The Killing Moon

[zatnikatel]

16. Extreme Ways

Hudak weeps herself dry, and she doesn't wipe the tears away, just lets them rest there on her cheeks until every trace of moisture has evaporated and salt trails stiffen her skin, so that when she yawns she feels her face crack. After yawning, she finds she can't close her mouth. It hangs open, as if her jaws have been ripped off their hinges and left swinging in the wind, like broken saloon doors in some Old West frontier town. She sits there, stock-still and stupefied, knees bent, hands resting on the floor beside her, staring at some indefinable spot of nothingness in the air and listening.

Dean is slumped next to her on the mattress, finally oblivious after having spent seconds, minutes, or hours, she doesn't even know, asking her why she was crying, after she had galloped around the room like a Triple Crown winner, throwing down handfuls of salt at every point of entry.

She listens and all she can hear is his breathing, fast, shallow. No sounds from outside. Dead zone now, dead zone where it hunts. Sam. Jesus.

Sam's pack is regurgitating its contents all over the floor, and right there on top is Sam's gun. And Hudak's body finally catches up with the fact her brain is poking her in the ribs and saying it might be a good idea to have the gun with the bendigo-killing silver bullets in it close by and handy, so she crabs over there, snatches it up, rummages for the bullets, and scoots back.

But the trouble is, now she has the gun.

She weighs it in her hand and she looks at Dean, lying there, hair and face sweat damp, skin ashy, eyes shadowed, a frown line between his eyebrows even while he sleeps.

She thinks he might be dying.

And that's a problem, because right here in her hand is the solution.

What do I do? she wonders. Christ, it wouldn't be the first time she shot a downed man, and she recalls it now: Old man Bender, staring up with mocking, challenging eyes, daring her to pull the trigger. And she had. She had planted it right between his eyes, here, have a third one, you murderous sonofabitch, had seen his momentary look of surprise, maybe even admiration, respect for the fact she'd had the cojones to do it.

For a second her head is full of how the sly gleam faded from his eyes and the blood started pooling around his head. She did it in cold blood, her hand steady, didn't flinch, didn't even bat an eyelid. And she hasn't felt guilt, or remorse, hasn't even really thought about it much apart from the time Bobby Singer told her she might want to consider cutting his boys a break if she didn't want to be up on charges herself. No, she blew the bastard away and strolled out into the yard to send Dean Winchester on his merry way to hell. She can't resist a wry chuckle, remembers what Sam said back then in the woods, how none of the mess that followed would ever have happened if she'd given him and his brother a ride.

Funny how one seemingly insignificant choice can change everything.

No, wait a minute. Strike that.

"Strike that," she says into thin air. "If you had just told me you were hurt, you stupid boy, I would have given you the ride," she hisses spitefully, and she even gives Dean a poke with the gun. "Everything would be fine. I could be writing fucking traffic citations right now if it weren't for you fucking Winchesters. Jesus."

Dean moans obliviously, and a muscle twitches under his eye.

"What do I do?" Hudak breathes. "What do I do, Dean? Do I just walk out of here right now, and leave you here for Bender and that thing to fight over? They don't want me. I could just go back to my dog and forget this mess ever happened." She looks at the door. "Behind door number one lies life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," she quips weakly. "What am I prepared to do?" She points the gun at the door. "Bang."

Dean is dying, she knows it because it was so clear that he knew it. "Them's the facts," she murmurs. The leg was a mess before he dragged himself off the mattress to try and get to his brother, and blood is seeping through the bandage again. The trap was a health hazard, and realistically his only hope was them getting him out of these woods to a hospital.

So. He can die up close and personal with Lee Bender's ghost while it drives him to insanity, or die spooning with Gabe Bendigo while it picks his brother's bones clean. And before that, he'll wake up and remember what happened, and then he'll insist they search for Sam, and Hudak will be doing exactly what she did all those weeks ago with the other half of the Winchester equation, while Dean fades away before her eyes. And then she can just go back to her dog and forget this mess ever happened.

Or he could die right here and now, without ever knowing, without ever waking up.

