I BLAME ABBY. WHO IS ALSO MY FANTASTIC BETA BABE. ILU.
AU. (Why was everything in caps? I dunno.)
Hermione sighed, shifting her weight slightly and frowning from behind the bushes. She rested her chin in her palm and blew a curl out of her face, glancing back to the house dully. She'd been staking out this house for a week, and she never saw anyone coming or going, but people would be in there one moment and then gone the next. It was definitely something worth checking up on, but she was debating on whether crouching in the bushes was a good idea or not.
She slowly moved her way to a tree, making sure she didn't make too much noise as she slipped behind the trunk and stood, rolling out the kinks in her shoulders before she gripped a limb and hoisted herself up, sighing as she sat on a limb with a clear view to the house, taking her gun out of the back of her jeans and settling it in her lap, leaning against the trunk as she watched.
It wasn't very hard, being a hunter, if you knew what you were doing. It took practice, but one wrong move during that practice and you were dead, so perhaps the incentive to not die also helped keep those skills in check. She wasn't quite sure how she learned, but she had a feeling that she mostly learned from herself, or anything that she read. She blocked most of her childhood memories, if she was being perfectly honest, and didn't really want to revisit them at present.
She was an orphan. That was all you needed to know about her past. That's why she hunted, end of discussion, now back off or else.
She pulled her sweaty curls into a messy ponytail, taking bobby pins out of her pockets and pinning loose curls away. A light flicked on in the house and she froze, catching her breath and leaning forward, pressing further against the tree trunk as one of the young men – the oldest, perhaps – waved around a stick in the younger ones face, although he was gesturing up at him, his mouth moving a hundred miles an hour and gesturing wildly with his arms and hands while the other stood and dully watched him. She frowned and gripped the gun, shifting to a crouching position and peering at the two.
The older one was blonde, his hair cropped short and spiky, his green eyes vibrant, even from where she was. He had on strange clothes, and when he peeled them off and tossed them to a corner during his rant, he had on baggy jeans and a black t-shirt. The younger of the two had brown hair that he constantly flicked back to keep out of his face, taller than his companion and a little bit lanky, jeans and a t-shirt covering his body, although he had on a jacket as well.
The blonde one growled and stepped outside, running his hands through his hair as the other followed him worriedly.
"Dean, come on," the brunette called as Hermione shifted and thought on who to shoot first. "It's not a big deal. I mean, if I could just tell her - !"
"Sam! Do you not get this Statute of Secrecy thing? It's kind of meant to be a secret!" Dean yelled back, the stick in his hand setting off sparks from the end, making Hermione's eyes widen.
"Not if you're close to someone!" Sam argued back.
"Are you really close to this chick? Or is this some college romance making your brain go haywire?"
Sam rolled his eyes before freezing, his gaze on the tree. "Did you see that?"
Dean turned and looked as well, "See what?"
"Something in the tree moved," he said, moving towards it as he pulled a stick out as well.
Dean's mouth moved but no words came out, although Sam was in front of him and couldn't see. "It's probably a bird or some shit."
Sam pursed his lips, relaxing his shoulders and lowering the stick, "Yeah…yeah, okay."
Hermione released a breath as Sam and Dean turned their attention away from her, raising her gun and firing at the tallest, only to scream and topple off of the limb and into the bushes as it bounced back to her.
"Shit!" Dean cursed, the ward around their house shattering as Sam ran to her. "Sammy, wait, don't!"
"Son of a bitch!" Hermione gasped, gaping as she saw blood spreading from a hole in her abdomen, making her t-shirt stick to her skin with the weight. "Oh God, oh God, I just shot myself."
"Hold still, hold still," Sam stated, rushing to her side and peering at the wound, his brother calling to him and rushing after him.
"No!" Hermione screamed, gritting her teeth and wrapping an arm around her stomach, finding that it was broken as well as she pushed away with her good arm, "Get away!"
"Sam, get back in the house," Dean ordered, gripping his arm.
"I can fix you," Sam insisted, looking to her as he struggled against his grip, "I can help."
"You and your kind have done enough help," she spat, breathing heavily as her shirt turned darker, her accent only making the boys blink.
"Sam, get in the house," Dean insisted.
"Let me help," he stated, turning to glare at his brother and sighing when he was released, moving to her slowly. "I'm going to tell you everything that's going on, alright?"
She frowned, eyeing the stick in his hand carefully before looking back up at his face. He seemed young, even though he couldn't have been younger than her, and he seemed confident in this sort of situation. She looked up at the brother, who was standing over her with his wand in one hand and her gun in the other, glaring back at her.
