Crossover Fic: In a Hand-basket (7/13) Supernatural/Veronica Mars

[elerimc]

** See Part One for full story notes and disclaimers.

PART SEVEN NOTES: Thank you all for the great comments on the last section. I love hearing the speculation and where you want the story to go. Huge thanks go to Jack and Lyn for their amazing, super-speed beta work. You both were story-savers! Any remaining mistakes are purely mine as I tend to fiddle up until the very last minute. And I mean that literally this time. (vbg) As always, any and all feedback is appreciated.

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Part Seven

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THEN...

But was that confidence worth the risk of taking her along? Her investigative skills aside, she'd probably never killed anything more threatening than a mosquito in her life. Then again, she had known where the special project camp was. She also had an insider's knowledge of how they worked and what kind of numbers the demons kept available. The tattoo on her arm they both carefully ignored talking about was another asset. He didn't like where his brain was going with that particular line of thought. But she had been the one to insist she was going. He was merely weighing the odds. He looked up at the back door, eyes narrowing.

Without conscious thought, he'd made his decision. Apparently, Veronica had less than twenty hours to learn a crazy amount of information. She needed to get started.

NOW...

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As soon as the door closed behind her, Veronica allowed her hands to shake as much as her insides. Holy crap. After watching Dean deal with the demon who'd chased her, she'd had the thought she never wanted to make Dean mad. It was no longer merely a thought.

She could still feel phantom fingers around her neck, tensed and ready to squeeze tight. Her wrist ached deep inside where he'd almost ground her bones into tiny pieces. But she could also feel the lingering sensation of his scar beneath her fingertips. The skin had been curiously smooth and sent sharp jolts of heat up her arm. What kind of injury could have that kind of residual reaction? It was fully healed and had the look of one that had been for a long time. She had to wonder if he'd gotten it in Hell and if it had come back with him. If she'd managed to convince him to take her with him, she'd ply Jo with a few more carefully worded questions.

Her whole body trembled, the residual rush of adrenaline leaving her empty and cold inside. Dean had scared the shit out of her, no question about it. But it had been the speed with which he'd moved, not his actions itself that had caused her heart to pound and her hands to break out in a cold sweat. Normal people could not move that fast. Yet despite every logical sense, instinct had kept her from struggling, kept her from striking out at him. Even the blank-eyed stare that had finally dissolved into horror hadn't set her off. She knew he wouldn't hurt her. She also knew it had been phenomenally stupid to touch him without either his permission or his attention.

Then why had she?

It was a question she wasn't touching with a fifty-foot pole at the moment. If she got through the next month without doing anything else quite so suicidal she might get back to it. Maybe.

Dean's boots thumped quietly behind her as he climbed the back steps. She got the feeling he was deliberately making noise. Whether it was to warn her so she could escape before he entered or so she could ignore him as he made his, she wasn't so sure. She drew in a deep breath and stilled the remaining shakes with an effort she'd have laughed at once upon a time. If Dean thought she was frightened of him, it would be even harder to get him to agree to take her with him. Her arrogant assertions aside, she was well aware she had nothing to force him into not leaving her behind tomorrow. She turned and sat in the chair that had somehow become hers over the past two days and shuffled a few papers around. The door clicked open and she glanced up nonchalantly. There was a look in Dean's eyes she didn't recognize. It wasn't humor. It wasn't annoyance. But it was something alive and growing. She hoped she'd have time to figure it out.

He leaned both hands on the back of a chair, pressing his weight into it as it creaked slightly. "If you're so dead set on going out there, you have some things to learn and learn fast."

Her heart stopped altogether for one long second as she replayed his words. Holy crap. What had she said to change his mind? She didn't have time to wonder because he was already going on.

"Write everything I say down then memorize it. If you can't repeat it verbatim by the time I start the truck, I swear I will chain you to the back porch and take the key with me. It's not just your life you're risking. I can't afford a liability who doesn't even know the most basic of exorcisms."

