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[dime_for_12]

masterpost
prologue
part 1
part 2



"I need - "

The words are almost a shriek, and it startles Dean awake. "Gah." He fumbles at the comm, slapping it a few times to lower the volume. Then, because he knows that voice, he breaks into the general channel. "Frank?"

It crackles back to life and he hears, "Nonono. Jesus, fuck, hurry!" It's a woman's voice, vaguely familiar, and then Frank's filling the silence, yelling over the commotion. "West Drenn. Patrolling Loams Road. Victoria Palmer, bit. You were bit?" Pause, crackle of movement, then, "Okay, bit, unknown dead. I need medics on route and I think we're gonna need prep in the infirmary on Main. "

It doesn't make sense. He stumbles out of bed, finds the nearest shirt and pants. He waits until he hears medical confirmation before he cuts in again. "Frank, Vicky was attacked? By what?"

"Demon, I think, or a fuckin' zombie!" Frank's louder, now, trying to compensate for Dean's tiredness, the cries of pain, the sheer fucked up situation. "We're over in the old Mayo building."

"On my way." The corridors are empty, people mostly sleeping now that curfew's hit; he's just thankful no one's there to block his way. He wishes he could think clearer. Time, I need time, because biting reminds him of diseases and mass infection. And it can't - "are they spreading it? Do you know if - "

"Fuck if I know," and Frank's voice carries the panic Dean's can't. "I don't know if it spreads, if this is new, or viral." There's a moment of feedback, then, "motherfuck."

"Just hold on," Dean says, and listens to Frank's panicked breathing.

**

"It bit me!" Victoria's screaming, clawing at the medic bending down to check her. The man ignores her, just focuses on prepping her for transport. Dean can see red covering her thigh where it's angled away from her body. She looks pale, waxen. "Holy fuck, it bit me, it bit me. What the fuck. Why did it do that?" She turns frightened eyes to Dean, bloody tears wetting her cheeks as more heads bend over her. "Why? Why, I don't - "

He kneels, gets her hands in his, tries to still their frantic movements, tries to ignore how her blood slicks her skin, smears over whatever she touches. "Don't worry, Vicky, we'll figure it out."

"Sir," the medics say, "we have to move her, now."

Dean clears their path, and it's easy, it's just him. Frank's pressed close to the corner, eyes trained on the stretcher and the hands holding Victoria together. There's blood beside him, a trail of it that leads to the body a few feet from him. Dean steps closer to both of them. He can see the blotches on the corpse's skin, the areas where it's pulled back from fingernails and a little from the mouth. The eyes are open, and they're a sightless, cloudy blue.

It's just them, and they watch as Victoria's wheeled away, as headlights break the murky light and pull away.

"Frank." He's surprised when he gets a response right away, but Frank turns toward him, nods like he knows. Dean checks his gun, his two knives, his vial of holy water. Checks Frank's. When he's satisfied, he says, "just go, okay? Be careful and get to the hospital, okay?" Frank nods again and a little sense returns to his eyes. Dean sighs. "I'll stay until the clean up crew gets here."

After Frank leaves, it's not long before Dean hears the rumble of another car coming down the road. He covers his flashlight and eases himself around the crumbling wall to look - it's hard to see in the dark, and he can't make out features or even the look of the car that pulls up a few buildings down; he sees a small group pour out of the car, but it's only when he sees the long collapse cleaning poles and huge jugs of chemicals that he steps out into the road, hears someone say hello once he's spotted.

He waves the cleaning up crew - another rotation duty, though it hasn't seen much use since they'd taken care of the remains left from the horde's only real hit - into the room. It's no one Dean recognizes, although he can bet their names and births are listed. New records to keep track of people, to know who dies and when. They wear gloves, a good precaution and one that makes the feel of Vicky's blood drying and stiff against his own hands all the more apparent.

They have to be careful. Nothing's safe and nothing's over.

