The Lightning Strike

I was reeling. A white hot rage had swallowed me up and I’d been pacing up and down by the window of the motel room all night. I could still hear the smarmy British voice leaking through the receiver of the phone from last night after the revelation had been discovered that Bela hadn’t been repaying Bobby’s favour at all, that she hadn’t given us that African Dream Root out of the kindness of her heart and that when we got the feeling that there was bound to be a catch with her, there always was and we should have damn well listened to that hunch. That bitch had stolen the Colt and Dean had promised he was going to hunt her down. I could hear her voice, the glee in it when she seemed to taunt him. She didn’t think we would, but I knew Dean. This was personal, some kind of warrior code that had been broken, a stain on honour, and though that didn’t pass anyone’s lips, that’s how it felt. Like she had broken some unwritten rules of our world and this was the worst sin she could have committed, and you know what? She would fucking pay for it.

Me on the other hand? I wasn’t satisfied with just stealing it back. Something about this had pressed a final button in me. It was no secret that I’d hated her from the moment I’d met her, and not just because of her oozing sarcasm, but purely because I hated what she was. We were trying to save people, and she seemed to stop that happening every time she was around, simply because she wanted the stink of money on her hands. So yes, I wasn’t satisfied with just stealing the Colt back. I wanted to beat her to a bloody pulp. I. Was. Going. To. Kill. Her. With my bare hands if I had to. Why? Easy. At this stage I’m prepared to admit everything point blank because that’s what desperation does. The year is almost over, and goddamnit, yes, I’m terrified. I’m terrified I’m not going to be able to save him. Dean, that is, and that bitch has taken from me the only thing that could ever possibly give me a snowball’s chance in hell of saving him. I can’t do it you know, go through that. I think I might be more in love with him than he is with me (maybe, I can’t read minds but he‘s so good at pretending that he doesn‘t care that much) but I can’t help it. I hate that I am, I wish I didn’t care because it’d be so much easier but here I am, I’m in this knee deep and sinking fast and there’s nothing I can do about it. I hate feeling so helpless and hopeless.

So when we found her. When we found Bela, it wasn’t Dean she needed to be scared of. It was me, because I wasn’t above ripping her limb from limb and then feeding her to some mutt in an alley for this. The counter was above his head, every time I looked at him lately, it was there and the seconds seemed to be ticking away faster and faster. Zero was so much closer now.

I glanced over my shoulder into the room. Nisha was asleep in her bed, she was tired, we all were. It was getting harder and harder to keep up the energy for this chase that we were on. This thing that was a race against the clock. So, no matter how much pacing I’d done in that square patch of moonlight that leaked into the room through the window, no matter how heavy my breath was, she didn’t even stir. I figured I needed some air. Maybe I should go for a drive. No, wait. Probably not. I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to concentrate on the roads and the last thing I needed was to fuck up my car as well. I’d just wait on the porch for a little and get some air. I peered through the window. It wasn’t raining, but the parking lot was glistening with frost. It was cold out, so I zipped up my hooded leather bomber jacket over my vest top and quietly let the door to our room creak open before heading out onto the lot. The air was so cold, and as soon as I exhaled a plume of smoke danced from my lips like a pyre. It was so quiet, so peaceful out there and for a second I almost forgot about why were even here. Almost.

I was alone for a few minutes, just dwelling in my quiet reflection before I heard the door to the next room squeak. It was Sam and Dean’s room and Dean slipped out into the parking lot without a sound. He had his jacket on and he was looking at me like he’d known I was standing out here the whole time. Christmas flooded back to me. That night when I’d finally gotten to tell him that I loved him and he told me the same and there really shouldn’t have been any doubt but there always was with Dean. He wasn’t a romantic, you couldn’t try to turn him into Prince Charming because he wasn’t. You couldn’t expect him to hold you all the time and kiss your forehead and tell you every second how he’d die without you because he wouldn’t. You’d be so disappointed if you expected that. For me though, that was fine, because I was exactly the same. Nisha and Sam were the antithesis to me and Dean. They were that couple that held each other tight and said I love you at least twice a day and they kissed and all of that. Me and Dean didn’t. We just kind of looked at each other, quietly nodded and just expected the other to know all of that stuff because there was no way in hell that we were saying it out loud.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked at last.

“Not really. I’m just, so angry, you know?” I replied with a light shrug.

Then he did that thing he always did when he was a combination of nervous and uncomfortable. He touched the back of his head and looked at his feet. “I wanted to head out straight away you know. I wanted to get that bitch, but Sam, he said he needed to sleep. So-”

“I know. Nisha’s practically unconscious too.”

