03:25 —Ooh, you cut me open and I keep bleeding love..
Being their personal doctor isn't hard, but it wasn't easy either. You're the one they run to whenever things get hard, when things start to feel unreal. When they need guidance, when they need advice, when they need your help. The person they know they can always rely on. The one who makes them feel seen and appreciated, the one who says everything they need to hear.
You're always the one who saw it. Despite all the smiles and laughter, you see their pain, their exhaustion. The times where you see them push themselves too much they end up in your office again. The times where they feel like they need to prove something but in reality, they've proven more than enough.
But what if something else starts to bloom? What if suddenly.. your contract that says "no feelings attached" in bold letters doesn't matter anymore?
Jonathan Wick, at once point in his life, didn't pay much mind for people's dirty little secrets.
He'd always liked listening to people, and learning about them, a bit too shy to talk to them himself. A gap tooth and a beauty mark made him a little self-conscious, as if he could hear a phantom lisp in his every word.
But he'd never been ravenous for gossip or scandals, particularly, until it became a matter of necessity.
It started the day that Cera fell.
There wasn't much to be done about it: there's no realistic way that a novelty cookie jar for last year's trend was going to find a niche fanatic to love her, but she was always cheerful, always such an optimist that someone somewhere would be delighted to find her after a long search. Unfortunately, a slip of a customer's hands as they lifted her from the shelf sent her careening to the ground, her crockery shattering with the impact into a thousand shards. Perhaps that was enough for her, in that final moment: someone was finally looking at her with genuine interest. How many could say their last feeling was the thrill of hope?
The rest of the bargain shelf could only watch as her pieces were swept up and discarded, silent in their witness and immobile in their grief, until the night had fallen and the aisles fallen still of shoppers. No longer obliged to their best behavior while vying for a potential purchase, the survivors were left to mourn. Mugs empty with sorrow, chipped dishware nervously inspecting their own damage, glassware wiping at dust in the fervent effort to find cracks of their own. These things happened, often, and it left everyone tense in the aftermath.
Metal items had the privilege of worrying less about such a peril, unless they were poorly welded or a thin alloy: as such, from a separate shelf, they watched and observed. Three of them from the same factory, overstocked from a main retailer and left as triplets to the mercies of the public, they were very close-knit…mostly.
Jon stayed near the edge, ears trained on the congregation of ceramics and their conversations. Though he wasn't much for speaking at length, he'd always found some comfort in listening to the world around him, for any errant word or inclination of praise, of what people liked and didn't, of how people related to their world and how that reflected upon them. He knew that the glassware thought that metalworks were arrogant for having a better constitution. He knew that the tea sets cried when someone didn't buy the entire set together, missing their siblings when separated. But tonight, he heard something new on his own shelf, from Jake and James.
Being mass-produced meant that your face was not your own: it was modeled from some unknown piece you'd never meet, the authentic article you're as good as a ghost of with a mockery of the care and attention given to the genuine artisanal work that you emulate. Though he didn't mind sharing the looks of his production batchmates, the prospect that his being was never truly his own troubled Jon in a way that his kindred did not seem to be burdened by. That, and a slight misfire of the die that imprinted him, made him something of an outcast (he loathed the pun) among his own. James and Jake, however, had always been fairly polite about it…until now, it seemed, when a whisper of his own name crossed their hushed exchange at the other end of the shelf.
Gaze lingering downward as he pretended not to notice, Jon cued in on the muttered conversation among his fellow Wicks. With a wake going on below their bases, what on earth could they have to say about him? Not as if a fall would break him, like Cera…
"Listen, Jimmy, you know it ain't gonna last. None of this ever does, we can only get marked down so many times. We gotta up our game."
"Jake, sure. I getcha. You know I do." muttered James, tossing a waxy curl over his shoulder with a frown. "But that's too far and you know it. We don't gotta do that. We're on a different playing field, people don't buy candelabras when they're looking for mugs. Think this through."
With a huff, Jake scowls at James, their faces a perfect facsimile of one another. "I been thinking. Since way before today! I'm just sayin' that less competition will only do us favours. More shelf space to shine, even if they ain't the same product. You know humans love impulse buys, and that's all we're gonna be at this point. Impulse is what'll get us outta here, so why not stack the deck?"
"And what about when it's just us three, Jake, what about that? Who's gonna be buying three candelabras? You gonna shove me and Jonny off the shelf too?" hisses James, nose wrinkling.
Jake snorts, lip curling in patronizing disdain. "Jonny? C'mon now, with that crack in his mug, right next to that lil' drop of solder? He's no competition, ain't nobody gonna buy that guy over us."
