The Lightning Strike

It had been a few weeks now, but it didn’t feel that long ago. It felt like I was trapped in that place, Bobby’s house, weeks ago. A possession is something I’d not seen much of, in fact, there had only been one demon we’d come close to recently - the crossroads demon - and I didn’t even face that one, but seeing Sam possessed had taken it’s toll on me and I knew for a fact that it had taken an even worse toll on Nisha. Seeing Sam’s eyes gleam like two chunks of obsidian against his skin and the vicious, shark-like smirk, it was frightening, not only because that was a real demon staring back at us, but that it was taking a ride in Sam’s body. He must have felt so unclean. In the meantime we’d occupied ourselves, tried to keep busy with other cases. One had blown all out of proportion, mostly because the culprit of the case had turned out to be the Trickster god. Some call him Loki? The other one was sad. Some woman who hadn’t realize she was dead. What am I saying? ALL of our cases are sad. That was the nature of this life.

Still those cases were in the past now, and I knew the deal with the life. Nisha and I had always known from day one, it started with tragedy and it’d probably end with tragedy. It had been around a day, we were in San Francisco, California. I hated cities. I mean, I seriously did. They were kind of overwhelming to me, and with Dean and Sam’s faces out in the Fed’s database it meant there was more opportunity for us to be spotted. Plus side? They had nicer motels by our standards and they were still cheap.

“So, this lawyer guy, is he the first heart free corpse in town?”

I looked up as Dean asked that. Heart free? I hope he didn’t mean what I thought he meant by that or I was going to throw back up the pancakes and coffee I was eating at the breakfast table. Apparently some guy had been found brutalized in his office space. Sam had gone to the morgue earlier that morning posing as a detective, he only got one important detail from her though. The only one that really mattered.

“No. In the past year some men and women have gone missing, their bodies washed up in the bay, too decomposed to be identified.”

“But no hearts?” Dean asked, polishing the components of his gun before sliding them all into place.

“No hearts” Sam replied.

It was at that point that Dean got this really weird smile on his face. I mean, if his face could have lit up that motel room, we’d have had our very own giant glow worm right there. He could have almost squeed like a teenage girl. I felt mildly embarrassed on his behalf, but continued to stuff pancakes in my face. This was a rare opportunity for me to eat breakfast, I was totally not passing it up.

“Well, don’t be TOO worried Dean. I mean, werewolves aren’t dangerous or anything,” Nisha interjected, rolling her eyes.

“Shut up Nisha. Werewolves are BADASS. Sammy and me haven’t seen one since we were kids and the best part?”

“Enlighten us” I replied, swallowing the pancakes. Ok, so I sometimes talk with my mouthful too. Sue me.

“We already know how to bring these suckers down,” Dean opened a small metal box he had on the bed and took out a single, gleaming silver bullet. “One of these bad boys, straight to the heart.”

“So, what do we do now?” Nisha asked.

“We talk to the girl who found the body.”

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I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that it wasn’t all that warm right now in San Fran. I had a scarf wrapped around my neck and stuffed it down the front of my hoodie. I’d warned Dean not to make any fat jokes, because admittedly, the scarf down the front of my hoodie made me look a little more bulbous than usual. Oh, and the other thing was that as we approached the first witness’ house we had all piled into the Torino for once. I hadn’t forgotten the little compliment Dean had given me about my ride. He’d said the Torino was a good car, that I’d taken care of it well. I grinned just thinking about the fact that he’d finally taken back what he’d said in Red Lodge all those months ago. It gave me room to insist that we all got into my car for once. The Impala could have a time out. So, with Sam and Dean in the back and Nisha next to me in the passenger seat, we pulled up outside a tall building. It looked pretty well kept, but was surrounded with twisting skeletal trees and a grey sky hung over head. It was threatening rain obviously.