Then there was an incredibly uncomfortable silence that passed between us and I thought about bringing up the last case with him. I’d told Nisha that I wanted to speak to Dean about it first but even now I still hadn’t figured out exactly what it was I was going to say. I’d been inside his head and I’d seen all of his nightmares right there. He’d seen himself. He’d watched himself yell at him all of his worst fears, about not feeling human, about being nothing more than a soldier and finally about how he was going to wind up being some monster in the belly of hell. He didn’t know that I‘d seen all of that, or maybe he did and hadn’t brought it up. Neither of us were great at communicating. So. I decided to be blunt.

“I saw all that stuff. In your dream.”

Dean paused and rose an eyebrow. “Ok, random. That was over two weeks ago Misha.”

“What’s that got to do with anything? I just thought you’d want to know that I saw. I didn’t want you to think I was snooping or something. So I’m telling you, Jesus.” My face went a little red with frustration and the bitter cold. I was just trying to be honest with him.

He sighed tiredly and gave me a rather pointed look. “What exactly did you think you saw?”

“Well, I KNOW I saw you arguing with yourself. Is that enough?”

He went silent then and looked down at his feet whilst rubbing his forehead. He knew what I was talking about, you see, I didn’t need to go into a long winded dialogue in precise detail. This was what happened with us. We just didn’t like talking about things, and I could tell the fact that I’d seen his deepest, darkest fears and feelings was a little bit of a shock to him.

“It’s not that much of a big deal. It just saves you the trouble of having to say it out loud. Right?”

That was sort of my way of trying to be comforting. I sucked at it.

He nodded. “Right.”

Then there was an awkward pause.

“If we left now, we could prob’ly catch her,” Dean added, looking at me hesitantly.

“I can’t sleep anyway.”

“Wake Nisha and I’ll wake Sam?”

I just nodded and turned from him, heading into mine and Nisha’s motel room to do just that. We didn’t need to say anymore. His discomfort had eased, something in his gaze shifted and though he didn’t say it I could tell that some part of him was relieved that I had seen what I’d seen. That he didn’t have to be so damn solid now. That he could just…be. I wished, sometimes, that he could be more trusting in me with things like this. That even though I wasn’t expecting him to give me a bleeding heart story, that he would just know he didn’t have to pretend that he was indestructible all the time. I could take it. I knew he was human, really. I accepted him. I loved him, flaws and all.

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By the time we got to Minnesota it was light. Mid morning I think. Nisha hadn’t been happy that I’d woken her up to drag her off onto some road trip across the states after Bela. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the urgency of us finding the Colt, it was just that she didn’t think it was a good idea for me to be doing this on no sleep.

“Because it’s stupid,” Nisha finally said flatly, looking across at me from the passenger seat.

“It’s not stupid. Dean’s running out of time and that piece of shit stole our only weapon against whatever demon is going to come and take him.”

“Yeah? How much use are you going to be if you’re falling asleep at the wheel?” Nisha asked.

Alright, so she had a point, but I wasn’t going to acknowledge it and so I just stared out of the windshield at the stretch of road.

“I won’t fall asleep.”

“You haven’t slept for at least 24 hours, Misha. You’re human, you need to sleep.”

“Yeah well, later. There’s no point now, it’s morning anyway. We have a lead and we’re taking it.”

“Fine, but I’m not letting you do this anymore. We can’t fight if we have no energy, so once we find Bela, you’re going to get some sleep.”

After that we parked the car at some fancy block up ahead. It was a hotel, only the finest for Bela right? I parked the Torino in the street outside and leaned across to the glove box to lift out a pistol which I pocketed before going after Sam and Dean. We crept along the corridors in silence and in one swift kick Dean kicked the door down and the four of us flooded into the room. A quick look around the room and I noted that there was nothing in it. No clothes in the wardrobes, no toiletries in the en suite. Nothing. She wasn’t here. Even the bed was perfectly tidy and made.

Then the phone on the bed rang.

I frowned and looked at Nisha who was frowning back at me. Dean lifted up the receiver. Guess who? Bela, of course. She had taken the Colt and no she wasn’t going to give it back to us and the longer the conversation went on the more and more angry Dean got.

“Oh, I’ll find you sweetheart. Do you know why? Because I have absolutely nothing better to do with my time than hunting you down.”

I frowned though as his face grew grave and he dropped the phone. What happened next was so fast that I hardly remember the sequence of it. The next thing I knew the door swung open and a ton of cops came flooding into the room with us. They had guns held to us, and were screaming at us to drop our weapons and hit the floor. They screamed it over and over, and I dropped my gun and got down on the floor flat. They put my arms behind my back, and they did it to Sam, Nisha and Dean too and handcuffed the four of us. That bitch had called the cops on us. She was going to die painfully for this. I was just kidding about that limb stuff before, now I meant it.

