that at the time). Actually, maybe finishing the Shield fic will help me feel more confident about Happyland.

Saint Christopher Ain't Real No More (fic,Teen Wolf/Supernatural)

brosedshield — Mon, 13 May 2013 01:15:29 GMT

Title: Saint Christopher Ain't Real No More
Author: brosedshield
Disclaimer: I own nothing. SPN and Teen Wolf ganged up to steal my brain.
Characters/Pairing: Chris Argent/Victoria Argent neé Campbell, Gerard Argent, Kate Argent, mentions of Mary Campbell Winchester
Warnings: reflections on canonical character death in TWO shows, mentions of implied torture
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 878
Spoilers: Teen Wolf S2.9 "Party Guessed" and SPN Pilot + general background (do you know who the Campbells are? Then you're good)
Summary: The first time Chris Argent met Victoria Campbell, he fell in love. Maybe because she was beautiful, badass, brave, vicious. Maybe because she felt like family (like that same old madness).
Beta Credit: YAY lavinialavender.
Author notes: I've wanted an Argent/Campbell crossover for a while, so I finally wrote one. This is also a character study of Chris Argent, because he is my favorite (of the secondary characters) because he's so SANE. That's really not normal for a hunter...

Christopher Argent was not named after the patron saint of travelers, but he may as well have been. His childhood and adolescence were a series of homes, a series of moves, different schools, different climates and monsters.

He hadn’t always known about the monsters, the werewolves and other things that go bump in the night, but he found out in high school. He could still remember the werewolf, howling, slavering, throwing itself against its bonds while his father and sister stood casually before its bleeding form, blades and electric triggers in their hands, looking up in mild surprise at his entrance.

“Dad, Kate, what’s…?” And then he felt his mother’s hand on his shoulder, pulling him back.

“Come away, Chris,” she’d said, her eyes cold and kind at the same time, locked on his father as though they could carry on entire conversations by a mere glance. They were often not happy conversations. “Your—Gerard and Kate are busy right now, and you don’t have to see this.” Her hand on his shoulder was gentle, but implacable.

That was the first time he’d turned away from the madness of his family, though he would never have thought of it that way. Not even when his mother disappeared his second year in technical school, a few years after Beacon Hills, a few years after he himself had walked away from Gerard and Kate to build a career that would provide a decent cover for the hunting. Gerard told him his mother left him, had the divorce papers to prove it. Chris never completely disbelieved him, because he could, looking down at the viciously precise scrawl of her signature, remember all those silent conversations.

“Will she come back, do you think?” he asked.

Gerard shook his head and looked away. “No, I don’t think so,” he replied. If he was worried that he was a man alone, without a woman to lead him, he expressed no concern.

Off and on, for the rest of his life, Chris wondered about her, where she had gone, if it had been something a little…closer that had taken her away. He was a loyal soldier, a man who believed what he was told when it made enough sense, but he had never been stupid enough to miss the crazy that surrounded him.

The first time he met Victoria Campbell he’d answered a general call to take down a vamp nest, and there she was, a muscled redhead, movements sharp as the blade (covered in dead man’s blood) she used to paralyze the vamps before kicking them toward a Campbell with an ax for the final beheading.

He fell in love that night, though he wouldn’t have told her that. She wouldn’t have appreciated the romanticism, not his jagged-edged warrior, his brutally competent beloved. Campbells weren’t quite as team-oriented as Argents, they had a different system, a different code, and she would have rather ripped his balls off than allowed him to believe for one second that she, a woman, was weaker, or less able to match the supernatural threat.

And because he didn’t believe that for a second, in all ways considered Victoria his equal or superior, he thinks that’s why she eventually consented to marry him.

She was his help-meet, or maybe he was hers. They built a family together, raised a daughter who was the second light of his life, and he had always believed there was no darkness that could stand against them together.

