Fic: Gods and Monsters (4/7)
Gods and Monsters (4/7)
By: Pen37
Beta: clarksmuse
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean, Jo.
Pairing: Chloe/Dean Sam/Jo
Disclaimer: Not Mine, Fun only.
Summary: The Orpheum theatre in Memphis has troubles with a Ghost. Sam has issues with Trust. What is Chloe hiding from the Guys? What are the Guys hiding from Chloe?
This is part of my Sam Dean and Chloe crossover series Special Projects.
They follow in this order:
Unstrung Hero
Now Stop Me if You've heard this one,
The Greatest Hits of Mapquest,
Devil's Dance,
Phone Calls From the Edge,
Didn't AC/DC Do A Song About this?,
We find Ourselves in the Same Old mess
Sam, Chloe and The Naked Teenage Wiccan Newbie Adventure.
Gods and Monsters Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Crossfire,
The Language of Waffles,
Conservation of Pain.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #100 Writers choice. (For this fic, I'm saying that the prompt is Trust) The table is here.
Chloe thought that the Orpheum reminded her a little of the theater in the older version of Phantom of the Opera: majestic and grand, like an elegant matron still in her prime. Not, like an exploding monkey, thankyouverymuch.
As she worked her way around the catwalks, she thought of Lon Cheney, hiding a grotesque deformity and a tortured soul behind a mask. What is it about girls who dig on the tragic types?
Then again, the phantom wasted most of his time on Christine. She supposed angsty types needed their porcelain dolls to sit unattainably up on their pedestals.
On second thought, the monkey analogy was looking better and better. Still, in a theatre like this, she could imagine someone like Byron from Smallville hiding out from the sunlight, writing bad poetry and using trapdoors to get around.
She finished scanning the loft areas and then climbed back down to the stage below, just in time to meet Sam and Dean as they crawled out from underneath it.
“Nothing,” She shook her head.
Dean nodded. “Sam, why don’t you go help Jo finish with the seats? I’ll take Chloe to check out the dressing rooms.”
Chloe knew instantly that something was wrong. They were being totally obvious with the non-verbal. She followed Dean and his scanner backstage and down dark corridors past dressing rooms. She wondered if he really wanted her help, or if this was a ploy to get her alone and try to mack on her.
They found their way into a storage room with props from an old Christmas musical production. When Dean didn't show any inclination of wanting to move on, Chloe figured that he had something on his mind. She sat down on an old, red-painted sleigh and pushed some fake-snow out of the way to make room for Dean to sit next to her. Dean smiled a sad-looking smile, and instead leaned against a giant faux brick fireplace.
“So what’s up, doc?” Chloe smiled back tentatively, hoping to lighten the mood.
“Did I ever tell you that you’re gorgeous when you smile?”
Her smile widened in genuine pleasure at the complement, and she ducked her head to hide a blush. “As flattering as that sounds, Dean, I get the feeling that you didn’t bring me back here to complement my smile.”
He shook his head sadly. “I’ve done some things that I regret, Chloe. Mostly, I try not to have regrets, and not to look back. But there’ve been some doozys. And occasionally, I wish I could just have that day as a do over.”
Chloe thought back to that awful year with Lionel Luthor’s threats hanging over her head. “I know what you mean,” she said ruefully. She caught Dean’s gaze, and held it. “So why the introspection?”
“I’m just hoping that today’s not one of those days,” he said.
Chloe frowned. That sounded ominous. She studied Dean’s troubled expression as he gathered his thoughts, and then looked into her face. “A couple years back, Sam . . . died.”
She raised an eyebrow, but otherwise said nothing.
“I found a way to bring him back - by making a deal. At a crossroads.”
“Oh Dean,” Chloe shut her eyes and shook her head. She knew that Dean and Sam loved each other. But it didn’t seem like love even began to cover it. “How long?”