A smile tugged at her lips, but she squashed it ruthlessly. She didn't want him to think she wasn't taking him seriously. In fact, she was in perfect agreement. She'd been planning to ask him to continue the monster lesson he'd started in the truck anyway. No, the smile was in response to the probably unhealthy level of relief she felt. He just wanted her to memorize a bunch of stuff. Unless he suddenly started speaking Swahili, she was as good as packed. Her memory had been on the high side of good even before she'd started her investigative training. She grabbed the pencil and flipped over sheets of paper until she found a blank side. "Ready whenever you are."

He shrugged once then crossed the room to pour a cup of water. He swished it around his mouth a bit, spitting it out into the sink. After refilling his coffee, he sat across from her and wrapped both hands around the mug. "First thing you need is a little lesson in Latin."

Two hours and thirteen pages later, Veronica sat back, brain cramping from the avalanche of information he'd thrown at her. The internal smile had disappeared after the third exorcism and she'd started subtracting hours of sleep after the fifth page. Yes, her powers of recall were excellent, but it was still a hell of a lot to learn in less than one day. Dean had covered everything from how to identify some of the most likely nasties they'd run into on the road to which ones they could only run from as fast as possible. Thankfully there were only a few in the list of the second compared to the first. Her eyes scanned down the first page, a tiny part of her whispering she'd bit off more than she could chew. She squashed it ruthlessly. Dean had survived Hell. The least she could do was manage to remember a few simple sheets of information.

"Still want to come along?"

It was a straight question, no sarcasm or innuendo in it. His eyes matched the tone, steady, hard, unapologetic. It only reinforced her decision. "You haven't scared me off that easily."

"Okay." He stood, going over to the sink to rinse his mug. "Weapons training starts at 1400. Have you ever fired a gun?"

"Um, once. My dad took me to a shooting range. He wanted me to at least know the basics in case, well, just in case."

He nodded as he headed for the doorway leading to the rest of the house. "Good. Then if you shoot me I'll know it wasn't by accident." He didn't wait for an answer before disappearing from her sight. It was probably better that way. She didn't know what she would have said to that if he'd given her time to think about it. Knowing the way her sarcastic nature was returning to life, she doubted it would have been something calming and non-confrontational.

Then again, maybe that'd been his plan. They were going to be spending a lot of time together in the very near future without another soul for company. If he could rile her with a mere handful of words, they both were in huge trouble. She pushed the idea aside and turned back to her sheets of homework. One eyebrow raised involuntarily as reality slapped her upside the head. She'd asked for it. Now she had to step up and prove she wasn't just all talk.

About ten minutes later, Dean came back downstairs with a heavy duffel thrown over one shoulder. He smirked as he passed her when he saw her mouthing exorcism number one to herself and she merely smiled in return. He shrugged and left as silently as he'd entered, the front door closing quietly behind him. She went through the exorcism twice more, using every bit of knowledge she'd picked up in language classes during school. Spanish and French were only related to Latin, but she was able to figure out the gist of most of the sentences. She didn't need to know precisely what she was saying for it to work. She only needed a road map to keep it in order in her head.

She'd made it through one full iteration with only two small stumbles when Jo entered the kitchen, a waft of sweet smelling air washing out in front of her. The other woman had been in and out while Dean had heaped information at her, not interrupting the flow of words. "Morning again, Jo. The coffee should still be hot."

"Thanks. Dean told me he's agreed to let you go with him." She stopped next to Veronica, damp hair clinging to her neck. "I don't know what you said to him, but it worked. I couldn't get anywhere with him last night."

Veronica didn't ask when the other woman had had the time. The three of them had spent most of the evening in the kitchen together. Veronica scribbling notes, Dean packing shotgun shells and Jo going over lists of things she wanted Dean to keep an eye out for while he was on the road. Her cheeks flushed slightly and she looked down quickly. Wow, she'd missed that one completely. Despite their obvious closeness, Veronica hadn't gotten the 'we're sleeping together' vibe from either of them. Apparently her sensors needed a bit of adjusting after so long away from normal human relationships. "Uh, yeah. I appreciate you trying anyway. This morning all I did was piss him off, really."

