Lewis' anesthetized brain awoke with the dull thump the body made when it unforgivably hit the ground. It sent a single message, but one so old, so embedded in the reptilian brain that he could do nothing but comply; if your best friend is bleeding out dead on the tarmac and the shooter looks at you with murder in his eyes, run. So he did, as fast and as long as physically possible for an nonathletic middle-class white guy with salt-pepper hair, straight into the arms of a murderous deity which wasn't in the mood for any pity.

oOo

Dean closed the distance between him and his brother, laying the blood-soaked stake on the ground to examine him "You okay Cherry?" heart's functioning if a bit rapid, breathing rasped and chopped but deep. He noted the heavy flinch and muttering Sam gave as he made skin contact, and his saucer-like eyes staring up at him.

The only response Cherry could manage to croak out was a pitiful "It h-hurts." Tears wouldn't stop falling and she didn't understand why, was it the aftermath of the shock? The pain? Having seen what true seething soul-consuming fury was? Because she was alright, breathing, living, and that was what mattered, right? And without her noticing, the only words she understood at that moment tumbled out of her mouth like one of those broken recorders, stuttered and slurred, slow but with the desire to be quicker, repeated because of a minuscule, unfortunate dent.

"HEY!" Dean's abrupt bark cut through the haze of whatever Cherry was in, and he kneeled besides her looking genuinely concerned. "It's gonna be okay." He took her hand and laid it on her thigh with a gentleness she wouldn't even have dreamt he would be using with her.

"Just press on the wound, I won't forgive you if you die from blood loss before you can tell me exactly what happened," he half-joked, forcing Cherry's eyes to meet his and not the cadaver's. However, despite his best efforts, the whole thing fell kind of flat as he was hurled five meters away by a single, perfect, porcelain arm.

"Hello again sweetheart," the goddess purred turning her gaze away from Dean who was now twisting and whimpering on the ground.

"What did you do?" Cherry asked as her defense mechanism turned terror into hate once more.

"Oh don't you worry, love, he is just paying for his crimes like our little Sammy did. It is just a tiny bit less physical…" At the mention of Sam, Cherry's rancor spiked even more, which didn't go unnoticed by the deity. "I am judgment, love. They get what they deserve, nothing more, nothing less. What did you expect from those boys, honestly?" The slight twitch in Cherry's jaw, her muscles tensing one by one, Praxidike could read her like an open book, and that simple fact made her smile. "Sammy here has been such a good boy just now, that I am at top condition you see." Her grin grew wide revealing a row of perfect, pearly white teeth "And you cannot measure how eager I am to show you, darling."

The goddess's mind shot itself to Cherry's with as much speed and greed as a famished prisoner would on a three-course meal. The sheer force of the assault bashed inside her skull, ricocheting on every surface, cracking her weakened defenses in all places, damaging the barrier Cherry had once so easily maintained.

"Still resisting are we?"

The voice resonated in every corner of Cherry's being, making even her bones rattle with the extraordinary volume alone, narrowing her world to two concepts alone: that booming, insufferable voice, and the feeling of her brain seeming to implode from within.

"Not for long anymore is my educated guess."

The force could have pulverized Cherry's barrier with a single more push, but of course that wouldn't have been fun. Slowly, almost lovingly, the deity wringed her power in the breaches already created, parting them further and further open with agonizing leisure, as if she were unwrapping a piece of antique Chinese porcelain she had been waiting for hundreds of decades. The memories slipped out of the breaches in droplets, dribbling out despite Cherry's barely lucid attempts to maintain them on her side of the dam. The goddess's heartfelt childish laugh echoed through Cherry's mind, and ironically that was what at long last delivered the final blow. Just as a plastic bottle explodes when the liquid in it freezes, Cherry's defenses imploded all together, and as the shards of the barrier fell, so did the half-human's consciousness.

oOo

It sounded like a firecracker, but as if heard from the other side of a two meter broad wool façade. The younger Winchester knew the sound was familiar, and it being neither the Fourth of July nor night, the chances of it being an actual firecracker were frankly brushing the probability of zero percent. Straining his numbed senses he heard something else, a scream perhaps, and his inability to pinpoint what it was fueled his will to try to open his ridiculously heavy eyes.