“I was desperate,” he said with a hoarse voice. “And the demon knew it. In the end, I agreed to whatever it would give me. And it wasn’t much.”
Realization dawned on Chloe. “Is your time up?” Chloe asked suddenly. “Is that why you’re telling me this?”
“What?” Dean looked at her in surprise. “No. Nothing like that. I -" he shrugged, and gave her a tiny smile. “I guess I could see why you would think that. Shit. I suck at this.”
Chloe squinted at him in confusion, and tilted her head. “So . . . If you aren’t dying. Then what?”
“I got a year. But Sam found a loophole and got me out.”
She was a good reporter. She knew when to ask leading questions and when to stay silent and let him fill up the space with his own voice. Now was time for the latter option. She nodded to him in encouragement.
“I asked for it to bring Sammy back. And it brought him back with something extra.”
“Extra?”
“A demon. One that I’d sent to hell twice before. She came back inside Sam’s head with a mad-on for me and Sammy, and enough power to control a demon army.”
“So what stopped her?”
“We caught her in time. And with the help of a couple of psychic friends, we trapped her.”
“Where?”
“Can’t tell you.”
Chloe considered that, and nodded. “Fair enough. So this demon was your loophole?”
“Sam didn’t come back completely as Sam. So when my time came up, he went all The Devil and Daniel Webster on the crossroads demon.”
“The Devil and Daniel Webster?”
“I did three separate book reports on it at three different schools in seventh grade,” Dean said. “It was an easy A.”
“I always thought of that story as complete fiction. Demons follow law?”
“Demons honor contracts. Contracts are based on law. Demons follow law.”
“Thank you, Socrates.”
He smiled at her, and Chloe felt like she'd won a small victory.
“Sam got the demon to agree to a trial - of sorts. He argued breach of contract. Since the crossroads demon didn't keep its end of the bargain, it had to cancel my end of the deal.”
Chloe didn’t know what to say. It was a lot to take in. “That’s . . . Wow.”
“Thing is,” Dean said. “We’re still guarding this demon's location. As long as we guard it, then the army that she escaped to command is pretty useless. Before we met you, we were finding the demon foot soldiers and sending them back one at a time.”
Chloe wasn’t sure where Dean was going with this. The couple of possibilities in her head didn’t look all that promising. Was he trying to tell her that she was slowing them down? Did they not want her with them anymore? Or was it an accusation?
“And then you came into our lives. With secrets that you can’t share. I’m fine with that - most of the time. Ellen says you’re okay. That’s good enough for me. But Sam - he takes this guardian thing seriously. And people that he’s trusted before have turned on him.”
“I’m not family,” Chloe’s smile twisted bitterly. The words sat like acid in her stomach. “Therefore not trustworthy.”
Dean winced. “I want to trust you, Chlo. But we need to know. Why are you with us?”
“There are a lot of reasons, Dean,” she said. “It's complicated.”
“But you aren’t doing a story about hunting?”
“Eventually,” she shrugged. “I think I am. I really do. But under the right circumstances.”
“Then can you uncomplicate things, please? Because . . . I'd hate to see you leave”
Chloe looked down at her hands and clasped them in her lap. What was safe to say? How much could she tell them? Given what Dean had shared, she figured that her purpose, at least could be shared. With a silent prayer, she met his gaze. Her eyes pleaded for understanding.
“I deal in words, Dean. Do you know how powerful words are?”
He continued to look at her with an unreadable expression.
“The Ancient Egyptians believed in the power of words. The Sun god Ra kept his true name secret so as to keep magicians from having power over him. When Pharaoh Hatshepsuit died, her son had her name carved off of all her monuments. He believed that he could erase her from history by destroying her name.
“In Hebrew scripture, God renamed his chosen people. Abram became Abraham. Issac became Israel.
“The words I write - people read them. They shape thoughts. Thoughts control actions. Actions form habits. Habits shape a life. Shape enough lives, and you can change the world.”