I looked to the doorway where a pair of perfectly polished black shoes stood and I looked up and instantly my heart sank. Agent Henriksen. Technically Nisha and I hadn’t met him formally. We knew of him, but hadn’t met him. He’d arrested Dean before, and he knew about Sam. Then there had been this whole shoot out that we’d tried to prevent that Henrisken had been convinced Dean was behind. Nisha and I had escaped before Henriksen got to us though and so we’d never met. That changed now though. There was no escape this time, we were in the room with Sam and Dean and so instantly we were going down as accomplices. The police lifted us off the floor and bundled us into a cop car and then took us down to the station for questioning. Fun.

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They brought us into the station in chains. Nisha and I were chained together by the hands and feet and so were Sam and Dean. There were a couple of cops in the station office, along with a sheepish looking receptionist girl who stared at us all like we were the four horsemen or something. She clutched a rosary in her hands and Dean made some crack about how it wasn’t us she should be scared of. I glared at him. I didn’t think this was funny, I don’t know what he thought he was doing but this wasn’t funny at all. We’d been fucking arrested for Christ sake. It wasn’t that I was scared of that per se, it was just the fact that this was a hindrance. If we managed to escape somehow, which wasn’t looking too good right now, we’d still be behind Bela and the Colt and my plans for being the saviour of Dean Winchester were quickly getting further and further away from me.

They shoved us into a cell at last. It was grey, cold and square and bars were all around us. It smelt like stale whiskey and cigarettes and I figured some old drunk had to have been in here before us because the smell was pretty distinctive. Au de Hobo.

Nisha and I sat down at the same time as we watched Sam and Dean struggle with each other. They both tried to walk in opposite directions and the chains jingled as Sam nearly tripped over and clung to the bars. Eventually they agreed to sit down and finally there was a little peace and quiet.

“How are we going to Houdini our way out of this one?” Dean asked.

“Good question,” Sam replied dismally.

I rubbed my forehead in frustration. This was so bad. So, so, so bad. I was screaming at myself in my mind like I’d just lost. I’d just cracked at that point and I couldn’t do this anymore. It couldn’t be defeated this way. Our mission couldn’t be defeated and end in a prison cell, it was just…it wasn’t the glorious ending I’d pictured, you know?

There was a pause as we sat there hopelessly in that gray prison and before I could voice my desperation I had to keep it bottled up because Henriksen appeared on the other side of the bar. He had a wide, smug smirk on his face and started off on some little spiel about what he should have for dinner in celebration of capturing the Winchester and their ‘accomplices’ as Nisha and I now were.

“After all, seeing you all in chains.”

“You kinky son of a bitch,” Dean replied.

I glared across at him. The last thing we needed was to aggravate this guy anymore. He was standing between us and freedom. The freedom we needed to track down Bela and get back the colt so I- I mean, so we could save Dean.

“That’s funny,” Henriksen replied.

“I wouldn’t bust out the melted butter just yet. Couldn’t catch us at the bank, couldn’t keep us in that jail,” Dean replied with a smirk and a confident shrug.

“Dean. Goddammit. Stop,” I replied through gritted teeth but he didn’t look at me, just kept looking at Henriksen with that damned smirk.
“You’re right,” Henriksen replied. “I underestimated you before, but now I’m ready. Ready to hold you in a maximum security prison until trial. That, between you and me, is probably a little unconstitutional.”

Henriksen left us to stew at that point. I was full on repressing hyperventilation at this point. I was worrying myself with how ruffled I was getting. I was usually able to keep a professional head on everything, keep a lid on the fear and the anxiety. My decorum had completely abandoned me. I wanted to break through the bars and run. I wanted out. I was spiralling. I was going to lose, him, this, everything, all of it. I couldn’t deal with defeat, it was like that afternoon in 2005 all over again. I couldn’t lose another important person again-

“Sam and Dean Winchester, I’ve been waiting for you two to come out of the woodwork.”

Dean was standing up, looking through the bars at yet another agent who had a similarly smug grin on his face to Henriksen’s. Dean scoffed and glanced back at the agent with disinterest. The next thing I knew, there was this horrible sound. It wasn’t anything too horrible, not to other people, not usually. Like a really exceptional pea shooter. The silencer on the end of the gun rendered the shot to nothing but that popping noise as it unleashed a bullet into Dean’s shoulder with ferocity. Everything slowed down and I could feel my lungs screaming out some kind of desperate yelling as I watched him fall back onto the bench in a heap. I scrambled over to him as Sam wrestled the gun away from us all and Nisha quickly chanted a Latin exorcism that made the agent twist and squirm. I hadn’t seen it, but it must have been a demon in his body. His eyes were black. I could see it now.

The Latin exorcism didn’t seem to work and the demon just smirked back at Nisha with a shark-like smile. That was not fucking good.

“Sorry ladies and gents. Can’t stay. It’s going to be a long night,” it replied ominously.

