wanderamaranth | Use Your Illusions Timestamp: Wake Up Dead Man

Title: Wake Up Dead Man
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R
Warning(s): mentions of violence, language, original character POV, crackesque author notes
Spoilers: Use Your Illusions, (fanfic co-authored with quantum_witch ) Chapter Eight
Pairing(s): brief mentions of Dean/Cas
Word Count: ~1,100
Author(s): wanderamaranth

Note: This is a timestamp set mid-Chapter Eight of Use Your Illusions. Title is from U2. See the bottom of entry for additional notes, pictures, and the song download link.

Disclaimer: I do not own nor am affiliated with any personage or company that could conceivably (or inconceivably) earn profit from the posting, promotion, or distribution of this fan work. It's fanfiction, folks. I'm not taking myself too seriously, and I don't expect you take me or my writing very seriously either. (But I will take credit, or blame, if you prefer, for Holly.)

*~*~*~*

Waking up dead fucking sucked.

Holly didn't know how the Winchesters dealt with this on a semi-regular basis.

Well, not exactly this, because she's pretty sure she woke up from death as a monster, but the general principal's the same. One moment, you're dead, the next, you're not. Shit like this was not supposed to happen to her. She was supposed to be the one who took the angel sword to the gut, feel the unpleasantness of her belly splitting wide open (joy, that) die and stay dead. Holly was an okay hunter, she supposed, but she wasn't, you know, special. Certainly not special enough to rate being brought back.

She hunted because it felt like her duty; some she guessed may refer to it as a calling. She'd been a soldier (again, nothing special, not even the 2^nd lieutenant she'd hoped to be after a few years when she'd signed) and after being discharged found that regular civilian life wasn't all it was promised to be, either. Jobs working third shift security at whatever ass-backwards retail store would take her or shoving drunks out on their asses (barely) covered her bills, but they weren't fulfilling.

The first time she'd encountered a monster it was snacking on a co-worker. Pulling the shotgun out from under the bar counter had been instinctual; her hands were steady as she'd blown it away. For the first time in a long time she'd felt like she did something that was important, that mattered. Saving a life was a rush, and yeah, okay, maybe a part of her felt the same about the opposite. What's certain was that taking a gun and making it so there was one less monster made her feel alive.

She wasn't sure how she was supposed to feel about hunting now that she was apparently a monster herself. Holly didn't seem any different to herself, but then, she'd only been not-dead for about ten minutes, all of which occurred during a cluster-fuck of a battle, so she figured she'd have to save all the soul-searching bullshit for some time when she wasn't in immediate danger of dying again.

“Derris! Blutarsky! Move your asses!” she shouted, scooping up a discarded angel sword and brandishing it. The freaky-ass bodiless monsters were pushing in closer to them, and the demons were abandoning the fight now that all the angels were gone. She'd dropped her flamethrower when it became clear that it was ineffective against the monster blobs. The angel swords, however, at least seemed to give them pause.

“Why the fuck aren't you dead?” Derris asked, mouth hanging open. How such a slack-jawed fool had managed to survive so long as a hunter...

“Just move, asshole!” Holly shouted. “We need to get to the cabin, now!”

A few of the angels heard her command and heeded it, which was just fucking bizarre, okay, because while she'd been in the military, she'd never really been in a position of authority, and now members of the most bad-ass army in the whole fucking universe following her resurrected ass' orders?

Maybe she was more special than she'd given herself credit for.

“Winchester!” Holly demanded, grabbing pretty boy's upper arm and hauling him along. Waking up from the dead made her wicked strong, apparently, because where before she'd had a slight issue when sparing with Dean, now she was able to practically tow him along behind her. “Use your big flaming sword and get us to the rendezvous point!”

It looked like a protest was going to spring up from his lips so she shouted, “We're getting slaughtered out here, we've gotta go!”

Dean finally snapped out of whatever trippy headspace he'd been in and nodded. Holly hoped she didn't zone out like that now that she was a member of the Lazarus Club. He started shouting instructions at his boyfriend's (and isn't it always the attractive ones that are gay?) troops, and a long slog through non-solid monsters later, they were at the cabin's door.

“In, in,” she directed hunters and angels, even pushing Winchester ahead of her.

“What're you doing, Holly?” Dean huffed, and she rolled her eyes.

“Getting everyone inside so I can throw the Holy Hand Grenade and buy us a few minutes, asshat,” she snapped. She placed a hand on his chest and shoved him back into the hut, getting ready to bar the door from the outside to keep him in if she had to (because that was the emergency plan; retreat to the medical hut and regroup if needed, and damn it, they needed to motherfucking regroup. Yeah, it sucked for him that his brother Sam was still out in the field, but they'd gotten who they could to relative safety, and she was gonna focus on that) when the angel Castiel swooped in behind her, looking like shit.

“Better get inside; I'm gonna toss the grenade,” she warned him. A pause, and she added, “Is it going to kill me, too?”

She was already supposed to be dead, so it didn't really matter, Holly guessed. If it bought those inside a few moments to catch their breath and a chance to survive, well, the extra ten minutes had been nice, and feeling special for a change had been great, so she wouldn't cry.

“Yes,” Castiel said, matter-of-factly, and shit, she was a liar because apparently she was gonna cry about dying, but she nodded, ready to at least pretend to be brave, but the angel continued with, “You'll get better.”

At her sure-to-be-attractive gaping expression, Winchester's boyfriend said, “You were marked by the mother phoenix. Unless shot with a very special and specific weapon, you may die, but you will always reform shortly thereafter.” He turned to enter the hut, paused, and said, “When you respawn after throwing the grenade, would you please resist the urge to test the limits of your new abilities and return to the cabin instead of battling the souls?”

Holly nodded, dumbfounded that 1) the angel had just read her freaking mind and 2) apparently she was immortal. Hell, she wasn't just immortal, she was Jean-fucking-Grey with better hair and a more bad-ass attitude.

“Yeah,” she agreed. The angel didn't smile or say thanks but just stumbled in as the souls pressed ever closer. They were almost too close for her to throw the grenade and not shake the hut itself to the ground, but almost wasn't actually, so with a feral grin she pulled the pin and tossed.

*~*~*~*

Additional Author's Notes:

If you've read this far, cool beans. I know original characters in fanfiction aren't always the best loved. Holly snuck up on me, though, and kept talking, and how can I refuse a character that talks?

When visualizing her, I see Holly as looking quite a bit like Agyness Deyn, particularly when she's dressed like a badass (like the icon used on this post). Here are some pics for reference:

And there are a few different blink-and-you'll-miss-them references in this little snippet. The Holy Hand Grenade refers to the weapon used to destroy the Killer Rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. QW and I had talked (only somewhat jokingly) about this being one of Castiel's heavenly weapons, and it seems I can not resist crack elements. So is it really one of the weapons of Heaven for the UYI verse, like Castiel's Rod of Aaron or Dean's Sword of Eden? *shrugs* I'll leave it to your own interpretation if Holly was just being a smart-ass.

Derris and Blutarsky are the last names of Jay and Silent Bob. They were vaguely alluded to being the two hunters Sam and Castiel encounter at Holly's house during Chapter Five of Use Your Illusions.

When Holly refers to herself as "Jean-fucking-Grey", she is talking about Marvel Girl, also known as the Phoenix (or when she's naughty, Dark Phoenix) from the various incarnations of the X-Men comics. (Cover is from her first appearance in Uncanny X-Men Issue #101, October 1976)

Oh, yeah, and I promised a song download too, didn't I? Go here for the U2 song this timestamp borrowed-without-permission its title from.