The Lightning Strike

I had a broad grin on my face. A stupid grin, one that I really was fighting against but I couldn’t. I felt like a moron for smiling like that. Fortunately, Nisha hadn’t noticed it, or if she had, she’d chosen not to say anything about it. Why was I grinning at the windshield of the Torino you ask? That’s what was so puzzling to me. I was still sort of, I don’t know how I felt, happy I guess that Dean had recognized that I was a good hunter. That me and Nisha were cut out for this life. I’d heard him say it to Jo on one of the previous cases we’d worked recently. The H.H Holmes deal. My ego was soaring. The guy who had done nothing but belittle us both since we’d met him had finally had to admit that Nisha and I were badass. I grinned sharply to myself, I could see Nisha looking at me from the corner of her eye but she stayed quiet. I put my foot down on the gas, and the car zoomed ahead down the stretch of road. I just wanted to follow the road for a while and ride this stupidity out. I had no idea what it meant, and I figured it didn’t really change my opinion of Dean for the most part (even though, I’ll admit, I don’t think he’s quite as big of an asshole as I did at first) but it did make me feel proud of myself to find out that he thought Nisha and me were worthy of this. It was hopeful, you know? Like we really could find out what had happened to our parents and get revenge.

Pictures of matchstick men and you…

I leaned forwards and turned up the radio so Status Quo could really sing their tune and fill the inside of the Torino with that chilled out sound. I’d never paid much attention to the song before now, but it seemed to fit my mood and the occasion.

We’d been driving for a while, Nisha had said something about Sam calling to say we were going to pull over and get some breakfast at a café on the way. Remember what I said about Dean always having to eat? That was still true. I think he had to stop every two hours and just stuff his face before he’d go on anywhere else. I rolled my eyes a little. When you ate with Dean? You really didn’t want to eat anything for yourself, trust me. It was such a repellent sight that he kind of put you off your own food, especially since he talked with his mouth full and showed you whatever chewed up bread it was that he was eating at the time. Nice, right?

We’d approached the café pretty soon. It looked like any other café, of course. Nisha and I had become really used to these too. Just like we’d become used to the dingy roadhouses, we were used to chirpy all American cafes. We sat in our quartet at the table. Nisha had made me sit next to Dean, which I glared at her for, but I guess if I was sitting beside him, it’d be harder for me to see his chewed up food. I watched Nisha sit next to Sam. Sam pulled out his laptop and looked at it, frowning, typing a little. Nisha leaned over him a little, looking at it curiously.

“So much for a low profile” Sam sighed, glaring over the top of the laptop at Dean. “You’re officially in the Fed’s database.”

Nisha rolled her eyes, looking at Dean pointedly. “Nice going Dean, you just made our job even harder.”

“Oh yeah? Well what have they got on you Sammy?” Dean asked, ignoring Nisha’s look as he sipped some lemonade casually. Lemonade for breakfast. Nice.

Sam paused, glancing elsewhere for a moment uncomfortably. “Well, nothing.”

“Nothing?” Dean snorted at that, and shook his head laughing as he stuffed a handful of fries into his mouth. “You’re just jealous.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked, glaring up at him, twirling a fork in one hand. “This isn’t funny, the cops and law enforcers all know about you now. We have to be even more careful than we were before. So stop turning this into a joke.”

Dean glared back at me. “Jealousy is ugly on you, Misha.”

My jaw tightened at that. He really did have an insanely petulant ego. Like, it was suffocating. I imagined if it sort of took physical form it’d be like King Kong on the empire state building. It was about as intelligent as a giant monkey too.

“Alright, well, whatever. What have you got on the case so far, Sammy?” Dean asked, and Sam looked back to his computer, typing again on it for a second. Sam could really type fast, but I digress again.

Sam paused, as Dean stuffed yet another handful of fries into his mouth and the three of us all cringed slightly. Manners of a pig I tell you. “Well, an architect named Sean Boyden plummeted to his death from a condominium he designed. Witnesses said he was screaming something about black dogs, only, none of the authorities found any dogs and were kind of puzzled as to how any dog could get passed the doormen and then take a ride in an elevator.”