She held her hands out to him in a silent plea for understanding. “If you change one thing, you change everything. The key is to use that platform - that power responsibly.
“You asked me why I’m here. I’m here because I want to know. Because - someday I’m going to need to know. Today we write about super heroes. Metahumans. Men wrapped in the borrowed coats of gods.”
“Tomorrow, we’ll be writing about monsters, wearing the borrowed coats of metahumans.”
Chloe knew the instant that Dean realized what she was talking about. He looked at her with wide eyes. No doubt he thought of all the places that metas were now: Petitioning for policy change. Working within the government. Inside the army. Vigilante networks policing super-human criminals with the sanction of major political powers. Then she saw the unsettled look that crossed his face as he probably thought of demons doing the same.
Suddenly, it probably didn't seem like enough to simply guard a demon general.
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
She gave him a sad smile. “I didn’t want to scare you.”
“Consider me scared shitless,” he shook his head.
“Ditto with the demon army stuff,” Chloe said. “I think we may be working two different sides of the same problem.”
“And that’s all you can tell me?”
“All I have clearance to say,” Chloe said. “For now, anyway.”
“Clearance?” Dean gave her a shrewd look. “Are you some kind of spy?”
She pinned him with a frank stare. “Think about where there are metas. Then assume that I’m connected in the way that some folks would murder for.”
Dean shook his head. “I suppose I should be glad that you aren’t running after this conversation.”
“I could say the same,” Chloe nodded. “I’d like to tell you everything, Dean. I really would. But it’s for your own protection that you don’t know it all.”
“You don’t think I can protect myself?” His question was all challenge. Chloe made a frustrated sound in the back of her throat. She wondered if the Winchesters were distantly related to the Lanes. Because until she met Sam and Dean, she'd never encountered anyone as stubborn as herself and Lois.
The only way she could see to make him understand was to share her reasons with him. Which meant sharing personal things.
“Why do you think I stay away from my dad?” Chloe said.
“You mentioned something once about ruining his life,” Dean said. “I don't see it.”
“I've been part of meta issues since I was fifteen and we moved to Smallville. Back then things weren't quite so complicated: The local bug enthusiast went all Spiderman and started stalking the cheerleader. The team's fullback turned into Iceman and started flash-freezing old girlfriends. The local shape-shifter made herself look like the local billionaire to rob a bank - which makes no sense to me. Why rob a bank when you can walk in there looking like an employee, and just help yourself?”
“Good question,” Dean said sardonically. “No wonder you're already familiar with hunting. Sounds like you've been doing it for a while without ever leaving home.”
“Guess so,” Chloe shrugged. “Anyway, for every meta that popped up on the radar, there was someone around who wanted to exploit their power. And one day, one of those people asked me to use my research skills for him. I guess you could say that I was offered my own deal with the devil. Only - I didn't have noble reasons for taking it.
“I was sixteen years old and I made a horrible mistake. I was angry at a friend, and I chose the wrong side out of selfishness and stupid spite.” Chloe thought about how easy it was to give in to temptation. To have everything she wanted. And then how the dream turned into bitter poison as she realized the price that came with it.
“In breaking the deal, I not only lost everything that I gained when I agreed to it, but I nearly lost everything else, too. My Dad’s job, the house we lived in, our lives. I suppose that what happened was penance of a sort, but my dad paid collateral so that I could make things right.” She shut her eyes and shook her head. “These kinds of enemies -- they hurt you indirectly by hurting the people you love. We faked our own deaths and went into protective custody, and they blew up the safe house to get to us.
“Do you know the kinds of connections it takes to find someone in government-sponsored witness protection? I had meta assassins after me who could turn their hands into knives.
“I wish I could tell you everything, but I can’t do that to you and Sam.”
She bent her head, afraid to see his reaction to her confession.
* * *
That little voice in the back of his head that sounded like Sam was telling him to keep away from her. Getting involved this deeply with any chick wasn’t his style. And she’d just given him a lot of very good reasons not to get involved.
