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Chapter 9 - Clear The Area
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Knock, knock... are you alone? You find your way back down. Low light... mercury morning... Slowly... darling... nobody means anymore to me than you
No one's out here and I was not followed.
Love, love... you're already home.
Party's over and you don't look so good.
And I'll keep the area clear... please clear the area.
When you find your way back down... in one piece.
Then I'll just be waiting here... right here.
No need to stay as it's always nothing.
But your eyes tell a whole other story... and I feel the weight of the world.
Won't talk... Won't try... just move...
It's too still in your sadness.
Cry... give up... it's okay...
You've just got to trust me.
If you're in... baby then I'm in (into this)... with you, always.
Careful... close to the edge... (You're scaring me)
Fall in to my arms.... (where did it all fall?)
Fall... into love... love...
Imogen Heap - Clear The Area
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Rika could feel her heart racing, her pulse picking up its pace as she ran full slayer speed across the cemetery. She loved running at full speed, and she got to do it way too seldom. It was a chilly night, but she didn't give it much notice. She had waited until she was sure Sam and Dean were sleeping to get dressed and sneak out of the room she was sharing with them. After Sam had found out about her nightmares, she had no reason not to share a room with the brothers. However, it hadn't been easy to nudge herself out of Sam's arms without waking him, but she had succeeded. The prophetic dream Rika had had was still bothering her, and she needed a good fight to get her mind off of it. Sam probably wouldn't have approved, but she didn't want to ask him and give him a chance to talk her out of it, so instead she snook out in the middle of the night. At the moment she was chasing a vampire that she (fortunately for her, not so fortunately for him) had stumbled upon shortly after approaching the cemetery. Once he had realized who she was, he had started running. But she wasn't going to let him get away, she couldn't.
The adrenaline was rushing through her veins as she caught up with the vampire and jumped him from behind, making them both fall to the ground. She was happy to be up against a simple vamp, it had been a while since the last time. Sam and Dean were always picking different cases, and she kind of missed the vampires, no matter how messed up that sounded. It was the slayer nature, and all she knew when she went up against a vampire was that it was going to lose and she was going to win. There was no question about it, or so she had decided. The outcome couldn't be any different. When she was fighting she was fully concentrated as she had learned to shut out the outside world. It gave her an advantage.
She got into a struggle with the vampire on the ground as they were kicking and punching at each other. Rika had the upper hand in the beginning, until the vampire managed to get in a good kick in her stomach, and she flew up slamming against a tree nearby. She huffed a bit at the sharp impact and the sudden pain that hit her. The vampire got up on its feet, and so did Rika, while ignoring the pain in her shoulder. It was probably dislocated, once again. She seemed to be and expert at managing to get her shoulder dislocated. She was ready as the vampire launched itself at her.
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It was almost dawn as Rika slowly made her way back to the motel. The fight with the vampire had taken longer than she had estimated, and had been way more difficult than she had estimated. It had turned out that the vampire had a friend. He was apparently an old vampire as he was a good fighter. She wondered where the hell all vampires picked up those martial art skills. After a long, tiring fight, Rika had finally managed to take out the two vampires with the scythe. It was a gray morning, and a slight mist masked the surroundings. "Mercury colored morning", Rika thought as she walked towards the motel room. Normally she would have enjoyed this morning since it was beautiful, but she couldn't help but to hope that Sam and Dean hadn't woken up and noticed she was gone. There'd be hell to go through with the brothers if they had, they'd be pacing around the motel room worried sick by now. Especially Sam. Her heart started racing and her entire body started tingling as she thought of Sam. At the moment however, her only concern was to sneak into the bathroom in order to get herself stitched up before the Winchesters woke up, if they hadn't already.
When Rika silently opened the motel room door and walked in, she almost sighed of relief. The brothers were still sleeping in their beds, just as she had left them prior to midnight. When she started walking across the room, one of the floorboards squeaked slightly. Rika cursed in Swedish in her thoughts and stopped. Dean mumbled a bit in his sleep and shifted slightly in the bed, but the brothers didn't wake up. With slow steps and a bit calmer, Rika walked to the bathroom, opened the door, got inside and locked the door behind her. She didn't want to risk getting walked in on.