(From his supposed vigil, Jon ran his tongue over the prominent gap in his teeth, adjacent to his beauty mark. They'd always told him that such things had character…a deviation to be proud of, that made him stand out.)
"And that smudge in his finish that never polishes out? Nobody with taste is gonna pick him. He's not even cutting it as a mass product, he's nothin' special. You and me though…people love buyin' matched decorations. Candelabra at either end of the dining table. You and I stick together." Jake adds, offering a sconce. "With me?"
As James chuckles dryly, a murmur of assent is granted as the sconces clank: a toast to conspiracy in serial murder, as Jon holds his breath to subdue the flush of betrayal creeping through his chest. His own alloys turned traitor, and plotting the downfall of the dishware on lower shelves? Laughing about it, their own little secret, as if this was some sort of game to be won? Kings of the anthill, superior to the broken and half-expired, lords of a land of missing parts and opened packaging? No, no…no, this would not do.
Rising, the burning wrath of justice ignited in Jon's chest as he traversed the shelf, a simple smile on his lips as he greeted his identical kindred, hands clenched in the nest of ruffles at his cuffs as he listened to their lies for the very last time.
----====----====----
The following morning, a human in a fabulous red shirt found themselves bemused in the clearance aisle of Valvidimart: the menagerie of wares was as mixed a bag as ever, but three candelabras stood alone on a shelf of their own, with most inventory well-separated from them. Something had clearly gone wrong with production or shipping somewhere: one had its middle sconce twisted off, with the other two mangles and flattened. The other, at the very edge of the shelf, was bent in odd places and missing a labrum…which was hooked around the arm of the third candelabra. This one had very minor flaws: a tiny crack in its sconce, a drop of solder near the neck, but otherwise looked lovely.
With a hum, the human removed the snapped arm from the candelabra and set it back on the shelf beside its owner, before setting their new purchase-to-be in the cart. As the human meandered off to browse, Jon knew, inwardly, that he'd have to be sure that they'd never doubt his integrity, his worth, his existence…and if he did it right, nobody else would either. There was no place in the world for ordinary things like Jonathan Wick to shine…but with some polish, perhaps he could be someone exceptional in a house full of strangers. Stand out in a spotlight to keep the shadows at bay, and make sure that the whispers in the dark didn't come with knives aimed for his back.
Two questions: 1. What do you think the triplets and Clem look like as Hamsters from the show Hamtaro? Or 2. Got Amy angst for the triplets?
Mmmweeell, that's a though one. I'm not sure to remember the Hamtaro artstyle in its exact accuracy, but... I do believe it'd give something like that ?
(as usual, click for better view)
And IIII- don't think I really have any MORE angst for the Triplets- (despite what I already posted about them in my 'alive' headcanons...) Just a fun fact maybe, did you notice the room in which they sleep is the one within they train all their animals ? You may also notice, in this very room, the three full piggy banks lying around. Then I wonder, why in this cash-stuffed hotel, with no real need for money, why exactly these little girls would still prefer to possess piggy banks ?
...If it may provides enough material to think about something angsty ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, I dunno...
Something I realized about 12.10 that everyone else probably figured out but has been puzzling me for awhile.
In 11901, Ishim kills Lily’s daughter and Akobel.
In the present, he tells Cas:
“I’m going to cut your humanity out the way I did mine.”
Now, people have been referring to this making Dean his humanity. Which, sure. I can get behind that and maybe I’m reaching but... what Ishim does in the past and what he does in the present don’t reflect right.
In 11901, Ishim doesn’t kill Lily, he kills May and Akobel. Wouldn’t that make Sam and... whoever is protecting Dean from him, his targets if we were mirroring that? Bobby is gone, we don’t really have a direct mirror for Akobel anymore.
So... then what does Ishim mean?
I think Ishim cut out his vessel’s heart and therefor removed humanity from himself. It hasn’t been proven in the show that destroying or removing the heart could remove humanity, but I can’t think of anything else that would add up in this case and Jimmy was killed when his body went poof. Stabbing isn’t enough, but removing the heart? That’s a statement.
There is an emphasis on the relationship between Benjamin and his vessel, how they’re both in there, interacting. Also Ishim comments about Cas not keeping his old vessel.
If Ishim cut out his vessel’s heart, that would make more sense with his actions and what he means. May and Akobel weren’t his humanity. His vessel was. It would also make Dean Castiel’s heart.. A bit more definitive and a bit more telling on past declarations.
Darcy have her breaking moments and psycho moments at times her psycho moments aren’t bad it’s only really her singing creepy songs and acting creepy a lot of the time it happens so mostly crazy moment
