Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/4299888.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Rape/Non-Con,
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Meg_Masters/Dean_Winchester, Meg_Masters/Sam_Winchester
  Character:
      Meg_Masters_(Demon), Sam_Winchester, Dean_Winchester
  Additional Tags:
      Meg_in_Claire's_body, Time_Travel, Dark_Dean_Winchester, Dark_Sam
      Winchester, POV_Outsider, Alternate_Universe_-_Canon_Divergence,
      Necrophilia, Torture, Mutilation, Violence, Apocalyptic/Hell_imagery,
      Scat, Vomiting, generally_grotesque_imagery, Squick, Additional_Warnings
      Apply, Mindfuck, Knifeplay, Abuse, Underage_Sex, Dark, Epistolary,
      Experimental_Style, POV_Experimental
  Stats:
      Published: 2011-03-22 Words: 2724
****** Commedia ******
by kalliel
Summary
     In 2007, the Boy King reigns. Meg wreaks havoc. Death blooms. In
     2011, Dean decides to do something about it. And once again, the
     Novaks get caught in the crossfire.
     Claire!Meg/Dean, Claire!Meg/Sam's body. Time travel AU.
September 18, 2007
Riverside, California
 
She was a small girl, so it surprised me. Though after the last four months, it
probably shouldn't have.
 
There's nothing beautiful about the dead. They remind Meg too much of angels,
gutter-pale and silent. But there may be something to scale--her black boots
mark green bruises on the stomachs of the dead as she walks the pale, silent
path. Flesh, heat-swollen, rips under her heels; she hears the snap of tearing
fat and blood vessels just before she smells it. The abused dead sing dirges,
rattling moans as stale air expels in a puff of mirage heat.
Meg walks.
 
The Boy King rolled in with the drought, sometime in early May. It's 2007. The
skies went black--Bible black--maybe one, two Thursdays after the last storm.
Got light again quick, yeah, but it wasn't ever the same. The Boy King played
Free on all the radio frequencies and told us it was all right now, like he
thought that was cute. I'll always remember that. That's why when hell on
wheels rolled up, black steel and broken windows, playing the same damn song, I
knew I was in for something big.
Guy climbed out--pretty big himself. Six-foot, muscular, not healthy. (This
doesn't have anything to do with the small girl; she comes later. I probably
shouldn't have started with her, but she--she really. She struck me.)
Anyway.
The guy--he runs up, panting, and I can see the stub at the back of his throat
where his tongue used to graw. He catches me stare and mouths Yeah, you're a
picture, too. Then he does violence to the cover of a scrappy leather journal,
scrawls--Water?. I told him maybe. Was he gonna pay me?
That was the wrong answer.
He takes out a handful of coins, and a Winchester hunting knife. Both end up
down my throat.
 
There are eight bones in the human wrist. Six of Meg's are broken.
That's what makes it hard to disentangle her body from all the rest when her
boot punches through a child's sternum and lodges in decomposing cardiac
muscle. She's still there when Dean shows up. He looks older--decades or more.
He looks--(but he couldn't possibly; she would have known) like he's been
through Hell.
She blinks, and looks harder. Still comes out with Hell face up.
"Meg," is all he says, with effort. Chain-gangs prying his jaw open, folding
what's left of his tongue, working his throat. Meg watches his Adam's apple bob
and envisions vocal cords stripped raw worn thin. She imagines Dean's been
doing a lot of screaming. Hell or not, he has a lot to scream about.
"Dean!" She gives him her most genial smile--she's been practicing, but it
still stings with violence at the edges--and does her best to get comfortable
in her dead twelve year old's chest cavity. She pushes her cheek close to its
lips and looks up at Dean. "Is this yours? I wouldn't want to intrude."
Dean doesn't try to speak, doesn't even look at her, like he's finally figured
out that cocky grins and stern jaws don't mean a damn thing to her, or anyone
(anyone left); he must notice the bruises on her wrist, or the swelling--either
is a feat, given the state of all the human landmines strewn about them--
because that's the first thing he grabs for. Fractured scaphoid, pulverized
lunate--twister triquetral and pisiform just gone. What's left grinds together,
making witch's powder out of Meg.
It's not until he grabs her throat and shuts her the fuck up Meg realizes she'd
started screaming, too.
His grip slackens as he stumbles backward through the trodden dead, and Meg
says, "Didn't think I'd see you again."
Sweat breaks out above his upper lip anew as he staggers back into the fresh
flow of shit his boots pressed out of what looks like used to be a grade school
teacher. Hell may have burned him at the edges, but something got him good
everywhere else. Fair bet Meg knows who. "Looks like I was right."
 
