Chapter 1

Michele Chadwick jumped as her phone buzzed with a notification, staring down at it, she was surprised to see an email from fan fiction notifying her of a review on "Thing of Beauty."

For a second the woman glared at her phone as if offended, before a happy squeak and some rather realistic quacking from the small curly haired child seated beside her on the park bench drew her attention.

"Now is good, leave it at that" she advised herself silently.

With a rueful sigh, she tussled the child's hair and turned her green eyes back to the scene before her, the water of the duck pond reflected the deep blue of the sky above, ruffled by the light summer breeze. The ducks clustered round her feet, surrounding the bench and spilling into the water like a mass of obsessed worshippers.

Her small duck obsessed son pulled another slice of bread from the bag, tossing small bits out into the feathered quacking sea, some ducks were even jumping into the air to reach the morsels of bread doled out. Catching her eye the kid shoved the other half of the bread slice into his mouth, munching with his cheeks puffed out.

"Come on you little beastie, if you are so hungry you have to eat duck bread, let's get you home and fed. You quack enough without eating like a duck too."

Sweeping the wriggling toddler up into her arms she headed back across the grass, through the gorgeous New Zealand day, to the silver people mover that sat alone in the car park.

Small charge strapped carefully in the back, the woman drove towards home, finding her mind nudging uncomfortably back towards the fanfic review waiting for attention on her phone.

It surprised her a little, all of her die-hard reviewers had reviewed, Thing of Beauty should now be buried quietly in the fanfic archives. Forgotten.

She really couldn't work it out, but every time she thought about the story she'd written, she felt... guilty.

She knew it was stupid but she felt like she'd been responsible for hurting two human beings.

Sam and Dean Winchester were fictional characters from a series of not very popular books, two brothers who fought the forces of Evil with a capital E and lived stuffed up lives doing the best they could to save the world and each other, despite what got thrown at them.

She'd found the books at a time in her life when frankly her life had been falling to pieces, her beloved, intelligent, self-confident, now 8-year-old son, had become a broken shivering neurotic wreck.

She'd seriously thought he'd been molested at school or something.

Finally, after dragging through 'the system' filled with panic, confusion, heartbreak, self-recriminations and soul rending horror 'The experts' had informed her "Your child is high functioning autistic."

Then while she was still reeling they'd shaken her hand, told her they'd contact her with appointments as waiting lists permitted and told her to "have a nice day."

For months, the system had been silent, while she watched the person she loved most in the world (not that she would EVER admit that to her husband or other 3 kids) disappear and become someone else, someone she didn't recognise. There were no words to describe how she'd felt. Looking back on it now, she'd gone a quiet very functional kind of mad. Caring for her family with a mechanical kind of obsessive desperation while spending every other waking moment researching obsessively trying to FIX IT!

The realisation came to her one day between sobbing snotty tears and the millionth journal article on Autism that she was looking at the person she loved most in the world, the light of her life, as a problem to fix. It led to more tears and a decision to stop, stop trying to bring back what she thought she had for the first 7 years of her son's life and try and accept and live with what she did.

Sam and Dean Winchester had been part of that, a distraction and a kind of industrial strength pain killer. Somehow reading about two people going through Hell (sometimes quite literally) helped. Their sense of duty, family and humour in the face of a life that pretty much was a clusterf ck, well it was a Thing of Beauty and helped her not feel so alone. It gave her hope to put one foot in front of the other dealing with the little evils with a small e that were daily life with a loved one with an invisible disability that so few people 'got' and a system that seemed to be designed to make any sane person snap and go postal.

There were days when she was dealing with an 'expert' or teacher or principal where the fantasy of beheading with a machete and salting and burning a corpse was hard to ignore ... but it also sort of helped with the anger that bubbled just below the surface.

The problem was that like most heavy-duty pain killers she'd gotten hooked and when the supply of Carver Edlunds books had run out she'd been forced to more... disreputable sources...

Fan fiction.

The major problem with fan fiction was, like back street drug dealers, some fic writers were peddling the worst imaginable form of crap.

It, had, been, a, horrible, education!

There were all sorts of horrors out there that a nice, rather sheltered, naive middle aged Christian lab tech turned housewife and mum of 4 had never imagined.

But she'd found some writers that stuck to what was apparently referred to as cannon, wrote stories with actual plots and didn't use the two guys she'd begun to think of as 'friends' as blow-up dolls for their own amusement... so it was ok.

But then, then, Thing of Beauty had happened to her. Oh, it had started out so innocently, write one of your own. A beach trip, what could go wrong...

Somehow, she'd ended up being responsible for hurting and traumatising 'her friends' but been unable to stop writing because otherwise the images stayed in her head clawing at the inside, stopping her from sleeping and almost driving her crazy. So she'd pushed through and finished the bloody fanfic story then decided she would never ever, ever do that again.

