"Brigitte Snaps Back"
Chapter Seven
"Doubt"
Brigitte enters the bathroom and slams the door closed. Her breath is caught in her throat and she's gasping for air. Her legs feel like they can give out any moment – the exertion is straining through her.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Not like this, please fucking God, not like this.
(I'd rather be dead than what you are)
Brigitte feels her hands tremble. Her thoughts race, mixing up their paths and shrieking as they fly in every direction – all just to move towards one simple thought: she feels unsafe from herself.
She makes it to the sink by some miracle. She can barely contain herself.
It was her first time.
(oh, god)
It was her first time with Sam.
Not that she has anything to compare it to, but in retrospect, it didn't feel terribly bad, and that's more or less what nice is, in the end. But this, all of what just happened was pure hormonal toilet stuff, a mindless, brainless fuck-drive that coated everything else into itself.
(he wants to get down your pants, stupid!)
It is this thoughtlessness that drives her to think: was this how Ginger felt? Brigitte isn't sure. Was this what she felt, this aching need for sex?
How long, she wonders, before it is replaced by the need to tear things to fucking pieces?
(it feels... so... good...)
Brigitte looks at the disgusting creature in the reflection. She's used to considering this thing, her various flaws and shortcomings, but tonight, she looks at her differently.
Tonight, she sees the monster.
It's got these little, green eyes, and it's staring right back at her, cruelly defiant. It's a self-righteous look, filled to the brim with betrayal. A monster, with twigs for limbs and visible ribs to count under sickly pale skin.
Brigitte clenches her teeth, her jaw shaking with anger. She hates her, hates the monster that took her sister, hates the monster she's becoming... that she is... that she always was...
(kill yourself to be different, and then your own body fucks you)
A scream gets knotted up in her throat and Brigitte snaps.
Her fists crash onto the body mirror and crack it, and she keeps hitting, hitting, drawing blood and finally breaking it to fucking pieces. She kicks the ground, slicing open her foot and she screams, screams and screams, unable to get it out, unable to vomit all that brought her to that point, all that she carried with her.
Brigitte Fitzgerald and all her burdens are finally unleashed.
Ginger, suicide, surviving, Sam, stitches, the lycanthrope, the Curse, the Pact, the Pact Renewed, it's all too much, just too much.
She holds the wall and swings her head forward. Her teeth rattle with the impact and she growls. No. This fucking wall isn't going to stop her, these walls won't contain her, nothing will, nothing except for the arms that are stronger than she ever could have known.
Sam grabs his own wrist to keep her in a lock.
"Brigitte!"
She finally snapped, he thinks.
He pulls her away from the sea of shards underneath them, but she turns and kicks the wall, sending them both back. He feels the sink counter dig into the small of his back, clenches his teeth and tries to keep her steady.
"Brigitte! Hey! Hey hey hey, calm down, just... stop kicking, damn it..."
She slows down more the longer he holds her. She gets heavier, and he struggles to hold her up – funny how a waif of a girl weighs so much when her legs can't support her.
(you don't have to do this alone)
He can't see her face. It's hiding, as it always does, behind her hair. He can see her hand. It's cut open something fierce and bleeding.
"Jesus Christ, Brigitte..." Sam can manage.
Cope, damn you, he scolds himself, this isn't... just do something, do something about it.
With one hand, Sam reaches to the vanity mirror above the sink, to the right. He pulls it to the side, and retrieves the iodine and some cotton. "Show me your hand." He says, "If there's any glass stuck in there, it might-"
"It'll heal." She says, "It'll heal."
She sobs. Sam uses the split second between that and her starting to cry to pull her in and hold onto her, as tightly as he can.
He catches his own reflection in the vanity mirror, and all he can see is some guy who has no fucking idea what he should do, because he knows that there's nothing that he can do.
Brigitte feels everything slowly spill out of her eyes and her mouth. All the while, even as her knees buckle and she sinks to the floor, he is there, holding her.
She feels, somewhere beneath the raw emotion cascading out of her, that this is wrong. She has no right, no right to just let him do this, let him help – not after everything. Not after what she said, what she meant. Not after getting him infected. Not after condemning him to the same fate the Curse always brings: horrible, horrible Death that she once thought could be this beautiful, wonderful thing.
