Author's Note: The title of the chapter is named after an Areosmith song, and I thought it fit pretty well.
"So...this is awkward," Nora commented, and Dean just glared. He shifted slightly from his position on the floor. He sat opposite Nora, his hands resting on his knees. Nora sat against the parallel wall, her legs crossed, extended out in front of her lazily, her toe tapping to an unknown beat as she discreetly mouthed the words. She blew a strand of hair out of her face once Dean shot her a contemptuous look, rolling her eyes before stopping her tapping.
They sat in silence for a long time, glancing over when they thought the other wasn't looking.
"So..." Nora started again, her voice breaking through the awkward silence. "You and Sam are brothers..." It was probably the lamest thing she could have said under the circumstances. Dean looked over at her, an eyebrow up, and shook his head at the absurdity if the comment. Nora held her hands up in mock-surrender. "I was just trying to break the ice." Dean hit his head against the wall, closing his eyes in frustration.
Why me? Dean thought. Really, what have I done to deserve this?
"Here I am," Dean said to himself, rolling his eyes. "Stuck in an elevator with the spawn of Satan herself."
"I like sarcastic guys, you know," Nora said, smiling.
"I wasn't being sarcastic," Dean replied. "I really do believe you are the spawn of Satan."
"They say chivalry is dead. You're just here to prove them wrong, aren't you?" Dean shot her the middle finger. "When you run out of smartass comments, always go for the backup plan of shooting someone the bird. Classy, Dean."
"That's what I'm here for," Dean replied with a sour smile. Nora rolled her eyes, and the occupants of the cramped elevator fell into silence once more. Dean was worried about Sam. Terrified, as a matter of fact. His hand itched to pick up the phone and call Sam, but he wasn't going to let Nora see the crack in his facade. He tried to think of a loophole of some sorts, an excuse he could use.
It turned out he didn't have to. Nora beat him to the punch with her own awkward conversation-starter.
"I'm not really a bitch, you know." Dean glanced up briefly from the spot on the floor he had his vision focused on.
"Well, someone get this girl an Oscar," he said, his voice over-dramatic in a mocking way. Nora just continued, pretending she hadn't heard him.
"And I don't think you hate me as much as you'd like to believe."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Let me put it this way," Dean said, leaning forward as he pulled out his gun. "If I was stuck in this elevator with you and two werewolves and this gun here," he waved the gun, "had two silver bullets in it, I'd shoot you...twice."
"And that's before I even piss you off," Nora said, her voice not giving away a trace of fear.
"If you ever piss me off, I'll let the werewolves maul you a little, too."
"You haven't killed me yet, have you?" she said matter-of-factly. Dean held the gun up once more.
"Sam has the one with the bullets."
"I'm pretty sure you could kill me without that."
"You're right," Dean said smugly. "I could."
"But you haven't."
"No," Dean said. "Not that I don't want to..."
"You really don't hate me that much," Nora said cooly. Dean hated when she did that; no matter what he would say to her, she would just sit there and take it. He wasn't sure to be pissed at her or admire her for it.
"Of course I don't," Dean retorted, layering the sarcasm on. "I'm just hiding the fact that I'm madly in love with you. Let's get down and dirty, right here in this elevator." Nora smiled.
"Alright," she said, calling his bluff. "Let's go." She broke into a sarcastic smile.
"Please," Dean said. "I'd rather make out with Sam than with you."
"Thanks for that mental picture, Dean."
"You wish."
"Think about it," Nora said. "What does that say about you?"
"I don't know what that says about me, but judging by your reaction, you're pretty turned-on right now, aren't you?" He cocked an eyebrow. Nora laughed, her eyes sparkling in the darkness.
"That's a good one," she said, flashing her crooked smile at him. She sighed and leaned back against the wall. "So why do you hate me so much?"
Dean cocked his head to the side. "You have to ask?"
"Yes," Nora said, her eyes narrowed.
