The hot water was soothing against the man's back. His arms stung as soap was applied, but the most attention he gave to it was a small hiss. He paid the most attention to the spot on his chest where tiny beads of red kept appearing and would grow bigger if he didn't constantly wash them away.

They had chosen a true fighter that night. It was a woman, who must have been in her mid-twenties and had pretty blonde hair. She came across as confident when he and Sam had been observing her from across the bar. That was what had caught Dean's attention the most.

The two cornered her in the alley after she exited the bar. At first, she tried flirting her way passed them, but then she knew they meant business when she wasn't capable of escaping the grip the younger Winchester had on her arm.

It turned out to be bloody for both sides. Another man from the bar decided to use the alleyway as a shortcut as well and soon joined to try to help the woman escape. He found it was all in vain a little too late, though, when he watched as the taller man of the two brothers took out a hand pistol he had brought along with them for back up.

Dean shut off the water when he heard three knocks from the other side of the bathroom door. Small droplets of blood kept forming from the line on his chest where the opposing man had brought a pocketknife to, ruining his shirt and cutting into him.

"Yeah?" he asked out.

"You done in there, Dean?" It was his younger brother. "Ellen's made some food for us. She wants to talk before she goes to bed. It sounds important."

Dean tensed up a little. With Ellen, it could be anything. But he quickly regained his composure over the matter. "Just give me a sec here, man. Oh, and look for some pie too."

He could hear Sam snort from the other side. In fact, he could practically imagine the bitch face he was probably forming that moment. "Sure thing," was the only reply.

The older brother listened as the other Winchester's footsteps retreated down the hallway over the creaky floorboards before resting his head on the tile wall of the shower. He closed his eyes and sighed after a short moment because in all honesty, this 'family business' was beginning to wear him out. There was no escape from it, that much he knew. All his childhood, he was being trained to become the perfect killer, the greatest mass murderer. In fact, Dean didn't know much about the outside life beside what his parents had told him. The man had little to no chance of making it in the real world, of having a perfect, apple-pie life.

And then there was also his biggest fear of all.

Of disappointing his father.

Sure, the man was long gone, but he had always talked about how great Dean was going to be one day. He even talked about how he was going to be dead at one point in time and that it was going to be Dean and Sam's job to carry out the family business. To not let the family legacy die.

He sighed once more when repressed memories began to swim to the surface. They were the ones that had been tucked away for a reason. They were the ones that he never told anyone of, mostly because of the fact that he was ashamed of himself when he looked back on those times of disappointment.

He reached out his towel and ruffled his hair with it for a few seconds before wrapping it around his waist. Glancing down at his chest, he found it wasn't as much of a bloody mess as it was just twenty minutes ago. Clothes were thrown on unceremoniously as he was trying not to concentrate on anything for the moment.

Yes, it was going to be one of those nights.

Downstairs, he found a plate of fries and a burger waiting for him at the bar. Ellen Harvelle caught sight of him as she was wiping down the table tops. She smiled at him and set down her rag as she walked over to pull him into a hug. Dean grunted uncomfortably as she accidentally pressed up too close to his chest.

She pulled away almost immediately. "Sorry about that Dean. Did you want to put anything on it to help it heal? Sammy told me all about this one."

Dean shook his head. "Thanks, Ellen. I'll be fine.

She gave a small smile and touched his arm. If Dean was going to be honest, he sometimes felt as if Ellen was a better mother than his own actually was. He knew that if he actually had the balls to step away from this, from all of this, that she would have his back. His biological mother always seemed indifferent to what he wanted when it came to their family legacy.

"You best sit down and eat your food, Winchester. Your health nut of a brother is back in the kitchen fixing him up some rabbit-food."

"Say what you want, Ellen. I'm still going to outlive the age you die at by forty years!" the two heard Sam shout from the kitchen.

"I'd rather die young and unhealthy than put that nasty stuff in me and live to one-hundred. I'm a warrior, I can't live on that crap," he defended.

"You say that now. Tell me what you think in another year when you're lying on your death bed and I'm as fit as a marathon runner."

"Whatever. Bitch."

"Jerk."

Dean laughed and shook his head, turning his attention back to the woman in front of him just as his younger brother came through the doors leading from the kitchen with a bowl of overly colorful, leafy stuff. "So what was it you wanted to talk to us about, Ellen?"

She suddenly appeared nervous, as if she hoped she wouldn't have to be put on the spot after all. "Well, for starters, Jo may ask if she can help you guys out on a trip sometime in the future. Poor girl wants to be more like her father. I trust that you two will say no and bring it to my attention," she said and eyed them seriously yet almost as if she dared either one of them to object.

