( he's only been at this school for a week or so, maybe more than that — he's lost track, honestly, because it's only a matter of time before their father has them picking everything up and carries them off into the sunset, or something just as poetic, because he likes to think of it in those terms instead of just packing up and heading off to the next job that will bring them that much closer to avenging their mother's death.

( he doesn't fault him for that, he really, really doesn't; because he wants that kind of justice just as much as john does, even if there are a myriad reasons that would find him pushing deeper and deeper than either of his sons might try, but that's neither here nor there. )

currently, sam is staring down at the specimen they're meant to dissect like it's. still somehow connected to its mortal coil, even though a more logical part of his brain is insisting that there is nothing here, and he looks at his assigned lab partner — kate, he knows her by both face and name, and never mind the fact that he's momentarily distracted by her general presence — but it's brief, and he looks back to his textbook as a form of cover, flipping a page forward and then back again before he even thinks about speaking up.

this poor nerd. this poor damned nerd. ) So, uh … where do you want to start?

( even if the guidelines specify directly where they should, he's just. making idle conversation.

this poor nerd. )

( Assigned partners. In other words: Kate, you're spending too much time with Marc. Again. She's pretty sure that's the main logic behind assigning partners for teachers - get away from your friends and family for a bit. She reaches - figuratively speaking - for the white noise in the back of her head, the familiar weight of presence there and tugs on it. Because even better than random partners, she's got the new kid.

(And maybe he isn't that bad, but part of her always resents being pulled out of the well-oiled machine that's her partnerwork with Marc. There's a system that works, why change it?)

She finishes adjusting the plaits either side of her head, pins them up so they're out of the way while working, and eyes the corpse - horrible word, but this thing is cold, dead and bloodless - with her head tilted before glazing over the textbook. Why do they even have to do this? Why does she? The day she has more than the barest of passes in science is the day they all wake up to the sky green and the grass blue. )

What's th' board say?

( She's not being snarky, she genuinely tuned most of their teacher's instructions out, stared out of the window and pieced together little running tracks she could be doing instead of sitting here. )

( for all sam and dean are generally in the same place at the same time whenever the situation allows, there is, at least, the fact that there are four years separating them and thus keeps them on completely opposite sides of the school spectrum. ( and … for all that doesn't keep his brother from popping his head in to check on baby sammy every chance he gets when he should be focusing on his own stuff, god, that's embarrassing, but … he can't say he doesn't appreciate it on some level. even when he's asked on several occasions to just be left alone. )

so. she has the new kid, and he has the sort of new kid jitters that everyone should feel when they're a week in and still surrounded by unfamiliar faces — but also the kind of jitters that haven't touched him in years, because he's used to this, because this is normal for him. so. why the jitters? maybe it's because he hasn't figured out how to talk to girls yet. even in a completely innocent and necessary situation.

( face it, sam. you're never going to figure out how to talk to girls. even when you're in your thirties. )

anyway. he glances at the board, reads the first couple of lines a couple of times before looking back at the corpse ( horrible word, yeah, but it's not wrong ), brows furrowing just enough to convey the very blatant thought that he does not want to do this. this is barbaric. this is stupid. this is unnecessary. you can totally learn the anatomy of something by just reading about it. ( which is, consequently, what he would prefer. put a book in his hands. he will thank you for ten years. )

but. they have to. so here they are. ) We have to locate the major organs. Heart, lungs, liver … ( and look, he can see them right there, plain as day, pale and bloodless and dead. ) And remove them.

( why this. )

( She's never wondered about what it would be like if Marc wasn't there. If they were separated by age or more, because that just never crossed her mind. And in recent times, she's done all she can to avoid thinking about anything like that. She needs Marc there, a presence that provides some sense to the world and some passable average to her grades.

Kate tries not to think about anything else. Loses herself in running, in the time she spends with people from school she doesn't really like but they have good stuff and better parties. (If by better you mean "somewhere she can forget everything else".) And for now, she can't think about anything else, because Marc's actually working and she's getting rebuffed whenever she tries to talk to him, and there's this new kid - didn't the teachers call him Sam? Sorry, she's really no good at this paying attention lark, unless it's letting her uncoil like a tensioned spring and dash across the campus - who's trying to do the work.

