MasterpostBack to Part 1They talked and laughed, sitting over Chinese food and beers. Charlie regaled him with the latest stories from her travels and fandom adventures, and he had old stories she'd never heard about pranks and hunts gone sideways. They watched
The Force Awakens and
Rogue One, Charlie chiding him and saying he wasn't a full-fledged Star Wars fan without seeing them. He teased her back that she just wanted to drool over Rey and Jin, and she agreed that they were drool-worthy. “They're fighters though—that's the big thing. They weren't damsels in distress, they both were fighters. Heroes.” Dean had to concede that was true.
After Charlie went to bed, Dean sat in his room, listening to music while he swirled whiskey in a Aquarian star-monogrammed cut glass tumbler, watching the amber liquid circle before shooting it and then pouring a fresh measure. Seeing Charlie, being with Charlie, had reawakened feelings he'd worked hard to pack away since Sam's death. He'd shut down the areas of his heart and brain that deal with caring, with tenderness and love. It felt almost awkward to have those currents of emotion moving through him again, like a shirt he'd outgrown or shoes that were too small and pinched his toes.
When she left the next morning, her usually animated face looked uncharacteristically serious. “You can't do this,” she said softly, looking straight into his eyes. “You have too much to give, Dean. Don't lock it all away—it's not what Sam would want.” He hugged her tightly, laying his cheek against her vibrant hair. “Try, Dean. Just...try. There's still good stuff in the world.”
He closed his eyes, letting the warmth of her body and the light scent of her shampoo fill him for a moment. Dropping his hands to her arms, he gently pushed her away. “You want to get going, if you're going to reach Cincinnati by evening.”
Charlie looked up at him with a sigh. “You Winchesters...you just dig your heels in, don't you? Okay, I'm leaving, but I'll be back.” She kissed his cheek and walked to her car, giving a little final wave when she started it and drove away.
Dean skipped the whiskey that night, instead lying on his bed, eyes open. The mattress dipped next to him, and he held still, breathing in the scent of clean flannel and citrus shampoo. Refusing to glance over and see if someone was really there, Dean simply chose to accept that Sam lay next to him, his shadow dark on the sheets. Dean didn't know if 'Sam' slept, but neither of them spoke all night.
The hunts blurred together over the months. Dean briefly wondered how many months—maybe it was years now?
It didn't matter.
Back to the task at hand. Drive, eat, plan. Interview the victims and suspects, dragging out his Fed suit. Clean the weapons. Sleep on the crappy motel bed, drink the crappy diner coffee. Do the hunt. On a good one, celebrate with drinks and some meaningless sex with a horny barmaid or party girl, just to scratch the itch. He could be balls-deep in some sweet pink pussy, fucking away as she squealed beneath him, and his mind would be split; one half immersed in the animal sensations of hot-wet-tight and the other half busy planning out his next day's journey. Play with her tits, kiss her, suck on her neck, pump his hips, make sure she comes before he comes, game over. Then extricate himself with a modicum of politeness and head back to the room, sleep for four hours, lay awake for five. Rinse and repeat.
Dean didn't consciously keep busy to avoid thinking about Sam. It wasn't an actual choice that he made. It was more like an invisible force field that set itself up in his brain, something that pushed away anything that came too close to it. Inside that field was Sam; all of Dean's memories, his recollections of everything Sam had done and said, the way he smelt and sounded and how his hair fell into his eyes. Whenever Dean's mind began to stray too close, the force field pushed his thoughts away, shunting them into deciding on a hunt, a target, doing research, making a plan. Anything to engage his mind and activity and draw it away from the area that was still too tender to touch.
It made for a bleak, solitary life. Dean had never considered living alone, hunting alone, but now he slogged through his life in virtual isolation, eyes constantly focused on the next hunt, the next thing he was going to kill. He occasionally ran into fellow hunters pursuing the same monster, but he never joined up with them beyond coordinating with tracking and killing the monster, and sometimes not even for that. Offers for post-hunt drinks were spurned, plans to meet up turned aside. The only companionship Dean ever sought out was for sex, but it was more animal reflex, and the sheets were always still warm when he left.
The only person he truly wanted to see...was gone.
When his phone started playing
Walking on Sunshine, Dean grudgingly picked it up. He'd promised Charlie he'd answer, barring being on an active hunt, and she was too important to let down. Despite his denial that life wasn't going too well, Dean was still aware that the threads of his human relationships were fraying, and he didn't want to have Charlie's unravel.
