Work Text:
'If On a Freezing Night a Writer'
It's been a long day, a long Christmas, a long year that is almost at its end. Sometimes it seems like events conspire to drag you down into the minutiae of everyday life, rather than elevate and enlighten, and the only consolation you are given is the unexpected sweetness of those small pools of relief and relaxation that can all too rarely be indulged in, because there are just far too many things to do in one lifetime. Family to take care of, life to lead. But right now you have an evening alone in front of you, and several things to make it even sweeter. One of those is in front of you right at this minute, just several clicks away. Tense muscles begin to unwind, and everything seems just a little bit brighter. A few minutes distraction you tell yourself, is just what you need at the moment. On the screen in front of you is the archive page, and with swift practiced clicks the story lies open and waiting for your gaze. It hasn't been read yet. It's just for you, virgin untouched territory like a Christmas cake with icing white and smooth. And you recognise the first words, because they've already been written elsewhere.
Only you have remained suspended there, you and Ludmilla, while nobody else thinks of continuing the reading.- Italo Calvino
Touching the paper is like handling my own death. I am hiding not in the darkness of Irina's eyes that now so mockingly open and catch mine, piercing through my soul, reading every secret I possess. Her face is serpent like now, and Valerian cannot be seen, only his red hair, in her fingers, and all that can be heard is the soft wailing of the wind outside the room. I sit there still caught out of time. Does she know? The question does not need to be answered. Of course she knows. Did she plan this with Valerian? Every fibre of me tells me no, she at least believes in the Revolution, in the dream of truth and not the bourgeois existence. And now she is turning, shifting, holding her hand out to me, and Valerian is reeling back as though drunk, eyes exalted and crazed, and he looks right through me. I'm helpless to resist her eyes and her hands, and although I tremble and know that I should flee, should plunge my paltry paper-knife into Valerian's throat, should kill my comrade, and strangle the deceiver before me, still I move forward on hands and knees, breath coming in short bursts. I think that the light makes her shimmer in an odd way, as though even the reddish dimness cannot hide who and what she is. Valerian is watching now, watching both of us, my hands so close to her hands. And then I turn and catch his eyes, and he knows that I know, and there can be no peace between us. The man who should have been my comrade through thick and thin has sold out to the running capitalist Whites. And we cannot both live. For as Valerian is the one who I have been ordered to seek out and destroy, so I must be eliminated from his plans. Then Irina is there, and the swift lash of her hand stuns me. She is naked still, but the gun is in her hand, and Valerian and I are pitifully consciously aware of our own nakedness. Irina does not care, but our male ego still yearns to cover up, to resume clothes and guns. But we both of us reckoned without Irina, and I doubt now if Valerian and I can muster up our own separate energies for belief in the revolutionary cause. Irina has drained us of energy, like punctured balloons we seep vigour and purpose.
You are slightly intrigued. The writing is barely adequate, but it is a story that has been written for you, and that was always an beguiling part of Calvino's book, just what did the narrator do on being confronted with Valerian's treachery? So the sound of the kettle clicking off in the background is a distraction. But on the other hand the night is cold, and it's only going to get colder, and right now a cup of tea is beginning to sound better and better. Perhaps a cookie as well. It's past the New Year. Time to break some resolutions. So making your way into the kitchen, you busy yourself with the essential task of preparing tea the proper way, just enough milk and in a big enough mug to last. And yes there is a cookie, because when its cold outside, and you have tea and a story, you need a cookie as well.
When you come out of the kitchen, feet already cold, you groan softly, because life's habit of being as awkward as it can be has struck again. Your screen is dark, your place is lost. But at the merest touch it rumbles back to life, and it won't be the work of a moment to reopen closed tabs. You're about to scroll down to where you had left off when the beginning sentence catches your eye, and something about it is different. Harry Potter, you murmur to yourself. The opening sentence is banal, the story quite obviously different. And yet the title and the author are the same- 'If On a Freezing Night a Writer' by Euripides. This is ridiculous you think to yourself. Yet surely the computer never lies. Had you drifted off and imagined that someone had written you Italo Calvino fiction? Your rational mind reasserts itself. You hadn't requested Harry Potter fiction. You had asked for Italo Calvino. Yet since clicking backwards and refreshing the page seem to have no effect whatsoever on the contents, and you have a cup of tea on the side in severe danger of cooling beyond consumption, you decide that what the hell. Harry Potter it is. Maybe the writer had a change of heart and uploaded another story with the same title.
