You don’t remember much about HYDRA. Only the screaming. The scraping. The cutting. Five months after escaping, you’re found half-starved and bloody somewhere in the Siberian wilderness by Nick Fury. SHIELD takes you in, patches you up, and gives you something you haven’t had in years. A choice. Unfortunately, they can’t take HYDRA out of your head quite so easily. Your voice isn’t exactly normal anymore. Every scream carries a frequency capable of disarming enemies, shattering glass, and turning electronics into expensive paperweights. It makes you one of SHIELD’s most effective weapons. It also leaves you with a constant ringing in your ears that never really goes away. The metal plates fused into either side of your neck aren’t exactly subtle, either. You keep them hidden beneath silk scarves whenever you can. They make people ask questions you’re not interested in answering. Fury usually sends you in first. Hit hard, sow confusion, disappear before anyone knows what happened. You’re more than capable of holding your own if things get messy, and unlike most of your teammates, you don’t hesitate to kill if you believe the situation calls for it. Old habits die hard. Most people at SHIELD eventually earn your trust. One doesn’t. You avoid Bucky Barnes whenever possible. It isn’t personal. He simply reminds you too much of the person you used to be—another weapon stripped of their identity, another survivor trying to outrun a past that refuses to stay buried. Looking at him is like looking into a mirror you’d rather keep covered. You tell yourself it’s easier to keep your distance. Maybe one day you’ll even believe it.
You were never supposed to survive the vampire attack. The Winchesters save you, barely in time. You’re alive—but only just. Dean calls it luck. It wasn’t. The venom never leaves your system. It settles quietly beneath your skin, changing you one heartbeat at a time. Food loses its taste. Sunlight burns a little brighter. You heal too quickly. Sometimes you catch yourself staring at the pulse in someone’s neck before forcing yourself to look away. The boys think it’s trauma. Castiel knows it isn’t. Something about your soul has changed. It isn’t corrupted, nor is it entirely human anymore. He can’t explain it, only that he can’t stop watching you. The more he does, the more fascinated he becomes. You rescue insects from motel sinks, collect lonely-looking rocks from every state, buy Dean pie just because, remember Sam’s coffee order after hearing it once, and insist everyone says goodnight before bed. None of it makes sense to him. Yet he finds himself waiting to see what you’ll do next. Somewhere between late-night motel conversations, roadside diners, and hunts that should have killed all of you, curiosity becomes affection. Affection becomes longing. Longing becomes something unnameable that no angel should ever feel. The Heavenly Host begins to notice. Because angels are not meant to love humans. Especially not ones whose blood is slowly becoming something monstrous. And Castiel has absolutely no idea that every day he spends falling for you… …you’re getting one step closer to becoming the very creature he was created to destroy.
You have watched Sam Winchester for nearly his entire life. You watched him lose his mother. Leave his home. Fall in love. Lose her. Break. Fight. Die. Come back. Save the world. Again. And again. And again. He never knew. That was the point. Guardians do not announce themselves. They simply keep watch. Sometimes a nudge here, avoiding a fatal blow to his heart. The occasional nudge there, guiding him back towards Dean after an argument. You were there for every victory. Every sacrifice. Every impossible choice. And every time he looked to Heaven… …you wanted to answer. But the Heavenly Host would not allow it. Now, the war is over. Your purpose is fulfilled. You should return to Heaven. Instead… You knock on the motel door. Sam Winchester opens it. He has never seen you before. You have spent years upon years memorising the man standing in front of you. He has no idea who you are.
It isn't a choice you make actively, at least not at the start. You just realise quickly that when Fury had told the Avengers he was recruiting you, he hadn't informed them why you were such an asset. The reason he wanted you in the first place. You figure he did it on purpose, that he knew they'd be furious when they found out. So you don't say anything. After all, taking away pain is all you've ever known. No harm in continuing the trend. It wasn't exactly dangerous, what you were able to do. Sure, it hurt. Yeah, it transferred whoever you were touching's emotional and physical pain to you. Sometimes even the entire injury. But you healed quick, it was part of the package. No need to worry the team with that, especially not as you start to realise just how much they'd flip out if they were to learn what you're doing.
Ten years old. That’s all she was. One argument. One childish outburst. “I wish you weren’t my parents.” Reality listened. From that day forward, she never spoke another word. Because every command she intentionally directs at another person becomes absolute. A single sentence can override free will without fail. Terrified of ever taking away another person’s choice again, she chooses silence instead. After years in the foster system, a string of impossible incidents catches S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s attention. Nick Fury discovers the quiet fifteen-year-old before anyone else can exploit her abilities and offers her something she’s never had before—a home. Raised within S.H.I.E.L.D., she learns to fight, survive and protect others without ever relying on the one weapon she refuses to use. By the time she joins the Avengers, she’s already family to many of them. Then she meets Bucky Barnes. A man whose freedom was stolen for decades. A woman who has spent her entire life terrified of stealing anyone else’s. While others see the most dangerous voice on Earth, Bucky sees someone who sacrificed her own so everyone else could keep their choices. As Hydra and other enemies begin hunting her abilities, she’s forced to confront the promise she’s kept since she was ten years old: Never speak. Because the moment she does… Reality listens.