Hudak looks at the gun, looks at Dean. She wonders where would be best. "Head shot I guess," she muses. "Only knowing my luck, it'll ricochet off your thick skull and plug me right between the eyes." She shuffles up next to him, stares down. "Baby-face killer," she mutters, and she sits up on her knees, points the gun.

Her hands are shaking.

She lays the gun down, rubs at her cheek tiredly. "Guess I'll clean up the leg before you come round," she decides.

She hauls the first aid kit over, retrieves the antiseptic, liberally soaks the filthy, scarlet-drenched bandage, starts peeling it off, and wrinkles her nose. "Christ."

"That bad, huh?" Dean croaks.

Hudak claps her hand to her heart. "Fuck! Don't you do that to me you bastard."

Dean sniggers, just barely. "Got to stay frosty, Kathleen. And when you have a killshot, you damn well take it. You don't talk yourself out of it. Fuckin' amateur."

Shaking her head as she breathes her fright back down to manageable, Hudak carefully eases the dressing off the rest of the way. "You just lay there and let me point that thing at you," she snaps at him as she thinks on it, even though she knows she never would have done it. "Jesus, you're nine kinds of crazy. How did you know I wouldn't pull the trigger?"

Dean shrugs, slowly, painfully, like even that slight movement is a huge effort. "I didn't know."

"And still you lay there?" Hudak challenges him.

"And still I lay here." Dean doesn't move, just flops there looking broken, breath wheezing like it's an effort to get it in and out. "Are we protected?" he adds hoarsely.

"I laid salt. That's all. I don't know how to do the symbols." Hudak gestures down at the floor. "That's why I had the gun," she says meaningfully. "But it hasn't been back. The sun's coming up, so maybe it's gone to ground."

Dean stares back at her, and it's like he's daring her to say his brother's name. She peels her eyes away, delicately picks off the gauze, can't help lifting a hand up to her face at the mess she reveals, the puncture wounds a furious red, the surrounding skin mottled dark, and seeping blood and pus.

"Smells bad?" he fishes, and there is a knowing tone to his voice that she doesn't miss.

She nods, and he's calm, placid almost.

"Is it sweet, like fruit, or is it like ammonia?"

"I can't believe I'm sniffing your leg," Hudak jokes weakly as she leans down. "Sweet. And there's a lot of gunk in there that needs to come out."

Dean sighs, but he doesn't really seem surprised. "What does it look like? Color, I mean?"

"Green." Hudak can't help the grimace that forms on her face. "Isn't it always?"

"Not the gunk," Dean clarifies patiently. "The leg. The skin around the wounds."

"Well, red," Hudak tells him. "Purplish. Dark, anyway. That's bad isn't it?"

"Could be," Dean confirms ruefully before he backtracks, pushing himself up on the pillows. "Protection first. Sigils. Is there paper here? A pen?"

She has a notebook I he pack and he takes it with a shaking hand, draws the designs slowly, frowning and teasing his battered lip with the tip of his tongue as he concentrates. He sags back as he hands it to her, drained by the effort, and the paper shivers with his tremors as she takes it.

"Those three," he murmurs. "Repeat them to fill up the space and draw a line in between to join them up." He closes his eyes for a minute, breathes in deep, long. "Like a charm bracelet, see? Semicircles on the floor, in front of the door, the windows. Use the paint. Then you trickle salt over the paint lines." He rests his forearm over his eyes then.

She has to ask him, wants to think he has a plan, a solution. "Dean. What are-"

"Nope."

She tries again. "But what are we going to do?"

He makes a harsh sound of exasperation. "I'm thinking."



Sam opens his eyes to blackness. He stifles a groan, waves his hand about uselessly in the air, has to settle for walking his fingers up his body, guided by his shirt buttons, to get to his incredible exploding head and try to soothe it into submission. "I'm blind," he mutters.

"You ain't blind, boy."

"And I'm hearing things," Sam goes on. "I've gone mad. I knew it was only a matter of time."

It's quiet then, because it was his imagination and there's just no way.

"Your ears are fine too, Sam."

