daikininz says:Tell Ulfric that if he doesn't lay off the cliffhangers & produce a happy ending I'm going to fast-post him a vial of myxomatosis

Leahelisabeth says: but I'm already shipping the love story of Kerryn and Andrew where he saves her from a horde of Croats and she saves him from the madness of his grief.

Denizens; they has teh pushy.


Chapter Twelve

Dean let out an unhappy yap as one of the Croats managed to sink its teeth into his leg; irritably, he extended a hind foot, kicked it away, and stomped its head.

Who the fuck pulls the legs off these things instead of the head? He snarled, rounding on his brother. Was that you?

Sam just returned the snarl, and deliberately turned his back. Throwback.

Runt, Dean shot back.

Serves you right for dividing your attention, gruffed Bobby, before Dean could take his brother to task, You got one ear on your den-sire, and not on what's right behind you. Your den-dam taught you better'n that.

Dean rumbled unhappily, knowing that Bobby was right.

The mopping up continued until it became clear that the swarm was all but destroyed. Dean was decapitating one last gnashing zombie when a particularly savage roar sounded from the direction of the bus.

Dropping the oozing carcass, he let out a bellowing roar of his own, and shot off in the direction of the sound.

With an anxious yelp, Sam bounded after him.

Bobby let out a demanding snarl of his own, then shifted back to human. "Sam! SAM! Balls," he muttered.

"What's set himself off?" asked Jody, putting a bullet in a Croat that was still twitching.

"We got a new arrival decided to go get her kid, I think," he replied, "Only I think she's about to get herself killed. Damn it," there was real sadness in his voice, "Damn it, I was hopin' we might avoid this, we can't afford to lose either of 'em…"

With a yelping cry, Sabine realised what was happening, and followed Sam. RJ dropped the zombie he'd just torn apart, and sped off after her.

"God's tits," Bobby growled, "Can you finish up here? This is pack business, and it's gonna get ugly."

"Stay out of the way, huh?" Jody suggested, "You're too old and cranky to challenge for top dog."

Bobby sighed at the worry behind the joke. "I just wanna make sure that only one of 'em ends up dead," he assured her, trying not to let his voice shake, "Just make sure all these sumbitches are properly non-viable, then go see Fic."

With a shrug, he shifted back to his wolf form, and followed the others, his heart breaking with the thought that he was going to lose somebody, and hating himself for praying fervently that it would be Dean who walked away.

...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...

Dean's heart sank as he took in the scene before him. The sprawled wreckage of Croats, torn carelessly to shreds, littered the ground. Kerryn cowered against the stack of crates protecting the bus, whilst Andrew, covered from head to foot in gore from the zombies and blood from his own wounds, prepared to attack. He let out another bellow, and shot across the space between them, barreling into the older wolf and carrying them across the ground in a rolling tangle.

He rolled to his feet, and saw his den-sire do the same. Andrew came up snarling; there was no recognition in his eyes, just rage.

Dean felt compelled to try. You are my den-sire, he whuffed gently, You are my den-sire, mate of my den-dam, and my friend. Enough.

The noise the older wolf made was a chastisement, a snarling correction given to a pup by an adult.

Dean shifted back to human, and tried again. "This is not you, man," he said softly, his voice catching in his throat, "This is not you."

Andrew sat back on his haunches, growling in inarticulate threat.

"Don't do this," Dean pleaded, "I don't wanna do this. But I will." He gestured to the other wolf's flanks. "You're hurt, dude. You weren't watching your back. Just, just stand down, okay? We've won. The Croats are dead."

The only reply was a guttural, rumbling threat, promising bloody violence. Get out of my way, Young.

"This is not what'd she'd want!" Dean hissed desperately, "You're my den-sire! This is not what my den-dam would want! Are you listening to me, Andrew? This is not what Ronnie would want!"

With a final roar of defiance and challenge, Andrew shot forward.

Dean shifted to his wolf form, and with an answering bellow – I am Alpha! – he went in for the kill.

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Kerryn felt herself grabbed roughly and let out a little shriek as she was dragged upright. She turned to see Sam, still in wolf form, pulling her away from the two fighting wolves. A detached part of her brain marvelled at the way the long muzzle could actually pull such a recognisably bitchy expression.

"What… what the hell's going on?" she shrieked. Sam shifted back to human, and continued to drag her back. "Ow! What's happening?"

"What does it look like?" Sam almost shrieked back, "What does it look like? They're fighting, that's what's happening! Andrew's finally lost it, and they're… they're fighting…" with surprise, she saw that there were tears in his eyes.

"But… why?" she asked, bewildered.

"This is pack business," growled a voice behind her. She turned to see Bobby, with a face like thunder. Behind him, one of the younger wolves, a female one, buried her face against the shoulder of the male – RJ – and cried like a wounded puppy. "This is how it's settled."

Kerryn turned back to the two werewolves who were attacking one another ferociously, using teeth and claws. Blood was flowing.