When she finally found a seat in a silent park, she unwrapped the chips and began eating them. After a few seconds she slid them across the bench. "Have one Harry." He moved out of the darkness and sat down beside her, hand reaching out for a chip. They chewed in silence for a moment.
"The best chips I ever had," he started, his voice startling her a little, "were three weeks after the final battle." She stayed silent, and listened. He drank from her can of Coke, then continued. "Do you remember, we were thanked by the Muggle Prime-Minister. Then we went and got pissed at the Dragonshide Arms. And you suggested we did Muggle London, so we Apparated into Camden, and had a wander around. We ended up eating at that Chinese take-away that did English stuff. We had chips and curry, and Ron tried to pay in Sickles."
"And you were sick in the gutter, Ron was sick in an alleyway, and I managed to wait until we got home to call God on the white telephone. That was a good night." They ate silently on, until all that was left was the greasy white paper the chips had come in, and an empty can. She screwed them up, then lobbed it in the direction of the bin.
He shifted along the bench, and put his arm round her shoulders. The weight was solid and comforting, and she felt obscurely relieved that he was there. He seemed to sense that and pulled her a bit closer. "Those were the best chips I ever had," he repeated. "They were greasy, salty, misshapen, and they were eaten in the company of the two best friends I've ever had, three weeks after we beat a Dark Lord between us." He sighed, and she felt it rumble through him. "I think," he continued quietly, "that it never got better than that. We all live in the past a bit. Us both especially, because the past is our home really. The past for us is Hogwarts and Voldemort, and hating school enemies because it never occurred to us to do anything but that. Ron and Ginny have their family, and this truly is the only world they know. But we chose it. And like all choices we have to live with those consequences. Sometimes things aren't as simple as they should be, things don't end like they do in books."
When the knock comes barely five minutes later, part of you knows it was inevitable. Laws of the universe have kicked into operation. When you're hungry, the fridge is empty. When it rains you'll have lost your umbrella. And when you're pleasantly occupied on an evening in by yourself, someone will interrupt you. Someone you probably won't want to talk to. Taking extra care this time, you merely turn off the screen. You'll be able to get rid of the intruder fairly fast you reckon. It might only be a neighbour popping by to borrow milk, but you'd still not rather have your story up on the screen. Until it's read through fully, it's yours after all. As it turns out the visitor is not a friend dropping by to wish you Happy New Year, or a neighbour on a mission, it's the inevitably frustrating face of someone who has found Jesus. But not in a nice quiet ooh isn't that nice way. In the loud, obnoxious 'now-I've-found-Jesus-he-wants-me-to-tell-the-world' way. Something tells you this man won't appreciate Harry Potter fanfiction. And right now, you don't appreciate him. A few well-chosen words and one thoroughly scalded bastion of the church is limping his way to the curb.
Flicking on your screen, and taking a sip of your now almost cold tea you prepare to settle yourself back into what was preparing to be a mildly engaging 'post-DH but ignoring the epilogue' story. But the screen is displaying a 'has lost connection' page, and is the peculiarly horrible shade of stark white associated with no internet. And even though it comes back almost immediately (it's starting to feel a little bit as though your computer has a faintly mischievous ghost tampering with its contents) the page still displays the barren message of 'No File Found.' And everything you try fails. Going through the archive, opening the link from your email, even delving into your computer history. They return the same uncompromising message, and although violence is never the answer, there is still a moment where you're tempted to mash the keyboard. Part of you tells you it wasn't that good a story anyway, that you'd be better off turning off the computer, picking up a good tried and tested book and curling up in a chair. But the rest of you is stubborn tonight. You've made tea, shown off a missionary with aplomb worthy of Hemingway and wasted far too much time on this story to simply let it go. A few minutes is enough to dispatch an email to the author asking for a emailed copy, and miraculously only minutes later an answer is received back. Now you're getting somewhere. Downloading the document is swift, and it's the work of merely a moment to print it out. Even better. What can possibly happen to a copy of the story that is physically in your hands? Except that unbelievably although the title proclaims it yet again to be 'If On a Freezing Night a Writer,' unless Harry Potter has undergone an unbelievably swift change to a hard drinking, hard living demon hunter with a little brother, it seems to be a Supernatural fanfiction.
