Loving the reviews guys. 11 on the latest chapter. Love you all, but can we have a few more? Please?
"Jilly's an ex-Marine, just like your dad." Cait told Dean and Sam. "So's Ammo, but I'm guessing you already figured that one out."
"Hey," Jilly piped up. "There's no such thing as an ex-Marine. Once a Marine, always a Marine."
Cait nodded. "Yeah, they're kind of like FFA in that way."
"Caiti, I told you about comparing Marines to FFA." Jilly said as she leaned forward and pointed a finger at her cousin.
Cait got to her feet. "What are you gonna do Jilly? Punch me out again? Listen, that was pretty funny when we were boxing in that marketplace in Beirut, but here it's not so hilarious."
Jilly rolled her eyes. "Hey, we only started fighting because Torque had just hit on that Muslim woman and we were trying to cause a distraction so he wouldn't be beheaded by the lynch mob after him."
"Wait," Dean interrupted. "Beirut? Your cousin's a Marine?"
Cait nodded and opened her mouth to answer more fully, but Jilly cut her off.
"Damned straight. And I used to back her little Squid behind up when she'd run off to kill the nearest man-eating creature around." Jilly said with a smile. "I owed her for the time she pulled the lead out of my shoulder."
Dean and Sam gaped at the two young women. They noticed for the first time the circular scar on Jilliana's right shoulder. Apparently both women were tougher than they looked.
"What else was I supposed to do for my baby cousin?" Cait said with a wide smile. "Leave it in? Besides, it was kind of my job at the time."
"Your job? Didn't she just say you're ex-Navy?" Sam asked, leaning forward.
Cait nodded and picked up another cookie. "Marines don't have their own medics. So they have Navy Hospital Corpsmen attached to their platoons. I just happened to get attached to the kid's group."
"I'm eighteen months younger than you Caiti, that's it." Jilly said quickly. "I took down that tik-tik for you so that you could stab its Aswang."
"Aswang?" Dean asked. "Tik-tik?"
"An aswang is a human-impersonator native to the Phillipines. They work as butchers during the day and suck the blood of people at night." Jilly told them. "They're only recognizable by their blood-shot eyes (due to lack of sleep from hunting all night), and that at night they walk with their feet facing backwards."
"A tik-tik is its familiar. It makes the noise in the distance that its named after to make people think that the aswang is far away when in actuality it is probably right next to you." Cait added. "Jilly took out the tik-tik and I had to do the gross job of taking out the aswang."
"It wasn't as bad as that bunyip in Australia though." Jilly reminded her.
"Bunyip?" Dean and Sam asked in unison.
"Think like a creature the size of a sabertooth lion, but with reptile scales and short tusks on either side of its mouth." Jilly told them. "They mostly hunt down women for food. They sound like dinosaurs when they roar."
"You killed one of those?" Dean asked Cait.
She shrugged. "It wasn't that hard after I'd gotten on its back. The hard part was letting it charge Jill so that I could jump onto it. Once I was on top I just stabbed through its spinal cord with a bowie knife."
The Winchesters stared at the pair in shock and admiration.
"You're one amazing woman Cait Statham." Dean told her as they closed the door of her bedroom behind them.
"Really, you think so?" Cait asked him as she backed against the wall and pulled him by his shirt against her.
He smiled and bent his head to kiss her thoroughly. She practically purred as he ran his hands down her back to cup her buttocks.
"Did I ever tell you how much I enjoyed our time against the motel room wall that first night?" She whispered when they pulled apart for air.
He raised his eyebrows. "Really? Maybe we should go for a repeater?"
"Sounds good to me." She told him as she threaded her fingers through his hair and pulled his head back down to hers.
Sam returned to the living room to find that Cait and Dean had disappeared. He turned to Jilly who was sitting on the couch eating a cookie.
"Where did my brother head off to?" He asked after a moment, having a hard time talking to Jilliana when her legs were crossed like that.
"They're off having sex I'd guess." Jilly told him with a shrug. "I'm guessing I don't have to ask if he's the father of the daughter she's carrying."
He shook his head and sat down next to her on the couch. "No, I think you already know the answer to that one."
"How'd you get into hunting?" She asked after a minute.
"A demon killed my mother, and Dad has spent all the time since then on a mission to hunt it down and destroy it himself." Sam told her, unsure why exactly he was confiding in her. "He trained Dean and I to fight the supernatural. One day Dad disappeared and Dean came and got me the day before I got into law school. We've been hunting together again ever since."
Jilly nodded. "Cait and I just sort of fell into it. Or rather she fell into it and eventually I joined her for awhile to watch her back. When we got back to the States we both gave it up. Then whatever it was took away everyone but me from Cait and she dove back in head first."
"You didn't join her again?" Sam asked, feeling aware of every movement and breath she made.
"She wouldn't let me, said that one of us had to have a normal life." She shrugged her shoulders slowly. "I became a social worker and she became someone I almost didn't recognize. It was as if there was nothing left for her to really live for, like she was just wishing that she'd get killed in one of her battles."
"You said she pulled a bullet out of your shoulder?" He asked quietly.
Jilly sighed. "There was an ambush a couple of weeks before we left the Middle East. Someone had tipped off a group of insurgents to the position of our camp. I was on guard duty at the time and got shot."
