A/N: It might be obvious from how things were left in the previous chapter, but this is the scene that had me tagging this story for violence. Skip to the first scene break if you don't want to read it; you'll still be able to figure out the bulk of the story based on context.

Chapter 7 - Lucky

In the midst of the fighting, gunshots, and howling, Sam almost didn't hear the tiny scream that followed seconds after Lex's first shot from the meteor rock gun.

If Sam hadn't been listening and watching for Clark, he was sure he would have missed it altogether. Dean didn't show any signs of hearing, and neither did Lex.

Sam waited for Dean to turn his back, then he bolted in the direction of the scream.

A moment later, he could hear Dean calling after him, but there was no way either Dean or Lex could chase him. They had their own problems to deal with. The last thing Sam had seen before he took off running was one of the werewolves transforming back into its human form.

The cabin was only a short distance away, though it had been hard to see through all of the foliage. Clark lay curled up on the ground just outside the front door, panting and whimpering. His shirt had been torn away, and blood dripped down his arm from a gaping wound in his shoulder. His veins around the wound were swollen, almost green.

Sam dropped to the ground, propping up Clark's head. "What happened? Did the werewolf—"

"Got shot," Clark choked out. "Please . . ." Tears poured down the sides of his face.

The meteor rock bullet. If meteor rocks could mutate regular people, maybe they could poison Clark. Already, sweat was breaking out on Clark's forehead.

"Okay, hang on, I'm going to help you." Sam's throat tightened. He had no idea what to do. Dean would probably be trying to get the bullet out—maybe Sam should try that, too. The cabin was abandoned, but lots of people left a tool kit in their cabins. There might be a pair of pliers or something.

Clark's eyes rolled back, and he fell limp in Sam's arms

Sam picked up Clark—he was awfully light, considering his strength—and hurried into the cabin. He stepped around a few fallen werewolves' bodies and laid Clark's body down on a dusty, beat up couch. He gave Clark's hand a quick squeeze, then he ran to start searching the closets and cabinets for a tool box.

He couldn't find one anywhere.

Sam checked back through places he'd already looked, growing more frantic by the second, but there was nothing. Finally, he stood in the center of the cabin and raked a hand through his hair, heart racing—he had no idea what to do.

"Sam," Clark whimpered.

"I—I'm trying!" Sam's eyes wandered over to the kitchen. He ran over and grabbed a pair of tongs. He picked up a knife as well—he'd have to widen the wound quite a bit to fit the tongs.

No. It wouldn't work. He'd have to widen the wound too much. Powers or no powers, Clark would bleed out before Sam could remove the bullet.

Sam racked his brain, then got a new idea—he ran for the bathroom, rummaged through the drawers, and finally got lucky. He found a pair of tweezers.

He ran back toward Clark and knelt beside the couch. "Okay, I'm gonna try to get the bullet out." Sam hovered the tweezers over the wound for a second, cringing, then pierced the metal into the open wound.

Clark screamed, kicking and slamming a hand into the back of the couch, his torso jerking upwards.

Sam pulled back—he couldn't see what he was doing while Clark was thrashing around. "Y-you have to hold still."

"I can't, it h-hurts!" Clark let out a couple of sobs.

Sam held out a hand to Clark, tears stinging his own eyes. "Here, hold on as tight as you want. But keep still."

Clark clung onto his hand so hard, Sam could feel his joints cracking and his muscles straining. But he knew whatever Clark was feeling was a hundred times worse, so he ignored the pain and focused on getting the bullet out. He had to pierce the tweezers in deeper than he'd wanted, but they finally struck something hard, and he pulled it out—a glowing green slug, which Sam tossed as far away from himself as he could.

Clark's grip on Sam's hand immediately loosened, his breathing slowed, and he swiped at his face with his arm, wiping away the tears. "Thanks," he whispered.

"Don't mention it." Sam gently pried his hand away from Clark's, massaging the muscles and wincing.

"Oh no! Did I hurt your hand?"