“Dean,” I said desperately, pressing my hand to the wound on his shoulder. “Are you alright? Fuck. Jesus.”

Smoke tunnelled out from the agent’s mouth and out the ventilation shaft in the ceiling and the body of the agent fell lifelessly to the ground. It was then that Henriksen’s men burst in with guns pointed at us. They screamed at us to drop any weaponry we had and Sam tried to explain that we hadn’t shot him.

“Check the body, there’s no blood!”

“You’re buddy shot DEAN,” I hissed back.

“Go ahead, check the body,” Henriksen nodded an instruction to one of the men who proceeded to check the cadaver for any obvious wounds. He found none of course.

“Nothing,” the cop replied.

“What did you bastards do?” Henriksen barked at us.

“We didn’t do anything,” Dean snapped back.

“He was possessed,” Sam interjected reluctantly. Henriksen wouldn’t believe us, he never had, so why would he start now?

“Fire up the chopper, we’re getting them out of here.”

Yet nothing came through the walkie talkie. Nothing but a lot of loud interference. A haze of static that tied my stomach in knots just listening to it. I knew that wasn’t just ordinary static or a bad connection. That was demon interference. The cops flooded from the room at that point, desperate to make contact with the chopper that was outside. Dean sat up, assuring me that he was okay, he just held his shoulder and winced when he moved. My breath was hot and steady, but quick and anxious. The lights went out, with only the comfort of some small lamps in the next room to offer any kind of lightning at all. I swallowed the lump in my throat and my shoulders tensed. Now we were in darkness and locked in a cell and there was some kind of brigade of demons outside that were going to come in here and serve up our guts on a silver platter and we were helpless. I was losing it. God I was losing it.

“Definitely not fucking good,” Nisha sighed.

“What the hell are we going to do?” I asked, gripping a lump of my hair in my fist.

Nisha looked at me frowning. There was little signs all over my face, little instances that she could pick upon more easily than either of the boys. Those signs that were telling her that something was up with me and that she was worried about it. Dean was staring at me with a raised eyebrow, like I’d just threatened to smack his grandma in the face or something. If he had a grandma, obviously. He shook his head and no one decided to make any comments which I was thankful about. I didn’t want to be psycho analysed right now.

“So what’s the plan?”

My head snapped to my right and I saw Henriksen again. He had his gun still and he looked really, really pissed.

“Kill everyone in this building and bust you four out of here?”

“What?” Nisha’s voice was tense and full of irritation. “Are you that dim? We already TOLD you what we do, it’s not our fault you don’t believe us.”

“She’s right, whoever is out there isn’t coming to help us, they’re-”

“Don’t you dare say demons,” Henriksen interrupted Sam sharply.

“Let us out of here dammit. So we can save your asses,” Dean growled.

“From the demons? Please. Let me tell you something, you should be a lot more scared of me,” Henriksen replied before walking swiftly out.

“I’m gonna hit that guy. When we get out of here, first goddamn chance I get. I’m hitting that guy,” Dean grunted.

I sat him back down on the bench in the cell. In all the commotion, I hadn’t had a chance to check his wound over properly. It stung him and he cursed under his breath when I leaned him forwards so I could check the back, and again when I slipped my hand inside his jacket so I could feel the depth of the injury. I’d pulled out a lump of tissue from my jacket pocket and pressed it against his wound but this wasn’t working. It was bleeding too fast to hold it. We needed bandages. A proper first aid kit.

I sighed. “How’s your shoulder feeling?”

“Awesome,” Dean replied, completely sarcastically. I glared at him. It wasn’t like it was my fault that that son of a bitch had shot him.

“Hey,” Sam got our attention.

I looked through the bars to where he was pointing at the receptionist girl from before. She was half hiding behind the doorway and looking at us warily. Sam begged her for a towel. We needed that at the very least before Dean just bled out all together. It wasn’t a majorly serious wound, but if there was a demon squad waiting for us outside, we needed him fighting fit and losing blood was just going to weaken him.

“Please, just a towel, that’s all we’re asking for Nancy,” Sam pleaded.

Nancy disappeared and returned a moment later with a white towel. She stepped towards the cell hesitantly and kept her eyes on Sam who had his hands held up to show he was being truthful. I watched her inch towards the cell and she smiled a little bit as she put her hands through the bars. Sam snatched her wrist and held it tight and Nancy just started screaming. It pierced through my skull and made me shut my eyes tight like someone had just scraped their nails down a chalk board. The sound just went right through me. One of the cops threatened Sam with a gun and got Nancy out. They backed out at that point and left us alone.

Nisha stared at Sam. “What were you DOING?”

Sam just looked at her and dangled Nancy’s set of rosary beads in front of her.

“Good work, Sam,” I said through a deep breath. “We’re going to need that.”

