Dean took his comforting hand away from her shoulder and jumped up. "You…you what?"
"I'm sorry, I never wanted you to find out. I never wanted anyone to find out. I don't want…I didn't think…."
"You shouldn't feel responsible for what happened to him."
"Dean, you don't get it! I did it! It was me, I shot him…I shot him."
He looked at her, unbelieving, his mind racing, but at the same time, his mind was frozen. "You killed him?" He had to say it out loud just to believe it. Carmen couldn't say anything because of the uncomfortable lump building in her throat. "Jesus…Carmen, how could you keep this from us all these years?" Dean's anger was mounting as the reality of what he was hearing sank in. "He was your family! And now WE are your family! We LIVE TOGETHER! Sam fell in love with you, and we had no idea who you really were! You're…you're a murderer."
"I'm the same person you've known all your life! I haven't changed, I've just been protecting you from-"
"You haven't been protecting anyone, you've been putting us all in danger! Dad never would have raised you like his own daughter if he had known what you'd done!"
"John DOES know! He's the only one who knows what happened, and he's the one who protected me from ever being found!"
This caught Dean off guard. John knew, and he let this murderer stay with his family?
"I tried so hard to keep this buried, Dean. I never wanted you to know. But I guess I don't really have a choice now. It's time for you to know my story. Please, before you condemn me, just listen. Listen, and then if you decide to abandon me, which is a possibility, then I won't begrudge you."
Dean crossed his arms and waited. Carmen confessed her story.
"I knew John for longer than you probably realize. Since I was 10 years old. The first time I met him was on a hunt…but maybe I should start from the beginning. I started off living with my mother…but I lost her when I was nine years old. It was devastating for me. She was my absolute best friend in the world. We moved around a lot for hunts…she was such a kick ass hunter." She digressed.
"She must have been," Dean spat. "She was your mom." He said it venomously, but there was as inevitable affection that crept into his eyes.
Carmen's mouth quirked up despite herself. "Anyway, I didn't mind moving. I made friends here and there, but I never was able to get close to anyone. You know how it is…you can never tell them who you really are. But I didn't mind, because I had her."
"She raised you as a hunter?" Dean asked grudgingly. He didn't want to feel sympathy for her, but it was out of his control. He knew how hard and painful it was to lose a mother.
"Not exactly. I don't think any parent would want this dangerous life for their children. But she taught me what was out there, and how to defend myself. She didn't want me to be ignorant to the dangers in the world. But at the same time, she wanted me to have a normal life. It was an impossible balance, but she tried.
"Her death is not something I think about often. I try not to, because it sort of taints my memory of her, and it's painful…just like I know it is for you to think about your mother." Dean's jaw clenched, but he didn't interrupt.
"My mom was sarcastic and tough, like I am, but she was also loving and funny and just…wonderful. And I miss her. Every day, I miss her so much. Her death should have been the worst thing that has ever happened to me. It deserves that title, you know? The Worst Thing. But it wasn't. Not by far.
"Up until my mother's death, I had seen my father only on holidays, and never alone. I didn't really know him. But when she was killed, I had no choice but to move in with him. Both my mother's parents had passed away, and she had had no siblings. He was the only person in the world I'd had left. All of a sudden, I had lost my mother and was shipped off to live with a stranger. It was fine for maybe a year, as fine as it could have been. My father and I didn't talk much; I stayed out of his way and he made sure to stay out of mine. He never spoke about my mother, not once, and he kept no pictures. The only photo I had of her, he ended up burning.
"He burned your only picture?" Dean asked, incredulous.
"He was a monster, Dean. And it only got worse when he started hunting again.
"He was a relentless hunter. He didn't do it to save lives and destroy evil like my mom did, like we do, or like most hunters; he hunted to keep himself alive and out of prison. If he hadn't been killing and torturing demons and ghosts, he would have been doing it to innocent humans. Killing was in his blood; he enjoyed it. He really was a monster.
"Sometimes, if he was on a difficult hunt, he would need to lure whatever creature he was after out into the open. So he would bring me into the woods, or into a cold cave, or a sewer, and he would tell me to sit down and stay still. He even tied me up a few times, so I was completely defenseless. He used me as bait. Sometimes I would be sitting there for hours, not knowing what kind of monsters could be hiding in the shadows. He was risking his own daughters life and it didn't phase him in the least."
"He used you as bait? Carmen, that's…" Dean couldn't even find the words.
She chuckled darkly. "And you think that's bad…" she muttered to herself.
"But that doesn't give you justification for killing him!" He exclaimed as if remembering his anger and trying to bury his sympathy.
"Oh, Dean, I'm so far from done." She heaved a sigh and continued.
"My father was a very heavy drinker. He was like that since before I came to live with him." Carmen said in a low voice. "But in the years that I was with him, it had gotten worse and worse, and when he started hunting again…" She trailed off, not wanting to remember. "We came home one night, after a brutal hunt. My father had tied me up, but the monster never fell for the bait. After hours and hours of sitting and waiting, he finally gave up. He was so angry that we hadn't captured it. He was yelling at me, blaming me for his failure. 'Why didn't you do better?' 'Why couldn't you have made more noise?' He would drink and yell and drink and yell…
"And one night, I'd had enough of his yelling. I screamed back at him 'It's not my fault!' And he came at me, and smashed an empty bottle over my head."