But there was a bigger part of him that said that this was where he belonged. In between this small blonde and the world. She was a fighter - no doubt about it. But he could tell that she’d had no other choice but to be tough. Because she'd probably never had anyone to stand in the gap for her.
She was running for her life at sixteen. At sixteen, he killed his first werewolf and then watched the carcass as it shifted back into its human form. While his baby brother slept peacefully unaware in the Impala and he and dad burned the remains, he made life choices that would affect them both.
He'd taken a life. Not a human life - because werewolves weren't human anymore. But a living, breathing thing. And he realized at that point that there was no turning back. He’d thought that most kids his age hadn’t seen half the crap he’d seen. But then again, he had dad and Sam. And he hadn’t had to dodge men who could turn their hands into knives, either.
He didn’t have that many people whom he cared for. Those that were close were already soldiers in a war. By getting involved with Chloe he would be putting everyone they both loved into a two-front conflict.
He didn’t know much about history, but he did know that those kinds of battles were harder to win. But then again, if Chloe was to be believed, the other side was already setting them up for this. At least this way, they knew what was coming.
He threaded his fingers through her hand, and gave her a hopeful smile. “I can live with that for now,” he nodded. “But there may come a point where we need to know everything.”
“If that time comes,” Chloe said. “It won’t be me who’ll be telling you. It’ll be the people whose secrets I keep. But I hope it doesn’t come to that. If it does - we’re going to be in pretty deep trouble.”
Dean nodded in acceptance. “The thing we have to do now is explain this to Sammy. And prove to him that you’re not . . .”
“Evil?” Chloe supplied with a rueful chuckle. “It's okay. He's being cautious. I understand.”
Dean nodded. “Plus we have this hunt to finish.”
Chloe nodded. “Let’s find out if Sam and Jo found anything. If not - I think we should focus on the time capsule angle.”
Dean nodded absently as he helped her off the sleigh and led her back out to the auditorium.
By: Pen37
Beta: clarksmuse
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean, Jo.
Pairing: Chloe/Dean Sam/Jo
Disclaimer: Not Mine, Fun only.
Summary: The Orpheum theatre in Memphis has troubles with a Ghost. Sam has issues with Trust. What is Chloe hiding from the Guys? What are the Guys hiding from Chloe?
This is part of my Sam Dean and Chloe crossover series Special Projects.
They follow in this order:
Unstrung Hero
Now Stop Me if You've heard this one,
The Greatest Hits of Mapquest,
Devil's Dance,
Phone Calls From the Edge,
Didn't AC/DC Do A Song About this?,
We find Ourselves in the Same Old mess
Sam, Chloe and The Naked Teenage Wiccan Newbie Adventure.
Gods and Monsters Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Crossfire,
The Language of Waffles,
Conservation of Pain.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #100 Writers choice. (For this fic, I'm saying that the prompt is Trust) The table is here.
Chloe thought that the Orpheum reminded her a little of the theater in the older version of Phantom of the Opera: majestic and grand, like an elegant matron still in her prime. Not, like an exploding monkey, thankyouverymuch.
As she worked her way around the catwalks, she thought of Lon Cheney, hiding a grotesque deformity and a tortured soul behind a mask. What is it about girls who dig on the tragic types?
Then again, the phantom wasted most of his time on Christine. She supposed angsty types needed their porcelain dolls to sit unattainably up on their pedestals.
On second thought, the monkey analogy was looking better and better. Still, in a theatre like this, she could imagine someone like Byron from Smallville hiding out from the sunlight, writing bad poetry and using trapdoors to get around.
She finished scanning the loft areas and then climbed back down to the stage below, just in time to meet Sam and Dean as they crawled out from underneath it.
“Nothing,” She shook her head.
Dean nodded. “Sam, why don’t you go help Jo finish with the seats? I’ll take Chloe to check out the dressing rooms.”