Another explosion, louder, followed by yet another scream, and for some reason unknown by even himself, the feeling that it was his duty to come to aid grew stronger.

Third blow, third cry. Sam could now perceive pained, hiccupped moans and a voice that was likely the one of the men holding the gun.

"And this one… is for a good guy you're soon goin' to wish you had never laid a finger on."

Fourth gunshot.

Sam's eyes flew open, and for a moment the only sounds that was heard was the one of a body falling to the ground. Then the quiet whimpering started anew, and this time he finally managed to place it: Cherry.

Sam forced his head to turn towards her, praying with all that he had that the red coloring her shirt and leg wasn't hers. He wanted to run towards her, to run and offer the comfort she had once provided him, but his body had as much strength as a turtle on morphine. He attempted to say Cherry's name as last resort, but his voice proved as cooperative as his body, his weakened state transforming the cry into a hardly audible choked gurgle. Fate didn't let Sam time enough to curse himself for his uselessness as a pair of familiar hands rolled his head. His breathing quickened instantly; the bad hands had followed him, Dean had followed him. The pain of his bruises and damaged bones seemed to flare at the contact, making him flinch uncontrollably as his eyes were glued to the familiar green orbs. He tried to voice his pitiful excuses and pleads, anything to avoid the hits that Sam knew would soon follow, but again his vocal chords failed him.

"You're okay, Cherry?"

Sam was growing desperate for his body to cooperate, to squirm away from the hands, to escape another bruise to add to his collection.

"It h-hurts." The bad hands stopped prodding.

"Ithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurts—"

Dean's voice gave out a sharp bark, making Cherry's frantic mantra and the hands disappear immediately. From there on Sam lost himself in the concentration of getting his erratic breathing under control and trying to move, getting only snatches of the conversation at hand. He found that he could move his right leg without much of a problem, so he confidently tried to reproduce the same movement with his left one. Big, big mistake. A jolt of pure white hot pain shot through his leg and the next moment he was shouting out at the top of his lungs. The thing was though, that he wasn't the only one.

The screech would have made any human flee and shattered windows if there were any. Sam's hands flew to his ears to try and cover the sound erupting from Cherry's throat as she dropped on the floor, convulsing as though overflown by electricity. The minutes that passed had the consistency of hours, as if the lord of time itself had stopped for the good pleasure of that abomination torturing the girl with the mangled blood, but finally it stopped.

The deafening silence that followed was what granted him the willpower to make his body comply. He rolled himself on his injured stomach, gasping face against tarmac as he waited for the pain ripples to subside. His hand brushed against the wooden stake, and he shuddered at the thought of what Dean had planned for him when he came. Dismissing the image he firmly grasped it. Even if it meant nothing to the creature, it was the only thing he had close by hand. Sam forced his trembling arms to take most of his weight as he finally dragged his legs beneath him, careful to avoid moving his broken ankle.

Now resting on hands and knees, already heaving heavily from the hell he was putting his battered body through, he crawled. He crawled despite it tearing on his wound, despite his ankle which felt like somebody had replaced his bones with shards of glass, despite Cherry being most probably already dead.

Move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg—

Sam's lungs were on fire, breathing erratic as he fought to do anything but choke on the wisps of air he managed to inhale, muscles begging for relief, body crying to give up.

A moan reached his damaged sense of hearing, low and deep, as if Cherry hadn't the force to put up a fight but still ineffectively wasting her last shreds of power in it.

Sam surged to his feet, ankle screaming like never before yet not giving in, blood seeping again from his chest wound, convulsive grip on the blood soaked stake. Not able to hold himself upright for more than mere seconds, he threw his whole body weight into the raging thrust, putting way more than power in it. The point of the wood shoved into the ivory flesh as easily as in butter, tearing muscle with ease, spilling blood over the snow white of the goddess tunic.

The two bodies were claimed by gravity as equals, hitting the ground as hard as one another. One was reaped before it hit the ground, the other was swallowed whole by darkness.

Silence fell on Washington Street like it does in a cemetery after a burial, the only sound being the Chirps of birds and the wind in the trees… and the unbreakable Dean Winchester waking up with a gurgled intake of air.