Sam was the one to speak first. "Of course we will Ellen. I wouldn't want her to experience any of the things we have to on a daily basis."

She forced a smile. "Thank you, Sam. I just wish I could expect that much from your brother." Dean gave her a look but didn't respond as his mouth was currently filled. He only rolled his eyes and continued to chew. Ellen cleared her throat. "Now, it is completely up to the two of you to decide, but Ash wanted me to suggest you letting him go on a couple of trips. He thought that he could help with the technical stuff if you ever wanted to go indoors. Like with the surveillance cameras. With him, I'm not so worried about anything…that crazy bastard."

Dean paused mid-chew to take a glance in Sam's direction. He looked almost torn.

"Well," the younger one began, but then paused longer than necessary. "I guess it would be nice to have some extra help every now and then, for when we start getting into heavier stuff. But there are certain risks…What do you think, Dean?"

Dean snorted, and then swallowed the rest of the fry in his mouth before folding his hands in front of the plate. "I think the dude's a crazy bastard. But he has the skills we lack." He brought his hands up to his face and let them block the light from his eyes while he thought. Finally, he brought them down and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe we can bring him along tomorrow, if you still wanted to go by that bank we had passed earlier this morning?" he directed toward Sam.

"Sure Dean, but what about the risks we could be taking if he comes along? I mean, he could mess up, he could die…he could get caught. Should we really do this?"

Dean sighed for what felt like the tenth time that night. Why did Sammy always have to be the voice of reason? "We're just going to try it. I'm sure, if we're careful enough, then we'll be just fine. Ellen, you can tell Ash that everything's peachy. Now, can you just let me eat my burger?"

Ellen and Sam shared a look. Dean wasn't usually like this. He wasn't so cooperative. He would have told them 'no, absolutely not. We're not going to put another one of our own in danger. Not Ash.' But then again, the family business was weird like that. When it was family, one of your own going in with you, you know you can trust them whole-heartedly. The thing with Ellen wasn't that she didn't trust the boys. They both knew that she trusted them with her own life, and that the feeling was mutual. She just didn't want to lose her only daughter, and both Winchesters understood that as well.

"Sure thing, Dean," was Sam's reply.

"Ellen, you got any pie?"

The officer sat down at his desk in his own home, thankful his shift was over. It had been a long day and it seemed to become worse and worse as each hour went by.

He sighed and looked down to his hands as his personal cell rang for the twelfth time that day If Alastair called him once more, he was going to throw a chair out the window of his fifth story apartment.

But what he saw when he glanced down was enough for him to forget about being angry for a moment or two. It was those Winchester copy-cats again. The man, or supposedly men, that attacked every night with the alias of the Winchester criminals. There was no link detected between the victims, just as there hadn't been for the past hundred years.

They had murdered a father of two the night before and set his home ablaze. Fortunately, no one was inside as his family had been visiting relatives that week. Well, except for the family cat.

The two had amazed the officer for more than a few years now. He could tell they were different from the generations of Winchester killers before them because, every twenty years or so, the signature would change. These past ten years, the signature had been the name 'Winchester' written in black Sharpie somewhere near the body, as opposed to 'W. Chester' written on the closest wall to the body with the blood of the victim.

In all honesty, he never did understand how 'W. Chester' was any better than 'Winchester.'

The officer had been researching the Winchester copy-cat files for quite some time now, and not just for professional uses. It had become a secret obsession of his. Usually, or maybe in earlier years would be a better choice of words, he would have been able to distract himself from the thoughts, the images, the magazine articles of the killers. But more recently, it had been impossible to think of anything else. It felt as if he were being burned from the inside, out sometimes.

He had often though about getting their attention, but how he could go about it had always puzzled him. He couldn't exactly call a press conference and just straight up come out and say, "Hello. I admire your art, your talent. I would very much like to meet you. Maybe we could even go get a cheeseburger sometime and discuss religious beliefs, if you would like that." No. He couldn't possibly do that.

But there was always the second idea that his mind gave birth to when he was in the middle of a crime/thriller movie. (Although they were never really his type.) He knew the tricks that other officers couldn't detect, being in the crime fighting business and dedicating several hours to research.

So on impulse, the officer grabbed one of his personal automatic weapons from his desk drawer and a large red marker. If this didn't catch his obsession's attention, he thought to himself, then what else would even come close enough?

Quickly, he tugged his tan trench coat on around himself and hid the weapon skillfully. He faced the mirror next to the door and took a moment to glance at himself. There was a certain look to him, he noticed. There was a hunger in his eyes that he had never seen before. "This is going to be so much fun," Castiel Novak said to himself with a wicked smile forming its way onto his lips before exiting his front door.