"She's a werewolf."
Sam hated Halloween.
Like… hated it.
Not only was it a day where people pranced around in costumes and pretended to be the monsters that had been a constant threat to Sam’s family his entire life, but Jessica had loved it.
It had been one year… the longest year of Sam’s life… since Dean had broken into his apartment not long after Sam and Jessica had returned from a Halloween party. Jessica knew that Sam hated the monster costumes and had been teasing him when she dressed up as a nurse.
Sam had appeased her playful begging by putting on a name tag sticker that said ‘Bob’.
“That is not a costume, Sam Winchester!” Jessica laughed when she saw the sticker. Jessica looked like every teenage boys fantasy of what a nurse looked like.
“Sure it is.” Sam had been filled with the confidence and awe that came from knowing that a beautiful and brilliant woman wanted to be with him. His smile was easy, uncomplicated, his hand on her hip belonged there.
Even in her red heels, Jessica was shorter than Sam. Not by much though and he bent his head down to press teasing kisses to her neck. God, she had the softest skin, sensitive in all the right places.
“People are going to be so confused,” Sam murmured as he pulled her closer, she could never be close enough. “They’ll say, ‘Excuse me, nurse? Where’s that studdly boyfriend of yours? All we see is boring Bob’.”
Jessica laughed and it made Sam smile against her neck with his face hidden. Her laugh was enough to bring him out of his worst moods most of the time. Getting to be the one that could hold her as he did? Kiss her as a lover and make jokes as a friend?
Sam hadn’t truly appreciated it until his bubble had been burst that same night by Dean.
It was apparently going to be a tradition for Sam’s Halloweens to always end in being attacked by his brother.
It had been Dean the year before, Harry that year.
Sam had fallen asleep on the couch after Madison went to bed. The silent invitation to join her had lingered in the air between them when she said goodnight, Sam had very nearly accepted it.
Madison was smart, beautiful, strong. They spent the entire evening talking and it had been nice. Madison told Sam about her ex-boyfriend, the douche that was suspect number one for the werewolf attacks. Madison loved him, he hurt her. She didn’t say it, Sam could just tell. She also said that she had been mugged a month ago, attacked on her way home by someone she never saw. They sent her to the hospital and it managed to give her the courage to leave her boyfriend.
“I mean, I just figured that if I was going to get attacked by crazy guys in the middle of the night then that was my quota, right? Why keep crazy at home when crazy was everywhere else?” She smiled, a touch self-conscious, and they were so close to each other on the couch. “Does that make me sound like the crazy one?”
“No.” Sam’s fingers were aching with how much he wanted to tuck her hair behind her ear, see every freckle on her face. “I think that makes you strong,” Sam said truthfully.
Madison was strong and sarcastic, beautiful and witty. Sam… Sam liked her.
Which should have been his first clue that she wasn’t being stalked by a werewolf, but was the werewolf.
Sam was ripped from his light sleep by someone grabbing his shoulders and shaking hard. Sam reacted instinctively before opening his eyes; he reached out and grabbed the shirt collar of whoever shook him and used it to fling them away.
Sam’s name was sharply called just as he opened his eyes, both hands up and ready to defend himself against- against Harry.
“Christ.” Sam saw his younger brother in a heap on the floor, already being helped up by Dean. Sam started to apologize, he didn’t actually mean to knock Harry down, but he was silenced when Harry threw himself at Sam and grabbed him in a fierce hug.
“Uh…?” Sam felt like maybe be had missed something, something that would explain why Harry smelled like cheap perfume and the muscles in his body were trembling while he clung to Sam like a burr. Sam looked to Dean for an explanation and only saw a solemn, almost remorseful, look on Dean’s face.
“You didn’t answer your phone,” Harry mumbled in Sam’s shoulder. Sam awkwardly patted him on the back while he shifted to sit upright, curious what happened that had Harry upset and Dean so serious.
Sam looked away from Dean to the coffee table where his phone had been. It never rang and the battery had been low, it probably died. When Sam said as much, Dean scoffed at him.
“Well you did a great job at keeping watch, Mister Big Shot Fed,” Dean snapped at him. “The werewolf that dropped another body tonight wasn’t the ex, Sam.”
“We thought you were dead.” Harry pulled away from Sam and gave him Dean’s shittiest scowl. There was a little bit too much worry in his eyes for Sam to take it to heart though.
“For the record, I didn’t think you were dead,” Dean said dickishly. “I thought wolf-girl bit you so that the two of you could have nasty wolf sex.”