For centuries, sailors have whispered about a stretch of Pacific Northwest coastline where the sea sings after sunset. Fishing boats vanish without distress calls. People sometimes wash ashore… …and sometimes they don’t. The locals blame a mermaid. Hunters call it a siren. The Winchesters are sent to put an end to it. Only… the monster they’re hunting isn’t killing anyone. She’s protecting the coast. Hidden beneath the cliffs and the icy water lives one of the last true mermaids—a solitary creature older than most human nations, fiercely territorial and deeply distrustful of mankind. For generations she’s watched humans pollute her waters, slaughter her kind, and mistake every act of mercy for malice. She long ago decided the surface world wasn’t worth saving. Until Sam Winchester sits on the shoreline instead of pointing a gun at her. While Dean remains convinced she’s manipulating him, Sam begins noticing inconsistencies in every witness statement. The victims don’t fit a pattern. The evidence contradicts centuries of hunter lore. Slowly, cautious conversations shouted across the tide give way to quiet evenings spent together. She doesn’t understand humanity. He doesn’t understand the sea. As impossible as it seems, trust grows. Friendship follows. Then something far more dangerous. But beneath the Pacific sleeps something ancient. Far older than mermaids. Far older than angels. A primordial creature imprisoned in the deepest ocean trench has begun to stir, twisting sea life into monsters and driving humans toward the water. The disappearances blamed on the “mermaid” are merely collateral damage in a war she’s been fighting alone for centuries—a war she’s finally losing. To stop the creature, Sam and the Winchesters must descend into a conflict older than recorded history, where forgotten gods, drowned civilizations, and creatures erased from Heaven’s records still linger in the abyss.
There was a time when your biggest worry was passing finals at Stanford. Back then, Sam Winchester was simply the quiet boy from your biology seminar. The one who always had an extra pen when you forgot yours. The one who stayed after lectures to argue with professors over obscure research papers. The one who could somehow make a twenty-four-hour library session feel… comfortable. You weren’t lovers. Not even close. Just friends. The kind who shared coffee, notes, and long walks back to your apartments after late-night study sessions. Then Jessica died. And Sam disappeared. You always hoped he found whatever he was searching for. You just never imagined you’d need to find him again. Because six days ago, your life stopped making sense. It started with an attack in the woods outside your apartment. You never got a good look at what did it. Claws. Teeth. Glowing eyes. Then nothing. The next morning, you woke with soft golden ears nestled in your hair. By lunchtime, you had a tail. By the end of the week, loud noises hurt your ears, your sense of smell had become impossibly sharp, and your body had developed a deeply embarrassing habit of betraying every emotion you tried to hide. Excited? Tail wagging. Nervous? Tail tucked. Happy? Good luck pretending. You tell yourself you’ll figure it out. Until you catch yourself instinctively retrieving the television remote after knocking it off the sofa. That’s when panic finally sets in. The police can’t help. Doctors think you’re delusional. Google is… spectacularly unhelpful. So, after exhausting every other option, you scroll to the very bottom of your contacts list. Sam Winchester. You don’t know if the number still works. You don’t even know if he’ll remember you. The phone rings twice. “…Hello?” For a moment, you almost hang up. Instead, you whisper the only words you can think of. “Sam?” A pause. “…Y/N?” You close your eyes in relief. “I know this is going to sound insane…”
It starts with a routine hunt. A witch. A farmhouse. A curse spoken through bloodied teeth as the blade finds her heart. By sunrise, you have a pair of velvet-black ears perched atop your head and a long tail that seems to possess opinions of its own. At first, it’s… manageable. Your hearing becomes sharper. Your balance almost supernatural. You catch yourself staring at birds through the kitchen window a little longer than you probably should. You tell yourself it’ll wear off. It doesn’t. Instead, the instincts grow. Warm laps become impossible to resist. Sunlight spilling across motel beds feels irresistible. You begin collecting shiny little trinkets without remembering where you found them. Sometimes you wake up on top of wardrobes. Once… You spend twenty minutes trapped inside an empty cardboard box because, somehow, climbing in had seemed like an excellent idea. The worst part isn’t the ears. Or the tail. It’s that every day, being human feels… Just a little less natural. Desperate, embarrassed, and with nowhere else to turn, you track down two hunters whose names keep appearing in every scrap of supernatural lore you can find. With no leads, no cure, and a curse that seems to be rewriting your instincts one day at a time, you reluctantly agree to travel with the Winchester brothers until they can break it. It should only take a few weeks. Probably. Hopefully. …Unless the spell decides you don’t want to be human anymore. And somewhere between haunted motels, witch hunts, stolen hoodies, late-night diner coffee and finding yourself inexplicably asleep in Dean Winchester’s lap for the fourth time that week… You begin to wonder whether the greatest danger isn’t the curse. It’s what happens if someone finally makes you feel safe enough… To stay.
New Orleans. Three bodies in ten days. No wounds. No hex bags. No sulphur. No signs of possession. Nothing that explains how they died. Sam and Dean Winchester have seen strange before. This isn’t strange. It’s impossible. Even Castiel can’t tell them what they’re dealing with. Their only lead takes them deep into the French Quarter, to a name that keeps appearing whenever the brothers start asking questions about old magic. You. Beautiful. Arrogant. Infuriatingly powerful. And a witch unlike any the Winchesters have encountered before. No demon gave you your abilities. No bargain was struck. No ancient entity lends you its strength. Magic has lived beneath your skin since the day you were born, as naturally as blood runs through your veins. You have absolutely no interest in explaining yourself to two hunters and their angel. Until Sam shows you the photographs. Because there is one thing connecting every corpse. Delicate, ivory-white markings etched into the skin surrounding their eyes. The same markings you were born with.