"I'll be okay." It hurt quite a bit, and it might have been sprained, but it didn't seem broken to him. He'd had enough broken bones to know what that felt like. "We need to get you to the hospital."

"I can't go to the hospital. They'll find out about my powers and experiment on me."

"You were shot, Clark."

"I'm okay. I'm healing, see?" Already, the swollen green veins were fading back to the color of his skin, and the flesh was starting to seam itself back together. "I'll be okay."

Sam's eyes just kept widening as he watched the skin grow back, covering over the wound.

"Sam?"

Sam blinked a couple of times, forcing himself to look up at Clark's face. "If the meteor rock bullets work on the werewolves, Dean and Lex are going to be here any minute."

"Do I need to help them?"

"I think you've done enough." Sam gently touched the smooth skin where the bullet had been, wiping away a bit of the blood.

"I'll go back to the house. I'll wash up in the creek, then I'll speed into the house and changed before my parents can see me." Clark's eyes fell on the few werewolves' bodies in the cabin. "Please don't tell Lex and Dean I killed those ones."

"I'll tell them I did it."

Clark smiled. "See you in a little while," he said.

"Yeah," Sam said, feeling a little sick to his stomach. "See you."

Dean wasn't sure what he had been expecting the meteor rock to do to the werewolves.

It was clear the silver was piercing their skin, injuring and hurting them, but it wasn't enough to kill them. Based on the summer before, Dean had believed that the meteor rock might be necessary, somehow, to killing the werewolves. Subconsciously, Dean had somehow expected that a werewolf who had already been hit with a silver bullet would be vulnerable to the meteor rock; one more bullet would pierce through its heart and kill it.

His theory wasn't even close to the truth. The meteor rock slug didn't break the werewolf's skin at all.

Only when Sam ran away did Dean realize how little he'd thought through this fight.

He hadn't done enough research; he didn't know what his equipment would do; he hadn't even known how many werewolves there were. They'd been incredibly lucky—had there been just a few more of the monsters, their guns might not have been enough to take them out. Aside from that, Dean had taken directions from a ten-year-old to find the pack in the first place. Worse still, instead of giving Sam a clear job and direction, he'd tried to take him off the hunt. What had he expected Sam would do in response?

Dean's father would have been absolutely livid with him, but no punishment could have amounted to the utter shame, the sheer disappointment that would be in his eyes if he knew that Dean had run into a hunt half-assed and failed to protect his little brother.

But Dean wouldn't have to tell his dad any of that. They got lucky.

Because the meteor rock didn't just transform the werewolf it hit back into a human. It transformed every werewolf within a few feet away from itself.

Werewolves were more vulnerable in human form; Dean hoped that killing them would take no more than another silver bullet. As it turned out, it didn't even take that. The silver bullet wounds they had weren't enough to kill them in wolf form, but in human form, they dropped to the ground, their injuries bleeding out.

Lex fired off no more than a half a dozen shells, and the next thing Dean knew, they were surrounded by dead human bodies. Dead bodies that looked human, anyway.

Why had Sam run away?

"Sammy!" Dean called, and he ran in the direction where he thought Sam had gone. He reached a clearing with a little cabin; there was a small pool of blood just outside the front door. "Oh no . . . Sam!"

Dean burst through the front door of the cabin. "Sam!"

Sam stood over three bodies. These ones hadn't even been transformed into human form—apparently, Sam had just shot them so many times, they'd succumbed to the silver. "Dean! Did you get all the ones outside?"

"Yeah."

Sam smirked. "I saw these ones trying to get away. I was afraid they'd attack us later, so I came after them."

Dean could feel his stomach sinking. An hour ago, he had punched Sam for trying to follow them. Now, he had saved their lives.

Sam could have been killed. And if he had been, it would have been Dean's fault for not trusting him, not equipping him. Not following after him when he ran. Dean had one job, only one job that really mattered—taking care of Sam. He hadn't even done that.