Again we pulled the detective bit. The woman inside was named Madison apparently. She seemed briefly suspicious that the cops had sent over four of their officers to investigate something she’d already given her statement about. Sam just told her we were double checking facts. I lingered in the living room. Madison’s neighbour was in there. I rose an eyebrow, noticing his shirt had some Jesus praise written on it. Whatever. Ted shifted uncomfortably at so many strangers being in his friend’s house and so he stood, said a gentle goodbye and left. We sat down at the table by the kitchen, I leaned my elbows against the glass table and stayed quiet. Sam and Dean were always better at asking questions I guess. They’d had more time to perfect professional lies.

“So, you were Nate Mulligan’s assistant?” Sam asked. Madison nodded.

“For two years.”

“So, you knew all about him?”

“You could say I knew more about him than he did. Nate…Nate was nice,” she smiled a little sadly.

I zoned out of the conversation a little. Glancing around Madison’s home. I don’t know why I did this, but I did tend to notice people’s homes. Nisha said it was because I wanted one of my own. She said she didn’t blame me for that, because she wanted to go back to the past too. She wanted to rewind a year and a half back and start again. Have normal lives. So did I. It wasn’t like any of the people we’d met wanted to be hunters, there just was no other option. Revenge, the thought of revenge, was the only thing that really kept anyone going. It was a poisonous fuel, made you bitter, but it was still a fuel. I rejoined the conversation to find Dean asking Madison if Nate had ever had any enemies. She’d given us the name of her ex-boyfriend. Kurt Meeler or something. Apparently Kurt was a little coocoo and had been stalking Madison since they’d broken up. Nice. She wasn’t having the best stroke of luck, I sympathized I guess. Her boss winds up dead and she also has a creepy stalker ex-boyfriend to boot. Still, one thing came out of this at least. I guess we’d found our first suspicious character to investigate.

With that said, we all left Madison’s place for now. It seemed like Kurt was our only lead right now, so we’d have to go investigate him. I jogged down the steps lightly, plucking my keys from my jeans and opened the car door. Dean seemed to have appeared around the passenger side fairly quickly and I rose my eyebrow.

“What part of ‘that seat is Nisha’s’ do you not get?” I asked.

He didn’t argue, just got into the back like I’d told him to and the four of us headed off to find this Kurt Meeler guy.

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We headed to Kurt’s house. I parked my car in a back alley at the rear of his apartment. Smoke rose from city drains and a meow from a stray cat made me jump a little. We approached the apartment, Dean insisted on picking the lock this time. I didn’t quite understand why everything had to be turned into a competition. I rolled my eyes. He was slow, fiddling with the silver lock with a knife. Amateur. I’d have had this shit open by now. I didn’t usually like to gloat but I was considered an excellent lock pick. Nisha often commended me for my skills.,

The four of us crept inside, and checked around. Dean checked the fridge, the light from the refrigerator cast a dull, decayed yellow stream of light against the tiled kitchen floor. I squinted, my eyes taking a moment to adjust to the burst of sudden light. I watched Dean peer inside, from what I could see there was only food stored in there, no human hearts. Though, I wasn’t sure what Dean was expecting to find in the refrigerator. If I was a werewolf, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to store my kill’s hearts somewhere so obvious. I guess it was worth checking everywhere though.

“Nothing” Dean grunted, closing the refrigerator door and thus closing off the beam of light too.

“Check the freezer, maybe there’s some human hearts hidden behind the Haagendaas or something” Sam smirked.

I glanced at Nisha at that one, she was snickering a little and I rolled my eyes. Of course, Nisha would laugh at Sam’s corny ass joke. Though, I guess I did smirk too. It was a fair point. Like I said, why would someone leave evidence in such an obvious place? I looked across the room, hearing the balcony window slide open. Dean was on the move, heading out onto the balcony. I frowned in confusion and followed him quickly.

“Hey, come’ere” Dean called.

The three of us headed out the balcony door. I leaned against the opposing ledge, looking to my left at a wall that adjoined the building. There were long streaks indentation in the concrete, like claws had latched into the wall and scraped all the way down. I frowned at that, well, if I was suspicious before, I was even more suspicious now.

