Hey there! I do Supernatural fiction (oneshots, imagines, the occasional drabble, whatever strikes inspiration). Welcome!
Requests are OPEN.
Not sure if I write your thing? Just ask! I might surprise you.
#AlwaysKeepFighting
“Not sure how you feel about PTSD, but could you maybe write a Sam x Reader oneshot where the reader suffers from PTSD and is having nightmares of an abusive home, and one night Sam hears her screaming bloody murder while he’s up late researching in the library and he finds her digging her nails into her palms and tossing and turning around while crying in her sleep, and he wakes her up and talks her through her nightmare and then in the morning takes her to get meds to help control the PTSD?
Title: The Brave One
Pairing: Sam x Reader
Word Count: 3,255
Trigger Warning: As the request suggests, this fic deals with domestic violence and its mental effects.
Author’s Note: I really tried hard on this one, not just because it’s my first request, but because it felt slightly personal. I suffer bouts of PTSD and I’ve always thought Supernatural portrayed it really accurately, whether they were trying to or not. Hopefully I have treated this subject with the respect it deserves. I could have kept writing but … it’s past my bedtime and I wanted to get this to you today. #AlwaysKeepFighting
That feeling you get when you cast your characters with real actors in your mind and create the perfect dream cast…but then you take too long to write your story and the actor ages…
and your poor mind has to come to grips with that sad fantasy that if ever your story was adapted, you can’t have the actor you wanted.
I don’t know if anyone out there is still paying any attention to me anymore, but I’m gonna try to start churning some more stuff out.
So send me some scene ideas! Or I’ll make some stuff up ... either way.
Mostly ... give my stuff a share if you enjoy it, yeah? This is practice for me. I need all the feedback I can get!
Check out my Masterlist!
Thanks. :D
Author’s Note: Am I the only one who sees the scenes in their head first and just tries to write it down? That last one reminded me that I forget to go back, take out the blocking, and add the subtext. Maybe it’s the theater kid in me.
So … here’s a little more sub with your text.
Read Chapter I and Chapter II
There was no way in hell Dean was sleeping with Baby. Nope. No way. That was entirely too weird. He’d seen that show about taboo stuff where the dude fell in love with his hotrod, and he was not going to be that guy. He felt a little guilty for even thinking about it.
A little.
Rowena was right about one thing, though. Baby had power. It had been implied every which way from Sunday, and anyway, she wouldn’t be walking around on two legs <i>looking</i> like that if there wasn’t some serious mojo going on there. He went back through what Rowena said on his way back to the motel. Apparently, Sam and Baby had opted to walk.
She’s as powerful as they come, if she wants to be. But it was up to him? How in the hell did that make any kind of sense?
Then he remembered that Castiel had flipped out on her the first night they brought her home. If he knew what she was, maybe he knew where to find the on-switch that sparked her power up. Whatever her power was.
It was starting to feel futile and his head was starting to hurt. Whether it was from the whiskey or yelling at Baby, he didn’t know.
When he got to the room, it looked like Sam had just been sitting there, waiting to pounce and scold.
“I know,” Dean said before he could start. “I was a dick.”
Sam wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that. He was clearly expecting the angry, stubborn version of his brother to walk through the door. “Uh, yeah. You were. And-”
“I’ve gotta stop treating her like a child,” Dean cut him off. “I get it.”
“Look, I know you’re worried about something happening to her. I’m worried too, but at some point, we’re gonna have to take off the training wheels.” Sam watched his brother pull off his jacket, but he was really watching him grapple with bigger things that had sufficiently worn him out.
“And she’s right,” he said. “She’s been here protecting us this whole time, but she was usually stuck outside when the really bad stuff went down.”
That last bit slowed Dean down on his way to the mini-fridge and once he processed it, it stopped him altogether. He’d never considered that and he should have. Damnit.
“You know she worries about us as much as we worry about her, right? As much as we worry about each other. B had to sit there, every time we got out of the car, and just … hope that we came back.” Sam bounced his brows at his brother, urging him to really think about that.
It hadn’t gone unnoticed by Dean that Baby thought a little too much like he did. He figured that was appropriate, given what she was, and with that in mind he knew Sam was right.
“She’s tired of being on the bench, Dean.”
The weight of Baby’s struggle dropped low in his stomach. He, of all people, should have known better. Idling on the curb while his family got bloody would have driven him batshit crazy.
“ … Son of a bitch.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, but what he really said was, “Now you’re getting it.”
–
Baby combed through the latest news updates looking for anything that sounded remotely hellhound’ish. So far, things had remained quiet for the evening. Maybe the hounds were full … which meant she had to find something else to keep her from brooding about the way Dean had been acting.
Gabriel had given her a body, but no compass to help her figure out what she was supposed to be doing. She only knew that she had a purpose, she had something to contribute, more than just being a proverbial tank.
Things had gone so well when she first “woke up,” for lack of a better term. The boys put the world back on its axis, Mary was back, she was there … even Castiel couldn’t help but surrender to it, and to the fact that Baby was clearly family.
They started to train her in whatever she didn’t know and she got a tattoo that she was fairly certain half the Midwest would mistake for a pentagram, and her a devil worshiper. The boys started with small hunts for her to cut her teeth on, made sure she knew how to handle herself, before they got back to scouring media the way they always did.
When Lucifer came back, everything changed. The car was locked away in a shipping container that had every kind of ward you could think of on it, and if over-protective had a gear Sam and Dean kicked it up to fifth.
Baby was unaccustomed to being the one who needed protection and she decided immediately that she didn’t like it one bit, but hard as she tried, she couldn’t prove them wrong.
She wanted to tell Dean who he was, to her anyway, but she’d never been able to form cohesive sentences that explained it. There weren’t really words for it, and Baby didn’t think she should tell him that if he died, she would die, or that she was only as limited as he wanted her to be. As far as her existence was concerned, he might as well be the sun.