I paused at that. It sounded pretty odd. Definitely our kind of case. Although, another thing I’d learned since jumping on the road with the Winchesters was that it didn’t take much oddness to warrant an investigation. We’d looked into things that could quite have easily been normal, but turned out not to be. That was the rules with this stuff, any hint of even slight weirdness and we had to check it out. Just to be on the safe side.

“What’s the lore on black dogs?” Dean asked.

Sam handed him a pile of papers, apparently that was kind of a vague question. There was a lot of folk lore on spectral black dogs, or just black dogs in general. This was going to take some heavy research I could sense it already and that made me sigh. It was too early in the morning for research.

“Well, they exist all over the world. The only thing for sure is that they’re big, nasty and-”

“They could hump the crap out of your leg” Dean smirked. I hit him in the arm and he glared across at me.

“It’s too early in the morning for your innuendo” I hissed, clasping my fingers together tightly. “So give it a rest.”

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After breakfast in the café, we moved onto our first port of call which was of course to go and find out information about the victim. Nisha and I had pulled those pencil skirts and blouses from the trunk of the Torino and changed into them in the toilet’s at a gas station. The boys did the same, changing into their suits. We all looked so professional, it made me cringe a little. I wasn’t really one for formal wear. I was happy in jeans and vintage band t-shirts, so squeezing into a black pencil skirt always made me complain like a little bitch.

We were visiting some really, really nice house. I mean, whatever this guy did, his house was gorgeous. I eyed the sleek wooden floors and the shiny surfaces of the kitchen, grinning approvingly. Nisha nudged me and I coughed, trying to make myself look professional again.

Apparently this was the friend of the architect guy. Sean? Yeah, that was his name. We were posing as writers for an Architecture magazine. Dean had said we were going to write this Sean guy a tribute. The guy laughed. A really big guy too, almost as tall as Sam, which was going some. I frowned. Why was he laughing? His friend had died, that all seemed kind of weird to me. Dean thought it was weird too, and he frowned, folding his arms.

“This funny to you?”

“No, it’s just..” he paused for a second. “It’s just that Sean always got the tributes. He kills himself, leaves me and his family here and he gets another tribute. He always lead such a charmed life.”

“How so?” Sam asked.

“Well, he was a genius. It wasn’t always that way either, it’s just like one day something clicked in him and he woke up a different guy. Ten years ago he was working in this dive of a bar called Lloyds and then all of a sudden he gets this huge commission and he‘s designing the most ingenious buildings anyone has ever seen.”

If that wasn’t suspicious I don’t know what was. After that, the guy made a really good point that got me thinking. He likened Sean to all the past geniuses like Mozart and Van Gogh. He pointed out that they all died young. Like that kind of genius was destined to die young. It made me wonder.

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At that point we’d hit the road again. There had been a mild altercation in which Dean insisted we all go in his car. I’d asked him if it was because he still had an issue with the Torino but he’d claimed that it was simply because it’d be easier and less suspicious to take one car. I didn’t buy that, but, as Nisha had pointed out to me before, I did get a little too protective of my ride. Do you know why? It was my mom’s. I only took it, since, well, you know that story. It meant a lot to me, and of course, it was a beautiful car that Dean needed to appreciate more. We had been standing outside of the Impala for a while when he just grabbed my arm and shoved me into the back seat next to Nisha. Incidentally, Nisha had taken the seat behind Sam. She was so obvious to me, and only me apparently, Sam and Dean seemed not to have any idea that Nisha was into Sam. I wish she’d just kind of tell him already, it was getting sad.

Anyway. After the little fight over what car to take, we’d pulled up outside the Animal Control office. We were sitting there for quite a while, and I. Was. Bored. Me being bored was always a recipe for mischief. I looked shiftily to my left, and then back at Sam.