“What's up, Red?”
“Dean! I think I have a hunt, but I want to come there and pick your brain. I'm about five hours out—can I head on in to the bunker?” Her words were hurried, her voice sounded excited above the hum of the road. Dean tried to remember what excitement like that felt like.
“Of course. You know where to park. Text me and I'll meet you at the door.” He clicked off after her assent, then looked around the bunker.
It was a pigsty. Papers coated every desk, punctuated by almost-empty liquor bottles and weighed down with crumb-strewn plates. A couple of pairs of heavy boots, filthy and muddy, languished by the stairs, and dirty weapons were in a haphazard pile on one map table. Dean knew without getting up that the kitchen had two sinks worth of dirty dishes, an overflowing garbage can, and a good three cases of empty beer bottles, to say nothing of vodka and whiskey liters.
“You know she's gonna freak when she sees the mess.” Sam's voice was calm, like he was commenting on the weather.
“Yeah, yeah.” Dean pushed himself up from the table. “I'll take care of it.” He walked to the kitchen for trash bags, carefully avoiding looking into the map room's shadowy corners and alcoves in case he saw Sam lingering there. Or didn't see him.
Having conversations with Sam was a relatively new development. Dean had been half-expecting some manifestation of his brother at some point, so he didn't wig out when he first heard Sam speak to him. Of course he'd built a hunter's pyre for Sam's corpse, but even that wasn't always the end of the journey, as Dean well knew. He never really saw Sam; it was more like a shadow out of the corner of his eye, tall and long-limbed, with a mop of dark hair. If he turned to look at it, it was gone, like a floater in his eye. So Dean stopped looking, desperately grateful for any link, no matter how amorphous, with his brother.
Being the hunter that he was, of course, he swept the bunker with the EMF, looked through various lenses. Nothing registered—no blinking lights, no blaring whine of an otherworldly reading. Nonetheless, there was no mistaking Sam's voice; the deep tone of it, the cadence of his sentences, as familiar to Dean as his own. Adrift in a sea of loneliness and isolation, Dean simply put the EMF away and stopped worrying about it. He heard Sam, conversed with him, and that was that. Real or unreal didn't matter.
It was better than nothing.
“Wow, Dean, you're baching it better than I anticipated!” Charlie looked around, and Dean could see her approval as she appraised the crumb-and-spill free tables and counters, the tidy rooms. “Here I thought you'd be waist-deep in bottles and trash. Kudos, dude!” She patted him on the back, and he marshaled a half-smile.
“Yeah, who can live like that, right?” He gave a weak little laugh, glad she didn't know about the last few hours of frantic cleaning. “C'mon, have a seat. Want a beer?”
“Of course!”
They sat and talked, which meant it was mostly Charlie burbling about finally making it back to San Diego ComicCon, (“No new tattoos though!”). Dean suggested Chinese again, not wanting to reveal the emptiness of the bunker's pantry. They ate companionably, and finally Charlie's stories wound down. Dean looked up from his General Tso's beef and caught her eyeing him.
“What?”
She put her chopsticks down. “You've hardly said a word since I got here. I know I'm a chatterbox, but what's up?”
“Nothing. Same old. Hunting. Driving. Drinking. Maybe a little hustling here and there.” He decided that telling her about hearing his dead brother's voice was not a good idea. Too many questions. “Not much to say.”
Charlie drank some beer and poked at her shrimp and broccoli before choosing a fortune cookie. Cracking it open, she extricated the paper fortune before cramming the cookie into her mouth. Dean couldn't help chuckling at her crunching. She flapped a hand at him, fortune held between her fingertips. “This could be it, you know! My ticket to fame and fortune!”
Dean snatched it from her. “Keep your eyes open and you will safely find your path,” he read aloud. “Yeah, that's a real guidepost for life there.”
Daintily picking a broccoli floret, Charlie huffed, “You never know what the day will bring, right? It might just be true.”
Dean sobered, catching a shadow in the corner of the kitchen. A tall figure in a plaid shirt flickered and disappeared. “Yeah, you never do.”
“Coffee's ready, and I found some frozen waffles. Geez, Dean, think you need to do a little grocery shopping?” Charlie put plates on the table, along with a plate of waffles and the bottle of maple syrup. “Shelves are a little empty in there.” She nodded towards the pantry. “Breakfast was almost leftover Chinese. Not that I haven't done that before, but yay waffles.”