She surfed through all of the television stations before she gave up and scrolled down to the channels that doubled as radio stations. She chose one that claimed you could “get the blues all day long” to find BB King wailing on Lucille to the tune of “The Thrill is Gone.”
It made her nostalgic. God, she missed proper radio stations.
When the knock came, she knew who it was before she opened the door.
He always apologized.
Baby pulled the door open to reveal a sheepish looking Dean with his hands tucked into his pockets and his shoulders curled, that quickly turned into a normal looking Dean with weirdly perfect, military posture.
She waited, and he finally said, “Can I come in?”
–
The second Dean left the room, Sam lifted his phone back to his ear. “Cas, are you still there?”
“Yes,” came the grumbled reply. “Sam, if these really are Matilda’s hounds and she’s with them? Dean and Baby may very well be the only way to stop them.”
Sam was staring at an artistic representation of Matilda and the Cwn Annwn on his laptop and a knowing worry began to creep up that back of his neck. “Why?”
“Because,” Castiel sighed. “The hounds are to Matilda what B is to Dean. Hounds represented her lineage. She was one of the greatest hunters who ever lived, and it sounds to me like they’ve been released for a reason.”
Sam slowly lifted to his feet and he had a feeling he wouldn’t like the answer when he asked, “What do you mean?”
He heard a scuffle on the other end of the phone and he thought he heard Cas and his mother arguing in reigned in tones before he heard her say, “Give me that.”
“To smoke her out, Sam.” Mary said. “Apparently, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that the Impala hasn’t been on the road in a while.”
“Wait, what?”
“Word’s out that we killed the original vampire, and since almost everyone thinks the colt is gone-”
“They think it has something to do with B,” Sam picked up.
“Sam …” Mary’s voice dropped. “Are we sure it doesn’t?”
He didn’t have much experience with having a mother, but Sam assumed it was normal when that annoyed irritation shot through him, because he was pretty sure it was a feeling only a mother could produce. “Mom-”
“I know what she is,” Mary cut him off.
Castiel said her name with a warning in the background.
Sam didn’t know what to say.
“You and Dean head back to the bunker,” Mary said before she hung up. “I think it’s time for a family meeting.”
–
Baby sighed the way most girls do at insufferable men and stepped back out of Dean’s way. She really was … so human. It was hard now to imagine that she’d ever been made of metal, hard to remember what it felt like when she was … well, a car. He remembered the sense that he was where he belonged and that, however twisted his world got, he could straighten it out as long as he had the Impala. Only he didn’t see his badass car come to life anymore, because now she was made of tender flesh and breakable bones.
When he turned to look at Baby again, he flipped it all in reverse. He tried to see the years in her, the experiences she must have had, the highs and lows that the Winchesters put her through. He tried … and he failed. She just looked so innocent. So young.
“Seventy-seven,” he said.
She wasn’t expecting that one. “What?”
“I’m 77 years old,” Dean said. “What felt like four months to you when I was gone was forty years for me, so, technically I’m an old man.”
He could see her adding things up in her frown. Gone. <i>Hell.</i> When it clicked, her eyes rounded at him and he felt a little bad for bringing it up.
Dean had the ability to smile without smiling. You could see the muscles twitch with the effort but it was almost like the smile was too heavy.
But the intention was there.
“Now, correct me if I’m wrong,” he said. “But that gives me almost thirty years on you.”
He wondered if this would cause her to see him the way he saw her, like the cover was pretty but the pages were filled with scary things and uncharted territory. “I know I act like some horny, high school dropout half the time, and I know what I look like, but … I don’t feel like what I look like.”
For the first time, maybe ever, she seemed to have no idea what to say to him. “Dean, why are you telling me this?”
“Because.” He took a second to gather his thoughts. “Sam reminded me just now that you’ve been you for a lot longer than you’ve been human … and it hit me that I’ve been doing to you what everyone else did to me ten years ago.”
Dean stepped back and motioned with his hand, up and down her body. “I look at you and I see some young, twenty-something bombshell that for all intents and purposes should be privy to Victoria’s secrets, not a girl that should be elbow-deep in death and violence with me and Sam.”
“But that is where I should be,” Baby said. “It’s where I want to be.”
Dean forced a smile that still didn’t quite make it to his eyes. “I know.”
“So … you’re gonna let me come with you to talk to Crowley?”
Dean stayed quiet for longer than what he knew Baby thought was appropriate. He couldn’t get past the thought that he’d done some damage here and he should have known better. These were words he needed to get right, and for a man that barked more than he talked, it took a little more time.
“Baby, you’re your own woman,” he said. “You don’t need my permission. You don’t need anyone’s permission. Ever. You make your own rules. If anyone tells you otherwise, you point them my way and we’ll have words.”
Silently he cussed at himself when he realized that was a concept she’d never tried to wrap her mind around. You stupid son of a bitch. That was the kind of thing a woman should know. It was the kind of thing that kept pricks like him from taking advantage. Because they would.
Somewhere in the flurry of trying to protect her … he’d steered her wrong.
“What if it’s you that tells me that?”
Damn, she was quick. She played chess while he played checkers.
“I can’t promise you I won’t try to stop you from doing something I think is stupid. But what I think doesn’t matter. If you think you’re right?” Dean shrugged. He already knew she was smarter than he was. “Go with your gut, because you probably are.”
Baby’s features warmed from confusion to gratitude. That was the look he’d been aiming for and it relieved him a little when he got it, selfish as it was, because it meant he was out of the doghouse.
“Besides,” he said. “I hear you’re some cosmic badass so, who am I to get in your way?”
Her tone almost sounded sorry for him when she said, “You’re the reason I am who I am. You’re the only person that could get in my way.”