Chloe knew instantly that something was wrong. They were being totally obvious with the non-verbal. She followed Dean and his scanner backstage and down dark corridors past dressing rooms. She wondered if he really wanted her help, or if this was a ploy to get her alone and try to mack on her.
They found their way into a storage room with props from an old Christmas musical production. When Dean didn't show any inclination of wanting to move on, Chloe figured that he had something on his mind. She sat down on an old, red-painted sleigh and pushed some fake-snow out of the way to make room for Dean to sit next to her. Dean smiled a sad-looking smile, and instead leaned against a giant faux brick fireplace.
“So what’s up, doc?” Chloe smiled back tentatively, hoping to lighten the mood.
“Did I ever tell you that you’re gorgeous when you smile?”
Her smile widened in genuine pleasure at the complement, and she ducked her head to hide a blush. “As flattering as that sounds, Dean, I get the feeling that you didn’t bring me back here to complement my smile.”
He shook his head sadly. “I’ve done some things that I regret, Chloe. Mostly, I try not to have regrets, and not to look back. But there’ve been some doozys. And occasionally, I wish I could just have that day as a do over.”
Chloe thought back to that awful year with Lionel Luthor’s threats hanging over her head. “I know what you mean,” she said ruefully. She caught Dean’s gaze, and held it. “So why the introspection?”
“I’m just hoping that today’s not one of those days,” he said.
Chloe frowned. That sounded ominous. She studied Dean’s troubled expression as he gathered his thoughts, and then looked into her face. “A couple years back, Sam . . . died.”
She raised an eyebrow, but otherwise said nothing.
“I found a way to bring him back - by making a deal. At a crossroads.”
“Oh Dean,” Chloe shut her eyes and shook her head. She knew that Dean and Sam loved each other. But it didn’t seem like love even began to cover it. “How long?”
“I was desperate,” he said with a hoarse voice. “And the demon knew it. In the end, I agreed to whatever it would give me. And it wasn’t much.”
Realization dawned on Chloe. “Is your time up?” Chloe asked suddenly. “Is that why you’re telling me this?”
“What?” Dean looked at her in surprise. “No. Nothing like that. I -" he shrugged, and gave her a tiny smile. “I guess I could see why you would think that. Shit. I suck at this.”
Chloe squinted at him in confusion, and tilted her head. “So . . . If you aren’t dying. Then what?”
“I got a year. But Sam found a loophole and got me out.”
She was a good reporter. She knew when to ask leading questions and when to stay silent and let him fill up the space with his own voice. Now was time for the latter option. She nodded to him in encouragement.
“I asked for it to bring Sammy back. And it brought him back with something extra.”
“Extra?”
“A demon. One that I’d sent to hell twice before. She came back inside Sam’s head with a mad-on for me and Sammy, and enough power to control a demon army.”
“So what stopped her?”
“We caught her in time. And with the help of a couple of psychic friends, we trapped her.”
“Where?”
“Can’t tell you.”
Chloe considered that, and nodded. “Fair enough. So this demon was your loophole?”
“Sam didn’t come back completely as Sam. So when my time came up, he went all The Devil and Daniel Webster on the crossroads demon.”
“The Devil and Daniel Webster?”
“I did three separate book reports on it at three different schools in seventh grade,” Dean said. “It was an easy A.”
“I always thought of that story as complete fiction. Demons follow law?”
“Demons honor contracts. Contracts are based on law. Demons follow law.”
“Thank you, Socrates.”
He smiled at her, and Chloe felt like she'd won a small victory.
“Sam got the demon to agree to a trial - of sorts. He argued breach of contract. Since the crossroads demon didn't keep its end of the bargain, it had to cancel my end of the deal.”
Chloe didn’t know what to say. It was a lot to take in. “That’s . . . Wow.”
