Hunter Heart to Heart
By San Antonio Rose
"Vot vos her name?"
Dean Winchester looked up from the whiskey he wasn't drinking into the unexpectedly sympathetic face of Mamma Gkika. "Sorry?"
"De lady hyu iz tinking ov. Vot vos her name?"
He sighed heavily. "Ellen. Ellen Harvelle." He looked back at his drink. "It... wasn't what you're probably thinking, though."
"Oh? Vot vos hit, denn?"
"Well, if... hell. I almost had a thing for her daughter."
"Ho. Dot dun sound goot."
"But Ellen... she was a lot like you, actually. Good friend. Ran a bar, called the Roadhouse. She was a hunter. So was Jo." He sighed again. "Had a guy who worked for her, Ash... here, he'd have been a big-time spark."
"He vos hyu friend?"
"Yeah."
"Zo vot happened?"
"I got 'em killed." He finally tossed back his drink.
She looked at him closely and turned a very sympathetic shade of purple. "Hyu iz a hunter—dot iz chust about as goot as being a Jäger, zo dot meks hyu und der Sam my boyz chust like de odders. Zo. Tok to Mamma."
He swallowed hard and wasn't sure he quite kept his lower lip from trembling.
She frowned a little in concern, but then her face cleared and she turned pink. "Dis Ellen, she vos like hyu mamma, hey?"
He nodded. "And Mom—" His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard again. "Mom was a hunter, too. She quit when she married Dad. But the life..." His voice cracked again, and he shook his head and looked down at the bar.
"Ach, zo."
"It was my fault," he whispered.
"Hy thot hyu vos chust a leetle boy. Vy hyu tink it vos hyu fault?"
He was just drunk enough not to ask how she knew that. Instead, the whole story came tumbling out—the disastrous trip to '73 when he'd tried to kill Azazel and instead accidentally drawn his attention right to Mom; the nightmares that he hadn't wanted to burden Mom with, that might have saved her life if she'd recognized them as dream-visions before they could come true; the demon attack that destroyed the Roadhouse and killed Ash just when he'd figured out what Azazel wanted in Wyoming; the unspeakable failure in Carthage, when Jo got mauled by one of the hellhounds accompanying Lucifer and Ellen sacrificed herself to take out the rest to give Dean a chance to shoot Lucifer with the Colt, only to have the damned archangel get right back up again because he was one of only five things the stupid gun wouldn't kill.
At some point—he wasn't watching closely—Gkika came around the bar. Now, as he finished, she pulled him into a surprisingly gentle hug. And because she was bigger than he, the hug made him feel all of four years old again.
"It's all my fault," he repeated brokenly.
"No. Iz not hyu fault at all. Iz var. Und not der fun kind." Steel crept into her voice. "Iz like de var vit De Odder. Dot Lucrezia, she vos bad krezy. Alvays vant effryvon to obey her. Vos like a game to her, seeink vot she could mek my boyz do, vot she could mek Master Villiam do efen vitout der bogs. Send a goot boy vot luffs his mamma beck in time zo he try und safe her und iz a trap all de time? Ho, yah, Lucrezia vould hef done dot."
"I'm still the idiot who walked into the trap."
She cuffed him gently and stepped back enough to look him in the eye. "Hyu iz not an eediot. Hyu iz a spark. Und hyu iz true like a Jäger. Hyu iz like Master Villiam, too—hyu iz a hero. Hyu vants to help pipple." She paused for emphasis. "De bad vons like De Odder, dey know how to tek adwantage of goot vons like hyu. Dun mek it hyu fault. Iz dere fault."
One traitorous tear rolled down his cheek, but then he sniffled and managed a huffed laugh. "Could you change color again, just to remind me you're not Ellen?"
She socked his shoulder, then gave him a sharp-toothed grin and turned electric blue.
