You were supposed to become a Widow. You never made it to the Red Room. The doctors noticed something first. Your heart beat slower than it should. Your body used oxygen differently. You could hold your breath for minutes without struggling. Someone quietly moved your file to another pile. BLUE ROOM. A sister programme to the Red Room, built for operatives who didn’t disappear into crowds. They disappeared underwater. But before they could train you, HYDRA wanted to see what else your body could become. They changed you. Shark DNA. Reconstructed muscle. Gills carved into your neck. Webbing between your fingers. Legs that could fuse and transform into the powerful tail of a shortfin mako. Something monstrous. Something beautiful. Something capable of moving through water at seventy kilometres an hour. Then they sent you back. The Blue Room taught you to fight in freezing oceans, navigate in total darkness, infiltrate ships from beneath them and kill without ever breaking the surface. You graduated top of your class. After that, you stopped being a girl. You became an asset. HYDRA occasionally borrowed you for testing. Sometimes they wanted to test your abilities. Sometimes they wanted to test his. The Winter Soldier. They locked you in rooms together and ordered you to fight until one of you could no longer stand. You don’t remember much of him. Your body does. Eventually, HYDRA found an easier way to store something they only needed occasionally. A sensory deprivation tank. Months passed between missions. Sometimes years. No light. No sound. No gravity. No way of knowing whether five minutes or five months had passed. Wake. Kill. Return. Sleep. Until one day, HYDRA stopped waking you. Years later, somebody else finally does. The Avengers discover an abandoned HYDRA facility containing one functioning machine. A tank. Natasha Romanoff is there when they drain it. So is Yelena Belova. Finally reunited with their little sister.
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.
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.
For weeks, Sam and Dean Winchester have been tracking an unusually active shapeshifter across several states. People report seeing themselves in places they’ve never been. Cameras capture one person entering a building and someone completely different leaving. A sheriff swears he argued with an exact copy of himself. But there’s one problem. Nobody is dead. Because Y/N isn’t hunting anyone. She’s bored. And an absolute chaos gremlin by nature. The daughter of a human woman and a shapeshifter father, Y/N can seamlessly become almost anyone, imitate voices and invent entirely new appearances. She mostly uses this extraordinary ability to cause problems on purpose: crashing parties, impersonating officials, sneaking into restricted places and occasionally scamming people who deserve it. Unfortunately, Sam and Dean don’t know that when they finally corner her. What begins as a hunt becomes an unlikely alliance, and Sam finds himself drawn to the shapeshifter who refuses to believe her supernatural blood is something she should fear. Despite the thousand faces she can wear, he becomes frighteningly good at recognising her anyway. Then Y/N meets Gabriel. They like each other immediately. Gabriel finds someone who can match his chaos; Y/N finds someone capable of making hers look amateur. The flirting becomes as relentless as the pranks—and Sam quickly discovers Gabriel’s attention isn’t reserved solely for Y/N. As attraction grows between Y/N and Sam, Y/N and Gabriel, and, increasingly, Sam and Gabriel themselves, three separate connections begin tangling into something none of them expected. Dean, meanwhile, would really, really like one normal day…
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.
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.
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.
The first time Nick Fury says “Bring the Lion out,” most of the Avengers have no idea what he means. They know about you, of course. You've been part of the team for a year. They know you accompany them on every mission—and, for reasons nobody has ever properly explained, you always remain aboard the Quinjet. What they don’t know is why. Until a mission goes catastrophically wrong. The team is overwhelmed. Nothing they throw at the enemy is working. Then Fury’s voice cuts across the comms with four words: “Bring the Lion out.” Natasha and Clint move immediately. They don’t prepare for reinforcements. They don’t regroup. They run, yelling at the others to get clear. Because Lion Protocol isn’t an order to send another Avenger into battle. It’s an evacuation command for everyone except you. Your abilities operate on a scale SHIELD has never successfully measured. Matter, energy, gravity and space itself respond to you almost instinctively. You could flatten a building without breaking a sweat. According to SHIELD’s projections, you could do the same to New York City with frightening ease—and nobody particularly wants to discover where your actual limit lies. So you wait. Every mission, while your friends fight, you sit patiently aboard the Quinjet. You chatter over comms, snack, entertain yourself and occasionally ask whether they’re finished yet. You’re never deployed simply because you could end a fight faster. You are deployed when nothing else can end it. There is no handler. Nobody stands beside you. Nobody controls you. When Lion Protocol is invoked, your friends have only one responsibility: Get as far away from you as physically possible. Because they might not survive what you do if they don't.
