Dean threw himself down into a nearby arm chair and let his arms hang down at his sides. Mercy sat up and looked at the mess around her.
"I have to clean this up now." She said with almost no emotion to her voice. The smell of the blood was beginning to cause her hunger pangs. Having tasted human blood before, this left her in an unfortunate situation. She could easily turn against Dean if she so desired, especially with the amount of rage she had pushed down deep inside of her. Mercy was always capable of repressing her emotions, having developed this gift over time. It was something all vampires should develop, but she knew many let their rage lead to murderous rampages that ended in their deaths.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Dean said, leaning forward and waving his hands. His brow was furrowed and he was looking at her as if she were an idiot.
"You were just attacked by a werewolf, I think you deserve a moment to chill out."
Mercy looked at him, her eyes wide and focused intently on him.
"I was tricked, held hostage, attacked, then rescued. That is the concise list of events that I have experienced this evening." She noted as she looked around at the mess once again.
"Why would you let a turned werewolf into your house in the first place?" Dean questioned.
"He and I were having dinner, then he revealed himself to be a little more interested in killing me rather than dining with me." She said, a slight sound of disappointment in her tone. Mercy didn't have any feelings for Markus, but they could have developed if he had not tried to end her life. She couldn't blame him though, he had obviously been told lies about what happened with Joshua. She sighed and continued to sit on the floor for a minute. Dean stood from the chair and extended a hand down to her. She looked at him for a moment and then accepted his, removing herself from the stained carpet.
"Thank you, though." She added after a few moments of standing there awkwardly.
"I guess we solved the mystery of who was out to get me." She shrugged and walked out of the room without another word.
Dean chuckled a little and then stood there looking around her living room. This place looked so nice and now it was permanently transformed for him - it wasn't just a place they met now, it was a place of disaster and pain. A warm trickle ran down the side of his face and he was soon snapped back into reality, noticing that there was a cut near his temple. He most likely acquired him from hitting the coffee table. He walked off to the kitchen to find a towel to wipe up the blood only to find Mercy sitting on the floor with her knees pulled to her chest and a glass bottle sitting loosely in one hand.
"So, you do feel something after this whole ordeal." He noted as he pulled the towel from the fridge handle and held it up to his head.
"Well, considering the fact that I was once human too, I do have feelings. One of those being hunger." She said right before sipping at the bottle again, the thick cold liquid satisfying her hunger for the time being.
Dean stopped for a moment, realizing what she was talking about. It had not crossed his mind that he was speaking with a vampire rather than another relatively normal person. He removed the towel and looked at the blood now staining it.
"I shouldn't have said that." He said as he held the towel back to his head again.
"It's fine. I don't have a lot of feelings anymore, so I don't really have much to rely on in regards to having non-awkward conversations these days." She responded with a monotone voice. "I appreciate what you did. You may want to go get cleaned up. I would help, but…"
There was more silence between the two of them. Mercy wanted to help, but she knew there were limitations to doing so. When there was blood, she couldn't do anything to help.
"I'll go then. Sam might be wondering where I am by now." Dean replied, trying to think of something better to say than that, but he had nothing. He was always so charming and knew everything to say to a woman, but what should he say to a vampire? Was a female vampire that different from a human female? He simply sighed and glanced back at her for a moment, trying to think of something to comfort her before he left. Nothing came to him. Dean left without another word, taking his battered self back to the inn.
"What happened?!" Sam quickly asked in shock as his brother walked through the door. Dean was a mess. His hair and clothing were disheveled and his clothing had blood stains on it. His knuckles were reddened and he was bleeding from the side of his head still.
"Werewolf. Think I need stitches." He said simply as he pointed to his temple.
"So, you went hunting a werewolf and didn't tell me?" Sam asked as he pulled out the first aid kit from his bag and moving toward his beaten brother. "Did you at least kill it?!"
"I didn't go hunting a werewolf, Sam." Dean said feeling somewhat offended. "I was going to up to Mercy's place when I heard her screaming."
Sam sat down on the edge of his own bed and looked at Dean.
"Why were you going there?"
"Does it matter? I got there, she was in trouble, so I helped. Simple as that."
He snatched up some stuff to stitch up his head wound and walked off toward the bathroom. This would be a tender place to try to stitch up, he had plenty of wounds to know that first hand.
Sam could hear him groaning on and off from the bathroom, it was never something they looked forward to having to do, but it was not like they could just go to the hospital for this type of thing.
Dean had finished and just sat in the silence of the bathroom for awhile. There was plenty of blood on the sink from where he had stitched himself up and he began to wash it out as best he could.
Sam sat on the end of his bed flipping through the channels on the small television when he heard a light knock at the door. He wasn't sure who would be visiting them at this hour of the night, so he put his hand on his gun and opened the door a bit.