“So, Sam. What do you look for in a girl?” I asked, Nisha looked over at me frowning in confusion.

“That’s a pretty random question Misha.”

“Humour me.”

“Well. I don’t know. Caring, good sense of humour-”

“Dark hair? Cherubim features?”

Sam looked confused by that, and Nisha hit me in the ribs. I sputtered out a cough and snickered. Sam didn’t seem to realize what that had been about, even though Nisha had, but then again Nisha knew me better than anyone else and she knew when I was up to something. I was just getting tired of her oggling Sam’s ass and his lost puppy look all the time. She needed to come out with it, because I’d already decided I’d bet 100 bucks that Sam liked her back. They oggled each other all of the time, and Sam seemed to take every opportunity to make sure Nisha was okay. Like that incident with Nisha disappearing into the shaft back when we were trying to take down H.H Holmes. Either way, I sensed they liked each other, and what was the harm in me dropping very obvious, very glaringly obvious hints?

At that moment Dean appeared back in the Impala, he got a list with him. He’d been inside talking to some secretary who had given him her Myspace address. I rolled my eyes at that. Nisha glanced across at me with a grin. She had been doing that a lot lately. Like she knew something I didn’t. It was kind of weird. Dean had gotten a list of complaints, all involving the strange black dog were trying to track down. One of the names on the list involved a doctor so we decided to take a visit to her home. Her name was Sylvia Pearlman.

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I’d been in this pencil skirt for a while now and I was getting increasingly irritated. So when we were standing outside this doctor’s house I got a little impatient for someone to answer the door. Dean tapped on it, and I practiced smiling like a brain dead receptionist or assistant. I found that doing the ditzy blonde bit usually got the answers to the questions we asked. People always confessed things to strangers when they thought they had an advantage over them.

Finally though a small Asian woman answered the door. She looked confused, I smiled that empty smile of mine as Dean whipped out his badge. We went from being reporters for an architecture magazine to being animal control agents. It could take a lot out of you, telling so many lies in one day. Again we wound up in some amazing house. Had we stumbled onto a really nice neighbourhood or something? Though, this woman’s wealth was explained pretty quickly. She was some high flying surgeon, a position she held at the youngest age in the hospital’s series.

“So, where is she?” Sam asked, frowning a little.

“She left two days ago” the woman replied.

It so happened that this woman was her maid, but had never really seen her employer before. Apparently she skipped town a lot, or something. I’d been lingering by the refrigerator at that point, looking at some of the photographs that were pinned there. I heard the others talking, asking questions, and by the time we were done we figured out that Sylvia Pearlman was appointed head surgeon at the hospital ten years ago, just like when Sean Boyden had apparently become an architectural genius. I looked across at Nisha and she was looking back at me, knowingly. This was all starting to piece together, we had the first piece of the puzzle. We’d established a connection between people living in the area.

After that we left the house, and were walking back to the Impala when Dean stopped, he was fumbling in the jacket of his suit. The three of us turned to look at him, I frowned. “What are you doing? Digging for gold?”

“Cute,” he replied, plucking a photograph from his jacket. It was of Slyvia.

“Well, I didn’t realize you’d developed a thing for the good doctor, Dean” Nisha smirked broadly.

“Will you two shut up, I swiped it because of what’s written on the back” Dean grunted, shoving the photograph into my hands before storming off towards the Impala. Did I mention he could be a little melodramatic sometimes?

I turned the photograph over and frowned when I read it. Lloyds Bar, 1996. That’s where Sean had worked as a barman ten years ago, when he’d become an overnight success. I guess we were going to have to pay this bar a little visitation too.

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We were back in the Impala and pulled up to a bar just ahead of a crossroads. The air was hot, the ground dusty and there was a lot of scrub stretching on for as far as I could see. I climbed out of the car, closing the door behind me, the leather of my boots touched the dusty white gravel below. I paused for a moment before looking up. The boys were already in one corner of the crossroads and it didn’t take me long to figure out why. There was an oddly symmetrical pattern of flowers all around the edge of the crossroads. It was a flower with small yellow blooms and it seemed unlikely anyone would take the time to plant flowers way out here.