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Somehow I felt timeless. I couldn’t say how long we’d been sitting in that piss scented cell. It felt like hours had gone by, but it was probably only something like half an hour at the most. I was starting to feel a little claustrophobic sitting in that cell. I wanted to get out. We were easy targets in here. We were going to get taken out.

“They’re coming straight for us this time,” Dean piped up, ending the silence.

I glanced at him. Watched him hold that towel to his shoulder and play with the rosary in his other hand. My jaw clenched and something about his disruption of my thoughts just kind of made me irritated. I didn’t want to be, but when I got like this, my temper flared more than usual. I guess it was my way of disguising…fear?

“It’s like we have a contract over us. Think it’s because we’re so awesome? I think it’s because we’re so awesome,” Dean added with a wry grin.

“For God sake, Dean,” I finally said, exasperated thoroughly. He stared at me blankly. “This is not a game. This is not one of your fucking punch lines. We’re in deep shit here, so stop joking around. This isn’t funny.”

“What the hell crawled up your-”

He stopped before he could finish that because Nisha was glaring at him. She snatched my arm and pulled me to one side of the cell. The distant corner, or, not so distant corner but whatever. She leaned towards me so the boys couldn’t hear and whispered.

“What’s with you? You’ve been getting twitchier and twitchier lately. I told you, you needed to sleep.”

“I’m fine,” I replied. Lie.

“No you’re not, Misha. Look at you, you’re kind of a mess. You can hold this together right? You know we’re going to get out of this.”

I forced a smile, and she seemed to relax a little, seeing me smile. Apparently my smile was convincing enough for now. “I know. We’ve been in tougher scrapes, right?”

Nisha smiled back at me. “Right.”

“Time to go, all of you.”

The four of us all looked up to see the sheriff sliding the bar doors to one side to…let us out? I was confused by this to say the least. I could see from the corner of my eye, out of some sort of reflex, that Sam snatched Nisha’s wrist and pushed her behind him as the sheriff looked up at us.

“No, thanks, Sheriff. We’re comfy right here,” Dean replied.

Henriksen walked in and brandished the gleaming black pistol from his waist band. There was nothing to it. Such a fluid motion as he pulled the trigger and shot the sheriff straight through the forehead. The four of us all jumped and I felt that horrible tingle down my spine as I stepped to one side. Sam wrestled the gun out of Henriksen’s wrist. He forced his head into the toilet that was now equipped with Nancy’s rosary that consequently had the effect of making the water in the toilet holy. Sam chanted Latin and Henriksen’s eyes tinged black as steam rose from his skin. He cackled, and yelled something about how he’d already called the others and that didn’t help me with whatever nervousness was currently victim to. Finally the demon spilled out from Henriksen and slithered away. I was breathing deep and leaning back against the cell wall as we watched Henriksen warily.

“Henriksen, is that you in there?” Sam asked.

“I-I shot the sheriff,” Henriksen replied, floating in a daze.

“….But you didn’t shoot the-”

“Dean, if you finish that. I swear to God,” I replied glaring up at him.

“You were possessed, now you know, right?” Nisha added with a shrug.

“H-How do we survive this?”

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Finally Henriksen had seen fit to let us go. I’d been so relieved to have the chains dropped from my ankles and wrists. We were standing amidst the station and waiting for whatever the hell was waiting for us outside. Sam and Nisha were spray painting demon traps to the floor. I hadn’t even thought to do that. My head was not in this at all. I was floundering. I wasn’t focussed and I wasn’t following procedure. If I was thinking straight, then setting traps would have been the first thing I did.

“Misha?”

I looked down at Dean. I’d been meddling with the same bandage for around five minutes whilst I zoned out. I blinked and shook myself back into reality, typing up the bandages properly as he stared at me with that raised eyebrow and confused look again. I could tell that he was slowly starting to realize that there was something wrong with me and he was going to ask.

“We need salt” I said at last, before he could say anything.

Henriksen and the one remaining cop in the building looked at me blankly.

“Bullets won’t kill these things, we need salt and lots of it.”

“There’s salt in the store room,” Nancy replied.

“Perfect. We need salt on every window and door, get to work on that now. Oh, and where’s our cars?” Dean asked.
“Impound lot out back,” the cop replied. “Wait, you’re not going out there are you?”

“Yeah. I, er, I need to get something out of my trunk,” Dean replied.

“I’ll come with you,” I replied.

I don’t know what I was thinking but I had to. I needed some air. I needed to just get out, even for a second, even at the risk there was waiting for us out there. Dean and I snuck out the back door and crept along the damp lot and through the wire fencing. We needed our guns, our books and our equipment. It was the only way we even had a slight chance of getting out of this.

“Got your keys?” he whispered to me as we approached the cars parked side by side in the lot. I just nodded.