“Wait, what?” Sam’s heart started pounding loudly, already understanding what Sam’s brain wanted to deny. Why would they…? Why were they…?
No.
Sam tilted his head at Dean, not in question, but a plea: come on.
Dean bit his lower lip and shook his head slightly as he finally looked away. As easily as Dean could read Sam - Sam could read him too. That regret hidden in the back of his eyes was for Sam, an apology.
No.
“It was dark, maybe we—”
Sam jumped from the couch, refusing to listen to Harry’s faltered offering. Madison was not the werewolf killing people, she wasn’t. She went to bed, Sam would have heard her if she—
The light blue sheets of Madison’s bed were rumpled, her comforter was thrown on the floor. The window was open, curtain mocking Sam as it waved in the breeze.
“She’s gone,” Sam said quietly, telling himself, making himself believe it.
Madison wasn’t the victim, she was the monster.
Dean wanted to go hunt Madison down, track her in the streets to try and keep her from hurting anyone else. Sam checked the placement of the moon, knew that Madison would be human before they had a hope of finding her.
Harry… Harry sat on the front steps with his mirror, repeatedly calling for a guy that wasn’t going to answer. It made Sam feel like crap to see that, to hear Harry getting more and more desperate each time he called, but there were a lot of things making Sam feel like crap.
“You couldn’t know,” Dean said as he watched Sam pace the living room and think. “It’s not like people announce that shit, Sammy. Even Harry didn’t tell us about magic and he doesn’t have a hankering for heart.”
Sam shook his head, flicking Dean’s words away like irritating flies. It had been so freaking gullible of Sam to just take Madison at her word. Why? Because she was pretty? Because Sam thought she was someone who had been through some tough situations and she came through stronger?
Had she been honest about anything?!
The longer Sam thought about it, the angrier he got. She played him, pure and simple. Maybe she suspected they were hunting a werewolf, maybe she just got off on the innocent act.
God, Sam was so stupid.
By the time the back door handle rattled, Sam was so far past ‘angry’ that he was the one to pull his gun first and aim it directly in Madison’s face.
Madison was pale, trembling. Her eyes were wide and wet. Her hands though? The hands that had been claws just an hour before? They were covered in blood.
“You’re one hell of an actress.” Sam made sure that the silver chains tying Madison to one of her kitchen chairs were tight. They could only be released with the key they Sam stuck in his pocket.
Madison was a monster, but Sam damn well wanted some answers first. Madison had cried and begged, pleaded with Sam to let her go. It was infuriating - she was still keeping up the act.
“Please, please…” Madison’s face was covered in tears and Sam briefly worried that she couldn’t breathe between the chains and the force of her sobs.
Then he reminded himself that if she cried herself to death that Sam wouldn’t have to - have to -
“Who turned you?” Sam demanded. He had to back up a few steps to put distance between himself and Madison. It would be easier if Dean were with Sam instead of Harry, Dean wouldn’t be swayed by tears or pleading that sounded almost genuine.
Well… that probably was genuine. Monsters never asked to be put down.
“Nobody turned me!” Madison yelled. She had denied every accusation of being a werewolf that Sam had flung so far, but the blood covering her and the gash from where Dean said he got her with a silver bullet to the arm spoke for themselves.
“Sam, please.” Madison tried to shift, to get her body out of the line of Sam’s barrel. She looked miserable when she looked at him, pitiful and broken. “Please, I’m not a werewolf. Those aren’t real, Sam. I - something happened, I think I was in an accident or something? I should see a doctor and so should you!”
“Me?” Sam laughed, shaking his head incredulously. “You’re really something, aren’t you? You killed someone tonight, Madison! Maybe even two people! And I need to see a doctor??”
Madison dropped her head and began crying so earnestly, heaving and terrified sobs, that it made Sam doubt himself for a second. Maybe Dean…?
No. Even if it was dark, there was no way that Dean and Harry both were wrong. Even Sam’s half-desperate hope that Madison had an evil twin (hey, Andy never knew about Ansem until it was almost too late) was blown up by the wound on Madison’s arm.
But with every tear that fell from Madison’s face to the floor, Sam felt uneasy.
Was he really going to be lured in by a - a crying fit? Was Sam so weak and desperate for connection that he would let a freaking murderer play him like a fiddle? A few tears here and there and ‘oh, Sam, won’t you undo these chains?’
No. There were still three nights left in the moon cycle and Madison would hurt someone, she would kill them.