"Use the incinator on East Main and 1st," he says. They'd found a crematory under the old funeral house on the back end of East Main. It's an old model, one that hadn't been used for years, but they'd cleaned it up, fixed up the room around it and above as a morgue as best they could. It works, and they use it when the remains are intact, whole, so the dead aren't just shrouded bodies burning away on stacks of trash.

**

The old clinic on East Main is more like an infirmary these days. Not quite a hospital, because they don't have enough supplies to even consider calling it that, but more than just the free clinic that it used to be.

Dean's standing outside the doors, now, keeping company with Frank and his pale faced fear.

He swipes his hands over his face, massaging dirt into the sweat there. Getting clean would be nice, but water's rationed, just like everything else. "Frank," he says, and his friend's eyes are even bigger than normal. Golden hazel turned black with adrenaline. "What were you even doin' in West Drenn?"

"We were...I don't know. Heard things about West Drenn." Dean has, too; mainly that there are rougher groups - not roamers, not that extreme, but wilder than East Main. "Just so fuckin' stupid. It's been quiet, lately - no horde up this way." He thows his hands up, and when they come back to his sides, Dean tugs the cigarette from Frank's hand. The filter is wet from Frank's mouth and he can feel the heat of the hotbox before he tosses it, mashing it under his boot heel and filling the air with the dry shuffle of broken concrete. Dean pulls him close, then, and feels the press of Frank's face low on his shoulder.

He says, "I'm sorry," and hears Frank's bitter laugh, feels the heat of breath against his shirt. People get comfortable even now; they get stupid for distractions. It wasn't safe. There's blood on Dean's hands, covering Frank, that says it wasn't safe.

"It was a person, Dean." Frank lifts his head, steps back. It's quiet, outside the infirmary, everything busy going on behind the doors they're not allowed through. "We didn't know it was a corpse at first. Victoria went up to her. It. She - she talked to it. My back was turned - I. I heard her talk to it." He swipes at the hair hanging in his eyes. "Jesus fuck."

That's when his comm crackles back to life, orders being shouted, directions given. Dean gets "major trauma" and "attack" coming through loud and clear. He turns to Frank. "Another one."

"Go," Frank says, like there was any doubt. "I'm staying here."

**

"No!" The kid cries (Joe, this medic says, we got Joe out of him), and Dean can see the strained muscles in his face under the red that coats him, seeps out of him, from under bandages and stitches, mats his hair. The pain is riddled throughout his features, and he's young, once maybe Dean would have said too young. It's late for that now, those distinctions don't exist anymore. "No, I'm sorry. Bethany was - I knew her, I knew her, sir, for a long time, and I just turned for a second."

"It's okay," Dean say, and it isn't, not really, but they can deal with it after. After. "It's not your fault."

"I swear." The kid says, and it's fainter, now, but still urgent. "I swear I didn't know. She was my friend, she was - "

The kid's eyes - Joe's - close. The medic steps closer, takes over. It's slow and methodical. Useless.

He watches them load the corpse of a dead girl. He watches as they buzz around Joe, how they can't stop the blood, how they can't keep the pulse. His body slumps against the ground, lax and empty, even with CPR. They'll have to salt and burn the bodies, purify everything that was touched by the blood. Joe's and Bethany's.

Vicky's.

"Stop," one says. His hands look like they've been dipped in paint. The crusted redness covers his clothes where he's touched Joe, where he's knelt on the floor. "He's gone."

**

Dean keeps hearing viral, viral, viral on a loop in his head. He pulls aside a careworn nurse, Jackie, one of the original nurses from before the horde's attack. It's an idea, sketchy, and he hopes he's wrong, even though he doesn't think he is.

"Can you run blood tests?" The question comes out hard and fast, and he sees Jackie stiffen. "If you had something specific to look for?"

"I suppose. I'd have to tell the doctors, though. If you think something's contagious - "

"I." He stops, head tilting as he looks around the cramped break room. "I don't know. It's possible. We've got to be careful, though." They don't need panic. They don't need anyone knowing until they have answers.