“Good. Get your supplies, I’ll get mine, then we bolt, got it?”

I just nodded silently again. I lifted the drunk of the Torino and rooted around in it for several guns and books, extra salt. Anything we could use. I shut the trunk and just as I did, I managed to look across the street to a gas station. The lights flickered and fizzed before finally giving out and my heart thudded fast in my chest. It beat violently. The light that was keeping the lot lit gave out next and Dean and I both turned in time to see a cloud of black smoke rushing towards us. It was the biggest mass of darkness that I had ever seen. It was riddled with veins of purple electricity, like jolts of lightning that burst through the smoke every so often. It was rushing at us like a freight train and my feet just locked in position. I had a hold of my duffle bag over my shoulder but my legs were frozen, my feet stuck to the ground and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t look away. It was like staring at a car crash. Something so frightening and horrific but I just couldn’t tear my eyes away. It had hypnotized me.

“MISHA, DAMMIT, MOVE!” Dean yelled at me.

I felt him snatch my arm and tug me away from the cloud before it could swallow me up. We ran, we fucking ran fast and we tumbled back into the station and we put salt across the door. Inside the station it didn’t take long for the demons to flood all around us. They engulfed the building, and the building shook with their mite. With their power. I was fucking freaking out. I was losing the decorum, I wasn’t holding it together. My fingers shook and I dropped my gun. The ceiling was starting to give and the windows rattled and then all of a sudden it went deathly quiet. An eerie silence filled the room as I gripped a hand on the desk beside him and just tried to stay on my feet. I looked to my left and I caught Dean’s glare. He was going to find out what my deal was, I could tell. He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me into the next room before I could protest. The door slammed behind us and finally he relinquished his grip around my arm and looked at me sternly. This is where we stopped being together, you see. On jobs, we weren’t ‘together’, we were colleagues. This was our work place and it was almost like he was my boss sometimes and right now I wasn’t doing my job properly and he wanted to know why.

“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on with you?” Dean asked.

I glared back at him. “Nothing is going on.”

He scoffed, unconvinced. “You just zoned out in a demon fest. You’re a crappy liar.”

“I’m FINE. Jesus, why is everyone psychoanalyzing me today?”

“Because you’re dropping the damn ball. That’s why. It’s our job to get these people out of this alive, remember? We can’t afford for you to breakdown right now.”

My jaw tightened a little at that. He could have been better about his choice of words. He made me sound like a piece of machinery. A cog that was essential to our functioning and that was all I was. My glare didn’t lessen any and it didn’t shift from him either.

“You know what Dean? Screw you. I don’t need you to tell me how to do this. Nisha and I have more than enough experience. Oh, and just so you know? No one made you fucking squadron leader, so stop talking to me like I’m someone who’s going take your orders. I’m not.”

That was when I walked out. I’m sorry, but I have no idea where my head is at. For once I’ll actually concede that Dean is right. What he was saying was perfectly true. I was losing my footing here but I just couldn’t tell him why that was. Plus his smarmy ‘I’m the leader’ shit had gotten on my nerves. He may have been right about my focussing, but I was right about him NOT being the leader. Bossy bastard. I walked back out into the main office of the station where Sam, Nisha, Nancy, Henriksen and the last standing cop were all staring at me. Nisha was frowning like she always did when she was worried. I refused to talk about it though. Dean wanted professionalism? Fine. I crouched down on the ground, lifted my gun and slotted the barrel into place with one satisfying click.

I so wasn’t ready…

A silence followed, a short lived silence that was interrupted by the sound of smashing. Dean burst back into the room behind me. He didn’t even look at me as he stormed passed, and the rest of us followed him to the opposing corridor. The window smashed, and trapped in one of the painted demon traps was Ruby. She was bloody and bruised and breathing deeply and glaring at us all.

“Well, is someone gonna’ let me out?” she asked through gritted teeth.

Sam smudged the outer circle of the trap to break it and Ruby walked free. I’d noticed that there was a gap in the salt that had been laid down by Henriksen across the inside of the window ledge, it made me frown (It was how Ruby had gotten in, in the first place, obviously). That was suspicious. Sam had apparently noticed it too though, because he covered the gap with the rest of the salt and reformed the barrier.

Ruby went on to explain that there were thirty or so demons outside. For starters anyway. I sighed and leaned against one of the desks, my fingers idly holding onto the barrel of the gun. I glanced at Dean and he wasn’t looking at me, he hadn’t done so since our little argument. Ruby went onto explain that they’d been sent by some demon called Lilith and, amazingly, Sam had known this for a while and not seen fit to tell any of us about it. Peachy.

“Where’s the Colt?” Ruby demanded.

“It…got stolen,” Sam replied.

“What? I must have blood in my ears because I thought you just said that you managed to let the Colt slip out of your big, clumsy, idiotic hands.”