“Thing is,” Dean said. “We’re still guarding this demon's location. As long as we guard it, then the army that she escaped to command is pretty useless. Before we met you, we were finding the demon foot soldiers and sending them back one at a time.”
Chloe wasn’t sure where Dean was going with this. The couple of possibilities in her head didn’t look all that promising. Was he trying to tell her that she was slowing them down? Did they not want her with them anymore? Or was it an accusation?
“And then you came into our lives. With secrets that you can’t share. I’m fine with that - most of the time. Ellen says you’re okay. That’s good enough for me. But Sam - he takes this guardian thing seriously. And people that he’s trusted before have turned on him.”
“I’m not family,” Chloe’s smile twisted bitterly. The words sat like acid in her stomach. “Therefore not trustworthy.”
Dean winced. “I want to trust you, Chlo. But we need to know. Why are you with us?”
“There are a lot of reasons, Dean,” she said. “It's complicated.”
“But you aren’t doing a story about hunting?”
“Eventually,” she shrugged. “I think I am. I really do. But under the right circumstances.”
“Then can you uncomplicate things, please? Because . . . I'd hate to see you leave”
Chloe looked down at her hands and clasped them in her lap. What was safe to say? How much could she tell them? Given what Dean had shared, she figured that her purpose, at least could be shared. With a silent prayer, she met his gaze. Her eyes pleaded for understanding.
“I deal in words, Dean. Do you know how powerful words are?”
He continued to look at her with an unreadable expression.
“The Ancient Egyptians believed in the power of words. The Sun god Ra kept his true name secret so as to keep magicians from having power over him. When Pharaoh Hatshepsuit died, her son had her name carved off of all her monuments. He believed that he could erase her from history by destroying her name.
“In Hebrew scripture, God renamed his chosen people. Abram became Abraham. Issac became Israel.
“The words I write - people read them. They shape thoughts. Thoughts control actions. Actions form habits. Habits shape a life. Shape enough lives, and you can change the world.”
She held her hands out to him in a silent plea for understanding. “If you change one thing, you change everything. The key is to use that platform - that power responsibly.
“You asked me why I’m here. I’m here because I want to know. Because - someday I’m going to need to know. Today we write about super heroes. Metahumans. Men wrapped in the borrowed coats of gods.”
“Tomorrow, we’ll be writing about monsters, wearing the borrowed coats of metahumans.”
Chloe knew the instant that Dean realized what she was talking about. He looked at her with wide eyes. No doubt he thought of all the places that metas were now: Petitioning for policy change. Working within the government. Inside the army. Vigilante networks policing super-human criminals with the sanction of major political powers. Then she saw the unsettled look that crossed his face as he probably thought of demons doing the same.
Suddenly, it probably didn't seem like enough to simply guard a demon general.
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
She gave him a sad smile. “I didn’t want to scare you.”
“Consider me scared shitless,” he shook his head.
“Ditto with the demon army stuff,” Chloe said. “I think we may be working two different sides of the same problem.”
“And that’s all you can tell me?”
“All I have clearance to say,” Chloe said. “For now, anyway.”
“Clearance?” Dean gave her a shrewd look. “Are you some kind of spy?”
She pinned him with a frank stare. “Think about where there are metas. Then assume that I’m connected in the way that some folks would murder for.”
Dean shook his head. “I suppose I should be glad that you aren’t running after this conversation.”
“I could say the same,” Chloe nodded. “I’d like to tell you everything, Dean. I really would. But it’s for your own protection that you don’t know it all.”
“You don’t think I can protect myself?” His question was all challenge. Chloe made a frustrated sound in the back of her throat. She wondered if the Winchesters were distantly related to the Lanes. Because until she met Sam and Dean, she'd never encountered anyone as stubborn as herself and Lois.
The only way she could see to make him understand was to share her reasons with him. Which meant sharing personal things.
“Why do you think I stay away from my dad?” Chloe said.
“You mentioned something once about ruining his life,” Dean said. “I don't see it.”
