Author's Note: Hi guys. I know, another short update, but this angsty, emotional stuff makes for rather slow going. I'll try to post again tomorrow. Enjoy.
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Reggie collected herself and forced her mind to cease dwelling on the painful things in her past she could not change. She focused on her recollection of that night. It was a dark, visceral whirlwind of adrenalin driven, fear ridden, horror and fury. She picked her way through the jagged mental fragments of memory, some were painfully sharp and clear, others blurred, dulled by the cushion of shock. Inside her head, she walked back through the shattered remnants of the church door, saw the demon, saw Dean, Sam, and the small figure that stood between them. She watched the difficult scenario play out with cool detachment, analyzing her own behaviour and feelings. She saw action, reaction, and very little thought, saw herself blindly seek and use that gift which she had been raised to believe was both her responsibility, and her proud legacy.
It was strange, in a way it was the one part of herself with which she was wholly comfortable. And the one part which she had never really taken apart and dissected, as was her wont. It was hard to describe it now, to divulge that very personal, private part of herself, that was also what she shared most easily. It was big and bright and warm inside her, and when she used it, when she called it forth and stroked away that nagging sliver of pain or doubt that her heart told her was lodged and biting in the soul of a stranger, she felt as though she had swallowed the sun. Healing others had helped Reggie to heal herself. How did she explain to Dean, that all she had done was feel.
"I don't really know exactly what I did that night. It was just" she shrugged,
"An instinct. I'd never done it before. But I'm a lot more in tune with my gift than Sam, or any of the other children you've encountered. I've known about mine, been using it, practically since I was in the womb. I wasn't alone, it was part of my heritage. Gran showed me, she taught me, how to control it, how to master it." S
he paused for a moment, trying to think of a way to make him understand. She'd never really had to explain it before. Gran had always just, known, and the rest of her family, well, they were content to accept that she was special, in an ephemeral, undefined way, and leave it at that. The strangest part was, she wanted to tell Dean, wanted him to understand.
"When Sam gets his visions, the power is out of his control, that's why they hurt him. He's just the conduit, it's using him, he's not using it. And as for the telekinesis"
"He told you about that!" Dean interrupted sharply, obviously surprised.
"Yes" she answered calmly.
"He thought maybe I could help him learn how to harness it."
"And can you?" asked Dean, hope sounded in his voice. Reggie shook her head.
"I don't know. It's not that similar to my power, and a lot of Sam's problem is self-denial and a lack of comfort and confidence. I think of my power as a gift, he thinks of his as a curse. Understandably so, considering that he thinks the demon somehow infected him with it, the night your mother died."
"But you don't" said Dean, reading the doubt in her tone.
"No" she answered,
"I don't. Gifts like ours can't be given. They simply are." She shrugged,
"I'm not saying that the demon might not have done something to bring what otherwise might have been a latent ability to the surface, but he's not the source of it. Gifts like ours" she gestured toward the sleeping Sam,
"They're part of a greater power."
"What" said Dean, "You mean like God?"
"No" she shook her head.
"God's far to simplistic a concept to embody what I'm talking about. It isn't good or bad. It can't be defined. It's more like, life, the power of life, everything that exists, in the entire universe. The natural" she looked at him,
"And the supernatural. It flows through everyone, some people are just" she searched for the right word,
"Open, I guess. So the power comes out in them, through them, in specific ways, and they are the ones who determine whether their power will be used for good or ill. At least, that's what my Grandmother taught me."
"Okay" said Dean, that made more sense to him than he'd been expecting. She wasn't telling him that the gifts she and Sam had were unconstrained maelstroms of power, that came with ironbound, predestined result clauses. The power didn't determine your destiny, you did, which was much more compatible with Dean's way of thinking.
"But that still doesn't explain how you stopped him, it, in the church, or how you stopped Hutchon in the apartment."
"Hmmm" she nodded,
"Hutchon was easier. My gift, it's all about emotion. I can sense what others are feeling" he fidgeted,
"And I can…share what I feel, and manipulate what others feel." He looked a little panicked.
"Not that I do, ever, in a negative way." She sighed,
"It's not as flashy or as overt as something like telepathy or telekinesis, but in the end, there is nothing more powerful. At least, not if you're human. Hutchon was the spirit of what had once been a man, and the soul is the ultimate source of our emotions, it's the part of us that feels, so, I just, let him feel some of what I was feeling. And I wasn't feeling very good at the time." Dean's teeth flashed whitely in the darkness.
"I remember" he said, but wasn't sidetracked,
"And with the demon?" Reggie sighed. That was a harder question to answer.
"I didn't hurt him, not the demon itself. It feels, but not the way we do. Its host did though. And that night" she shivered, remembering the killing rage that had swept through her,
"That night I had never, ever, felt that kind of fury before." She rubbed her arms unconsciously, on some level appalled at her own savageness.
"I wanted to hurt it, more than anything, I wanted to make it suffer. So I gathered it up, all the hurt, what I remembered of my grandmother's pain, my own," she looked at him, half apologetic,
"Yours, Sam's, and I fed it to him, squeezed him with it until the body couldn't take anymore and he had to flee."
"Wait" said Dean, "What do you mean, he had to flee?"
"Just what it sounds like, he couldn't stay in the body, it was collapsing around him, if he had, he'd have died with it." Dean's eyes flickered, they were as sharp and hard as emeralds.
"Are you telling me, that if we can somehow trap the demon inside a host, and kill it, he dies too?"
Reggie thought back, remembered precisely what she had felt from the demon in the moment before it had fled. It had felt fear, a mortal fear.
"Yes" she answered firmly, "That's what I'm telling you." She felt the sharp flare of excitement within him.
"Sonofabitch" whispered Dean. There it was, what he'd been looking for, a way to end it, a way to kill it. Well, half the way at least. He had no idea how they might manage to trap the demon inside a human body, and the host seemed to become more or less physically indestructible once the demon took up residence, but hot damn, it was something. He looked at Reggie,
"Do you think you could do it again?" he asked, but she was shaking her head before he finished.
"I don't think so. I don't know if I'd ever be able to feel quite that way again; anything less then that all consuming hate, I don't think it would be enough." He nodded.
"It doesn't matter. We've got a start." He grinned at her,
"You did good."
She knew it was a close to a thank you as she would get.