She chuckled, her smile giving Veronica a glimpse of the carefree young woman Jo might have been without demons and Devil's Gates in the world. "I glad you did. He also told me you know about a hidden camp."

"It wasn't enough for him to change his mind though. That came later."

"Once Dean gets something in his head it almost takes an act of God to get him turned around." Glancing around the kitchen quickly, Jo's expression grew serious. When she met Veronica's gaze, her brown eyes were clouded with worry. "Come with me for a few minutes. There's something I want you to see."

"I have a lot of memorizing to do here, Jo."

"This won't take very long."

With a sigh, she set her notes aside. Wherever they were going, she could run through the exorcism there just as well as while sitting at the table. Having a distraction might even be better in the long run for her. She doubted every demon they came across would just politely stand still while it was exorcised. Shoving the thought aside, she followed Jo out the back door, down the small walk and onto the tiny trail leading into the woods. The day chilled immediately once they passed under the wide spread branches and Veronica felt goose bumps crawl up her arm. She started the exorcism, enunciating clearly in her head, her mouth moving ever so slightly with each word. She only made it halfway through before Jo halted in front of a pile of rocks nestled along a line of towering trees. They looked like some kind of evergreen to her, but that was the closest she could come to naming them. After Dean's crash course that morning she now knew more about demons than she ever had about dendrology. The only reason she even knew the word was due to a tree-hugging biology professor her first year at Hearst. Nameless though they'd stay, she had to admit they were beautiful specimens. She looked from Jo to the trees and back, wondering exactly what was so important about this place that she needed to see it just then. But Jo wasn't looking at the trees. Her attention was focused solely on the rocks heaped among the trunks.

Veronica frowned, turning back to them with her observer's eye. This time she saw it. The rocks weren't simply tossed around the trees in any old haphazard fashion and left to create their own pattern. Now that she bothered to really look, she could see the cairn-like shape, the elongated slope of the peak. "Who..." She couldn't finish the question. If there was an actual person beneath those rocks she did not want to know.

"That's not just one 'who,' Veronica," Jo said, finally looking up to meet her gaze. "There's a stone for every human Dean has killed because of a demon. Whether he used the knife on them or if they didn't survive the exorcism."

Her blood ran cold as the words sank into her. Her eyes traced the length, brain automatically calculating how many rocks had to be there. It was like one of those jelly bean jar contests that used to be so popular, only this wasn't a contest she would ever want to enter. There had to be hundreds, maybe even a thousand. She swallowed tightly, forcing moisture into her suddenly too dry mouth. "Why did you bring me here?"

"Because you need to understand him. You know Dean was in Hell, literally. He didn't escape it unscathed. He's different, harder than he used to be." Jo grabbed her arm, fingers digging into the muscle just a fraction shy of painful. "Other hunters, what few he's willing to be around if they're here at the same time, get to thinking he doesn't care about anything, that all he's after is destroying demons and taking revenge for everything they did to him down there."

Even after she'd watched him kill the demon in the barn Veronica had never thought he was heartless. Broken, suspicious as all hell, doing anything he had to survive, yes, all of those. But uncaring? He hadn't left her in the rain by herself, had he? He'd brought her somewhere safe, where she could recover and learn how to be human again. Jo didn't give her time to respond.

"Veronica, he does care. He cares so much, he has to punish himself with this reminder of every time he fails. His words, not mine."

"I never thought that, Jo," she said softly, placing a hand on the other woman's where it still held her arm. "Don't forget, I've seen him in action. He didn't scare me off then. He won't now." He might scare the crap out of her sometimes, but she had no plans on letting him drive her away.

Jo searched her eyes for a long moment before nodding and releasing Veronica's arm. "I'm trusting you to keep him whole, Veronica. Remind him he's doing the right thing. Don't let him bury himself in guilt. He has too much to carry as it is."