And it turns out Sam is leaning up against something warm and solid, and he turns into the embrace and holds on for dear life, and Bobby holds on just as hard, hugs him back, rubs his back with strong, capable hands, and tells him everything will be fine.

But even while he sobs out his relief, Sam is thinking of that split-second decision to grab Hudak and hang on, and he's replaying it in his mind, in slow motion, and thinking he should have let it fucking well have her and be damned, and then picked up his brother and run for the hills while it was distracted.



Dean lies with his face covered all the while she spray paints the sigils. Sam, he thinks. Jesus. Fuckin' idiot. And he feels useless, feels like the failure he is. One job to do, to take care of his kid brother, to put him first, to keep him safe, and he fucks it up grandly.

His foot nags endlessly at him. It isn't the agonizing bolts of white-hot pain he remembers feeling when he planted it square on the wall, but the fierce ache isn't far off it. It's like one of those cartoon bumps on the head, he muses, like the ones Tom and Jerry sprout every time they whale on each other with skillets, and Dean wonders if it would literally be throbbing and thrumming, ballooning in and out like it grew its very own heartbeat, if he dared to look at it. It's not good, because he's got places to go, people to see, things to do. He has to find his brother, and for a second he feels the horror he has buried deep under the mental equivalent of the cave-in he hauled Sam across start shifting the rocks aside, start pushing a grimy, clawed hand out to grab him and start shaking him viciously by the throat, and no. No. Not cracking up now. Man with a plan. Once he comes up with it. And once he does, man, this is so fuckin' over.

He peeps out from under his arm at Hudak as she studies the paper carefully, sprays the shapes, squints, rubs out, starts again. Got a civilian involved too, as if losing his brother isn't enough. He's going for the record, that's for sure. And Christ, but he wonders if he'd have done what his brother did had it been Sam lying here in his place. He wonders if he would have just stopped, watched, stared into her eyes as it wrestled her all the way out of the window and vanished, wonders if he really might have thrown the fucker a bone to keep it occupied while he picked up his brother and ran for the hills. He wonders, and he doesn't know the answer.

Hudak stands up, scratches her head as she examines her artwork before turning and placing the paint can on the table. She scoops out a jug of salt from the large burlap sack on the floor and starts laboriously trickling salt over the paint, pushing stray grains up towards the lines, keeping it neat and tidy, until the job is done.

Dean emerges from behind his arm as she walks back across the room to kneel down beside his foot, and he steels himself because he knows damn well what has to be done and that he'll be lucky if the shock doesn't finish him. "So we need to clean that ankle up," he broaches, and she flicks him an uneasy look. "This is how it goes down," he continues, forcing a calm he doesn't feel. "You need to haul that table over here. There's a rope in my pack. You secure the good foot to the table leg, nice and tight, you hear? That'll keep your workspace clear."

Her expression turns puzzled but Dean smiles at her, reassuring, and he raises his hands. "And then you cuff my hands to the fireplace," he goes on easily. "Just there, the fender, see? That way you won't get hurt when you start in with the knife."

Hudak shoots bolt upright again, stumbles away to stands at the table, leaning forward onto her hands. "I can't do that," she chokes out. "It's one thing to have Sam hold on to you, but this - no. I can't strap you down and do this to you."

Dean is quiet for a minute, clears his throat. "But my brother isn't here to hold me down this time, Kathleen," he says, keeping it reasonable. "I can't do this unless you secure me. You will get hurt. Do you hear me? I will hurt you if you don't bench me for this. I won't be able to help myself."

She spins, hollers at him, sudden fury turning her cheeks pink. "How dare you make me do this," she scathes at him. "How dare you and your brother come to my town and put me through this…"

Dean doesn't even try to interrupt, because her rage is too many kinds of awesome to cut off in mid-flow.

"I've had it. To here. Christ on a bike. There were two other officers on duty that day, but you had to pick me. Why? Huh? I know why! Because you thought you'd switch on the million-dollar smile and I'd just fall at your feet, you… you…"

"Man-whore?" Dean prompts dryly.

"And I'm fucking terrified!" she thunders back, as if he never spoke. "Terrified."

