roadrunnermuses | meme } { open rp post

Artemis sat down. If anything Sam had said fazed her, she did an extraordinary job of not showing it.

In truth, talk of angels and Hell and the Apocalypse were nothing new to her world. But ti was a bit surprising when she heard people from outside of it talking like that. And she found herself rather wishing that she had an angel or two in her corner.

Then again, why should the Damned?

"What was the price?"

"The price?" His sanity? Their lives? Them having any semblance of a healthy relationship? He wasn't entirely sure what part she's referring to, so he's going to wait to clarify before he answers.

"When you pull someone out of Hell, there's always a price," Artemis said impatiently, as though she were trying to explain it to a toddler.

Well, compared to her, the boy of letters was.

Really. He hadn't heard of a Malkavian? That just struck her as unnaturally odd.

Oh. That price. He frowns for a moment, before shaking his head.

"I don't know. He was given orders to - Dean was the vessel, they couldn't leave him down there."

Just like they couldn't let Sam not release Lucifer.

"Good friend to have," she muttered dourly.

What she could do with a handful of them at her command. The mind boggled. Things would be so much easier. Better. Fewer of her people would have to suffer the price of rescue.

Not that Artemis had regrets about that. They were her people. Her responsibility. And when they got pulled down into the underworld, of course she was going to make whatever deals were necessary.

But it didn't help her sleep easier during the day.

Her eyes went distant and glossy. "I've seen terrible prices."

Sam's eyebrow climb slightly, before he nods. "Right. I'm sure you have." Sam's seen some terrible ones himself. But he doesn't feel like saying them out loud at the moment.

"Comes with the territory, I suppose," she sighed, her twenty-year-old body sagging under the weight of two centuries of mistakes.

There had been more than a few.

She turned to look at Sam, pressing her fingers to her face and biting down on the knuckle of her index finger. "What's it like? Hell?"

That's not really a question that Sam wants to answer. It's not really a question he knows how to answer. Castiel had taken most of the pressure of his insanity away, but that only made everything feel more distant. It doesn't even feel like his anymore. So he answers with the only thing he can answer with.

"It's Hell."

"Some philosophers argue that Hell is just being with other people." Her eyes lost their focus a bit. "And there's the traditional, cartoonish vision of hell as brimstone and fire. Although I rather think it would be cold."

She blinked once and was back in the present.

Presumably.

"I suppose I'll find out eventually."

There's a beat.

Sam shouldn't say anything. She probably doesn't want to know. But that know-it-all need to correct is shining through a little more than most, and he cringes before spitting it out.

"Actually, vampires don't go to Hell. They go to Purgatory."

It was hard to tell if Artemis looked amused or annoyed. Of course, it was entirely possible that it was both. Artemis didn't inhabit what most would consider to be a binary world.

Far from it.

"I see," she said pressing her lips together into a fine line. "Thank you for clarifying that."

Yes, Sam. Good job.

"Sorry," he adds belatedly after the fact. "We've just ... dealt with our fair share of afterlives and all that."

"All in a day's work?"

She made a dismissive gesture. "We've all died once or twice. But the work never really ends, does it?"

Well, Sam's died more like four or five times, but honestly, who's counting?

"No, it doesn't." Sam sighs. "Though sometimes I wish it did - just so I could take a break for once."

"You could always send your angel to do it," she murmured, raising an eyebrow.

No. Artemis did not like sitting on the sidelines of this. Not at all.

"Oh, sometimes we do. And sometimes he doesn't answer the phone."

Which the boys' way of saying that he doesn't always come when he's called.

Artemis had the distinct impression that he bloody didn't know how to use a phone. But that assumption was based entirely on arrogance. She was very proud of her own ability to adjust to changing technology.

Not all Cainites were so skilled.

"Who else works for you?" she asked.

He pauses at the question again because ... yeah. They weren't exactly the employee type. "It's mostly just me, my brother and Cas." He doesn't share information about Kevin at all if he can help it. It's just safer for the kid that way. "We don't have people who work for us."

"That won't do," Artemis muttered, pressing her fingertips to her lower lip for a moment. "That won't do at all."

There was a peril to being an independent agent. One sacrificed one's sanity. One's sense of connection.

And, in time, one's humanity.

"We shall take you on," she declared.

....

.........

........... Did he just get offered a job?

Sam is a little blindsided by the offer so it takes him a moment to articulate a response, but even then, it isn't really that articulate. "I'm sorry, what?"

She glanced up at him. And somewhere, in the dark recesses of her eyes there was...was it possible? A slight twinkle of amusement?

"Perhaps I spoke too soon. It won't do to have a field agent who's hard of hearing."

Apparently, the Malkavian had a sense of humour after all.

He catches the joke and he shakes his head a bit, still trying to process the first part. "I'm just ... you want me to work for you?" Because he can't say he's ever been offered a job before.

"Your brother as well. Although I suppose I'll have to meet him first. And the two of you will need to be introduced to the rest of the high-ranking members of the Order." Not that it mattered. Artemis might accept the counsel of Liam and Fatima. She might even entertain some of Diana's ideas. But ultimately, it was she who had final say. And when she made up her mind about something, it was very hard to dissuade her.

She leaned back in her seat, steepling her fingers and looking at the boy of letters over them. "What you need to understand," she told him quietly, "is the purpose of the Order. We are in the business of saving the world. But we don't work on a grand scale all the time. Only when the need arises. Most of the time, the things we do are small. Significant to the people that we help, but not to the world itself. There are hunters among us, both human and Cainite. And they go out and deal with the monsters lurking under children's beds as well as the apocalypses."

Artemis leaned forward in her seat a little, her eyes squaring in on his face. She'd forgotten to blink again. "That is what they do for the Order. But the Order does something for them as well. People are not made to function alone. That way leads to violent death or insanity. We are created and built for communities. And while great cities fall, they always rise again. Always."

"Sometimes people have to."

If there's anything that Sam has learned, it's that anyone they work with, anyone they value as an ally always winds up dead. It makes it hard to connect with anyone, knowing that they'll be dead as soon as someone wants to prove a point to Sam and Dean.

"Look, you don't know what you're signing up for with me. I've been doing this a long time. And ... it doesn't end pretty for people that work with us."

"I think," she said, "you give yourselves too much credit. Because I can promise you this. However long you've been doing it? We here have been doing it longer. The order has existed for over two hundred years. And I'm not vain enough to tell you there have been no casualties along the way." Her hand drifted to the necklace with the emerald, the one Adam had given each of his daughters. "But I will tell you that that time has allowed us to see many unaffiliated hunters and the way they operate. Eventually, all of them end up hearing voices. And one day, they finally listen to those voices."

She leaned back again, her focus going soft as she examined the boy. "When I look at your nature, I see a Penitent. You do everything you can to deny your darker impulses, or at least to channel them into some productive, virtuous enterprise." Her hand swept out toward the library. "Is this not productive?"

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject