britomart_is | Fic: dark and rolling deep, PG, Gen (Bela)

Title: dark and rolling deep
Author:

britomart_is
Rating: PG
Characters: Gen (Bela)
Word Count: 345
Notes: Title from Charlotte Brontё's "Regret". Takes place after Episode 3x12; spoilers for that episode.
Companion piece to rest of their bones.

The television news is a mind-numbing endless commercial, filled with human interest stories about dogs that pull their owners from fires, that sort of thing. It is not Bela's cup of tea.

Neither is this pub, but the bartender is the only living kin to the last known owner of the monkey's paw, so—here she is, sipping an overpriced microbrew, waiting for closing time.

Bela keeps the bartender in her peripheral vision, but he's not going anywhere, so she lets her gaze drift casually around the room, making split-second analyses of the remaining patrons. The man in the booth with the saucy redhead—a middle-aged woman, which is a refreshing change—is definitely cheating on his wife, but he probably doesn't know that his date is cheating on her husband. The scruffy man at the end of the bar has just lost his job, and she fully expects that he'll go postal within the next few days.

Bela takes another drink, and as she lowers her glass she sees the Winchester brothers.

The pictures that flash across the screen are mugshots, Dean looking cocky and Sam looking miserable. A news camera pans across the blackened wreckage of a building. The female anchor, lacquered hair and heavy makeup, is saying something Bela can't hear. The sound's turned down, and she could ask the bartender to turn it up, but she doesn't. There's little ambiguity in the text lining the bottom of the screen: Slaying suspects killed in police station explosion, and she doesn't need to hear any more.

Bela drops her eyes from the screen and wonders what the real story was, what came for them when they were unarmed and locked up. They always escaped before.

But the bar's closing up, bartender getting ready to go home, monkey's paw somewhere in his possession, probably dusty in a box of family heirlooms. Bela finishes her drink and goes outside to wait, follow him home. There's no time to mourn the dead, and remorse won't undo what's done. If life has taught her anything, it's this.