Chapter Fifty-Two: Children in Need
The Road So Far…
"Our dad's gone out on a hunting trip and he hasn't called in a few days."
"I know it seems hard to believe. I really understand that. But you've seen the proof that the supernatural exists now. I'm sorry you've been shoved into it. But yes, that was the murderous ghost of a woman long dead."
"Something's wrong, someone else is in the house, they were waiting for Sam to get home."
"I think he wants us to pick up where he left off. You know – saving people, hunting things. The family business."
"Hunting doesn't make it easy to have relationships, Holls, and there's nothing she could do to stop it from failing if it's going to fail anyway. So alright. We don't tell her. Or Sam, for that matter."
"This monster, hovering over Sammy's bed, touching him, less than a foot away from him… just as I was about to fire, Dad came back, shot it… it ran out the window and disappeared."
After the disaster that was the Hell House, and the nightmarish would-be ghostbusters that went along with it, we settled back into our rhythm. We traveled wherever there was suspicious activity and we never stayed in one place for too long. We made the nomadic tribes of Native American hunters look leisurely with our rapid route. It probably helped that we had this giant metal box we could get in that did the walking for us.
The only real difference in our behavior, if not our thoughts, was that we weren't actively looking for John. Sam was starting to get aggravated by his father's habit of being MIA, again, but so far, no fights had broken out between the brothers. I hoped John was safe, but I didn't care too much personally if we didn't see him for a while. Just because we made a truce didn't mean I necessarily liked him.
We got our proof of life in the form of a text message from an unknown number with coordinates. I had tried to trace it, but it hit a dead end by New England and had us driving in the opposite direction, mostly at Dean's strong insistence. The coordinates were supposed to drive us to a small town in Wisconsin, but John had neglected to give us any further information, which meant we had to start from scratch finding out what the problem was.
Sam and I dedicated ourselves to figuring it out so we had a starting point when we arrived, both of us tackling all of the resources we could think of. I went for the databases and police records while Sam went for the internet and the news that had been posted on the web, but neither of us could find anything.
At first, I had suggested that the supernatural hunt was of a benevolent – or, at the very least, not malicious – being, only to be looked at like an idiot. I concluded from their reactions that this was an unpopular and unlikely guess. To myself, I thought it was a little unfair to automatically assume everything supernatural was malevolent, but I knew better than to say this aloud.
"You've probably missed something," Dean sighed, turning on the turn signal to come off of the interstate at the next exit. The momentum of the car changed as he slowed to the exit speed, but the transition was gentle and smooth.
Serenity leaned her head back onto the booth and sighed deeply, loud and pointed.
"Dude! We've run LexisNexis, local police reports, newspapers, and couldn't find a single red flag." Sam put down his phone onto his leg as the screen fell asleep. Dean turned his head at his brother's annoyed voice, looking a little irritated himself. Sam saw and he huffed. "Are you sure you got the coordinates right?"
"Yeah, I double-checked." The older hunter insisted. He had checked it out a second time when Sam and I first started expressing frustration with finding anything wrong with the town. "It's Fitchburg, Wisconsin. Dad wouldn't have sent us coordinates if it wasn't important, Sammy." He looked back out the windshield, bobbing his head to music that had been turned down.
Sam glared. "Well, I'm telling you, I've looked and all I can find is a big pile of nothing. If Dad's sending us hunting for something, I don't know what." He shifted to look out the window and he sulked through the rearview mirror. For the most mature of us, he sure does pout a lot.
"Well, maybe he's going to meet us there."
Dean's steadfast determination that John was sending us there for a good reason felt a little naïve and overly optimistic to me. The hunt we want to be involved in the most is the one for the yellow-eyed demon, the monster that slaughtered our mothers and Sam's girlfriend. John is adamant that we not be involved in it directly, at least for the time being, while his energies are all focused on the one goal. It was an unfair and dangerous situation that he was putting us all in, and I had my doubts that he hadn't just sent us away from where he was for the purpose of having us away from him.
Serenity lifted her head up from the back of the seat to shoot Dean an angry glower, never one who appreciated misplaced optimism. "You mean, like he 'met us' in Chicago?" Dean's eyes flashed to her in a mirror. My sister was agitated, almost sounding mean, reaching the end of her rope with letting John lead her around by the nose. "Hate to break it to you, Dean, but he didn't even show up when he suspected we were walking into a trap!"
He bristled and immediately defended his father. "He said he got there after we were already inside!" Yes, but he's forgetting we called him first. John had the opportunity to call us back and warn us. If he just hadn't gotten the messages, he wouldn't have known to show up in Chicago in the first place, so I was pretty skeptical of how much I could trust him not to send us into trouble we wouldn't be able to handle. He let us go in to get information and didn't even act as the cavalry. "He just saw Meg fall out the window."
Sam snorted. Serenity visibly flinched at the reminder. Meg had been their friend, who just happened to be evil and had stabbed them in the back. Of course they didn't appreciate the reminder, and no matter what Meg had done, it wasn't easy for Serenity to see her friend be attacked by Daevas and then killed by being thrown out the window.
"Firstly, she was dragged," Serenity snarled harshly. "Secondly, he has a real track record for saying what makes you believe he's great!"
She wasn't wrong, but it was a dark way to think about it and Dean couldn't accept that his father was manipulating him. It was something he refused to see, so he rose to the challenge. "What are you implying here?" He demanded. The ride in the car became less smooth. We paused to yield to another line of cars and the brakes were hit suddenly instead of with a slow press.
I could see in Serenity's posture that she was well prepared to respond sharply, but I didn't want to deal with working damage control for her unchecked tongue, so I interrupted to soothe tempers. "Both of you, shut up!" Sam cringed at the volume. Both of our siblings looked mutinous, but a little bit cowed, and both shut their mouths.
I breathed deeply. I could address their argument or I could just let it die. The latter would just be shoving it under a carpet, but if we were going to fight, in the middle of a long car ride was not the time to do it.
"Look." I started evenly once I thought I could keep my voice down. "Sam and I, we searched for deaths. But we know that not all hunts have victims if they're caught early. The poltergeist in your old house never killed anyone, because we caught it before it had the chance."
We had only been able to do that because Sam and I had had the psychic dreams that had led us to Lawrence. I should have known Dean would remember that and throw it back. "So, what, he's sending us on a ghost hunt that he cottoned onto because he's having his own damn Vulcan vibes?"
I clenched my jaw down until my teeth were aching with tension. "I'm trying to be a peacekeeper here," I said, quiet only because I didn't trust myself to speak normally without a temper. I hate when Dean picks on us because of our psychic powers. I don't want to have them, but I can't get rid of them, so when they're not useful, I like to pretend they don't exist. Dean's negative attitudes towards the matter definitely didn't help either. "But if you don't lay off, I'll kick your ass. That goes for you, too, Serenity," I added sternly, turning around in my seat to look back at Serenity.
Serenity glared, but only weakly, and then she stuck her tongue out at me while looking off to the side. She wouldn't admit with Dean in hearing distance that she may have been intentionally stepping on his toes.
"You're the bossiest kid sister in history, you know that?" She said, crossing her arms and reaching up to the earphones wrapped loosely around her neck. She took one of the earbuds and placed it in her left ear smoothly, the motion practiced and familiar, leaving the other one out so that she could still hear.
Sam's shoulders fell in visible relief that it wasn't escalating. "We should rerun the search when we get there," he suggested thoughtfully. "Look for incident reports, not necessarily deaths."
"And hospitals, too, for suspicious injuries," I contributed. It would be hard to tell which injuries were considered suspicious without any guidelines, but, say, something like missing organs or whatever would be a pretty strong MO.
Dean nodded distantly, already tuning out of the conversation. I could tell when his heart was in something, and right now his heart was in the melody of Led Zeppelin's Kashmir. His heart was absolutely no longer in how Sam and I planned to track down something that may or may not exist. "Whatever you find, something in Fitchburg's worth killing."