You were never trained to be a soldier. You were raised in underground fighting rings where rules were optional, losing meant pain, and strength was currency. You learned to fight before you even understood formal training, building a brutal, instinct-driven style from survival alone. No medals. No record. No official experience—but in a fight, you still drop most trained opponents first. Your anger has always been there, simmering beneath your skin alongside something you never fully understood. Strong emotion generates and manipulates energy around you: lights flicker, electronics fail, objects tremble—and when it spikes, the environment itself reacts. That’s what gets SHIELD’s attention. You’re recruited for your combat ability and emerging powers, but tactical assessments reveal something unexpected: you can plan instinctively. Years of reading opponents have made you frighteningly good at predicting movement and adapting in seconds. Fury realizes your real weapon isn’t your fists or your power—it’s your mind. Soon, you’re leading Avengers missions despite being younger and less conventionally experienced than the team. You don’t have their training histories—but you know how to use them. Not everyone accepts that. During a critical mission, parts of the team ignore your orders. The plan collapses. People get hurt. You adapt on the fly and still bring everyone home. Back in New York, someone suggests you weren’t ready to lead. Something in you snaps. Lights explode. Windows crack. Alarms scream across the city. And beneath Avengers Tower, Manhattan experiences a minor earthquake.
You were born with fire at your fingertips and enough money to avoid ever having a normal career. Raised among Manhattan’s Upper East Side wealth, you’ve built a life you genuinely fucking love: late mornings, later nights, tiny dresses, ridiculous heels, expensive cocktails, casual sex and absolutely no reason to apologise for enjoying yourself. The fact that you could also burn half of Manhattan to the ground is almost incidental. Your pyrokinesis has grown with you, leaving you capable of producing and controlling extraordinary amounts of fire and heat. There’s no real limit to how far you can push it—except that your own body starts burning from the inside out when you get too hot. Naturally, Nick Fury noticed. You refused to join SHIELD or the Avengers permanently, but eventually reached an arrangement with him. When something needs an unreasonable amount of firepower, Fury calls. Sometimes you answer. Sometimes you’re busy. Sometimes you make him explain exactly how urgent urgent is while standing in a nightclub bathroom. Every now and then, you trade the minidress for tactical gear, join Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and set something extremely deserving on fire. Then you go home. There’s no grand destiny attached to your powers and no desire to become a full-time hero. The Avengers are simply another part of your chaotic life: colleagues, friends, drinking buddies, targets for relentless flirting and several extremely promising additions to your mental to-do list. You have Manhattan at your feet, fire in your veins and Nick Fury periodically ruining your plans. Life is fucking fantastic.
You grew up in rural Nebraska, raised by two eccentric inventors who taught you that almost anything could be understood if you were stubborn enough to take it apart first. Your childhood was spent in their workshop, learning to build, dismantle and question everything. When you were seventeen, an experiment went catastrophically wrong and killed both of your parents. Instead of abandoning science, you became obsessed with understanding why things fail. Entirely self-taught, you buried yourself in physics, fluid dynamics and engineering. No university. No prestigious laboratory. You scavenged scrapyards, salvaged machinery and fabricated whatever you couldn’t find. Sixteen years later, you’ve accomplished something extraordinary. Powered armour. Not designed for war. Not designed for fame. And certainly not designed to impress Tony Stark. In fact, you can’t fucking stand Tony Stark. You hate his arrogance, billionaire swagger and history as a weapons manufacturer. So when you’re watching a live broadcast of the Avengers fighting another alien threat in New York, Tony is the last person you’re thinking about. You’re watching the civilians. A damaged building is collapsing. People are trapped inside, an alien is heading straight toward them, and the Avengers haven’t noticed. “Wednesday. Wake the suit.” Your remotely operated armour tears into New York airspace and heads straight past the Avengers toward the civilians. It stabilises the building, clears debris and gets people out alive before turning on the creature threatening them. That’s when Tony notices it. The unidentified armour moves unlike anything he’s ever seen, flowing through the atmosphere almost like a marlin through water. FRIDAY can’t identify it. Tony can’t access it. Worse, he doesn’t understand how half of it works. Then he gets in your way. So you open a private channel. “Could you move your enormous red ass about thirty feet west?" Silence. Then- “…Who the fuck are you?"