He wonders sometimes now, as he stands over her grave, if when he first saw her, he recognized his family in her. Not that he would have been attracted to a woman exactly like his sadistic Kate, or viciously manipulative like his father, but there was little denying that a thread of crazy, a thread of hate ran through his family. It was usually directed toward those beasts that threatened all of humankind, but sometimes was just frankly crazy. They looked into the darkness, and grew teeth in defense, as his mother whispered to him some nights when he asked why Kate had smiled while she cut into the werewolf’s skin, or his father had said every damn moonfollower should all die when only one or two had been doing harm. And his beautiful Victoria, his Campbell wife who told him stories sometimes about her relatives who hunted things, saved people if they could. She sneered at her mad cousin Mary who ran away with a civilian and burned to death on a ceiling, dead by a demon’s hand in a damn nursery, the freak that killed her vanished without a trace.

“I wouldn’t die that way,” she had said, “defenseless before a freak. I’d go down swinging.”

And she did, in the end. She did.

He saw family in her. He recognized her as his home.

And now, looking down at her grave, his arm wrapped around his daughter’s shoulders (the daughter in love with a “freak,” and wasn’t that worse in Victoria’s eyes than civilian?) he wonders what home he will find now, to whom he belongs, with nothing solid in his world but the no-longer-little girl beside him, head bowed by grief.

Chris Argent is traveling again, lost, without even leaving Beacon Hills.

That's Kind of the Definition (SPN, S7)

brosedshield — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 01:37:32 GMT

Title: That’s Kind of the Definition
Disclaimer: If anyone owns anything in this relationship, Supernatural owns my heart. strong>
Characters/Pairing: Sam, Dean, implied hallucination!Lucifer
Warnings: self-harm (cutting), self-loathing, hell visions, hell issues
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~980
Spoilers: S7
Summary: Sam needs pain to drive Lucifer out of his head. It comes to the point where Dean realizes that he has certain skills that might be of use.
Beta Credit: Yay lavinialavender!
Author notes: I wrote the mini-poem that starts this out too! Because I truly thought that I’d heard some poem somewhere that would make my title make sense, but couldn’t find it so improvised. //random thoughts//

        Hurting the one that you love
          Because that’s what you need,
          Because that’s what you want,
          Because you can’t stop:
          That’s kind of the definition of hell.

Dean comes into their latest crap hotel—really crap this time: holes in the walls, roaches in the holes, hell knows what’s in the roaches—and Sam’s hunched at the mini-table with his head almost touching the bloody fake-wood and a bloody knife on the floor.

Part of Dean panics, and part of him notes the newspaper spread thoroughly and protectively over the table and the floor beneath—not a spur of the moment, hey-I-gotta-knife-may-as-well-try-it-out decision then, but something precisely premeditated—but most of him is too busy half-leaping to Sam’s side, pulling him upright, and turning over his bleeding arm.

“I dropped the knife,” Sam says muzzily. “Don’t know why but my hand…’m sorry, was going to be cleaned up, didn’t want you to know…”

The neat hatch marks on Sam’s forearm are deep. A bit of Dean that he tries not to think about much notes how close he came to slicing a tendon, thinks how he could have done it better.

“Shut up, Sam,” he says without any heat, and turns over his other arm.

These wounds are old, a couple weeks at least, but probably deep enough to have messed with his grip. No wonder he dropped the knife this time. Thank God he didn’t cut his own hands off. Dean presses the scabbing marks and Sam whimpers a little, but he can tell just from the feel of Sam’s forearm under his fingers that there won’t be permanent damage.

Sam is shaking now and Dean pulls him close, tucks Sam’s head against his chest. It’s exhaustion making him shake, and stress and worry and yet Dean figures that his little brother didn’t so much as whimper while he was running a blade through his skin. That’s the kind of fucked up they are.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says, brokenly. “I didn’t want you—“

Dean doesn’t want to hear it again. “Lucifer?”

Sam drags in a stuttered breath. “Yeah. My hand…” He flexes it, the scar there still dark against the skin. “It’s not enough anymore and I—“ He flinches from something only he can see or hear and turns his face into Dean’s jacket.