Sam winced and Jilly rubbed her right shoulder absently.
"Cait saved me, pulled me out of the way and shouted an alert to the camp." She smiled bitterly. "If she hadn't had called out and acted so quickly we would've all died that day. Instead onlyCowboy and Torque didn't make it, everyone else survived."
"Wow." Was all Sam could think of to say.
"After what happened the day before we left Iraq and then what happened to Uncle Jake, Cait was nearly destroyed. To be honest, I'm glad she got pregnant after sleeping with your brother. It gave her a reason to go on, helped her see that her life wasn't over."
He blew out a breath. "I had no idea. Cait always seems so happy and carefree, she enjoys life to the fullest." He said quietly.
"She does now. Its what she was like before everything, up until the ambush and the weeks of fighting afterwards." She looked over at him, meeting his eyes for the first time. "You won't tell her I told you will you? She doesn't like me interfering."
Dean and Cait lay on her bed, him on his back and her half on top of him, her head lying on his chest. He was absently playing with her hair as she was silently thinking. She looked up at him, resting her chin on his pectorals.
"Dean, have you ever killed?" She asked him quietly, almost afraid to broach the subject.
He shrugged. "Course I have, I'm a hunter."
She shook her head. "No, that's not what I meant. I meant have you ever killed a person?" She watched the face she considered the epitome of gorgeous, wanting to and yet not wanting to tell him everything
He nodded slowly as his hand slipped down to her bare back and drew lazy circles between her shoulder blades. "Once." He spoke slowly, as if trying to figure out how to break it to her. "A demon was about to kill Sammy, so I shot him, even though I knew that he was just possessing a human. The man I killed really had nothing to do with wanting to hurt Sammy, but he wasn't the one in control."
Cait cupped his jaw in her hand and rubbed his cheek with her thumb. "Dean, that wasn't your fault. The demon took away his choices, and it didn't deserve mercy or warning. You were just protecting your baby brother, I get that."
He smiled slightly, then stared down into her emerald eyes searchingly. "Have you? Killed a human I mean?"
She nodded sadly. "I was in a warzone for three years, but I was just the medic. I had been issued a service weapon and had been trained in how to use it and several other weapons along with hand-to-hand fighting. But I'd also been trained to melt into the background in a firefight, not to engage."
He nodded, but didn't speak, knowing that she had to explain it fully.
"We were ambushed three weeks before we finally left the Middle East. That's when Jilly was shot, along with Torque and Cowboy. All three of them were on guard duty and had been taken out by a sniper." She lay her head back down on his chest but kept talking.
"I'd gone out to see if Jilly wanted some of the candy Dad had sent me. I came out just in time to see her fall when the bullet hit her. I hit the alarm and screamed for help." She blew out a breath over his skin. "I had to keep a hand on her shoulder to keep her from bleeding out. I was so scared that she was going to die."
"She's your cousin, of course you'd be scared." He reassured her.
"I shot six men that night. Six people in nine desperate minutes." She felt moisture run down his cheeks and land on his bare skin. "And through it all I never stopped to think that they were people, all I did was point and shoot until no more came at me and Jill."
Instead of continuing, she kissed him. He realized that she needed a way to get out all her tension and all the other remaining emotions from that night she was scared to even talk about. A way to exorcise any mental demons in a way of speaking.
This chapter was hard to write, please repay my efforts with reviews. The longer the better.
Wow, some actual research was done for this chapter. It's been awhile:
"Once a Marine, always a Marine." Actually this is true. There is no such thing as ex-Marines. If you retire than you're a 'former Marine' but the only ex-Marine wasLee Harvey Oswald.
'Swabby' is another term for a squid/sailor/Navy personnel.
The info on Marines and Hospital Corpsmen is correct and from my CO Chief Moffet. Out of the 7 or so recruits at the last meeting of the Delayed Entry Program (DEP), 4 of them are heading off to be HCs. HCs wear Marine uniforms but have Navy insignia, this way enemies cannot tell them apart, but the Marines can. They all have my undying respect and admiration. They are also in more danger than you can imagine.
Aswangs and Tik-tik are creatures from Philipino lore. Think like their version of the vampire.
Bunyips are Australian monsters, lots of theories abound on them. Info on Aswangs, Tik-Tik and Bunyips on wikipedia.
Jilly is pushed in front of the computer.
Jilly (cheerily): Hi everybody. First time a OC has been allowed to talk in the A/N of this story. So anyway, please review.
Jilly wanders away to talk to Cait.
Sam sneaks in front of the computer.
Sam (whispering): Hey, can you guys do me a favor, can you write some good reviews? Because I was thinking...
Dean pops up out of nowhere.
Dean (loudly): What are you doing?
Sam jumps and looks around nervously.
Sam (stammers): N...nothing.
Dean (with insight): Oh, I see... Sammy's trying to get laid! Good for you man.
Jilly appears back on screen.
Jilly (curiously): What's good for Sam?
Sam shakes his head desperately at Dean.
Sam (too quickly): Nothing! Nothing at all! I'm just gonna go now.
He disappears off screen.
Jilly (turns to Dean): What was that about?
Dean (laughing): Go ask him.
Jilly follows Sam off screen.
Dean (still laughing): Ah, I am a bad bad man.