He should let her go and run, far away from her as possible, but there he is, holding her.
(no-one knows it but he saved me like how I killed him)
Brigitte cries herself right into unconsciousness. Sam wants to get up, to get to the bed. The greenhouse is probably one of the warmest places in Bailey Downs, he knows, so they won't freeze during the night, but they can't just...
Fuck it.
He feels spent. He can't, he just can't.
Sam feels that he's back in that dark hallway again, lying in a pool of his own blood and looking to her for help.
He can't carry both her and himself. Not tonight.
Brigitte appears to be sleeping soundly, her body shivering every once in a while. She's curled up against Sam, and she steadily breathes, her mind in the blessed respite of dreamlessness.
Her own circle like lazy vultures in that unconscious blank.
(cold, but I'm still here. You left me here alone, Ginger. You broke the Pact. You left me to the wolves. And here I am, and my only friend is the cherry hound, because he's here for me, and you're not even around)
Sam wakes up alone to the cold, linoleum floor of the bathroom, with the shards of his mirror underneath his arm. His body feels like it's been through the grinder once more. He stands up, balances the world and tries to form a coherent thought.
His first thought is his worst thought: what if she ran away? He quickly dismisses it. She doesn't just run when things get tough. Hell, if she had, he most probably wouldn't be there, forming this coherent a thought. So it follows that she's still there.
He steps out of the bathroom, and is about to head into the living room when he sees her. Brigitte Fitzgerald. Hunched over, arms crossed. Wearing that thick, black turtleneck sweater and that long skirt. Face obscured by long, long hair.
He hesitates. So does she. The silence hangs in the air for a moment, and it's shy, unsure. In a way, this is their hello. They are new.
(well hel-lo, hello, hello)
"Hello." Sam says.
She doesn't look at him as she answers.
"Hey."
She feels that she's back to square one. She doesn't know how to talk to him, make conversation. Sam, in turn, decides to default to basic necessities.
"Are you hungry?"
Brigitte looks at him then, her green eyes (gorgeous green, concerned green, beautiful green) full of confusion.
"...yeah."
"Then how about we angst about all of this over breakfast?"
Brigitte hunches her shoulders and crosses her arms. She brushes past Sam, her eyes on the floor and her face barely visible through a curtain of hair. Sam follows her. He remembers the first time they met, when Ginger and her new friends were smoking up – how she wouldn't look him in the eye, how she kept fidgeting... and then, the second time when he returned her photograph, the same song and dance; the way she couldn't get out of there fast enough...
To someone that withdrawn, that isolated, what happened last night, he figures, must be more shocking that it is for someone like him. With some degree of sick satisfaction, he thinks that he's finally earned his name. There. He's hounded cherry, and popped it to boot. He's officially the Bailey Downs Cherry Hound, exactly as advertised.
(Trina was right. I really am an asshole.)
He goes into the kitchen and silently starts preparing breakfast, aware, all the time, that he can still taste her.
Brigitte munches on the piece of French toast and has to admit that she comes close to worshipping the taste of peanut butter. There's enough adornments on her plate to feed an army, she thinks, but what interests her the most are the bacon and the salami that appear to be way more appetizing than they should be. She decides to stay away from those.
Sam, on the other hand, somehow manages to both smoke and eat.
"So," he says in between a drag and a bite, "...about last night. Guess saying that's the best way to get things rolling."
"I thought you said you weren't a cherry hound."
(do you see me chasing small turnover girls who can't even spell lycanthrope, never mind know what it means?)
"I'm not! Look, I don't know how it happened, it just... happened. I don't know, alright?"
"I know how it happened." Brigitte says, "And that's the problem."
"Do we really need an excuse to-"
"We're infected." Brigitte says.
Sam stops. It's a curious sight, he just stops. Not a breath, not a motion; for a single moment, he just stops functioning. When he resumes, he drains the cigarette for all its worth and says:
"That's... holy shit. Holy fucking shit... but... but I thought you said it worked... d-didn't you say you used it on somebody else?"
