Chapter 4 – Puns. Puns everywhere
The Beach Boys – Fun, Fun, Fun Parody:
Pun, Pun, Pun by Phil Alexander
Their secret knock came on the door about another twenty minutes later. Alla had left Ivy alone in the bathroom at her insistence and was just sitting at the desk twiddling her thumbs, so she sprang up instantly to open the door.
"I managed to find some salad and hamburgers at the diner down the street, I hope they are fine," Mary announced, her disposition much cheerier than that of the other blonde's.
"Yeah, uhm, let's just set it here on the table for now," Alla said, her own exhaustion seeping into her voice now. She had been hungry earlier, but now she wasn't so sure anymore.
"Everything alright? Where's Ivy?" the hunter inquired upon not seeing the other girl on the bed.
"Bath. We called her douchebag of a husband… it didn't really end well. He was pissed we aren't returning tonight," she tried to simplify the matter.
This whole fiasco… she totally understood why Ivy had wanted some time to herself to process everything. Even if it left Alla a bit adrift with her own emotions. Regret, guilt, remorse, loneliness were just a few examples of what had been running through her head in the last fifteen minutes. She wanted to have a good cry, but honestly, this was neither the time nor the place for it. Not to mention that she felt like she had no right burdening Ivy with this on top of everything else. She had been through enough on her own.
"Flight or road trip?" Mary inquired. Honestly, she had been wondering if getting the girls out of here and thus out of danger would have been better, but that didn't seem like a viable option at this point. Ivy was simply too ill to be moved. She even considered that the brunette should be taken to a hospital if her condition worsened.
"Flight, and no. Really not. She just threw up…" Alla sighed heavily, dragging her hands down her face, trying to keep herself awake as she assessed what else had to be taken care of since they were surely not leaving for a while. "I need to check us in for another night downstairs. Or two. Plus take the rental car back. Though I have no idea how to manage that, I don't want to leave Ivy here alone…"
"I could take it," the hunter offered, seeing how the Ukrainian girl was about to break down under the weight of everything on her shoulders.
"Yeah, but you weren't put down with them as a driver… I'm not sure what the fines are if I 'let' you drive…" she protested, somewhere deep down wanting to chuckle, since wasn't this the exact same thing Ivy did with her just a half an hour ago? But that urge was not nearly strong enough to bubble up to the surface under her weariness.
"I'll handle it," Mary asserted, placing her hands on the girl's shoulders.
"But then how are you going to get back here?" Alla feebly retorted, slightly terrified of the possibility of them getting stuck here alone with a monster on the prowl.
"Taxi… have you heard of it? I'm pretty sure they're still a thing," her mouth quirked to a small smile. At least she hoped… she had seen a few yellow cabs in the bigger cities, surely Tampa wasn't lacking in them either.
"Well, Uber is cheaper…" the Ukrainian girl argued, unable to stop herself from speaking before her know-it-all-ness shone through.
"What?" Mary looked at her with confusion.
"Sorry, uhm, never mind… I think I'm reaching my limit…" Alla sighed, rubbing her face yet again. Geez, she was so tired.
"Why don't you lie down and sleep?" the hunter suggested, gently guiding her towards the still made bed, pulling the covers back.
"But what about Ivy? She'll need help to get out of the tub…" the blonde pointed out. Surely neither Ivy nor Mary would be comfortable with this arrangement…
"I'll manage. Sleep!" Mary practically ordered as she sat the girl down.
"Yeah, I can do that," she drawled and unceremoniously fell to her side, still clothed and all, her feet dangling off the edge of the bed.
Mary snorted to herself as she pulled the girl's shoes off, lifting her legs onto the bed and basically tucking her in.
Alla was back in one of the buildings of the cult, trying to prove to a group of fanatics that she wasn't worthless, wasn't a piece of useless shit, wasn't a waste of space as they had repeatedly drilled into her over three years. She was an adult now, and desperately tried to tell them everything that she hadn't been able to put into words or express when she had been just a teenager because she had had no frame of reference. All the double standards, contradictions, and unfair – and quite honestly, illegal – conditions present in the church. But logic and rational arguments were like fuel to the fire of their disapproval and every word that left her mouth seemed to dig her into an even deeper hole than before. Just like back then.