And at that, Dean's flippancy is abruptly gone, spilling away like his water broke or something, and he can feel his face crumple as he yells back just as loudly. "I'm fuckin' terrified too, Kathleen. My brother is out there." His hands fly up to his eyes, and he roars out in rage, frustration, breathes in sobbing gasps. "My brother is out there. With that thing. And maybe with Bender. Who is corporeal when he wants to be." His voice is harsh, and as desperate as the pictures that flit through his mind's eye. "Do you understand what that could mean for my brother, Kathleen? That sonofabitch raped me. Do you understand what that could mean for my brother? Do you understand?"

Hudak's mouth flaps for a few seconds until she grits her teeth, stares at the floor, and Dean wonders if she maybe even runs through her new mantra a few times before she stalks over to his pack, tips it upside-down, plucks the rope out from the pile.

"Just fucking admit you picked me because I'm female," she snaps as she starts hauling the table over towards the mattress.

"This face is currency, Kathleen," Dean confirms weakly, muffled by his arms. "Of course I picked you because you were the only woman. I'm not stupid."

"I could have been gay for all you knew," she retorts.

"I would have cured you of that, you can bet on it," he parries.

She throws him a marrow-freezing look as she pushes the table the rest of the way, grunting with the effort as it grinds across the floor, and Dean thanks God for good, solid, well-made furniture that's going to hold him in one place while he suffers, squirms and maybe even screams. Hudak squats and loops the rope around the table leg and his good ankle, making a few passes before she knots it and reaches round her back for the cuffs.

"Are you wearing a belt?" he says quietly.

Wordlessly, she unhooks it, slithers it out from her jeans, and hands it over.

"You'll need to sit on the leg," he adds. "High up. Pin it down."

She bites her lip. "I don't. Think I can-"

"Yeah, you can," Dean cuts in, gentle now. "Listen to me. My dad and my brother have tied me down and dug God knows what out of me more times than I can even remember. They've stitched me up with wood splinters and fishing line, even safety pins one time. See this?" He pulls up his tee, points to a livid, blotched scar above his right hip. "I broke open a bullet, sprinkled the gunpowder on there and lit it up myself. I've superglued myself closed before now, Kathleen. And three months ago I was electrocuted and had a heart attack, and-"

"A heart attack?" She pales, swallows.

"It's fine," Dean hurries out. "I'm fine. It's fixed. Long story. But I'm not going into cardiac arrest during this, I promise. I can take a licking and keep on ticking, every damn time, and you know that… you saw me after Bender did his thing." He pauses, smiles. "Whatever you hear, it won't be the worst pain I've ever been in. Not by a country mile. And I'll probably pass out anyway."

Hudak takes a deep breath, visibly steadies herself, nods. "I'll do it."

Dean puts the belt between his teeth and she cuffs his wrists to the fender. And she starts, and it turns out Dean lied, because while this isn't the worst pain he's been in, it most definitely is within a country mile of it, maybe even as close as being in the ballpark of it. It's blow-the-top-of-his-head-off pain that has him biting off strangled cries, locks the muscles of his jaw and neck, makes his body rigid with agony, makes his back arch and flex in new and exciting ways, since it's one of the few parts of him that he can move, makes his hips judder as he tries to bounce and roll her off, makes him batter his head on the mattress so hard he can feel the floor through its bulk, makes his vision tunnel, makes spots dance before his eyes, makes him think he might hurl so hard he'll turn himself inside out with the force of his retching.

But unfortunately it isn't the kind of pain that makes him pass out.



Sam wakes up again with his head lolling on Bobby's shoulder. "It's so damn good to see you, Bobby," he breathes. "We just. Jesus. We really thought-"

Bobby cuts in. "It's here with us Sam. So keep it down. No sudden moves."

Sam tenses, darts his eyes about in the darkness. "Where?"

"Ahead of us and to the right. It's asleep."

Squinting in the darkness, Sam waits for his pupils to enlarge sufficiently, and then he can just make out its curled up bulk, feels his nerve endings freeze in ice-cold fear. "Christ," he whispers. "What do we do? How do we-"

"It isn't ready to deal with us yet," Bobby says, casual almost.