Dean took a deep breath, swallowed, and fidgeted for a second, thinking about his answer. He was thinking about simply saying "Because you're a bitch," but he knew he could think of something better than that. It wasn't simply because she annoyed him, or because she constantly tried to remind him what a bad brother he was, or because she held details of what was going on with Sam over his head. And he might have been going against every rule he had set for himself by admitting what he did, but he didn't care what Nora thought of him.
"You're going to hurt him," he said quietly, causing Nora to purse her lips in confusion. She motioned with her hand for Dean to elaborate. "I see the way you look at him. I'm not stupid."
"I like him, Dean. I like him a lot," Nora said, still uncomprehending.
"I didn't mean in that way," Dean replied, his voice biting. "I know why you're here. You're here because they told you to, aren't you?" If Nora was acting, she was doing a damn good job of it. Her jaw slackened a bit in surprise, her eyes widening.
"You still think that's why I'm here?" she asked incredulously.
"If the shoe fits," Dean said, not backing down in the slightest. Nora, smiling a tiny bit as if she knew something he didn't, leaned forward, looking up at Dean through her lashes. Dean had to admit, she looked pretty hot.
"Dean," she said quietly, still grinning secretly. "Don't you think that if I was with them, I could have had him already? You of all people should know what I'm capable of." Her eyes twinkled mischeiviously, looking damn-near evil in the intense shadows. "If I was one of them, can you think of one good reason I would wait this long and give him more time to recover?" Dean glared right back at her, his jaw set.
"Because he's not recovering. He's not getting better, and you know it." Nora leaned back again.
"It's not something you get over easily."
"Like you would know what he went through," Dean spat, his voice raising. He started to shout, all of his anger pouring out in one sentence. "You have no idea what they did to him!"
"I never said--," Nora started to say.
"You have no idea what they put him through---"
"And neither do you!" Nora yelled over his voice. The remark effectively shut Dean up. Nora was officially pissed off, her eyes narrowed, her hands clenched at her sides. "Don't act like you understand what Sam went through. You weren't there, were you?"
"Shut up," Dean hissed.
"You weren't there when they did that to him--"
"Stop!"
"You weren't there when he killed that woman!"
"I said shut up!" The rage was boiling inside of him, ready to spill over.
"You weren't there when he destroyed my life and when they destroyed his for a second fucking time, when they ripped away what little humanity he had left!"
Dean shut up.
"And you," she said more quietly, but still furiously, now that she had Dean's attention, "weren't there when he tried to destroy his own life. And don't act like you understand what he's going through. Have you ever had a single moment where you weren't sure who you were, where you were, and if anybody was going to save you from what you knew people were going to do to you, and know that any second you could lose what made you you?"
Dean didn't respond. He was frozen, listening to her speech.
"Then you don't understand," she said simply, her brow furrowed furiously. "And don't," Nora continued, getting up onto her knees so she could lean closer to Dean across the small space between them, "act like you understand me or what I went through. And don't judge me because of what someone else did to me, because of what Sam did to me." Dean's stomach clenched, and he had to almost physically hold himself back from lunging at her. Nora's eyes were cold, dark, but with something that looked like despair somewhere deep down. When she spoke again, her voice was softer, sadder. "I lost everything that night. Everything. Because of your brother." Her bottom lip twitched a little, and Dean wondered what she was thinking. She glared for a second, her face about a foot away from Dean's. He didn't move, waiting for her to either snap and attack him or start crying.
Instead, though, she smiled humorlessly, and continued in a half-laughing voice. "But you know what, Dean?" she said, backing up a bit. "I don't blame him. I don't blame Sam for what he did that night. Do you know why?" She paused briefly, as if waiting for a response. "Because I'm a fucking good person, that's why. You can call me whatever you want, you can believe whatever you want about me, but that's not going to change.
"And just because I have my own ways of dealing with things, doesn't mean that I'm up to anything. You don't see me accusing you of stabbing him in the back just because you can't talk about your feelings. There's no problem with the way we handle things; people just don't understand it. We don't even understand each other, and we're in the same boat."