"What?" Kerryn gaped at him, then up at Sam. "What's being settled?"

"Andrew's just challenged Dean," Sam told her, "He's openly challenged the authority of the Alpha. And now, they have to settle it."

"But… they're killing each other!" she yelped in horror, watching Dean dodge a disembowelling strike from the other wolf before darting in and almost managing to slice Andrew's throat open. "They're… I'm safe, now! You can't let him kill Dean instead of me! You have to stop them!"

"We can't," Sam growled, "This is pack business. It has to end here."

"What, when one of them is dead?" she shrieked incredulously.

"Yes," he answered woodenly.

"Dear God, I wanted to avoid this," Bobby growled despairingly, "I hoped we'd find a way to bring him back."

"But… but…" Kerryn gaped at them, "But that's… completely stupid!"

"It's pack business!" Bobby snapped.

"What if Andrew kills Dean?" she demanded.

"Then I'll tear his fucking head off," snarled Sam.

"Really? Well, that's intelligent!" she shouted, the stress and terror of the previous hours, the previous months, the horror of the whole situation, finding its way out in bewildered anger at what she perceived as utter stupidity. "He's your brother, he's your leader here, and he might get killed, but you're gonna wait and see?" She looked around, and her eyes fell on the other wolves, who were standing and watching, Sabine still keening into RJ's shoulder. "With their kids standing there, and watching? There's enough of you to stop it! You can't just let them kill each other in some stupid pissing contest to see who has the biggest dick!"

Frankie shifted back to human. "Look, I know it must be hard to understand," she began.

"You're damned right it's hard to understand!" shouted Kerryn, "Aren't enough people dead already? Haven't we lost enough already? What's the point? What's the damned point of getting somebody else killed?"

Her eyes fell on her gun, dropped carelessly on the ground. With a wrench, she pulled away from Sam, scooped it up clumsily, and fished in her pocket for her last magazine. She strode towards the wrestling werewolves, and before anybody could protest, she took a wincing aim, then put four shots into the ground at their feet, bellowing as loudly as either of them,

"THIS IS FUCKING STUPID, YOU MORONS, SO FUCKING STOP IT, YOU FUCKING FUCKERS!"

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Dean's attention was completely on the fight: he didn't register the presence of the rest of his pack, and he didn't acknowledge the sadness of what he had to do. It was something his den-dam had taught him.

"You have to let the wolf drive," Ronnie had told him, whilst patching him up after the first Hunt he'd tackled after she had bitten him, "You can't let your human mind hang around, worrying about collateral damage, worrying about who might see you, worrying about consequences. You worry about that before, or after. Once you have to fight, you don't dick around. Get in there, and kill."

"You make it sound so simple," he'd grunted, wincing as she wielded the peroxide.

"It is simple," she shrugged, "For a werewolf, for us, it is that sample. Kill, or be killed. You saw your brother? It's nuts; College Boy is happy just to let the red mist come down, but Mr G.E.D. here won't switch his mind off." A hunt should be completed quickly, she added, using the familiar form of address that an Elder used when instructing a pup.

I am not a pup, he'd gruffed back. Or a Young, Old Female.

Watch your tone, she had rumbled back in amusement, You are not Alpha. Yet.

"Sam has a lot of anger in him," Dean confided. `

"So do you," Ronnie had replied, "But you're more afraid of it than he is. You're more worried that you won't just be able to use the wolf; you're worried that you'll be good at it. That you'll enjoy it."

"What are you now, my shrink?" he'd snapped more petulantly than he'd intended.

I am your den-dam, she'd gruffed without anger. "I'm an Old Female who's not as dumb as she is ugly," she cracked a smile, "And it's what will make you Alpha one day." It is the way of things, she added, when she saw his face.

"Yeah, right, like you'd ever do what I told you," he griped, wincing as the disinfectant found another cut. "Or Andrew. Mr I-Always-Get-The-Last-Potato-Pancake would just flip me off."

"The day may come when you have to call him out," she remarked casually, simply stating a fact, "Just promise me you'll make sure it's over something more worthwhile than a potato pancake. Because if one of you kills the other over a kartofelpuffer, I will shoot the other one on the grounds of stupidity unbecoming."

"Okay, I promise, no challenging my den-sire over a potato pancake," Dean promised, "But if it happens to be one of your apple and blueberry pies, his ass is mine… OW!"

He had replayed that conversation a number of times since Andrew had been lost to madness, but right there, and right then, he was in the moment, kill or be killed. The grief would come later.

Assuming he won, of course. His den-sire was older, but he had more practice; he'd been trained up in Werewolf 101 by the best, and he most definitely didn't have any problem with letting the wolf take over. The fight was brutal, vicious and unrelenting.