I rolled my eyes. "Worth hunting," I corrected. Killing sounded far more coldblooded than hunting. Also, it would be better in public to say "we need to finish this hunt" than "we need to finish this assassination." At least 'hunt' could be mistaken for something usually legal.
"What makes you so sure?" Sam asked, looking fish-eyed at Dean in scrutiny.
"'Cause I'm the oldest," Dean haughtily declared, while Serenity put on some Korean pop music to play through her earphones. "Which means I'm always right."
Serenity raised her eyebrows. I snorted and covered my mouth. Sam grinned like it was a joke, but his face fell at Dean's serious expression.
"No, it doesn't," the researcher hurriedly stated.
A smirk played on Dean's lips as he looked back out at the road. "It totally does," he said, intentionally goading Sam on now.
"You thought Roy was the one binding the reaper." Flatly, I pointed out one of his various mistakes. Roy, a peaceful, blind cancer patient in remission, had only been miraculously cured because his devoted wife had bound a reaper with black magic and forced it to heal him. Except then the power went to her head, and she started killing people like she was right to mete out judgment for what she saw as misdeeds. One of which was homosexuality, so… yeah, fuck that.
"You thought Meg was a nice girl." Serenity added, leaning forwards. Dean had repeatedly urged Serenity and Sam towards hooking up with Meg, not necessarily one at a time.
Sam smiled and looked out the window. Then, of course, he took the opportunity to be the irritating little brother he was and joined on the topic of pointing out Dean's many mistakes. "You offended Pastor Jim by pointing out one of the Lord's angels in the church painting and asking if that was Lucifer."
Dean didn't appreciate the three against one ganging up on him and he glared at me, because I was the easiest and safest to glare at while he was driving.
"To be fair," I tried to placate, "Lucifer is an angel. Or, at least, was."
"That's the same excuse you used when you were seven," Serenity taunted me, bringing to light the real reason why I was defending that particular error. I bit my lip while Dean laughed at me, going to the extent of pointing at me with one hand while he did so. I leaned back and scowled.
I flicked through my emails on my phone, licking my lips as I scrolled through rapidly. Sam, who was looking over my shoulder, probably didn't even get the chance to read what they were; I was deleting promotional store and social media advertisements as soon as I saw Facebook or Hot Topic at the top bar. Others I just looked at the names. One was Henriksen, which I starred to remind myself to look at later before moving onwards.
Sam wasn't pushy, but he made a questioning noise when I hovered over the arrow button as I looked at a tech report. I just looked up at him, shrugged, and decided I should probably read it, because it was addressed to me with familiarity, and the name at the top was Garcia, whom I remembered was an analyst. Probably something about my accounts, then, and their sporadic activity, which I should respond to, if only so she didn't keep looking into it.
Serenity and Dean came back across the street from the café, looking before crossing the road. Serenity had a paper bag of food with the diner's name in italics, while Dean carried a cardboard cup holder with both hands, full of coffees. They joined Sam and I at the Impala as I marked the email from Garcia with a star. Keeping up with my email was harder for me than it was for Sam, since Sam mostly just had friends that sometimes tried to get in touch. I had colleagues and associates and even underlings.
"Well, the waitress thinks the local freemasons are up to something sneaky," Dean said by way of greeting, shifting the drinks and twisting a coffee cup out of the holder. There was a cardboard grip around it so his fingers didn't burn. He handed it to Sam, smirking, seeming too pleased about the waitress's apparent conspiracy theories. "But other than that, no one's heard about anything freaky going on."
Serenity jumped up onto the back of the Impala and pulled the bag of food onto her lap, paper crinkling loudly as she opened it and made to start taking things out. After rummaging, she got an egg and bacon biscuit sandwich for Sam and a set of French fries for Dean. I'd neglected to ask for anything to eat. My eating habits are usually pretty predictable: food equals consumption, but sometimes I'll have a day or two where I just don't feel like eating much.
Dean handed off another of the coffee orders while Serenity leaned over the side of the car to pull out her own. "There you go, Princess," Dean told me, deliberately letting our fingers touch when I tried to take my coffee by the grip. "Just the way you like it. Disgustingly sweet and French."
"Aw," I cooed, both feeling like mocking him and being endeared. "You know my coffee order."
"I know your order for practically everything," he reminded me, making me scoot to the left so he could lean against the Impala on my right. I shuffled my feet and found myself between the two brothers. "And you complain about me not having a varied diet."
I frowned at him, affronted. So I liked particular orders at restaurants more than I liked perusing a menu. There is no shame in comfort food. There is no shame in comfort food when you remain healthy as you gorge yourself on sodium and sugar. There is no shame in comfort food when your life has been turned on its axis, your mother was murdered, you're apparently psychic, and you're carrying on a secretive relationship with one of your best friends.
I never said I was completely innocent of hypocrisy. At least I'd enjoy fruit, where Dean turned his nose up in favor of fries and burgers.
"That'll teach me not to quote Glee at you," I muttered, glaring at him halfheartedly.
"I can't believe you even tried," Serenity quipped. She was fanning a hand by her mouth, tongue burned by coffee that hadn't quite cooled off enough to drink just yet. "That's getting dangerously close to flirting."
Dean snickered. I smirked and turned my face to the ground so Sam didn't get to see my expression, like I knew something they didn't. Serenity had no idea. "Oops," I said, feigning guilt sarcastically. "Wouldn't want to be doing that, would I?"
She hummed thoughtfully for a moment before she clarified, "It's not so much that as it is I'm amazed you even know how."
I reached an arm behind Dean's shoulders, but instead of hugging him from the side, I stretched towards Serenity on his other side and flipped her off. She laughed brightly, her humors not deterred in the least.
Sam cleared his throat. "Dean, you got the time?" He pointedly ignored the rude interactions going on between my sister and I.
Dean didn't even look, just sighed like Sam had asked him to do some terrible labor. "Holls, you're on your phone."
I glanced at the black bar on top of my screen with the Wi-Fi connection, time, and battery percentage. "Four ten," I said without further prompting.
"Four ten," Dean relayed needlessly. Sam was literally right there; he'd heard me say it. Sam wasn't too annoyed. I thought it was kind of amusing that we pretended Sam couldn't hear us when we talked directly at someone else. "Why?"
Sam nodded forward across the city lawn on the other side of the street. There was a stretch of well-kept and mowed grass, and on the other side was a children's playground. It wasn't very big, but it was nice. Unlike most I remembered seeing in the past few months, it was kept up with by the community. "What's wrong with this picture?" He asked.
Serenity shook her head already, rolling her eyes. "The monkey bars are too low to the ground for us to play on, Sam. No way they're high enough for you."
Sam threw a bitch face at Serenity. I wondered if he could remember the last time he'd tried to do acrobatics on a playground, much less the last time he was actually sizable for the equipment. "Um, no, that's not what I meant."
Dean made a quiet sound. "School's out, isn't it?" He asked like he was realizing something, a bit surprised.
"Yeah," Sam answered. School dismissal times ranged through America, but I doubted any of them released after four o'clock. He narrowed his eyes at the playground. Only one kid was playing on it, and who looked like the child's mother was sitting on a bench, legs crossed, a book on her knee. "So where is everybody? This place should be crawling with kids right now."
I laughed. "Oh, right. Kids these days, with their internet and X-boxes and adjustable temperature systems." I pretended to be cranky like someone from an older generation, and when Sam transitioned his bitch face from Serenity to myself, I just smiled cheekily, biting my tongue. Sam didn't let up. "If you're worried, go ask." I gestured across the park to the woman on the park bench. "She's probably a local."
Sam looked over in the direction I indicated, seeming to seriously consider it. I shook my head and drank some of my coffee.
There wasn't a very big hospital in Fitchburg, but it was a nice-looking one called Dane County Memorial. We'd have gone there anyway sooner or later in an attempt to figure out what it was we were supposed to be hunting, but our process was expedited by the general concern that Dean's conversation with the woman at the park had raised.
