I have seen the future, brother, it is murder.

[iron-and-latin.livejournal.com]

((closed RP for Sam and the Master))

(It's like an old picture in black and white from some noir film, a beautiful woman smoking a cigarette, the man across from her sipping something expensive from a highball glass. They're talking, words he doesn't quite understand, and there's laughter in their tones, an almost lightness. He recognizes her, it's Una, and the man)

(his eyes, darkening, it could be intimacy but it's not, and he knows that face too, that smile that's a lie, he met the Master at the gates when the man - alien - first arrived. he'd thought he could be a demon then and he thinks so now)

(at the sight of her pressed up against the wall, straining for air as the Master's elegant-but-cruel hands tighten around her throat, and he isn't stopping, isn't giving room for air, and the look on her face that suggested this could all be just a dangerous game slips under the sounds of a windpipe slowly collapsing beneath his fingers)

Sam gasped, seeing a distant glimpse of the ground close to his nose, was aware that (the same room, now in disarray; there had to have been a struggle.) his chest was heaving and the staggering, stabbing pain (the outside of the Toon Town City Hall, one door ever so slightly ajar.) behind his eyes was lessening some. The ground was wet where he'd dropped a half-drunk can of Coke-Cola, the sight slowly spreading liquid interspersed in his sight with the flagging pieces of the vision.

(Una's body, pale and broken and lifeless, and the Master's hands covered in her blood)

He hadn't had a vision since he'd come to the park. He'd never had a vision that hadn't been centered around one of the children like him, or the demon that stalked them. He'd never had a vision with so many complicated pieces. Sam let his forehead rest on the pavement, feeling how his knees ached from falling on them. He'd been right about what he told John- his visions were getting stronger.

Or maybe he was making them stronger.


Sam got shakily to his feet, brushing grit from his knees and passing a hand though his hair. There was a small part of him that wanted to run in the other direction, to stay as far away from Toon Town as possible, and a much larger part of him that wished Dean were here. But he couldn't, and he wasn't. He was on his own on this one, and he had to do his job.

Less than a half an hour later, he was standing on the steps of the Toon Town Hall and knocking on the door. His hands were only shaking a little.

Comments

[hear-the-drums.livejournal.com]

The Master hadn't exactly been expecting any visitors, but then, he rarely did. Still, he usually had a sense of when people were about to show up, and the fact that this sense had failed him in this particular instance was unnerving.

He left the lights low inside City Hall and went to open the door. And he certainly had to hand it to Sam Winchester; he was one of the last people the Master had thought to find on the other side.

"Hello," he said quietly, his expression betraying a –faked– delight at seeing the young man.

[iron-and-latin.livejournal.com]

"Hey," Sam answered, himself all pleasantness. He was holding his usual Mickey-Mouse notebook and Disney Princess pen, and he scribbled something down at the sight of the Master. "Sorry to bug you. I'm helping Cayce out with an update on her census; I don't know if you've noticed but there's been a lot of disappearances lately, so we thought it might be a good idea to do a bit of a door-to-door thing this time around."

[hear-the-drums.livejournal.com]

That... was exactly the wrong thing to be bringing up.

As the disappearances had been more than noticed by the Master, and he had been trying his very hardest to ignore it. All of it. For reasons that this young man would not be privy to.

"Mm. And what precisely is the point of involving you in this census? As I recall, a piece of paper tacked onto a bulletin board seemed to serve her well in the past."

No. No, strangely enough the child was lying. And it wouldn't have been quite so obvious were it not for a wave of psychokinetic energy that the Master could almost taste, the way it radiated outward from Sam Winchester, and he couldn't believe he never noticed it before, if only due to the sheer magnitude of it.

[iron-and-latin.livejournal.com]

Sam half shrugged.

"Not everybody pays attention to stuff on the message board," he pointed out. "I thought, given how freaky the whole situation is, people might feel better if we had something a little more definitive. I know it'd make me."