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…”
The Avengers know you can manipulate energy. They also know you wear a plain black leather cord around your neck at all times. Nobody has ever thought these two facts might be related. That changes during a mission. Everything has gone spectacularly wrong. The team is surrounded, several people are injured, their extraction route is compromised, and the enemy just keeps coming. You look around. Look at the team. Sigh. Then reach for the cord around your neck. Someone asks what you’re doing. You simply tell them not to freak out. This is immediately followed by several people pointing out that don’t freak out has never once preceded anything reassuring. You rip the cord. And every light in the building goes out. There is approximately one second of silence. Then someone yells. Because where you had been standing moments ago is now a vaguely human-shaped patch of darkness with two tiny pale pinpricks for eyes. Tony’s suit starts throwing error messages. Nearby electronics die. The temperature drops. Bullets stop in midair. And the Avengers collectively arrive at the extremely reasonable conclusion of: WHAT THE FUCK. Unfortunately, they don’t have time to unpack that. You move. The fight that had been kicking their asses for twenty minutes lasts approximately another forty seconds. Energy weapons only make you stronger. Gunfire becomes useless. Entire groups of enemies are thrown aside by concussive force while the Avengers mostly stand behind cover, watching their previously normal teammate become something that looks like it should be photographed through a dirty window at three in the morning. Then everything goes quiet. You turn around. • • Half the team flinches. They need to get a replacement suppression cord around your neck before you absorb enough energy to become genuinely dangerous. And they need to do that while every primitive survival instinct instinct in their bodies is going: DO NOT APPROACH THE THING WITH THE BEADY EYES.
After a mission, the Avengers head out for a rare night of drinking and dancing in New York. Bucky, predictably, keeps mostly to himself. While the others disappear onto the dance floor, he watches from the edge of the club—and notices a beautiful woman tangled up with a man amongst the crowd. At first, he assumes they’re kissing. Until you lift your head from the man’s neck. There’s blood on your lips. For the briefest second, he sees elongated canines before they disappear back into your gums. And then your eyes meet his. You’ve been caught. Humans aren’t supposed to know that vampires exist, and ordinarily dealing with a witness would be simple: compel them to forget and move on. Except Bucky Barnes isn’t an ordinary human. His altered physiology makes compulsion unreliable. His blood is different. His instincts make him difficult to frighten, and instead of running from what he’s discovered, Bucky does something considerably more troublesome: He starts asking questions. His accidental discovery pulls him into a supernatural underworld that has existed beneath New York for centuries—territorial Hives, ancient rivalries, protected humans, feeding grounds and creatures who quickly take an interest in the enhanced soldier who stumbled into their world. Some want to feed from him. Some want to understand what he is. Some would rather keep him for themselves. And increasingly, keeping Bucky alive means keeping him close to you. What begins as reluctant protection slowly becomes fascination, attachment and something far more dangerous. Because Bucky doesn’t romanticise what you are. He sees the blood, the violence and the monster everyone else fears. He simply begins to see the woman beneath it, too. And for someone accustomed to taking whatever she wants, wanting something that must be freely given may prove more dangerous than any enemy lurking in the dark.
You were never supposed to have powers. You weren’t HYDRA, SHIELD, an experiment, or some carefully selected candidate for a classified government programme. You were a twenty-four-year-old bartender from England who happened to be walking home from work at exactly the wrong time. An experimental Stark Industries energy-storage prototype was being transported through London when an attempted theft went catastrophically wrong. The containment system destabilised, releasing a kinetic blast powerful enough to shatter windows for blocks. You were almost directly in its path. You should have died. Instead, the force simply… vanished. Your body absorbed it. By the time you realised something was wrong, you were standing untouched in the middle of the wreckage, your entire body buzzing with enough stored energy to level half the street. When someone grabbed your shoulder to check if you were hurt, you instinctively released it—and sent them flying through the side of a parked van. Which was how Tony Stark eventually received the rather concerning news that his destroyed prototype hadn’t lost its energy after all. Some British girl had apparently walked off with it. Now you can absorb kinetic energy from practically anything—impacts, movement, explosions, machinery, even the vibrations from sufficiently loud bass—and release it as devastating concussive force. There’s just one slight problem. The more energy you store, the more powerful you become. The more powerful you become, the more euphoric and impulsive you get. And unfortunately for everyone involved, you weren’t exactly known for your excellent impulse control before gaining superpowers.