According to her, the entire town was pretty dim these last couple of weeks due to a strain of illness that was being passed around among the children. While there had been no fatalities – which explained why we hadn't found anything in our search for odd deaths – all of the children to have fallen ill had then been hospitalized since, and none had been released. Parents were beginning to grow paranoid.
Well, whether or not there was some strange supernatural phenomena at work here, if children were getting that sick for no apparent explanation, we all wanted to look into it anyway. If it was supernatural, we'd found our hunt. If it wasn't, then we've been good Samaritans and helped the children, whom were too sick to help themselves. Besides, the scientist part of me was increasingly worried the more I thought about it. Was it a new bacteria? Would the children recover? What was the source? Was it contagious? Could it hit adults or only children?
I whipped out my FBI badge and hummed while I smiled at it, wiping my thumb over the laminated photograph of my face to clear the smudge of fingerprints and dust. I missed using it as often as I used to; the small black billfold felt comfortingly familiar in the palm of my hand, and I missed the way my fingers curled around it like it was second-nature.
Sam got out his own identification card, which Dean had retrieved from their stash in the glove compartment. We were walking side by side while Serenity and Dean walked next to each other in front of us. At first the hunter blinked. Then he raised it up to his face and squinted. Finally, he sighed and threw his arms down, stopping in his tracks.
"Dude." Sam set his jaw firmly and glared at the back of Dean's head. "Dude," he hissed emphatically, getting Dean to turn around and see. When Dean stopped, so did Serenity, leaving the four of us standing in the middle of the hospital lobby and slowly attracting the attention of the few people in the waiting room. Sam looked around, aware of where we were and how conspicuous we'd just become, then walked closer to Dean, raising up his fake ID. "I am not using this ID," he said bluntly.
I tilted my head back and remembered to keep my voice down. "Oh, now you have scruples about lying about your name?" I asked, because really, if Sam was going to have an epiphany about his lying habits, why did it have to be at a time when we needed him to do some lying?
"Why not?" Dean asked, exasperated.
Dean, however, was immediately turned on by Serenity, who took one look at Sam's frustrated expression and blamed Dean for whatever the problem was. "What did you do to his ID?" She asked in a scarily knowing voice. It wasn't even an accusation, just a thing that she apparently knew without a doubt.
Sam narrowed his eyes at Dean. "It says 'bikini inspector' on it," he said lowly in answer. Dean broke out into an unabashed grin now that he knew he was caught.
My shoulders sagged. "Dean," I protested in a groan.
Dean just kept smiling so wide it looked like his cheeks were hurting. "Don't worry," he laughed, reaching out to pat down hard on Sam's shoulder. "She won't look that close, alright? Hell, she won't even ask to see it! It's all about confidence, Sammy!"
I frowned. I don't think Dean understands how security guards work, I thought, pursing my lips while Dean tried to force his little brother to walk on towards the security guard stationed behind the front desk.
Rolling my shoulders, I exhaled and walked up to the guard behind the desk. She saw my shadow and she looked up, ready to be attentive in case we were in need of urgent assistance. This was a hospital, after all. "Just let me," I muttered to Sam, subtly stepping in front of him and holding up my badge from the bureau. "Hi," I said, politely smiling. "FBI, Holly Kasakabe." I motioned behind me to Sam while Dean and Serenity, the former snickering behind his hand, stepped to the side behind us to pass, since the four of us had come in together. "This is Dr. Jerry Caplan, Center for Disease Control."
Sam smiled, but it was a little strained as he held his ID awkwardly. Although it occurred to me that he was trying to cover the 'bikini inspector' part (Jesus Christ), he just made the guard a little bit more suspicious of him. Even though she could see my badge, she wanted to confirm him. "Can I see some ID?"
Dean audibly laughed. Serenity elbowed him.
"Yeah, of – of course." Sam looked down, making sure his hand was covering the right part of the card, and shot Dean a dark glower. Then he offered out his fake ID to the security guard with a more certain smile. She looked at it. He hadn't covered his photograph, and it did say CDC on it, so she leaned back in her chair and made a motion as if to wave him past. With his shoulders relieving of tension, Sam hurriedly shoved his card back in his pocket and walked off towards Dean and Serenity.
I bit my lip, trying not to smile outwardly. Regardless of how appropriate it was, that was pretty good – not that I would ever give Dean the satisfaction of knowing that.
Pushing my own ID away, I looked down to the black-haired woman and inquired, "Pediatrics ward?"
She leaned forward again, most of her weight going to her legs rather than the chair, until she could see around the side of the desk. She pointed with her left hand. "Just go down that hall, up the stairs to the third floor, and turn left."
"Thank you." Nodding respectfully, I turned and followed after the three of them.
When I approached, the dark blonde hunter punched Sam in the arm and then rubbed his hand over his brother's shoulder. "See? I told you it would work!"
Sam's dirty look went unregistered by his unreasonably pleased brother, and he deliberately made his strides longer. He shook his head and shrugged his shoulder to knock off Dean and huffed. "Follow me," he grumbled, too irritated to speak in normal tones at the moment. "It's upstairs."
In the hallway, there were restrooms to the right, elevators to the left, and a doorway with the glowing 'exit' sign above it. On the door was a panel that labeled it in both white print and Braille as a stairway. At the same time, Serenity and Sam went in different directions. Sam started to push against the side of the door to the stairs, and Serenity punched in the 'up' button on the elevator panel, located between two sets of closed silver doors.
Serenity cleared her throat pointedly just as the door latch clicked. Sam looked over his shoulder and locked eyes on my sister.
"That's for handicapped patients," he said, calm, like that explained why he was going for the stairs. He also seemed to believe that that made it a reason to expect us to go up the stairs, or like it was a reason not to use the elevators.
Serenity raised her eyebrows sassily. Even to a complete stranger, it was obvious that she was issuing a very plain challenge. "Who paid for this elevator?" She asked Sam testily, and then answered her own question swiftly before he could interject. "The government. Who do we apparently work for?" Sam started to lean his head back, obviously exasperated, but Serenity didn't stop until she had gotten her point across. "The government. Look, man, I'm not needlessly going up two sets of stairs."
I can do stairs, but given the option, I gravitate towards the means of transport that does the work for me. With one hand, I pointed to Serenity and simply said, "We're taking the elevator."
The light over one of them turned on and it pinged.
Sam let go of the door with a mournful sigh. It clicked closed again and he grudgingly came back to the elevators, but not without complaining. "You're both so lazy." This wasn't the first time Sam had expressed his displeasure with our lack of enthusiasm for physical activity, and I was positive that it would not be the last. "How are you so athletic when you avoid exercise whenever possible?"
It probably has something to do with running around, fighting, and hunting monsters, I figured to myself silently, but it wasn't the first time we'd had this argument, and I knew well enough that if I reminded him of that, he would argue back by bringing up all of the junk and candy and fast food I ate.
That was a can of worms I didn't want to open up.
"Thank you very much for seeing me, Dr. Heidacker." I smiled politely and reached forward to take the pediatrician's hand in greeting. After asking a nurse, she fetched the doctor primarily responsible for the treatment of the children who had fallen ill. He was a tall man – taller than Dean, but, of course, shorter than Sam – with blonde hair and blue eyes, and his palm felt cold and clammy as we shook hands. I pulled back and gestured to Dean and Serenity, who just happened to be on my right side. "CDC and my partner met downstairs, we just thought we'd all talk at once to save you the time."
"Well, I'm glad you guys are here." Heidacker's smile was tense and forced, polite, but he kept looking over his shoulder into the private room of a child which he had just left. I thought it was nice that he was so concerned. "I was just about to call CDC myself. How'd you find out, anyways?"
Dean lied smoothly, "Oh, some GP. I forgot his name. He called Atlanta, and, uh, he must've beat you to the punch." On my left, Sam was nodding wordlessly, corroborating Dean's story to the doctor.