No way, no how!

She'd read other people's work (as long as she stayed away from the yucky stuff) and she'd write to the few fanfic reviewers and authors she'd sort of got to know through the experience. But no more writing, it just messed with her head. And she really didn't need that.

...

Two hours later, four kids were fed, one toddler was down for his nap.

And one autistic bumblebee activist had delivered a half hour lecture unto her on achievement of lucid dream states based on his research morning googling and watching YouTube. Shaking her head to herself in bemusement she wondered if she should mention the Supernatural book with 'African dream root' in it to her small genius, but decided the last thing she needed was to expose her sensitive heart on his sleeve kid to anything even slightly related to Supernatural.

Monsters, blood and violence could stay the f ck away from the kid, she thought of as 'her Sam.' The real world hurt him enough, no need to traumatise him or add to his worries with make believe stuff. Despite eating the provided sustenance, the two ornamental couch cover teens appeared to had not moved from their position on the couch with their iPads, all morning probably, but for now she'd let them be, after all they'd babysat the autistic little brother, while she took out the smallest Chadwick out to run him ragged and have his daily duck fix.

So now, for a little while, there was free time. It was time for coffee, that review and to check in on her American ficwriter friend "Peaches."

Well that was weird!

Staring down at the review from "SWrocksaltandsilver" Michele frowned

"I'm sorry the stuff that happened in Montauk messed with your head. Don't take it on board too much, life happens.
SW"

For long moments Michele stared at the message. SWrocksaltandsilver was sorry that the stuff that happened in Montauk had upset her?

Umm ...?!

Last she checked, she'd written "Thing of Beauty" if anyone was responsible for the events that had 'happened' in Montauk it most definitely WAS Michele Chadwick.

That said, she guessed it was polite to reply.

What SWrocksaltandsilver had written was odd, but it was kind of nice. She'd take odd, nice, and sympathetic over the avid 'make them hurt more so I can watch them bleed' PMs she'd gotten. Right now though, she wanted to tell Peaches about it.

Opening Skype she found Peaches on her contacts list.

"Hi Peaches how's my favourite American ficwriter doing? Guess what, I got another review on Thing of Beauty."

She typed wondering if her young friend was napping, the time zone across the world thing, was confusing but Peaches habit of staying up most of the night writing, then sleeping at odd hours, putting her into a nearly New Zealand routine.

"Told you it happens from time to time" came Peaches zen reply

"So, did the hit of the good stuff change your mind, are you ready to admit defeat and start writing again?"

A smile curved Michele's lips, yes there'd been a little jolt of the pleasure that came with seeing someone had written a review, read something she'd written ... even if she had mixed feelings about the story itself. Admitting that to Peaches though, that'd be starting down the slippery slope.

"You, Peaches, you're a Good writer, you deserve to be condemned to a never ending eternity of being a ficwriter ... maybe even a grownup author one day... me ... nah there's no proof I'm any good, not unless a really good writer like you reads it and tells me it doesn't totally suck. (But not you, cos you might lie and be nice, just so you can have company in your damnation. Besides you don't have time to read my crud, I'm waiting impatiently for your next chapter update! ) Writing one little fanfic can't condemn me, I can get out, lead a normal life..."

"Awww come on you know you want to" Peaches response made her snort in amusement, she was pretty sure Peaches was right.

"The review was a bit weird..."

"Weird how?"

Copying and pasting Michele dumped a copy of the review into the Skype instant message box.

"You're right that is a bit weird"

"Not exactly creepy weird though..."

The silence stretched and Michele wondered what Peaches was up to

"There's no Bio on the account or favourited stories" Peaches informed her.

"I always forget about the Bios I never filled one in."

"I updated mine recently."

"You know I've never looked at it... I'm like a cat, prefer things I hunt and kill myself."

The laughing emoji popped up in the Skype box.

"So are you going to hunt and kill SWrocksaltamdsilver too? Add her to your captive collection of ficwriters? You know if we all stopped talking to you you'd fold and start writing again."

"And if I stopped talking to you, you might actually sleep!" A fond smile quirked Michele's lips "or maybe you'd just reach your 400k New Year's resolution word count quicker, without me annoying you so often, oh great and most dedicated ficwriter"

"Jokes on you, I'm not annoyed"

"-sigh- I'm doing it all wrong again, and I try so hard! I'm going to go send rocksalt a message."

"Don't you have enough in your collection yet?"

"Nah I've only got three, you, the cat, and the social worker... the other two are just emails every few days. You my fruity American friend, are my favourite!"

"Awww"

Closing the Skype box and leaving Peaches to get on with writing, or napping, or eating cheese from a can for all she knew, Michele wondered how to reply to SWrocksaltandsilver's review.