Jackie nods, gray hair shimmering with the movement in the dim light. "Okay. What are we going to be looking for?"

There are tense lines around her mouth, her eyes, but her face is blank otherwise. Dean swallows. "Sulfur levels. Check sulfur levels."

She shivers, but her voice is calm when she says, "and you. We checked you over for open wounds and sores when you came in with Ms. Palmer, but do you...?"

He nods, almost counting the dips of his own head, unaccountably nervous. "Yeah. And - and Frank." He sees her brows furrow and adds, "Frank Grey. He's staying with Victoria now. There's a body, too. Joe Truman. If it hasn't been taken care of, maybe we could run tests on the corpse. See if..."

"I'll tell the doctors and the other nurses." She nods back at him, and he thinks of the damn bobbleheads he's seen. Feels like one. "If you're serious about some kind of infection, we could be endangering everyone that comes through those doors. That's...that's a big risk, and one the doctors might not see as reasonable."

"I know," Dean says, and he reaches over, squeezes her hand. Her skin is cold, a little clammy, and he draws back after a moment. "But I don't know if East Main could handle a panic. Not right now. I'm not sure if we shouldn't do what we can as quietly as we can." He can't quite look at her face, his eyes dart to the side every time he tries. "For now. But the final decision is up to the few medical staffers we have. I know that."

**

People going crazy and murdering or commiting suicide. Dean remembers Porter's tired face and thinks, shit. It's quiet on the comm line with Sam, and into the pause, Dean says, "two people attacked and one's dead. Two different attackers - one was a corpse. Dead awhile, from the looks of it. The girl, Bethany, was killed when she attacked her friend." Dean tells Sam. It's late and Sam's patrolling the finance buildings over in the northside of the district, just on the right side of their comms range.

The place is a charred mess, Dean knows. Just another casualty when transformers started blowing out and no one could repair them, couldn't stop the resulting fires, couldn't even really contain it, just watched the smoke billow and spread all along the district. Afterward, the horde had retreated even further, barely visible on the horizon, before it had started pressing inward again, closing in on the lines Sam had said the marked had made on the edges of Downtown, when they realized that even just the presence of the marked somehow helped keep the horde out of East Main, and the few occasions it has swept through it was obvious. The creep and the smell of rotten eggs - sulfur - strong and unavoidable before the thick smoke crept down the streets.

So the marked are busy building and strengthening wards, endless half loops that take the group through the outskirts of the back districts of Downtown and sometimes, according to Sam, into the City.

"Bethany Vaughn?" Sam's voice is tinny and broken by static, but his pace flows with it, and the question is obvious, like he's forgotten their trip into the City months ago. They've done this a million times. "One of the richest families left after the takeover. The majority were killed in the first wave of attacks." Dean remembers heavy black make up and grief. A dead silent hotel and a knowing look. "So they're important, or at least to our way of thinking." The last is a reprimand, couched in static. But they've done this a million times and it's easy for Dean to pick up on it. Sam shouldn't have to tell him this stuff. Dean's rubs his forehead, feels the grooves there. Well, shit.

Because the elite are dead or almost dead, so if that was the point, it's been made. Now it's apparently in Downtown, scattered and just as effective. The horde. The marked, all with a different ability. Now this new...thing infecting people. Everything's scattered, though, after the horde showed up, after the widespread massacre. Little things, here and there, but never consistent, never something that had any pattern that he can find, or that even seems to have a point.

"Yeah," Dean says, and he has to go through the archives soon, refresh all the shit he should already know. "Kill off the elite and everyone's stunned. Distracted." Sam makes a sound of assent, and Dean can imagine him rolling his eyes. "But here? It's weird, how it was back to back like that. As soon as we got to Vicky there was another case. And then nothing after that? I thought we'd be swamped with cases of people getting - bit. One or two? Scary, maybe, but not effective."