Serenity took over with the premeditated lie for the two of us. "One of our colleagues is a relative of someone who lives around here, and the story traveled," she explained, putting her arm around my shoulders. For the sake of presentation, I didn't even blink and instead let her lean on me, just slightly nodding. "We thought it was a bit weird, so it couldn't hurt to check out, right? Bioterrorism isn't something to be overlooked."
In two seconds, Heidacker went from looking concerned to looking alarmed. I jutted out my elbow and caught Serenity in the ribs that she'd left vulnerable when she'd raised her arm. "Don't say 'bioterrorism' in a hospital," I hissed.
Sam cleared his throat to distract from Serenity and I. Serenity had a dawning expression as she figured out that yeah, bioterrorism was a no-no in a hospital.
"So you say you've got six cases so far?" He asked in a subtle prompt for elaboration.
The doctor nodded his head. "Yeah, and all in five weeks!" He exclaimed, still surprised by how quickly so many children had come down. "At first, we thought it was garden variety bacterial pneumonia. Not that newsworthy." Not at all – with the right treatment, pneumonia could clear up in less than a week. "But now…"
His eyes left Sam and moved to the door shielding his patient from the hallway.
"Now, what?" Sam leaned in to try to catch his eye and regain his attention.
He sighed softly as he forced his attention back to the four of us. "The kids aren't responding to antibiotics," he informed quietly. "Their white cell counts keep going down. Their immune systems just aren't doing their job. It's like their bodies are… wearing out."
"Jesus," I whispered, stunned, looking down and pinching the bridge of my nose, an obvious behavioral tic. I took a deep breath and looked up again. "How many prescriptions have you tried?"
"I've gone through almost a dozen on the first," Heidacker answered gravely. His eyes darted back towards the room. This time, I looked with him. An adult was hovering over a poor child, skin sallow and pale and face sickly, faint bruising under the eyes from exhaustion. He was right; the kid's body just wasn't replenishing itself. "We'd have done more, but none of them seem to be working. Of course, first we have to wait a bit, so we know which one it was if they start taking affect."
"And you've run blood cultures?" I looked back to him and began exercising my medical knowledge again. One of us had to, so we seemed educated, and quite honestly I bet I knew more than the supposed CDC agents. "Genetic tests? Taken full histories?" He kept nodding at everything I said. "I mean, at this point, even a contrast MRI could be worth looking into."
"Of course," he said, though I wasn't sure if he meant they'd done everything he could think of or that he was agreeing to see about an MRI. He divided his focus again and looked between Serenity and Dean, whom he hadn't spoken directly to as much. "Look. I'll be the first to admit I don't know any of these children personally, but they don't deserve to be stuck here. I'm doing everything I can think of. Everyone in the hospital is. They're just kids, you know?" Serenity glanced at Dean while Heidacker talked to see how the Winchester was taking it. "We all wanna take it away, make them safe."
At the end of his last sentence, the doctor held out a hand, averting his eyes to the nurse approaching. Sam stepped to the side so that she could reach the doctor, and she stood at his side, passing him a clipboard that apparently needed to be signed.
"Have you ever seen anything like this before?" Sam asked, looking at the nurse in interest, probably wondering what it was that she had given Heidacker.
He shook his head while he clicked the end of a pen, then scribbled on the corner of the paper to make sure the ink was coming out. "Never this severe," he verbally replied while starting to sign his name on the line.
"And the way it spreads… that's a new one for me." The nurse must have cottoned on pretty quickly to what we were here about. With her left hand on her hip and the other at her side, prepared to take her clipboard back, she joined into the discussion after inviting herself.
That… seems like an odd thing to say. "How does it spread?" I wondered aloud in reaction.
"It works its way through families," she said, looking at me because I was the one who had asked. That in itself wasn't very stunning. Of course a contagion would access the families quickly. "But only the children," she specified. "One sibling after another."
Okay. That is strange.
"Does it start with the youngest?" I questioned, thinking about the younger and less experienced immune system.
"In two of the families, yeah." She nodded. "There's an odd number of patients, though. The other family's got an only child."
"You mind if we interview a few of the kids?" Dean asked, looking between the two staff members. Either one could technically give us the okay for it, since they worked here and we were supposed to be with the government.
The nurse pursed her lips. "They're not conscious."
Sam blinked. "None of them?"
She shook her head slowly, eyes dulling. "No."
"Are they running temperatures or are their bodies just too exhausted?" Serenity inquired incredulously, referring back to the earlier remark that Heidacker had made. While he looked over the other papers below the first, he left the nurse to confer with us and answer questions, mentally checking out.
"That's the strange thing," she said, her voice going up slightly. Personally, I thought that there were several strange things about it, but go ahead, add another to the list, please. "They'll all run fevers until we give them antibiotics. Then the fevers break… just for a while, but it's like they get that boost, then they just give up." She rubbed the back of her neck after the ends of her ponytail scratched at her skin. "It's why we've tried so many doses and meds. We thought it might have to do with the dosage."
The doctor turned the pages back down on the top of the clipboard. After sliding the pen back through the top, he handed it back to the nurse. She said a hurried thank you and took off rapidly again in the other direction.
Dean watched her go with raised eyebrows. "Can we, uh, can we talk to the parents?" Looking back from the almost racing nurse, he gave Heidacker his charm smile.
The charisma didn't exactly blow the man away. "Well, if you think it'll help…?" He ventured. Dean started nodding enthusiastically at this, and the guy just sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and nodded permission as if we actually needed him to let us talk to other adults.
"Who was your most recent admission?"
Dean and I first went to speak with the father of the children who were first admitted, a pair of small daughters with only a couple years' age difference in between them. There wasn't another adult, man or woman, with him or his children, and their second emergency contact was listed as an aunt rather than a mother, so I guessed he was a single parent.
We took him to the hallway and Dean picked up one of the chairs from inside the younger girl's room and carried it out to the corridor. He set it down and pushed it so the back was against the wall, preparing his own seat for the interviewee.
He was sitting for all of five seconds before he began fidgeting and he scratched the back of his elbow and looked over his shoulder towards the closed door to his child's room. "I should get back to my girls," he murmured, halfhearted. He sounded wretched and wrecked, like he hadn't spent enough time sleeping and had spent too much crying.
I had to stop myself from sighing. "Sir, I looked over them both myself," I said in a quiet reassurance, hoping that I sounded kind, considerate. "They're exhausted, and on strong antibiotics. They'll be asleep for a while yet. By the time they wake up, we'll have long since left the hospital. We just have a couple of questions to try to figure out what caused this, so we can find what will fix it, as well as to stop it from happening to anyone else's children."
"Your daughter, Mary, is the younger one, right?" Dean opened up a notebook to the next blank page for a new game of tic-tac-toe. I'd told him before it was better to just pretend to write things, or actually write, even if you don't intend to revisit the notes, but he still liked to say he was writing while he was playing a game with himself on paper.
"Yeah." His voice had the tone of a man who had strong chords and a loud volume, but it was hushed, dulled and turned down with anxiety and discomfort. "Nine."
"And Mary showed symptoms first, right?" I questioned. Mary had been admitted a while ago for pneumonia, the first child to be checked in, followed swiftly by her older sister.
He nodded nearly listlessly. "Bethany, thirteen… the night right after." I had to strain my ears to catch all of the notes in his voice.
"Both within twenty-four hours?" I inquired. I knew what the hospital records said about admittance, but the signs that alerted their father weren't documented, and they could be important, right?
Except… he wasn't very clearheaded. "I guess," he agreed distractedly. "I just…" He took a deep breath and shook his head, covering his forehead and eyes with his hand, balancing his arm on his knee, bent at the elbow. "I remember checking on Beth and her breathing was off… I brought her right here." He moved his hand down again and looked up at Dean, wordlessly begging for us to just let him get back to his kids. Look, I already went through all this with her doctor."