Dean's face flushed, and he could hear the defensive note in his voice as he answered, “Been traveling a lot. Just haven't had time to catch up.”
She patted him on the arm as she sat down. Forking a waffle onto her plate and drizzling syrup over it, she replied, “It's okay. I'm going to run out for some snacks after breakfast, but we can make a proper run to Hy-Vee later and get you re-stocked. Okay?”
He ducked his head. A matter of months, and he was forgetting what it was like to have someone give a shit, actually care about his well-being. “Yeah, sounds great.”
The plates, forks, and cups from breakfast were barely in the drying rack when Charlie bounced back into the kitchen. “Okay, I'm running to the Gas n' Sip and then we can talk about my hunt idea. Don't go rambling off somewhere before I get back.”
“You got it.” Dean gave her a quick hug and a fleeting kiss on the forehead. “No speeding.”
“Aye aye, sir!” She gave a mock salute and scampered out the door.
Dean decided to address some housekeeping until she got back, so he gathered up his laundry and took it to the bunker's laundry room. As always, he silently thanked the Men of Letters for ending his days of visiting sketchy, dingy laundromats. He sorted his clothes—hunting and non-hunting—and got a couple of loads going. He laid a towel down on his bed and began cleaning his weapons. This task always relaxed him, and he lost track of time as he wiped, oiled, and reassembled all of his guns and checked the blades of every knife.
Wiping his hands, Dean stashed all of the weapons in his room, thinking hard about a beer. He went into the kitchen and popped open a bottle. Looking up while he took a refreshing swig, he caught sight of the clock.
4:00.
Wait...what?
Dean put the bottle down and pulled out his phone. Hadn't Charlie left at, say...12:30? He thumbed at his contact list and dialed.
Nothing.
He tried it four more times, but voicemail answered every time. “Hi, it's me. I can't pick up right now, but--”
Don't get squirrely now, Winchester, he thought.
She got a flat or something. Everything's fine. At the same time, he grabbed his gun and a jacket, racing for the garage. Hitting the garage door button, he started Baby, then pulled up the local news, just in case.
“--at the scene. Police responded to a silent alarm at the Gas n' Sip on 281, where an attempted robbery was taking place. Police responded and apprehended the armed robber, 24-year-old Mortimer Leroy Stebbins, who threatened the Gas n' Sip cashier with a .9mm, but the cashier activated the alarm before he raised his hands. Shots were fired, grazing the employee as well as fatally injuring a young woman waiting at the register.”
The words droned on but Dean stopped understanding them. That couldn't be Charlie, could it? They couldn't mean Charlie. She'd just gone out to buy some damn snacks. She hadn't just been killed in some stupid robbery. That was ridiculous.
Dean took a deep breath, gripping Baby's steering wheel hard. Everything was fine. He was going to get there and Charlie would race to him, telling him of the horrifying event while he hugged her tight. They'd go back to the bunker and have a stiff drink while rejoicing in her safety.
Police cars and the coroner's wagon were still clustered in the parking lot of the Gas n' Sip. Dean parked well outside of them, rummaging through his ID box. He'd get a lot further as a Fed. He got out of the car and strode in with an air of authority. Half the time, the authority demeanor alone was enough in situations like this.
“Special Officer Winter.” Dean flashed his ID. “What happened? You have the perp? I heard report of a vic?”
Not a vic, not Charlie, no no no...“Yes sir. Robbery, single armed perp, .9mm. Um...sir, why is a Fed on a convenience store shooting? Aren't you on the big cases?”
The young officer—Ofc. Lane Melstra according to his ID tag—looked a little awestruck at Dean's credentials. Dean clapped him on the shoulder. “I'm out of the Wichita office. We're trailing a serial—yeah, forget I said that, would ya, Lane? Confidential, know what I mean? Now gimme what you got so far.”
“Sir yes sir. Cashier hit the alarm, got grazed on his arm and his side. Vic is over there, they're just about to take her away.” The young officer waved a hand to the side, and Dean turned to see a figure covered by a sheet. Red splotches blossomed hideously on the gray fabric.
“She caught one in the belly and one in the chest. Coroner said she never had a chance.” The officer continued, but Dean ignored him as he walked over to the body, bending down to lift the corner of the sheet.