“What is this stuff?” I asked, standing beside the two brothers. Nisha joined me, she looked down to the flowers and then back at me. We were both puzzled.

“It’s Yarrow flower” Sam explained. “It’s used in summoning rituals.”
I paused at that, stuffing my hands into the pockets of my hoodie. I did that a lot when I felt nervous. Or more, like when I got slow sinking feeling in my stomach. Summoning rituals? Which dumb shit would ever mess with that kind of stuff. It didn’t take me long to piece together where Sam and Dean were going with this train of thought. I’d heard legends about crossroads, and the fact there was mysteriously some plat all around one that was used for summoning. Summoning what?

Sam and Dean didn’t care to explain. They talked amongst themselves, they carried on pointing out about how suspicious this was. Summoning flower at a crossroads, by a bar that had just so opened to be the place where two people had become over night successes. Very weird. It reminded me of that story…about this one guy in the 1930s who could play the guitar like no other. What was his name? Never mind. I blinked as Sam and Dean lingered in the middle. Dean nodded towards me, pointing to the ground.

“This look like the dead centre to you?” he asked.

“I guess so, why?”

“Bingo.”

The two of them headed back to the car and plucked a shovel from the trunk. They shoved the shovel into the gravely Mississippi dirt. I stood by Nisha, the two of us kind of felt like spare car parts at that point. Sometimes this is why I resented travelling with the brothers. I mean, they were so much more experienced, and even though they hadn’t told us what was going on, not fully at least, I could already tell they knew they were onto something. They kept digging anyway, I watched them, kicking a stone idly before I heard a thud. Dean stopped digging and looked up at us.

Nisha and I crouched beside Sam and Dean. Something was buried in the dirt. I watched Dean pluck a small, square metal box from the dirt and I frowned confused. He opened it. It was stuffed with some kind of bone and a little glass bottle filled with dirt.

“A black cat bone and graveyard dirt” Sam shook his head and the four of us stood up.

“Okay, wait. What exactly does this all mean?”

“Listen up, rookie” Dean said, looking at me and I frowned. “This is all serious hoodoo. Powerful spell shit. It’s used to summon demons and not just any demon. A crossroads demon. A deal making demon. People have been making deals with this thing.”

Sam nodded. “The people who are seeing dogs? They’re no ordinary dogs. They’re called hell hounds, basically think demonic pit bull. They’re used by the demon to collect on the deals it’s made, which means it’s back and it’s collecting right now.”

“Wait a second” I interrupted. “This story sounds familiar. It reminds me of something. Damn. A blues singer from the 30s, people said he must have sold his soul to play guitar the way he did.”

Dean glanced at me, I could have sworn he looked mildly impressed at least. “Robert Johnson, right?”

“Who’s Robert Johnson?” Nisha asked, huffing a little.

“You’ve never heard of Robert Johnson’s music?” me and Dean both said that at the same time. It was starting to creep me out that we’d done that so much lately.

Nisha rolled her eyes. “Clearly not.”

“The story goes that Johnson died choking on his own blood. He supposedly hallucinated about seeing big evil dogs. Seeing the pattern now?”
Nisha just stared. “That is some disturbing shit.”

She was right. We had never seen anything like this before. This was way worse than H.H Holmes or that zombie bitch from a while back. It was worse than Gordon Walker, worse than vampires and guy’s with psychic powers. We were talking actual demons and devil deals. It was frightening.

“We need to find out other people that have made deals around here” Sam finally said. Nisha seemed to agree but I kept quiet.

“So, what, we have to clean up these people’s messes for them? No one forced a gun to their heads and made them make these deals. They’re not exactly squeaky clean, Sam” Dean interjected.