She may as well, too. Not like there's anything else, and the impatient bouncing of her leg isn't enough of a distraction. )

Just- why?

( It isn't... hard. They stand stark against the paper-thin skin and it's just a matter of cutting them out and...

Ugh. )

( he wants to be the normal one, he wants to be his own person — but that's never going to change as long as his last name is winchester, and he's steadily ( maybe a little bit slowly ) learning how to make do with what he has, because family is family and the three of them are all they have left.

( like he's likely to ever know anything other than dean being overprotective, right there at his damned elbow every time he turns his head. it's annoying and reassuring all at once, but he can't not appreciate it. )

at least she has other to hang around, has the choice of it in the first place because she isn't carted up and off so frequently that making friends would just be a waste of everyone's time, and sometimes he does wonder what that's like, even if he doesn't dwell on it too much. ( another waste of time, really, because what's the use of working for something if you can't keep it? ) but here they are, staring down the face of something completely unnecessary, and at least their corpse has zero idea that it's being stared at like it's something to be inspected and not dissected.

ah, the blissful ignorance of death. ) Teachers are masochists? ( ha, a little try for humor, can't blame him. ) Or they think this is just something everybody has to do once. ( which sounds ridiculous. but there you go. )

( As long as he's a Winchester and she can see all the things normal people will never see, they're never going to have normal. But then, Kate doesn't know any other way. Sure, there are people who don't glow bright with powers, and they probably have a different life, but-

What's normal if you haven't got anything else to compare it to? This place - insanely far removed from where she was born - is full of people who are just people, but after years of everyone being so colourful to her eyes, that's the weird thing. People who are just people. Who live their lives unaware of monsters under the bed or the layers the the world around them. She tends not to talk about that, because she doesn't want to, because there's no one around here she really wants to let in. Just a bunch of kids who'll never get it.

She hasn't been dragged away from her life in a couple of years now, and that's something, but this place doesn't feel like home either, feels like she's floating with only her brother - best friend, whatever you want to call them, because it isn't blood but it feels wrong to think of Marc as anything less than family when he's the only person Kate really wants in her life any more - for an anchor. Kate swallows. She wants to get out of here. It's a waste of time and god, who wants to make this their career? She doesn't. Being taken to the police station after her parents' deaths is as close as she ever wants to get to the people who cut open bodies and remove organs. )

Got an idea.

( Murmured under her breath, just loud enough for Sam to hear. The school will have something to say about this, but they always do. She skips too many classes, has walked out of more than a few without even bothering to try and offer an excuse.

At least this time she's doing that, trying something that'll get them both out, because he seems as unenthusiastic about this as she does. )

Miss- ( It isn't exactly whiny, but it's more emotion than Kate's put into any of her words so far- ) I feel sick. ( Yes, it's the lamest, oldest excuse in the book. She knows. There's nothing to spill around here, and Kate isn't about to stab herself to get out of class. ) It's just-

( Mind if she grabs your wrist Sam? 'Cause she's gonna. Complete with a noise somewhere between a gasp and a retch.

This isn't going to win any Oscars, but she sure is trying to drag them both to the classroom door. ) Nurse's office.

( C'mon, before she slams the door on your face. )

Edited (it's time for nic's favourite hobby: completely rewriting tags three weeks later) 2017-08-19 08:53 am (UTC)

( normal is. always up for speculation, whether he really wants to admit it to himself or not; everywhere they go, every new town they find themselves in there's always a new definition of normal and when it all comes down to it, he understands that there is no real bottom line for reference.

but maybe normal people don't go around hunting things that go bump in the night. and maybe normal people know what it's like to sleep in a real bed every night instead of what passes for one in a crappy motel, or the backseat of their dad's car. maybe normal people haven't known how to properly disassemble and reassemble a pistol at age ten.

