Chapter Forty-Eight: In Which Charlie Joins the Cavalary

"I can't believe you managed to dislocate it."

Mary grimaced. "Well, we can't all be thirty-three. Hurry up and set it, will you? It feels like somebody poured lava in here."

"Thirty-four, almost," Dean corrected absently as he gave her shoulder a sharp tug.

Mary, who had been waiting for their customary count-down-from-three-and-tug-on-two, let out an undignified yelp and nearly took his head off with a swing of her other hand. Dean narrowly ducked, laughing.

"What happened to the countdown?" Mary demanded, massaging her sore, but no longer painful, shoulder.

"You're used to that. I've got to mix it up a little."

Mary made a face, even as she hauled herself off the bed to start throwing her bag together. They'd agreed to meet Sam in a few hours, and they were a little behind schedule if they were going to catch up.

"Don't you think something is a little weird about Cas?"

She'd been mulling it over ever since they'd parted after Samandrial died. The fit thing he'd gone through had been weird; the fact that he'd gone after an angel had been weirder.

She recognized the guarded expression on Dean's face.

"Come on, you've got to admit, this doesn't fit his MO from the last few years," she pointed out, shoving one last sock into her bag.

Dean watched her struggle with her zipper, a smirk on his face. "Yeah, well, if he's not a little different after Purgatory, there's definitely something wrong with him. 'Sides, he's always tried to look out for the other angels."

Mary opened her mouth, but Dean cut her off. "Hey, so, has Sam called?"

She shook her head. "Not since the text. Did he call you?"

The two of them made their way out of the motel room and towards the car. Dean shook his head, wrapping his arms around his chest at a sudden blast of wind. Mary's lips pursed. She had a pretty good idea of how the conversation with Amelia had gone, and she wished it hadn't.

"He'll be fine," she told Dean, more to reassure herself than anything else.

"Yeah, after what happened to his last girlfriend, this is light by comparison," Dean said sarcastically. "Come on, Mom. Kid's gonna be upset."

Mary arched her eyebrows at the word kid, but didn't say anything.

When they met up with Sam about two hours later, he got into the backseat without a word.

/

As per usual, Mary decided the best thing to do to distract the boys was to get them working another case as soon as possible. (After all, it worked for her just fine.)

Two people from the same LARP group had been found dead with a tree burned into their arms. While a good old fashioned LARP in the park wasn't exactly what she had had in mind, it would probably do the trick. Dean had been big into Dungeons and Dragons in high school (though admittedly that might have had something to do with the cute boy that had been the dungeon master), so he might welcome the distraction.

The queen of Moondoor, also known as Charlie Bradbury, looked down at them, her face pinching slightly, first in confusion, then in fear and then in resignation. Mary offered an apologetic look. The last thing she wanted to do was involve the other woman again, but apparently she held all the (fictional) power around here.

"Uh—leave me, squires. I must talk with these…foreigners alone."

The two men departed, casting suspicious looks over their shoulders as they went. Mary rolled her eyes. It wasn't as if Charlie was a real monarch. The other woman hopped off her throne and walked over.

"Can't say I'm happy to see you people again," Charlie sighed. "Your FBI cosplays are weak, you know."

Mary glanced down at her suit. "I'll have you know this is regulation fit and color." Casting an appraising look over at Sam, she grimaced. "Though his hair certainly isn't."

This earned her a small grin, although Charlie snapped back to her serious expression fairly quickly. "So what's up? I mean, what's my statistical likelihood of dying this time around?"

Mary didn't want to give her false hope, but they needed her help. "Thirty-five percentish."

Charlie just stared at her. "Alrighty then. What's up?"

They explained the situation. Charlie's already grave expression grew steadily paler.

"And when the toxicology reports came back, they said they'd both been killed by belladonna. You know, the poison."

Charlie shook her head. "As much as I'd like to duck out of this one, a queen can't abandon her people in their time of need." She looked them up and down. "Though, you're going to have to change."

/

If there was one thing Mary had never understood about Dean, it was his affinity for roleplaying games. She'd encouraged it because the players were usually pretty good kids, but she'd never gotten it. If you could fight monsters in real life, why would you bother fighting fictional ones?