Before we had any more time to investigate, a gunshot sounded off from below. It was an instant and rigid reaction but the four of us set off down the iron stair well to find out what the hell had gone on. Around in the back alley, near to where my car was parked I could smell the richness of iron in the air. That sort of stale metallic smell. As we looked ahead, it wasn’t difficult to spot feet protruding from the side of a dumpster. We advanced slowly, I swallowed hard, my breathing was shallow as I felt that welling anxiety pool in my gut. I peered around the corner of the rusted dumpster and we saw a policeman splayed out on his back. His rib cage stuck through the flesh in his chest, spread apart like the mandibles on an arachnid. There was a deep, dark, gaping hole in the centre of his chest and just like with all the previous victims, his heart was missing.

Sam said he’d call 911 and with that, the we headed back to Madison’s. We needed to confirm whether or not Kurt had seen her lately.

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We tapped on the door to her apartment. I lingered, glancing over my shoulder as her neighbour from earlier answered the door and looked at us. He looked at us warily, but Dean told him we were on police business and he seemed to slink back inside his own apartment. Whatever was about to go down wouldn’t be easy. How were we supposed to do this without being suspicious? The last thing we needed was for Madison to get freaked, she was our only source of information on Kurt so far.

“Was Kurt here last night?” Sam asked, as Madison poured him a healthy cup of coffee and then moved on to Dean.

“Well no. But, I saw him outside. He was just…watching. Has he done something?”

“We’re not really sure,” Sam replied. “It’s probably nothing, but we don’t want to take any chances.”

“A couple of us should probably stay here with you, in case he decides to drop by” Dean added. “Where does he work?”

“He owns a body shop.”

Madison disappeared to get the address of the body shop for us. I leaned back against the kitchen unit and sipped my coffee carefully. At that moment Sam and Dean did some macho, but childish display of rock paper scissors. Apparently they wanted to decide who would stay with Madison and who would have to go find Kurt.

“Why do you always get to hang out with the girls?” Sam asked with a sigh.

“Because I’m older.”

I rolled my eyes. That was a iron clad reason. Dean was always so reasonable. Not.

As it turned out, Dean only ever used scissors and after two rounds of rock paper scissors, Sam won. Nisha and I decided between ourselves that we’d each go with one of the boys. Nisha, naturally decided to stay with Sam. I could tell of course that she was wary of Madison. She was wary of any female company around him, I wasn’t judging of course, I’d have been the same way if I felt that way about someone. Jealousy was a sneaky bitch, it sort of just kicked you in the ass before you could realize. Though, at that stage, I personally didn’t think Nisha had anything to worry about. Anyway, you probably know what all of this meant. That’s right, it meant that I was going to have to go with Dean, I could just sense a fun evening up ahead. Again, I’m being sarcastic.

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I walked out of the apartment, Dean was silent and I was silent. I had my hands in my pockets (of course) and for once I was the one who was looking like a petulant child. I glanced at Dean as he fumbled in his pocket for the piece of paper that Madison had written the address of the body shop on. I snatched it from him and he glared at me.

“What’re you doing?” Dean asked sharply.

“We have my car, remember?” I dangled my car keys in front of him with a smirk and he rolled his eyes. “I’m driving, I want to look at the instructions. So you just sit there and try to look pretty, I know it’s difficult.”

The two of us headed out to the Torino. Gleaming pleasantly with a few rain drops stuck to the paint work like jewels. Dean rolled his eyes seeing my car parked there. For once he was able to get into the passenger seat without me having to hit him across the head. I climbed in, and placed the keys in the ignition, he was looking at me. Looking at me in that way that you kind of gather someone is looking at you because they want to say something.

“What?” I finally asked.

“So, where did you get this tin can?” he asked, slouching back in the seat. I narrowed my eyes.