Everything I do is always wrong.
You weren't supposed to think for yourself or have any thoughts really, just expected to automatically follow orders, like blind sheep being herded to the slaughterhouse of the mind. But she couldn't not see the abuse, the lies, she couldn't not raise her voice when confronted with injustice. So they tried to break her, brainwash her into the good little soldier she could never be.
She couldn't take it anymore. She wanted out… but there was nowhere to go…
She was trapped.
She was trapped… she realized, panic taking hold of her.
"Alla!"
Firm hands on her shoulders were shaking her awake, and Alla bolted up with a gasp and tears streaming down her face.
She should have expected these particular nightmares to return with full force, now that she was back in this town. She really should have, but naively she thought that Koschei and the loom of the more imminent danger, or even the exhaustion, would drown them out or at least redirect them. Even if only one night. But no. It had to be her recurring dreams of futile exercises in self-redemption to people who really had no business setting expectations for her. Why her subconscious cared so much about the opinions of mindless drones who had once before driven her to suicide, she had no idea. Years of therapy couldn't tell her. On a rational level she had sorted through this, she could, of course, recite all the theories on the whys, but her subconscious mind was still playing a game of catch up at times.
"Well, I assume the shock had to settle in sooner or later," Mary remarked as she assessed the girl, who was still panting and shaken from whatever visions her mind had conjured.
"Pfft," Alla snorted, pointedly refusing to give in to her weakness. She was stronger than this. She was so done with this. Those fuckers would never have any power over her again if she could help it. "You think I had nightmares of Koschei? Please… I grew up with gruesome stories about him. Believe me, real monsters are just people. Not the kind that lurks under your bed."
The two blondes stared at each other for a while, Alla's statement hanging heavily between them. Mary had suspected before that something awful had happened to the girl in the past, and of course, it had to be something humans did to her. She was mumbling about being taken or trapped in her sleep, and the hunter had just assumed she was reliving the cellar… but apparently not. Had she been kidnapped before? By whom? How old had she been then? She did say she had never been sexually assaulted, but why else would someone abduct a girl if not for sick perverted games? She didn't seem like a rich brat, being held for ransom…
"Do you want something to eat?" Mary asked, deciding that the best course of action would be to just skip right over this one. It wasn't really her place to pry.
"Yeah," the Ukrainian girl nodded, climbing out of bed at a sedated pace. She noticed that Ivy indeed had made it back to bed somehow, napping peacefully.
"Ivy fell asleep a good four hours ago," the hunter commented as she followed her line a sight.
"Good. That's good," she sighed as she sat down to eat. It was around dinner time, judging from the lights filtering in through the blinds and she was absolutely starving despite everything. No matter what anyone said, reheated burgers were still delicious.
"I took care of the car and room, by the way, so no need to worry about those either," Mary added.
"How much do I owe you?" Alla asked because she honestly couldn't let the hunter pay for those. Now that she thought about it there was the food she was eating, too. She really needed to even things up between them. Having been saved was already so much more than she would ever be able to repay.
Speaking of pay. How did hunters make money? It didn't seem like a lucrative business given that no one freaking knew about the supernatural besides their speculatively small circle of buddies and the surviving victims. That couldn't make for a viable established customer base and didn't seem very probable that they asked payment in exchange for saving people anyway, random or returning victims.
Mary on the other hand just cast her an incredulous gaze, speaking volumes that money was something she handled very lightly. Ooookay, maybe Alla didn't want to know the source of her income after all. Had to be something illegal.
The rest of the evening was mostly uneventful. Sam called a little past eleven to inform Mary that they were going to stop for the night somewhere near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Just mentioning the name of which was enough to prompt Alla into a high-pitched giggling fit every single time. American city names amused her to no end. Like Culpeper, where Ivy lived. And Cincinnati. And Boise. And now apparently Chattanooga. It reminded her of a Hungarian theater play one of her friends from over there raved about. Other than that she had no idea what it could mean, it just sounded funny.