“He said I had to save you and - and if I couldn’t save you that I had to kill you.”
No.
It so wasn’t the time for Sam to push his issues on someone else. There was no cure to lycanthropy. There was no…
Something tugged at Sam’s mind while Madison continued to cry and his gun began to droop in his hand.
It was something he read, somewhere. Sam had to focus to picture the words; had they been handwritten or typed? A book he bought or one handed down to him?
The handwritten words about a theory on curing a person of lycanthropy appeared in Sam’s mind the exact second that the kitchen door was thrown open.
“I need John’s journal,” Sam said.
“I need a ride to Nevada!” Harry cried, beaming at Sam. Harry’s eyes ticked to the side, directly to where Madison was tied up (the image Sam and Dean had been trying to prevent him from seeing) and his smile fell. They spoke again at the same time, overlapping and adding a new layer of confusion to the room.
“Why is she tied to a chair?!”
“Why do you need a ride to Nevada?”
Dean slid in the kitchen then, fifteen seconds too late. Sam was confused, Harry was horrified, and Madison was still pretending to be terrified.
Maybe Madison was terrified… Sam was actually too confused to be certain.
“You have to untie her!” Harry hissed when the three of them moved to the living room for a private conversation. “I thought you fancied her! You don’t tie up people you fancy!”
Dean opened his mouth and Sam sharply shook his head no. It was definitely not the time.
“She’s a werewolf, Harry,” Sam reminded him. “If I untie her now she’s going to run and end up killing someone else.”
“Does she know she’s a werewolf?” Dean asked. He shrugged nonchalantly when Sam and Harry both looked at him. “I dunno, man. She seems pretty scared right now.”
Sam considered that. It was possible that Madison was completely ignorant to her own transformations. It would explain the tears and fear… though it didn’t make her any less dangerous.
“Okay, so she calls the cops and still transforms tonight,” Sam said, forcing himself to sound firm and in control. It didn’t matter if Madison had a Jekyll and Hyde situation going on, she had killed at least three people and there were still three nights left in the cycle.
“But what if she transforms and keeps her human mind?” Harry said. He had a book tucked beneath his arm and shoved it to Sam. “I - I’m sorry it took so long to find it. I couldn’t remember exactly what it was called and I tried to call the bloke that er…”
“Sirius,” Dean helpfully supplied.
“Yes, I tried to call the bloke that Sirius said he’d stay with to get the potion, but nobody answered and it took some time to read through the book until I found what I wanted.”
Sam listened to Harry ramble while he opened the book to the bookmarked page. It was a potions recipe, Sam knew that much at least, and he read the information on it quickly.
Wolfsbane Potion, a medicinal grade potion to allow a werewolf to retain their human mind during their monthly transformations.
Harry was still rambling, explaining how he didn’t know if it would work since Madison didn’t seem to be a ‘normal’ werewolf. Sam stopped listening, honestly, as he began to feel a swell of hope rising in him.
They didn’t have to kill her. That potion could make it so that Madison didn’t become a monster when she transformed, she could just wait it out as her usual self. If her usual self wasn’t a bloodthirsty monster, as Sam hoped was true.
“You can make this?” Sam asked Harry, looking to his younger brother with hopeful eyes. “If we go to Nevada and get supplies, you could make it?”
“Er… no.” Harry pointed at the instructions in the book and Sam read the brewing time… thirty one days.
“But I could buy it,” Harry said. “It’s expensive, but I’m sure potion stores sell it.”
“I had another idea too,” Sam said, thinking quickly as he tried to plan. “In John’s journal, there was a note about curing lycanthropy. If we can find the person who turned Madison and kill them, the chain could be broken and she could be cured. Have you ever heard of anything like that?” he asked Harry.
“No,” Harry said, his face screwed up in deep concentration. “But I think the bloke that did the section of werewolves was a bit biased.”
“Dean?”
Dean shook his head at Sam, that same annoying regret in his eyes.
“It was a myth, Sammy,” Dean told him. “It was never tested or proven. We don’t even know when she was turned, it would be impossible to find the person who did it.”
“Maybe not,” Sam said. He turned back to the kitchen and took a deep breath before returning. There were a lot of maybes, uncertainties, but… but Madison might be able to be saved.
She didn’t have to die.
Madison had stopped crying and she looked at Sam with miserable resignation in her eyes. Sam held her eyes as he slowly raised his gun and unclipped it to set it on the kitchen counter.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, praying it was the truth. “Madison, I need to know… you said you were mugged last month, right? Do you remember the day?”