Dean can hear his brother’s breath rasping into the fabric, and the first moment when he touches his hair, he flinches, before he understands that it’s actually Dean.

It’s not like he didn’t know that Sam had problems, not like he really believed that Sam pressing that one wound would work forever, but he had hoped. The pain of a body is different from the pain of Hell. He can’t really describe it (he only tries when he’s really and truly drunk, which is getting harder and harder all the time) but it’s like in Hell, you know you’re just a soul, and you can’t really kill a soul. You can shred it and break it and remove every inch of a person from it, make it just another power source, something that follows the programming it has been given, whether from love or pain or fucking fate.

But a body knows that it can only go so far and no farther. A man can be broken while alive, while still breathing, certainly he can, but at a certain point when there is no healing the body will shut down, will cease, will end. That awareness makes physical pain different.

It makes it better.

Even before the thought is fully formed, Dean’s stomach is clenching around the triangle sandwich he ate when he went out, Sam’s is still in the bag that he’d dropped on the floor when he saw the blood. And it’s not because the thought of what Sam needs disgusts him (it doesn’t, actually; he’s been there, he is there, that’s why he drinks, because he’s been on the other end so long that he doesn’t want the pain so much as the causing of it, the screams under his knife and the knowledge that this, this, THIS he can control) but because there’s another part, someplace between his shoulder blades where Alastair would pat him on the back when he had drawn out a soul’s cries into stuttering and eternal pain, someplace in the rib bones that he watched drawn from his body more times than he can count, broken while he could still feel it.

He wants it. And that scares and revolts and horrifies him more than anything else could.

“You can’t keep cutting yourself,” Dean says. It’s almost a purr. And something inside him is screaming, something is clawing at the edges, but this is for Sam and he has to do it or one day he’s going to come home and find his little brother cut open and it won’t be him, and he doesn’t want to think about how losing him again would break him.

“I have to,” Sam gasps. “I have to, I can’t…it’s worse seeing him, I can take the pain, I need the pain, I just can’t.”

Dean picks the knife up from the table. “I’ll do it.”

Sam’s eyes have a sick sort of hope in them, and part of Dean is pleased, and the rest of him hasn’t stopped screaming (he’s not sure that it ever will, given that it started ages ago when the body he had imagined for himself, the body Alastair permitted, had picked up that first knife). “You would? I’m sorry you have to, but—“

“But you need it.” Dean slides just the edge of the blade along Sam’s throat, and then down to the arm he’d been working on before. “I understand. And this will be safer.”

“Thank you,” Sam says, ragged and grateful, before Dean slides just the tip of the knife into flesh.

Dean is gentle, or as gentle as he can be, and Sam writhes and sobs and thanks him for every cut.

Same Old Burnt Sugar (Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters)

brosedshield — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:33:28 GMT

Title: Same Old Burnt Sugar
Fandom: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing
Characters: Hansel, Gretel, miscellaneous villagers, children and a couple of witches
Warnings: self-hatred, eating disorder, implied violence (and violent imagery), sensory descriptions of illness
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~1800
Spoilers: I have stolen all the backstory from the movie, but the story DOESN’T spoil the plot of the movie itself (the author's notes might).
Summary: The one where Hansel can’t stand the smell (taste, thought) of sugar and Gretel holds him up (or maybe they support each other)
Beta Credit: lavinialavender and whereupon are the most fantastic always *hugs them tight* even when they are suddenly reading a fic without either one seeing the movie :) As always, mistakes that remain are mine.
Author notes: More (somewhat movie-spoilery) notes at the end.

The village of Schwinburg had a witch and a sweetshop.

Hansel and Gretel had heard of the witch just as they were finishing a job in the village of Oberpatch, half a day away. That hunt had yielded a pittance of their usual price, but the witch had been a great mostly-spider thing a bit too fast and poisonous for someone without their particular talents to take down. Neither of them could truly walk away. The villagers had paid upfront and in-full, at least, even if none of the children taken had been alive by the time the brother and sister had tracked the monster to her lair.