Now, though, she was starting to get it.

"You know, I liked the green one better, I think."

Charlie had decided that the boys would be able to find their own clothing, but she'd made it her personal mission to dress Mary. She'd gone along with it, at first if only because they needed Charlie to get around Moondoor properly, but she found herself enjoying herself.

"Really?"

Mary squinted at herself in the mirror, swishing the pale blue skirt back and forth once or twice. She and John had never had a wedding. Her parents' deaths had been too raw at the time to even consider it. But she imagined wedding dress shopping was a little bit like this.

"Yeah, no, definitely. This one doesn't fit your shoulders."

Mary rummaged around in her purse for a few moments and finally withdrew the two hairclips she kept around just in case she needed an emergency lock pick. She pinned part of the dress together and then let her hands drop to her sides.

"How about now?"

Charlie grinned. "You're a natural."

The two women exited the tent and headed back to the tech tent find the boys. Mary eyed Charlie out of the corner of her eye. She suspected she would make a very good hunter, if she was trained up a bit. She had just the right amount of guts and just the right amount of too-much curiosity to fit the bill.

They were ducking out of the tent just as Mary and Charlie rounded the corner. Sam had a triumphant look on his face, though he looked distinctly ruffled to be stuffed into a fake suit of armor. Dean, on the other hand, was rocking the chain mail with a smile.

"Fairy magic."

Mary looked blankly at him. "Fairies?"

Dean nodded. "Yep. And when we asked that orc over there—" Sam rolled his eyes "—and he told us that we'd find our answers in the Black Hills. Whatever that means."

The Black Hills, as it turned out, were located just behind the playground. Despite herself, Mary couldn't help but smile when people bowed politely to Charlie as she passed by. If they ever stayed in one place for longer than a week, she'd have to look into this.

"So how do we stop this fairy magic?" Charlie asked as they finally turned into the woods. "I mean, unless you've got some kind out countercurse or something."

She looked hopeful at the last sentence. Mary could tell she was dying to see some actual magic. Regrettably, she wasn't going to get her wish. Mary had never personally worked a spell properly (though Sam seemed to have a weird affinity for it). This time, though—

"Won't need it. All we have to do is find whoever has been casting it and kill them."

Charlie went milk-colored again. "Wait, you're not even going to let them explain themselves?"

"Dog eat dog world, kiddo," Dean reminded her.

Mary and Charlie both arched their eyebrows at that.

"You know, I thought there would be more Rowling and less Lovecraft in this hunting stuff."

"Yeah, well," Mary said, "it's not all rainbows and—"

Something rustled in the woods behind them. Even Charlie was quick on the uptake as they all whirled around to find a horrible, skull-faced thing staring back at them. It took Mary approximately half a second to size up the situation.

"Go!"

She hooked her fingers in Dean's new chain mail, spun him around again and gave him a shove, hoping Sam would be smart enough to follow. Charlie, in the meantime, had thrown one of her Moondoor "spells" at the thing. Mary grabbed for her arm too, but before they could get moving, a deep wooziness overtook her.

/

In terms of kidnappings, Charlie supposed that waking up in a very nicely decorated tent wasn't the worst thing that could have possibly happened. She rolled over on the pillows to find Mary Winchester snoring beside her, her breath making a few gray hairs that she'd missed dyeing in front of her face flutter.

"Uh—Mrs. Winchester?" It felt a little weird to call her Mary, which was weirder still because that meant she had, somewhere along the line, stuck Sam and Dean in the friend box. "You should probably wake up now."

To Charlie's immense relief, she stirred, swatting at Charlie's thigh as if it were an alarm clock.

"Boys, I'm getting too old for thi—Charlie?"

Mary lurched into a seated position, her eyes taking in the situation much faster than Charlie had. Putting her finger to her lips, she swung her legs off the pile of blankets and headed for the tent flap.

"We're not locked in," she noted. "C'mon, Charlie. Grab that candlestick, would you?"

Charlie dutifully picked up the candlestick and handed it over, feeling like it wouldn't do much in the long run against that weird thing that had brought them here. Despite her misgivings, she charged after Mary and into—

"What?"