“I've been part of meta issues since I was fifteen and we moved to Smallville. Back then things weren't quite so complicated: The local bug enthusiast went all Spiderman and started stalking the cheerleader. The team's fullback turned into Iceman and started flash-freezing old girlfriends. The local shape-shifter made herself look like the local billionaire to rob a bank - which makes no sense to me. Why rob a bank when you can walk in there looking like an employee, and just help yourself?”
“Good question,” Dean said sardonically. “No wonder you're already familiar with hunting. Sounds like you've been doing it for a while without ever leaving home.”
“Guess so,” Chloe shrugged. “Anyway, for every meta that popped up on the radar, there was someone around who wanted to exploit their power. And one day, one of those people asked me to use my research skills for him. I guess you could say that I was offered my own deal with the devil. Only - I didn't have noble reasons for taking it.
“I was sixteen years old and I made a horrible mistake. I was angry at a friend, and I chose the wrong side out of selfishness and stupid spite.” Chloe thought about how easy it was to give in to temptation. To have everything she wanted. And then how the dream turned into bitter poison as she realized the price that came with it.
“In breaking the deal, I not only lost everything that I gained when I agreed to it, but I nearly lost everything else, too. My Dad’s job, the house we lived in, our lives. I suppose that what happened was penance of a sort, but my dad paid collateral so that I could make things right.” She shut her eyes and shook her head. “These kinds of enemies -- they hurt you indirectly by hurting the people you love. We faked our own deaths and went into protective custody, and they blew up the safe house to get to us.
“Do you know the kinds of connections it takes to find someone in government-sponsored witness protection? I had meta assassins after me who could turn their hands into knives.
“I wish I could tell you everything, but I can’t do that to you and Sam.”
She bent her head, afraid to see his reaction to her confession.
* * *
That little voice in the back of his head that sounded like Sam was telling him to keep away from her. Getting involved this deeply with any chick wasn’t his style. And she’d just given him a lot of very good reasons not to get involved.
But there was a bigger part of him that said that this was where he belonged. In between this small blonde and the world. She was a fighter - no doubt about it. But he could tell that she’d had no other choice but to be tough. Because she'd probably never had anyone to stand in the gap for her.
She was running for her life at sixteen. At sixteen, he killed his first werewolf and then watched the carcass as it shifted back into its human form. While his baby brother slept peacefully unaware in the Impala and he and dad burned the remains, he made life choices that would affect them both.
He'd taken a life. Not a human life - because werewolves weren't human anymore. But a living, breathing thing. And he realized at that point that there was no turning back. He’d thought that most kids his age hadn’t seen half the crap he’d seen. But then again, he had dad and Sam. And he hadn’t had to dodge men who could turn their hands into knives, either.
He didn’t have that many people whom he cared for. Those that were close were already soldiers in a war. By getting involved with Chloe he would be putting everyone they both loved into a two-front conflict.
He didn’t know much about history, but he did know that those kinds of battles were harder to win. But then again, if Chloe was to be believed, the other side was already setting them up for this. At least this way, they knew what was coming.
He threaded his fingers through her hand, and gave her a hopeful smile. “I can live with that for now,” he nodded. “But there may come a point where we need to know everything.”
“If that time comes,” Chloe said. “It won’t be me who’ll be telling you. It’ll be the people whose secrets I keep. But I hope it doesn’t come to that. If it does - we’re going to be in pretty deep trouble.”
Dean nodded in acceptance. “The thing we have to do now is explain this to Sammy. And prove to him that you’re not . . .”
“Evil?” Chloe supplied with a rueful chuckle. “It's okay. He's being cautious. I understand.”
Dean nodded. “Plus we have this hunt to finish.”
Chloe nodded. “Let’s find out if Sam and Jo found anything. If not - I think we should focus on the time capsule angle.”
Dean nodded absently as he helped her off the sleigh and led her back out to the auditorium.