“Watch your damn mouth, Ruby,” Nisha hissed back at her.

Ruby glared back at Nisha and there was a momentary silent showdown between the two of them before Ruby went on with a different idea. She sighed and explained that she knew another spell that could wipe out every demon within a mile radius.

“Including me, so next time, you idiots should try being more careful. How‘s that for a dying wish?” Ruby hissed.

“What’s the spell?” Dean asked.

“It needs a person of virtue. A virgin,” Ruby replied.

At this point for some reason she was looking at me. Squarely, in the eye, and she wasn’t being subtle about it either. I stared back at her raising an eyebrow. Was she trying to insinuate that I was in any way virginal? I snorted and rolled my eyes. Had she not been paying attention to who I was supposed to be with right now? You weren’t with Dean Winchester for over a year and remaining ‘pure’, trust me.

“You’re about three years too late on that Ruby, sorry,” I replied with a nonchalant shrug.

What? Dean wasn’t the first, that would be a ridiculous ego boost that he didn’t need.

Then she looked at Nancy and the four of us turned heads to look at her as well. She was looking sheepishly back at us. Nancy was a virgin? Wow. I wasn’t judging, and come to think of it, I wasn’t that surprised. She was obviously a Catholic or something, what with the crucifix on her neck and the rosary beads. Yep, not much of a surprise when I think about it.

“What can I do to help?” Nancy asked.

“You can hold still whilst I cut your heart out of your chest,” Ruby replied.

Nisha stepped between the two of them at this point. In case you didn’t know, Nisha hated Ruby. Ruby had just shown up one day out of the blue a while ago, claiming that she wanted to help Sam and naturally, Nisha was suspicious. Not to mention Ruby was a sarcastic bitch and spent too much time thinking she was in charge.

“It’s either her, or us and the thirty other people that are outside. Take your pick,” Ruby growled.

“Back the fuck off, Ruby. No one is killing any virgins,” Nisha hissed. “We won’t let you, right Sam?”

Sam didn’t respond. I glanced at him, and he was just standing there pensively. Somehow he kind of looked like he was actually agreeing with Ruby’s crazy plan. What the fuck? We didn’t sacrifice anyone, no matter what the circumstances were. It was against everything we were about.

“Sam?” Nisha asked again, looking up at Sam and frowning.

“I think we all need to have a brief conference. Now,” Dean added sternly, walking off down the corridor.

Nisha, Sam and I followed him and he turned and glared at Sam.

“We’re not sacrificing anyone Sam. I don’t care what the damn stakes are. It’s crazy, it’s not who we are.”

“But, there’s thirty other innocent people out there Dean.”

“No, Sam. We’re not sacrificing some innocent girl who hasn’t even gotten laid.”

“Then, what Dean? What do we do?”

“We freaking fight, that’s what. We open the doors, we let them all and we goddamn fight. We don’t sacrifice innocents.”

I wasn’t exactly thrilled with that plan, I won’t lie. In fact, right now, I was pretty much terrified. Terrified and trying not to let my shaking hands be too visible to everyone else. I swallowed hard. This was is it. This was how it was going to be. We weren’t even going to get close to the finish line and some part of me screamed and then withered inside.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was sitting in a chair at a desk, with my feet on the table. I don’t know why, just trying to look casual I guess as the seconds ticked away to our end. Ruby was leaving apparently. I watched with vague interest as she took off back through the way she came. I was glad she was gone, if only for the fact that I wouldn’t have to clean up her mangled body once Nisha was through tearing her limb from limb for continuously insulting Sam.

Nancy was on the roof with the cop, and was told to stay there until the time was right. The two of them were going to seal the demons in here with us once they’d all piled in. Henriksen went to one exit of the station. Nisha went with Sam to another and I went with Dean to the final one. We still weren’t looking at each other or talking to each other, but that was probably a good thing right now. I needed to concentrate. My throat was so dry though and my palms were sweating and my heart was thudding and the corridor was spinning a little bit and I thought I was going to pass out. God, why was I losing it? I wanted so much to get back my steel, I was never scared of cases, not like this anyway.

“Ready?” Dean yelled down the corridor and the others responded with a simple ‘yes’.

Dean crouched and began rubbing off the paint on the floor in front of us, with his knife he etched it away until the trap was broken and I kicked a gap in the line of salt at the door. They could just walk right in now. The demons had nothing between us and them now, they could…come for us at any time.