“Didn't we already cover this?"

He just stared at me expectantly and I sighed and rolled my eyes.

"My mom helped me save up to buy it. I'd been wanting to buy it for a long, long time; etcetera, etcetera. Can we just get this over with? I’m not exactly thrilled about wasting hours of my life in your company either.”

With that said I pulled out and we headed off to the body shop. I could smell oil the moment I got out of the car, and to my satisfaction a few of the grease monkeys wielding spanners whistled and eyed my car. That had to prove to Dean at last that he should drop the little jibes about my car. I know he’d said he didn’t think my car sucked a while ago, but that didn’t mean anything when he wanted ammunition for mockery. Whenever he felt like mocking me, that conversation mysteriously never happened. Strange right? Yeah, not really.

I stood beside Dean, watching him whip out another badge that said he was a cop. Lie, of course. He had about sixty different fake badges I swear. I have no idea where he got his hands on them all, but, I was mildly impressed with his con artistry.

“So, Steve, have you see Kurt today?” Dean asked.

Steve shook his head, looking kind of bewildered that were asking about Kurt. I guess it would be a shock to anyone that one of your colleagues was being pursued by two cops. Anyway, apparently Kurt never showed up. I had to stand there and listen to Dean talk to Sam. He teased Sam about avoiding Madison, and then asked what Madison was wearing. I frowned at that. Did he have NO clue about Nisha? Were they both really that dense? All I hoped was that Nisha didn’t hear what Dean was saying to Sam. I pulled the car out of it’s parking spot as Dean clasped his phone shut. Apparently, he knew where to find Kurt.

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“A strip club?!” I snapped as we sat outside the club.

“What? That’s where he is!” Dean retorted defensively.

“I am not going into a fucking strip club”

“Fine. Stay here.”

I glared at him as he climbed out of the car. He waved at me sarcastically through the window and I just watched him disappear. This is another one of those slow moments of the story where I was left alone. Honest reason for me not liking to be left alone? This is why, because I was forced to sit and reflect upon things, dwell. Dwelling was never a good idea where I was concerned. I sighed, puffing out my cheeks and blowing some strands of blond hair from my line of vision as I watched the monotony of the wind screen wipers sway two a fro, gathering rain droplets from the glass.

Dean was still infuriating but I couldn’t forget what I’d found out when we’d encountered that Crossroads demon. His father had sold his soul to keep him alive. Since we’d met, I’d always thought that there was something else in Dean’s gaze that I couldn’t quite place. I knew it was there but I couldn’t touch it. Now I could. Now I knew what it was. It was guilt. A black, cancerous guilt that was eating him up inside. He couldn’t let it go, and struggled to actually live with it. I swallowed hard, he must have been in so much pain. It must have been the dull ache I felt in my rib cage. I felt guilt too. If I’d just taken the day off that day, if I’d been less naïve. If I’d paid attention, maybe I could have protected my family. It made me feel so pathetic that I’d only learned how to defend them after they’d died. That their deaths was what made me open my eyes. I wished every day that I could just go back to having my eyes closed. I wanted things to go back to how they were. That realisation made me see something. Me and Dean weren’t an entirely different animal, we had a lot more in common than I’d originally thought. We were both being swallowed up by revenge and guilt. It hurt.

I jumped as I heard the creak of the passenger door as it swung open. Dean was back from the club with a large Cheshire grin across his face. Looking at silicone clad women in g-strings probably had caused that grin. I felt a weird twinge that made me glare at him for the millionth time. He didn’t get it. It was night fall suddenly, I hadn’t realized how long I’d been sitting in the Torino whilst he watched strippers, oh, and Kurt apparently.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

I didn’t answer, just started up the engine and let the Torino run off with us down the street.
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We had headed off to Kurt’s, and we were standing in the back alley against the blue, rusted dumpster where we’d found that dead cop. The silence was awkward to say the least. I had my back against it, and was slouching a little, sighing to myself. This is where hunting got kind of boring. Waiting around for something to happen always made me incredibly anxious.