It's Brigitte's turn to stop, because she then remembers the one thing she forgot.
"Oh, shit..." she says, "I did. Eat up. We gotta go."
"What?"
"We gotta pay a visit to Jason McCardy."
"McCardy?"
"He's the one I dosed, and if we're..." she bites her tongue, "...like this, he should be having some complications right now."
After a breakfast literally forced down their throats, they grab their coats and head out. Once again, Sam takes the wheel, but this time, he only watches the road.
Brigitte tries to focus intensely on the non-descript streets of Bailey Downs, but no amount of engine noise can drown out the sound of her thoughts.
(mom... what do boys want?)
Standing in front of the house McCardy, Sam shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and decides to light another cigarette to wash down the previous one, because that's a good idea. Brigitte fidgets, sighs, rolls her eyes, but can't bring herself to move away, either.
"Give me one." She says, rubbing her back with one hand. It hurts from both the (not the sex, no, not it at all, I'm thinking about something totally else, I'm thinking about something like) sleeping on the bathroom floor and (not on top of him, in front of him, beside him) all the kicking and screaming.
"This isn't one of your better ideas." Sam says as he lights hers and passes it on.
"Neither were any of the others. You just weren't paying attention."
"Got us this far."
Brigitte doesn't feel inclined to argue. She takes a drag and then (another one of Ginger's burdens that I have to carry) knocks on the door. Every second feels like a second too long, and after seventeen exact seconds, that feels more like five minutes that contained a lifetime, the door opens, revealing a very disheveled mother.
Brigitte almost takes a step back from the sight. Bags under her eyes, shoulder-length hair looking like she was electrocuted, cigarette (halfway burned) dangling from her lips. Uh-oh. This isn't good. This isn't even in the neighborhood of good.
"Afternoon, ma'am." Sam says, with a politeness and sense of decorum that makes sure Brigitte's jaw is locked in place, "We're sorry to disturb you. We are friends of Jason's, and..." he hesitates momentarily, seeing her expression shift from a pronounced weariness to urgent despair, "...well, he was supposed to meet us today, and he didn't show. We were wondering if he was sick or something."
"Do you know where he might be?" Jason's mom asks, her voice quivering, "He hasn't been home in two days, I... the police are waiting for it to be three days so that they can look for him, I... have you talked to him?"
"We had arranged to meet about a week ago, actually, so we really haven't..." Sam says, and Brigitte can hear the tone of his voice vibrating under the sudden strain.
(yeah, I really wish I was hairy and hemorrhaging and sucking off Jason McCardy)
Brigitte wants to turn away and run. Run like hell and never look back, be (out by sixteen) done with it all. She can't, damn her, she can't.
She can't leave him here.
They return to the van after a show of brilliantly choreographed excuses, synchronized lies and an exchange of phone numbers just to put the ribbon on top. Once there, Sam kicks it into gear and stomps on the gas. He rushes through the streets, easy now that there are still very few cars around, and the look on his face tells Brigitte that he's got a target in mind.
"Slow down!" she says, "You wanna get pulled over?"
"We have to get to the greenhouse." He says, "And after that, we have to find more monkshood."
"More monkshood? Why bother?"
"Maybe the dose was wrong. Maybe we're supposed to OD on it, I don't fucking know, okay? Just give me a sec."
"What's at the greenhouse?"
"I have a Winchester. Family heirloom. Looks like we'll need it."
Brigitte thinks about it.
(search and destroy, go)
(Jason McCardy. shot once in the head and twice in the chest while slowly turning into a lycanthrope. Courtesy of following his dick blindly into my dead sister)
"...if nothing else, I'd rather take a bullet to the brain." Sam says.
(Sam Macdonald. Killed himself with a gunshot to the head, the rifle kiss. He died because his life got fucked by Brigitte Fitzgerald, after she got fucked... by him and this time literally)
"But after all that, we gotta find the asshole." Sam continues as he takes a sharp left and then a wide right, "And hope he's still somewhat human."
(Brigitte Fitzgerald. She wanted to die, sort of. When she didn't, she found out that she could do nothing but die, that living was not an option. Not anymore.)