Dean hasn't slept for a long time. Not properly slept, the sleep where you sank into dreams and woke if not exactly refreshed then ready for another day at least. It seems like he'll never sleep that sleep again, and not merely because every worst nightmare is walking the earth clothed in flesh, and there can be no such thing as a good dream, not anymore. Not when asleep on the other bed, lies someone whose face he knows as well as he does his own, and yet who if given half a chance might become someone Dean can never know. And he's not just talking about Lucifer, and what he'd do to Sam if he crawled inside him, what foulness he'd contort Sam's face and voice into, he's talking about every goddamn menace that has faced them from the beginning. Only now it's too big. It's too much. No-one can live this way. No-one should have to live this way, dragging their feet through some parody of life, some semblance of normality. Not now that he can't be sure that Sam is Sam, and not some wilful trickery showing Dean just what he needs to see. Because he's not stupid, he's thirty years old and he's lived long enough now to know that nothing can manipulate you like an angel. That Sam could be there, eyes pitch black and dreaming of nothing except pure demon blood, and that with a wave of Zachariah's hand all Dean would see is Sammy, Sam his brother, his best friend, the person for whom Dean gave up everything. And though he trusts Castiel, trusts him with an almost painful intensity, in the way he had once thought he could trust Sam- without doubt or reservation, he knows all too well that in the final stand you're on your own. It's a lesson that's been drummed into him, by everyone he ever knew, the mother who couldn't stay, the father who would take his death but never trusted him entirely, the brother who picked the demon over him. In the end you stand alone and face what's coming your way. So now he's alone, despite the angel a phone call away, and the brother a metre to his side, and for the first time he begins to understand what he has to do.
The harsh ringtone of a phone breaks your concentration, and you tear yourself away from the screen enough to scrabble through your pockets, wondering who is calling you. Not that it is an especially late time, but you'd rather counted on having this evening all to yourself, as a blissful haven of peace. Maybe the phone should have been turned off. With the sigh of someone who is being pushed beyond a limited store of patience, you answer it. Is it genuinely too much to ask to be allowed enough time to read a story that can't be longer than three thousand words or so? It would seem like the entire bloody world is conspiring against you at this point. And it doesn't make your mood any better to be reminded half way through your phone call, when your eyes flicker around the room that you've forgotten to post that letter. Yes, that one that's been sitting perched against a vase for a grand total of two weeks. You tell yourself, even as you absentmindedly reply, that it doesn't matter, that it's past eight and well past any post collection. It would be absolutely ridiculous to go out now, to drop a letter into a postbox that won't be collected until the morning. Except you reluctantly know that you're busy in the morning, and you certainly won't remember it. Even if you stick it in your bag, all that'll happen is that it'll end up crushed and illegible, and forgotten for weeks upon end. And besides you need milk, the last of it went in the tea. And for that matter you need bread. You could even do with some more dishwasher tablets. Finishing your chat- you literally can't remember a single word of the conversation, you grumpily concede the fact that this treasured evening is not going to be so uncluttered after all. But you're not taking any chances with a story so slippery, and the scrunched up, small font pages go straight into your bag, along with everything else.