Not Charlie, not Charlie, not Charlie, please dear God, spare her. Spare me.“Dean! Thank God you're here! They kept making me lie down on the floor and covering me with this musty sheet. I tried to say I was fine, but they just wouldn't listen.” Charlie's voice was as bubbly as ever. Dean huffed a sigh, closing his eyes a moment in relief.
When he opened them, Charlie was lying still and quiet. Her hair spilled around her in a fiery spray against the dirty linoleum floor, but her face was already unnaturally pale. Her hands, always so busy, lay unmoving at her sides. Her t-shirt—one of her goofy ones with a unicorn and a rainbow, was soaked in blood, the sticky crimson obscuring the t-shirt's words,
I Believe. Someone had closed her eyes, and Dean was grateful for that small mercy.
I Believe.“Yeah, you always did, sweetheart.” Dean blinked hard to keep tears back. “You always did.”
Dean got up and turned to the young officer. Clearing his throat, he barked questions. “Where's the investigation at? We have the trash that did this?”
“He's already been transported away. We're just about to get this all cleaned up, you came just in time.”
Yeah, just in time. Just in time to see the blood, see the body of my friend. My family. Dean took a deep breath and smiled at Lane. “Good job, buddy. Very efficient. I'll be sure to let my superiors know about how well you handled this.” He winked. “We're always looking for good men in the Bureau.”
He turned on his heel and strode away, leaving Lane burbling his gratitude and Charlie cold and alone under a sheet.
He got almost all of the way back to the bunker before he had to stop Baby, throwing the door open and falling to his knees on the gravel shoulder to empty his stomach.
“You're torturing yourself.” Sam's calm observation annoyed Dean.
“Fuck you. I shoulda gone with her. Then she wouldn't be dead.” Dean slugged vodka down, his throat constricting painfully around the liquid, making him grimace and cough.
“Maybe you would be dead instead. Would that be any better?” Shadow-Sam tilted his ethereal head.
“Yes. No. Maybe.” Slug. “Like...fuck you. You're not here, you don't get to have a say in this.”
“Agreed. But I still have a say about you, and I'm glad you aren't dead.”
“Yeah, yeah, I'm a real winner.”
“Don't be an ass, Dean.”
Dean rolled his eyes and took another slug. “Smart-ass.”
“Dumb-ass.”
“Bitch.”
“Jerk.”
Dean squeezed his eyes shut, but instead of darkness, all he saw was red hair spilled over black and white linoleum.
If life had pared down for Dean after Sam's death, now it went to the bone. Every word he had to speak to people was an effort. Every interaction felt like he was merely playing a part, including ordering at a diner or bar. He could see the lines in his head:
Dean enters the sleazy bar, selecting a seat so that he faces the door. A sexy blonde waitress approaches, cleavage on display. Dean orders a beer—the liquor comes later. When she brings him his beer, her number is scrawled on a cocktail napkin. And so on.
He couldn't wait to be sitting back inside Baby, sitting alone on the black leather seats, listening to his classic rock echo off or stream out of the windows. Baby was his cocoon on the go, his immediate escape from all the people he needed to deal with while he was hunting. When he was done interrogating, he could hop into her and just drive off. In the dark of night, he could lay down rubber for miles on empty highways. Baby only ever required gas and oil; no conversation was ever necessary.
The bunker provided the balm of sanctuary; it was his place to get away completely from the outside world, to live in alone, free of any expectations or interactions. It was also the hell of true isolation, full of shadows and dimly heard voices, a luxurious, giant prison cell. As welcome the solitude was upon his returns, after a few days Dean would be itching to get back out, to drive and drive and drive--to find some disgusting, evil son-of-a-bitch and kill it and forget, for a few brief seconds, what a mockery his life had become.
At one worn-down bar in yet another podunk town, he went in and ordered a draft and two tequila shots. He drank the first shot, savoring the distinctive agave taste as it melded with the salt and lime, and left the other sitting there for his entire time at the bar. Four beers and five shots later, he finally picked it up. “You and me, Sammy. It's supposed to be you and me.” Tossing the liquor down his throat, he slammed the glass down. “Now what the hell am I gonna do, Sam?” He threw some bills down and went back to the seedy motel of the night.
It was more than just losing Charlie. He missed her terribly, but this hollowness went beyond that one loss. It was that her death—her removal from his already sparsely populated world—not only reminded him anew of his greater loss, but of how bereft he was at all. So many had already gone on, departed this world one way or another, that Dean acutely felt how alone he was at this point. Like roads to Rome, everything seemed to lead back to Sam, and that...that was a loss he couldn't adapt to.