That part, he definitely knew. That responsibility had been waking him up at night. “Well, I’m stepping off the asphalt. Highway’s yours.”
One of those silent conversations passed between them again, an unspoken understanding of what and how they’d decided things were going to be.
Afterwards, a small but subtly victorious smile lifted Baby’s features. “You can ride shotgun.”
Dean grinned the cheshire-cat grin of a man that knew he was still full of surprises. “Sweetheart, if you think I’m gonna shut my cakehole? Believe me. That dog won’t hunt.”
He’d intended to shut the door behind him, but he turned right into Sam’s wide, worried eyes. “We’ve gotta go.”
–
Somewhere in hell, Crowley was slouched down in a miserably uncomfortable throne wondering why he hadn’t changed it out with something softer, and staring off into nowhere tonguing the self-loathing that kept him going.
He’d forgotten Lucifer was there until he heard the mutt’s chains rattle when he shifted positions. “I hear you finally found out about the car,” he said.
Crowley tried to fight the curiosity that begged him to look up at the devil. It irritated him that Lucifer had caught his attention. But what if he knew something? He finally lifted his gaze with a slant that said, ‘This had better be good.’
Lucifer smiled like he was happy to see him and they’d just sat down to afternoon tea. “I hear they haven’t seen her on the road in a while.”
“What’s it to you?”
“Given I’ve been fighting against her for the souls of mankind for millennia?” The devil shrugged like it wasn’t that big of a deal. “Call it nostalgia.”
“Come again?”
“You think the Winchesters are the first real heroes I’ve seen rise and fall over the ages? They all come with one of her. Matilda had her hounds, Arthur had Excalibur, the Winchesters have a 1967 Chevrolet Impala,” he chuckled. “Times they are a’changing.”
“Oh yeah? Then, tell me, who was the last great hero you saw fall?”
“Adolf Hitler.”
Crowley rolled his eyes, “You realize he has a special place here …”
“What? You didn’t know Hitler was a hunter before he was a dictator? Funny how they always leave that part out.”
Something in Crowley bristled briefly, then, very calmly, he lifted to his feet and idled over to where Lucifer was sitting on the floor, moving in close so that when he hiked up the knees of his slacks and squatted down, he was leaning over the angel who’d fallen the furthest. Crowley’s fingers twitched up in the direction of Lucifer’s throat and the devil grunted. “You’re trying my patience, mutt,” he said while Lucifer’s face turned red. “Get to the point.”
When he pushed to his feet, Lucifer gasped and started sucking down air, released from the king’s Vador grip. “Fine!” Lucifer coughed. “Jeez, talk about work-related stress.” He rubbed at his neck and spoke like the information had been pried out of him against his will. Crowley knew it wasn’t.
“Before the swastika was a Nazi thing, it was like her, it was a totem. The only thing left of the line because the surnames had changed over the years. Adolf didn’t know that, the poor schmuck was an artist, so he just thought it was something he’d always been inspired by. He had no idea who he was. What IT was. After the war, he was just a decorated soldier turned drifter who’d learned a thing or two and hunted monsters.”
“I’ve heard the poor-me artist to Sieg Heil, thanks,” Crowley said. “This had better be going somewhere.”
“The Thule Society. You’ve heard of them …”
“Of course,” Crowley said.
“Well, they worked with a guy named Dietrich Eckart back in the day, and he knew exactly who Adolf was. All it took was a little mentoring … a little push in the right direction. Turn him away from the truth of what he could be, use his despair over the plight of his people to convince him all the evils, supernatural or otherwise, come from one enemy.” Lucifer shrugged with his chin as if it were simple. “Hero that he was, Adolf jumps in with both feet and designs the banner for the National Socialist German Worker’s Party using his own personal sigil. People start waving that thing in the streets and the more they wave it, the more Hitler talks, and the more Hitler talks, the further the swastika goes and, before you know it?” Lucifer clapped his hands like his favorite team just scored a touchdown. “Global domination, baby!”
“Let me guess,” Crowley said. “You were Eckart?”
“Oh no, that was all Azazel,” Lucifer said as if he’d never take someone else’s credit. “Say what you will, but that guy knows how to pick ‘em.”
Crowley stared through a barred window, turning these new insights over in his head. “So you let out the one beastie you thought had a chance of catching her, is that it? You think she’s the key to regaining your kingdom?” Crowley turned back on him, looking at Lucifer like he was so … predictable. “It won’t work. You must have learned by now that the one, surefire way to reap the wrath of the Winchesters is to go after one of their women. Those boys will scorch and salt the earth planet-wide before they let anyone get their hands on that girl.”
Lucifer smiled the smile of a demon that still knew he had cards up his sleeve and said, “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” Just before Crowley twitched his hand and his vertebrae cracked and his eyes were staring behind him.
I just finished this week’s episode and couldn’t help but notice how similar it was to the second chapter of the Rider story.
I mean, original hellhounds, having to call Crowley for help, and then Dean with his, “Imagine she’s a beautiful woman.”
Guys … maybe I’ve stumbled onto some weird predictive power specific to Supernatural? In which case I need to write myself into a story. Stat.
Can you imagi
“Great, some weird chick that writes fanfiction is the next profit. Do you people even remember Becky?”
Anyway, you can read the stories below. I may get a few one shots out soon, too. I’ve got some weird ass scenes stuck in my head that aren’t going away.
(I know this is a switch, but hell it’s been a year and writers find new ways at going about things so … this is all in third person. Too many personas to balance and I thought Gabriel’s part came out best in the original anyway. Sorry this took so long. I hope it was worth the wait.)
Word Count: 4401
Read Chapter I and Chapter III
THEN
To say the last year had been a pivotal one in the book of Winchester would be an understatement, but also somewhat disrespectful to everything that had come before it.