The next day, well, it was much of the same. Alla and Mary rotated being on watch, Mary sometimes going out to get food, while the girls slept and tried to recuperate. Especially Ivy. Honestly, they were getting quite bored, notably more so after the night went by and no attack whatsoever came from any kind of supernatural being that they had been gearing up for mentally to fight all this time. Even the witching hour had been almost blissfully quiet. Mary – when awake – was mostly going through articles on the internet, trying to find omens or odd deaths for her next hunt, since this was one seemed to be coming to a close, even if she wasn't the one who was going to finish it. That detail still gave her a sour taste in her mouth.
So, when six in the afternoon rolled around, and Mary's boys called again to ask which room she was in exactly, it had come as a welcome diversion. Alla was brimming with curiosity about the men already, even though she didn't dare interrogate the female hunter about them. She didn't know why, but she imagined them as surly, redneck type people. Maybe it was a blatant stereotype, but who else would have the mental constitution for this job? Definitely not pretty boys. She still wasn't exactly sure how Mary got mixed in the business in the first place. Though that did make her think… unless their daddy was an ugly ass guy, Sam and Dean couldn't be that bad looking, based on just pure genetics. Mary had the potential for drop dead gorgeous and even as utilitarian as she was, she was undoubtedly beautiful.
The familiar knock pattern that Mary had taught her vibrated the door, their visitor's hand falling much heavier on the wooden surface. So that was the family code? If Mary died when they were young, did their father teach them that? Who did he learn it from? Or have they established this pattern after she was revived? So many questions were running through Alla's mind. In either case, she felt a bit like an intruder, having been let in on this secret.
Mary cocked her gun just in case, then went to open the door. The tension only slightly relaxing in her shoulders when she saw that at least physically they appeared to be her sons as promised. Nonetheless, she gave a silver knife to each of them to test themselves with while still outside the door, and a bottle of holy water to take a drink from, she herself repeating the process too to assure the other side just the same.
Now, Alla was definitely not prepared for the pair of tall – and very handsome – guys waltzing in, with morose and guarded expressions on their faces. The fact that they hadn't been prepared for her presence in the room either was clear from the shocked expressions and the wary glances they threw at each other too.
The Ukrainian girl slowly stood, not wanting to alarm them, just assuming that Mary was going to make some sort of introduction. Damn, the one with the almost shoulder-length hair and hazel eyes had to be at least 190-195 centimeters tall… What was that in feet and inches? Maybe 6'4? And the other one wasn't that much far behind either in height, though he had spiky, gelled hair and green eyes. Both had muscular physiques and wore plaid and some sort of utility jacket similar to Mary's. Alla had come to realize that was the trick to hiding a butt-load of weapons on your person without notice.
"Sam and Dean. Alla," Mary made very quick of the introduction, pointing so hastily to the boys that the other blonde couldn't even catch who was who, then closed the door behind her sons and reapplied the salt line with practiced efficiency, while they dropped their duffels in the corner.
"Uhm, hi. Alla Koleshnikova," why she felt the need to introduce herself with her full name, she had no idea, but it was flying out her mouth before she could even think. That awkward wave seemed to have made it permanently into her first greetings protocols too. Snap out of it, damn it, these are just pretty faces!
"Like the guy who made the AK-47?" the shorter one asked with pensively furrowed brows, momentarily breaking from his distrustful demeanor.
Weapons fanatic. Should have figured.
"Uhm, no, that's Kalashnikov, and he was Russian," Alla corrected him, feeling very self-conscious but also relieved that at least her first name wasn't causing problems. Though if they were familiar with all sorts of mythology and religions because of supernatural research then they were probably much more educated on the subject of pronunciations of these creatures too. She was just going to assume that Allah was a supernatural entity along with all the Pagan gods she could think of. She probably wouldn't go wrong there. Wonder if Santa and the Easter bunny were a thing too…
"Ah, my bad then… though maybe if he wasn't rushin' so much…" he smirked at his own awful pun, looking conspiratorially at his brother for acknowledgment, but instead of the usual bitchface, Dean found him staring at the blond girl.
How could someone look so similar to, yet so different from Jess? The overall features – long, slightly wavy blond hair, highlights a bit grown out, dark blue eyes, everything – was there, even the height (she seemed around 5'7). Yet, the girl lacked that naïve sense of innocence, despite her freckles and the polite – albeit a bit startled – smile on her face. For whatever reason Sam saw right through that façade that she tried to project, the one that told the world that she was okay. He saw a tortured soul, one that despite all the hardships still retained kindness that was generally hard to find in people. All of that discerned from a look in her eyes.