Sam's quiet for awhile, and Dean listens to steady thrum of static. Every other minute or so the static sharpens, gains pitch and volume before falling back to a steady, almost ignorable, rhythm. He hears Sam sigh, then his brother says, "fear isn't effective?"

Something about Sam's words or Sam's tone gets Dean's back up. "We're not just going to sit around and."

He stops, not surprised to hear Sam's wry snort. "Not do exactly what you've been doing? I mean, Dean, East Main isn't exactly - "

"We take care of roamers. We have our wards."

Silence.

Dean winces, because it sounds kind of pathetic just hanging in the air like that. It seems like so little in the face of something so hugely threatening. It's his turn to sigh. "You're right," he concedes, "but it's what we can do, so we'll keep doing it. And this new stuff..."

Sam's breath is heavy and crackles over the comm. "Be careful."

**

He doesn't have to tell Bobby. He's already there, face dark and solemn. "Get to her friends," Bobby says, and Dean flashes on Joe, pale and dead, bloody streaks on half-rotten floorboards. "Her family."

Because maybe there's still that something parading around in someone's skin, someone Bethany knew and wouldn't be wary of. Two cases; two cases and they only know that one attack was spurred by a corpse. It was violent, abrupt, something a kid like Bethany would have mentioned happening to her, would have had to seek help for.

Which means, "she didn't know." She was exposed some other way, from someone she knew or something that wouldn't cause alarm.

"Looks that way. The host could still be in there, Dean, alive. We don't know." Dean thinks, it can still be around - turning others. If they don't stop it, he can see the epidemic, supernatural rabies or some shit until they're all dead. "You'll need things, Dean. Standard exorcism, holy water, restraints. Your knife," in case it's just a corpse, always or newly made. Even if it's not, Dean thinks, even if there's a person inside, it's still better to get it over with, maybe, but then again - he's never faced this kind of thing, and Bobby doesn't seem inclined to help out during the actual event.

He finds them easily. Seeing them slouching, eyes lined in black, wearing the ragged leftovers of City clothes, and he can remember their faces, limned in the wavering streetlight as they piled into Bobby's truck in Riverside. They're still closed off, stone-faced, and Dean just wants to laugh a little. Maybe they're still grieving, having barely stopped being kids after all, or maybe they're just too rich to mingle comfortably with the rest of them, but Bethany's an indication: they won't last, not as they are.

He eases himself down on one edge of the hard bench in the hallway. Says, "Bethany Vaughn," and watches the group flinch. He grins.

A dark haired little mess of a girl finally pipes up. "She's dead, isn't she?"

He settles more her way, says, "what do you know about it?"

"I don't...she got weird around here. I thought it was from hanging with Joe and Cenny. They're...rough." She pauses, running her fingers over her mouth. She glances at her friends before continuing. "We all saw it. She was running around all crazy with them. She was half in love with Cenny, and she stormed out of here as soon as she heard about him leaving. You remember?" She glances briefly at her friends who stay stony quiet, and she shakes her head. "Joe went off chasing after her."

"Where'd this Cenny go?"

She shakes her head, finally focuses on him completely. "She didn't come home, and I knew, you know? I knew it was so dangerous out there, and when she didn't - " the girl clears her throat. " - when she didn't come back, I knew she was dead. That something got her."

"Hey," he says, and she shudders, swallows loud enough for Dean to hear it. "Where. Is. Cenny."

"I uh. I don't know. Took off after he slept with Beth, or not long after. I don't know where he'd go," she lifts her arms up, what the fuck else is there? "He was talking up the marked to Beth, you know, like they could do something for her. Or something. She was upset. A lot. She couldn't get over what happened to her family. Cenny used that, I don't know what'd he'd get out of it, but there must have been something, right? It's why I didn't like him," another wide sweep of the hall. "Why none of us liked him."

The marked. That's fuckin' ominous; something he could have gone without hearing. "And Joe? What was his last name?"

"Truman," and it's a whisper, something weak. "Cenny was his cousin? Or something? They never talked about parents, I always assumed they'd died." She shrugs.