When Gabriel woke Baby up, Dean had just put an end to Death and the Darkness had been unleashed on the world. Looking back now, the brothers are almost certain, Gabriel didn’t expect any of them to survive another year. They’d spent countless hours on back highways discussing that night … the angel’s shifty movements and cryptic messages about keys and kingdoms.
It was Sam that suggested it first. “I think he thought we were all gonna die.”
“And what?” Dean glanced across the cab at him. “She was our parting gift?”
“He did always have a soft spot for you two,” Castiel said. When Dean cut his eyes at him the angel glanced back out the window. “Or so it seemed.”
“Or she was our last ditch effort,” Sam shrugged. “He said she had power.”
Dean’s eyes had flickered to Baby in the rear view mirror, oblivious to their conversation. He’d bought her an iPod and a set of headphones and the girl could disappear for hours into her music. She was staring out her own window, hair half-pulled back in a clip, looking perfectly normal.
And that was just the problem.
For all intents and purposes, aside from a head full of years and memories she looked too young for and a bloodhound’s nose for danger, Baby was a normal, human woman. If she got hit, she fell down. If she got cut, she bled. She’d never thrown any furniture across the room with her mind or scared a demon out of its stolen skin. Sometimes she knew things, like knowledge had simply been instilled in her upon creation, but it wasn’t anything to write home about.
The year rolled on. The Darkness became Amara who became God’s sister who turned out to be Chuck. Dean still couldn’t make himself call him God. It was both too big for the strange little man and too intimate at the same time.
Chuck had taken one look at Baby and said, “Oh! You’re here,” with a quirky grin. “I’ve been waiting for this part.”
Then the siblings of creation and destruction had disappeared leaving behind another Winchester in their wake and new questions to ask and, more importantly, a new normal to find.
NOW
Chicago, Illinois
It was after hours at the Field Museum and Bill Cunningham was making his first rounds of the night. He always swept the building of trash first before he went back the other direction with the cart loaded full of cleaning supplies to give the place a thorough scrub.
The janitor didn’t notice as he rolled his cart down the hallway, long oblivious to the obnoxious squeak of one of the wheels, that something moved inside one of the exhibits. He didn’t notice the strange smell that wafted in the air, a bi-product of too many chemicals stinging at his nose for years while he cleaned.
It was only when he walked past the exhibit of two lions prowling dangerously over a rock that he thought he saw something twitch. One of their tails, maybe. Bill turned and stared at the lions, but their dead coats lay dusty and still. He chuckled at his own foolishness and even waved the big cats away as he turned back to his cart.
Then a low, menacing growl stalled him in his tracks. The sound rolled over itself like a giant rattle in a deep, tumbling box. Bill Cunningham turned back to find one of the lions had stepped forward … right up to the fucking glass.
The lion met the janitor’s eyes and when he looked back, he saw a depth of evil that turned his blood to ice water in his veins. A fear like he’d never known swallowed him almost completely, numbing every nerve in his body so that only his eyes were wide in stark, ghastly terror. The lion’s lips drew back and it let loose an unearthly roar just before his brother leapt over his back and straight through the glass, cutting short Bill Cunningham’s screams with his massive jaws.
Blood splattered across the sign that hung to the right of the exhibit, engraved with four words in brass: The Tsavo Man-Eaters
Sam was frowning at the story of the janitor’s mysterious death in Chicago when he saw Baby appear in the kitchen doorway over the top of the laptop screen. She was wearing one of his t-shirts, which swallowed her like a baggy dress and the neck was so wide it hung off her shoulder. She’d stolen several of them to sleep in. The girl yawned and shuffled in her slippers towards the coffee pot.
Sam chuckled, wondering if she’d even noticed he was there. “Morning, B.”
“Morning Sammy,” she said groggily.
Dean was the only one who called her Baby anymore. Sam had been right, of course. A girl that looked like her in a public place with three grown men calling her “Baby” came off a little weird. The looks irritated Dean and made him want to punch people. Sam found them embarrassing. Cas was oblivious to the whole thing. So, they’d taken to calling her “B.”
Sam clicked to the next article, looking for something a little more concrete. Dean plodded into the kitchen and went straight for the coffee pot, too. He didn’t think twice anymore when Dean kissed the side of B’s head and they mumbled mornings to each other while they made their coffee. It was just understood that the bond Dean and Baby had was something sacred.
If Sam had been a betting man, he’d have been certain his brother would have tried to get her into bed by now. He was much more affectionate towards her than he’d ever seen Dean be towards anyone, but there was nothing selfish about the way he touched her either. He wasn’t looking for anything. He’d never tried to kiss her or even cop a feel that Sam had noticed, though he did stare at her sometimes. But then again, it wasn’t that normal covetous stare he turned on other women.
In the end, Sam had decided it was very simple. They loved each other. There was nothing complicated about it. He loved her, too. Even Castiel had come to see her as one of their own. Their mother was still a little weirded out by her, but Mary hadn’t been around much so it hadn’t been much of an issue.
When Dean and B made it to the table, Sam turned his laptop around. “Think I’ve got a case.”
Dean grunted.
She reached out to drag the laptop closer so she could read.
“You remember that movie, Ghost in the Darkness? About the lions that killed all those men?”
“Yeah yeah yeah,” Dean motioned with his coffee cup. “Kirk Douglas played Remington.” He looked at Baby and did his best Douglas impression. “Everyone has a plan until they’ve been hit.”
She smirked.
Sam chuckled and kept going, “Right, well, it was actually based on a true story. Two lions really did kill all these people when the British government was trying to build a bridge through Tsavo. They eventually killed the lions and had them stuffed and they’ve been on display at-”
“The Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois,” B read from the laptop, finishing his sentence.
Dean was actually reading now. “Wow. They found the guy torn to pieces.”
“Hinky,” she muttered.