And there was the real reasoning behind their tiny hike. Something shifted inside her, a cracking deep down that spilled warmth up and over her chest. The walls Jo kept locked tight had come down and Veronica could see it in the other woman's eyes. Jo was a much better actress than she'd given her credit for. She'd seen affection and caring for Dean and then this morning the tiny bit of heat which clued her into the hidden aspects of their relationship. But nothing in the past two days had pointed to such intense feelings. "You're in love with him."

"Since the day I met him." Jo's easy acknowledgment didn't match the shadows lurking in her eyes.

She didn't want to ask, didn't want to make her feel any worse, but the question was floating between them without permission. "He doesn't feel the same?"

The smile was tinged with a bittersweet longing Veronica knew intimately. She'd felt it every day those first few months before she'd locked it away. "The story of our lives. Wrong place, wrong time."

"I'm sorry, Jo. I really am." There was nothing else she could say to that. But she could offer something else. "I'll watch after him. I'll drag him back from the edge kicking and screaming if I have to. He doesn't have the monopoly on stubborn."

"Thank you." She gestured back down the small trail toward the house and started out in front of Veronica. "You know, I figured out a long time ago his feelings for me were never going to be what I wanted them to be. So I steal what I can for as long as he'll let me. Then I wait for months hoping he'll come back. Veronica, I just want him alive. Happy is a miracle I stopped believing in years ago."

"Maybe he'll find a little when we get his brother back." It was wishful thinking at its finest. The pile of rocks they'd just left behind told her Dean carried more than his share of guilt and self-imposed blame.

Jo's hand snaked out once again, stopping her in mid-stride. "Veronica, I don't think Sam's alive anymore." The words were so low she could barely make them out. "I think they hurt him bad and then they killed him. The Winchesters were pretty high up on their top ten to kill list before the Gate opened."

Her mouth opened twice before she found her voice. "Then I'll be prepared for that too." Thankfully, she'd have some time to work on a plan for that twist if it turned out to be true.

"Then I'll let you get back to your memorizing. I'm sure Dean's crash course was more than thorough." Like a switch, Jo's demeanor was back to normal, the woman hopelessly in love gone as if she'd never made an appearance. The sight was enough to plant a lump in Veronica's chest as big as her fist.

"Definitely. And I have a weapon's lesson this afternoon." The house was startlingly dim after the brightness of the forest. She blinked rapidly to adjust her eyes, heading immediately back to the table and her notes.

Plates clacked together as Jo set them on the counter. "He's a good teacher. You'll be hitting the center of the target before he's finished with you."

Veronica wasn't so sure she wanted that much familiarity with them, but if the need ever arose, she'd have to be able to hit what she was aiming at. The rest of the morning sped by as she read, quizzed herself, mouthed words and read some more. Dean walked by no less than a dozen times, the same smirk lifting his lips but he never said a word. Jo started a soup that was going to be dinner then laid out her own stack of papers on the opposite side of the table. They worked in silence, only the sound of Dean's movements, the quiet simmering of the soup pot and the slide of paper in the room.

She was stumbling through the final exorcism when Dean plucked the sheets right out of her hands. "Hey! Give those back. I'm on a deadline here."

"And since you studied through lunch I'll assume you weren't hungry. We're going to go blow things up now."

As soon as he said the words her stomach growled fiercely, her concentration broken completely. It didn't make a dent in his expression. "Fine. But if my hands shake too much to aim, it's all your fault." She snagged an apple from the pile on the counter and hurried after him. Jo's whispered 'good luck' lifted her spirits a bit. The book stuff she was confident about. The weapons? Well, not so much. She hadn't told Dean the reason her father had only taken her to the range once was because he'd given her up as a lost cause. There was no way she was shooting herself in the foot like that. But he'd know soon enough. Her only hope was to fake it well enough he wouldn't change his mind and decide to handcuff her as he'd threatened.