“I want to see him, Sam.” Dean's words were soft but determined.
“Why?”
“I want to understand why he did it. What made him do it, you know? His reason.”
“You know what Dad always said.”
Dean nodded. “Monsters I get; people are crazy.”
“That might be all you get.”
“I know.”
“Will that be enough?”
“I don't know. But I gotta do it and see.”
Dean could feel the shadow nod in understanding.
Dean showed up in his full Fed suit array at the gate of the El Dorado Correctional Facility. The name of the Gas 'n Sip shooter had been in the news, so Dean had been able to track him down quite easily. Now he sat in an interrogation room, waiting to see Mortimer “Morty” Leroy Stebbins, white 19-year-old male, convicted of murder in the second degree and aggravated assault, said charges incurred during his attempted robbery of the Gas 'n Sip at the intersection of routes 281 and 36.
Morty was ushered in, wearing an orange jumpsuit with “EDCF” in large black letters across the front. His face was blank, and he received the introduction to Dean Davies with no reaction or interest.
“We'll be at the door, Agent,” said the older of the escorting guards, and they exited, closing the barred door behind them.
Dean studied the young man sitting in front of him. He had no outstanding features that Dean could ascertain. His face was pale and bland, his chin weak, his hair a dull mouse-brown. Finally Dean broke the silence and addressed Morty in a terse voice.
“So, Morty, what can you tell me about the shooting at the Gas 'n Sip out there on 36?”
Morty shrugged. “It's all in the trial records, I guess.” He sounded uninterested in the matter.
Dean felt a stab of annoyance. “Yes, it is, but I want to hear it from you. I want to know what you were thinking when it happened. How it happened at all—what you decided to do when.”
Morty shrugged again, and Dean thought if he did that one more time, Dean was going to smack him upside the head.
“I robbed it because I needed some money. I was working at the plumbing warehouse, but they fired me for not making my quota, and I needed money quick, so I thought, I'll hold up the Gas'n Sip and then it'll be okay.”
“All right. Then what happened?”
“I got there and it was empty 'cept for the cashier, it was perfect. So I take out my gun that I got from my buddy and I tell the cashier to give me all the money. Only it turns out it ain't empty, 'cause this chick comes up with a basket all fulla junk food. Man, she had chips, Chee-tos, mini donuts, some candy—like she was having some kinda party, or maybe she got the munchies real bad. And she gets in between me and the cashier, tries to talk me out of holding him up, but I know he's got one of those silent alarms, so I tell her to get out of the damn way or I'll shoot her.”
Dean flexed his fingers, imagining them around Morty's neck.
“She wouldn't move, so I pointed the gun at her. She backed up to the counter, but she still wouldn't budge, the dumb bitch.”
Dean shot out of his seat, but managed to keep from hitting Morty. One of the guards popped in and asked if everything was all right. Dean clenched his fists and nodded, sitting back down and motioning for Morty to continue.
“That's about it. I needed the money, and she wouldn't get out of the way, so I shot her.”
Dean's vision went black for a moment. Of course Charlie died protecting someone else. He rubbed his forehead, pinching his nose to deflect the pricking in his eyes.
“So...you just gunned her down.”
“Yeah, and the goddamn cashier had already hit the silent alarm, so then the police were right there. And that's it.”
Dean cleared his throat. “What...just what did you need the money for, Morty? Drugs? Gambling debt? Pregnant girlfriend? What was so damn urgent?”
Morty shook his head. “Nothin' like that. I had a line on a real sweet motorcycle, friend of a friend was selling it real quick. I thought, bike like that, I'd score me some hot tail, maybe even get out of this lame state.” He snorted. “Now I'm stuck in here for the next ten years. Stupid bitch, ruined my life.”
This time when Dean bolted from his chair, he grabbed Morty by the throat with one hand. Staring down at Morty's pale blue eyes, wide with panic, Dean growled low, “You killed her, you utter asshole. She was smart and funny and brave...she was a fucking
hero, and you destroyed her for a fucking bike. You ever speak of her like that again, ever even think of her like that, and I'll come back here and rip your fucking throat out after I tear your nuts off.” He shook Morty, whose eyes were bulging with fear now. The acrid odor of urine told Dean that Morty had just pissed himself. “You
got that, Mortimer?”
Morty gave an aborted nod and squeaked assent.