( unless they're from the deep, backwoods south. he's convinced that everyone born there comes out of the womb holding a twelve-gauge shotgun, but that's neither here nor there. and maybe a little bit of regional profiling. )

now. sam winchester is so much of a nerd that he's never skipped a single class in his life, and while he has no interest whatsoever in following through with this particular experiment, he'd already chalked it up to something he's going to have to do — at least up to the point at which kate says she has an idea, and while he's always going to be new enough to never understand anyone at any school entirely, he. has a feeling he knows where this is going.

ah. yep. he doesn't mind you taking his wrist at all, because while she's retching, he's looking up in the teacher's direction and giving a helpless sort of shrug. ) I'll — I'll take her —

( look, here he comes. he doesn't want any doors shut in his face, okay. )

( She moves quickly because Kate's about... 95% sure that the teacher isn't really buying it and the faster they get through the door and down the stairs, well, the quicker she gets out of this place and... she doesn't know. Somewhere better. Somewhere they're not staring down the corpse of a frog. )

C'mon. Back door's... probably open.

( It's usually open, because there's a cleaning lady or two who take smoke breaks there, and no real chance of being seen trying to wriggle out of the fence among the stand of trees - most with snapped branches, stupid "JM + BY" and hearts scratched into them, all the other signs that teenagers roam these places, trying to get away from the prying eyes of teachers, feeling the rush of rebellion and secrecy. )

So, where d'ya wanna go?

( Kate's only plan has been to get out of class and away from school, and if she was alone, she'd probably keep running until she found some of the other usual suspects hanging around. But she's not, and it does occur to her that she should maybe have asked the new kid before she dragged them both to the gates of the school.

Oh well. Too late to change that. )

( honestly, anywhere that isn't staring at a frog corpse is preferable, and while he's also pretty sure teach ain't buying what they're selling, they're out the door and down the hall quickly enough that it probably won't matter, because. good luck catching them now?

uh. okay he's just going to follow her lead entirely because as has been mentioned previously, he's never skipped a class in his life and probably wouldn't know how to do so on his own if he tried, which he wouldn't, because he's such a damned Upstanding Citizen ( ™ ) that it wouldn't have even crossed his mind, so out the door and through the fence they go, broken branches and carved initials passing mostly beyond his notice because he. doesn't notice those sorts of things, really, and. well.

he has her to follow. where else should his focus be? and so. here they are, sam winchester comprised of nine-tenths awkward and one-tenth actual ??? when she asks that, reaching to scrub absently at the back of his neck like it might either give him an answer or at the very least give him the time he needs to find it. ) Uh. ( uh is right. here we go. that good ol' winchester charm hard at work here. ) I dunno. I've never skipped class before. ( NERD ALERT.

christ. )

Really?

( God, maybe they should have paired Sam with Marc. But even Marc skips classes. (Okay, so maybe he mostly skips classes because Kate skips classes, but same thing.) First things first, though, Kate's going to check the gate - breathe a long sigh of relief when she realises it wasn't properly locked - and shift it just enough for them to squeeze out. )

C'mon.

( She turns left, away from the streets she'd normally expect to find the kids from a couple of grades above with their cheap booze and hand-rolled cigarettes, darting past the school with quick steps and held breath until she leads them down a residential street - perfectly respectable detached houses with their manicured lawns and sprinkler systems, drives empty of cars as everyone's off being adults and students and god knows what else. )

So, where d'ya live before this?

( She speaks so quickly that the beginning of that question slurs into one word - wheredjalive - finally relaxing into a stroll once they're deep enough in the maze of identical houses that school becomes easy to forget. )

( look don't. just don't pair sam with anyone because he is the most obvious square and has nothing to do with anyone around him. he's just passing through, you know? he doesn't want to stick out. he doesn't want to be memorable, except —

well. maybe he'll end up wanting kate to remember him, even for the nerd he is. even for the fact that he's never skipped school before. ) Well, yeah —

( but. well, here we go.

he's following her again before he has a chance to think to do anything else, past those upperclassmen and their booze and cigarettes, the latter of which hits his nose with a stink that nearly sends him into a coughing fit ( jeez, sam, calm down ); but then there they are with her slurred questions and sam himself kicking at an errant piece of asphalt before he thinks to answer, because it's a bit of a difficult question. ) I don't, uh. Really live anywhere. ( his hands shove deep into his jeans pockets now. ) I think we were in Montana last? I can't remember. ( his geography is as bad as anything, but he's pretty sure that's where it was. )

( Don't worry, Sam. Marc will love you. And will definitely not tease either of you about this. Ever. No siree, Bob. Since when do brothers do that???