He almost managed to get his teeth into Andrew's throat, and felt claws rake along his flank, opening wounds and aiming for a disemboweling Twisting away, he turned and slashed for his opponent's stomach, then jumped backwards as four-inch claws barely missed his own throat. The old wolf was too damned cunning to leave him any real opening, so it was going to be a knock-down drag-out slugging match. They'd be lucky if one of them was still alive when it ended…

Both brawling wolves suddenly jumped apart as shots sounded right next to them. Incredibly, a human – Kerryn, the newcomer – stood glaring up at them. With a start, he realized that she was shaking with as much anger as fear. Both of them gawped at her, utterly stunned by the human intervention in pack business.

When she had their attention, she reached up and slapped Andrew as hard as she could across the muzzle. The older wolf yipped in surprise.

"Where the fuck do you get off?" she screeched, her voice on the edge of hysteria while she shook her hand in pain, "Ow! Ow! Just where the fuck do you get off, you idiot?"

Shifting back to human, Dean tried to steady his voice. "Kerryn, right now I need you to…"

She whirled, and hit him too. It was a clumsy and unpractised strike, but it had enough rage and hysteria behind it to make it hurt. Andrew yipped again, his eyes bugging as widely as Dean's.

"Shut up!" she shrieked, her voice cracking, "Just shut up! You can take your damned pissing contest, and shove it up your fucking ass, you jerk! This is so, so, fucking STUPID!"

Kerryn turned back to Andrew, her teeth bared as the tears started. "You think you're the only one who's lost somebody?" she demanded, absolutely irate, "You think you're the only one who misses somebody? And now, you want to wallow around in it?" Her face went bright red. "You selfish prick! Your world came crashing down. Well, boo fucking hoo! What gives you the right to, to, to, just lose it, when everybody else has to try to keep it together! The world's going to hell, there are zombies, actual ZOMBIES, trying to take over the planet, the entire frigging world, and people are being killed, and turned into more zombies, and there are real monsters out there, and, and, and, somehow, we're trying to keep it together and not get exterminated, and you, the best you can do, is try to kill me, then try to kill this guy? In front of your daughter? Your own child? You sonofabitch! You selfish, thoughtless sonofabitch! You know what? I don't care if he tears your fucking head off!" She was sobbing in earnest. "I don't care! In fact, I hope he tears your fucking head off! Go ahead and kill each other! This is insane! This is insane! I don't even know what happened to him, whether they came back and ate him, or whether he turned into a Croat too, it's insane, it's all completely insane…"

She fell to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably, as the others stood looking at her stunned.

"Mom?"

That single syllable brought her up short. Like a marionette with the strings tensioned, she suddenly stood up, in control of herself again.

Todd stood, cautiously looking out from around the pile of crates with half a dozen other small, curious faces. "Mom?" he said again, making his way to her side.

Kerryn fixed a rictus smile onto her face, and wiped at her eyes. "I'm fine, honey," she quavered, "Really, I'm fine, I'm just a bit scared. It was scary, with all the zombies." She sniffed and took a deep breath. "Are you all right?"

"I'm not scared," Todd announced, looking around. "We had Andrew. He saved us."

Kerryn blinked; that was the longest sentence her boy had spoken in more than a year, she thought vaguely, as he walked fearlessly up to the blood-caked monster. Tentatively, he reached out a hand, and rested it on the werewolf's huge paw.

"We saw," he said, peering up at the wolf, "You were awesome."

Andrew let out a small, yipping sound, then backed up a couple of steps. He threw back his head, and let out the heart-rending howl he'd given the previous night, then without looking back, he headed for the fence at a limping lope, climbed over it, and disappeared.

"God's twirlin' tasselled tits and Satan's sandalwood-scented toilet tissue," breathed Bobby.

Dean shifted back to human, and turned to give Kerryn The Stare. Covered in blood – Croat, Andrew's and his own – he didn't look any less intimidating on two legs.

"We will talk later," he growled, "When we've cleaned up this shitfest, we will talk."

"I…" she began.

"Do not say another fucking word," he hissed, "Because, lady, if you do, I might just…"

"Oh, stick a cork in it!" she snapped at him, taking her son by the hand and heading for their cabin. "And put some clothes on, you exhibitionist!" she shouted over he shoulder as she stomped away.

"That's you told, bro," observed Sam as they watched, Dean gawping at Kerryn's retreating back. As she left, the sound of running feet came towards them.

"Dean! Dean!" Kelly came running at them, full tilt, "We need you at the gate!"

Dean whipped around. "Are there more?" he demanded, "Is there another wave?"

"No, no, it's not Croats," she assured him, "But Fergus was right; Zeus and Xena have caught a demon."


Calm down, depraved beldames, it's not Gratuitous Winchester Nudity; it's Narrative Consistency-Relevant Winchester Clotheslessness. Completely different.

Send Ulfric nice reviews to eat, because Reviews are the… uh… Gore Splattered Werewolf in the… um… they're the Cathartic Hissy Fit in the… er… the Astonishingly Hysterical Person Doing Their Nana at the… um, look. please send me reviews because the plot bunny likes them and they make me feel loved wanted and needed. Thank you.