"Oh, hey." He said, slightly confused, once he saw Mercy standing at the door. "Come in."
Mercy walked through the door past the tallest brother and looked around at the small room.
"I just wanted to come by and thank Dean again."
Dean could hear her voice through the door and he turned toward it to listen.
"I heard about what happened. Are you okay?" Sam asked as he pulled out a chair for her to sit, which she politely declined.
"I'm a vampire, of course I'm fine." She said, but Sam had hardly believed it. Mercy could play it off all she wanted, but being attacked was something that effected people more than they would like to admit and Sam knew that. All of the things that happened to himself and Dean were things that changed them as well.
Dean listened to them through the door, still taking a moment to himself. There were times people just needed a moment to breathe and this was one of them. He took one last look in the mirror and then straightened up, giving himself a charming smile before leaving.
"Hey, Sammy-" He called, looking over to Mercy as he walked through the door. "Oh, Mercy. How are you doing?" Dean was playing as if he hadn't heard a word of their conversation.
"Fine." She said as she looked to Dean. There were no obvious wounds on her anymore, it had all healed nicely. "I just wanted to say thank you for what you did."
"It's what we do." Dean responded, it wasn't out of the normal for them anyway, he just happened to be around at the time.
"Well, I am grateful. If you had been any other hunter, Markus and I would both be dead. So, whether it's what you do regularly or not, it still doesn't change how I feel about it."
Sam looked over to Dean and then back to Mercy, realizing that this was a moment in time where they had a new ally. He imagined not many people cared for those like her, he knew they had once been that way. The two of them used to view the world as black and white, monsters had to be killed and people saved, that was that. Now, the two of them constantly questioned whether that was really the case. The things they hunted were once human too and some of them retained that part of themselves.
"Mercy, can I ask you a couple questions?" Sam chimed in after a moment. He wanted to understand her a little more.
"Anything." She said, still looking at Dean before going and sitting down. At times she would still glance his way, focusing on him as if she were trying to remember his face.
"As a vampire, do you feel human still or…?" Sam trailed off.
"I maintained my humanity for a long time. But, for me, I am losing parts of myself as the years stretch on."
"What do you mean?"
Dean was looking on, just taking everything in. He did happen to notice that Mercy continued to glance at him every so often.
"I used to feel more. When I was turned, I felt all the bad emotions along with the good. As I have gotten older and farther from my first life, I am losing the good emotions. I feel more empty. I have forgotten love, happiness, joy. I really only have darker memories left and I feel a little more like a creature, a predator these days."
"So, that's why you reacted the way you did after Markus was killed?" Dean asked, looking at her as if trying to understand.
"Yes. I don't want to put anyone in danger. I don't want to be like the vampires that killed my family or the ones that I hunted. I didn't want to hurt you."
"Speaking of Dean," Sam started, "you keep glancing at him like you have met him before. Why?"
Mercy looked directly at Sam for a moment and thought about answering. She did not mean to look at him so often, but she almost couldn't help herself.
Dean looked at Mercy curiously, he did notice that she kept glancing at him. He thought it was because he was like a hot piece of apple pie, delicious to look at.
"I knew someone from your family a long time ago and he looks like him." Mercy said hesitantly.
"Who did you know? We don't even know much about them." Sam stated.
"I knew one of the Winchesters when I was a child. We had contact on and off after the Meredith incident."
Sam thought back to the story she had told them when they were at her home. He was trying to remember all the details and then realized something - she told them about someone she had loved.
"What was his name?" Sam asked, feeling like he was beginning to connect the dots. "You told us there was a man that you had loved, he ended up dying. What was his name?"
Mercy let them sit in silence for a minute as she debated telling them. Was it really that important? She began to think that they deserved to know.
"Jonathan Winchester." She sighed as she looked at the floor.
Dean and Sam glanced at one another and then back to Mercy. She felt like they might hate her for what happened now that they knew one of their ancestors was someone she had killed. The two brothers sat in silence for a moment.
"Jonathan was a great man. He really was and I miss him." Mercy continued. "I can't help looking at you because you're the modern version of him. When I first saw the two of you, I knew you were Winchesters and I was trying to keep away from you, but you ended up coming to me instead."
She stood from her seat and began to walk toward the door to leave, but she stopped and face them again.
"Thank you again. If you need anything…" Mercy pulled a card from her pocket and handed it to Sam. "You can just contact me. You're always welcome to come back to Meredith as well."
She gave a weak smile and walked out the door. Sam flipped the card around in his hand to look at it, then handed it over to Dean who eyed for it for a moment as well before sliding it into his wallet.
The next morning the brothers left town for another job.
((Thank you for reading this short story. I will be writing another one shortly as a separate story. If you liked Mercy Cole, and want to know more about her, she will be back in future stories! Thanks for reading!))