**

Maybe they have a chance. If this virus spreads through bodily fluids, then maybe they can survive it, or protect themselves. Maybe they aren't stuck with an airborne demonic virus.

"Just give us a fuckin' break already," he mutters, and tries not to think how how low they've come if a possible direct contact sickness is the high point of this whole mess.

If it does spread through fluids and not the air, and that's a theory based solely on Dean's own keen observation skills - the fact that Bethany turned violent only after sleeping with this Cenny dude. And Victoria's bitten by some rotting corpse.

There's her and Joe, both having severe wounds from whatever this things are. There's Dean himself and Frank and the medics and clean up crews - not wounded but exposed to blood all the same.

If he were smart, he'd maybe quarantine everyone until they know. Frank's already halfway there - holed up with Victoria in the infirmary, but everyone else...well. Blood tests will start, and if there's any proof, chances are they'll find the answers there.

**

Cenny, or whatever's riding Cenny, apparently didn't think to go far. He sends the description Bethany's friends gave of Cenny over the comm, making sure it's on the general channel. He doesn't even have to wait two days before Robert's group is calling it in, rushing into East Main like a bat out of hell. Robert's redfaced with the effort of keeping tags on the squirming form.

"It's somethin'," Robert says, sweat and dirt streaked all over his face. The rest of his group isn't much better. "Not too smart, though. Got him tryin' to weasel through some of the caved-in sections of lower Drenn."

"You okay?" Dean asks, but as far as he can see there's no blood and no wounds.

"Fine," Robert grunts. No one got hurt or anything."

Dean leads Robert into the weapons room. There's already an area clear in the middle. Just a single chair with ropes piled around it and a devil's trap scratched into the floor. Robert drops the demon into the chair, holds onto him when Dean starts knotting the rope around chest, wrists and legs. He's fighting, muscles tense and shivering, although he doesn't make a sound.

"Holy water worked," Robert says. "Blessed blades did, too. Screamed like a fuckin' banshee. You uh. You gonna need help?"

Dean looks at the guy strapped to the chair. Besides black eyes, he looks normal, young. Scared. "Don't think so," he says, but he eyes Robert's bulk. Adds, "stay close, though. And, Robert?" The guy looks over his shoulder, hand resting on the door. "Your team's on break, now, alright?" He can tell Robert's confused, but he just nods his head and closes the door behind him when he leaves.

**

Dean's hot and tired and restless with the lack of anything he can use. The damn thing tied to the chair is panting and twisting, face wrinkled and contorted in pain. It babbles almost mindlessly every time Dean moves nearer, alternating between arrogance and oily platitudes. Right now, they're back to arrogance. "Echon daimonion, echon daimonion, she wanted it. All that fear and grief twisted around, Winchester," and it says the last like it's sounding out the syllables, like there's something hiding in the word. "She wanted to be strong."

"She was a kid that was scared, angry, maybe wanted revenge, but you - you made her into - " he presses his crucifix into the thing's forehead, watches it flinch away, unable to move past the restraints holding it to the chair. He smells the char of flesh, hears the sizzle from the skin beneath the wood. "Don't sit there pretending you did her a favor."

"Just some innocent, hmm? Not even close." Sweat slips into the burns made by the holy water, and Dean can see the thing wince again, minute ripples across skin stretched too tight. But Dean wants to hear it scream, beg, whimper, and it won't. Maybe he wants to make it pay for every death since the attacks, but he can't. Too many, and not enough time, and he doesn't even know if there's a person buried under it all. "She didn't want revenge, you idiot. She wanted to inflict pain, and she didn't care who suffered for it. She was a sadist in the making - and I just gave her what she wanted." It pauses, licks bloody lips. "Me, I kinda like the symmetry."