They'd entered the tent again. Okay, so no leaving. Charlie's chest began to constrict a little with panic, not helped by the fact that the cow thing reentered the room. Mary gave the candlestick a homerun swing. Charlie closed her eyes, waiting for the crunching noise on impact, but it never happened. It took all of Charlie's determination to peel her eyes open again. The first thing she caught sight of was the candlestick, sitting probably two yards away from them both. The second was Mary, both hands in a (probably ineffective) defensive position. Uh oh.

"Look, uh, your magic tent is cool and all, but we'd super like to get out of it if you don't mind."

The thing turned its face towards her instead. Charlie preemptively winced, but nothing happened.

"And if you didn't kill us, that would also be great."

Mary, who had turned towards her disbelievingly throughout this entire exchange, looked about ready to try running out of the tent again.

"I don't want to," said a definitely not super evil voice.

The cow skull head vanished, replaced by a pretty woman who smiled at Charlie. Confidence returning, she grinned right back. Scary monsters? Nope. Pretty girls? That she knew how to deal with.

/

Some days, Mary couldn't believe her luck. Most times, that was said sarcastically, but this time she actually meant it.

Charlie had managed to find everything out that they needed to. The woman, Gilda, turned out to be the fairy they'd been looking for, but she wasn't a malevolent one like they'd thought. (At the words "good fairy," Mary thought Charlie was either going to pass out or try to seduce her. Or both at the same time.)

Turned out one of the LARPers had bound Gilda to do his bidding. It had started out simply enough—twisted ankles and pulled back muscles—but it had quickly gotten out of control.

Mary had a feeling there would be a little more action going on on the fairy front if she hadn't been there, so she mostly stayed out of the way and let them talk. She was getting the uncomfortable idea that it was about to plunge into a little more than talking when the tent flap flew open and the boys charged in, followed by one of the men Charlie had ordered out of her "throne room."

"Boltar?" Charlie said, confused, at the same time that Gilda yelled, "Run! It's my master!"

Knowing he was between them and the door, Mary took a dive over the side of the bed and crashed into the floor. Her formerly dislocated shoulder gave a groan of pain as she landed. Gritting her teeth and cursing her age, Mary pulled her gun from the waistband of her jeans and poked her head over the top—only for the gun to turn to a plastic chicken in her hand. Gilda lowered her hand with her eyes shut.

"We don't play with firearms in Moondor," Boltar said, shaking his head.

Mary forced herself to stand up, pretending she wasn't wheezing.

"Gerry, man. Come on. This is ridiculous," Charlie said, hands outstretched.

Boltar/Gerry turned towards her, a little crazed. "If I was to win the battle, I could win your hand!"

Charlie raised her eyes to the heavens, shaking her head. "You're totally barking up the wrong tree there, Gerry."

Gerry nodded to Gilda, an unspoken order passing between them. Wincing, Gilda raised her hand again and turned his plastic sword into a real one. Charlie immediately scooped the candlestick up and made a run at him, but Gerry elbowed her out of the way. Mary lobbed her chicken at his head.

But it seemed to be Dean he was focused on first. He raised his shield, barely managing to avoid getting Anne Boleyn-d. Sam jumped for his back, but Gilda blasted him away.

"Get the book!"

Mary caught sight of it, but it was clear on the other side of the room, near Charlie. Charlie bolted to her feet, ducked Gerry's sword, yanked his knife out of his holster, snatched the book and drove the knife directly into the front cover.

"I'm the one who saves the damsels in distress around here."

/

"It was all very Harry Potter, wasn't it?" Charlie asked, turning towards Dean.

She couldn't believe all three of them had agreed to join up with the Queen's army for the day. With any luck, three skilled fighters would be enough to turn the tide in her favor.

"I wouldn't know. I was reading the first book with my class and—well, we never finished."

Charlie desperately wanted to ask, but this wasn't the time. "Ugh, that's no excuse. You've got to read Harry Potter."

Before she could berate him further, the trumpet sounded. Charlie grinned and led her troops into battle.