“So. Misha” Dean finally piped up and I glanced at him.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“You said your mom gave you that car, right?” he asked.

I rose an eyebrow and shrugged. “Well yeah. It was hers, she gave it to me when I turned eighteen. It was her pride and joy but I guess she felt like she had out grown driving around the middle of ass no where Missouri in a muscle car. So I inherited it.”

Dean just smirked a little and nodded like he understood. “Yeah. I get it. My old man gave me the Impala. Bought it back in the 1970s.”

I watched him eject the magazine of bullets from his gun. Silver bullets that is. He tapped them against the chrome handle and then slid them back into place. I was intrigued that we had just had half a conversation, I’d been about to continue it but we both looked up hearing a smash come from Kurt’s apartment. The glass was shattered to the balcony, and suddenly the lights went out.

“What…the?” Dean muttered.

“We gotta’ get up there, “I replied swiftly.

We moved quickly, scaling back up the iron stair well and approached Kurt’s front door. This time we didn’t pay the courtesy of picking the lock, Dean just slammed his foot into it and it swung open without little persuasion. I had a gun of my own, it was stuffed full of the silver bullets Dean had and I held it up defensively as we stormed through the apartment trying to find the source of the noise. I looked in one room as we stalked the hallway, and Dean the other but there was no sign of Kurt yet.

Then we saw him. I stopped. Kurt was lying splayed out on the floor. His rib cage spread like the cop’s and looming over him was a woman. My eyes widened suddenly as she turned to face us. It was Madison. Her eyes were electric blue and she bore her fangs at Dean and I, growling like a rabid pit-bull. She lunged at us and I quickly moved to the right, but Dean wasn’t so lucky. She snatched at his shirt in her clawed fingers and shoved him back, throwing him into the opposite wall with great force. I was disoriented and pointed my gun at her, but I was hesitant because I didn’t want to miss and end up shooting Dean. She’d been about to slash Dean’s throat, but he ripped a silver knife through her arm and she recoiled with a pained howl. The last I saw of her was her back disappearing off of the balcony.

“Dean!” I yelled, scrambling over to him. “Are you alright?

“Yeah, help me up, will you?” he grunted.

I helped Dean up. The sunlight was beginning to peak over the horizon which made the sight of Kurt’s heartless corpse even more vivid. Dean got onto the phone to Sam, apparently Sam didn’t believe him initially that the werewolf was Madison, but Dean informed him that he’d scraped her with a silver knife. We only hoped that, that would be enough to convince him.

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We headed back to Madison’s, Dean pounded on the door until Sam answered. I stormed passed them both, I wanted to make sure Nisha was alright. The thought of her being alone with a werewolf in the same building was spine chilling. I knew Sam was there, but I still worried about her. I saw Nisha lingering in one corner of the room. She looked wary, upset even, surely she wasn’t upset for Madison? I guessed not. Nisha looked up and saw me and headed towards me.

“Nisha” I breathed with relief. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. This is just…so fucked up Misha” she replied, teary eyed.

I frowned a little in confusion. I wasn’t quite sure why. I mean, okay, some girl being a blood thirsty werewolf was pretty fucked up by most people’s standards but it was weird for Nisha to say it. We dealt with screwed up shit all of the time. This had to be about something else.

“Hey” Sam called and me and Nisha both looked back at him. “We have to talk.”

We joined Sam and Dean in the back room, I leaned my back against the wall, my foot too and sighed listening to Sam try and defend Madison, which just seemed to make Nisha more and more upset.

“She has no idea what I’m talking about. She blacked out when the creature took over.”

“She’s lying” Dean replied flatly.

“What if she’s not, Dean?” Sam retorted, raising both eyebrows expectantly.

“Sam, she’s a monster and you’re feeling sorry for her?” Dean’s jaw tightened.

“Maybe I understand how she feels,” Sam replied.