Sam finds his knuckle is in his mouth, and he bites down hard on it for a minute. "Has it been coming back here when it isn't after us? And you've been here with it and it hasn't-"

Bobby sniggers. "It's working up to me, boy. It's got a hiker or two to finish first, Kathleen's cop friend too. She was alive when I got here, didn't last much longer."

Sam shakes himself out of his stupor. "What about you? Are you okay? Has it hurt you?"

Bobby shifts, and Sam can just make out his head shaking. "Nope. Had a headache when I got here, but it hasn't come anywhere near me. It's even feeding me."

"Feeding you?" Sam ponders. "Why?"

"To keep some meat on the bones is my guess," Bobby says ruefully. "It isn't dense, that's for sure." He sighs. "You've been here for coming up on three hours, drifting in and out. You know what day it is?"

Sam thinks, scratches his head, glances up at skinny streaks of light filtering through from above. "No… I lost all track." He scuffs a hand through his hair and winces. "And I hit my head. Is that daylight? I know it's about a day since the tree fell down… no, more… must be two. I think. Bobby, are you sure you're not hurt?"

"I'm fine, boy. Thing knocked me out of the way as the tree fell." Bobby pauses for a second, continues haltingly. "Sam. Your brother. Is he…?"

Pulling his knees up, Sam parks his arms, rests his brow on them and thinks about his reply.

"Sam…?" Edgy now, sharper.

"God, Bobby… he… Jesus. It just goes from bad to worse. He's hurt real bad." Sam trails off, feels his throat swell, his eyes water, and he has to blink hard, sniff it back in.

"The tree didn't hit Dean, I'm sure it didn't." Bobby's voice is rusty, has a tremor in it, and fuck, Sam just can't bear to tell him, but he has to. So he does.

"Not the tree… he was running. He stepped in a bear trap. We got it off him, but." He has to stop, has to breathe deep for a few seconds. "His leg. It's a mess. Infected. We managed to get him to the Bender cabin. There was morphine there, we gave it to him to get the trap off. Vicodin too. But he's-"

"Just - wait a second," Bobby cuts in. "Spool back. What Bender cabin? How the hell did this happen?"

The words tumble out of Sam. "We were trying to get away, we saw the cabin in the trees. It's the Bender cabin, the one Doc Swenson told us about, remember? Their initials are carved everywhere. Bender initials, Bs, and there are journals there. A first aid kit too. We're doing our best, but his leg's a mess, Bobby, it's-"

"Wait, slow down," Bobby interrupts again. "So this thing came back for him after it took me?"

"No, no…" Sam sinks his head in his hands. "That's just it. He wasn't running from the wendigo. He was running from Lee Bender."

"Having a flashback you mean?" Bobby asks. "And he bolted, like back at my place?"

"No," Sam says softly. "He was running from Lee Bender. We saw him. We all saw him… he came at us. We didn't bring enough salt rounds… Kathleen fought him off with the anchor chain from the trap."

"Bender is out there?" Bobby barks, almost simultaneously darting a look over at the thing and hastily muting the outburst to a hiss.

"We never burned the body," Sam reminds him bleakly.

"So all that twitching… your brother could see him? And he never said?" Bobby is horrified, aghast. "Jesus, I will wring that boy's neck when I get hold of him."

"He thought he was going crazy, Bobby." Sam puts it out of his head, the awful desperation in Dean's eyes. "That he was imagining it because of the wendigo. But seeing Lee must have been what flipped him back into Gabe. We thought it was - something else. But-"

"He flipped back into Gabe?" The old man is newly appalled, and Sam hurries on.

"Not for long… it was right after you were taken. He helped us find one of the mines. Turns out Lee had shown it to him. We were hoping it might have you stashed there, but it dead-ended. Looked like it was an old lair, there were bones." He leans back stretches out his legs now. "Jesus, he groans. "I can't believe I missed Bender."

Bobby's tone is gentle for all his shock. "Not your fault, boy. We couldn't have expected this. Double whammy. Christ."