He stopped roughly fifty feet away from the house and dropped the duffel bag from his shoulder. It gave a sharp clank when it hit the ground. Exactly how many guns were in there? She didn't bother asking. It looked to her as if he'd brought all of them. He emptied the bag, laying the weapons out side by side from shortest to longest. A second, smaller bag he'd stuffed inside the duffel went next to them. Assuming he'd start her with the smallest, she frowned when he picked up one of the medium length ones. From her limited experience she thought it was a shotgun of some kind, but she wasn't willing to stake anything on it. With his other hand he grabbed two shells of ammunition about the circumference of a quarter and shook them lightly together. "What do you think is in these?"

She stared at them then back up to his expectant face. How the hell was she supposed to know? She'd actually opened her mouth to say exactly that when it clicked. "Salt. Those are the things you were working on yesterday."

His lips twitched up a bit as he nodded. "Good. And what does salt do?"

"It's a purifying agent. Demons, spirits, all manner of supernatural things can't cross an unbroken salt line. And they can harm the demon inside without permanent damage to the host," she said, taking one of the shells from his hand. Her fingers tingled slightly where they brushed his palm, but she pushed it down quickly. She held the round up between them as she felt her own lips match his expression.

He nodded approvingly, his expression growing into an actual smile. She nearly bit her tongue to keep it in her mouth. Holy Mother of God, that smile was a weapon in itself. She'd thought the scar was riveting and not in a bad way. Why he didn't give up the guns and violence and just charm demons out of their hosts she had no idea. They were certainly made of tougher willpower than she was to resist the slightest hint of flirt that went along with the smile. She looked down at the weapon to break the spell. She needed to concentrate if she was going to even have a chance at a good showing here.

He went on without a pause, either not noticing her stupor or ignoring it. She wasn't sure which option was the worst. "This is a double barrel shotgun. Pop the barrels, load the rounds like this and snap it back into place." He went through it twice more, quickly, the movements fluid, deadly graceful. She got the impression he could do it just as confidently blindfolded in a perfectly dark room. "Your turn."

Fumbling a bit with the sudden weight in her hands, Veronica somehow managed to juggle it all without dropping anything into the dirt. She took a moment to examine the shotgun. It looked like every one she'd seen on TV, but it was much heavier than the actors had made them out to be. The weight was clumsy to her, back balanced. She opened the barrel with the small lever Dean had used. It clicked into place, the dark eyes staring up at her expectantly. Swallowing down the nerves struggling to appear, she awkwardly placed the shells inside, ensuring she kept the muzzle end pointed away from Dean and the direction of the house. It took her two tries to get the barrels locked back into place. Dean kept his chuckle to a quiet bark of sound. She unloaded and reloaded it five more times, each repetition becoming a touch smoother. She was nowhere near Dean's facility, but she figured he wouldn't hold it against her. He did have a lifetime's worth of experience on her. "Why did you start with this one? Isn't a pistol easier?"

"Nope. There's nothing simpler than your basic shotgun. Rock salt rounds have a wide dispersal pattern. What does that tell you?"

He was like a teacher she'd once had, making her figure out the answer on her own. She wondered where he'd learned the technique. What she knew about his life didn't lend itself to teaching anyone much of anything. "Um, that I need to be pretty close to the target or it's useless?"

Nodding again, he tapped one finger on the weapon just above the pivot point. "It also means you don't have to be quite as accurate. If you aim for the chest you'll almost always hit something. You have to hold your shot until your target is within twenty feet. I know that seems really close, but any farther away and the salt just doesn't have the velocity it needs to do any damage." He gripped her shoulders and turned her to face a tree with a large X painted in green on it. "Find twenty feet."

After he stepped out of the way, she moved forward, eyeing the distance critically. Measurements hadn't been her best talent, but she thought she was pretty near it. "Here."

"You're about two feet too far away. Take one more step."

She did and stared down the tree. It was really close. Reaction time would be nothing with the speeds she'd seen demons move with. Yet Dean was still here and he'd been doing this for a very long time. It was possible. She barely kept the shotgun in her hands when he stepped up behind her, one arm reaching over her shoulder to point. Her spine tingled with that unsettling rush of energy again and she forced herself to focus on what he was saying and not what her body was telling her. Once he'd explained the cocking and safety mechanisms, he stepped away. She took a deep, mind cleansing breath and refused to look over to see if he'd noticed.