It went quiet for a second at that one and I sighed. Nisha backed into the corner and looked elsewhere. We all knew about Sam’s psychic stuff. He felt like a freak, that was obvious. In fact, Gordon had already stalked us and tried to kill him over it. Sam felt alone apparently. I just wished he’d get his shit together and see that Nisha was right there in front of him and she didn’t think he was a freak in the slightest.

“There might be a way we can end this without killing her. Dad said that if you kill the werewolf that bit you, and sever the blood line, there may be a cure.”

“MIGHT be a cure Sam. That’s a big ass maybe” Dean retorted sourly.

Sam and Dean rushed back into the other room. I’d been about to ask Nisha if she was alright, she didn’t let me though and just stormed out after them. For once, she didn’t want to talk about this. I still felt she had nothing to worry about, but what if I was wrong?

“When were you mugged, Madison?” Sam asked.

“About a month ago.”

“Did he bite you?”

“…How did you know that?”

The boys went back into the other room. I could hear Sam arguing about how they could save Madison. About how Dean had to go and look for the werewolf that bit. That if it came to it, he’d put a bullet through Madison’s chest. That was a relief at least. I didn’t want to seem callous, but, it had to be done. I was with Dean on this one. Whether or not she knew she was doing it was irrelevant, the fact still remained that she was a werewolf and she was killing people. We had to stop her, even if that was going to be painful for us to do.

Dean came out of the room again and stopped in front of me, nodding in my direction vaguely.

“Misha, with me.”

I offered a mild salute and followed him. “Alright, if you say so.”

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Dean and I headed back onto the street. It was weird spending so much time with him actually. We usually tried to avoid each other. Still, I couldn’t help but think about Nisha. I was worried about her. I wanted her to be okay. I knew she felt like she was being cast aside in favour of Madison. She wasn’t subtle to me and I could read her like a book, but I guess even though I agreed with Dean, I could see Sam’s angle. Our job was to save people, and if there was a potential way for us to save Madison, we should try to do that before we shot her in the chest.

Dean and I were walking down some dreary street. There was a bad smell of piss on the sidewalk, and a lot of neon signs from cheap bars and even cheaper, hazardous late night diners. I hunched my shoulders with the cold and folded my arms tightly to my chest. A blood curdling scream filled the air, and that was our cue that we had just found the werewolf we were looking for. We both sprinted off down a back alley where a girl in a fur jacket was laid on the ground, screaming. A male figure leaned over her, baring fangs, hissing with all the intent for murder in his eyes.

“HEY!” Dean yelled and the creature looked up.

Dean gave it no time to respond and I watched as he fired three shots straight into the werewolf’s chest. It flung from the girl and landed on the damp concrete in a heap. He sputtered out a dying cough, blood dripping down his chin like thick, read treacle. Dean crouched beside him and I stood to one side warily watching.

“Where….where am I? What happened?” the man coughed.

I frowned looking closer and I could see at last that it was Glenn, Madison’s neighbour. He was scared and didn’t seem to realize what he’d done either. I fell silent, I couldn’t deny that I felt bad for them. I mean, I would have been just as prepared as Dean was to shoot them, but, I still felt like this was all wrong. That there should have been another way.

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The job seemed taken care of. Sam had stayed with Madison. I didn’t actually know why that was exactly. I thought it was all over and done with. I was outside. Nisha had gone somewhere. I don’t know why, she’d left in a hurry after Dean had done this really awkward thing of getting us all to leave Sam and Madison alone in the apartment. Nisha said she was going to go and get a burger, or something to eat, that she just needed to get outside which once again left me and Dean alone. We went back to the motel for a while and watched the pay per view. I ate some curly fries and he drank beer. We spent a while talking about music, and hobbies that we wished we could have but didn’t because we were hunters. It was, dare I say it, fun. I got to know him, I mean, actually got to know him. He still had his faults but I realized that he was in fact not as big of an asshole as I thought. He was pretty cool.