He went off down the corridor and I stayed by the door in eerie silence. There was no sound, nothing in those few seconds. I could hear myself breathing as I readjusted my grasp on the shot gun in my hands. I had it pointed at the doorway but I still wasn’t ready for this. One of the demons finally showed and thrust itself through the door towards me. It smacked me in the face, I felt it’s knuckles hit my nose and I could instantly taste the metallic flavour of blood in my mouth. I fell back into the corner of the corridor and more of the demons were coming towards me. They had me in the corner, they had me pinned. Around six of them had encircled me and one gripped me by the collar, lifting me off the floor and pinning me back against the wall. I was choking, and they were all looking up at me with obsidian eyes and shark like grins, cackling.

Then I screamed.

“DEAN!”

I was surprised by my own voice. My cry for help wasn’t what I imagined it to be. It sounded a lot more desperate than I thought it would. In this entire year and a half that I’d been on the road with the Winchesters, in the entire time I’d been sentenced to this life, I had never once screamed. I’d never cried out for help like that. I hated it.

I saw Dean appear at the other end of the corridor and he ran like a shot towards me and the crowd of demons that had set upon me. He fought them off, he grabbed me and he pulled me down the corridor away from them. I heard him vaguely say ‘I got you now, I got you’ as we ran but it was muffled. My head was spinning like a tornado.

We were back in the station room. There was a mob of demons in there, and just as I’d been relieved to get down from the damn wall, one demon walked forwards and with a wave of her hand, the four of us were pinned against the wall.

“HENRIKSEN, NOW!” Dean yelled.

His plan was unfolding. Henriksen, in the next room, hit the play button on the tape recorder and Sam’s voice rang out through every corner of the police station. The Latin exorcism chant filled my ears and I’d never been so glad to hear that dead language in my entire life. The demons twitched and screamed and some tried to get out but they couldn’t. Thank God for Nancy and the cop. They were trapped in here with us and this was their end. Finally black smoke filled the room, he collected on the ceiling and swirled like a vortex, with those pulses of purple electricity. I flinched, watching the final smokey demon join the others and in one blinding, fiery explosion, they blew up into nothing and only a few flakes of ash fell on our heads.

It was over.

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We got back to our motel around 2am. I was so relieved to see that hideous red and gold wallpaper and the matted carpet. Sam and Nisha collapsed onto one bed, completely exhausted. I looked up as I put my duffle bag down, Dean was lingering in the doorway giving me a pointed look.

“Got a minute? I think we need to talk Misha. Out here.”

I sighed and nodded, following him outside onto the parking lot. He turned around and frowned at me.

“What happened to you today? You completely lost it. I mean, damn, that never happens to you. You’re like much hotter and less crazy version of Rambo, you’re always toting guns and you’re always on top of this. What happened?”

I couldn’t resist him any longer I guess. I had to tell him, because he wasn’t going to fucking drop it. Seriously, he could be really persistent.

“Everything, Dean. Everything happened.”

“Thanks, that really clears things up,” he replied, folding his arms and rolling his eyes.

“You’re going to die. In a matter of weeks from now and excuse me but yes, it’s getting to me. Alright?”

He looked at me with surprise.

“You’re going to die and I can’t stop it. It’s so unfair and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s in my nightmares, when I eat, when I wake up in the morning and when I go to sleep at night. I’m fucking obsessed by it because it’s not right. Some selfish part of me just doesn’t get it. I finally let myself love someone and then, just as I do, it’s snatched away. I feel so goddamn helpless and, I’m never helpless. I’m never ever helpless-”

I stopped because I realized tears were slipping down my face and now I was just even more pissed off. I hated showing feelings, I hated showing weakness and I especially hated to show that around Dean because frankly? I didn’t want him to feel like he had to baby-sit me. Enough shit was going on already without me blubbering.

“Misha…”

“No, don’t. You, you keep pretending like this doesn’t matter and that you don’t care. It’s so shitty of you to ignore how it feels like that. It’s not just you that it’s going to crush, alright?”

“Misha, stop. I get it now. Jesus. I get it.”

He had his arms around me and he held me against his chest and I was just quiet. He was silent and I was silent. I didn’t have the energy to fight him, to pretend that I didn’t need his comfort. I clung to his jacket. God I was pathetic, but I felt good now. Now he knew, now he knew how it all felt, I could pick up the pieces of that now.

I stood back from him and took a deep breath and I stuffed my hands into my pockets and looked at him. His hand was against the nape of my neck and he leaned closer.

“You’re crazy,” he grinned. “But I love ya.”

He kissed me on the forehead and then disappeared back inside. I was stood there alone, feeling mildly idiotic. I blinked, taking a moment to gather myself before following him inside. Nisha and Sam were sitting on the bed and neither of them looked pleased. In fact, they looked damn well grave.

“What? We were only gone for five minutes,” Dean retorted to their silent looks with a shrug.

“No, it’s not that,” Nisha said. “Ruby was just here…”

“Lilith…showed up at the station just after we left. They’re all dead. Every single one.”

No one said anything. My breath caught in my throat and I just stared.

Shit. What now?