Dean elbowed the Moose standing beside him in the ribs, rolling his eyes. His baby bro was practically drooling.
"Uhm, yeah, hi, I'm Sam. Winchester. That's Dean," he said quickly, stumbling over his words a bit.
"Smooth," Dean muttered under his breath, moving further into the room, past the girl, not wanting to watch this poorly written romantic comedy bit unfold any longer.
Alla followed him with her eyes for a just a split second, a tiny bit wary of letting him get behind her. They definitely had an air of lethality to them. No doubt they had killed countless creatures, maybe even humans in their line of work. Every move they made spoke a million words about their training, experience, skills, ability to assess risks and weak points as they sized up their surroundings. The only thing that kept her from being jumpy was the fact that Mary trusted them, and somehow, she had come to trust Mary in the last two days.
When she glanced back at Sam, he was looking at her again, and Alla didn't really know what to make of that. His gaze was so intense, yet full of sorrow. Maybe even pity. It felt like he was baring her down right to her soul. She felt naked and exposed, but at the same time safe for some reason. Compassion, that was the word. Whatever Sam was seeing in her, he felt compassion for it and wouldn't dare hold it against her.
Mary just watched them with a tiny little knowing smile on her face, intent on not intervening.
"Well, who do we have here?" Dean asked suddenly with a hint of amused interest mixed into his displeasure of being caught unawares with something again, noticing Ivy's sleeping form in the bed further away from the door, effectively breaking whatever moment Alla had with Sam.
"Leave Ivy be, please. She isn't feeling well," Alla asked kindly, turning his way again.
Sam instantly put the picture together from what Mary had told him over the phone yesterday. Alla seemed to be doing exceptionally well for someone who had just been abducted by a monster preying on women, and simultaneously had to find out that these things even existed. And the look she was giving her friend spoke volumes about her character. Protective. Caring. Selfless.
"Poison Ivy got to her?" the older Winchester joked, so damned pleased with himself that all these great opportunities were presenting themselves one after another.
"Dean, I'm sure there wasn't any poison ivy down in the basement, and she doesn't even have a rash," Sam looked at him in frustration, his tone getting just a tiny bit condescending.
Alla chuckled at their banter. The lighthearted back and forth was such a stark contrast to their appearances and general demeanor.
"You're going to bite your tongue with the DC references when I tell you her last name," the Ukrainian girl smirked, knowing exactly what the older brother was referring to, and also finding it very funny that he even knew pop culture references. Though maybe Mary's obliviousness to everything modern was giving her a skewed view of hunters. She supposed they had to have some downtime once in a while too, why couldn't they watch movies, TV shows and read comics like every other person?
"See? Someone gets it, Sam! And I thought you were the geek!" Dean quipped with a sense of triumph, winking at Alla, essentially giving her a touch-free high-five with his eyes. The blond girl was getting the feeling that teasing his younger brother was a favorite pastime of the guy.
"I just prefer Marvel… DC is a bit too dark for my tastes. There's enough darkness in our lives as is," Sam muttered under his breath, shaking his head.
Alla, all of a sudden, had an intense urge to reach out to him, or comfort him in some way. A finger or two of hers might have even twitched a little before she could suppress her inclinations because in the next moment Sam was looking intently at her hand.
"Well, then we can just pretend Ivy is the long-lost cousin of Iron Man," the Ukrainian girl quipped, cradling her offending limb with the other against her chest to keep herself from doing something that might be constituted as an attack or too sudden of a movement.
"Huh," Dean huffed approvingly. Tony Stark was alright. He had good tastes in music according to the movies. AC/DC? Back in Black? Any day of the week!
He tiptoed closer to take a better look at the sleeping young woman. Brunette, with cute, girl-next-door kind of feel to her. Yeah, he would tap that.
Ivy stirred suddenly, her features around her nose and eyes scrunching up in discomfort. She opened her peepers almost instantly, finding an unfamiliar guy – albeit an insanely gorgeous one – just inches from her face. The brunette's sense of panic set in just about the same time as the scent of his cologne hit her.