I had to admit that I agreed with him. I guess that it was kind of a trait we shared, being consumed with revenge. I had lost a little more of my humanity than Nisha had. I had to say, that at that moment in time, I didn’t give a shit. These people had signed away their souls freely, for selfish reasons and now it was payday they wanted help? They knew the consequences, making a deal with the devil would never end well.

“What are you saying? That we should just let them die?” Sam frowned.

“Sam’s right, Dean. Our job is to help people, right? We wouldn’t be helping if we bailed on them now.”

I looked across at Nisha when she said that. I sighed. I agreed with Dean. These people were stupid, really, really stupid to make devil deals but we weren’t jury and executioner here. That wasn’t our job. Our job was to help people and in the process hopefully get some answers to the questions we really wanted answering.

“Alright, fine” Dean said, practically through gritted teeth. His jaw clenched a little and he held up the picture of another black guy, who I thought was Robert Johnson at first. Apparently not. Whoever he was supposed to have started all of this and his picture had been in the box buried at the centre of the crossroads. “This guy summoned the thing. Let’s go into Lloyd’s and see if anyone knows anything about him. If he‘s still alive”

With that he started to leave. I paused for a moment, Sam and Nisha were looking at each other pensively. You know that feeling I’ve brought up before? The one where I always get the feeling that there’s more history to the Winchesters than they like to say? Yeah. Getting that right now. I finally jogged after Dean quickly. I don’t really know why. We didn’t get along, we hadn’t since we first met but Nisha’s speech a while back had never really left me. I got this weird familiar feeling with them, like they understood what me and Nisha went through. I didn’t want to admit it, but I wanted to be around people like that. I wanted to not feel…so alien.

“Dean!” I called after him.

He glanced over his shoulder at me and stopped in the shadow of Lloyd’s bar. The sun was setting in the distance, and if it was any other two people, this could have almost been romantic. It could have almost been the setting for some cheesy romantic movie. Almost. Don’t forget, this was me and Dean, who were the last two people to be in that situation together, ever.

“What is it?” he asked, sighing irritably.

“I just wanted to say something. I agree with you, you know?”

He looked at me warily for a second, like he was trying to figure out whether or not I was joking.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s just, this passed year, I’ve realized that there’s so much evil in this world. There’s so much darkness and these people…they just added to it because they were greedy. They wanted to make themselves better but they didn’t want to work for it, you know?” I paused, my voice was faltering a little. “There’s just…too much evil that worms it’s way in already, it shouldn’t be welcomed in with open arms.”

Dean just looked at me, silent. His face was half obscured with shadow, and there was a sudden gust of wind that ruffled his hair. The sunlight caught his eyes and they shone for a second before the sunlight disappeared completely behind the structure of the bar to our right. This was incredibly awkward for me, I hated pumping up Dean’s ego as it was, but to full on get so…dramatic about it, I don’t know, I was anxiously awaiting his answer I guess.

“Thanks, Misha.”

That was all he said, and then we went into the bar. Sam and Nisha followed us soon after that.

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Fishing around in Lloyd’s got us a name at the very least. George Darrow. This was starting to turn into a game of Guess Who. We’d followed a trail of three names so far, four if you counted the legend of Robert Johnson. His house was huge. Kind of creepy I’ll admit, a little too gothic I guess, but it was huge. The fact the house was in a state of mild disrepair made me suspect that George’s deal wasn’t for cash. Dean had confirmed that George was a regular at Lloyd’s and seemed to think George had some huge debt to pay. I hoped we were getting closer to answering some questions, I wanted to get this case over and done with. Lingering around anything to do with demons made me uncomfortable. More so than usual.

We came up to a white door, the paint was kind of peeling off it. Nisha pushed passed me and I frowned at that. She’d seen something at the foot of the door. She crouched and touched a black powder, holding it to her nose she sniffed it and she sneezed.

“Pepper.”

At that moment, the four of us took a cautious step back. George, or who I thought must have been George, answered the door to us. He frowned, wary.

