roadrunnermuses | meme } { open rp post

She huffed out an impatient sigh, pulling on her hair a little bit. "Can't think," she mumbled. "Can't think like this. The pieces aren't coming together the right way."

And with her trademark abruptness, Artemis stood up straight. She pointed to Sam. "Follow me, bring the file with you."

Without waiting for a reply, she started out of the room again, heading down the hall as fast as her injured leg would take her. Along the way, she pulled off her father's duster. Artemis was an incredibly slender, frail girl beneath. She seemed to lose more than half of her mass in that one, simple action.

Sam doesn't complain, just follows and decides it's probably better not to ask. He watches as she sheds her coat, and is curious, but doesn't ask. He isn't sure he really wants to know.

Still, he's got the file in his hand and is still looking it over.

Artemis led him to the end of the hall, to a bathroom. It was old, like the rest of the mansion. The floor had uneven, little white tiles and the bathtub had feet and a rickety railing holding up a curtain.

She hung the coat on the corner of the door, then pointed to a rusty folding chair, propped in the corner of the room. "Start reading me anything in the file that seems interesting," she ordered Sam. "There's a missing piece. Something connecting this attack to the Devil's Gate."

And then she turned on the tap for the shower.

... Sam stares at her for a moment, glancing back to the chair and then back to her again. "Here? In ... the shower?" This doesn't seem kosher and he doesn't know what he's doing.

"It's not for you," she said, as if that were the most obvious thing in the world. She pointed at the chair in the corner of the room. "Sit. Read. Help me find the connection."

Artemis was used to giving orders. And having them obeyed. So much so that she sometimes forgot about things like hospitality or courtesy.

Or that her Malkavian quirks were just that.

Fully dressed, she stepped into the tub, letting the spray from the showerhead hit in her in the chest. Water ran down her body, tinging a little pink as it washed over the blood on her leg.

Strange though it seemed, the water had a bit of a calming effect on Artemis. She stopped pulling on her hair, she stopped fidgeting about. Serene as an ice sculpture, she closed her eyes, turning her face up, just above the splatter.

Well, it's not as though Sam could say he's been in a stranger situation. He takes a deep breath, tries to not be weirded out at the woman sitting in the shower with her clothes on, and starts reading. He reads the file from the beginning, including every field because all of this is important. All of it could find something that could lead them to the cause of all of this.

Despite all appearances, Artemis listened intently. A part of her began to realize how uncomfortable he probably felt. And she had to applaud his resilience.

Unfortunately, she couldn't find any connection between the werewolf attacks here and the Devil's Gate in Perth. She knew. In the Malkavian part of herself, she was utterly certain that the two were one in the same.

"We're going to have to go to Perth," she muttered softly when he finished.

Wait. Artemis blinked in confusion. We're? That was absurd. She barely knew the boy of letters and he wasn't one of her field agents. What's more, she didn't do field work any more.

Yet she realized, as the word echoed in her mind, that she desperately wanted to go. She wanted to get her hands dirty. She wanted to clean up the mess one of her own people had been a part of. And she wanted to escape. From Diana and Joseph and Liam and their headache-inducing problems.

Sam is equally confused by the sudden declaration that 'we' were going to Perth. Because she couldn't have meant we as in her and him. He pauses, blinking at her for a moment, before shaking his head.

"By 'we' you mean the Order, right?"

Artemis considered the question for a moment. "No," she said. "Yes. But no."

A typical Artemis answer.

Slicking back her wet hair, she turned to look at him. "I need a human," she said. "One who knows what a Devil's Gate is. And one who can take care of himself. You fit the bill on both accounts."

"I have my brother." And the trials. And all the other stupid bullshit that's going on in his life. "Dean really won't go for me hopping a plane to Australia to work with an Order we never heard of before."

He pauses.

"I mean, I'd love to help you out, really, but ... I don't think I'm your guy."

She made a dismissive gesture, droplets of water flinging off of her fingertips. "Bring him along." Really, the Order had more than enough funds, if her young boy of letters was going to be quite so co-dependent. Besides, she imagined that two humans who knew about a Devil's Gate were probably better than one.

And perhaps the other one was a bit quicker on the uptake.

"Hell is empty," she murmured softly to the spray. "And all the devils are here."

Sam tries very hard not to laugh out loud at the idea of trying to convince Dean that they need to take a plane to Australia to check out a case. Because yeah - that'll go real well.

" ... How would we be getting there, exactly?"

In all honesty, it would be Artemis' preference to fly. She didn't particularly fancy the idea of trusting her corpus in a coffin to a stranger, not just yet. But she supposed there might be a trustworthy human or two she could enlist to keep an eye on the boy.