Sam lifted a finger. “Gets hinkier. The lions? The actual lions from the display?” He lifted his chin a bit for effect. “No one can find them.”
He watched Dean and Baby exchange a look and then his brother shrugged. “Okay. So let’s go lion hunting.”
—–
One twelve hour drive and three hours of sleep later, the 65 Mustang they’d taken to driving since Baby showed up pulled into the parking lot of the museum. Sam was continually surprised by the fact that Dean never lamented the absence of the Impala. The only time he ever brought the car up was to make note of how much better she handled than whatever else he was behind the wheel of.
They met a short, gray-haired man at the door, still taped off with caution tape, who introduced himself as Detective Schrader.
“I’m Agent Kristofferson,” Dean flashed his fake badge and motioned at Sam and Baby. “This is Nelson, and Joplin.”
Then, with a bright grin, “We hear you have a stray cat problem.”
The crime scene had been cleaned, and obvious construction had already been made to the metal frame in preparation of a new plate of glass for the display. The very empty display.
“So-” Sam frowned. “Let me get this straight. He was lying here, right?” He motioned at the floor and quirked his head down the corridor at the display case where Dean was bent down over one of the fake rocks and B was watching with her hands on her hips.
“What was left of him,” Detective Schrader said.
“Hm.” Sam muttered.
“What?” Schrader asked.
“Just … not really lion behavior,” Sam said. “They kill and they eat. They don’t play with their food.”
“You telling me you think this was actually done by lions?” Detective Schrader cast him a pitiful look, like he almost felt sorry for him.
Sam looked up curiously. “You don’t? The autopsy seemed pretty conclusive.”
“So did my last prostate exam,” Shrader huffed. “Still got cancer. Look, are we done here? I don’t really see what you expect to find around here, anyway. Like I said, you can read everything we found in the report.”
“Yeah,” Sam forced an irritated smile and slipped his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t fond of law enforcement that treated a person’s death like another day that ended in Y. “We’re done.”
Dean and Baby wandered over while Detective Schrader let himself out. Dean rubbed his fingers together, gave them a sniff and jumped his brows at Sam. “Sulfur.”
Sam looked confused. “Really? Demons?”
“That surprises you?” Baby asked.
“No. I mean …” Sam looked past them at the empty display. “Kind of. I was betting money on some kind of Hoodoo thing.”
“Why?” Dean asked, thumbing over his shoulder. “Cause Africa?” His brows lowered in sarcastic accusation. “That’s racist, Sam.”
Sam’s face dropped, annoyed. “No. Because it tends to be used to bring things back to life, Dean.”
“Uh huh.” Dean smirked. “Racial profiling then.”
“Whatever.” Sam rolled his eyes up then back to B. “Any of those spidey senses tingling?”
Baby frowned, her heels clicking against the floor as she circled around to the other side of Sam, staring at the spot where Bill Cunningham’s body had been found. “Not really,” she said. “But I think you’re right. This isn’t a normal demon thing.”
“Well.” Crowley’s voice lifted up behind them from out of nowhere. “You’re not wrong.”
Sam and Dean pivoted on their respective heels in an instant, the youngest Winchester tugging Baby behind him.
“Relax,” Crowley rolled his eyes. “I haven’t tried to kill you for months now.”
The brothers exchanged a look. Did he know about Baby? Had he seen her?
“Then what do you want?” Dean quipped.
The lapels of Crowley’s peacoat flashed outwards with a shrug of his hands from inside his pockets. “To be of humble service.”
“Right,” Dean said. “Cause you’re always so helpful.”
“Helped with Lucifer, didn’t I?”
“Yeah?” Dean chuffed. “Where were you when they tossed us in a hole and threw away the key?”
“Like I told Wings, I didn’t know where you were. Still working on getting a demon into the oval office,” Crowley sneered. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“Fine,” Sam said. “Then why are you here?”
“To let you know you’re in way over your heads on this one,” Crowley said. “The Cwn Annwn? They’re Lucifer’s personal lapdogs.”
Dean arched an impatient brow. “The coonan-what?”
“Kun,” Crowley emphasized the phonetics. “An-wynn. It’s Welsh.”
“Okay fine, whatever,” Dean said. “Explain the coon hounds.”
Crowley rolled his eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know why I even bother.”
Dean growled Crowley’s name, signalling his loss of patience.
The demon king sighed like a long suffering, and very bored girlfriend. “Fine. The Cwn Annwn aren’t lions. They’re the original hounds of hell. The first breeding pair. The two that came for you?” Crowley quirked his brow at Dean. “Those were puppies in comparison.”
Real fear flashed across the eldest Winchester’s face in a single split second, but Crowley caught it and smiled. “These two were made specifically for hunters.”
When the boys exchanged another look that managed to hold an entire conversation, Crowley spotted a slender hand slip out from behind Moose’s hulking figure and catch the side of Dean’s jacket. He watched Dean’s head snap to the side like he’d suddenly remembered she was hiding there and shake his head at whoever was back there. He watched him grab the delicate hand curled around the army-green corduroy and push it back down in an attempt to conceal it.
It didn’t work.
“Well well,” Crowley mused, rounding out a step to try to get a look behind Moose. “Who’s this?”
Sam flexed his jaw at Crowley and side-stepped to obstruct his view. It only served to deepen the demon’s curiosity. Sam shut his eyes against the inward scolding he gave himself for his mistake and cursed under his breath.
It was futile anyway.
They couldn’t hide her from him forever.
Baby peeked out around Sam’s arm from between the two boys and Crowley’s eyes went wide … could he really be seeing what he thought he was seeing? The beautiful brunette stepped into full view, Sam stepping aside with a relenting sigh.
The Winchesters watched Crowley like hawks while his face went slack and his jaw dropped open. “Oh … my,” he shook his head in, what looked to Dean, like a certain flavor of awe. “I haven’t seen you in a very long time.”