"Plant the butt in your shoulder. Make sure there's no space or you'll hurt something. I can get away with faking it, you can't. Gain eighty pounds of muscle and I'll let you hot dog it. That looks good. Move your right foot back a bit and lean forward into the shotgun. Fire when ready."

She wasn't stupid. She knew there would be a kick. She also hadn't heard Dean say anything specifically to warn her about it, despite the instruction about her stance. Figuring it was just another one of his tests, she flipped the safety catch and sighted down the barrel as he'd told her to do. Squeeze, don't yank. She heard her father's voice as if they'd been out on the firing range only the day before. It should be a surprise when it goes off. She smiled grimly at the memory, breathed out evenly and squeezed. Even expecting it, she almost got knocked on her ass.

The shotgun bucked in her hands, jumping upward so sharply, she nearly brained herself. She took a stumbling step back, struggling to keep her feet. Through it all, Dean didn't utter so much as a smile. Once she got the shotgun, and her heart, back under control, she looked up at the target. Her hands clenched around the shotgun when she saw tiny holes decorating the green paint. "Holy crap." She'd actually hit the damn thing.

"It kicks like a freaking mule, doesn't it?" That wasn't what her exclamation had been about, but if he wanted to take it that way she wasn't about to dissuade him. "It's better to let you feel it for yourself. Scares people if they're warned for some reason. Make sure it's on safe and let's go see what you hit." His eyes followed her every movement as she reengaged the safety. Keeping it pointed safely away from him, she followed him to the tree. He nodded once as his hand outlined the blast pattern. "See this spot here? That's the center of your shot. You need to come about five inches to your left to hit center mass. Not bad for your first attempt though."

The praise rolled through her with all the power of a cup of hot chocolate on a winter day. She was thrilled she'd hit the target at all. Not having him tell her she was the worst shot he'd ever seen was simply bonus points. "Okay. Let's kill us a tree."

By the end of the grueling lesson, Veronica's shoulder was screaming in surrender, her arms were so heavy she could barely lift her own hands, her abs felt like she'd done the 8-Minute Power Abs torture workout for about an hour straight and her brain was fried crispier than anything Colonel Sanders had ever thought up. Dean had not only given her more information than she'd ever need to know about every weapon they fired, he'd grilled her mercilessly on the pages he'd reeled off so quickly that morning. If he was trying to prove a point about how much she didn't know about his world, he succeeded brilliantly. But she wasn't about to back out. Not when she felt like she was just beginning to win him over. She did, however, wonder if she'd be able to get out of bed tomorrow morning. "So what's next, Mr. Miyagi? A little knife throwing?"

"Nope. I'm not letting you anywhere near a knife until you're at least moderately competent with a pistol."

Yeah, she had to admit he had a point. She actually hadn't been so bad with rifles in addition to the shotgun. But the pistols? Everything she'd learned had simply vanished once the weight of each gun settled into her hands. She'd had no problem keeping her eyes open and on the target with the rifles. Trigger squeeze and aiming was even growing habitual. The guns were supposed to be easier. She'd winged the tree a few times, but that was about it. Thankfully, he'd as much as admitted she wouldn't have much need of them since she wasn't going to be getting into fights with demons anyway. She wasn't exactly positive what he'd meant by the comment, but she didn't contradict him. She also promised herself she'd practice whenever she got the chance. "Does that mean I have the rest of the day off to finish studying?" Her voice had a touch of wistfulness she hoped Dean didn't hear. Then again, maybe he'd appreciate the honesty of it.

"You wish. Now we clean everything we fired." He held the door open for her, lips pulling back in a broad, fake grin. "We function just fine if we're covered in dirt. A dirty rifle, however, will jam and that gets us killed."

"Wait until you see me without a shower for a week. You might wish it was the rifle." She smiled when he let out a surprised bark of laughter and brushed by him into the house.

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cont.

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Thanks for reading!

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