“Life sucks and then we die.”
Dean spent a mind numbing amount of time combing through deaths within a hundred mile radius of Madison.
Research wasn’t Dean’s thing, it was Sam’s. Research made Dean’s eyes blur and letters to start switching themselves around when he did it for too long. Obituaries and news stories about any dead bodies were recorded in sloppy handwriting that Dean himself could barely decipher.
Give Dean a gun and a monster to gank over digging up research any day of the week. Hell, Dean would even take another two weeks in Rockies territory in the middle of winter while he tracked a black dog over research.
It was for Sam that Dean did it then and really put his best effort into it. Dean wasn’t blind, he saw the bashful little smiles Sam had been giving Madison and he saw his hesitation when the idea of her biting a silver bullet became a real reality.
If it weren’t for the fact that Dean figured that there was a real possibility of there being another werewolf in town they would find, Dean would have put Madison down as soon as Sam left her place. It was cold, Madison seemed like a nice girl, but she was a monster and one week every month she would kill innocent people.
God damn, when did hunting get so complicated?
It used to be real simple: monsters bad, saving people good.
Dean wanted to blame Harry for making everything that had been simple so complicated. Nothing screwed up a hunter’s idea of right and wrong like having a kid brother show up with powers that should have him on a kill list. After Harry it had been Lenore, the friendly vampire, and Dean wanted to blame her too.
But when he really thought about it, Dean’s black and white view started getting real grey the first time Sam had a vision in front of him.
So it was Sam’s fault that hunting was more complicated than it should be and it was Sam’s fault that Dean was even still hunting.
Bitch.
Dean had his research fathered and he was pretty damn sure that if the werewolf that changed Madison didn’t skip town, he’d be downtown by the river that night. They never made the front page, cause hookers never did, but at least two working gals made it to the river for the last six months during the lunar cycle. The articles didn’t say they were missing their hearts, but the pattern fit anyway.
Since the werewolf bit Madison instead of killing her, there was a good chance it was sticking around for her. Dean would bet some heavy cash that it would be a dude and it would be someone that knew Madison. The ex boyfriend was out, but Dean could get a list of Madison’s male friends and work his way from there.
A list of suspects and a good idea of where they liked to hang out when the moon was high was better than nothing. It was half a chance, Dean just didn’t think that they were going to have much more than that for Madison.
Sam was desperate, working off myths that had never been tested. Even if Dean managed to find the wolf that changed Madison, even if Dean stuck a silver bullet in his chest… there was still a damn good chance that Madison was going to go the same way.
It sucked, but that was life.
Dean trudged his way from the motel lobby he had been holed up in, using their computer since the library hadn’t been open yet, for the last six hours back to Madison’s house. Dean stopped for a coffee and decided fuck it before grabbing an energy drink too.
Double caffeine wasn’t going to hurt any, not when Dean had what was looking to be a damn long day. Dean needed to check on Harry, make sure the kid didn’t release Madison and get himself arrested, then Dean needed to get down to the river to start hunting.
It was early though, barely nine am, so Dean might be able to fit an hour or two of sleep in somewhere. It seemed fucked up to nap at Madison’s place while she was tied to a kitchen chair, but Dean figured he was only exhausted because they were trying to save her instead of killing her. Plus, Dean had done a lot more fucked up things before, so what was one more?
Dean touched base with Sam on his walk back. Sam didn’t have much to say, but he sounded desperate when he asked if Dean found anything so Dean figured it didn’t go so great on his end.
“Dean…” Sam’s voice was small on the phone, always making Dean picture him back when Dean had been the one that towered over Sam.
“Why did I think I wanted to do this forever?”
Dean was too tired for the ‘I told you so’ speech. Dean was too tired for much of any speech, honestly.
“Man, I dunno,” Dean said truthfully. “It ain’t too late to back out, Sam.”
“Yeah,” Sam sighed and went from eight to eighty. “It is. Get some sleep, Dean.”
Sam figured he’d be back by one, which meant if Harry didn’t do anything stupid while Dean was gone, then he could sleep until then. Dean finished the coffee and pocketed the energy drink for later.
God himself knew Dean was going to need it.
Dean didn’t bother knocking before he let himself inside Madison’s house when he made it back. They already tied her up, terrified her. Dean even shot her with a silver bullet, though he doubted she remembered that. They were a ways past good manners…
Except it seemed like Harry had wasted no time in releasing the deadly fucking werewolf.
Dean blamed that freaking school of his, they hired ghosts and werewolves, it was no wonder the kid had no healthy level of fear for actual monsters.
Harry was sprawled out on Madison’s couch when Dean walked in the front door. He had taken up Sam’s prior post and clearly cared to be alert while on guard duty about as much as Sam had. The purple invisible blanket was tucked beneath his head like a pillow and his wand dangled from his fingertips over the side of the couch.