She paused, grudgingly remembering, and Dean reached out and touched the still prominent scar below her eye. It was one of the rare instances when she didn't slap his hand away. Instead she gave a slight nod in affirmation to his unspoken question.
"And then," she continued, "he hit me, until everything went black. From then on, instead of drinking and yelling, he would drink and hit."
"He hit you," Dean breathed. He was suddenly seeing her though new eyes: not as a murderer, but as a victim. This girl, whom he thought was so tough, who could handle anything without breaking, whom he loved since he had first met, had experienced such trauma in her early years. He looked at her as if she was a flower, and any gust of wind could tear off every one of her precious petals and destroy her. He wished he could protect her from such destruction.
Dean's emotions were welling up inside him, but as Carmen related her story, she felt as if she was outside of herself. Her eyes were glazed over and she was simply reporting these past events; there was no emotion tied to her words. However, she could not recall the next events without feeling the pain and the terror and shame that had once ripped through her chest.
"I just wish it ended there," Carmen whispered. Dean's mouth hung open.
"Dean, you remember when John first took me in…I was thirteen, but I looked as though I could have been seventeen?"
He nodded, unable to formulate coherent words.
"Well, I suppose I had always looked old for my age…" Once again, she trailed off. For years she had blocked off her memory of this. She had buried it so far down, but despite her best efforts, every detail was still vividly etched in her memory. Consciously retrieving it was something she had never before done in her life. The emotion tied to it threatened to overwhelm her, to drown her so she could not breathe.
"I couldn't tell you the first time it happened." Carmen tried to steady her voice, but to no avail. "I think I probably blocked it out. But for months and months, we'd go on hunts, and if it ended badly, he would beat me. If it ended the way he'd wanted it to, he'd get excited and he'd…do things to me that were worse by far than the beatings."
"No," Dean breathed. His anger had evaporated and sympathy and fear and love for this girl replaced it. Carmen's face crumpled.
"No matter where I ran, not matter how hard I fought, I couldn't stop it. I hated him so much, Dean. I hated myself. I was ashamed that my mother was somewhere watching over me, and seeing that this was my fate. And I couldn't take it anymore." She sobbed, but her story wasn't over.
"I met John on a hunt in Chicago. He had been a friend of my mothers, and he knew my father wasn't a good person. I don't think he ever knew the extent, until…
"John and I became close, very quickly. He would tell me about my mother, and about his sons that he loved so much. And he could tell that something was wrong with me." Carmen eyes betrayed the pain she felt at these words. "He told me to call him if I ever needed anything, but I knew I never could. My father had threatened me enough times that I knew I could never leave."
"I wouldn't have been able to survive there for much longer, Dean. It was a night like any other, and I knew exactly what to expect when we came home from the hunt. I locked myself in my room, but he hammered on the door, until I felt like he was banging on the inside of my head. He broke the door handle. I fought him harder that night than I ever had…and he beat me harder than he ever had. When I was bloody and delirious, he forced me on the bed. I waited until he was vulnerable, and then I pulled out the gun from under my pillow, and shot him in the chest. Directly through the heart, no mistakes. He bled to death within sixty seconds. That was it; his life was over. I was badly beaten, and I was weak. I'll never know how, but John came through my bedroom door and saved my life. He carried me out and brought me back to the motel where you and Sam were asleep. He cleaned me up, then went back to my house to make sure no one would ever find me. He burned my father's body and scattered the ashes.
"I know it was murder, Dean. I know what I did was wrong. I could have told someone; I could have told John. But never once have I regretted what I did to him. That may make me a monster. Maybe it makes me just as horrible and heartless as he was. But that night was the turning point, Dean. It was going to be either a bullet in his chest, or a bullet through my own heart."
She looked out over the dark water to avoid looking into Dean's assessing eyes. It was over; Dean knew everything, and now he would leave her. Now she would lose him, and Sam as well….
"Sam wasn't sleeping that night, you know." Dean whispered. Carmen chanced a glance at him. "Sam was awake, and he saw you. He saw dad carry you into the room, and you were so bloodied up that it terrified him."
"How do you know that?" Carmen breathed the question.
"He told me," Dean looked over at her and actually smirked. "The next day, he asked me why someone would do that to such a beautiful angel."
This took Carmen's breath away.
"Dean, I don't want you to leave me. But I understand if you have to. If you can't handle this…fine. But please finish this hunt. I can't let my father hurt any more people! And please, please, I am begging you, don't tell Sam. He doesn't need to know! It would only do harm by telling him, okay? No good can come from him knowing."
"He would want to know, C. He would want to help you through it-"
"After this hunt, I won't need help getting through anything! Please, Dean. Let him stay ignorant."
He looked at her for a long moment, contemplating her. His brow creased as his mind worked, and Carmen stared back at him, trying to etch every detail of him into her memory. She never wanted to forget him when he left.
When he moved, it was slowly, as if every movement was calculated. He stepped toward her, then put his arms around her and held her tightly to him.
"I'm not going anywhere, C," he whispered into her hair. "You were strong in what you did. I couldn't imagine not knowing you, not having you with me every day…I'm grateful he got the bullet instead of you."
Carmen let out a long breath of relief, mingled with a sob, and hugged him back.