Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or any of the Supernatural characters depicted within.
"Listen to me, god damnit!" Dean Winchester could be really convincing when he wanted to, but this wasn't a woman and his smile wasn't going to charm Jake. "Look.. uh.. you're a dickhole, there's no getting by that, and you hate me, because, well, I'm not a dickhole - you see, people actually like me. Look the point is this: I'm trying to help you out here.. even though.. you're a dickhole."
"We have a job to do, there could be some people trapped in here.. ya know, some of us are professionals." Jake gave Dean a look of derisive superiority. "And when we get out of here we're going to have another one of those conversations."
"Listen you smug son of a bitch, you don't know what you're messing with here.. besides, we already convinced the 7th and 8th floors to evacuate. We gotta find the source of the fire and I don't have time to explain it to you, just trust me." Dean's face says it all, even he wouldn't be convinced if the situation was reversed.
"Fuck off you crazy asshole, the whole building could go up.. we have orders to sweep the upper floors.. where'd you learn to be a firefighter anyway?"
"Uhhh, I was 8 and my dad was showing me how some fires can't be put out with water and.. that doesn't matter, well it does matter because we're going to.. just, listen, all of the fires have occurred on the 7th or 8th floor, right? None of them burnt beyond those floors, right? All of them were more or less isolated to one room, multiple times in the same house sometimes.. right?"
"So what, I fight fires, I don't write reports. Moretty and Hancock have 5-8. We have to make sure the upper floors get evacuated, that's what we're doing." Jake turns to go.
"Look, I'm going in, with or without you.. and I do like writing reports, I'll write one saying I could smell smoke and that you left me to investigate it all by my lonesome." Dean opens the door and heads onto the 7th floor.
Muttering obscenities, Jake follows Dean inside. Heading to the first door and tries the handle, it's locked. "I think I can smell smoke, actually, I'm gonna start busting down these doors." Jake hefts his axe.
Dean lifts his own axe and hooks it against Jakes. "You don't want to do that, trust me, look.. we're better off keeping these doors closed, because of.. you know, backdrafts."
"Backdrafts.." Jake laughs out loud.
Dean turns and continues walking down the L-shaped hall and around the bend.
"For fucks sake. I'm not working with you again.. I'm putting in for a transfer.. you're going to get someone killed." Jake looks seriously pissed.
"You may not live to put in the request." Dean slows as audible whining emanates from his EMF-meter, increasing in volume as he continues down the hall. Waving it carefully from left to right, the right side causes a distinct increase in the pitch of the whine.
"What the hell is that thing supposed to do?" Jake looked on skeptically.
"It measures electromagnetic fields.. it'll help us find what we're looking for. And keep that axe ready, if the fire comes at you, keep the axehead between you and it." Dean raises his own eyebrow in skepticism at whether his advise will get taken to heart.
"It? Coming at me? Electrowhat.." Jake blinks in disbelief but then stares curiously as the light just ahead starts blinking off and on. Each time the light fades it almost sounds like the electricity is being drawn out like a breath.
Dean pulls out his walkie which is switched to a different channel than the one used by firefighters. "Sam, I've got something on the 7th floor, near the end of the hall."
"You guys aren't really firemen are you?" Shawn was quiet but perceptive. "You undercover cops or something? All the questions you two ask.. you think the fires here are deliberate arson don't you?" Shawn liked Sam, he never dodged questions and would always answer them with a kind of wisdom, he seemed older than his early-twenties appearance would otherwise suggest. And Dean who supplanted Jake, as the resident don't-fuck-with-me-tough-guy-asshole of the firehouse - the badboy. Unlike Jake, Dean actually helped him talk to some girls.. even got him laid. Jake likes to be the only one getting laid. Not someone you want to be friends with unless you're into sloppy seconds.
Sam was running. It wouldn't take long to get there, they were only one floor up. Opening the door to the stairwell, he jumped inside and started heading down the stairs quickly but carefully. Shawn was right behind him. "Shawn.. just trust me when I tell you that this won't be an ordinary fire we're fighting, it will seem to come at you.. like it's alive.. keep the axe up and in it's way, try to hit it if you can.. fast movement can make it react quite quickly.. be slow and deliberate with your moves.. use the axe like a spear."
"Move slowly and keep your axe up.." Dean instructed Jake.. he wasn't waiting around for Sam, if this was what they thought it was then Sam would be a liability. Dean kicks in the door of the first of two rooms the EMF-meter had indicated, the door gives in easily. "And don't panic, the flames can't really hurt you unless you believe they can.. it'll try to use your fears against you."
Jake stands out in the hall using the axe like a cane."Ohh I get it, so it's like some kind of.. ghost.. thing.. with pretend flames and my axe is gonna help us kill it. Great, this isn't completely fucking nuts or anything."
"Look, just don't be a pussy." Dean heads into the apartment.
"We suspect it's a ghost that wasn't quite destroyed properly.. you see, when what ties a ghost to our plane is destroyed - usually the bones or some object important to it - the ghost bursts into flames and passes on.. sometimes however, a ghost really, really doesn't want to leave our plane and will become bound to a physical location, like a structure, a house, a windowframe.. something inside the place it's haunting." Sam opens the door to the 7th floor and starts running down the hall.
"So this fire ghost, is it intelligent.. can we speak to it? And this axe you gave me, is it magical or something?" Shawn felt foolish asking such a question.. but it seemed relevant and he trusted Sam and Dean.