“Wait-” Dean started, and Sam joined him when he said, “What?”
“You know her?”
Baby was staring at Crowley the way a little girl might stare at a massive gorilla at the zoo … with that look when it dawns on a kid that what they’re seeing is just a little too scary and yet, a little too much like them to be okay with it.
Crowley’s voice was almost reverent. “Of course I know her,” his eyes ticked up to meet Dean’s. “Do you?”
Dean’s eyes narrowed at Crowley like he was assessing which punch to throw to break the man’s nose. Then, after a few seconds, his entire body abruptly kicked into gear. “Alright, Sammy, let’s go.”
The boys split to move past him, Dean yanking Baby tightly into his side, trying to unsee the wonder in Crowley’s face when he watched her go by. He could practically feel the demon thinking about how he could use her.
“… Don’t you want to know about the lions?”
Dean dropped Baby’s hand in time to pivot back and charge like he meant to beat the ever loving shit out of the King of Hell, but somehow managed to reign himself in before he got within swinging distance. “Crowley, you have thirty seconds!”
The demon managed to pull his eyes away from Baby, a little too slowly for Dean’s liking and smirked. “Matilda of the Night,” he said. “She controls them. It’s her punishment.”
Worry clouded Sam’s features. “… Punishment for what?”
“Well,” Crowley shrugged. “The woman once said if there was no hunting in heaven she’d rather not go. That might have had something to do with it.”
“So she’s a hunter,” Sam said.
“One of the oldest,” Crowley said. “She was a viking once upon a time, and very nearly brought down Lucifer himself. He created the hellhounds to return the favor and when he finally caught her, he granted her wish. She would hunt with her hounds for all eternity … hunt people like you.”
The more he spoke, the colder the room seemed to get. It was Sam’s turn to reach for Baby and pull her back, swallowing a tight dread that had formed in the back of his throat. He wasn’t necessarily worried about himself or his brother, but she was still learning how to fight.
“They say she cries out in misery when she has to kill them,” Crowley added with a hint of whimsy. The demon king cast one last, lingering look at Baby. “I have a feeling I’ll be seeing you again, sweetheart.”
Then his form blinked out in a split-second you could never see with human eyes and he was gone.
Sam, Dean and Baby trotted quickly down the stairs of the museum and made for their car.
“Do you think he was telling the truth?” Sam looked across the hood at his brother who was opening the back door for B.
“About Matilda?” He slammed the back door and jerked open his. “Unfortunately, yes.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he turned the engine to life. “I think I actually read about her in dad’s journal a while back. He called her the traitor.”
“From the sound of things, it wasn’t her fault what she turned into,” Baby said, slouching down in the back seat.
Dean caught her eyes in the rearview before he turned back onto the feeder road. “Maybe not. Doesn’t matter. If those things are Lucifer’s pups and she’s got the leash …”
“Yeah, but how do we find her?” Sam asked.
“Far as Luci’s concerned we’re the big bads,” Dean shifted gears a little harder than he needed to. “I’m betting she finds us.”
They didn’t stay in Chicago. “It was too damn crowded,” Dean said. And anyway, it was best to keep to back roads and small towns, especially now that half the government had it in for the boys. Instead, they shot down I-57 to a town called Champaign and stopped at a rundown Super 8 for 41 bucks a night.
An hour later, Sam was propped up on one of the beds with his legs stretched out and his laptop in his lap while Dean sparred with Baby in the space that the small kitchenette jutted out to provide. He glanced up just in time to see B duck a swing but miss Dean’s opposite fist when it came in at her ribs. His older brother had an uncanny ability to bring a punch mostly to a stop before it hit her too hard.
“Keep your fists up,” Sam offered. “Block him with your forearm.”
The girl lifted her fists, concentrating, determined to get better. Dean darted down to pat the back of her leg, “Weight on the ball of your foot,” before he came back up to throw the same combination without warning.
This time, Baby blocked the sucker punch.
“There ya go,” Dean nodded, bobbing out of the way of her next swing before smacking her upside the head. Not hard, but it got her attention. “Fists up.”
“Hey,” Sam said, sitting up. “Hey, I think I got something.”
“What?” Dean said, crossing the room to look over his brother’s shoulder.
“They moved quick,” Sam said. “An entire campsite just got wiped out next state over. I bet it’s on the news.”
Baby snatched the remote up off the end of the bed and flipped through the channels until she found a 24-hour news channel. They caught the tail end of a story about the President getting out of the hospital and exchanged nervous looks at the reminder.
Oh yeah. There was still that to deal with.
A few seconds later, the screen jumped to flashing lights in the darkness and a view of police walking through picnic tables in the background. One bent down and looked inside a body bag.
“Park Rangers have verified this was some kind of animal attack, but there’s still no official word on what kind of animal it may have been. What we do know now is there are multiple dead and, as of yet, there are no survivors. From Ft. Wayne, Indiana, I’m Sarah Smith.”
“Shit,” Dean turned from the TV and pushed a hand back through his hair.
“We need help,” Baby said. “Where’s Cas?”
“With mom on a werewolf hunt in Mississippi,” Dean huffed.
“We could use them both,” Sam said.
“No,” Dean said. “She needs to work some stuff out. Let her do it.”
Most people, even Sam, had assumed Dean took after John. He didn’t. He was much more like Mary on an emotional level.
“You realize that leaves Rowena and Crowley,” Sam said.
“Uh uh,” Dean shook his head sharply. “Nope. He’s not getting within a ten miles of Baby again.”
“Dean-”
Dean motioned at Baby, looking half pissed and half horrified. “He was looking at her like she was food. No, Sam!”
“Does Baby get a vote?”
The boys both looked at her, Sam with an open mind, Dean immediately irritated.