The Schwinburg sweetshop, on the other hand, was just within the city gates. The smell hit Hansel hard, the thick richness of butter, the sharp tang of ginger, the burnt sweetness of sugar wafting in the air and making his stomach clench. Between that and the way Schwinburg’s gates towered above their heads like a cage, the jagged spikes on the top carved to mimic (or mock) the monsters from a half-dozen bestiaries, he could feel the old screaming, the shadow edge of dizziness and fear rising up along his spine.

Only Gretel’s grip on his shoulder, a pressure he could feel even through the jacket and armor and into the bruising their last hunt had left, held him in place, held him to this job and this time.

Still, he dropped his eyes as they passed, and if he kept maybe a too-tight grip on his gun, only the strain in his hands gave any sign.

Schwinburg was full of the usual assholes, men who thought that a batch of poor children disappearing into the woods was cause for distributing poison meat for the wolves—or, in their own words, “save a sovereign, dip the brats in flea-poison before they wander off”—and a woman dressed in leathers like a man was mockery at best, a whore a worst, and not worth respecting.

“Say that in front of us again, and I’ll shoot out your manhood, Your Honor,” Gretel said, steel and fire and the only sweet that Hansel could taste without gagging. She rolled the blunderbuss from her shoulder and aimed it easily with one hand at the guards who had advanced to defend their employer. “Come closer and I’ll drop you like a rotten oak.”

Her voice was strong and clear and echoed through the town square like a bell. Frauen in windows gasped, and children hid behind their elders, and probably even the monsters in their dens knew now that there was a new force in Schwinburg: one that had never met a monster (petty human or viciously supernatural, there was no difference) of which she was afraid.

Hansel could speak just fine, could make himself heard and strut and bluster with the best of them, but he preferred not to be seen, to let his three-hours-older sister stand in the twilight and be heard to the ends of the earth.

She had the words and the will and the way, and still the fools of Schwinburg strutting forward with no idea of what they faced only stopped when Hansel pointed his blunderbuss at their heads. “You heard her. Back down.”

The men held up their hands, mock-startled and stupid, and Gretel did the talking. She told them why the Kuhns, Hansel and Gretel, were there and what it would cost them. She told them how much gold she and he expected in advance, and what they wanted if they could bring the children back alive. Hansel nodded at all the right times, kept his gun trained on the fools and wished he could get the stink of sweet buns out of his nose.

It was more than habit to agree with his sister. It was ritual. It was protection. When eyes were on them, they never disagreed. They rarely argued anyway—the mare she’d bought in Berlin with the majority of his archery winnings, and the whore he’d spent the week with in Krakow were two notable exceptions—but never when Gretel was in the delicate business of convincing another set of morons that when she and Hansel went to a fight, it would be she and Hansel.

Maybe it was because she was his sister, but Hansel couldn’t understand why the village idiots that held the purse strings insisted on looking at Gretel and seeing a whore in leathers pretending she could use a blade. For one, Hansel had seen (met, known, in all senses of the word) plenty of whores and not one had the balls to dress like his sister (even that one that had, indeed, had balls).

For another, she had a vicious right hook, and of the two of them, she had the stronger stomach. And he didn’t just mean his stomach.

She looked good in blood, his sister. She would bite and kick and fight and go toe to toe with any witch, bastard, or monster they faced without a second’s hesitation. She didn’t worry for her clothes, face, skin, hands, hide, bones, or the blades and clubs that could break them. She had never once been trapped in what was expected of her.

And Hansel, at least in his own heart, had never once lived up to what was expected of him.

The bargaining done, the arguments finished, the night close to falling, they retreated to the local cheap inn, accosted by the usual wide-eyed townies, come to praise or poke at the famous siblings with a mixture of awe and fear that made Hansel almost as sick as sugar.