The other alternative was a boat and that would take weeks.

Or were boats faster these days? It had been far too long since Artemis traveled on one.

"A metal bird in the sky," she replied, cupping her hands under the spray and dousing herself with water.

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen. My brother doesn't do planes. Not unless he absolutely has to."

He takes a deep breath, leaning back in the chair and pinching the bridge of his nose. He knows that this is important, that they had to go deal with this, but he isn't sure he can convince Dean to do it, unless ...

"What if I had an alternate suggestion? Still get us there just as fast - in fact, it would probably be faster, and a lot harder to trace."

Colour her intrigued.

Artemis turned to look at her boy of letters. Her hair was wet and glistening against her face. The dark contrast against her pale skin was stark and vivid. Water ran down the bridge of her nose and along her cheeks.

"Faster than a metal bird in the sky?" she asked, arching an eyebrow. "Shall we become the wind?"

"Sort of."

Actually, yeah, that's not an inaccurate description of what Castiel can do. But basically, cutting out the travel time here would not be a bad thing.

"How do you feel about angels?"

Artemis wasn't known for her sense of humour. But perhaps, because she had no better answer, she replied almost immediately with, "Horrendous. I have yet to see them win a game."

Of course, she'd never actually watched a baseball game. One of those statements that was true and false at the same time. A personal favorite of Artemis'.

She reached over to the tap, turning off the flow of the water. Her arms and hair were dripping and she was soaked to the skin, her shirt clinging to her in any number of different ways. "I don't know much about angels," she said. "My people fought one in Miami, but they didn't stop to take notes." She turned to look at the boy. "Why? Passing curiosity?"

"No. I just ... know one. And he likes to zap us all over the place for no apparent reason, I'm sure he'll be more than happy to do it if we actually asked."

In theory. Castiel isn't exactly known for coming when they call. Or when Sam calls at least. But he can try.

Daintily, especially considering her leg, Artemis stepped out of the tub. It didn't seem to bother her overly much that water puddled around her feet. Nor that she looked like a drowned rat.

The prospect of meeting an angel was...

Well. It was more significant than vanity. Or the fear of mold.

"You're serious?" she asked, wondering if she ought to read his aura again. "You're not...mad?"

He shakes his head. "Not to say that I'm not ... crazy, because after everything I've been through, there's probably a part of me that is, but ... angels are definitely real. I could probably even bring him here right now if you wanted."

What decided it for Artemis was when he admitted that he was, at least in part, crazy. Like all Malkavians, Artemis believed that insanity was like the air. It was all around everyone and couldn't be avoided.

Few people really understood, however, that it wasn't a curse. In many ways, it was a blessing.

If her boy of letters was wise enough to know that, perhaps he was wise enough to help her close a Devil's Gate.

She folded her arms across her chest, dripping a little on the bathrug. "Show me."

Sam sucks in a deep breath, before nodding and closing his eyes. "Cas, if you can hear me, please come here. We have a problem with a Devil's Gate."

There's a pause.

"And please don't ... not show up and make me look stupid."

There's a long pause of silence, followed by the soft flutter of wings and suddenly there's a tall man in a trenchcoat, also sharing bathroom the bathroom with them. He peers at them both, before turning to Sam.

"Sam, why are you in a bathroom with a wet Malkavian?"

He smirks. "Castiel, meet Artemis."

If there was one good thing that could be said for the world of darkness Artemis inhabited, it was that she'd become very good at navigating it. It took a lot to faze her. She had a stomach of iron and more research crammed up inside of her head than one head really ought to be able to hold.

A man appearing out of thin air was nothing earth-shattering.

A man appearing out of thin air in her bathroom was another matter.

"Because the dry one is still in her bedroom," she replied.

Castiel frowns, his brow furrowing in that endearingly adorable way of his, and he turns to Sam in confusion. "Is the dry one supposed to be the one we're meeting regarding the Devil's Gate?"

Sam's lips purse as he tries not to laugh. "No. She's being ... facetious." He pauses as he doesn't realize if she actually is. "I ... think."

"Not entirely," Artemis replied, picking up a towel from the sink and offering it to Sam when she noticed water seeping dangerously close to his shoes. "I have a sister."

She glanced back and forth between the two gentlemen. "You'll both have to meet her sometime."

But a Devil's Gate felt a bit more important at the moment.

Artemis turned her full attention on Castiel. His aura was the colour of a nameless color, sparkling and shining like a disco ball. It was actually rather painful to look at, but she couldn't help it. It reminded her of the sun. Or what little she remembered about the sun. "So you are an angel, then?"

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