AN: Hi! I am back, a little late, but back! The Outtake I was originally planning on posting next just would not behave so I switched the order so I have a little more time with it. This one is probably much more exciting to you all anyway. Behold, the manticore!
Also shout out to Eennio! Thank you for still being here, I really appreciate you! Without further ado, enjoy!
Addendum: Outtakes
Referenced (First) in Ch. 8
Kings Point
New York: April 2017
The manticore's grinning devil face seems to taunt them. A beast out of Ancient Persian legend, it has the face of a man, the body of a lion, and the venomous tail of a scorpion. Its face is eerily human except for the shocking red of its skin, giving it a cartoon devil appearance that is much scarier than it has any right to be.
A Manticore can only be killed by being beheaded with a thrice blessed blade, as well as severing its lethal tail, thus dividing its three forms and dissolving its unholy power.
It had taken Dean and Elena a considerable amount of time to figure out exactly what thrice-blessed meant – blessed by a priest of each of the three major Abrahamic religions, a Catholic Priest, a Jewish Rabbi, and an Islamic Imam. Luckily, it hadn't been that hard to find one of each in the city, and each one willing to provide blessings on the machetes that they'd picked up at a hardware store with surprisingly little questioning.
The Imam had seemed to know exactly what they were intending to do with the blades and had blessed Dean and Elena too.
Now if only it was so easy to get close enough to the monster in order to sever the tail, injuring it and disarming it enough to take its head. They'd been in a stand-off for what felt like hours now. The two of them cornering the manticore in a corner of a deserted warehouse.
They'd each gotten a few good hits in, injuring it, but not enough to slow it down. They were had a dozen scratches from its claws between the two of them. While not venomous like its tail, the claws were enormous and the wounds they made were substantial.
It paced between them, leering angrily as they each stood at the ready, blades in hand and chests heaving from exertion. They couldn't go on much longer. Occasionally the manticore would let out a lulling sound, alluring and low, as if to coax them closer. Neither of them can hear it, having shoved beeswax in their ears before their arrival at the warehouse.
Dean and Elena exchange a quick, despairing look. They are running out of energy and therefore time. Something needs to be done.
The manticore cocks its head at them, its red face crimped with frustration.
"Yeah, you and me both, pal," Dean mutters between gritted teeth. He has claw marks on his forearm, hip, and leg. He's more than ready for this to be over.
The manticore responds with its lulling sound, as if to promise that it will be over quickly if they'd only surrender.
Elena seems to consider something. She straightens out of her fighting stance, looking at the monster intently. She opens her mouth, saying something that Dean can't make out because of the wax.
The manticore freezes, turning its attention on Elena fully. Her mouth moves the same away again, the manticore sways closer, like it must move closer.
Dean, panicking, rips out his beeswax in time to hear what Elena is doing – she's making the sweet, lulling noise back at the manticore, of all things.
"Elena, what in the hell are you doing?" he demands.
This seems to break the beast from its revere because it pounces towards her. Elena lunges back, slashing her machete down as the manticore's tail lashes out at her. Both hit their mark. Elena's thrice blessed blade severing the manticore's tail mere seconds after it strikes her skin, scrawling its rage down the interior of her thigh, its venom imbedded into her flesh.
"NO!" Dean leaps forward with his blade raised above his head held in both hands, he brings it down on the manticore's neck, severing its man's head from its lion's body, finally separating it.
Elena is on the ground, clutching her leg, her face already shockingly pale. Dean drops his blade, hurrying over.
"Holy shit, Elena," he mutters, barely able to glance down at the black pus oozing from her thigh as he pulls her into him.
Her uncharacteristically pale lips twist. "Can't hear you," she mumbles, reaching up to remove the beeswax from her ears.
"You look so bad right now, holy shit," he says, bordering on hysterical.
She snorts, lolling back in his arms. "What a compliment," she says, slurring.
Her eyes roll back into her head. He grabs her, shaking her with one hand, feeling for her pulse with the other.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he mutters as her pulse slows underneath his fingers. "C'mon, Elena, stay awake. I need your help with this part," he requests in vain.
Seeing that she is too far gone, he doesn't let himself hesitate. "Ah what the hell, I'll do it myself." He reaches for the zipper of her jeans, muttering apologies as he yanks it down, frantically peeling them off her. He lays her down as gently as he can, kissing her forehead absentmindedly.
"You're gonna be okay, baby," he says, barely hearing what he's even saying, only knowing that he can't let her die. He can't conceivably imagine a world where she no longer exists – where she is not in his life and by his side.
Kneeling between her legs, he frantically searches his pockets for what he needs. He remembers exactly what is needed to prevent the venom from spreading, just as he knows that what comes after will be the hardest part. He finds his knife, then a zippo lighter buried in one of his pockets. With shaking hands, he lights it, holding it to the blade until it is blackened completely.
He grabs Elena's knee, right below the wound, opening her thigh to see the wound clearly. Without hesitating, he lays the flat of the molten blade to her the wound. Elena jerks from the pain, barely conscious. Dean shushes her, stroking her knee briefly before removing the blade to heat it again, then applying it to the other half of the wound.
When the wound is fully cauterized, he drops the blade, leaning over Elena to check her pulse. It steadies under his fingers within minutes.
He sags with relief, dropping his cheek to hers briefly. "Oh, thank god," he mutters gruffly. Sitting back up, he wipes the tears from his face that he hadn't realized were there until now.
Elena stirs, trying to sit up on her own. He reaches out to her, grasping her wrist in one hand and the back of her neck in the other, pulling her up into his chest.
It's only when she speaks that he realizes exactly how intimate their position is.
"Why am I not wearing pants?" she asks in a dazed voice.