It shifts, then, like it's changing course, and considering it's tied to a chair and surrounded by sigils and a devil's trap, Dean thinks it's pretty stupid. "You know," it says, and it draws the sound out, low in its throat. "I think the marked is a pretty good name for those kids you ran out of here. I mean, think about it. They have demon blood slithering in their veins. You see me?" It laughs, a dry, choked sound, and Dean sees the skin peeling away from the burns of holy water and crosses. "That's what they are under all that skin. It's what Sam is."

"Shut up."

"Uh oh, did I hurt big brother's feelings? Or is it just gross to think about fucking that?" It bites at its lips, but the skin flakes off, gets on the bits of teeth peeking out of its lips. "You guys sure didn't give them a lot of chances, did you."

It's not a question, and Dean doesn't respond, just gets the journal ready, Latin scrawled in bleeding ink, but he knows it, now, eyes closed or book closed, he knows this exorcism. "Odd, that. Given how much you love your Sammy, isn't it weird how you just gave him up?" The thing's voice raises as Dean starts rolling words in his mouth, careful pronunciation clean when the thing starts shrieking. "Think about it. Why would you do that? Are you that weak?" It struggles against the ropes, muscles rigid and rippling through its arms. Blood coats where it's bound to the chair - dark crimson and sluggish where it seeps out of the wounds. "Fuck! I could help you. I know. I know - "

When the demon's gone, it's only a corpse. New, so new that Dean wonders if maybe the exorcism killed the person inside, because when he looks it over he can see the trace of decomp. Fuck, he thinks and doesn't know whether to be freaked out or relieved.

**

He's not surprised to see Frank passed out in Victoria's room when he finally goes to visit her. There are deep lines around Frank's eyes, purple slashes against his skin. He's out, so deep that he doesn't stir when Dean walks in, hears Vicky's scratchy, "what's going on?"

He shakes his head, says, "Bethany Vaughn," and he's not expecting her to know, but she breathes out, heavy, and turns her face away. "Did Frank tell you?" She nods, still looking away, and he moves closer, presses his thigh against the hospital bed. It's an older model, only ones available in Downtown, and he feels the bite of metal through his pants. "There was another. Another one."

She's looking at him again, eyes wet, face working. "I can take it, Winchester," it's a growl, and her eyes dart to Frank before focusing back on him. "It's fine."

"Bethany Vaughn," he says, "had extremely high levels of sulfur in her blood when she was killed. Joe Truman's blood presented the same thing when it was tested." At her frown, he says, "He was attacked by Vaughn."

"They take my blood every day." Her head jerks and Dean can see the small tremors, but he can't do much for them, he knows that. "They won't tell me why. What it has to do with anything."

"Victoria." But he can see her anger building, and anything besides the truth would be pointless. Useless. "They're running tests on the latest victim, too, seeing if there's a connection there."

"God," her voice cracks, fingers pressed to her mouth, like she can hold it in. "I could be one of those. I could," she looks over at Frank. "No, no, I wouldn't. I wouldn't."

Frank's leg kicks, a dull thud against the chair arm where he's curled up. Dean leans closer to Vicky, whispers, "We'll work it out, Vicky. Okay? I'll see what the doctor's doin'. Don't worry."

"Heh." He straightens when she presses her head into the pillows behind her. "We both know, don't we? The damn thing bit me." She smiles, sharp and cold. He knows what he'd do under the circumstances, wonders if she's thinking the same thing. "It's just. It's strange. I'm still me. I can feel it, you know?"

He wants to go, find the doctor, at least, because he can do that. Hand on the doorknob, he says, "I think - I think at some point it's not about you anymore, Vicky." And he remembers what the demon said, echon daimonion, the human possesses the demon. But Vicky's not Vaughn, never that lost, never that naive. He turns to look at her, sees her studying Frank, eyes half closed and relaxed. For a minute he can see it, mindless ripping and tearing and all that blood. Something not her wearing her skin, and he knows without a doubt what the doctor'll say.

She catches him looking and smiles, weary and small, before the door clicks shut between them.

**

The next time he sees Vicky, it's because Frank's wild-eyed and haggard, nearly dragging him through the doors of the infirmary and right to Vicky's room. "She told the nurses not to admit me! Fuck, Dean!"