"You don't understand," Sam insists. "When he was Gabe he was trying to tell me Lee was out there, told me he kept catching sight of him in the trees, that he could hear him in his head all the time. But then when we got to the mine it was like it just switched off… he said it was the first time his head had been clear."

Bobby sighs. "Iron."

Sam nods. "There's more," he says. "Are you sitting down?"

"Been doing nothing but the last couple of days," Bobby growls.

"This thing… the wendigo." Sam glances over at it where it slumbers, wonders if it might hear him simply because he's talking about it, half expects it to throw a pillow at him and holler at him to shut up so it can sleep. "The initials… the cabin has a whole bunch of them carved into one of the roof beams, and one of them looks like a G. We found a bunch of journals and it looks like this thing was one of them back in the day."

"Bendigo," Bobby murmurs.

"Yeah, but not just any bendigo." Sam leans in closer, confidential. "It is a G. The initial. The journals were Gabe Bender's, because, what the heck - it turns out there was one." He throws up his hands, lets them flop back down onto this thighs. "He built the cabin, back in the last century, got snowed in up here, ate his brother. As you do."

Sam can just about make out Bobby's open mouth. "Gabe Bender," the old man breathes. "Jesus… so that's why it never hurt him out in the woods with Kathleen."

Sam nods. "It must be. I think it thinks it's him. Or he's it. Or something like that."

They sit there in silence for a few minutes before Bobby speaks again.

"So how is it you're still here, boy? I mean - I'm glad to see you, but Jesus, Sam. Not here. You should be long gone."

"Dean wouldn't leave without you, Bobby," Sam replies, and he shrugs at the old man's headshake. "I tried to talk him out of it… we didn't have the map, that thing was out there. I wanted to get him back to Hibbing, come back with a map and find the other mines. But he was adamant, so we figured we'd search around the one we found, give it a day before heading back into town. That's pretty much when Bender showed himself."

"And your brother rabbited," Bobby surmises.

"Yeah, straight into the trap," Sam confirms. "Bender chased us to the cabin… there was salt there."

"Yeah," Bobby murmurs. "To preserve the meat."

"We fought him off, and I laid a perimeter, salt lines and sigils." Sam hears his voice crack as he goes on. "I thought we'd be safe."

Bobby nods slowly in the darkness. "But you laid separate lines."

Sam doesn't even reply, just waits for the reprimand, but the old man is perfectly neutral if regretful.

"You couldn't have known they were in cahoots with each other."

"You knew!" Sam chokes out bitterly. "You just worked it out without the details. Dean knew."

"Kid, I've been a hunter for thirty years," Bobby says gently, and he reaches out a hand, squeezes the back of Sam's neck.

"Dean hasn't even been alive for thirty years," Sam counters.

Bobby nods again in the dark. "Well, your brother… he's a whole different breed of horse. With him it's instinctive. He doesn't learn it - he already knows it. Best damn hunter I ever saw, your brother. Smart as a box full of monkeys."

"He was trying to tell me. About the perimeter." Sam bites his lip. "I shot him down. He was doped. I didn't listen to him. I should have trusted him."

Over in its corner the thing stretches, shifts, and they both freeze for a minute until it slumps back down.

"Sam, you were out of the game for… what, two years? Three?" Bobby says then. "Don't blame yourself for this. Your brother won't. You're playing catch-up. No weekend tennis player's going win the US Open, boy. It takes constant practice to get to where your brother is on the totem. You'll get there."

"But I should have listened to him," Sam says miserably.

"Yeah, you should have," Bobby says, but his tone is still even, non-judgmental. "And all this means is that next time you will."

Sam can feel the old man's eyes on him in the dark, swallows hard, gathers himself. "Okay," he says. "What's the plan for getting out of here?"



Dean breathes through the pain as he forces spaghettio-slop down from a can, reflects on the fact that breathing through pain while forcing slop down from a can, and concludes that deja vu can be pretty damn familiar sometimes. He glances over at Hudak, sees her watching him. "Ever had that weird feeling you did something already?" he remarks.

She forks up her own slop, sighs. "What are we going to do?" she says.