"I understand," I started to say, but realized as I was speaking that I didn't, really, get exactly how stressful the situation had to be for him. "I don't have children, so I can't imagine how anxious you must be… but it is very important that we learn what we can, so we may conduct our own investigation. For a disease to spread like this, there's likely a common source." This was, for me, as much about protecting children as it was curiosity and wanting to know what had happened and how so many children got so sick, so while I knew Dean was trying to figure out which monster was responsible, I just wanted to find the culprit, whether it was human, supernatural, or environmental. "My partner here will call the CDC when we have a theory, and hopefully this will stop right where it is."
Dean glanced at me, but I didn't look towards him and meet his gaze, instead giving my attention to the emotionally suffering father. "We just have a few more questions, if you don't mind." As a result of what I'd said, Dean sounded a bit gentler regarding the topic. "How do you think they caught pneumonia? Were they out in the cold?"
"No. We think it was an open window." He shook his head and made a motion with his hand that looked vaguely like pushing open a windowpane. I noticed how he barely seemed aware he'd done it. Maybe he was more absorbed in his thoughts than he was in what we were trying to discuss.
My fellow hunter raised his eyebrows. "Both times?"
"The first time, I… I…" He started to shake his head but then decided that he wasn't entirely certain he was remembering the right thing with the right clarity and aborted the motion. "I don't really remember, but the second time for sure. And I know I closed it before I put Bethany to bed."
"So you think she opened it?" Dean glanced at me again. This time I had happened to look at him at the same time and I shook my head very slowly very subtly, reaching up to my ear at the same time and making it seem to the parent like I was just fixing my hair. It seemed unlike something a kid would do, especially with parents always cautioning them not to let in strangers or unlock doors and windows.
The man looked back up at Dean again, more distressed, but the aggravation to his calmness seemed like it sort of sparked more lucidity. "It's a second-story window with a ledge. No one else could've."
Spiderman could've, I thought, then almost made a face at myself, disgusted by my thoughtless reference to a franchise I don't even like. A ladder. Something strong enough to climb up the side? Or jump? Really, there were several alternative options, but I had to admit that to someone who didn't suspect supernatural involvement, they seemed awfully farfetched, both in theory and in context.
"You're sure it's the window?" I gently pushed, a little halting, but still wanting to ask. "Pneumonia can be caught in a variety of ways. They didn't necessarily have to be in the cold. Almost anything that lowers the immune system… a common cold, the flu, strep throat, even."
"No, nothing like that." He seemed insistent, and I figured he would have noticed if his daughters had acted oddly, so I let it go, crossing out the possibility of previous illness. "They're both totally healthy!" He stopped, and his face crumpled. "Well, except-"
Right, except for the pneumonia they're barely surviving right now. I interrupted before he could say that out loud and recede back into that quiet little shell, too focused on his stress and fear to talk.
"No exposure to any questionable vegetation or fungi? No signs of anything wrong, like exhaustion, abdominal pain, changes in appetite, fatigue…?"
"No," he steadfastly retorted. It was past being a response and had upgraded to a retort. Although I got why, I was a little insulted he was becoming hostile. Miffed and affronted, I leaned back, trying not to seem irritated. "I've told you, they must've got it from the open window. They have lots of blankets, but, you know, it's only just coming out of winter. It's still cold enough to get sick."
I thought back to last week when Sam had rolled over in his sleep and pulled the blankets with him, and Serenity had woken me up while complaining that thanks to Sam, her toes were numb when she woke up. I'd giggled at the time, but now I just solemnly bit my lip. He was right; especially for small children, it was still cold enough to be a victim to the temperature.
We said our goodbyes and polite wishes to the father of the two girls before Dean and I took our leave, and now we were standing outside of another of the kids' room, while Serenity and Sam were inside, talking to the mother and father of a little boy, so sick he barely looked alive, a blood pressure cuff and pulse monitor attached to him while he slept. He was hooked on an intravenous solution with multiple bags; the ones currently on the drip were an antibiotic and a supplemental solution.
I had to look away because children should not be that sick, and I wanted to leave the pediatric ward. Even though I wasn't totally sold on the idea of something supernatural passing on bacterial infections to children, there was still obviously a cause to what they were suffering – polluted resources, contaminated spots that they were nearby, or more susceptible to. Unless we could fix whatever was going on, I was dead serious about calling the CDC. Five children in such a short time…
"Since when are you Dr. Wang?" Dean asked, keeping the voice low and the conversation ours. The door into the room was closed, so no risk of the parents overhearing, and the corridor was surprisingly quiet.
For a second I frowned, trying to figure out what that was a reference to – and then I stopped, raised a finger at Dean, and shook my head. "No," I stated, in no uncertain terms.
"What?" He asked, leaning back as I pressed my finger into his sternum meaningfully. I had to have boundaries, right? Well, I'd just found one of them.
"No," I repeated insistently, glowering darkly. There was no way in hell that that was going to fly. For some reason, he still didn't seem to realize why I was so strongly protesting. I narrowed my eyes and specified – though in my mind, I shouldn't have had to. "You are not ever going to call me the name of one of those incompetent mockeries again. I put up with them on the television enough – I refuse to be called by one of their names."
Dean leaned back. "Why not?" He asked, pouting more than he was irritated. "I could've gone with the neurotic one," he pointed out. At least the neurotic one has an excuse for her lack of competence.
"Because they are pathetic excuses for doctors in a show whose producers probably have absolutely no idea what they're talking about and give zero fucks about it." I said plainly, voicing my blunt opinion on the show for not the first time. I could not stand that horrible porno – oh, sorry, I mean drama. "I do not have a medical license, yet I would be a far better doctor than any of them, you know why?!" I didn't let him respond. "Because I know that there is no point in taking someone to the operating room after they've been shot in the head at point-blank range. I also don't have to run a thousand tests to find out why a jaundiced patient's eyes and nails are yellow, okay?! Because I already know hey, their kidneys are failing, start them on dialysis. If that show were real life, people would die." I paused for a second before meaningfully adding, "And the building would never be up to code, because it seems like everyone, including the cleaning and maintenance staff, are too busy getting it on in the closets and elevators to do their jobs."
He put his hands up in weak surrender. "Okay, okay!" Though he said it seriously, his face was amused, his eyebrows up and his bright green eyes sparkling with life and mischief. "Chill." I clenched my hands into fists and then loosened again, taking a deep breath, but glaring at him for telling me to chill. "Got it, babe. Not allowed to call you the doctors from Dr. Sexy. That show really bothers you, doesn't it?" He grinned, already knowing full well that yes, it did.
I rubbed two fingers over a spot on my forehead. Even when I don't have a headache, it's a habit I picked up when I get exasperated or irritated. "You cannot say I'm not dedicated to making this work," I agreed emphatically.
I sighed, bit my lip, and then reached out for his hand. Dean didn't say anything, but he opened his palm and let me lock our fingers before he squeezed my hand softly. I looked through the window at the sick child again, more invested in the kid than I was with Sam or Serenity's current questioning.
These poor kids… They're so little, and they're not even old enough to stand half the chance that a healthy adult would against a new strain of pneumonia. I remembered being shot in a job gone awry and being taken in for surgery. While I was recovering, I hadn't moved enough, and a weak pneumonia had taken root in my lungs. I'd been in the hospital for another five days while I was on antibiotics, and Serenity had helped me move around the hospital so that I was more active and stood a better chance. The illness went away, and I took medicine for another week to keep it that way.
I squeezed his hand again and took a deep breath, taking comfort in the way my muscles stretched when I felt my ribcage expanding. "Okay. I'll be the first to admit this pneumonia thing is weird, but it could be some new strain. Or maybe it's something that's only mimicking pneumonia. Diseases and bacteria grow and evolve, just like humans. So it may really just be some sort of pneumonia, in which case it's frustrating, but I'll call the real CDC and we can move on."
