Just A Tiny Spark

A/N: Hey guys, thanks for the reviews. I was really worried about the premise of this story, and whether anyone would be even remotely interested, but the idea just wouldn't leave me alone. I had to get it out there. My muse is a diva little bitch sometimes, but I love him ; P

Chapter 2: A Dark, Demanding Child

Meggie was doing dishes when she heard it. A faint whisper, brushing past her, ruffling her hair and making gooseflesh ripple across her back and shoulders. She'd turned and followed it out of the kitchen, then the house, and through the yard, the whispers calling to her, telling her there was something important she needed to know. The sun was setting over the hills, low red and purple light painting the green acres of her father's land. In the east, the sky was beginning to turn a deep, velvety blue, almost black, and it would have been beautiful if she'd stopped to look.

But the voices were persistent, and she recognized them now as the voices of Fate, the whispers she heard when she held someone's hand and saw their future. They were demanding and petulant, like children. They urged her on in dead languages, and she followed their pull as if in a trance.

Her feet led her to the barn, where her father, Mortimer Folchart, was speaking with some of the local police. Mortimer controlled everything in town, the cops, the schools, the City Council. His family went back nearly two hundred years and he had his fingers, and his twisted faith, in everything. "He's causing trouble," Mo was saying as Meggie drew close. She hid to the side of the barn door and waited, knowing she’d gat beaten if she interrupted anything important. She was still nursing the wounds from her last punishment. "The Winchester boy. He's handsome, and the girls are starting to notice. He flirts with them, right in full view of everyone. We can't have him turning the minds of our young women to sin."

"What do you need, Mo?" the Sheriff, Zachariah Smithson, asked. He was an older man, with grey, balding hair, and a beer gut.

"Run him out. He's seventeen now; he can find his fortune elsewhere."

Zachariah nodded. "Have you thought more about my proposal?"

It was Mo's turn to nod. "Yes, and I'm starting to think it's a good idea. I'd hate to lose her - she's an angel in the kitchen - but she's growing up, and she'll need a firm hand. Got a bit of her grandfather's stubbornness."

Zachariah smiled. "I look forward to... reigning her in." He turned to leave. Meggie gasped and ducked behind a bale of hale.

"Oh, Zachariah?"

The sheriff turned. "Yep?"

"See that the Winchester boy takes his brother with him. He's what, thirteen? What's his name... Shawn?"

"Sam, I believe."

"That's right, Sam. He'll be awful pretty in a year or so... just like that Dean. Send them both away."

"Yessir." The sheriff tipped his hat and left.

Meggie waited for about thirty seconds, then came out from the behind the bale of hay. She walked into the barn as if she’d just arrived. “Meggie?” her father asked. “What are you doing out here? Finished with the dishes already?”

“No, I just...” the voices wanted her to read her father’s future, but to do that, she’d have to touch him. The thought made her skin crawl.

“Just what, Meggie?” His voice was taking on that dangerous, honey-drenched tone it got when he was angry.

“Nothing, I just...” Steeling herself, she walked over to her father and wrapped her arms around him in a hug.

The effect was instant. Meggie was thrust into a vision. It was blurry, and the colors all ran together, like a watercolor left in the rain. She saw herself and the sheriff, standing in her father’s church. At the altar. Meggie was wearing white, and the sheriff was in his dress uniform. Her father... her father was presiding over their wedding. Meggie could feel it as Zachariah took her hands in his. She shook in his clammy grasp as he pressed his lips to hers. She squeezed her eyes shut, and the scene shifted. Zachariah’s face was above hers, and his arms were pinning her down...

“No!” Meggie screamed, wrenching herself from her father’s grasp.

Mo looked stunned. “Meggie, what’s the matter with you?”

He was marrying her off. He was marrying her off to that disgusting sheriff. That’s what they’d been talking about. He was selling her like a pig at market.

Her father reached out to her.

Meggie stared at her father’s hand for a moment, the hand that had beaten her till she cried, then held her when she did. The hand that controlled the entire town, and the lives of everyone in it. She turned the other way and she ran.

And she didn’t stop.

*************

Dustfinger watched as the girl carefully sipped the hot tea he’d put in front of her. She was a dirty scrap of a thing; her hair was long and ratty, and might have been blond in the right light. She was sickly pale, her eyes hollowed, and there was a thinness to her that spoke less of fashion and dieting, and more of starvation and abuse. Her collarbones jutted out, and her wrists were bony and awkward. She looked absolutely pitiful, and Dustfinger had the momentary thought of drowning her like you would a runt pig.

Now, ‘at’s an awful thought, Dusty, said a voice in his head that sounded a great deal like his dead mother. Look at the lass, she’s a right sight, ain’t she? You should be lookin’ after ‘er, not dreamin’ of stickin’ ‘er head in a barrel of wash-water. God says the meek shall inherit, idn’t that right? He rolled his eyes. He could see her in his mind’s eye, plump and grey-haired, standing over the stove waving a wooden spoon at him. And nothing at the moment seemed meeker than this girl.

Dustfinger sighed. “That table you’re sitting at is also your bed.” Meggie looked up at him, and he was struck for a moment by how utterly old her eyes seemed. The color itself was bright, but there was a dullness to them, as if she’d seen more horror than any child should have to endure. He shook himself, then continued, “You let the table down, and slide the seats together.”

Meggie nodded. “Do you have any pajamas I can wear?”

Dustfinger rolled his eyes. “I suppose.” He moved off to the left, to where the door to his bedroom sat, just to the left of the front door. He rummaged around and found an old concert t-shirt (it wasn’t as if the Pistols would ever get back together) and a pair of gym shorts from some high school he never went to. He came back and tossed them onto the table. He had a feeling this girl was going to be trouble, and he had half a mind to storm back to Joseph and demand he put the girl somewhere else. Dustfinger knew, however, that his was probably the safest cabin in the carnival. Joseph tried to keep out the more unsavory characters, but there was always a good handful who slipped through the cracks.

Dustfinger noticed Meggie staring at the Sex Pistols logo on the shirt he’d given her. “What does this mean?” she asked finally, turning to stare up at him.

“It’s a band,” he said, frowning. “You telling me you never heard of the Sex Pistols?”

“A band?”

Dustfinger scoffed, wondering if this girl was messing with him. “A band, you know... music. You never listened to the radio?”

The girl lowered her eyes, then said, her voice quiet, “Listening to the radio is a sin.”

Dustfinger nodded to himself. So that’s what it was. She came from a heavy religious background, something puritanical and repressive. And probably abusive. “Well,” he said after a moment, “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

Dustfinger retreated to his room. He pulled off his leather pants, replacing them with an old, worn pair of grey sweats. He slid into bed, Gwin curling himself around Dustfinger’s shoulders. Dustfinger lay in the dark, listening to the girl get ready for bed. He could hear it as her jeans were unzipped, her shirt dropped on the floor, the new clothes donned. He heard her fumble for a moment with the table - but only a moment. She easily slid it into place and got into bed. Dustfinger was mildly impressed. He could barely do it himself. But then, following orders was most likely a part of her... upbringing.

Dustfinger slid into an uneasy sleep. He dreamed of fire and wolves, and a church bell ringing. He awoke to the sound of the girl crying in the next room. He felt a small swell of sympathy for her, and whatever had driven her to this carnival of outcasts. He entertained the thought of going to her, stroking her hair and telling her everything would be alright.

He stayed in bed. Dustfinger was many things, but a liar he wasn’t.