“George? I think you went for the wrong shaker. Usually when you wanna keep something evil out you go for the salt” Dean said with a smirk. “You seen that Hell Hound yet?”

“Please” Sam interrupted. “We want to help.”

George’s room that he’d holed himself up in was creepy, to say the least. It was filled with bizarre paintings. During the course of the meeting it turned out that the pepper was actually some hoodoo powder his grandmother had told him about, it kept demons away. Nisha cringed, since she’d accidentally snorted some of that shit. George had made a deal too, he’d asked for talent, like the others but never got famous with his paintings. Most interesting piece of news? The demon never left. It stayed for a week and made more deals, which explained Sean the Architect and Sylvia Pearlman the surgeon. There had been one more. Evan. Evan Hudson.

“Doesn’t matter what ‘he wish for. He done for now” George added.

“No, there has to be a way” Sam interrupted.

Me, Nisha and Dean decided to stay quiet.

“I don’t want a way” George hissed. “I brought this on myself. I summoned that thing. I’m going to hell.”

Then we left.

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We set off in the car again. It was some heart pumping race against the clock. We knew we didn’t have a lot of time left to find Evan. The boys got back into the Impala and me and Nisha, as usual, were in the Torino. Sam had done some digging around on the internet and found out where Evan lived. It always amazed me what a whiz Sam could be on the computer. There wasn’t a lot he couldn’t find out, which was fortunate for us this time around.

Night fall was already hear and my breathing felt quick, I could feel my heart pounding against my chest. I scrambled from the Torino. Even though I agreed with Dean that these people had brought it upon themselves, I still had come around to the idea that we couldn’t let a demon get away with this. We weren’t the judges, jury or executioner. I stood by that. We had to help this guy, and if he lived, we’d kick his ass for it and tell him not to be so stupid ever again.

We rushed up the driveway and Sam pounded against the front door. Evan answered. He looked kind of sweaty and wide eyed. That confirmed it. He knew what was coming.

“You ever been to a bar called Lloyds?” Dean asked. “It would have been about ten years ago.”

Then Evan slammed the door shut. Right in our faces.

“Oh, smooth Dean. Nice going” I hissed.

Dean rolled his eyes, and his answer to me was kicking the door down. We headed inside, and chased Evan up the stairway. What did this guy want? We’d already said that we weren’t demons. We got upstairs to where Evan had locked himself in a room. Dean was about to kick that door down too, but Sam stopped him, which was maybe a little more diplomatic to the whole, gung-ho cowboy deal Dean was trying to pull. Oh and by the way? Evan had left the door open. Lesson to note there: Always check the door first before busting shit down.

We told Evan we weren’t there to hurt him. That we knew about his deal. Dean started his tirade again, about how Evan had brought this upon himself. We were all silenced though. What Evan said, it was…it was pretty damn fucked up that he’d been put into that situation in the first place.

“My wife was dying. Cancer. The woman at the bar, or whatever she was, said I could anything I wanted, so I made the deal. I’d do it again, I’d have died on the spot for her.”

I swallowed whatever words I was going to say. I wanted to say something smart and wise, something comforting, but I was twenty one and still dealing with my own troubles to figure out anything of the kind. I kept quiet.

“You…did it to save her?” Dean asked, and Evan just nodded.

“You ever think about her in this?” Dean said again after a moments silence. I stared at him, horrified that he would ever ask something like that.

“I think you did this for yourself”

“Dean, shit, shut up” I snapped, snatching his arm, but he shrugged himself free of my grip and carried on talking.

“I think you did this so you wouldn’t have to live without her. Well guess what? Now she’s gotta’ live without you.”
“What if she knew this cost your soul? How do you think she’d feel? Huh?” Dean snapped.

“Dean. Shut. Up,” I warned. No one was saying anything. Weirdly, I’d blanked out every other person in the room. I couldn’t deal with much more of his shit. It was like being tied to a yo-yo with him. Just when I thought I’d made a break through, he did something shitty again to change my opinion right back to how it was before.