The air was damp outside, it made me shiver, it got into my bones. There was no hiding from that. I had stuffed my hands into my jacket pocket in some vain attempt at staying warm. Dean and I were heading back to Madison’s to collect Sam and Nisha. I hoped Nisha had come back to meet us at Madison’s by now and if she hadn’t I was going to kick her ass. I felt oddly…not mad. Not even a little irritated that Dean had made me wait outside of a strip club whilst he conducted some ‘interrogation’ earlier that day. I wasn’t mad though, like I said, which immediately weirded me out. I seemed to distance myself from the fact we had shot Madison’s neighbour too. Maybe it was the big, full, glowing moon grinning at me in the sky and the stars and the utter cheesiness this situation could be considered as. Maybe I suddenly felt like I’d walked into a romantic movie. There’d been a couple of times when me and Dean had looked like that, but, I’d never even felt that way about it until now. I exhaled a deep sigh, my breath drifted off into nothingness in a plume of wispy vapour. Up ahead I could see the Impala parked and it glittered with rain drops, the street lamp putting a spot light on it. Madison’s place was to the left of the car, which meant mine and Dean’s weird silent walk back from the club was about to end.

I’d been about to go up to the porch but he stopped. I saw him lean with his back against the driver’s door of the Impala. He had his arms folded against his chest and seemed to be looking at me expectantly, raising one eyebrow like I was doing something wrong.

“Sam’s in there with Madison.” Dean said suddenly.

“And?”

“I got the vibe that he was into her, I wanna give him a few, you know?”

I frowned at that. I hadn’t really noticed the signs that Sam might have been interested in Madison and part of me instinctively wanted to find Nisha just then. I wanted to make sure she was okay, I mean shit, she was in love with Sam already. For now though, I felt some sort of pull, magnetic, like I was about to be absorbed into something I really shouldn’t allow myself to be absorbed into. I sighed and turned to lean beside the car next to Dean and he glanced at me.

“I changed my mind about you and Nisha you know, it’s good that you’re with Sammy and me.”

“I’m flattered” I scoffed jokingly.

There was a dead silence lingering uncomfortably on the air. Dean shifted next to me, shuffling awkwardly like he was going to say something and he didn’t really know how to say it.

“Sam told me how you reacted, when we were on that case a while back and you found out what happened with my dad” he shrugged a little, trying to pass it off as nothing and I looked elsewhere.

“Oh. Yeah. That was pretty frigging messed up. I had no idea, it was a shock you know?” he just nodded a little vaguely. “It made me realize that even with all the shit me and Nisha went through-”

“Your families?” Dean asked.

“Right. In a messed up way, I guess we’re not that different you know? We both lost something precious and we had to grow up so fast, I feel like I was robbed.”

“Of chances?” I just nodded in response to that.

I went quiet, I had tears welling up in my eyes just thinking about my family, and Nisha’s family. I’d never told Nisha that before. How I really felt about all of this, I played up to the role of being some revenge soaked hunter. I wasn’t though, I was still a kid in the grand scheme of things and the thing that hurt me most of all about this was that me and Nisha had been robbed of so many things. That we didn’t deserve it.

“It was just so fucking senseless. None of us deserved this.”

My voice was shaking by this point, and I didn’t realize it but I turned to face Dean. Face to face in the dark, the rain and the moonlight drifting over head. Like I said, if this was anyone else’s life, this could have almost been romantic.

“It’s like, my dad. Why did he do that? How did he think it’d make me feel to know he sold his soul…for me? I should be dead, he should be here. It’s not right, Misha. It never will be.”

I touched his arm out of some kind of reflex to be comforting. I wasn’t normally, and I usually just sucked at being tender at all, but this conversation, this situation we were in right now - we’d just served up our souls for inspection to each other. We’d told each other those dark little thoughts we had that we wouldn’t tell many others. I think I’d just opened a door that I couldn’t close, even though I kind of wanted to. I was scared of getting close to other people too. Messed up right?