It's not running away if I'm still making sure something gets done about it, I reasoned, although I didn't think I could stand settling for just leaving all of these half-dead kids in a hospital with no clue what's wrong with them.
"Maybe." Dean agreed with me quietly. Even with his sometimes callous attitude, he couldn't deny that there was something wrong with seeing so many sick children at once. "… Or maybe something opened that window." With his free hand, he raked fingers through his short hair. "I don't know, Holls. Look, Dad's sent us down here for a reason. I think we might be barking up the right tree!"
I wanted to say that it didn't make sense for a monster to make children ill, but not kill them, but then again, my entire life doesn't make all that much scientific or reasonable sense. I owed it to Dean to explore the potential of it being something different, something unexplainable, and for all my issues with John, the man did know how to hunt.
"Both of the kids are here. He's not going to leave them." I said aloud, referring back to the father we'd talked with. "We can check out his house with the other two." The kid shifted just the slightest bit, dry lips parting and chest very weakly heaving when he tried to cough in his sleep. He put his head back in the pillows and his mouth stayed open while he tried to breathe. "I'll tell you one thing, though."
"What's that?" Dean questioned, looking over curiously.
I set my jaw and steeled my resolve. This was going to end, one way or another, regardless of John and his instructions. "It's going to seem like eternity to that father before he gets to go back home." I untangled my fingers from Dean's and turned straight to face him instead of looking into the room. "If something is attacking the children, it's dead. And if it's a ghost, it'll be so dead it's not even going to be in Hell. It's just going to have to stop existing." That was how dead it was going to be when I was done with it.
Dean wasn't serious as he responded, but I knew he understood me. "Ooh, Holls," he teased. "It's so sexy when you get all vengeful."
I should've known that wasn't the end.
I sighed loudly and rolled my eyes. "Don't."
"Sorry. Dr. Kasakabe."
"Drop it."
"Drop it, stat."
"Don't make me hit you."
"We're in a hospital. I'll be fine, Doctor."
"I'm going to kill you."
Breaking into the single father's home was easier than it should have been, because he'd forgotten to lock the front door, and none of the neighbors would be too alarmed by a couple of federal suits knocking on the door and then walking inside with no commotion. Dean pulled out the EMF meter he'd hidden in his jacket and we split up to explore the downstairs.
The most interesting thing we found was proof that one of the kids should be applauded for a creative response on her homework, which she'd forgotten to put her name on. So, really, whichever kid it belonged to needed to be reminded of the importance of taking credit for work (assuming she wasn't going to grow up a career criminal) and then commended for her out-of-the-box thinking.
We all went upstairs to the girls' room, since they shared one, and since the father wasn't sick, we weren't too urgent to investigate his own personal living quarters. The girls were in the corner of the house in a large room, almost as big as the master bedroom. I supposed it would be a good size for two people, especially pre-pubescent siblings, who could live in the same room for quite a while longer before it became less appropriate.
They had twin-sized beds on opposite sides of the room, and on the adjacent wall, across from the door, was a large window with a lock at the bottom and white silk curtains pushed to the side and hung back on a decorative hook. Their carpet was shaggy and pink with green swirls in the pattern, and one girl had a bedspread of Jasmine from Aladdin and Raja, her pet tiger. The other's was floral, with poinsettias and bright red and purple flowers. They had toys, but they were pretty organized, both of them with their own shelves, and a shelf on the other side of the room with books and movies.
I wandered over to the beds to look underneath, thinking absently that if I got a surprise like the clockwork droids from Reinette's room in Doctor Who then someone was going to get punched. Serenity went to the toys on the shelves.
"What are we looking for?" She asked in the meantime, pulling back games and dolls to look behind them before pushing them back in.
"I don't know," I answered, getting down to my knees and looking into the dark under the beds. Something about the lighting looked off, so I reached out and my fingers hit shining black wood. The bedframe may be hollow, but there were sides that went all the way to the floor. I pushed back the other's blankets to make sure they were both built like that, but they were.
Then I heard the soft singing.
"Prince Ali, glorious he, Ali Ababwe-"
"No," I said simply. Serenity rolled her eyes. "I do not want that stuck in my head all day."
"You got anything over there?" Sam asked.
"Nah, nothing," Dean answered, leaning into the closet, which didn't have a door. He pushed back the girls' clothes to move the EMF as close to the back wall as he could, but it didn't go off with any abnormal signals.
"Does anyone smell sulfur?" Serenity asked. I looked up immediately to her – sulfur was a sign of demons, which, no, I can do without, thanks – but she wasn't alarmed, or making a face. It was just a question. We usually did comment on it, anyway, and I let my shoulders relaxed as I crawled forward on my knees to the wall between the beds.
"No, just, um…" I unplugged the air freshener from the electrical socket and unplugged the bottle from what looked like it was supposed to be a neon owl. "Warm Vanilla Sugar," I read from the label. It was a Bath and Body Works product. Curiously, I held it closer to my nose and inhaled, humming in appreciation. It was just as good as it sounded.
"Hey, guys?" Sam called, standing by the window. The window hadn't been closed when we'd come in, but Sam had pushed it all the way open and was holding it that way with a hand on the lower pane. I shoved the air freshener back into the dispenser and plugged it back into the wall before getting up and joining Sam.
"What is it?" I asked, leaning forwards to look down. It made sense that whatever he saw would be on the ground below, but instead my attention was caught by the long black markings on the outside of the window, between the outer ledge and the plastic gutter. "Wow," I remarked, not sure what to make of it at first. "Okay. Um. Not normal."
Outside the window, it looked like there were several long black burns over the greenish roofing. That was weird enough, but I leaned closer to the window to see more of it, and the scratches all met at a point below of a small, uneven oval. It looked almost like a handprint of a very disproportionate hand, scorched into the roof.
"What is it?" Serenity asked, looking over from the bookshelves, standing up.
"Dean, you were right." Sam didn't look away from the handprint, and neither did I. I almost wanted to reach out and touch it, feel the texture and what it was made of, but something about it was telling me not to. I was getting a better sense of what not to do where magic and the supernatural were involved, both by learning and by a general intuitive reasoning, but even if I didn't know magic existed, I'd still be wary of touching it with my skin. "It's not pneumonia."
"Get one of the pencils from the girls' desk," I called behind me. I didn't want to reach out the window, not after the incident with Max and Roger Miller, but being afraid of windows was a bit silly and I had to face my fear sooner or later. Plus, Sam was holding it up, so…
Dean picked up an orange colored pencil from on top of the desk by one of the coloring books shoved precariously at the edge and carried it over. I took it from him quickly and reached out, holding the pencil close to the end and pressing the bottom to the handprint. It felt rough, but there was a little give to it when I pushed harder, and I made a face.
"It's dry rot," I announced, leaning back inside and chucking the colored pencil into the trash. Some dry rots were caused by fungi, and the kids didn't need to be potentially exposed to that if that is what was causing it.
I moved back to the side so that Dean and Serenity could both see. Dean stood by the window first and he stared at it, his eyebrows pinched almost like he recognized it while he looked with scrutiny.
"What the hell leaves a handprint like that?" Sam asked, mystified, which didn't help my nerves that much. I was already put on edge, but having Sam – the source of our learning and broadening knowledge of the supernatural – clueless made it seem a little less acceptable and a little more fear-worthy.
"Dean?" I called, when he didn't answer to Sam. Dean didn't respond and Sam was looking at him in bemusement, so I said his name a little louder. "Dean."
Although I got his attention this time, Dean looked like he'd been startled. His mind had gone somewhere else for a minute there, and as much as I wanted to know where he'd been taken to by the sight of the handprint, I also figured if he were going to say in front of everyone, he'd say it first.
So, I was understandably surprised when Dean, sober and grave, started to speak, sounding uneasy in his unsure voice and looking a little like he was feeling sick.
