Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down [Closed]

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

Dean had made sure to keep himself to the house. He was too worried about the next time he'd lose more memories to do much on the house expansions for now. It meant he spent his time pacing around like a caged tiger.

And then things shifted again. His hair became more mussed up, and his hands looked abraded and bleeding, like somebody who had to claw out of a coffin and the ground. He glanced around, trying to realize where he was. It wasn't Bobby's, and yet it seemed familiar. Everything was mixed up.

Sammy, he had to find his brother. Had to see him again after so long.

(ooc: closed, but open to anybody who'd be by the house or know the Winchesters well.)

Comments

[chosenfamily]

It was a very quiet house, with a scent that was somewhat like dog, though Bobby wasn't around at the moment.

Sam came out of the kitchen, looking tired. More like bone-weary, but he was doing his best to ignore it. "I thought I heard voices out here," he said, smile flitting over his face. Not there long, but true enough. "Hey, Rhiow. And this is Arhu?" The pronunciation was probably off since he was going by what he'd read. "Dai stiho."

Hey, he'd hung around Rhiow long enough to pick up a few things.

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

Dean had been trying to nap upstairs by this time, but while his body was weary, his mind was too active for sleep. Any time he shut his eyes he was getting those flashes, things in his past only now because this regression it's in his future too. He almost expected the Hellhounds to show up.

[seeing-eye-cat.livejournal.com]

Arhu paused, peering up at the ehhif-tom who'd emerged. Finally he headed toward him.

"Yeah. You'd be Ssam, then?" Well, he might be D'hean, but Rhiow said that he wasn't doing well, so it probably wouldn't be likely that he'd be down here. The ehhif's accent wasn't bad either, but Arhu attributed that to spending so long wit Rhiow. He wasn't as good as Rosie, but that was hard to do. "Dai."

Arhu knew that he didn't look quite as impressive as Rhiow - he was still growing, after all - but at least he was getting some size to him. He was a full-grown tom now, not the half-grown one he'd been when Rhiow and the team found him. He just needed to bulk out.

[chosenfamily]

Sam knelt down, offering the back of his hand for Arhu to scent, if he wanted to. It was polite, after all. "I am. Thank you for coming to help out."

[seeing-eye-cat.livejournal.com]

He leaned forward to sniff the offered hand, getting Ssam's scent for himself.

"Rhow's talked about you a lot, and she considers you friends. I'd have to be pretty stupid not to help out someone that she likes so much," he said dryly, sitting down and wrapping his tail neatly about his feet.

[chosenfamily]

Not much like Rhiow, then, at least in this respect. Sam nodded, dropping his hand back to his thigh. "I wouldn't say stupid." Just because he knew there were a lot of people who wouldn't think to help others that they didn't know. Though, that wasn't really a wizard thing, from what he knew of Rhiow.

"She's talked about you, too. I'm glad that she has someone from home now, too." He glanced at the ceiling. Or, really, at the bedroom where he knew Dean was trying to sleep. "I don't know what I'd do without Dean here."

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

Upstairs, Dean must have drifted off because a moment later there was a sudden scream of absolute panic. Also thumps suggesting somebody violently thrashing in their sleep.

[seeing-eye-cat.livejournal.com]

"I wish Sif was here, too," he said softly, glancing away from Ssam for a moment, not even looking at Rhiow, who didn't remember meeting his sister this life around.

Any thoughts about continuing the conversation were cut off by that scream, and he leaped to his feet in surprise, fur fluffed up and claws half-extended in shock. His head snapped upward toward that scream, eyes wide. "Irh's balls, what was that?!"

[chosenfamily]

For a really big guy, Sam was surprisingly fast. He was on his feet before the scream ended, turning toward the doorway and the stairs. "Dean," was his reply, like that explained everything.

Well, for Sam, it did. Then he was off running, heading for the bedroom and taking the stairs two and three at a time.

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

Dean continued to twist and thrash around, the covers twisting over his tense moving form. The coiled sheets were wrapped tightly around his torso and his arm, restraining him. He wasn't screaming now, his cries having died down to pained whimpers.

[on_errantry]

"Sweet Iau," Rhiow said, casting her gaze to the ceiling. "Arhu, I think we had better get moving before things get worse."

She leapt lightly down from the couch, trotting to the front door. "I think it'll be easier to enclose the house entirely. Arhu, start rolling out the spell on your end, and I'll carry it over here."

[seeing-eye-cat.livejournal.com]

Arhu watched Ssam go tearing upstairs, listened to the screams fading somewhat - he could still hear though, and so he heard those whimpers through the floor. Then he shook his head quickly, ears flapping. There was pain here, and they had to do what they could to mitigate it.

"Gotcha," he said, voice and muscles tense as he followed Rhiow to the door and then bounded out and around the house. As he moved, he recited his part of the spell, paw-prints and tail-swishes laying it out behind him in a bright tracery of light. The words glowed in the Speech, the wizardly language that everything understands, laying out what the spell was requiring of the universe.