You’re a dragon-rider from another universe—a world of ancient kingdoms, sprawling wilderness, steel and fire, where dragons still rule the skies and you’ve spent years flying them on the back of Vaelor. You’re minding your own business one day, soaring high above the clouds, when the sky in front of you suddenly splits open. There’s no warning. No time to turn. One moment, there’s open sky ahead of you. The next, you and Vaelor are swallowed whole. You crash through the rift together—and emerge into another world entirely. Over the skies of Manhattan. You don’t know where you are. You don’t know what’s happened. And you certainly don’t know what the fuck you’re looking at. There are impossibly tall structures made almost entirely from metal and glass, stretching higher than any castle you’ve ever seen. Strange metal boxes race along grey roads far below without horses to pull them. Lights flash everywhere. Vaelor doesn’t understand this place either. He’s frightened. Disoriented. Surrounded by unfamiliar sounds, smells and machines—and when strange metal objects begin flying toward you, he reacts exactly as an ancient, territorial dragon might be expected to react. Badly. Then you spot something in the distance. One particularly tall tower rising above the others, with an enormous “A” emblazoned across its side. You have absolutely no idea what it means. Unfortunately for everyone involved, you’re about to find out. Because somewhere inside that tower, in the middle of an otherwise perfectly ordinary morning—coffee brewing, breakfast being eaten, arguments already underway—the Avengers receive an alert about an unidentified airborne entity over Manhattan. Tony Stark wanders over to the window with his coffee. Looks outside. Stops. Sees you. Sighs. And just like that, what had promised to be a perfectly normal morning at Avengers Tower becomes a very, very interesting day.
You are Y/N. To the world, you’re The White Rabbit. An aerialist. Platinum hair. Glitter tears. Ivory silk. A woman who makes falling look like flying. But underneath the ribbons— you’re Rapture. A Red Room Widow. Trained to infiltrate, deceive and kill. And when the blood starts flowing? You come alive. Then the White Rabbit is invited to perform at a charity gala inside Avengers Tower. Rapture is given a second assignment. Steal a classified Red Room file. Disappear. Instead— Natasha Romanoff recognises what you are. Your cover falls apart. It takes several Avengers to capture you. You enjoy every fucking second of it. Now you’re imprisoned behind reinforced glass inside Avengers Tower. They want information. You give them nothing. They think the Red Room manipulated you. You call it home. You don’t need rescuing. Then Bucky Barnes starts visiting your cell. First for answers. Then with coffee. Books. Dinner. Eventually, he just comes for you. Bucky thinks he understands. HYDRA made him a weapon too. But Bucky hated the Winter Soldier. You don’t hate Rapture. You remember every mission. Every choice. Some of them still make you smile. You’re not an innocent aerialist buried underneath a monster. You’re The White Rabbit. You’re Rapture. You’re Y/N. And if Bucky Barnes is going to fall in love with you— he’ll have to love the woman who exists between all three. There’s only one problem. You’re falling in love with him too. Bucky believes the glass between you is temporary. You know better. Wanting each other is easy. Believing you can rewrite the stars is harder.
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.