Guilt overwhelmed him, and for a moment, Dean almost wanted to be honest with his dad about how badly the hunt had gone. Dad would kill him, but he deserved it.

Dean breathed in to thank Sam, but he couldn't get the words out. What came out was, "Hey, Sam? Slug me."

"W-what?"

"Come on, you get a freebie. I won't even hit you back." Dean held out his arm.

Sam rolled his eyes. "You're nuts." He walked out of the cabin. "Let's get back to the farm."

Dean sighed and followed Sam out of the cabin. Lex was waiting just outside. Sam ran out ahead of them, and Lex walked beside Dean.

Dean glared at Lex. "How much of that you listen in on?"

"Enough," Lex said.

"Sam saved my life last summer," Dean said. "I shoulda let him come with us today."

"Yeah, you should have."

"We needed a third person. I shoulda trusted my brother. Shouldn't've hit him."

"True," Lex said, then he coiled back his left fist and punched Dean in the arm.

Dean gasped. The force of the hit caught him off guard—he'd forgotten that Lex was left handed. "The hell, Luthor?"

"Now that's done. So you can stop beating yourself up over it."

Dean gritted his teeth. "You're gonna pay for that."

"No, I don't think I am," Lex said, and he ran out ahead to catch up with Sam.

Dean might have half-assed the hunt, but one way or another, they'd done it. They'd taken out a pack of werewolves, saved a whole lot of people from having their hearts ripped out. The local police might never come to understand what was going on with the pile of bodies in the woods—that was a part of every hunt.

He might have missed a few things along the way, but his first solo hunt had been a success in the end.

And no one had been hurt.

Clark wanted to super speed back to the farm, but he didn't. His shoulder still hurt really bad, and his whole body felt tired and feverish. So he didn't speed into the house; he snuck into his bedroom to grab a clean set of clothes, and then he went to the loft. He knew which chores his parents would each be doing at this time of the morning, and he just avoided being where they would be.

His parents would ask too many questions. Clark had washed the blood away from his arms, face, and chest, but there was still some on his pants and socks, and he wasn't wearing a shirt, and he was soaking wet from his bath in the creek. If they saw him before he could get changed, they would want to know why. And if they caught him before Lex and Dean and Sam returned, they'd want to know where the other boys were.

Clark's heart was still pounding from the fight, and part of him just wanted to curl up in a corner and cry. But it felt really nice to change into clean clothes, and by the time he made his way out to the loft to wait for his brothers to return, he felt more hungry than anything else. Lucky for him, he'd stowed some snacks in a little cabinet in the back of the loft. He was just finishing eating when he spotted Sam and Lex walking through the cornfield, and Dean a few steps behind them.

Clark ran out to meet them. He did his best to look innocently curious as he asked, "How did it go?"

"We're all fine," Sam said, smiling, though he still held his arm stiffly. Clark winced—he knew he had held onto Sam's hand too hard when he'd been removing the bullet. "No one suspects anything?"

"I saw my parents at a distance, but they didn't see me. It's almost lunch time, they'll be expecting us to come back."

"Good," Dean called from a few steps back. "I'm starving."

They were all quiet for the last minute or two of the walk to the house. Clark walked them over to the side door that led into the kitchen, and he could smell lunch before he even opened it. Chicken fried steak, scrambled eggs, toast, potatoes, and fresh squeezed orange juice.

His mom looked up from the table as she was setting down the last of the spread. "You boys are late," she said, but the smile in her eyes let Clark know she wasn't really upset. "Wash up."

"Yes, ma'am," both Sam and Dean said in near unison, and Lex smiled at Clark. They were going to be okay.

Just before Clark sat down at the table, it occurred to him that he hadn't actually told Sam about those bodies he'd left a little distance away from the cabin. He was pretty sure they hadn't actually been dead; someone needed to come shoot those werewolves. But he decided not to say anything, since his parents were listening. Sam and Dean were professional monster hunters. They definitely would have checked the area for more bodies, and they wouldn't have missed anything.