“Yes,” Sam said, at the same time Dean barked, “No!”
She lifted her hands to her hips and looked pointedly at Dean. “Call Rowena.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Not Crowley …”
“For now,” she said. The man had entirely creeped her out but she wasn’t about to tell either one of them that. “If she thinks we need him, then we need him.”
Dean stared at her for a beat, forced himself to take a deep breath, and admitted defeat. “Okay,” he rolled his eyes, fishing his phone out of his pocket. “But I’m not calling Crowley. You can bat your lashes at me all you want. No.”
“We need Fergus,” Rowena said, leaning back in her bar stool and casting a disgusted look over at a table full of rednecks laughing about their exploits. “Honestly, this was the best place you could find to rendezvous?”
“Yeah. Cause, whiskey,” Dean said, immediately downing the rest of his glass.
“Why,” Sam interrupted, “do we need Crowley?”
“Because,” Rowena’s brows lifted at him as if it were simple. “He’s the King of Hell. He’s the only one aside from Lucifer who can see to it that the hounds are locked back in their kennels. I can’t imagine how Lucifer woke them up in the first place, truth be told, given his state. It’s quite difficult to conjure that level of magic without a proper vessel.”
Dean pointed a finger at Baby the second her mouth opened. “No.”
“Dean, you’re being ridiculous,” she said.
“She’s right,” Sam shook his head at his brother. “We’ve gotta send these things back to hell and if there’s only one way to do it …”
Rowena sat back watching in utter amusement, with a smile that said she knew something they didn’t. Neither of them noticed. But Baby did.
“Fine,” Dean shrugged and sat back, locking his eyes on B’s. “Then you’re not coming.”
Her amber eyes flashed at him. Sam didn’t think he’d ever seen her look at Dean like that … let alone yell at him. “Like hell I’m not!”
“The stitches just came out of that shot to your shoulder last week!” He snapped back at her.
“Ya know what, Dean?” The legs of her chair scraped against the wooden floor, scooting away when she lept to her feet. “Maybe it’s time you remember that I’m the one who’s protected you for the last 39 years. Not the other way around.”
Baby turned on her heel and headed for the door, finally putting Dean on his feet. “I’m 38!”
The girl whipped back with clinched fists at her sides, “Fine! 38 years and nine months!”
The door slammed behind her, leaving several patrons staring at the Winchesters’ table curiously and looking at Dean sympathetically because they assumed he’d just had a fight with his girlfriend. Sam was staring at his big brother wondering if he had.
“Oh, I like her.” Rowena’s Scottish brogue crooned, eyes floating up at Dean. “She certainly knows how to put you in your place, doesn’t she.”
Sam shook his head, completely disappointed, and pushed to his feet. “That was great, Dean. Real classy.”
The guilt of yelling at Baby finally seemed to make its way through Dean’s features after Sam turned away, watching his brother head for the door to go calm her down. It occurred to him that if he were the one headed out there, he’d have no idea how to calm her down because he’d never seen her that angry. And that was his fault.
“Shit,” Dean muttered and dropped his ass back into his chair, reaching for Sam’s leftover whiskey.
Rowena was watching him with her chin propped atop her fingers. “Do you even know what the poor lass is?”
Dean shot a look at Rowena, warning her he wasn’t in the mood for games.
The woman simply stared at him. Like he was an idiot. “She’s the burning bush, Dean. The dove with the olive branch. She’s the very breath of God, himself.”
The glass was halfway to his lips but it stopped on route. “She’s … what does that even mean?” In the back of his mind he was scolding himself for humoring her, but .. she sounded like she knew what she was talking about.
“It means, dearie, that she’s as powerful as they come,” Rowena smiled that sweet, yet twisted little smile she had, put her palm against the table and pushed to her feet. “If she wants to be. That really all depends on you.”
Dean’s brows twitched trying to put that together and when he couldn’t, he looked back up at her. “So … what am I supposed to do?”
“That’s between you and her.” Rowena tipped her eyes up as if an answer had suddenly come to her from the ether before dropping them back to Dean with a wave of her hand. “Try sex. It worked for the pagans.”
Dean’s eyes widened and his face dropped blank, staring at her while his brain tried to catch up. It made Rowena toss her head back with her laugh. “Dean Winchester, proper scared … Now that was worth stepping out for.” The overly sensual witch turned and sauntered out the door, leaving Dean thinking about things he shouldn’t be.
I woke up this morning to find I had hit 300! 300 little beautiful pieces of sunshine, 300 sugar plum fairies, 300 precious unicorn farts. You guys mean the world :)
Aaaand… I couldn’t decide whether to do love letters or a takeover- so I picked both!
From now until Friday night send me all your requests for personalised love letters. I need to know a little bit about yourself, and who you want a letter from. And let the love flow <3
And then Friday night will kick off my sleepover! Team Free Will (Sam, Dean & Cas) are coming to crash at mine and run this little blog. So send in your questions! (If you send their questions in before Friday night, I’ll just hold on to them to answer once they arrive)
Description: Picking up where “Into The Mystic” (11.11) left off.
Words: 1566
Author’s Notes: I got the inspiration for this from quotes from the episode combined with an idea I’d had for a story a few weeks back. This is the results of that combination.
(gif credit: @hellsbells91)
Dean sat on the edge of his bed trying to organize his thoughts. He hadn’t stopped thinking about his conversation with Cas from the day before. That coupled with being targeted by the banshee, and what Mildred had said to him, everything just felt so jumbled.
“If there is one thing I’ve learned in all my years on the road, it’s when somebody’s pining for somebody else. …Follow your heart, remember?”
“Banshees only go after the vulnerable. So why did it go after you?” Sam’s words from earlier rang in his head.
“Ah hell.”