That combination led her promptly to puking her guts out to the side, leaving Dean barely a moment's notice to jump out of the way. Her aim was not really good, and she ultimately missed the bin that was set on the floor by the bed just for this purpose. The bedding, rug, and Ivy herself, as a result, were much less lucky, even if there wasn't much coming up. She only managed to eat some soup earlier.
"Well, that's definitely a first. I swear ladies don't usually react like that to me," he tried to joke nonchalantly, a half-hearted apologetic face plastered on him for the others, though as he glanced back towards the girl, the apparent signs of worry were written all over him.
"It's not you… the smell," the brunette tried very hard to keep herself from throwing up again while forcing the words out through her teeth. Embarrassment was so far down the list of her worries that her pale face didn't even manage to gain a faint pink tone.
Dean sniffed himself around the armpits, not even trying to be inconspicuous about it. "Funny, I even showered today."
Ivy would have laughed if she weren't feeling so miserable. The guy clearly had a funny bone. She found that endearing.
"No. Your cologne," Alla intervened, pushing the hunter out of the way and further away from Ivy. She had stopped caring at this point if he would get jumpy by being suddenly touched. The blonde moved closer to help cleaning her friend up, opening the window in the process to air the heavy scent of musk out. She mentally berated herself. She should have realized sooner that this would be a problem, but honestly, she didn't even notice the stuff they were wearing was so quintessential.
"Watch out for…" Sam commented, noticing from his angle the elongated piles of tiny white grains along the windowsill too, reminding him of the protections Mary had set up.
"I know. Salt line. Don't worry, I was careful," she retorted, leaving Sam stunned as to how she even knew about it. He glanced at Mary questioningly, who just shrugged, mouthing "fast learner" to him as Alla skipped over the vomit stain to help Ivy out of the thin sweater she managed to soil.
"Wait, what is that?" Dean snapped to attention suddenly, stepping back closer as he noticed something weird on Ivy's right shoulder that had now become visible with just the camisole top she had on underneath.
"She is sensitive to chemicals, like perfume in the air. Would you mind just backing off?" Alla tried to hint not so subtly now, getting a little irritated, but nodding thanks to Mary who handed her a few towels from the bathroom at the same time, one of which she instantly laid over the wet patch on the carpet and patted the other along the ones on the bed.
Sam watched like a hawk. Smart. Fierce. He added to the mental list of her qualities.
"This?" Ivy, on the other hand, craned her neck to see what he was referring to, her curiosity winning over nausea. "A birthmark. I had it as long as I can remember."
"Well, that is definitely not a birthmark. Looks more like a tight-knit pattern of runes burned superficially into your skin. The kind you'd see in witches' curses," the seasoned hunter commented, throwing a meaningful look to Sam, beckoning him to come and take a look too, before retreating away from the girl as requested.
"What!?" Alla and Ivy exclaimed in sync, glancing between the three professionals for an explanation. How could that be possible? Would that mean Ivy had been cursed? For like most of her life? What was the curse's effect? Who put it on her?
"You said her last name was Stark, right?" Sam asked Alla gently as he examined the offending patch of skin from as far away as he could to avoid upsetting the girl's sensitive nose even further.
"My husband's last name, yes. Why?" Ivy answered instead, refraining herself from trying to scratch off the crisscrossing lines of her back. Now that she was so aware of it, she swore she could feel it itch.
Disappointment flashed across Dean's face at the news that the girl was married, gone before anyone could have had a chance to notice.
"Does he by any chance have relatives named Don and Maggie?" Dean cut in, his voice full of accusation, even though both the last name and those given names were fairly common.
"Uhm… I think he has an uncle named Don, and if I remember correctly his wife is named Maggie, but I have never met them. They don't come to family reunions or anything. Aaron only mentioned them in passing once," the brunette replied unsurely but truthfully, almost looking pleadingly at Dean to make this go away. He seemed like the guy who would have an answer or solution to everything, or if he didn't, he would sure as hell find one.