Kate takes a sidelong glance at Sam as he answers her question, or tries to. Her expression shifts slowly, a quiet sort of contemplation striking her features - calmer than anything before. Even her steps are quieter.

I don't really live anywhere - weird. But she recognises the hands in pockets, the awkward half-explanation given, something she uses all too often if she can't get away with simply saying Why do you care? Fuck off when someone overhears the word "guardian" instead of parent. )

... That's north, innit?

( She thinks. American geography is still beyond her, other than the big cities and states everyone knows thanks to too much media centred here. Her brow furrows, trying to recall the map at the back of the Geography classroom, as if she's ever really paid attention to the contents of it. Just the lines, stretching out across an expanse of a country, linking one place to another.

A seemingly endless path to travel. )

Moved here two years ago.

( Her eyes flick over to a neighbour's oak tree, standing tall and proud in their garden, bathing a napping cat in cool shade. Kate reaches for her keys without paying any mind to her steps - or to Sam, really, at this point - as the memories of first coming here, practically a handful of days after her parents' funerals, being given a copy of the keys to a house which is all too big for how often her guardians are actually in it.

Kate shrugs as she walks down the drive. It'd probably be a nice house - big gardens, recently built. Lots of space to grow, but it never really feels like a home. Just a place to fall asleep. It isn't the hectic terrace with dad's lesson plans spilling out of his office and all over the house, a door always open to let Marc and his parents in or vice versa.

No one ever comes and goes here, not really. )

( wait, brothers tease their younger siblings about things? especially when those things include awkward future crushes? how on earth can such people exist on this beautiful planet?

( okay. no. for real. even joking about that sort of thing is ludicrous, and truthfully, if dean ever stopped teasing him about everything under the damned sun he'd have to stop and think whether or not a shifter had taken over his body. or if he was a pod person. you know, something like that. )

he doesn't mean to be so quiet, really; it's only that he never knows what to say when someone asks anything about him at all, because they always seem to be questions that he can't answer completely honestly, and that's another damned thing. sure, yeah, he's always had to skirt around the truth of what his family does for a living ( 'living', like it really counts for as much ) and it always ends up with him being vague as hell, which earns him some decently skeptical looks — justifiably — but it's gotten to a point in his admittedly short years that he's already tired of lying. even if it's by omission.

… well that sure was a tangent, wasn't it? whoops.

anyway. he's thankful that she doesn't pry, and instead nods at her question. ) Yeah. It wasn't very exciting … or maybe we just didn't stay long enough for anything interesting to happen. ( well, now he's babbling a little bit. pick a side and stay on it, sammy. find some neutral middle ground. )

Where're you from originally? ( he assumes the uk, but you guys have a bunch of different accents, and he's about as great at picking those out as he is with american geography. )

( Are most places interesting? Kate's not sure they are. Every place she's been is just another configuration of a sprawl of houses, with people running around doing the same things day in, day out.

Maybe she's a little morbid nowadays, a little too cynical about how ordinary everything can be even when your world's been turned on its head. Whatever. Not like it matters. They're out of school and within the empty walls of the house she lives in. Who really cares how interesting a place is anyway? )

Erm-

( Two years here, you'd think she'd have the answer on the tip of her tongue already, but she always wants to be specific before realising that most Americans don't know a British city beyond London and maybe Oxford, if you're lucky. )

North England.

( Keys dropped in a bowl as Kate leads them both into the kitchen, tossing her jacket in the vague direction of the living room and heading straight for a top cabinet, stretching to try and reach whatever's on the back of the shelf.

Whatever's on the back of the shelf being code for vodka. )

Ugh. ( Hold up you're lanky. ) Can you get that?

Edited 2017-11-13 07:35 pm (UTC)