Standing up he grabbed his keys off the desk, a pair of socks from the dresser drawer, and his boots and jacket from the closet. Moving quietly through the dim halls, he made his way to the garage. Once the door was closed, he stopped to slip into his socks and boots. He hadn’t put them on before cause Sam was finally sleeping well and he didn’t want to chance waking him.
Description: Charlie decides to throw Dean a surprise birthday party, also using it as an opportunity to mess with him.
Words: 1,115
Author’s Notes: This is my first attempt at writing fic, so forgive me if it’s not that great.
(Ring)
(Ring)
(Ring)
(Riiiiing)
(Riiiiing)
“What’s up? I missed ya, but get over it cause you can still leave me a message. Peace, bitches.” (beep)
“Charlie, where are you?” there was a sense of urgency in Sam’s voice. “He’s gonna be back soon. And for the record, I still think this is a bad idea. Someone could get hurt.”
———-
It was a nice day out, for January at least. There was no wind, clear skies, and it felt like it was in the mid to low 60s. He’d driven the ten mile round-trip with the windows down and had even debated just cruising around for a while. But Sam was waiting on his beer and Dean didn’t want to listen to his whining when he got back to the bunker.
Dean grabbed the beer off the passenger side of the bench seat before stepping out of the ’67 Impala. Why Sam had asked him to go get it instead of going himself, he didn’t know, but he really didn’t mind. Dean enjoyed his one-on-one time with Baby, and he didn’t get a whole lot of that anymore.
As the door to the bunker closed behind him, Dean immediately knew something wasn’t right. All the lights were off and the only sound in the entire place was the hum of the air conditioning system and his rhythmic breathing.
“Damn it. I leave for 30 minutes…” Dean growled under his breath.
He paused to set the beer on the landing at the top of the stairs before pulling out his ivory handled Colt M1911A1, and retrieving a flashlight from his jacket pocket. (He may have never been in boy scouts, but years of hunting had taught him to always be prepared. Those boy scouts had nothing on a hunter.) Arms crossed at the wrists, one on top of the other, he brought his gun up in his right hand, as he clicked the flashlight on with his left
As he descended the steps to the main floor, his back to the wall, he used what little light his torch provided to take stock of the situation room. Nothing was broken. All the chairs were where they were supposed to be, pushed up the table in the center of the room or at their respective stations lining the outer wall.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he had two options check the library or head down the hallway leading to the rest of the underground compound.
Better check the library first. The rest of the bunker could take a while.
Moving forward quietly, he first came to the hallway. As he eased past the mouth of the corridor he glanced down it just to make sure it was clear. Slightly relieved to see that the hall appeared to be the way it had been when he left, he continued to the library.
Appearances can be deceiving. Need to stay cautious.
As he was about to take the last step up into the library all the lights came up in a bright flash, momentarily blinding him.
“SURPRISE! Happy Birthday, Dean!”
Dean whipped his gun around to face the intruder only to find Cas, Kevin and Sam standing in a corner behind one of the shorter bookcases.
“Son of a bitch! I could have shot you! What the hell were you thinking?!” He glared at the three of them.
“I told them it was a bad idea.” Of course Dean’s younger brother knew him well enough to guess at how he would react to something like this.
“Wha..” Dean lowered his gun, glanced around taking in the streamers covering the room and a “Happy Birthday” banner hanging on the back wall. Just then the bunker door slammed. Snapping out of his bewilderment at the decorations, Dean snapped around, gun raised, ready to take on whatever had come through the door. Leaning on the landing rails, Charlie grinned down at him.
“Sup?”
“Don’t sup me.” As he puts his gun and flashlight away, Dean turns so he can look at both Charlie and the three dumbasses that have now moved to stand next to the tables that occupy the center of the library. “Someone better explain to me what the hell is going on, and they better do it pretty damn fast!”
“Oh, don’t get your panties in a wad. Sam told me you’d never had a surprise birthday party, so I decided you should have one this year.” Charlie responded as she came down the stairs carrying a rather pastry box.
“I was fine with sitting on the couch, drinking beer and –“
Charlie cut him off before he could finish. “I brought pie.”
Dean narrowed his gaze at her as she moved past him to set the pink box on one of the tables. “I didn’t know you baked.”
“I don’t but there’s this amazing bakery just down the road. You know the one with the pink awning? That’s why I was late. I had to go pick this up.”
Dean knew the bakery. He loved their pies. He had never had a pie from there he didn’t like, but then again he had yet to find any type of pie he disliked. “I guess I’ll let you off this time. But the rest of you,” he turned to glare at them, “You’re not getting off so easy.”
Cas had one of his innocent puppy grins on. Kevin looked kinda jittery, like he was ready to bolt. And Sam was a scowling tower of a man, obviously not totally pleased with being pressured into letting this happening. But then it is hard to say no to Charlie.
“Welp,” Charlie piped up, cheerful as ever, “Who wants to help me get plates and utensils for the pie?”
Sam didn’t say anything but stepped forward and the two disappeared toward the kitchen. Kevin and Cas, not sure what to do, sat down to wait. Dean, not wanting to wait on Sam and Charlie to return, opened the box containing his birthday pie.
“CHARLIE?! Charlie get your ass in here RIGHT NOW!”
Seconds later Charlie bounced back into the room, holding a stack of plates and napkins. Sam close behind carrying forks and a serving spatula.
“What the fuck is that?” Dean jabbed a finger towards the now open lid box.
“It’s pi,” Charlie grinned.
“Pie, my ass! That’s a fucking cake!”
Charlie couldn’t help but snicker, “But it’s pi too.”
Dean picked up the box and shoved it in her face, “How is this pie?”
The room erupted in laughter, minus a very perturbed Dean. In the box, sat a cake in the shape of the mathematical symbol for pie.
Happy 37 Dean Winchester! Here’s to many more years of hunting.