Sam and Dean exchanged glances again, and it was as if they could have a whole conversation without any words spoken. Everything was suspicious about this. And everything fit. Dean never mentioned that Don and Maggie were supposed to be husband and wife. And there was the fact that they were absent from "family" functions. They had to keep their never aging bodies a secret. Ivy's husband could be a distant descendant though. And it would explain why they would help him with a spell in the first place… that is of course if he was involved, but Dean's gut told him that he had to be the culprit.
"Are they witches?" Mary inquired, connecting the dots pretty quickly too.
"Yes," Dean confirmed, sighing before continuing. "Petty and spiteful, but old and powerful witches… Dammit. We should have killed them when we had the chance."
His last words were directed at Sam, his displeasure and guilt over the situation clearly written all over him. Alla was starting to see he was the angsty one in the family.
"That was five years ago, Dean. Ivy said this had been on her for like forever, it wouldn't have made a difference," Sam tried to calm him down with words of reason, rounding Ivy's bed to join his pacing brother.
"Killing the witch sometimes reverses the curse," the older brother pointed out, his voice rising with each sentence he spoke.
"And sometimes it makes it permanent. Let's not get hasty, and research before we jump into this," the taller hunter pointed out. "Plus, I still have Koschei to take care of."
"Wait. What do you mean you? Isn't Dean going with you?" Mary spoke up, alarmed by that news.
"Uhm… no, the spell only lets the one giving the blood sacrifice through," Sam explained apologetically. That meant him since he was the only – albeit previously – married male in their bunch. It working even for him was speculation on their part too.
"Alright, enough of the chitchat. Let's go over to your room, Mom, and set everything up," Dean tried to usher the hunters out of the room, assuming that Mary was only over here for the duration of the wait.
"This is my room," the blond hunter stated, looking perplexed.
"You let civilians you didn't even know bunk with you?" he asked incredulously and was quite honestly pissed. Saving them was one thing, but dragging them along on the hunt? What the fuck?
"Actually, she bunked with us," Alla cut in, getting kind of tired of the back and forth between them. And why was Dean even grilling Mary about this? They honestly handled her like she was their child and not the opposite.
"And warded the room once I brought the girls back here after rescuing them from a farmhouse about twenty miles north from here," Mary filled in the rest of the story with irritation, her tone softening before continuing. "I couldn't leave them unprotected given that Koschei could still be on the prowl."
Dean drew his mom to the side after giving Alla a grouchy look for meddling in their conversation and trying to keep his voice low to have some semblance of privacy. "You could have just sent them home wherever they live. Clearly, this motel room isn't their home!"
"Does Ivy look like she is in any state to travel? She has been ill since yesterday," the female hunter asserted. Why does she have to defend her decisions to them?
"You know whispering isn't one of your strong suits. If you have a problem with us, just book another room and go on your merry way," Alla commented dryly, her arms crossed over her chest as she stared sharply at Dean.
Seeing her expression, Sam tried to disguise a low chuckle as a cough, imagining that his face must look something similar when he was unhappy with Dean.
"Dean, had I separated from them, would you have spotted that curse on her? No. So stop fussing," Mary reasoned, with a calming hand on her son's shoulder.
Dean rubbed his face in frustration.
They were not getting it.
"I… I just don't want to put them in danger, okay? Haven't they been through enough? We have never done a spell of this kind before. We don't know what Sam will be facing over there!" he expressed his concerns, his voice noticeably less offensive and more on the concerned side.
Alla's stance softened at that. They were the good guys, she saw that. Just hardened by the tragedies witnessed on the job for years, and probably the memories of people they lost too.
"Dean, it's going to be okay. It's just a portal. I jump in, kill a freaking rabbit and a duck, and I'm coming right back," the younger hunter insisted, wishing a little that Dean would stop being so overprotective. This wasn't a suicide mission.
"Unless you need to smash the egg against Kostiy's forehead to kill him, then you need to hunt him down too," Alla remarked absentmindedly.
Sam gave her small smile, sort of shy but mostly amused by the fact that she had just as much trivia in her head as he himself did. Also, the way she was unable to stop herself from blurting them out when they applied either.
"What if Koshchei, or whatever his friggin' name is, shows up on the island to defend his ridiculous treasure chest?" Dean worried some more, but he had a valid point.
Sam just kind of shrugged his shoulders with a long-suffering sigh. Then he would deal with it. Not like they had any other options.