He allowed a vaguely anxious expression to appear in his eyes and a concerned tone in his voice, playing it a bit naive, a bit timorous, hoping that might make the man a little less on-guard. He knew he was probably in way over his head here, and dealing with something a bit different than his usual, but he could only try and hope that he might get away with it. "Your friend the Doctor can be pretty flighty about answering the censuses, for example." He shrugged again.

[hear-the-drums.livejournal.com]

"Well, you can't expect an alien who was raised on a planet that had no need of census taking to actually take the process seriously." He almost sounded genuinely helpful just then. Without taking into account how his eyes were steadily narrowing.

Tsk tsk; bringing up the Doctor would not be an effective way to push his guard off-centre. "So then. What precisely were you planning on asking me?" –if he indeed had an plan at all up to this point–

[iron-and-latin.livejournal.com]

Sam hadn't missed the narrowing eyes, and was trying to discern if they meant anything more than that the Master was simply finding this visit annoying. He suspected it did.

"Yeah, fair enough," he laughed, sounding like he was still just sort of tickled by the idea of having aliens around, and that he was kind of excited to be talking to one. Which he would have been if it hadn't been for the personality of said aliens. "Must drive you guys even more crazy than most, being stuck here when you're used to having whole galaxies at your fingertips."

"Mostly just checking up to see if you were still here," he answered cheerfully. "Of course, every time I talk to someone I wonder if I should be happy or not that they're still trapped, you know? Since we don't know where people go when they disappear. Though personally I do think that they go home." He was pretty much asking, with his tone and his expression, if the Master had any theories of his own. He was sure the alien did, and he didn't expect them to be shared, but it was a good explanation as to why he was still hanging around asking questions.

[hear-the-drums.livejournal.com]

The 'whole galaxies at your fingertips' comment elicited a laugh that had been long ago designed to make all sorts of people nervous. "Yes. Yes, used to it. Hm."

He had little patience for thinking about where people went, though. If only because there had been enough time spent on the subject, and all of the theories were less than satisfactory. "Why would you bother thinking that? Because it makes you feel more comfortable? There's not much point to it in the end. You'll never be certain, and so your reasoning is useless." Reasoning was never truly useless, of course, but if Sam Winchester wanted to push his buttons, he could push right back.

[iron-and-latin.livejournal.com]

Sam gave him a suspicious glance.

"Well of course I can't be certain," he answered. "At least not until I disappear myself." A short laugh. "Then I guess I'll find out."

[hear-the-drums.livejournal.com]

This conversation was going nowhere in a hell of a hurry.

"I guess you will," the Master said brightly. He made the easy push with his own mental energy, his voice seeming to take up physical space. "Go away now."

[hear-the-drums.livejournal.com]

"Oh, this isn't fun, my boy." He knocked the flailing hand out of the way and moved back around to stand in front of Sam Winchester. Something else was retrieved from a pocket, harder to see this time. "This is science."

He sliced into the younger man's forearm, deep enough to get the blood running freely.

[iron-and-latin.livejournal.com]

"Bull," Sam grunted as the knife dug in. Someone with sharp enough eyes might have noticed a long, faint scar just next to where the blade pierced his skin. "That's what they always say, it's nothing personal Sam, it's an experiment, it's for the greater good, the bigger picture, yada yada. I still just see a guy slicing into my arm with a knife."

[hear-the-drums.livejournal.com]

The Master did have sharp enough eyes. And pairing the scar with the interesting angst, it prompted a few extra questions. "Ah, so this sort of thing happens to you often then? Always a shame not to be the first."

The mystery object happened to be a vial. He let the blood from the gash drip into it.

[iron-and-latin.livejournal.com]

"Yeah. He was a psycho too. What the hell are you doing?"

[hear-the-drums.livejournal.com]

Most people know the rules; it's never smart to call the psycho a psycho. Psychos tend to believe that they're better than that. They're people with vision that are fortunately unburdened by annoying things like a moral compass and empathy for all living creatures.