“But we have to keep fighting. Things are shitty, but we have to keep fighting Dean.”

He turned toward me at that and got close. I felt my back press against the cold metal of the car, and I could see his silhouette approach me. His breath touched my skin softly, and his warmth suddenly enveloped me and all of a sudden I let go. I actually felt completely safe, I was about to seriously give up to this guy. A guy I had hated from the moment I’d first met him but now, what now? I didn’t know. I didn’t know what any of this meant. It was spinning so fast, like a hurricane, leaving me standing there in the debris. I felt his fingers against my neck, they were cold, but gentle, and sloped down to the nape of my neck. I lifted my head, I could feel his chest against mine and the dull thud of his heart against his ribs. He got even closer, to the point that I could practically feel his lips against mine and there wasn’t any doubt. No flinching, no regrets that I had just opened myself up.

“MISHA!”

The sob cut through the silence sharply and caused me to slip free of Dean’s grasp. I heard him mutter something under his breath, and he leaned his elbows on the roof of Impala, holding his forehead in one hand.

I could see Nisha approaching, so I left Dean by the car and went straight to her. She was crying, and she was shattered looking. I knew why. I just knew. She ran towards me and I pulled her into a hug as she continued to sob.

“I walked in Misha. I walked in.”

“What? What’re you talking about?”

“Sam and Madison. They…they slept together.”

“God…Nisha. I’m-I’m so sorry.”

Dean approached us at that moment and coughed awkwardly to alert us to the fact that he was there and I glanced at him. He frowned in confusion, nodding towards Nisha as thought asking for an explanation as to why she was crying. I just said ‘nothing’. I didn’t really feel that she’d appreciate me confessing to Dean that she was in love with his little brother and upset because he’d just slept with some werewolf chick.

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Dean came back with me and Nisha to the motel. Nisha sniffed a few times and wiped her eyes, she was more uncomfortable at the moment about Dean’s curious gaze. He really wanted to know what was wrong but I refused to explain. It wasn’t right for me to tell him anything. Nisha had to say it, and anyway, she had to tell Sam before she went and told Dean about it.

It was just then that we heard a furious knock on the door. I got up and opened it. It was Sam and his eyes were wide and panicked.

“It didn’t work!” he yelled. “It didn’t work, she still turned. She ran out of the window. We didn’t cure her.”

The morning after this, Madison had come back. I was sitting in the Torino, and Dean was leaning against the hood with his hands in his pockets. Nisha was beside me and we all felt incredibly tense. Sam had said he would do it. He would finish the job if it came to it, and he had meant it, even though we wanted to help him. He wanted to do it alone. Dean glanced at me through the windshield, I just offered him a slight smile in response and he looked back to the apartment building.

It was the most tense minutes of the job so far. I was torn. I felt bad for Sam having to put a bullet into someone that was otherwise innocent a part from her lack of control, but at the same time I wanted to hit him. I wanted to scream at him for being so dense as to not notice that Nisha was so in love with him. Or at the very least cared for him a great deal. How could he be so stupid to go and seek comfort in a werewolf girl? She couldn’t help it, I know, but there was a girl sitting beside me in my car right that moment that never once judged him and could relate to how he felt about life. Why did he seem to overlook that?

Just then, Sam appeared from the building. He looked a little shaky as he stepped down the porch and walked to the Impala that Dean had brought over from where he’d left it at the motel when we’d first arrived in town. Dean put his arms around him, I watched them embrace and then Sam sobbed against Dean’s shoulder before climbing into the Impala in silence.

Dean glanced at me and just nodded. That was the signal that we were leaving.

The job was done. The werewolf was down and now it was time for us all to move onto the next job. I glanced over at Nisha and she was just looking distantly out of the passenger window. I stayed silent, revving the engine of the Torino as I headed out after Sam and Dean, back onto the road. Moving on, as always.