“I… the thirtieth,” Madison said. “Why?”
That would fit, it would have fallen in the moon cycle.
“This is going to sound crazy…”
Madison laughed a little hysterically, making Sam even more hopeful that she really didn’t remember her transformations, she wasn’t purposefully killing people.
“But did the person bite you?” Sam asked gently. It was uncomfortable to ask, it had probably been a traumatic event to have happened.
“How…” Madison’s eyebrows curled downward. “How did you know that?”
Sam turned to Dean, sharing his thoughts with only a glance. If they could find the person that ‘mugged’ her, then they had a chance to cure her. And, if that failed, they could get the potion for her.
The problem they faced was that there just weren’t enough of them to get everything done at once. Someone had to watch Madison, someone had to search for the person that attacked her, and someone had to go to Nevada.
“Alright.” Dean tucked his gun away and scrubbed his face with both hands. “How d’you wanna do this, Sam?”
“I don’t…” Sam couldn’t decide which was the higher priority. Harry wasn’t positive the potion would work, Dean didn’t think killing the wolf that changed Madison would work.
“What if I stay here and one of you goes to Nevada and the other one goes to find the person who changed her?” Harry asked, surprising Sam and Dean both. Sam started to refuse, to claim that Harry couldn’t stay alone with someone who might hurt him, might have him arrested, then Harry pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper from his pocket.
“I’m not riding in the car with either of you for that long and I’m not walking around with a gun to kill someone,” Harry told them. He handed Sam the paper and Sam unfolded it curiously. It was…
Christ.
It was a list of spells down the left side of the paper, the reaction they would cause on the right side.
“I wrote them down because I’ll forget without it,” Harry said, his voice sheepish and needlessly embarrassed. It wasn’t Harry’s fault that Sam had given him freaking brain damage.
“So I’ll be fine here and you two should go do the other things,” Harry went on. He leaned past Sam to give Madison a half-smile. “As long as she promises to not call the cops.”
Sam looked at Dean for an answer as he returned Harry’s list to him. Madison wouldn’t change until night, Harry only had to worry about the cops getting called and honestly Harry had the upper hand in that scenario. All Harry had to do was hide under gods cloak, wait somewhere for Sam or Dean to find him. He had a phone, a wand, a cloak…
It was the best plan they had.
“You can’t untie her, kid,” Dean told Harry, glaring him down firmly. “You swear?”
Harry blinked up at Dean and raised his left hand, “Solemnly.”
“And if anything happens, you need to hide and call us,” Sam stressed, raising his eyebrows to get his meaning across to Harry.
Harry looked like he wanted to roll his eyes at Sam and only stopped himself by the skin of his teeth.
“Oh, will you answer?” Harry asked him with biting sarcasm hidden behind an innocent front. “I thought maybe you didn’t do that.”
That kid was pure Dean Winchester.
Sam and Dean divided up the other two jobs easily. Sam could get access to the magical city in Nevada with his badge, Dean could pour through papers on any other attacks before Madison had been turned to try and find the one that turned her.
“Drive like you’ve got some fucking common sense,” Dean said when he grabbed his things from the car, leaving it free for Sam to take.
Sam bristled, if only because Dean sounded too much like John when he said that.
“Ava hit me,” Sam reminded him irritably. “And, ugh.” Sam looked down at the drivers seat and saw glitter suck to the leather. “Why does your car look like you’ve been hanging out at a strip club?”
“Drive safe,” Dean said again, setting off Sam’s suspicion. When would Dean have had time to go to a strip club?
It would have to be a mystery for another day… Sam needed to get his ass to Area Fifty One and buy a potion with the money that would hopefully hit his checking account by the time he reached the city.
It wasn’t a budgeted purchase, but Sam would take it from his emergency fund. If saving an innocent life didn’t count as an emergency, Sam didn’t know what did.
The car was quiet while Sam drove as quickly as he could. It was only four hundred miles, nothing compared to some of the trips Sam had made on his own before with much less sleep than he had gotten.
It did give Sam too much time to think though… too much time to consider every hunt he had been on, every monster he had killed. Could some of them have been saved? The other werewolves that Sam had killed… they didn’t have to die.
Sam just hadn’t cared enough to try and save them.
Area Fifty One wasn’t hard to find, it was right out in the open. Sam had never been there before and he wasn’t sure how to go about getting inside.