The beer was sweet on his tongue, every drought threatening to have his stomach revolt, but he downed them grimly and let Gretel carry the conversation (as she carried him), let her give the spiel: bring down, behead, and burn.

He waved away the stew when it came, and accepted the next tankard shoved into his hand, accepted Gretel’s knowing look as she ate his helping as well as hers—she’d long ago stopped forcing him to eat, stopped pinning him down and snarling at him to keep himself alive, knowing now that he would, for her—and held it together until he’d filled his stomach with enough bitter beer to have a good excuse.

The late summer night was crisp around the edges, with stars that burned like a witch’s eye on a pyre, and he bent over the midden pile, knees digging into the dirt of a hundred un-finished meals and emptied his stomach until he could imagine he tasted blood and ginger in the bile sliding down his throat.

When he finished, panting from the pain, lightning in his head and his watch buzzing like a bee’s nest, he leaned against the filthy wall and forced himself to breathe. After better than a decade, he didn’t have to think about getting out the syringe, shoving the needle into his thigh. The world spun in a way that was not completely related to alcohol, and he barely felt the needle’s tiny, sharp pain.

Gretel found him like that later, her hair slightly mussed, a rip in her shirt, new scrapes on her knuckles.

Hansel blinked up at her. “Trouble?”

She shook her head. “Guy got drunk, got handsy.”

“So you got handsy?” He grabbed her by the hand and ran a thumb over her bruised knuckles. The world was still spinning. He could imagine sugar on his tongue, bruises yellowing on her skin like butter browning over the fire.

Gretel’s mouth quirked and she dropped down next to him. “Handsy, Hansel. You could say that. Or maybe say he’s sleeping it off after I introduced his jaw to my fist. How about you, Hans? Trouble?”

He looked away. “Same old, same old, sis.”

She gently disentangled her hand and laid it over his thigh where the cloth of his pants was worn thin from the needle riding through. “Same old?”

He put his hand over hers, held onto her warmth and her steady fierce strength. “Can’t burn this one, can we?”

She moved her head, though through the darkness he couldn’t tell whether the short motion was a nod, a shake, or something indefinable. “Let’s get you to bed, shall we?”

He didn’t fight her as she pulled him back to his feet and back into motion.

The next day they rode into the forests near Schwinburg and killed themselves a witch.

This one wasn’t very smart, or fast, and didn’t last too long, even if she fought hard before dying. Hansel ended up pulling one of her jagged spines out of his hand—sharp like a hedgehog’s, but something that once they got stuck wouldn’t come easily from his flesh, and burned—and Gretel ended with blood a solid stain from her waist to her calves, with one streak over her forehead where she had wiped sweat from her brow during the work.

The witch had been luring the children into her snares with birdsong, and then keeping them in cages. Only two of the eight that had been taken were still alive.

They were poor little mites, sharp bones and big terrified eyes as Hansel smashed their cage doors and Gretel told them in her clean and no-nonsense voice that they were okay, that they would be okay. Hansel had to turn away from the sight of the blank eyes, of bony arms wrapped around his sister’s neck, and wrap his hand that bled sluggishly. This witch hadn’t fed her prey, apparently preferring them mostly bone.

When Gretel had broken them out, when they had burned their first witch down to ashes and filth, he had been a fat little boy, slow and empty-eyed from the sugar and the fear. He still woke thrashing from nightmares about those cookies and shards of sugar shoved through the bars of his cage, his hands shaking while he brought it to his lips, unable to do anything less while the witch held a knife to his sister’s throat. He had known even then, that he would be eaten when he had eaten enough to please her, but he could do nothing less for his sister’s life. To this day, the act of eating reminded him of having so much sugar in his stomach that he had to vomit it out, and then watching helplessly while the witch beat his sister bloody for his sins.

They burned the witch’s lair to the ground, and carried away their reward, the little girl clinging to Gretel’s shoulders, the undernourished boy with empty eyes Hansel recognized well carried in his arms.