"I'm going to fix your arm, alright?" Sam said, taking her broken arm gently in one hand and pointing the wand at it, noticing how she flinched. "If you keep doing that, you're going to hurt yourself more. Just relax, or I'll have to knock you out."
Hermione gritted her teeth and glared, watching as the pain subsided in her arm and moved directly to her abdomen, hissing and throwing her head back to the sky to mutter curses. He didn't speak this time, pulling her shirt up slightly to get it out of the way, muttering to himself and setting off different flashes of light as he worked, numbing the area and then slowly taking the bullet out, kneeling in the brush as he healed the wound slowly, looking up when she laid back against the ground and shut her eyes, looking deathly pale.
"Dean, we need to get her inside," Sam stated quietly.
"Sammy, she shot at you," Dean growled.
"Yeah, but…" Sam paused and looked back at her face before looking back to her blood on his hands. "Why?"
Dean was silent for a while before he sighed, "She ready for transport?"
Sam nodded, standing and allowing Dean to levitate her into the house, settling her on Sam's bed – in her bloody clothes, no doubt payback for being so very difficult with his older brother – and tying her wrist to a bed post and settling the other in a Muggle cast, which wasn't exactly needed but would keep her from escaping much anyway.
Sam dug out a leather bag from the back of his closet, popping open a vial with purple liquid and tipping her mouth open to pour it in, grinning when more color appeared in her skin.
"Okay, what's with you and Muggle girls?" Dean asked as Sam sighed and rolled his eyes, standing and putting the bag back in its place. "First Jennifer, then Buffy the Vampire Slayer over here – "
"Jessica, my girlfriend's name is Jessica," Sam argued before the girl captured his attention, groaning and cursing.
"Hey, look, it's Killer Sleeping Beauty," Dean snorted, "By the way, you really should start explaining."
She looked blearily at him before blinking, looking to her bound wrist and her cast before looking between them, "Actually, I think you two should start explaining."
"Ah-hah, no, seeing as you tried to kill my brother, I think you should," Dean stated darkly.
"I'm sorry, he doesn't really like Muggles right now, it's not your fault," Sam said.
"She tried to put a bullet in your brain! I think it's totally her fault!" Dean snapped.
"Muggle?" she repeated as she tried to sit up.
"Ordinary people," Sam answered. "How did you find us?"
"Got a tip," she stated slowly, "Said that there was something weird in these woods. I checked it out, found this house. I was going to go back to my camp when the lights came on and you two walked through – even though I hadn't seen you come in."
"What do you do?" Dean asked instead, "Just hunt wizards and witches?"
"Whoa, whoa – wizards?" she repeated, looking between the two with an arched eyebrow, "I thought male witches just stuck with witches?"
"I mean, I'll admit it is kind of unfair to have two specific gendered words, but most guys get offended when they're called witches," Dean frowned.
"Whoa, whoa, hold up," Sam stated, reaching into his pocket to pull out the stick to show her, "These witches – did they have these?"
She was silent as her eyes flicked up to him before turning back to the stick, "No."
"Ahh, you ran into the occult witches," Sam answered smartly, "Those sold their souls for some half-assed powers – no harm."
"Yeah, all thanks to your big brother," Dean snapped before turning to her. "Why do you hunt?"
"None of your damn business, Blondie," she spat back.
His jaw clenched and he sighed, "Alright, let me rephrase – what do you hunt?"
"Vampires, witches, werewolves, ghouls, anything that tries to hurt mortals," she answered.
"What if they were hunting the same thing, what would you do then?" Dean asked as Sam turned and blinked to him.
She paused, "It depends on what exactly 'they' are."
Dean let out a short breath as Sam looked anxiously to him. "Dean? What's going on?"
Dean sighed and turned to Sam before looking to her, "Dad's on a hunting trip…and he hasn't been home in a few days."
"What?" Sam asked before she could say anything. "Dean, why didn't you tell me?"
"You had your Stanford LSAT, I didn't want to worry you if it was nothing," Dean answered. "But now I'm not so sure."
"I'm assuming he's like you two?" she asked, pursing her lips when they nodded. "I'd need to do some research. And, also to be untied."
"I'll help," Sam offered.
"I thought you had a law school interview on Monday?" Dean asked primly, and Sam sighed and shot him a quickly glare before leaning down to untie her and vanish the cast.
"We'll find him in time," he said before watching her as she sat up and swung her legs over the edge, lifting her shirt and skimming her fingers over where the wound should've been. "Thanks."
"For what?" she asked dully.
"For being such a lousy shot," he answered cheekily as she glared further at him.
*does the wave* *somehow hurts knee* *crumples into the floor*