Dean ignores the question for a few minutes, keeps chewing as he thinks about maybe just never answering, about staying in that moment forever, and fuck knows that won't be long for him. He revels in the brief luxury of not being the one figuring out the plans, deciding the strategy, pondering the tactics, making the mistakes. No responsibilities. But, "I'm going get my brother back, Kathleen," he says finally, and he manages to inject a shot of confidence into the statement even though he's tight-chested and breathless, can still feel the ache of strained muscles and tendons in his neck and shoulders.

Hudak stares him down for a minute. "Just like that? Because I'm looking all around me Dean, and I don't see your stunt double anywhere."

Dean nods his appreciation at her sarcasm, reaches up a hand to rub hard at his neck. "Kathleen," he rasps, coughs to clear his throat. "I think what we have here is a failure to communicate. But I'm good with it, being as you aren't coming anyway."

He waits for the explosion, but after a moment she smiles, pushes up onto her feet. "We'll get you packed up then, shall we?" she tells him, with faked brightness. "I'll put some dressings in your pack… the gun, bullets. Will you need food, you think-"

"I'm not leaving him out there with those things," Dean cuts in, firm.

"Oy," Hudak barks out, and she facepalms before sitting down on the floor opposite him and fixing him with a look that is way softer than Dean expected, one that throws him off, maybe even worries him a little. "What do think of this whole set-up you have going with your brother Dean?" she says. "Because… God. You know, when Bender had you before and we were searching, I asked Sam what he thought you might have wanted for him and he said you'd want him to be happy, to live for you."

Hudak stops and waits like she's expecting Dean to say something. And he finds he's got nothing, because he's pushing it away and down, the acknowledgment that this fuckin' dependency isn't normal, that maybe it's a millstone anchoring him and his brother as the tide rises higher and higher, high enough to drown them both in unwanted responsibility.

"Don't you think he'd want you to do the same for him?" Hudak breaks into the silence.

"My brother isn't dead, Kathleen," Dean mutters back at her, and maybe he finds he can at least try to broach the fucked-up mess that is family for him. "And anyway, it isn't that simple. It's my job. He's my brother."

Hudak nods. "He's your brother, Dean. But he's not your job. Don't you want more than just being your brother's keeper? Don't you think Sam wants more for you than that? More for you than this life, and when I say life I mean it in the loosest sense of the word, Dean, because this, this thing that you have, that you do - it isn't life. It isn't the life you deserve."

Dean glowers at her and reverses into denial. "I'm happy with my-"

"You're what, twenty six?" she jumps in again. "Twenty seven? Don't you think about real life? About a home, kids maybe?"

"It isn't that simple," Dean says again, and she exhales sharply.

"Yes, Dean, it is," she counters, with a note of finality that tells Dean she knows the conversation is over, and that it changed nothing. "It really is that simple if you let it be. If you want it to be."

Dean waits for what he hopes is a decent interval before he prods, "Will you help me get my boots on?"

"Yes, I will help you get your boots on, Dean," Hudak replies, and Dean suddenly thinks that he's heard her sound cold, desperate, angry as hell and dismissive. But this is the first time he's heard her sound crushed.

She pushes up again. "What's the plan? How are we doing this? Since you can't actually walk?"

"We're not doing this," Dean informs her.

"Oh, we're doing this, Dean," she replies, and she chuckles humorlessly. "You're in my custody. Which means I'm legally responsible for you."

It's left-of-field enough for Dean to let his bewilderment overcome his discomfort. "In your custody? What the hell does that mean?"

"I arrested you," Hudak says. "Well, I arrested Gabe, anyway."

"You fuckin' arrested him?" Dean splutters weakly. "I mean me? I mean him?"

Hudak smiles thinly. "Yeah, he was getting restless. I think he was scared of me."

"Well, maybe you reminded him of Missy," Dean spits back, with some venom.

Rolling her eyes, Hudak glances towards the other room. "We can maybe break the bedframe down, MacGyver a crutch, or a splint or something so you don't have to put all your weight on the leg." She stops suddenly, and her voice turns brittle. "The leg. You know it's infected, Dean. You know this is, it's-"

"You're right, I know what it is," Dean snaps. "And I'm still doing it. So just get me booted and spurred, splint me and point me in the right direction. I'll draw them off, and you can hike back to town and forget any of this ever happened, forget you ever met us. It's what you want after all."