It seemed a long, slow road back to Schwinburg, a smell almost like burnt sugar lingering in his nose, as always, following his sister wherever she would go.

~*~

{Author's commentary/notes}

*I’m playing fast and loose with German geography here (and with many other things). There is actually a town named Schweinberg (though I’d picked out Schwinburg before I knew that for sure; Google translate tells me that Schweinberg means “pig mountain” though I would have guessed “pig town” before) and it is near Oberpirach, which became Oberpatch for the sake of embracing inaccuracy (aka, not actually learning everything I would need to about German geography and culture to write this fic in a REAL place).

*Frauen—plural of “frau”, lady, woman, Mrs., I don’t speak German, so if my usage sucks, please let me know!

*Kuhn—this is…Hansel and Gretel’s last name? Seriously, guys, I didn’t know this until I started reading fanfic for the movie. So it may not be true *itches to see movie again but refuses to pay full price for it *

*Diabetes doesn’t work this way. I had to check, because I have friend with diabetes, and while watching the movie I was like “Wait, is that a high blood sugar when he gets those headaches? Is that a low bloodsugar? WHAT IS GOING ON?” So, after researching a bit turns out, the movie doesn’t know, and Hansel takes magic insulin, and has equally magic diabetes where he only gets dramatic sideeffects and doesn’t worry about his extremities

*Do any of you know which of the siblings is actually older? The internet didn’t seem to know, and the movie itself may have left it to the imagination.

*I wrote this fic on two premises.

One, that Hansel should have an eating disorder (in my continued canon, he eats crackers and beef jerky, and not much of that, just enough to keep up his strength, and in the past Gretel was practically screaming at him/holding him how to eat because she was so scared that even after they got away from the witch she was going to lose her little brother to sugar sickness and his own fear.

Two: That Hansel always seemed to back up Gretel in the movie, but she’s the one who does the talking when they are in public, she’s the one that fights, and doesn’t flinch from the sight of blood (okay, so Hansel doesn’t exactly run screaming, but he…dodges. Or pulls other people in front of him. If you’ve seen the movie you know what I mean), and Hansel just agrees with her. Both because he agrees with her and because he doesn’t seem to have the energy to butt in when she has it handled.

For all that Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters was a busty action flick, I thought that it’s portrayal of women was…strong? I mean, with the witches all being women, and Gretel being The Most Badass, both the savior of the day and the evil of the day were women and Hansel was…along for the ride? Important, but it wasn’t really about him so much.

And also Gretel’s outfit looked both like she could fight in it, and that it was very supportive. *grin *

FC Timestamp: A small and undefined amount of comfort

brosedshield — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 01:16:30 GMT

GUYS GUYS GUYS, I've written WORDS!!

Written and edited and POSTED (sorry I'm so excited but it feels like it's been forever that I've done something SHORT [the entirety of FC doesn't count so much because even the small Chapters are larger than most everything I posted in my life soooo....]).

If you are reading my LJ and for some reason have not read Freak Camp at all, you may not want to start here...

Title: A small and undefined amount of comfort
Chronology: Chapter Twenty-One
Author: brosedshield
Characters/Pairing: John Winchester, random hunters, all the ghosts of stories past...
Warnings: violence, alcoholism, strong language, self-hatred
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 2495
Summary: John deals with his emotions with the same unhealthy coping mechanisms Winchesters have used for generations. It's not a lot of comfort, but he'll take what he can get. (Notes at the end)
Beta Thanks: You are awesome lavinialavender and whereupon. Without you all writings would kind of curl up and never see the light of day.

Story here (at freac_camp)

Why is there food...oh wait, stress response

brosedshield — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 22:07:16 GMT

Hi guys, I promise I'm not dead. Just may seem that way sometimes with how often (that is, not) I've been...doing anything here.

