Chapter 4: Advance and Retreat
Dean Winchester's energy summons her again a few months later. Again Eir finds herself kneeling over him in the wake of a battle he had no business fighting alone. Again she plunges her hands deep into him, manipulating his heart and lungs while she seals him closed to keep what's left of his blood supply on the inside.
This time she has a better idea of what he is: hunter, more than warrior. Hunters are irrelevant to her purpose; she tends to those whose spirits still cling to their broken bodies in the wake of battle, the ones her sisters choose not to reap. Picking through my leftovers, Freya teased her once, when she was in a not-so-nice mood. My sister, the dumpster-diving doctor.
Eir wonders why she can hear this man at all. Perhaps because he considers himself to be at war with his prey. He's on a noble quest, a minor savior of the human race. Eir's inclined to think he's more of a bully's bully, but she can't really choose sides. She goes where she is called.
He has killed more creatures since their last encounter; she can feel his sharpened senses and harder edges, and a grim loneliness tucked just below his surface. That same buoyant sunlight shines at his center, though; she resists the urge to sink into its warmth, tries to focus only on her mending.
She takes care to cloak her physical presence as she works. Still, he comes awake with a yell, knife slicing through her arms and chest before she can disentangle her energy from his. Her shocked glare meets his for a long moment before instinct kicks in and she zaps herself to safety, leaving him to threaten empty space.
Eir chokes on air; she can hear the wet sound as blood rushes in and prevents the oxygen from filling her lungs. The sharp burning overwhelms her for several minutes before she's able to separate body from purpose and begin healing herself. She recognizes the pain, but it is a sensation distinct from what she pulls from others' bodies.
She's relieved to find she can repair her own body. Bombs, bullets and blades never touched her before. Why was he able? The entanglement of their energies, perhaps. That's what she gets for mingling.
Dean's wounds nag at Eir for hours afterwards. She hadn't quite tipped the balance to where his body could heal itself before she fled, and her mind circles the unfinished task like a moth determined to self-immolate. Every idle moment finds her back at his side, hoping he'll be unconscious or delirious so she can poke at him without retaliation, but he remains stubbornly on guard. Had she been endowed with a little more leeway on the moral compass, or maybe just a little more gumption, she would exert pressure in just the right places and knock him out so she can fix him without interruption. She's tempted. But her purpose has always been to heal warriors who ask and accept, not to force treatment on the recalcitrant. Near death, he has sought her help twice, then rejected it after it was already given. She wishes his conscious and unconscious selves would reach a consensus.
She's ready when his injuries finally overwhelm him and he passes out in a dingy motel room. Eir works warily, refusing to be drawn into the warmth at his core. She retreats as his consciousness rises; leaving him to handle the lesser healing on his own. It's not her finest work.
Eir stands outside his motel room door and contemplates cowardice. She is shy, but she has always thought herself as brave as her soldiers. She has never hesitated to walk into the height of battle for them. Of course, she has never flirted with mortality before. She'd rather not.
One doesn't see many new things after the first thousand years, but this hyper-alert hunter filled with sunlight and crushing loneliness is a tantalizing, terrifying, completely new thing. She's not sure she can refuse Dean Winchester when he calls again. She has never been bold or forthright like her sisters, nor has she ever tried to resist the broken and dying men who call to her. She'll be drawn in every time he gets damaged, and he will attack the moment he senses her presence. He might actually kill her.
In the interest of self-preservation, Eir spends some time surveilling Dean. There are gaping holes in his life. His mother is a distant, idealized memory: a glimpse of golden hair and a sweet smile; tickling fingers across his belly and a soft body folding him in as she breathes his name across the top of his head; contented, absent-minded singing and the sweet smell of hot apple pie wafting through the air. Walking among another's thoughts is not Eir's forte, but the images are strong and Dean visits them often. He uses them like a mantra. He thinks they bring him comfort, but she can see the rising tides of loneliness and wanting that threaten to wash him away.
He loves his father. Eir can hear it in his voice when John calls, nearly every day. But he doesn't get much comfort from the man. John's voice brings reassurance and steadiness, but when he hangs up Dean becomes restless. He always has to do something in the aftermath; he cleans and loads his weapons, drives through the night in search of something new to hunt and kill. Finds a bar to procure alcohol, women, cash from an unfriendly game of billiards. John's voice is a call to action, goading his son into a journey with only a vaguely promised destination.
Eir can't quite fathom Dean's sharpest ache, a constant companion whose absence he feels a dozen times a day. Someone has stolen his softer parts, caused him to hide in superficialities. Someone he has lost on purpose; there's a hint of martyrdom in his loneliness. A child, perhaps; sent way for safety.
Dean has no home. No mate. He has plenty of casual company; he's charismatic and pretty enough to reel one in on every line he casts at a woman, but no constant relationship to anchor him. Eir has hopes for one beautiful, sharp-witted girl in a college town who recognizes Dean's worth despite the swagger and cheap clothing, but he tells her too many truths too quickly. The tenuous ties between them break. He moves on.
Dean moves through a revolving landscape of small towns and motels and diners. He has a network of acquaintances but no close friends. He has a car full of weapons and a head full of knowledge that keeps him isolated. He has an old car with a million miles on it that is arguably his closest companion. He can't quite camouflage his immense loneliness behind sex, booze, burgers and pie.
Her wayward warrior is smart and fearless, but impulsive. He gets into a lot of mischief, attracts a lot of bad luck. He's living by the seat of his pants, and they are rapidly becoming threadbare. She wonders how many times she can steal him from under Death's nose. And how long it will take her sister to steal him from under hers. She's surprised by a wave of strong feeling at the idea. Mine, whispers the current swirling beneath thought. He called me.