milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Second verse, same as the first.

Susannah is back, trying once again to get some work done away from her troublesome menfolk. Not that she doesn't have a perfectly good office to hide in if she really felt like playing the recluse. But they don't keep liquor in the house, and where would she be without her Dragonfly?

The mountain of paper situation has only gotten worse; more resumes, print-outs of her memos that she's now marking up in red pen, and a file from the Vannay Institute about Stephen King's latest publications. Among other things.

She's open to distraction; just don't bring up Ron Howard.

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"Sam Winchester." She waves from her world of paper. "Evening."

"How's it going?"

Almost in the same breath, he adds,

"You look busy, though, don't let me bother you--"

"If it couldn't be set aside, I wouldn't be here," she says mildly. "I'm working on..." she glances down at the heading of the paper she's looking at. "Lord, the symbolic significance of apples, apparently. Probably time for an interruption."

"Of apples," he repeats.

A beat.

"Uh... any particular context? Or reason?"

"They're the symbol of my daughter's college," she says. "Kirkland. Probably a lot of nonsense, but we never do know what details are going to be significant. The report is mixed in with a whole lot of other information from our researchers."

"Guess it's better to be sure," he mutters, as his glance drifts toward the papers.

"How many researchers do you have?"

"The Vannay Institute has about fifteen people now, I guess," she says. "With the new staff they took on. They're a sort of specialized think-tank, though. When they were integrated into the company, the whole group was about ninety, including field workers assigned under them."

He can't help it; Sam looks momentarily stunned.

"... okay then."

"We invested in Microsoft," she explains. "Right around the time everyone wishes they could go back and invest in Microsoft."

And that?

That gets a laugh.

"I have a friend who'd probably be making some kind of warding sign about now, but man, that's a seriously good call on your part."

"Well," she says simply, "time travel."

"The SEC would probably have something to say about," she adds lightly, "but it was in a good cause."

"The SEC can probably take care of itself."

Sam blinks, though.

"Time travel?"

"Of a sort," she says. "And not exactly. Sometimes I think my life has been a moit more convoluted than necessary."

"... from what you've said before, yeah," Sam agrees.

"Some time..." she says, and trails off.

"Hm. Sam, do you think you could give me a hand with something I need moved from my house to here? I could use someone strapping and... possessed of a pair of legs, and my husband doesn't come in here."

"Sure, no problem."

He glances at the door and then back to her.

"Now, or?"

"If it's convenient," she says, pulling her stacks into a semblance of order.

"No problem."

He won't be gone long enough for Dean to notice, and it's not like he's going on a job, or anything like that.

"Here, I can help carry--?"

Susannah is good at letting people help her; she's mastered the art of making it seem like a favor conferred rather than accepted.

Besides, her hands hurt.

"Do you know a little girl called Ingress?"

"Blue hair," Sam recalls. "Likes ice cream."

"That would be her," she affirms, motoring towards the door. "Well, I have a birthday present for her."

He walks beside her, piles of paper stacked in his arms.

"It was her birthday? Man, time just flies by--"

Something tightens in his face for a moment at the thought.

"I knew her when she was six years old," she says absently. "And I was thirty."

And Eddie was--something like alive.

"Time does fly."

The door opens out from a linen closet on the second floor; along a gallery overlooking the foyer and living room, in fact, in a large open plan, and facing wide-set windows set in the sloping roof. The view is pretty spectacular; it's her favorite thing about the house. There's a line of doors all along here.

"Wow."

Sam stares out at the windows, then grins down at Susannah.

"Nice house."

"The books bought this," she says, smiling just a touch. "Not the Microsoft stock. My husband's a writer."