chaletian | [SPN] Girl, Interrupted, 1/1

Title: Girl, Interrupted, 1/1
Author:

chaletian
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Bela
Spoilers: Slight for Red Sky at Morning
Summary: Bela hasn’t always been the woman she is now.

Bela Talbot hasn’t always been a sleek and sophisticated international black market antiquities dealer (conman – or should it be conwoman?). It’s not so long ago, really (a lifetime ago), that she was Isabel Talbot, the younger daughter of an auctioneer in an English market town. During the week, she went to school, came home, did her homework, had dinner: a routine that went essentially unchanged between the ages of 5 and 17, a routine interrupted only by ballet lessons, piano lessons and occasional visits to the local library. At the weekends, she would hang out with friends, or go shopping with her mother, or visit the auction house where her father worked. She loved the auction house – loved the things it sold – sometimes cheap, sometimes valuable, sometimes glistering with gilt, sometimes plain and dull, but all with that patina of previous possession. Sometimes she imagined their history, touched them lightly with curious fingers, closed her eyes, and imagined the places they had been, the people who had held them.

* * *

Her apartment is cool and modern, and it suits her. She doesn’t daydream about the artifacts she trades, doesn’t run her fingers across them (with many of them, touching is a bad move), doesn’t imagine. She’s not that girl any more. Life came, and life changed her, showed her that unconditional love doesn’t exist, and the only person you can rely on is yourself.

She wonders if that’s what makes her different from the Winchesters – that they still believe, always, that the other will love them, no matter what they have to do. She wonders what it will take for them to find out that it isn’t true. It’s never true. The people who should love you, no matter what you have to do, turn away. They don’t understand. She thinks they don’t even try.

* * *

Isabel Talbot’s routine went essentially unchanged between the ages of 5 and 17, interrupted only by ballet lessons, piano lessons, occasional visits to the local library and, one cold November morning, when frost adorned bare, stiff branches and breath made icy clouds, the killing of her sister, whose tar-black eyes faded, leaving behind a broken body and a girl clutching a blood-slick knife.