Never knew anyone that quick with a knife. That one cousin we have--you
remember?--he could skin a rabbit full in just under six minutes, but I ain't
ever known someone that quick on a tongue. (Excepting that same cousin with the
ladies, but he never brought a knife into the bedroom.)
I swallowed my weight in blood, and part of my tongue, after he was through
with it. I know, because it all came back up half an hour later, all down the
guy's front. Milky red and bits of meat, like over-boiled sausage. Guy didn't
even blink. He didn't smile, neither. He wasn't happy. Just gave me a look
like, You're gonna have to do a lot better than that, and kept right on pulling
the rope.
Guess I don't know if this is gonna get to you, the mail's probably not doing
so great, but I wanted you to know my handwriting was a helluva lot worse, and
that this is an improvement. I put my hands out in front of me and they make
Ls, so if my Ls look like arms I can't help that.
Been practicing since he left, though. Doing exercises. Flipping the coins I
picked out from around my hacked up tongue. It's the queerest thing--one of
them says 2010. Where in the hell would he get that?
 
Dean smells like shit, in a real sense. He smells like acid rain and carbon
smoke, but mostly like sloppy, human shit. Meg just smells like blood, which
isn't too far off the ordinary; she nestles comfortably in cooling fat and
drying sinew. Dean nestles comfortably, too.
She knows his stances, knows the way he kisses steel, and his fingers tend his
knives. She knows the only one who could have taught him that, and it wasn't
John Winchester. "Is there something you want to tell me?"
Nah, he's just gonna kill her. He's gonna rip her fucking throat out and stuff
it up her ass. That's what his body's telling her, in any case. She's familiar
with that language, too. Dean's mouth doesn't say a word.
And Meg hates that. Her wrists are past pain; they're hardly hers anymore. They
find their way into Dean's lap like spiders.
"Where'd you learn are those neat tricks?" she asks. "Or should I be asking--
when?"
 
The walking dead started with them two: that much I know. Him dragging her with
her wrists all twisted and sad. She was a small girl, and he was as big as
ever, and I thought I knew the punchline then and there. He'd cut out her
tongue, rape her in front of me, and we'd never be able to tell a damn soul.
We'd sit there, watching shiny 2010 pennies roll and roll and never land.
He's the kind that really flourished under the Boy King. The rest of us--we
were destroyed. But it's guys like him that were born to this kind of shit. The
kind that didn't fade when the Boy King came stateside. He just grew.
That girl kept her tongue, it turns out, though she didn't keep her mouth. He
swallowed her whole right outside the window (this was in my place in
Riverside, the one with the curtains you hate. There's these two people
streaked with other people hanging outside my window, trying to poison each
other with their tongues, framed in daisy paisley. Frenching like that one kiss
was a goddamn game-ender. That was really something.
At least I thought it was, 'til I saw what they dragged in after them.
"Boy King's dead," said the girl, to me. "Get the fuck over it."
 
Sam's body's still a lot more Sam than Meg would have guessed. Hell warps--
purees, in Lilith's words, when she's feeding babies to babies with little
plastic spoons that keep their form even in Hell. But Sam's looking good. If
you let your eyes glaze over and you don't see the thick dark veins encroaching
on his heart from the fingers up, pulsing, vibrating tentacles all the more
alive now that Sam's heart's long done beating, then Sam's looking real good.
The Boy King still looks human. Not as much as Meg does, her vanity won't let
her even consider that, but more than Dean.
Dean waggles his knife above her tongue, cuts in close when she tells him so,
but he hasn't cut her so far and Meg knows that means he won't. There's nothing
holding him back; if that's really what he wants, he doesn't need to wait.
"I'll be needing this," she reminds him, even so. She lets a nib of tongue hang
out between her teeth. "There's some things Sam just can't do for himself--
though I'm sure you're aware. Reanimation is...a complicated thing." But I can
bring him back. For you, Dean. Because you're such a dear.
Meg looks down again, looks past the tentacle veins, and sees a body, gutter-
pale and silent. Boy King's not so special after all.
"How'd you kill him? When'd you learn? Because you did, didn't you." Meg asks
again. She drops to her knees and tries to wriggle his mouth open with her
elbow. Her hands are good as gone.
Sam is stiff, even as corpses go. Lips puckered and dried out, frozen in the o
o o of betrayal. She tries to knock his head back. She doesn't want to break
his jaw just to get a kiss in.
She knocks his chin with her elbow (it crumples; no blood, so no bruise, but it
deflates like a lung and doesn't pop back, and finds her preservation courtesy
is wasted--his neck's already broken).
"How'd you know it would kill him?" Her neck broke, after all. Her spine
shattered in four places. She'd fallen a thousand stories and hell, everything
inside her broke. She still showed up in South Dakota. Yet the Boy King breaks
his neck, and he's out--so how could Dean have known it'd be over like that?
Because he must have known. He had to. "How'd you--"
"Call it hindsight," Dean mouths. His lips writhe like hunted things.
Meg's mouth forgets its training and curls into a smile, all death and teeth
and bile. There's more to that story. But Dean remains as impatient as ever.