He said nothing else, just walked out of the room. I felt Nisha’s hand against my arm and I looked at her. She didn’t know what to say either. I knew she agreed with me, I knew she thought Dean was way out of line but I could also tell that she knew he had his reasons.

“Evan, wait here” Nisha said gently. “We’ll be right back, we’re going to figure this out. Don’t worry.”

The three of us left in the room walked out into the hallway. I hung back, and folded my arms leaning with one arm against the wall. Dean had his back to us, and Nisha stepped forwards, frowning.

“Are you alright Dean?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” He threw the bag of George’s hoodoo at Nisha. He’d given us a bag of it when we’d been to visit him. It kept the demons away apparently. Nisha looked confused, and frowned a little.

“I’ve got a plan” Dean went on. “You three stay here with Evan, hold the hell hounds off with George’s hoodoo. I’m going to the crossroads, to summon the demon. I can trap it, exorcize it and buy us some time until we figure out something more permanent.”

“What? No, Dean, no. I don’t like where your head is at right now. You’ve been on edge since we got here, since we figured out that this was a Crossroads demon and I know why. This is to do with dad isn’t it? You think he made one of these deals.”

I paused, looking at Nisha. The two of us exchanged a surprised look. We didn’t really know anything about their family or what had gone on before we’d met them. They’d been kind of secretive about it I guess. I knew about their dad, how he’d been a hunter too, but they never talked about him TO us, just amongst themselves occasionally.

“It fits, doesn’t it?” Dean said. He swallowed, his face became haunted all of a sudden. “I’m alive, dad’s dead. What if he did do this Sammy? What if he sold his soul for me just like Evan did for his wife?”

“I think I hear it, outside!” Evan called.

“Keep him alive” Dean snarled, and he began to walk off.

I’d been about to walk after him but he turned around and glared back at me. Nisha grabbed my arm before I could pull an insane stunt and go after him. I wanted to though. Something inside of me, something inexplicable wanted to follow him. His dad had done the exact same thing it seemed, and slowly I was starting to realize why Dean was this way. The attitude, the need to act like he didn’t have a weakness, suddenly I understood him. His dad had sold his soul in exchange for Dean’s life. I felt my face contort, I could feel my eyes stinging, threatening tears. God. That was fucked up. How must that have made him feel? He must have felt so guilty. I watched him disappear out of the front door before Nisha snatched my arm and dragged me back into the room with Evan and Sam.

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I was silent, sitting in a char in Evan’s study. Sam was dusting the room with the hoodoo that George had given us. I stared at my reflection in the chrome gun that was rested against my legs. I mean, this was one of those times when I was forced to reflect again. Mine and Nisha’s lives were fucked up. Seriously fucked up, but god. The situation Dean was in? That was worse. Our families were dead, probably gone to a better place if you believe in that kind of thing, but Dean’s father was almost certainly rotting in hell and for Dean. It must have eaten him inside out.

“Misha?”
I felt Nisha’s hand against my shoulder. Sam was busy putting a circle of the black powder around Evan’s feet. I looked up at Nisha, she was giving me that look. Not the grinning one, the genuinely concerned one. She crouched beside me and sighed.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

Nisha rose an eyebrow. She knew I didn’t do carey sharey moments very well, but this time I could tell it wasn’t negotiable.

“You’re a terrible liar, Misha.”

I rolled my eyes and leaned forwards towards Nisha so I could whisper. I didn’t particularly want Sam overhearing our conversation.

“I just. I didn’t know any of that about Dean, you know? About either of them. God, it’s so shitty Nisha. How must he feel? Something like that…it’d…well, it’d destroy me.”

“Dean’s strong Misha. He’s still here. He’s still fighting. It’ll be fine.”

I nodded a little and she patted my shoulder and stood up to help Sam dispurse the powder around the room. We wanted to be thorough and make sure no exit was over looked. The hell hounds could worm their way in through any gap, I guessed. We had to be very, very sure.