He is suddenly hyperaware of her bare thighs on either side of him. "Yeah, I had to take them off to cauterize the wound, sorry about that," he says, hastily maneuvering until they're in a less compromising position.
She pouts. "I really like those jeans."
He rolls his eyes at her affectionately. "Maybe you can turn them into cut-offs," he suggests, swallowing back all the terms of endearments that suddenly seem like they could only apply to her.
"Good idea," she says.
He grabs the jeans to hand to her, as well as the machetes. She carefully wraps the ruined jeans around the two blades, holding them to her chest.
It takes them a moment to solve the riddle of how Dean can carry her without hurting her. She's not strong enough to walk, and with his arm at the crook of her knees, he's bound to cause a little pain, but he'd like to minimize as best he can. Eventually Dean removes his jacket, then the plaid shirt under it, and folds it up to wedge between her knees, preventing her thighs from touching as he carries her.
"C'mon…" he swallows his words, surprised that he almost called her baby again. "C'mon, Gilbert," he says instead. Elena hardly seems to notice, so Dean picks her and her makeshift package up, and carries her out to the car, far more of aware of her than he's ever been.
When Elena walks out of the bathroom the next morning, Dean walks over to her and immediately presses his palm to her forehead, then flips his hand over to press the back of his fingers to her forehead, frowning all the way.
"That's a very unusual way of saying good morning, Dean," Elena says dryly, looking very confused.
He presses both palms to her cheeks, tilting her face upwards to scrutinize.
"Dean, what are you doing?" Elena asks directly.
"You're supposed to be very sick right now," Dean says, sounding accusatory. "I'm supposed to be taking care of you."
Elena shrugs. "I feel fine."
Dean shakes his head, looking puzzled. "All of the literature says that after cauterizing the wound, the infected runs a high fever and is delirious for a week before either succumbing or recovering."
Elena shrugs. "Maybe it hasn't set in yet?"
He shakes his head again. "No, it's supposed to start right away, in the first couple of hours at the latest. I stayed up all night in case you'd need anything but nothing."
She gives him a small smile and a soft look. "Aww, that's so sweet, you were so ready to Nightingale me."
"Well, yeah," he says like she's stating the obvious. "Except you look fine! It's like you never even got hit with its venom."
She shrugs. "Maybe that's why the Imam blessed us," she suggests. "Maybe that blessing prevented the fever."
He considers this. "It's a theory." He squints at her. "You don't feel anything out of the ordinary?"
"I mean, my leg hurts, and it's gonna be a while before I can run again, but other than that, I'm fine."
At the mention of her leg hurting, he pats the bed. She sits down, waiting while he goes to get the first aid kit.
When he comes back, he kneels in front of her, thanking every deity he can think of that she's wearing shorts this time around. With gentle fingers he unwraps the bandage, revealing the angry red slash that now covers the inside of her thigh.
He whistles lowly. "That is gonna make one badass scar."
Elena laughs. "Oh yeah, can't wait to explain it to every person I meet from this moment onward."
As gently as he can, he smears antiseptic on it, then gently wraps it back up again, lightly patting her knee when he's done.
She thanks him, lying back down on the bed, dropping her uninjured folded leg onto the bed beside her, the injured one bent, but standing straight up.
Dean clears his throat, looking anywhere but at her. Busying himself, he gathers up the first aid kit and the used bandages taking them away to the bathroom where he can be alone with his treacherous thoughts.
The next morning, they are halfway across New Jersey, Dean thinking it might be nice to take Elena to Sioux Falls to see Jeremy for a few days while she recovers.
"Can I ask you something?" he asks.
"Sure," she says, sounding tired but alert.
"Where in the hell did you come up with mimicking that weird soothing sound it made?" he asks, incredulous now that she is out of the woods.
She shrugs. "Oh, that," she says, sounding distracted. "I dunno, really, I was just hoping I could distract it long enough to get the tail."
He nods. "Well, it was totally working before I fucked it up," he says grimly.
Elena shakes her head vehemently. "Don't be so hard on yourself, Dean. You had absolutely no way of knowing what I was doing or if it would even work."
Dean shakes his head in return, not as willing to let himself off the hook. "If I'd just kept my mouth shut, I could've gotten the tail while it was paying attention to you."
"I mean, it did still work, I got the tail, you got the head, it's dead now," Elena says reasonably.
"And you almost died because I was too busy trying to save you to do my damn job," Dean counters immediately. He glances over at her from the driver's seat.
She looks back at him and he has never felt more aware of his own heart's beating.
"Yeah, but you did save me," she reminds him gently. "And now I have a very badass scar," she adds for levity.
"I should've trusted you," Dean says stubbornly. "I was so busy trying to prevent it from hurting you that I didn't even think about what you were doing."
Elena shrugs lightly. "Well, you wouldn't be the first," she admits lowly.
He looks at her again. "That doesn't exactly make me feel better."
Elena sighs deeply. "Well, next time, you'll just have to remember this case," she says reasonably, then adding, "And that you can trust me."
"I do trust you," he says seriously.
She smiles. "I trust you, too."
AN: And thus a love affair was born. Between all female-attracted people and Elena Gilbert in her cutoff shorts, lol. Oh and you know, Dean realized he sees Elena as more than just his hunting partner and friend. I don't think I realized until I sat down to figure out the timeline but by the time the story starts it's only been about 6 months since Dean realized he has romantic feelings for Elena, so, no wonder he's so bad at hiding it! Elena's had so much more time to learn how to hide it.
If all goes as planned, I should be posting both the next outtake and Chapter 19 of the main story on Sunday! Wish me luck in the editing process! Thoughts? Questions? Please leave a review!
xoxo
-Pixie