Christ, he's exhausted, his body aches, his shoulders are tensed, bunched, and his guts are spasming. But the relief, the fuckin' relief when she bends, picks up his boots, and kneels down next to him, is so intense he could maybe float off on it.

She lifts his good foot first, maneuvers it into its boot, loops the laces.

"Bunny ears," he says softly. "You did it the bunny ears way." See, Sammy, here are the bunny's ears and they're so long he has to knot them up just like this so he don't trip over them…

She doesn't look up. "That's how my brother showed me," she says. She lifts the other boot, that boot, and then she does look up. "I'm going to pull the lace right out of this one," she says calmly. "And then I'm going to try to ease your foot in. But at some point you're going to have to push, because I can't grab you round the ankle and force the boot on."

It sounds difficult but it is, Dean finds out, inch by agonizing inch, as he braces against her thigh, grits his teeth, pushes, feels sweat bead his brow and tears breach his eyelids. Sneakers, he thinks, fuckin' sneakers, and he longs for his low-tops, maybe even for slippers, Christ, even wishes for flip flops or those sandals, what are they called, the ones preachers wear with socks, Jesus boots, that's it.

He must black out for a few seconds because he comes round to the cool sensation of moistened cloth on his face wiping away the mess he made as he sobbed and lugied his way to momentary unconsciousness.

"It's done," Hudak soothes. "Sorry. Should have thought to use a plastic bag."

"Plastic bag?" Dean mutters, dazed and confused.

She smiles suddenly. "Years back, we all had these thigh boots, like Pretty Woman. Fuck-me boots, we called them. The only way I could slide them on was if I wore plastic bags on my feet."

"Fuck-me boots," Dean echoes her wistfully. "Please tell me you still have them."

Hudak is tapping her fingers on the seams of her pants. "Well, you'll never know, will you?"

Dean ignores her, is already advancing through his plan, knowing that he'll need help to get upright and moving. He heaves himself more upright, and jerks his head over towards the plastic box. "Is there anything in there that'll get me on my feet?"

Hudak blanks at him for a moment and then her mouth falls open. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"Speed, whiz, crank, blues, uppers, bennies," Dean tells her. "Crazy medicine, Kathleen. You know exactly what I'm saying. I need to function. So. Is there anything in there that'll get me on my feet?"

She snaffles the edge of the box, drags it over, angry and aggressive as she roots about, plucks out a bottle and tosses it at him. "Dexamphetamine," she snaps. She doesn't look at him, sits, hugs her knees, and her breathing is fast, shallow, her face flushed, her knuckles white.

Dean takes a deep breath, confronts it. "I can never explain him and me to you," he says. "You'll never get it. I'm finding him. You don't have to come - fact is, I'd rather you didn't. I don't want your blood on my hands, Kathleen. It means too much to me." He leans across to the cup of water his brother parked by the mattress, unscrews the bottle cap, palms three of the small white pills, washes them down, settles back to wait for the buzz.

"Maybe I understand more than you think, Dean," Hudak says then. "Maybe I understand that you're a guy in his mid-twenties who remembers exactly when and where his kid brother said his first word, took his first steps… how old were you? Six? Seven? How can you know that stuff? Why would you even bother committing it to memory?" She rests her chin on her knees. "Besides. You need someone to carry the packs. The guns."

She doesn't break Dean's stare, and he doesn't honestly know what to do with her offer. "Look, Kathleen," he says, and he can't work out whether his words are laced with frustration or thanks. "You don't owe me anything. And you sure as hell don't know me well enough to die with me or for me."

"I know you well enough," she insists quietly. "And I'm not letting you do this by yourself."

Somehow Dean knows she doesn't mean looking for his brother. Somehow he knows what she means is that she isn't going to let him die out there alone. And for all his bravado and fighting words, he's pathetically grateful for it.

Maybe she has worked it out too, because she shrugs and her eyes are suddenly knowing. "I want to see how it ends, Dean," she murmurs.



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