Pivot Point

Story Name: Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: What if Anna decided to derail the apocalypse by intervening to help rather than trying to make the brothers never having existed.

Timeline: Season 5

Note: I'm Australian and I can't bring myself to use USA spelling, sorry.

Chapter 103: Were

They were back to being continually on the move, a different motel every night. That night wasn't any different, to start anyway. There'd been nothing in the papers.

So Sam hadn't been expecting the mental pressure of a vision to manifest even as he approached the bed Dean always insisted he take with his duffel bag. The streets that flashed in front of his eyes were darkened, but he still recognised them. He also recognised the flashes of a werewolf in those streets as it stalked and then pounced on someone walking along.

Then he was aware of reality around him again, his bag now rested on the bed, and his big brother was in front of him.

"I take it we need to jump back in the car?" Dean stated more than asked.

Sam shook his head, "no, it's local."

"Did you miss something in the papers?"

Sam didn't grace him with a look, though he felt like it, "wouldn't have missed reports of hearts ripped out no matter how tired or unenthusiastic I was."

"So, a werewolf?"

Sam nodded.

"Simple enough. Except with no reports, we have no idea where its range is, and the police are going to look at us sideways if we turn up at this hour." Dean complained, glaring at the dusk settling outside. Given the time of the month, they had maybe an hour or two before the werewolf would start hunting. At this point, it didn't matter what had kept the newspapers from reporting on its activities, but he still felt annoyed. Reports would have attracted the attention of Hunters, either them or others, and the number of deaths would have been cut short. Couldn't do anything about that now, though. Except try to save whoever was going to be killed that night.

"I recognised the streets; we drove through them. It's walking distance."

"Wonderful." Dean wasn't sure whether to be glad it was so close or annoyed that they'd taken a room in a hot zone, "okay… well, you grab a snack, I'll get the silver bullets."

"A snack?" This time Sam did send a look his way as Dean headed back out to the impala for the ammunition needed.

"Humour me. It's been active once; it'll likely be active again before the night is through."

Sam rolled his eyes at his big brother's back.

Dean shot him a glare when he came back in, and the middle brother hadn't moved, "Sam…"

"It's a werewolf, Dean. Not an experimental melting of a tulpa symbol. At worst, it'll be a small application of telekinesis, and if that happens, I can eat a muesli bar. Stop fretting already."

"I'm not fretting. I'm making sure my little brother doesn't overextend himself."

"Uh-huh." Sam took some of the bullets from his big brother and slotted them into his gun. He had the Colt, but they didn't need to use up the special ammunition it used when they had other stuff that worked just as well.

Dean slotted the bullets into his gun also, "just trying to protect you, Sammy."

"More like overprotecting." Sam retorted, then sighed, "I know, I know… it's just 'cause you care. It's smothering sometimes, Dean, and it isn't necessary right now."

"Fine." Dean grumbled, "just don't go doing anything strange."

"It's a werewolf. We find it, we shoot it, we burn it. What strange things could I do?"

"It's you, Sammy. Sky's the limit."

Sam rolled his eyes again.

"When do we need to be out there?" Dean changed the topic.

"It was dark."

"Real specific."

"I don't choose what they show me. Stalking someone, though. They'll die if we don't stop it."

"What's new?"

"True."

"We'd better get out there, though; it's getting dark."

"And being there ahead of time would be best." Sam finished with a nod.

They stuffed their guns into their waistbands and covered them before heading out into the night.

Just walking around trying not to attract attention was not the usual way they would hunt a werewolf, but they didn't have a choice. After an hour, Sam tapped Dean's shoulder and indicated the direction that he could sense a werewolf.

They were no more than halfway there when gunshots shattered the night's stillness, and they broke into a run. But, as they could have predicted, it wasn't another Hunter facing the monster down. Instead, it appeared to be the local beat police officer, and the bullets hadn't done anything more than make it flinch.

As the werewolf leapt again, the police officer firing frantically at it, Dean hauled his gun out of its hiding place and bullseyed it in the heart. Then quickly moved the weapon to behind his leg to conceal it from the jumpy officer.

"You okay?" He called over to said officer, who jumped and looked around at them.

"Don't you know better than to head towards gunshots?"

"Nope." Dean could swear the officer actually rolled his eyes, "so are you okay?"

He nodded, "yeah. The guy must have been hopped up on drugs or something, took near a clip to drop him."

The officer turned back around and walked over to the sprawled body. Dean took the opportunity presented by his turned back to put his gun away again.

"I could have sworn…" they heard him say as he looked down at the body.

"Yeah… shadows do some crazy things to even recognisable faces." Dean put in.

"I guess…" the officer didn't sound particularly convinced, but it was the only believable explanation he'd have for what he saw, "why the hell is he naked?"

Dean nearly laughed aloud, "who knows why anyone does anything. The important bit is he didn't hurt you."

"It looked like he was trying to bite me." He sighed, "what in the world was he thinking…"

The officer's voice trailed off, then he turned back to them, "anyway, thank you for trying to help. Not many would, and you should be careful about that. All too easy for someone to mistake you for another bad guy, and it is our job after all. Now, I need to call this in."

Both of them nodded, turned around, and headed away from the scene.

"Well…" Dean said when they were far enough away, "the burn him step isn't happening this time."

"True. And the officer believed he was the only one to fire."

"Yeah. We need to work on the speed of your draw, Sammy."

"You've always been faster with that than me, not that my speed is bad anyway. Besides, I was too far to the side; I'd have had to shoot through him to get the werewolf."

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh."

"Think they'll do an autopsy?"

"They think they know the cause of death, so not likely. I mangled the bullet anyway."

"That it's silver will raise questions if they find it. Maybe you should pull the bullets out when we have to leave a body to the authorities."

"Extracting it would have been a lot more fiddly to do without just ripping the body apart and taken time we didn't have. I don't think even you could bluff your way through explaining why I was hovering over the corpse of the guy he shot."

"Damn."

They walked in silence for a while.

"Hey… how come you can do stuff like the stitching nearly right away, but getting a bullet out is fiddly enough to take a noticeable amount of time?"

"Because, for want of a better description, the body knows where it used to be. Where it should be. It just needs a little help to be back there. Extracting a bullet is different; I'm either trying not to cause further injury or trying not to leave evidence that something has been extracted."

"Huh… okay."

Getting back to the motel was somewhat anticlimactic, and they got to settle for the night without any further excitement.

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