He met Rhiow at the other half of the spell and passed right by her, double-checking her work this time as he headed toward the front door again.

[chosenfamily]

If he'd been less worried, Sam probably could have warned them that it was just a nightmare, not Dean regressing again. Then again, the wizards probably realized that on their own.

Sam took a moment to realize what was happening before he stepped in, leaning over the bed and shaking Dean's shoulder. His other hand was ready to catch the free arm, not wanting to get smacked for trying to help. "Dean? Dean, it's just a nightmare. Wake up."

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

Dean thrashed wildly more as he felt something grab his hand. He struggled to punch and the veins on his arms stuck out with tension.

It took another two minutes before his eyes finally snapped open with a wild expression.

"what? What?" he blinked with confusion at his sweat drenched body and twisted sheets.

[on_errantry]

It was a mark of how long Rhiow had been on the ship without another wizard that she almost asked Arhu what he was doing. She'd been checking her own work for the past few months, and a weight of nervousness she didn't know she had rolled off her shoulders.

"Checks out," Rhiow said. "I'm wondering if we shouldn't use a little extra energy and key it so that Ssam can raise it when the time comes."

[seeing-eye-cat.livejournal.com]

"Might be a good idea," he said, flicking his tail 'yes.' "We can't necessarily be around when he needs it." Or at least, he might not be. Manly, independent tom had manly, independent things to do. "How would he trigger it, though?" That was more uncertain. Could non-wizardly folk trigger spells?

[chosenfamily]

"It's okay." Sam kept his hand around Dean's wrist, waiting until his brother seemed more awake before letting go. "It was just a nightmare." Which, given the way his sheets had twisted around him, wasn't that surprising. "Come on. Let's get you unwound, all right? If you're going to sleep, that'll be better."

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

Dean slowly nodded when he realized Sam was there, and fought to get his breathing under control again.

"Yeah, stupid sheets," he shakily replied. Shit, he's this bad now, and he can't remember much of it.

"Don't need much sleep, Sam. Think I'm good."

[on_errantry]

"The spell will take as soon as we read it," Rhiow agreed. There wasn't much time-release capacity in wizardry. You needed the energy from the universe then...

Rhiow's head snapped to the power array and her whiskers suddenly went forward in amusement. She threw a quick question out to the Whisperer and her ears perked forward at her pleased reply. "Except it can't actually start working until the power supply is in place," she said, turning around to fish in her claudication. "Ssam can hang on to the battery and put it down when the shield needs to go up."

[seeing-eye-cat.livejournal.com]

"Perfect!" He leapt to his feet, circling around to where the spot for the battery was. "I can even enhance this, make it visible to non-wizarding eyes so that he can see where to put it when he needs to." Only maybe he could see that sort of thing already? Rhiow had mentioned that Ssam would have been offered the Oath in their universe, and there were plenty of crewmembers that were magical but not wizards. Would he even need the help? He hesitated over the circle, but decided to emphasize it anyway, if only to set it apart from the rest of the spell.

[chosenfamily]

He really wanted to call bullshit on his brother, but Sam knew better. More to the point, he knew what it was like to have your own brain turn against you when you were sleeping. A lot of his first year hunting after Jess had been spent in much the same way.

So, instead, he nodded and pulled back, finding the edge of one of the sheets and started pulling in order to help loosen it around Dean's chest and legs.

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

Dean tried to reach down to assist without much luck. He grumbled and settled back on the bed.

"I'll be all right, man. Just a few years of suck, and rest will be good."

[on_errantry]

"Ready?" Rhiow asked. She trotted to the wizard's knot that would enclose the spell on itself, putting her front paws at the edge of the circle as she sat down.

She hadn't read a spell with another wizard in a very long time. Rhiow felt a sudden joyous thrill at that, her spirits lifting despite how badly she worried about Dean. "Let's begin."

"This is a hemispherical solid-state matter repellent barrier with an open-ended time parameter," she said with her wizardry behind it, and the universe sat up to pay attention.

[seeing-eye-cat.livejournal.com]

He put his whiskers forward at her and took the spot of his own name, joining his voice with hers. He worked to match paces for just a fraction of a second before falling back into it like the team-member he was.

"Power to be drawn from one thaumaturgical battery in the orath position, activated by power drawn from one Rhiw'aow and one Arhu." It felt good to be doing a larger wizardry like this with someone else, and he felt the universe lean in around them to listen, external sounds going quiet. He kept speaking as the pressure built up, and then they reached the word that was the equivalent of the wizard's knot, and power bled from him to put the spell into place.

[chosenfamily]

"Yeah, I know." He got the sheets pulled out so that Dean could get up. He didn't bother telling Dean that he knew exactly how many years of suck it had been. At the moment, it didn't matter.

"Rhiow's here," he said, stepping back. "Do you remember her?"