Forty five minutes later, as you feel in your bag to find the purse to pay the cashier with, the papers are gone. It sends an uncomfortable shiver down your spine, this whole situation is beginning to feel like The Trial, only instead of an un-named and unknowable Kafkaesque crime all you're trying to do is read a story that doesn't want to be read. The small supermarket is miniscule, a glance up and down the aisles reveals no small bundle of papers, and nobody would pick them up surely. Feeling stupid you ask the bored looking manager of this small concern if anyone has handed in a wad of papers- typed on you hasten to add. He shakes his head in a display of obvious boredom, and offers to take your number in case they turn up. You decline. The story isn't that important. You have it saved actually on your computer now, both on the computer, and on your email and even on your printer memory, but the disappearance of the papers is still faintly bizarre. Yet as you head out the door there it is, lying on the side just out of the range of the weak bulb, as though it has been kicked roughly aside. There is something odd in the way your hands shake as you read the first page, because this is beginning to get more than a little strange. Less Kafka, more Murakami. Even though the pages are the same ones you could swear you stuffed in your bag- creased in the same way, same font, even the same faint scent, they simply can't be the same ones. Because the words are different. Instead of Dean Winchester and the apocalypse, the first page is telling a story about characters that seem familiar and soon melt into a new story altogether. The familiar fascination with words takes over and holding the pages up to the dim halogen bulb, leaning against a brick building you start to read.
On Earth-that-was there had existed ships. Sailing ships made of wood and tar and rope, that sailed briny seas. So the legends went anyway, and even when he was small Simon had only half believed in that. Pleasure boats he could understand- his parents owned a small one, and liked little better than to holiday on water, feet dangling over the side, safe and secure in the knowledge that no fish would bite, no waves would swell and take the lives of those sailing, that everything was calm and pleasant and sedate, but sailing ships that crossed vast masses of water bearing essential goods, battling not just the elements, but other ships in titanic duels, staffed by sailors who grinned with blacked, broken teeth, and spoke in a language that was other, who survived on a little wooden world and liked nothing better than a skirmish with whatever nation they were at war with at the time, it seemed too utterly bizarre. It had seemed impossible, and strangely appealing at the same time, and his favourite game was to play at sailing. He couldn't even remember where he first heard those stories, first read those books.
He certainly had never expected to find himself aboard an actual ship. Not one made of wood of course, and certainly one with better defenses than a simple coating of tar against the elements. And it wasn't like he'd never been on a space-boat before, simply not one like this. Nothing polished, nothing sanitized, and populated by a crew who could have staffed a man-o-war centuries ago. It was like stepping back into a different time, one where he profoundly did not belong. Little land boy finding his sea legs, clinging to a life line as the shore vanishes before his eyes. Because where other ships had promised safety, this one promised adventure. Adventure for him and River, even apart from the other advantages signing on with Mal brought for them both. But the perils of sailing this ship were not those of a pleasure boat, and the tide that had washed him and River to this resting-place was a treacherous one. The sea is a fickle mistress, and space her compatriot, nonetheless so.
He turned at the soft tap on his shoulder, staring at the wide eyes of his sister, unsure as always how much she was picking up from him. "Cabin boy," she murmured.
"Ship's doctor," he corrected, and quietly acceded as she took him by the hand to show him what she wanted to show him.
When your fingers have gone numb, and your feet feel like ice, you realise that perhaps straining your eyes in bad light, in freezing outdoor weather isn't the best way to enjoy this story. Besides your groceries aren't appreciating the exposure. Encumbered with two bags, you juggle them in your effort to zip the papers up tight in your bag again. Because you feel as though you are close to understanding something important. It's itching at the corner of your mind, and you know if you don't think too hard, don't turn and look at the idea head-on and scare it into retreating that eventually it'll tap you gently on the shoulder and everything will become clear. For now, all you want to do is get home and sort this out. Sit down and read it through and not stop for anything. Not until you get to the end and find out how it finishes.
When you're inside, you don't bother with tea, cookies or the computer. With the edges of clarity just beginning to become apparent you fumble out the sheets of paper from your bag, but instead of beginning to read from where you've pulled it out, you gently peel each sheet apart and lay it out to dry, before with careful hands you begin to rearrange them, according to the barely perceptible numbering at the bottom of the sheet. Firefly catches your eye but you ignore it, and when with trembling hands you pick up the sheet labelled number one, and begin to read, you aren't really surprised at the words.
It's been a long day, a long Christmas, a long year that is almost at its end. Sometimes it seems like events conspire to drag you down into the minutae of everyday life, rather than elevate and enlighten, and the only consolation you are given is the unexpected sweetness of those small pools of relief and relaxation that can all too rarely be indulged in, because there are just far too many things to do in one lifetime....