A string of bizarre deaths draws Sam and Dean into the underground street-racing scene, where seemingly healthy people are suddenly dropping dead from catastrophic heart attacks. Something supernatural is responsible—a spirit capable of amplifying the body’s natural adrenaline response until excitement becomes euphoria, fear becomes terror, and eventually the heart simply can’t keep up. And then they find you. You’re a mechanic, tuner, notorious street racer, and the very proud owner of a heavily modified car you built yourself. You’ve been around for several of the deaths, making you either their best lead or their prime suspect. What none of you realise is that you’ve already survived the spirit more than once. Years spent chasing adrenaline have given you an unusually high tolerance for its effects, but lately something feels wrong. Your hands shake long after races end. Your heart pounds when you’re standing perfectly still. Sleep becomes impossible. Every encounter pushes your body a little further—and while the spirit burns through everyone else, you keep surviving. Which makes you far more interesting to it. As Sam and Dean investigate the racing scene, they realise the spirit isn’t simply haunting it anymore. It’s attached itself to you. And unless they can discover what it is and destroy it, eventually it's going to claim you too.
You’ve been hunting with Sam and Dean Winchester long enough that somewhere along the way, they stopped being two hunters you occasionally worked with and became home. Your clothes live in the trunk of the Impala. You know which motels Dean will refuse to stay in and which diner meals Sam will pretend aren’t terrible. You know their habits, their scars, their silences— —and for longer than you care to admit, you’ve been hopelessly in love with Dean. Eventually, you tell him. Dean says no. He tells you that he doesn’t feel the same way. That even if he did, relationships don’t survive this life. That you deserve something better than motel rooms, monsters and constantly wondering whether the person you love is coming home. What he doesn’t tell you is that he loves you too. Dean has simply convinced himself that refusing to have you is the same thing as protecting you. It breaks your heart, but you believe him. So you do the only thing you can: you let him go. Months pass. You keep hunting together. The three of you remain a team, and gradually being around Dean stops hurting quite so much. Somewhere in the middle of research nights, long drives, shared diner booths and conversations whispered across dark motel rooms, something else begins to change. You start noticing Sam. Sam, who has quietly loved you for years and never said a word because he knew you loved his brother. Sam, who never expected you to choose him and refuses to treat Dean’s rejection like an opportunity. Sam, who simply remains exactly where he has always been—beside you. Until one night, you realize you’ve fallen in love with him. This time, when you offer someone your heart, you’re terrified of hearing the same answer. Sam says yes. And Dean Winchester discovers far too late that when he told you to move on, you actually would.
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.
You are The One Who Waits—an ancient deity who existed long before Asgard became the kingdom it is today, old enough that even gods lower their heads when you pass. Your dominion is Creation and Destruction, though neither comes at the wave of a hand; beneath your touch, life can bloom from barren earth. Wounds knit themselves closed. Forests rise over centuries in moments, while stone, steel and flesh can just as easily decay and return to the natural elements from which they came. You do not rule, conquer or answer prayers. You simply wait, hidden from the Nine Realms for millennia at a time, until the balance between creation and destruction is disturbed badly enough to require you. There is no ritual capable of summoning you and no god powerful enough to command your return. When you are needed, you simply know. And after thousands of years of silence, the earth beneath your feet has finally whispered to you again. So what, exactly, has happened that was terrible enough to wake you?
Your husband has been dead for a year. You’ve been texting him for a year, never expecting a reply. Sad at first. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this without you.” “I slept on your side last night. I hope you’re mad about it.” “I miss you.” Then gradually, because grief is fucking weird, they become mundane again. “Your mother called. I pretended I wasn’t home. You’re welcome.” “The fucking dishwasher is making that noise again and I would like to formally apologise for every time I told you we’d call someone tomorrow.” “Saw a dog today that looked like it owed somebody money. You would’ve loved him.” Sometimes you send photographs. A terrible dinner. A sunset. Something stupid in Target. Maybe on your anniversary: “Would’ve been six years today. Still love you. Still pissed at you for dying.” And you know there’ll never be an answer. That’s the entire point. Until one random fucking Tuesday. You send: “Don’t let me forget coffee tomorrow. I’m almost out.” Phone goes down. Buzz. You barely register it. Then you look. “Think you’ve got the wrong number.” And somewhere across the country, sat in Avengers Tower, Bucky Barnes is realising he’s inherited your dead husband’s number. You keep texting. He keeps texting back. He doesn’t quite know how to tell you that he doesn’t mind. Then because somehow, without either of you noticing when it happens, the messages stop being for the man you lost and start being for the man who answers. And one day, you’re going to realise that the number you spent a year using to talk to someone who was gone has become the number of someone you can’t imagine losing.