Dean shook his hand free and banged on the door, striding away as soon as the guards opened it, leaving Morty and the puddle underneath his chair behind.
Dean scarcely remembered the drive back to Lebanon and the bunker. When he thought about it later, he felt he'd been caught in a haze of swirling images, like when the movies tried to show that someone was on drugs or had a concussion. There was Charlie, red hair bouncing as she ran to hug him and Sam. Charlie dressed as the Queen of Moondor, smiling and waving at her subjects. Charlie at the bunker laughing over pizza and beer with Sam. Charlie dancing around with her ear-buds in to some silly pop song.
Intermixed with those images were the surreal stills from the Gas 'n Sip. A metal-handled shopping basket askew on the floor, chips and candy spilling out of it. A gray sheet draped over an unmoving figure lying prone. Red hair fanned messily across black and white linoleum. A still white hand with a Leia phone case clutched in it.
All for a stupid motorcycle. A fucking piece of metal. Not anything important. Not something irreplaceable. Not even remotely worth Charlie's death, worth removing her from the world forever. From Dean.
Fuck Morty, and everyone like him. Wasn't a monster as much as any vampire or ghoul, feeding off decent people who deserved to live? What made humans any different from monsters, the fact that they had a soul? Fat lot of good souls seemed to do—Dean sure didn't see any evidence of souls in action in events like these. All that could be seen was hate, malevolence, violence; blind, hungry violence that decimated the good and caused irreparable harm to the survivors.
He parked Baby in the garage, stripping off his tie and jacket as soon as he walked in the map room door and grabbing a bottle of whiskey before heading to his room.
Over the next several months, Dean's hunting habits changed. He still sought out werewolves, rugarus, ghosts, poltergeists, any denizens of the supernatural world he heard of or could find. In the past, if he found out that people were responsible for the case and not something supernatural, he left it alone. Maybe there would be an anonymous tip to the local police force, but he was done with it, moving on to the next lead.
Now Dean found himself still following those cases, sifting through the evidence and determining who was responsible for the crimes. Sometimes it was a matter of misguidance, of someone making the wrong choice, taking an unfortunate turn. In those cases, Dean tipped off either the police or whoever it was that could help them work it out. He avoided getting involved directly, but he gave a nudge here or there to help make things right.
Other cases turned out to be the evil brought forth by human villainy and degradation. Abuse, slavery of all types, torture, rape; these all sickened Dean when he found them rooted in human perpetrators and not otherworldly creatures. Humans were supposed to know better, to be better. The revulsion that took root during his interview with Morty developed a more distinct form, prompting Dean to act as judge and jury in those cases. He took the deadly action he felt was needed, and he felt no qualms, no hesitation about performing that task. Humans who performed acts like that deserved to be put down as much as any monster.
Several months had passed since the confrontation with Morty when a hunt in Alabama beckoned Dean, despite the daunting August heat of the Deep South. It was one of his least favorite but most compelling scenarios--kids disappearing in a small town--so Dean threw a few things in a duffel and headed out to investigate. The further southeast he got, the higher the temperature and humidity rose. The interior of the Impala was blessed protection from the intensity of the summer sun, and Dean's sun-dazzled vision tried to slip toward the flickering shadows playing over the passenger seat.
“Sam...”
“Shh, Dean. Gotta keep going. It's kids, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“We gotta help them. You gotta help them, okay?”
“Okay, Sam. I will.”
Rubber sped down asphalt hot enough to burn bare feet, sending up little shimmers of heat that looked like puddles in the distance. Dean's shirt gradually dampened, wicking up his body's moisture until it looked two shades darker. He knew he'd have to stop for water before he dehydrated, but pushed it until Baby declared unequivocally that she needed gas in her tank and water in her radiator.
Dean pulled off Route 43 and into a gas station with the sign so faded, it was almost unreadable. He pulled up to the pump and hooked Baby up before going inside for his own provisioning. The cool air conditioning made him shiver at first, but he sighed in relief, closing his eyes and reveling as it swirled around him.
Taking another deep breath of the refreshingly cool oxygen, Dean started grabbing what he needed. Three or four water bottles, some chips for salt, jerky for protein, peanut M&M's for energy; he filled his arms and approached the register. As luck would have it, someone else was already there, and Dean huffed in impatience, juggling his items without really paying attention to the people in front of him at first.