Dean averted his eyes; her gaze was penetrating as she waited for the reaction to her mini-speech. He took a deep breath, running a hand through his hair, frustrated.
"Have you ever had a sibling?" Dean asked quietly.
"A sister," she responded, but her voice was cold. Dean continued.
"Have you ever had something bad happen to her?" Nora sucked in a breath, smiling humorlessly.
"I don't know," Nora said, closing her eyes as she leaned her head against the wall. "I left home when I was pretty young. I never really got a chance to know her. So no, you could say I really don't know if something bad ever happened to her." She swallowed and smiled weakly.
"If..." Dean started, his voice lower than usual. "If you had a sibling, you'd understand. You'd see what happens when you spend that much time with someone, when you'd do anything for that person. When you'd die for that person." He knew he was pushing his chick-flick moments quota, and brought it to a close. "I'd die for him, and he knows it. I just never thought..." he took a deep breath. "I never expected him to return the favor." He swallowed, forcing the lump in his throat down. He smiled, covering up for it. "And if you had a sibling, you'd see that."
Nora blinked, looking thoughtful, then smiled slightly, but it didn't totally reach her eyes. "I think I already do," she said quietly.
The lights flickered back on.
Hi everybody! I'm sorry it took so long to update. I told you it would, but I promised that it would come out eventually and it did. It's just been hard and I had to rewrite all three of these chapters (the last one, this one, and the next one).
Also, I know I said this chapter would include something with Sam, but if I included that then it would be a few more days and I figured it would be better to release the chapter earlier without the Sam part than make you wait a few more days to find out what happened. So next chapter will pick up with what happened to Sam during the time Dean and Nora were in the elevator.
Oh, and as a side note, this was what Eric Kripke said about the ratings of Supernatural:
TVGuide: Are you happy with how your show is doing, considering that you are up against a lot of big shows?
Kripke: Um... I'm happy, but I wish I was happier. We're hanging in there, and that's a testament to the fans. Under extreme competition Grey's Anatomy and CSI, we're sticking in there with comparative numbers to what we had last year. And that's in a much more brutal time slot and on a new network with not nearly the level of marketing that we had last year. All things considered, we're doing well. For the show to be the six-/seven-year player that I want it to be, we need to do better. We need to say to the fans and to the converted, "Spread the word." People catch on by word-of-mouth, so the best thing I could ask from the fans, as a personal favor to me, is to tell people about it.
You heard what he said! We need to spread the word!
Oh, one more thing that has no relation to the story whatsoever, but whatever. Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance comes out Tuesday, and I am so excited it's not even funny. I have been going crazy all week. (My friends think I'm insane, and they're big fans too.) I have tickets to see them when they come to Tampa for the Next Big Thing 6 concert and once more, I'm so excited all I can do is scream. My personal favorite song on the album so far is Teenagers. It's already on my list of favorite songs EVER. It also fits into a later chapter of this story (which is a flashback to when they were...guess...here it comes...teenagers!...gasp, never would have guessed that, would you?) that I'm in the planning stages right now where the song is my inspiration for the chapter. The same thing goes for Famous Last Words a little bit. (I can't tell you where it fits in, though, because that would give too much away.) Wow, this note actually does have some relation to the story.
Oh, and my friend Sam (BloodyMaryBloodyMaryBloodyMary) is finally reading my story. Wow, after helping me with certain parts and giving me advice (she helped me with the beginning part of this chapter) she's actually started reading it from the beginning. Let's all give her a hand -claps-. Yeah, and she updated her chapter nine without letting me edit it. (shame, Sam, shame) :) She knows how I'm obsessive about the editing crap (weird, huh? I'm even editing my author's notes.) and how it bugs me if I can't do it, but I don't hold it against her, and she did let me do chapter eight.
Anyway, I think that's enough pointless ranting.
P.S. School SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Until next time...