A quick glance in the mirror made her realize her injuries were pretty bad, she looked like hell. She would have a really difficult time concealing this from Sam and Dean, especially Sam. She had a nasty, red cut on her forehead, which was her biggest problem. She pulled some grass out of her hair and then looked down at her shirt, which was soaked in blood. She had scratched herself on a branch that the two vampires had thrown her against. Her shoulder was still dislocated as she hadn't had the time to pop it back into place, and with her luck she probably had a broken rib or too as well. She was just thankful she didn't bruise easily, otherwise she'd already be black and blue all over. She had to pull her leather jacket off in order to attend to her wounds, and she dreaded it. But she knew it had to happen like when you pulled off a band-aid, fast and without hesitating. The first sleeve wasn't difficult, but when she came to the one covering her dislocated shoulder, she had to bite her lip not to scream in pain. It hurt more than she had anticipated, and afterwards she was breathing heavily, trying to get through the pain. Rika knew she wouldn't be able to pull off her t-shirt as well, so she decided to cut it off, it was ruined anyway. She'd have to hide it and throw it away before Sam noticed the bloody t-shirt.
When she pulled off the broken t-shirt, she let out a tiny gasp in pain, unintentionally. She took a glance at the wound on her side. It was long and looked nasty, but thankfully it wasn't very deep. With her enhanced healing ability, it'd be completely gone by the next day. She'd just have to avoid Sam seeing her without a shirt until it was gone, and it would probably be a very difficult task. Just as she looked in the mirror again, noticing that her eyes had teared up, she heard someone knock on the door. She cursed again, and tried to sound as normal and as calm as possible.
"Yeah?" She quickly realized how broken and raspy her voice was, another reason to damn herself.
It was Sam on the outside. "Rika? What're you doing? You okay? I thought I heard some noises."
"Damn it", Rika thought just before replying to Sam. "Yeah, I'm fine, I was just going to take a shower before Dean wakes up and hogs it for three hours." She tried sounding as normal as possible, but she couldn't quite pull it off.
"You sure you're fine?", he asked softly and she could hear the worry in his voice. "Why don't you open the door?"
"Nah, I'm okay, really. Just go back to bed."
He was silent at first, but when he spoke again he sounded more determined. "Rika, open the door now, or I'll break it down." Somehow, he knew. She wasn't sure how, but it was like he had some sixth sense.
"Fine, just wait a sec."
She took a quick glance around the room, hoping she had left a clean shirt there somewhere, to hide her injuries with. She cursed silently again as she realized the bathroom was empty, typically her luck. She had no other option but to open the bathroom door in her current state. She quickly gathered the stuff next to the sink into a little pile, washed away as much of the blood from her face and body as she possibly could and hid the cut on her forehead with her hair and then walked up to the door. She took a deep breath before opening up. She just cracked the door open a little, so he wouldn't be able to get a clear view of anything else than her face.
"See, perfectly fine", she smiled at him.
"You don't look fine to me", he said as he scanned her face. His eyes were widened and worried and he reached out his hand to pull her hair away from her forehead, thus seeing her cut. "What the hell did you do? You're hurt!"
He forced his way into the bathroom and gasped as he saw her in nothing but her bra and jeans, with a wound on her stomach, a dislocated shoulder, a cut in her forehead and various small cuts and bruises all over. The knuckles on her left hand were injured from some punching, and they were bleeding.
"Jesus", he got out before he found the medical kit and rushed back to her, and took her hand, starting to clean the cuts on her knuckles as gently as he could. It hurt and stung so she bit her lip not to scream or gasp and tilted her head slightly backwards, trying to be strong and ignore the pain she was in.
"What happened?", he asked with his calmest and softest voice, but she could tell he was really worried and angry on the inside. It was shining through.
"I fought some vampires", she replied. Rika thought it would be better to just be honest, he had already caught her.
Sam looked up at her with shock and sadness in his eyes. "And they did this? You don't usually look like this after a fight! This is really bad, you know that right?"
"Yeah, I kind of noticed. It was more difficult than I had expected. There was just one at first, but it turned out he had a friend."
"Why are you even sneaking out to fight vampires all alone in the middle of the night?", he asked as wrapped her hand up in bandages. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I don't know. You just have to trust my judgment, okay?" Rika looked down, she had no idea what to tell him. She didn't want to worry him, and she knew she had to do something about this. She needed some kind of closure in order to go back to her old self. And that's when she knew what she had to do.
"I think I need to pay Hugh's grave a visit. I think it's about time."
Sam just looked up at her and nodded. He understood. She had some ghosts to chase away from her before she could fully devote herself to anything else, like for example their relationship. He loved her so much, and all he wanted was for her to be happy. After that they were silent as he moved to put her shoulder back in place. When he did it really hurt and Rika screamed a bit, but he quickly took her into his arms to hold as she breathed through the pain.
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