"That axe has been dipped in holy water but it's not magical, we do have some enchanted weapons though.. what makes the axe special is simply because it's made of iron, the lore isn't too indepth.. iron works on a lot of entities.. it seems to draw or conduct their energies and makes them weaker.. we use silver a lot too. And no you can't really speak to it, well, it depends on how much of it remains.. usually it's just an echo of a specific traumatic memory combined with extreme emotion.. and some kind of need to feed upon energies, primarily fear. An entity like this is likely too far gone to try to communicate with." Sam's brow was furrowed, he knew entities like this which were a manifestation of an element, the element manifested being fire which was quite common for these types of creatures who fed off fear.. fire was a very good fear inducer. And fire just happens to be a trigger for a memory of another life Sam had been living. Sam shakes his head slightly to clear his thoughts and refocus on what he had to do.
"Ahhhhh, ahhhhhhh! I'm burning!" Jake ran, his axe dropped and forgotten, not that it would have done him much good since it was made of steel, the offer of an iron-headed axe from Dean had been flatly ignored. Steel could still work somewhat and so Dean hadn't bothered arguing with the fool. But when it came to ghosts, the difference between steel and iron was that iron was sharp; it had a bite to it, and steel was more blunt; used for swatting and deflection but unlikely to do any real harm to anything supernatural.
Sam leapt over Jake who was rolling on the ground in the hallway, screaming in panic. He had it pretty bad, sometimes an attack by a ghostly entity can induce a full-blown hallucination which if left to the throes of whatever demons he's imagining can leave it's victims in a catatonic state. "Shawn.. help Jake, talk him down.. and slap him.. slap him hard."
Shawn somehow knew Sam was going to suggest slapping him. Grabbing at Jake's chest he takes a bunch of his firesuit in his fist and pulls Jake up to about a fifty degree angle and delivers a loud smack to Jake's left cheek.
"Ouch, that'll leave a mark.. wish I could've done it. What took you so long anyway?" Dean asks in a relaxed casual way despite the appearance of flames hitting his axe and deflecting the fire into two streams that blow past him harmlessly.
"Well, there was a flight of stairs, and a bunch of questions being asked by a rookie firefighter turned rookie hunter." Sam deflects some incoming flames with a flick of his axe. "How did Jake take it?"
"Well.. he told me to fuck off, which wasn't entirely unpleasant and apparently we'll be having a conversation later. I'm really looking forward to it." Dean smiles. The flames were retreating.
The brothers advance forward, Dean a picture of stoicism. Sam however looked angry and resentful..slowly backing the entity into whatever base it occupied. Sam darts forward, striking hard at the centre of the flames, the entity sensing the swift movement seems to spread itself out and engulf Sam.
"Sam, what are you doing! Sam!" Sam was standing in the doorway and Dean couldn't do much to help except try to hack a passage through the wall. "Shit.. Sam snap out of it!"
Sam was completely surrounded by the flames, what should have been an overwhelmingly frightful situation wasn't. Sam felt no fear, only rage, rage at being subjected to the memory of his friend; of his lover. She appeared in the flames. Flames which were enveloping her form and made her seem so bright, her face crystal clear with a look of terror.. just like she did that night, just like she would every night in his dreams. Sam owned that memory, it was his forever and always and what he was seeing wasn't that memory but simply a creatures attempt to cause him dispair and pain. Sam's vision defocused and split, focusing his mind on the task of herding the entity towards it's hiding place.. he wasn't going to let this fucking thing continue in this world, he was going to end it. And he did.
Thirty minutes later all four of them were sitting in a booth in the back corner, it was late and they were the only ones there. Dean drummed the table in anticipation. "Ahh pizza, how I love thee, always good to have an excuse to order a nice pepperoni with extra pepperoni."
"Breakfast, lunch, on a date.. practically anything is an excuse for you to order pizza." Sam took a swig of his beer.
Dean smiles. "Jake, how about that axe then? The offer is still open, a free iron axe with which to carry out your firefighters duties.. and a little 'rest in peace' action on the side when you run into the odd firebreathing ghost.. or a flesh craving zombie.. not to mention umm.." Their pizzas arrived. Three pepperoni's. Dean stopped talking and picked up a slice and starting munching happily.
Jake looked pale, he was staring at the table.
"What about werewolves and vampires?" Shawn really kept his cool during the fracas they had just endured.. he seemed eager to learn as much about hunting as he could.
Dean nodded. "Vampires have been hunted almost to extinction.. have to cut their heads off.. garlic and crosses don't work, that's just like.. vampire propaganda. And werewolves.. always keep a silver blade handy." Dean pulls a wicked looking curved silver dagger out from nowhere and casually flips it around a few times expertly before making it vanish.
Sam spoke without looking up, he was staring at the metal salt shaker which was really bright at the angle he was sitting from it. "Firefighters used to know the dual importance of an iron axe which was not just for breaking down doors, but for fending off evil spirits which would cause mischief unless confronted and driven off."
"Gotta love those oldschoolers.. didn't know how to read.. couldn't count past ten.. but give them an iron axe and tell them it can kill a ghost.. makes perfect sense to them.. much to humanities disappointment.. today we get such heroes as Jake." Dean smiled at Jake who was scowling, sulkily munching on his slice. Dean drew his cellphone out of his jacket and faced it at Jake who looked suspiciously at it. What played was a video clip of Jake screaming like a frightened little girl and waving his arms about trying to fend off invisible forces. "So about that conversation you wanted to have?"