one-lane highway

Sun Eclipsed by Moon
Characters: Max Banes, Alicia Banes, Tasha Banes, Winchesters
Rating: gen
Spoilers/Warnings: 12 x 20!
Summary: How to give back a body.
Notes: Companion for Natural ; can't stop writing witch twins!
Title from Roger Waters; inspired by a conversation with laughablelament.

When the moon goes dark she doesn't bleed, so you give her blood.

You give her cramps. You give her a little fever, remind her she's a body, sit by her bed and bring her what your mother used to, willow and cohosh, angelica, haw; bitter tea.

Max, she moans, and you say yes, you still are, you're still here.

Why would you even say that, she says, sticks her face in the pillow, swats at you. Her fingers harder than they used to be, bark-calloused--or that's an illusion; that's more likely. Outside, whiskey jack hops on a rock.

Reveal; reveal; reveal.

Outside the wind's shifted direction.You think what you'll do now. Little Banes'; Little Foxes, your mom used to say. Your mother's children but also your father's. You betrayed it; the white-witchery, the hunt, the whole thing.

Lie down awhile, dream-walk: Max, your mother says. Why did you do this? Why would you do this.

You don't know if you really burnt her or not.

*

Your arms feel different, that's the first thing. Run through, veinburn, firewater and devil's claw. Your eyes are red. Tears, sure. Something else too. A river in you, allochthonous grits, dark magic and college geology.

You wash dishes, slow and normal, in the sink where you mother taught you. Where she taught you not to witch up the things you could do with your hands alone.

Your phone buzzes and Dean glimmers awake onscreen; then Sam, then nothing at all. Ghosted. What could they teach you now, those boys, about what's humming in you. A lot, your gut says, a lot, not like you don't know, about the blood, the curses and grace, the heaven-hell they turn on like that’s the only axis (faerie too, don't forget that); dimensions they can't shed.

They'd see you. They'd know.

On alert. You are your mother’s son but also your father's daughter. Or that's what 'licia said to you, sometimes, playful, one-of-the-girls. She was more witch than she knew, than she wanted to be, and it would've come out no matter what she said, no matter how she practiced with her blade, said it was all the wand she'd need.

Outside: the rent call of the ôhôw.

Max, Alicia calls from the bedroom, sleepy.

Feeling better?

Yeah, she says, we got food in the house? Or what?

Vegan, you say, hold up the bean-chips and shake, watch her smile back sad and barefoot with your mother's smile.

The wind rattles in the windows; her soul is walking far away.