So to say that Sam Winchester had made the Master angry... was a bit of an understatement.

Sam's mind suffered for it. The controlling force suddenly branched out and entered areas where it was naturally repelled, among memories that brought happiness, even bliss. And there weren't many of them by any means, making it much easier to violate the ones that mattered with an unwanted presence. Brother, father, girlfriend... two on the list were dead. Sam Winchester had the worst luck of any human being he'd yet encountered.

"Blood sample. Hope you don't mind."

[iron-and-latin.livejournal.com]

It actually had little to do with luck.

Dean's face above him, his hands against the scratchy motel blankets as he tucks Sam in. Sitting by his Dad's feet and eating gingerbread cookies the one Christmas there were no monsters near enough to be hunting. Holding Jess's hand on the quad and the first time they kissed.

And, unbidden, her voice from his nightmares "Sam? Why? Why Sam?"

"Not at all," he managed to gasp out, "I'm just punching you in the head and calling you names because I think it will make the process so comfortable for the both of us."

[hear-the-drums.livejournal.com]

"Temper, temper, Mr. Winchester," the Master tutted out loud.

–and she burned on the ceiling, the woman he loved, and that's somehow relevant, the same way his brother's car is, and Sam's unconventional education is, and you would push that, but you can't tax this one to exhaustion, not if you're planning on having anymore fun with it–

He stoppered the vial and slipped it back into his pocket.

"Would you like to leave now?"

[iron-and-latin.livejournal.com]

He grit his teeth and didn't answer, because the question was too mocking for any response not to sound lame. And it didn't matter what he said either way.

"What are you going to do with it?" he asked after a moment's thought.

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Some time later, perhaps an hour insofar as an hour could be measured, a slim figure in a dark blue dress could be seen quietly approaching City Hall.

Una glanced around out of habit, seeing no-one. That the door was ajar was unusual, and this time when she knocked, she didn't wait for him to answer, instead pushing the door open the rest of the way and taking a step inside.

[hear-the-drums.livejournal.com]

He was sitting in the only chair the room had, sipping something expensive from a highball glass. Twirling a prize between his fingers.

His eyes wandered slowly up to where she was standing. There was something playing at the corners of his mouth, but it seemed keen on keeping hidden.

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Una raised an eyebrow. "You look—" She considered the possible adjectives, and finally selected, "—pleased."

She took out her lighter and a cigarette and lit one. Crossed the room slowly, one foot deliberately placed in front of the other, and stopped a few paces away, hand on hip. She looked curiously at the object in his hand but, unable to tell what exactly it was, chose not to comment on it just yet.

[hear-the-drums.livejournal.com]

The object was slipped into his inner jacket pocket without any ominous cues. No foreboding chords. Nothing important.

"Had a good day," he said ambiguously, as though 'pleased' discribed such a natural state for him. His glass raised in her direction. "Drink?"

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Probably just another widget off his work table.

"Don't mind if I do." A thoughtful drag on her cigarette. "A good day? Really? Sufficiently distinct from the rest?"

[hear-the-drums.livejournal.com]

There was an extra glass next to the bottle. –just in case...– He poured just over a shots worth and handed it over. "It hardly started out that way. But things evened out in time."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Una accepted the glass with a gracious little nod, not yet bothering at this juncture with the usual nails-across-the-back-of-the-hand tease. She swirled the liquour, took a small sip, and said, almost to the contents of the glass, "And are you going to tell me how they evened out, or is it for me to guess? Which gives you the most satisfaction today?"

[hear-the-drums.livejournal.com]

"Oh, it was entirely unexpected," he assured her, though why that should be a comfort was up for discussion. He took a sip from his own glass and inhaled the smoke from her cigarette before saying, "I doubt you'll be able to tear the reason from me this time, however." –lucky for her, though she'll never know it–