He's not banned. He doesn't even think the nurses would follow it if he was, ever since he'd proposed stashing basic supplies along patrol routes, which means that people aren't rushing the infirmary for fuckin' bandaids at three in the morning. They like him, so he gets in, catches Victoria sleeping.

He bangs the visitor's chair against the tiled floor, lets it rattle around before he settles in it. She wakes up slowly, groggy and confused. He waits 'til her eyes are big and sharp, drilling holes into his face, to say, "Frank's pissed."

She laughs. "Yeah, well. Ain't we all." She shifts higher in the bed, yanks at the gown riding up and bunching through her chest. "We both know what's going on."

"Yeah, me and you. Not Frank. You haven't told him." She raises an eyebrow, you haven't? "Not my place, Vicky. You should tell him."

"He wouldn't want to leave me." Either way, now or then, that's a sure thing. It's obvious, and Dean doesn't answer it. "What do I say? Tell me that. What do I tell him?"

"That we don't know everything." He leans forward as she twists her neck away from him. "You're only one of a handful of victims. Bethany was..." rabid, a monster, apparently. "Compromised, but Joe died from trauma. The sulfur levels don't have to mean anything."

"That's a big risk, Winchester."

"One that needs to be taken. We can't be stupid about this. It's too early in the game for that."

"If I were anybody else, would you say the same thing?" He doesn't answer. They both know most of the ground Dean's giving is for Frank's sake. There's a lot of years between them, almost to the day Dean moved into Downtown. He doesn't want to lose that, and if keeping Vicky alive is the key to keeping Frank's friendship, well. He'll do his damnedest. But he can't say that, can't flat out tell her that no, no one else would be alive this long. He doesn't think he really has to. "What do I do?"

He reaches over, gets her hand in his. It's cold, and there's an IV port in the back of it. "Give us a chance, that's all. Give us some time." He smiles. It feels shaky, but maybe it's stronger than it looks because she turns her hand, squeezes his fingers and returns the grin. "Let that fucker back in here."

"I really liked him." She chuckles, but the sound's wet, more like a sob than anything else, and it follows him down into his dreams when he finally makes it back to his room.

**

It's sudden, he thinks after. Even expecting (encouraging, demanding) something to happen, it still takes him by surprise.

Dean's sprawled out in the visitor chair after sending Frank back to his room to get some sleep. I don't mind staying, Dean says, smiling, when Frank tells Dean he doesn't want Victoria to be alone. Dean's heart is pounding, his mouth's dried out and stale, and it's an effort to get his lips pulled up in something resembling goodnatured comfort. There's a stiffness to Frank's face that lets him know that Frank's not buying the words, but he goes, anyway, and Dean gets a last shot of red rimmed eyes before Frank closes the door.

Dean watches. He watches Victoria blink and sigh, watches her turn over in bed, trying to turn her back and get away from him. Watches as she turns back, stares back. The sulfur levels are higher today, jumping all over the place. He leans back, feels the chair poke at him uncomfortably. "How are you feeling?"

"The same." Her face is full of an empty, sharp eyed beauty that Dean doesn't know how to read, because even though he's known about Victoria since the beginning, he's never bothered that much with her, except where Frank was concerned.

The power's unreliable. Running simple blood tests is the extent that the little ramshackle lab can do, and soon that's not even going to be viable. Victoria's probably the last person they'll be able to give the benefit of the doubt.

It's a waste, he thinks, and he hopes Frank sleeps for hours. "The same," and it's a question, really, but he can't get the inflection right, can't find the strength to ask it. "Right." Victoria blinks, jaw trembling, hands shaking when she sees the knife Dean pulls out of his shirt. Knives are less damaging than guns. Less mess and less damage for everyone to deal with. It doesn't matter that they'll burn her body, Dean doesn't want Frank to see anything besides Victoria. "It can be quick." He doesn't add, kind of.