This weekend there were vague plans to write and edit and catch up on comments over at freac_camp, all of which I have been COMPLETELY TERRIBLE at, but instead I stress cooked. I'm not 100% certain what I've been stressed about, but I started off Friday night attacking a Bota-box of wine, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and made chicken pasta, chicken soup, and mushroom stuffing to go in croquetas. Saturday, I stared into space, hit church, hit my staff party, and then came home and went to bed. And then today I made tapioca pudding, a tortilla, and homemade curry with rice while finishing S1 Buffy the Vampire slayer, and the proceeded to clean EVERYTHING (everything made of tile or formica at least) and I still feel like I SHOULD BE DOING SOMETHING.

In about...now, I'm off to my youth group big night, which...may very well be the source of the anxiety. Anyway, last week was crazy busy, and this weekend it's been hard enough to sit still enough to check my email (which is by itself rather unnerving) but I'm hoping that tonight/this week there will be more time in general to reconnect and thank people and...yes. Communicating would be good again.

Hope you see you all soon, and prove that I'm alive, as opposed to it generally just being understood.

Best,
Brose

A Monster By Any Other Name: Part Two - Chapter Twenty-One

brosedshield — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 04:44:48 GMT

It's up! It's up! (at last at last, you get to READ our pretty pretty little Chapter :D :D)

Title: A Monster By Any Other Name: Part Two - Chapter Twenty-One
Authors: lavinialavender and brosedshield
Rating: R
Warnings: please see full list here
Spoilers: none; AU
Pairing: eventual Sam/Dean (yet not incest; AU where they’re not brothers)
Chapter word count: 11,565
Summary: The same old Sam/Dean love story, with a darkfic twist. Sam grew up in a concentration camp for monsters and Dean was raised as an only child and hunter: Together, they make each other human. // Sam was prepared for anything Dean wanted him to do – except become a real.

Masterlist

Part Two: Chapter Twenty-One

brosedshield — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 01:07:25 GMT

Hey guys, somewhat unhappy life update. I found out this week that my mom has first stage breast cancer. The tumor (only one, I think) is still really tiny and doesn't seem to have spread anywhere, and they/we (not sure yet if I'm going with yet...I'm invited but there might be other plans) are going in on the 26th to talk about options.

I'm in a pretty good place right now, not freaking out just kind of in the "Well, fuck, okay, moving on to action" stage. Wednesday, when I found out she had a tumor and we didn't know yet what it was, was not a good day. But today is better.

Anyway, prayers and good wishes are very much appreciated, and Merry Christmas to everyone.

I'm writing myself an Epiphany (card)

brosedshield — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 06:00:11 GMT

Hey guys! I'm alive, I swear, even though I'm not around practically at all. Here's the low-down on the last couple of weeks.

{November was insane} because that was the month of commuting an hour each way, of learning a new job with new people, moreover a job I've NEVER TRAINED FOR. I'm fine at it, don't get me wrong (I'm a youth minister! I like youth, and I'm passionate and knowledgeable about my faith, but dammit I'm kind of terrified by the budget). November was also the month of missing Mom and Dad (they were gone to fair conventions in the West for the whole month), cooking my own food (not really that hard, I love cooking, but it takes time), and thinking about packing and never seeming to manage it after i got home that night.

I learned a lot, I got paid, I met people, I went ARG, I got bored, I got stressed. It was a good month, but crazy (this "being employed" thing is really nice, but certainly doesn't give you a lot of time to write :P)

And now it's December and life is STILL really fantastic and really insane. Mom, Dad and I moved into my new apartment the first of December. I actually got the 24 hour flu that same day and was vomitting...pretty much eveywhere while they dragged the furniture up the stairs. They were really awesome and we got almost ALL my stuff into the place within that one weekend. Getting it all put away is a different matter.

For the first time in my life, I have all the stuff that I've collected over 25 years together in one place, and I can't help looking at it and thinking "I went to Spain with two handbags and a suitcase, why the heck do I have all this STUFF?".

