SPN Fic: The Human Factor
Okay, this one kinda went the weird way around the block before it got here.
I started out writing a SPN_500 Challenge ficlet just cause I was bored, and this notion appealed to me in a much longer applications, but I didn't really want to go as angsty as it wanted to be in a longer form, so I thought I'd give her a whirl in the 500 words or less world. Given that the challenge there was MacGyver episode titles, I decided on The Human Factor as a title, and then proceeded to go.
But then, as I'm wont to do, I got WAY wordier than 500 words, which they frown on over at SPN_500 (mostly cause I'm always doing that, and they said they'd burn me at the stake if I kept it up), so I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but then I remembered that I am SUPPOSED to be writing First fanfics for my spn_challenges First Times Chart, which I've been terribly negligent in doing.
Do that's where I am now. This is totally a first-time story for Dean, but I didn't really have a good grip of what kind of first it was. Or rather, I couldn't really cop to what kind of first it is without taking some of the impact out of the story. So I decided to go with "First Job," cause, mostly, that's what it is.
So here ya goes. As always, looking for any feedback you've got to offer, good or bad. Thanks!
Title: The Human Factor
Author:
dodger_winslow
Challenge: spn_challenges First Time Chart (First Job)
Rating: T
Genre: Gen
Pairings: None
Warnings/Spoilers: Violence
Disclaimers: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for a while.
Summary: It gets easier.
The Human Factor
He could hear her coming long before she reached him, scrambling through the thick tangle of underbrush, breathing in gasps of terror and exhaustion. She burst into the clearing only a few feet away from where he lay in wait.
She saw him and tried to jump away. Her foot twisted on a rock. She fell.
She began to cry.
"It’s all right," Dean said. He held out a hand to calm her as he approached. "It’s all right. Don’t be frightened."
She stared at him in mute horror. Her body, crisscrossed with dozens of cuts and bruises, trembled in a palsy of panic. She tried to hide her nakedness from him to no avail. The whine that tore from her lips seemed as much animal as it was human.
"Don’t be frightened," Dean said again.
Something about his voice reassured her. She stared at him with the blind hope of the forsaken. "He’s going to kill me," she whispered.
"I won’t let him hurt you," Dean said gently. She blinked at him, afraid to believe. He took a step closer. "Come here," he said, glancing back along the track of her reckless flight. "Come to me so I can help you."
A stick snapped in the brush. She crouched lower into the sparse scatter of ground debris, her eyes stark with fear as she stared back the way she’d come.
"I can’t help you if you don’t come to me," Dean said. He, too, was watching the undergrowth behind her, his eyes searching for some indication of where her pursuer would emerge into the clearing.
She moaned, a guttural sound of pure despair. "Help me," she pleaded. "Please help me."
"I will," Dean said. "Come here. Now."
The authority in his voice won out over her fear. She scrambled to his side, hiding in the lee of his body. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around her slim, trembling shoulders. "It’s all right now," he said. "Everything is going to be all right."
She smiled at him, tremulous, grateful. The terror in her eyes eased as she believed the gentle way his hands laid themselves against her.
Dean pulled her to her feet, nestling her close to him in a way that made her feel protected. She never saw his gun. She never feared him, even as she died, silver cutting through her skull and into her brain, splattering his jacket with blood and gore and regret.
John stepped into the clearing as Dean lowered her lifeless body to the ground, settling it carefully into a nest of leaves and sticks and underbrush. He stood near the treeline, watching as Dean salted her, then set her remains to fire.
They watched her burn together, then buried the ashes where she’d fallen.
"You okay?" John asked as they walked back to the Impala.
Dean nodded.
They didn’t speak again until they were on the road. "I’m sorry she reverted before we got to her," John said suddenly, his eyes on the road as he drove. "It’s harder when they don’t know what they are."
Dean nodded again, but didn’t speak.
They drove in silence for several minutes.
"Pull over," Dean said suddenly.
John barely had the Impala to the shoulder before Dean was on his knees in the gravel. John let the car idle, studying the pavement ahead while his son retched himself dry on the side of the road.
"Sorry," Dean said as he climbed back into the car and closed the door.
John nodded. He put the Impala in gear, and pulled back onto the highway.
"It’s what we do," John said almost half an hour later. A quiet rain had started to fall, wetting the world to a dull, merciless gray. "Sometimes I wish it wasn’t, but it is."
"I know that."
"It’s important work. She’d killed half a dozen people that we know of. She would have kept killing if we hadn’t stopped her."
"I know, Dad," Dean said. He was staring out the window, watching the scenery pass.
"It will get easier," John offered after a long beat.
"I know."
Neither of them spoke again until they’d settled into the cheap motel room, barely taking the time to strip out of their muddy clothes before falling into beds sheeted with worn cotton starched to the consistency of corrugated cardboard. It was still raining, the gentle patter of it a quiet comfort in the dark still.
"I’m proud of you, son," John said suddenly.
Dean opened his eyes. He lay there for a moment, savoring the sound of the words on air that smelled of ammonia and moldy oranges.
"Try to get some sleep," John said after a beat. "I want to get an early start tomorrow. There’ve been a rash of disappearances in Medford, Oregon I want to look in to."
"What are we looking at?" Dean asked.
"Don’t know. Won’t know until we get there."
"Long drive," Dean noted.
"Longer where you’re making it alone." John returned. He waited almost a minute before adding, "It’s easier for me, having you here, Dean. Sam wasn’t ever the type to take to it. He couldn’t have done what you did today. I wouldn’t have trusted him to do it."
"Sam’s tougher than you think."
"I’m not talking about Sam. I’m talking about you. I can trust you, Dean. I always could."
Dean didn’t know how to answer that, so he didn’t.
"Get some sleep," John said again when the silence between them had stretched on too long.
Dean closed his eyes. Lying in the dark, he listened to the rain and the sound of his father breathing.
-finis-