"So are you going to fuck him or not?"
And it's hilarious, it really is. It doesn't have anything to do with the
mangled slur that accompanies his lip movements: After all this time, those
words still kill him.
You know the way your baby girl plays with dolls? She'll sit them up and snap
their legs in place, fit tea cups into their hands and have a party. That's
what this girl did. She moved like a killer, but she looked like a small, small
girl.
She had the stiff snapped up against the wall like a big doll, head slung
against his shoulder and tongue lolling out. Blue like the rest of us, dead
like all of them not me. She slams his mouth fast, like she's on a mission from
God, catches his tongue with her teeth and rakes down the grey, bloated thing
like she's death's hooker. I could see the villi nibs collecting in her teeth,
like roe.
"A Deal like this takes more than a kiss, Dean. Do you really want to watch?"
she says. First name basis.
Then--angel lust, they call it--the stiff's dick flips up, must catch her by
surprise, because she falls into his lap like she's really the little girl it
seems she is, and he's her daddy, gonna tell her a bedtime story. Then she's
grabbing his dick, mottled and crusted as it is, and she's spreading her legs.
I looked away. Joseph and Mary, I looked away.
The guy--Dean?--just moved closer.
 
Fucking a dead body isn't so far removed from becoming one. Meg spills a little
black down Sam's throat, lets it loosen his muscles and boil through clogged
capillaries. She spills a little in his eyes, a little up his nose. It warms
him just enough to reanimate the blood.
That's the first step.
Then she guides Sam's cock up her dress, past her underwear. It doesn't work at
first, but Meg rips her vessel open, something snaps, and there's blood (the
way there's always blood), but it's done. She lets her body sag into him,
grinding edges, trying to work pleasure into poison. It's like fucking a damn
rock. Such is the price for reanimation.
Dean jumps to her shoulder, and she moans into his hair. Her laughter makes a
sound like victory bells. Sam shudders, dead air pushing out of his mouth as
brown sludge seeps from under him.
Dean grabs Sam's throat, minus the crushing force he used on her, checks for a
pulse. His breaths start matching the steady beat Meg can feel pulsing through
her everything, so it must have worked.
The Boy King rises.
 
I open my eyes when the guy starts screaming, but his jaw's shut tight. Noise
is coming from the stiff. And maybe the congregation'd call me crazy, but
that's probably the first time I believed in Jesus fucking Christ. Because
there's our Boy King, coughing gritty shit and blood, but come again--only
difference is, he's the Devil's son, not God's.
The guy, Dean, snaps his arm out before the Boy King draws a real breath and
starts carving at it, same way he did my tongue. Circle, with a bar, like a
lock.

"Where'd you learn that?" says the girl. She's got her legs pressed together
like her insides are gonna fall out if she's not holding them in. After all
that, and the symbol, bleeding and puffy, is the thing that scares her. "That's
one of ours--a binding--"
A binding what, I don't know. But Dean digs his nails into the cuts. He
flinches a little when the Boy King moans, but he doesn't stop. The same way he
kept tying me, he doesn't ever stop.
 
Dean starts scrawling letters across Sam's chest.
m n s t r s
he writes. d i e
w h e r e t o ?
Meg shakes her head. Her body aches. Warm blood coats her fingers when she
pulls them away from her dress. She writes, we don't. "We don't go anywhere."
He writes,
o , y o u
d o.
a n d im (one flurry, the last flourish of blood before he needs to dig in for
more; Sam groans, but Dean doesn't flinch this time.)
Meg snorts, washes her hands in Sam's blood. "And where did you find this
information? Your friendly neighborhood demons are just handing out intel?"
Dean barks. s u r p r i s e d ?
i m
g o n n a b ethere
w h e n y oud o.
------andN O W
He takes a deep breath, and something inside Meg squirms. He opens his mouth,
slurs, throaty and sibilant: "Sam too."
 
That's when I saw you. Wearing that ratty trenchcoat Amelia hates so much. You
appeared out of nowhere, like a ghost. Then there was a flash of light, and I
guess I passed out, because I don't remember anyone leaving.
Next thing I know, someone's got PURGATORY written in blood on the wall. Next
thing I know, it's me and the girl, dead. She was so small--and wearing a red
dress used to be white. Hair in stringy blonde rattails. The kind of sad thing
you see on crime shows, or war movies. She started smelling, bloating, in the
afternoon, when the sun leaked in. I wasn't really up to moving, or moving her,
but I tried anyway. I turned her around, and she really looked like--
Well, let's just say the whole thing made me think of you. Like I was getting
some kind of message, and it was about you. You with the trenchcoat, and your
little girl, and--
Well, I thought I should write. Brothers shouldn't be strangers. Give my best
Claire and Amelia. Let me know how things are back east.
 
S. Novak
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