"I know why Dad sent us here," he revealed reluctantly. Every companionate instinct in my body was telling me to go to Dean and take him away from the window and the sight that was freaking him out and find out why it was a problem and get him to stop looking like he'd been slapped. Even Serenity was visibly concerned, taking a step forward and starting to raise her arm, sucking in on one of her cheeks like she wasn't sure what to say, but wanted to say something. "He's faced this thing before. … He wants us to finish the job."
Serenity scoffed. She balked either at the idea of John fighting something and not killing it or at the idea of doing someone else's work. Probably the latter, because Serenity's the one that tells someone to get their own pain medication if the other person's bones are all intact.
"Excuse me?" She asked predictably, leaning back, visibly against the idea of being sent to do John's work.
I was almost on that boat, but I was on one with just a little, slight difference; where I was against doing what he wanted done, I was mostly concerned with why, if he wanted it done, he hadn't done it himself. John isn't one to run away from a hunt; he's the guy that does a battle cry and enthusiastically tackles it and sticks to it for over twenty years.
So why didn't he just finish this one himself?
While Sam and Serenity went to the gas station down the road from the motel, well within walking distance, to get snacks and food to survive on for the next couple of days, Dean and I pulled the Impala up along the front of the motel to check in and get a room. The building was just one story, and it was small, but it looked nice and well-kept.
The engine cut as Dean twisted the keys, but before he could open his door or take them out of the ignition, I reached across the space between us and set my palm gently on his shoulder. He turned his head around from the window and looked at me questioningly, looking with meaning down at my hand.
"Go on then, genius," I prompted, giving him a soft push on his shoulder before moving my hand back into my own space. "What's a shtriga?"
I had known since the bedroom there was something Dean had been keeping to himself. I'd also known that if he didn't want to talk, then the best way to bring it up would be when we were alone. With Sam and Serenity a little less than a block away and us alone in the car, we wouldn't be overheard. We had privacy.
I don't want him to keep secrets, but I'm really more worried about him freaking himself out over something and trying to handle it himself when he has three other people more than willing to help deal with whatever it is.
Dean shifted in his seat. I paid attention to how he fidgeted; he put his back at an angle more towards the door so that he could face me more. Open to discussing it, then. "It's… it's kinda like a witch, I think." He answered vaguely. "I don't know much about them."
I raised an eyebrow. "Then how come you know what it is just from the handprint in the bedroom?"
Dean shifted and he swallowed, but he didn't look away from me; actually, he just dipped his head and let his gaze move down to my leg. "Dad hunted one in Fort Douglas, Wisconsin, about sixteen… maybe seventeen years ago?" Dean would have only been nine or ten at the time. "Sammy was there. I'm surprised he doesn't remember."
"Well, he'd have been, uh, five or six then," I pointed out. It was totally possible to remember things from that age, but the minutiae generally faded, especially if you didn't want to remember. If it was a hunt, I doubted Sam would have.
Dean's elbow knocked against the steering wheel when he raised his hand to the back of his neck. I grimaced sympathetically, but he didn't really seem to notice. "I guess he just caught wind of the thing here in Fitchburg again now, and kicked the coordinates over to me."
"To us." I corrected, eyes soft and sympathetic.
"Right." He cleared his throat, continuing to rub the back of his neck. Remembering how I'd calmed him down when our siblings had been kidnapped, I leaned forward, raising my left hand over his right shoulder and cupping the back of his neck with my palm, settling my fingers along his throat. "To us," he repeated, his eyes sliding shut as he leaned into the touch, his own hands falling down to his lap.
I smiled softly as I saw how it relaxed him and squeezed softly, just firming up my touch. Maybe the reason he found it calming was because it was so trusting. Having the back of your neck touched speaks to primitive instincts to move away and protect yourself. It's why I don't typically let someone touch my neck. If Dean wasn't tensed, then it was because he trusted me not to harm him.
The conversation wasn't over, and I thought if we'd just stayed quiet in the car, he might feel better but I still wouldn't know what was going on with him. "You said John saw this before?" I said, scooting a bit closer. "You think it's the same monster?"
Dean started to lift his shoulders. "Maybe."
Slowly, I canted my head to the side. "Then why is it still breathing if John has already given it a shot?" The man's a more than formidable hunter. I have to acknowledge that about him, if nothing else. His determination in laudable. "I mean, he's gunning for twenty-three years after the pyromaniac. You think he'd just give up on a shtriga?"
Dean raised his eyes to me and looked into my blue ones. "It got away."
"It got away." I repeated skeptically, peering into his irises the way he was doing to me.
Dean broke eye contact to roll his eyes. He didn't pull away from my hand. "Yeah, sweetheart, it got away. It happens, even to Dad." There was a little thrill in my stomach at his cute pet name. It sounded sweet, kind when he said it to me; not condescending or leery, like when most others did.
I still snickered. "I'm pretty sure John would object to that statement."
He held his arms out helplessly. "I don't know what to tell you, Holls! Maybe Dad just didn't have his Wheaties that morning!" I narrowed my eyes. Dean saw I wasn't buying it and groaned, leaning away. I let him move away and brought both of my hands back to my lap.
"Dean." I said his name softly, being more patient with him than I had ever been with anyone aside from Serenity and frightened children. "Come on. Talk to me." Dean gave me one of his 'don't patronize me' glares that he liked throwing around when he thought he was being treated like an idiot or a kid. I huffed at the glare. "Yeah, yeah. Come on, I have girlfriend rights that involve making you communicate in ways other than violence, drinking, and touching."
He started to look away. For a second I thought he was being stubborn, but the way he did it… there was no aggravation or anger, but he didn't meet my eyes when I leaned to an angle to try to catch his gaze. Shame, I realized as I noticed in the fading light that his cheeks were flushed.
"He let it go." What? I was about to ask if we were talking about the same John Winchester, but Dean looked down to his knees and made himself keep talking. "Remember when the Benders snatched up Serenity and Sam, and I… told you about the monster that attacked Sammy?"
"Dad was working it alone… I knew how to work a shotgun – it was the first thing he taught me when I was big enough to hold one – and he left me to watch after Sammy. I got bored, went out to the arcade, and when I came back, there was this… This monster, hovering over Sammy's bed, touching him, less than a foot away from him."
That had been a terrifying ordeal I wasn't likely to ever forget; both relaxing and emotional, it had stood out against the fear and anxiety and frightening calm after Serenity and Sam had disappeared from the parking lot without a warning. I remembered snuggling up to Dean in bitter cold, frost on the ground, the scent of gun oil and cologne soaking into my clothes from Dean's jacket, warming ourselves up with each other.
Then he'd told me why he always took his job to protect his brother so seriously – the one time he'd neglected to, Sam had been attacked by the monster John was hunting, and the story had made me want to time travel to the past, fight the bad guy myself, and pick up the child version of Sam and never let go, and had, more reasonably, wished to get both of my siblings back to safety and just hug and hold them both.
Thrills and butterflies – shots of chemical nirvana from Dean being so sweet and affectionate, and the feel of his lips without any deceit or drunkenness or even lust, and it was so sweet and perfect I couldn't have imagined a better first 'real' kiss with the hunter.
"Of course I do," I responded reassuringly, dragging my mind back to the actual point of the conversation I had instigated.
"And…" Dean looked up again, at my face. My hunter looked scarily defeated and guilty. "He just packed us up after that, took us to Pastor Jim's. He was so scared for Sam, he didn't stay to finish it off. He just wanted to get us out of the way." Finally! I internally thought with no small amount of exasperation. An act I can support!
"And the monster was a shtriga," I concluded, being able to complete the puzzle without him having to spell it out for me.
Dean sighed and looked down, leaning forward and bowing his head. I lifted my chin and our foreheads met softly, our noses pressing together. I'd have giggled at the good way it made me feel except for the context, which made it hard to laugh.
"Yeah," he murmured, his breath tickling over my cheek and warming my cooled skin.