When the kid in front of him pulled out a gun, Dean started paying close attention. Fuck his luck that he walked in when the place was being robbed. Shit. He dropped his items and the noise of water bottles thumping and bags crinkling drew the robber's attention. He swung around, gun pointing at Dean now; Dean could see his eyes nervously darting around and his gun-hand trembling. A real career criminal, this one.
“Hey kid, put it down. No one has to get hurt here.” Dean squinted at the cashier's name-tag. “Kurt there is going to get the cash for you and we can all walk away from this with no one getting shot, okay?” Kurt nodded vigorously, his hands in the air and his eyes wide. Dean nodded at him. “Let's just take this easy, boys.”
“Fuck you! Shut the fuck up!” The gunman—gunboy? He didn't look eighteen yet, all mottled skin and wanna-be beard—yelled hoarsely at Dean. “Now get the goddamn money and put it in a bag!”
Kurt lowered his hands to obey, but suddenly collapsed to the floor. Dean spun around, his own gun in his hand, and saw an older man standing just inside the door, weapon in hand. Dean realized he'd just shot Kurt, bullet passing close enough to Dean to practically graze him. Where the gunboy was nervous and fidgety, this man was icy calm, his gun hand rock-stable and his eyes surveying the situation coldly.
Dean drew his Colt 1911 on the man, and they stared at each other in a stalemate. “Okay, this doesn't have to escalate. You go on about your business and I'll take care of Kurt and no one else has to get hurt,” Dean said, his other hand open. He didn't know how badly Kurt had been injured, but hoped there was still time to get him help.
“Fuck off,” snarled the gunman. He pulled the trigger, and the gunboy dropped to the ground. “That's what I get for letting a fuckwit join up. Just take care of you and--”
Dean squeezed the trigger, shooting the gunman in his shoulder. He screamed and fell, clutching his shoulder while blood began to trickle down his arm, his gun abandoned on the floor. Dean kicked it away before racing to the counter to check on Kurt. Gunboy was already dead, the bullet hole in his forehead and the pool of blood behind his head clearly indicating his demise. Unfortunately, Kurt exhibited those same characteristics—clearly Gunman was a much more capable criminal than the ex-gunboy. Dean sighed as he turned away from the counter.
Gunman, breathing unevenly from the pain, looked up at Dean angrily. “What did you have to go and butt in for, asshole?”
Dean scoffed. “So sorry for interrupting your lousy attempt at a stick-up.” He turned the Colt 1911 around and whipped it against the gunman's face. “What did you have to go and shoot those boys for? So you could feel better about your shriveled little dick?” He whipped the gun the other way, and gunman cursed in pain.
“What do you care? You didn't know them. One was the clerk in a crap-ass gas station in the middle of Bumfuck, Alabama, and the other was my ex's incompetent son. So what if they died? What do they matter to anyone?” The gunman panted angrily, his eyes still deadly despite his bloody arm and the crimson bruises on this cheeks.
“They're people. People matter.” Dean's skin felt tight, like the hate he felt for this man was bloating him. He gritted his teeth, fighting back the urge to continue pistol-whipping this asshole, or maybe start breaking his fingers so he'd never shoot a gun again. He settled for grabbing the gunman's shoulder and squeezing, digging his fingers into the bullet wound as hard as he could. The gunman screamed and wrenched himself away, falling sideways onto the floor.
“Fine—if people matter, then I matter too, right, dickwad?” He panted harshly, glaring at Dean. “So fuck you again. You think you're so perfect? You're the one beating up the injured man.”
“You're the one who killed two boys. I'm betting they didn't do squat to anyone to deserve that, even your wanna-be partner, not the way he handled that gun. They were innocent.” Dean idly wondered where his anger was coming from, why it felt so intense, but pushed the thought away. Focusing back on the gunman, he asked, “How did these two fucking deserve to die?”
“Because they were in my way,” sneered the gunman. “And before you get any more righteous, just remember that I am as much of God's creation as they are. I'm as God made me, so blame Him if you're gonna blame anyone.”
That did it. Dean's anger surged like a wildfire, and without a moment's further thought, he raised the Colt and emptied it into the gunman. He stared at the body, bleeding now from the chest and head, the wine-colored fluid pooling on the floor.
“There, you son-of-a-bitch. You're done.” Dean bit off the words. “And you're right. I do blame God. I blame Him for all of you scum-sucking dickheads. And I'm going to tell Him that when I see Him.”
On to Part 3
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