Of course a lot of that is books. We traveled a lot when I was a kid, so it wasn't practical for me to check something out of a library when there was no guarantee that I'd be able to get it back in time, so all that time I was a voracious reader AND buying everything. I have one heck of a library, even after a few year of whittling down the books that I didn't think that I'd ever read again, or ever want to lend out to someone. Or look up info in. Or compare to other writing styles.

Yeah, lots of books, and exactly one bookshelf *eyes books, eyes checkbook, eyes calendar* I think I'm going to wait until after Christmas to go out and buy some. But there DEFINITELY will be some.

MAN, you see how distracted I get. There's so much STUFF to put places. For example, I ended up going out to buy a new iPod cord yesterday because...I don't know where the other one is. It's in a BOX. A box my parents packed because i was too sick to go home and finish up the last packing details. It HAS to be somewhere, because there is NOTHING in my old room. Nothing. It's been converted into a sewing room, with a fresh coat of paint, and I'm still kind of amazed, because I can't REMEMBER the last time my parents moved that fast on a home improvement project. O_O. They do still have a cot in there for me though for when i com eback to visit. *hehe*

ANYWAY, I'm finally in the new apartment. The internet came in last Thursday, thank goodness, but I've been doing computer training away from work, and driving around, and having meetings and figuring out where my spoons were in the intermissions and...yeah.

I haven't been writing. I regret that. I miss FC, and Natl, and even Haraan Demonrider is starting to shove his way into my brain (I've been reading the Bible lately, the juicy bits in the middle and every time i read about the early Isrealites, how passionate, how faithful, how bloodthirsty they were, how closely they followed God, I find myself writing about faith in the incarnation of Haraan Demonrider (whose name may change some day because it's too close to Haylan and they would really not get along). Haraans an utterly faithful man, and brilliant, and driven, and a complete bastard and I'm rather fond of him. Maybe someday I'll actually finish a story about him and throw that up here.

I'm going to write Christmas cards this year! I finally got a whole batch of cheap but pretty ones, and I'm going to start writing them out and sending them...any...day...now...*stares vacantly at calendar*. Did I say Christmas cards? Maybe I meant Epiphany cards. (Epiphany is a holiday on Jan 6 celebrating the visit of the Three Kings to Baby Jesus. Not one of the big holidays where I'm from, honestly, but it was BIG in Spain. There was a parade, with Santa and LIVE ELEPHANTS).

I really can't complain about life. Life is VERY good. I have a job, my supervisor and I are scarily on the same wavelength, I really like the kids I'm working with, the community is incredibly accepting, and things are GOOD, even when they're stressful, or I have my 10-hour-work-day Wednesdays. But there's not a lot of time for anything else right now, you know?

So, anyway, I hope that you all have been having fantastic lives, and that you have a very Merry Christmas, a delightful New Years, and...an epiphany on Epiphany? :P

TL; DR
Writing? Sleeping? Blogging? What are these things of which you speak? Where is the time for them? Better luck after Christmas...

A Monster By Any Other Name: Part Two - Chapter Twenty

brosedshield — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 04:44:53 GMT

Part Two: Chapter Twenty

:)

A Monster By Any Other Name: Part Two - Chapter Nineteen

brosedshield — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 01:15:03 GMT

I've decided that when we update Freak Camp I really should tell you guys over here, and not just assume that you're all reading it at the comm. Soooo! Have another chapter. :P

Title: A Monster By Any Other Name: Part Two - Chapter Nineteen
Authors: lavinialavender and brosedshield
Rating: R
Warnings: please see full list here
Spoilers: none; AU
Pairing: eventual Sam/Dean (yet not incest; AU where they’re not brothers)
Chapter word count: 7,851
Summary: The same old Sam/Dean love story, with a darkfic twist. Sam grew up in a concentration camp for monsters and Dean was raised as an only child and hunter: Together, they make each other human. // Sam was prepared for anything Dean wanted him to do – except become a real.

Masterlist

Part Two: Chapter Nineteen