If it turned out to be another thing that Sirius incorrectly told Harry then Sam was going to hunt him down himself and knock his teeth out. At the rate Sirius was going with ignoring Harry, Harry might not even mind so much.
The fence and multiple warnings about prosecution for trespassing on government property made Sam wary as he drove around to find the opening. Three guards approached his car as soon as he pulled up beside the only opening to the building.
Sam pulled out his ID and hoped like hell that he wasn’t about to be detained.
“This is government property, son.” The guard that approached Sam had his gun strapped to his back, but the other two hung back and had them in their hands threateningly. “You need to turn this car around and head out.”
“Sam Winchester.” Sam held his badge out. “I work for MACUSA.”
The expression on the guard didn’t change, but he did accept Sam’s badge. He stepped from the car and Sam let out a sigh of relief when he watched him pull a wand from his belt to tap the card with, when nothing happened, Sam’s badge was returned.
“Park in Lot C and enjoy your stay,” he said. He pointed his wand at the gate and Sam was actually granted access.
Sam was granted access to Area freaking Fifty One.
The way Sam’s life worked and somehow it wasn’t even the craziest thing to happen to him that week.
Sam found the area he was directed to park in and called the automatic number for his new banking account before climbing out of the car. His check had cleared - another shocking event - and Sam couldn’t help but think it was a good sign.
If everything was lining up… Sam had to think maybe it would end up okay. Sam could get the potion, Madison would be saved. And Sam would remember it on future jobs, he would remember that kill first didn’t need to be his motto, not Sam’s.
Sam was not his father.
The inside of Area Fifty One reminded Sam of an airport. There were restaurants with tables lined up outside of the ordering booths, shops with people standing around in crowds. Maybe it was more like a mall, but Sam didn’t have a lot of time to look around and gawk at it all.
Sam asked a few people about where to buy potions and followed their directions around the crowds and the stores until he found ‘Fifty City Potions’.
The woman running the shop had on lime green robes that were an eyesore to Sam, but she was knowledgeable when Sam asked about Wolfsbane Potion.
“Oh, dear, get bitten, did ya?” she asked, a twang to her voice. When she tsk’d in sympathy, the strings of multicolored beads in her grey hair echoed her. “First cycle, hun?”
“It’s for a friend,” Sam said. He followed her through the shelves until she found the row he wanted. There was a price tag and label beneath the bottle - Jesus Christ, it was expensive.
Worth it though.
“Mm, of course, hun,” the woman said, cooing at Sam in a blatantly skeptical way. She plucked one of the potions from the shelf and offered it to him. “It’s more effective if you take it the week leading up to the full moon.” She peered at Sam with pale blue eyes. “Did your friend transform for the first time last night?” she whispered.
“She did,” Sam said. He hesitated, the bottle already in his hand. “If she takes it today, will it still work tonight?”
“Tonight?” The woman shook her head and the beads in her hair hissed at Sam. “Hun, full moon only happens once a month. Your friend is safe ‘til next month.”
Sam felt something in the pit of his stomach that felt a lot like trepidation. He clutched the bottle even more tightly in his hand, holding it like the lifeline he wanted it to be.
“I think she’s a different type than usual,” Sam said, thinking of the differences Harry kept mentioning as well. “She changes every night of the week of the full moon.”
“Oh.” The woman actually took a step back away from Sam and her beads definitely hissed at Sam then. “Hun…” She whispered so quietly that Sam nearly couldn’t hear her. “Your friend isn’t a no-maj, is she?”
Sam swallowed as he nodded. “Yeah, she is.”
The woman tried to take the potion back, her hand wrapped around Sam’s and he once again saw regret in someone’s eyes as they frowned at him.
“Hun… no-maj’s can’t take this,” she said softly, her voice dripping with sympathy. “The aconite will kill her.”
Aconite… an actual poisonous plant.
“That’s- that’s an ingredient?” Sam asked, all the hope he had wilting away to horrible disappointment. It was a wasted trip… Sam should have known better.
“Best thing to do?” The woman patted her robe pocket as she took the bottle from Sam’s hand. “Silver bullet, hun. Don’t let her suffer.”
Sam still bought the Wolfsbane, if only because he couldn’t let the entire trip be a waste.
He reminded himself the entire drive back that Dean was working on another angle; there was a way. There had to be. Madison didn’t have to die because someone else forced her in the role of a monster. Where was the fairness of that? The justice?
“If I couldn’t save you, I had to kill you.”
Sam was not his father, Madison didn’t need to be killed, she could be saved.
Sam could save her, he could.
He could.