She sobs once, bows her head and when she lifts it, her face is wet, eyes red, but there's no tears that he can see. "Yeah," she says. "I'll do it," like it's a boon and it is, one he wants to grab onto, but he hesitates. He'll do it if it's easier. He can do that much. "I'm sure." The words are uneven, broken by the way her breath hitches and mouth trembles, but she holds her hand out and it's steady, now. "Through the heart, maybe?" She laughs, a sharp bark and then shakes her head. "Fuck. You tell him, alright? You tell him, Winchester." He nods, and she just breathes. "Go on, I don't need you in my face."

It feels like cheating to get up and leave her. The knife looks huge in her lap, hands braced on the hilt. It's a regular combat knife, the ones they'd distributed to almost all of East Main.

It's meant to kill, and it's sharp and bright in her thin hands, long fingers pale and cold looking. "Victoria."

"I don't want to be a monster." Dark hair, dark eyes. She already looks half dead in the washed out light. "Sometimes when I sleep I dream things, and I wake up so angry." Her head jerks, concisive nods. Her mouth is set, thin lines and fragile angles. "I won't be that. Tell him I'm sorry."

"I will." He steps out, door closing with a click, and he hears the lock catch. The blinds to her room are half closed, enough to see sections of her. The knife. Her throat. The top of her head.

She's quick. The knife's there, and then gone. The parts of her he can see jerk. They jerk and jerk, and then the blood comes, slicking the hospital gown, staining it wet and red. He watches as she tosses, it's not quick, not really, minutes pass until she's still, and her body's turned slightly, sodden gown rucked around her body.

She's still, though, finally, and he backs away. Victoria had been off the monitors after the first few days, because they couldn't spare the power to run them any longer than that, not with daily blood tests.

It'll be awhile until the nurses come on their rounds.

**

He's the one that tells Frank. After the marked had left, Dean had moved into a single room unit on the same hall as Victoria and Frank's rooms. The walls are thin, and everything's quiet, so he knows when Frank gets up.

Frank's already backing away as soon as his door is open. Shaking his head, and thank god the place is empty or he'd be tripping all over everything.

"No."

"It would have been bad, Frank."

"Is that..." Frank's barely dressed, skinny knees sticking out of ragged shorts. "Is that all you've got? You killed her! You fuckin' did it! You know you did!" Frank stumbles, hands braced on his head. "Fuck."

"She - "

"No, no. Fuck you, alright? Just fuck you. Get out!"

He can hear Frank breaking everything in his apartment. It's not much, Dean knows, but Frank finds enough. He hears it later, too, when he slams out, steps receding down the hall.

**

He's there when Victoria is brought down to be cremated. He can smell the sage and rosemary from where he stands. He can see the small bags of incense pressed close to her body, can see the salt.

Better safe than sorry.

Frank's quiet and pale, but he follows Dean out when it's over, when all he has left is her necklace, a cheap metal and twine phoenix, wrapped tight around his fist. It's just them, the operator and Dean and Frank. "No one else," Frank mutters. "She didn't have anyone else," and for a minute all Dean can see is thin, pale hands clutching a knife.

Dean doesn't say anything when Frank goes to Dean's room when Dean heads that way. Doesn't say anything when Frank starts stripping. Doesn't say anything before Frank drags Dean's head down and kisses him until he tastes blood.

"You owe me," and the words are bitter, ugly, but Dean just drags him closer, so tight that Victoria's necklace is pressing into his skin, angles of sharp pain every time they move.

After, Frank's pressing his fingers into Dean's shoulder, fingers slipping in what Dean thinks might be blood. "She wanted me to tell you that she was sorry, Frank." Frank's fingers dig deeper, but Dean just grits his teeth, says, "I am, too."

"I knew," Frank whispers, the prick of his stubble raw and burning against Dean's neck. "I knew when you told me to leave."

He feels ragged nails breaking new skin, the slide of liquid, this time blood and tears, when Frank starts shaking against him.

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