"Okay." That felt like a weight had been resolved. No wonder Dean was so tense; he blamed himself for the shtriga getting away the first time, for being allowed to continue and harm the children that it had up to this point. No matter what he says, Dean has a certain fondness for kids, though it's not always apparent or obvious. I think all of us do; aside from maybe Serenity, who gets angry when they're hurt or threatened on principle and morality if nothing else.
"Well, whether or not it's the same one, we'll kill it and protect the children." My words were barely a whisper, because I didn't have to speak louder for him to be able to hear me. It was like being in a bubble where we were the only things that mattered. Idealistic and a romantic notion… yes, it was, but I think that with everything I deal with and all of the people I've helped, I deserve a couple of minutes now and then to cherish my family, my hunter. "This one won't be getting away."
I changed my angle just a touch to press my lips to the corner of his mouth, feeling his lips move as he began to smile. An arm had come up around me while I wasn't paying attention, and a large hand cupped the back of my head.
"Thanks," he said in a soft, relieved sigh, holding me still while he pressed his lips square over mine, returning the gesture, grateful and appreciative. I hummed quietly so he knew I'd heard and I opened my mouth slightly, a shiver coursing up my spine and butterflies crowding my stomach as his tongue ran over my lower lip.
It didn't go any further. Without discussion, Dean unsnapped his seatbelt from the buckle and leaned back to pull it across his body. I licked my lips and reached blindly for the door handle, knowing the Impala so well by now that my fingers found it deftly without looking. He pulled the keys out of the ignition and when I stepped into the colder air, closing the door behind me, I sighed softly, tipping my head back to look at the stars.
For all the stress of the yellow-eyed demon, and John, and Sam's and my psychic abilities, I… I was feeling like I was in a dream. A large part of the daydream factor was that, after giving up on a serious relationship built on something other than lust or mutual gain, I now had exactly that with Dean, whom I respected and admired but was also familiar with. It was probably the healthiest relationship I'd ever had, everything else in our lives aside. There was never any pressure or rudeness, just the occasional fights that were healthy to have; the alternative of having no fights indicated that we just didn't care enough to make our opinions known.
When he walked around the front of the car, Dean held out his arm for me. I slipped my hand into his and tugged him towards me, our hands falling down between us while we walked almost shoulder-to-shoulder into the motel office reception. I was smiling brightly up at Dean until I heard the bell from over the door and the shuffling footsteps of someone coming near, dragging their feet on the carpeting.
A blond kid, ten at youngest but not thirteen or older, looked up over the counter. He was just barely tall enough for his head to look over the reception counter. I had to smile at how at ease he tried to look, leaning against the counter in jeans and a long-sleeved grey hoodie. His hair looked soft, curving around his face and reaching almost to his chin. Behind him I saw the colors of a bright cartoon, and an even smaller kid sitting in a bean bag chair watching the television.
Family-run business? I guessed, because now that I was looking, behind the counter there was a door that led to a back room which seemed pretty large, furnished, and personal. It was where the kid had come from, I'd guess.
"King or two queens?" He asked us, eyes darting between Dean and I like he wasn't sure exactly who to be addressing.
I smiled down at the kid and started to wonder if there was a polite way to ask where his guardian was without offending the kid. Children get so irritated if someone asks for their parents when they're trying to be adults. "Two queens, thanks."
He stood up on his tiptoes and craned his neck subtly. I tried looking down to my left to find what he was looking at and remembered that I hadn't let go of Dean. His fingers were still wrapped around my hand. Abruptly I started to look back to the kid, who had settled back onto his feet and smirked.
"Yeah, I'll bet," he mumbled under his breath, deliberately loud enough for us to hear, while he picked up a black ink pen and looked at a clipboard, probably of rooms and numbers.
I rolled my eyes, but I was more amused than anything. Dean balked, affronted. "What'd you say?"
He looked to Dean's side and plastered an innocent smile onto his young, boyish face. "Nice car!" He praised brightly. Dean frowned suspiciously, knowing full well what he had heard. The guy could be as bothered as he wanted, but I was quite frankly surprised that he wasn't preening or boasting about his Baby.
… Yeah, I may be his sweetheart, girl, and babe, but the car is still his baby to the point of being called Baby. I accepted that a long time ago because I've known since I first met them that he has an unusual attachment to the Impala. Besides, the car's kind of grown on me, too.
A woman a little shorter than me came around the side of the door from the room with the younger child, her hair straightened with the ebony ends brushing her shoulders. She smiled at us while she reached for the blond kid with one hand, setting her palm along his scapula. He looked up over his shoulder.
"Hi," she said, cheery and charming, nudging the kid to the side and sliding the clipboard closer to her.
"Hi," Dean replied less enthusiastically, still giving the boy a suspicious fish-eye.
The woman plucked away the pen from the boy's hand and he put his arms down and bent his head. "Checking in?" She asked, making the assumption already, given that she would have likely recognized us if we were leaving.
Dean still nodded anyway.
"Do me a favor; go get your brother some dinner." She didn't even look to the kid as she asked, and she took the effort to withhold her sigh when he protested.
"But I'm helping a guest!"
The look she gave him made me have to hide a grin behind my hand, and I went ahead and supposed that she was the boy's mother. The way his face fell when she gave him that unimpressed stare was reminiscent of parents and children everywhere, and his shoulders fell as he admitted defeat.
Still, he rebelliously got in another quip as he lowered his head and turned to trudge back into the personal room behind the counter. "Two queens," he muttered loudly, making an extremely obvious point.
I raised my eyebrows. I was torn between laughing and being bothered that a kid whose name I didn't even know was so blatantly insinuating that Dean and I were having sex. Still, I couldn't be angry at the kid, so I just bit my lip and looked up to the manager of the hotel.
"Kid's got a bit of an advanced sense of humor," I said, trying to stay light and conversational to make it a joke.
She glanced up from behind the counter and her stern countenance melted. "Oh, yeah," she chuckled. "He likes to think so. I apologize for anything he said."
I held up my right hand and sort of made a waving motion. I'd needed something funny to cheer up some after what was going on. "No trouble. Don't worry about it."
The woman smiled as she pushed the board aside and woke up the computer system facing her. "Will that be cash or credit?"
Dean opened his mouth even while he was reaching back for the billfold he kept in the pocket in back of his jeans. "Do you take MasterCard?" He asked, opening up the wallet and thumbing through cards. He pulled out a credit card while she hummed and then offered it to her. "Perfect. Here you go…"
The manager took the card from between his index and middle fingers, looked for the numbers, and then turned it so she could slide it in her system on the counter by the computer. She looked tired, but equally warm and optimistic, and I couldn't even be irritated by the near constant smile on her face.
The device printed out a receipt with mechanical beeping and the sounds of paper rustling, and then she tore off the slip with the tiny, sharp razors on the inside of the case, neatly ripping off the receipt from the roll. She folded it unevenly around the credit card and then held out both towards Dean.
Dean didn't take either of them. He was staring, transfixed, at the space in the direction of the private room where the blonde boy had disappeared to go take care of his brother. The little kid was sitting at a table, now with a bowl of cereal in front of him, but Dean's expression was unsettlingly blank.
"Dean," I prompted, letting go of his hand and sliding my fingers gently up his back, cupping my palm around the back of his neck and applying soft pressure. His neck tensed but then relaxed again as he came back to reality. I thought he must've been remembering something, a memory brought on by the older brother taking care of the younger.
"Sir?" The manager's smile faded, but it was just replaced with mild concern.
Dean pursed his lips and took away the card and receipt so quickly that it was almost rude. "Thanks," he said to make up for it, still a little dazed or distracted.
"Hey, kid!" I called on impulse, looking into the next room. The blond boy popped his head out again, blinking in question and looking a little guilty like he expected to be rebuked. Instead, I gave him a little wink. "Just so you know, you weren't wrong." Dean and I only used one bed. The other was for our siblings.
I left him standing, confused and surprised, while I led Dean outside of the front office and picked out a map of Fitchburg from a brochure shelf on the way.