“Did you hear that?” Evan asked. I looked up at him, and stood from the seat, loading the pistol in my hands with a magazine of bullets.

“Hear, what?” Sam asked.

“It’s right outside the door.”

The doors started pounding. Rattling, but I could hear nothing. I don’t know what I was expecting my gun to do, but I held it pointed at the door. Nisha was standing beside Sam. I watched her reach out for his hand amidst all the fear. You could never hold on to subtlety when you were scared shitless. Evan looked terrified, and I could see him tensing up like a stone. All of a sudden, the rattling and pounding on the door stopped and I lowered my gun slightly. For a second I thought it was over, but then Evan jumped. It was in the air vent. We’d missed a spot when we’d put down George’s hoodoo. The grill on the vent burst off, and I could feel the thing in the room. It was a weird sensation. I couldn’t hear or see the damn thing, but I somehow knew it was there. The wind picked up, I could see claw marks appearing in the floor where the hound was obviously standing outside the circle of powder. The wind got furious, blowing up papers and fluttering them around the room like autumn leaves. The powder was beginning to thin, and even Sam’s sturdy form wasn’t going to protect Evan if that circle of powder was broken. The powder suddenly thinned so much that the circle was broken.

“IT’S BROKEN, GO!” Sam yelled.

The four of us ran from the room, into a store closet and Sam barricaded the door with, well, himself. Nisha clung to Sam’s jacket as I pressed my back against the far wall. Where was Dean? What was he doing? He was supposed to be stopping this bastard crossroads demon wasn’t he? Just as those thoughts went through my mind, the door to the store closet stopped pounding. I was breathing heavily and my heart was still slamming against my ribs. I felt a little dizzy, my head was spinning.

“Evan” I breathed and he looked at me. “Are you alright?”

He just nodded, clearly shaken up, but it was over.

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We’d let Evan go back to his life. He was okay. We’d stopped the deal from happening and that was good enough for me. I was just happy to be leaving. The four of us walked out of the house, back into the crisp night air where the Torino and Impala were waiting for us. Nisha was still clung to Sam’s jacket, coughing and letting go of him when she realized that herself. Subtle, of course. I grinned. Dean was walking ahead, hands in the pockets of that musty leather jacket I’d seen him in when we first met back at Red Lodge. God that seemed so long ago now. I glanced to Sam and Nisha who were standing on the porch of Evan’s place talking to one another. Nisha was giving Sam that goofy smile, and I thought I saw him touch her hair. Still, I had my own matters to attend to.

Quickly I skipped down the porch and got to Dean before he climbed into the car by himself. I put my hand against the door, just as he was about to put the key in the lock. He looked up at me, and rose an eyebrow.

“You lost? Your ride is over there, Misha.”

“Funny. I know where my car is, asshole. I wanted to tell you something.”

“Again? These confessing moments are starting to get a little too frequent.”

I rolled my eyes. He couldn’t just let me have my moment. Ever.

“I’m sorry” I blurted out. He rose an eyebrow. “About what happened to your dad.”

I was taking a risk here. I could see his jaw tightening at me just mentioning it. Dean didn’t like to be pitied and I knew that. He also didn’t like people trying to understand him, but it was too late for that. I’d figured him out now.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. It’ll never be right. Ever. We’ll keep fighting though, because it’s all we have. I just wanted you to know…that I understand you now. Not how you feel, but I understand you.”

He looked at me, leaning one shoulder against the car. I’d been expecting him to bite back at me for saying that, but he didn’t. He looked elsewhere like he did when he was forced to share things that he didn’t want to share. He didn’t like people knowing his weaknesses I guess. I could relate to that.

“Well. Thanks. To the next job?” He rose his fist and I bumped my knuckles against his. We almost looked like a team.

“To the next job” I replied with a smirk before disappearing off to get into the Torino. With Nisha and Sam both now in their respective cars as it should have been, the four of us took off again. To no one knew where. Wherever the next job came up.