Dean automatically grabbed his pistol when he noticed the way that a blanket had been tossed over Harry. It wasn’t the way that a person would cover themselves, it was the way it might look if it was thrown over someone after they were already out.
“Not another step.” Dean had his gun up and aimed at the doorway that connected the living room to the kitchen before Madison even had a chance to show her face. Dean might have thought that she had busted herself free after Harry fell asleep, but Dean knew his brother better.
Madison didn’t look scared, she looked really freaking miserable, actually. Even with her hair wet and face freshly washed, Dean could tell that she had spent a good chunk of time crying while he’d been gone.
“Dean?” Harry stirred while Dean and Madison watched each other from across the room.
A part of Dean thought it would be kinder to just put her down then and there, not drag it out in the hopes that Dean and his brothers would be the first hunters to reverse lycanthropy. If Madison really didn’t have any memory of her time as a werewolf, then she was just a nice girl who had been dealt a bad hand.
“Oi, don’t shoot her.” Harry had woken up fully and he twisted himself off the couch and rushed to put himself between Dean’s gun and Madison. Dean only raised the barrel, aiming it at Madison’s head over Harry’s.
Madison didn’t say a word, she just watched Dean with swollen eyes that were too calm for the situation.
“Hey, you, c’mon, don’t.” Harry had his wand in its right hand, loose at his side, while he tried to break Dean’s eye contact with Madison. “Our brother should be back soon and that potion works, I swear.”
It wouldn’t, Dean knew that just from the tone of Sam’s voice over the phone. And Madison knew it then too, she saw it in the small wince that Dean couldn’t hold back.
It didn’t change anything, Madison didn’t lunge for a phone or try to attack Dean. That was what he needed to relax his finger on the trigger - her acceptance that he would if he had to.
“Sam will be back in a few hours, we gonna be good until then?” Dean asked her.
“You’re going to have Sam do it?” she asked. There was some pain there, Dean hadn’t thought that Sam’s attraction had been one-sided.
“No.” Dean lowered his gun slowly, making a point that she saw him slide the safety on but leaving it loaded. “We’re going to do what we can,” he told her. Then, because Dean didn’t sugar coat shit, “I don’t think it’ll matter.”
Madison made a choked sound and when her eyes welled up with tears that made Dean itch, he swung his attention to Harry. Harry had his eyebrows pinched in a look of annoyance.
“You’re being dramatic,” Harry told him firmly, playing Dean’s role of big brother. “Other werewolves take that potion and they’re perfectly safe when they do it.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean didn’t know what Sam must have found out that made the potion not an option, but he figured they’d all know when Sam made it back so Dean only shrugged a shoulder up.
“How’d she get loose, Harry?” Dean asked instead. “Let me guess, magic?”
Harry must gave been fully over his fear of Dean killing him cause he stood there and made his eyes go wide and surprised while Dean had a loaded gun in his hand.
“How’d you know?” Harry asked, sarcastic as fuck. “It’s meant to be a secret, you see.”
Dean snorted, too tired to do much else. He saw Madison edging her way back to the kitchen and figured that she would stay put at least until Sam arrived.
“She remember wolfing out or did magic shock the truth in her?” Dean asked, thinking of the way she called Sam crazy and denied being a monster. Dean didn’t think she had been lying, he’d never had a conversation with the human side of a werewolf. It wasn’t crazy to think maybe they weren’t talking much, the human and the wolf.
During the day, Madison was a pretty girl that worked at a law office and made sweet eyes at Sam. It was one week a month when her friends, her neighbors, everyone started to look like an all-she-could-eat human buffet. Maybe the nice girl didn’t know about it, maybe she was one hell of an actress, Dean couldn’t be sure, but he thought it seemed more likely that she didn’t know about her own nightly adventures.
“Once I showed her magic, she was a bit more open to believing she was a werewolf.” Harry yawned and messed up his hair with his free hand, it would have been sticking out in all directions like Sam’s did when he first woke up if Dean hadn’t cut it shorter in the hospital.
In Dean’s opinion, Sam’s hair was too damn long and Harry’s was just past the perfect length.
Dean wanted to drop on the couch, clock out for a few hours if he was going to be on a werewolf hunt that night. Sam would be back before Dean had to leave… he could get a list of names from Madison… Dean just didn’t want to be a hypocrite and do the same thing he bitched in his head about both brothers doing.
“How likely is she to book it if I crash until Sam gets back?” Dean asked Harry.
“It’s her house, so I’d reckon not very likely.” Harry pocketed his wand as Dean did his pistol. “I told her that our brother’s getting a potion for her. She seems upset, but I don’t think she’s going to run away.”
It was nice of Harry to give Sam the credit when Dean would be the one out looking for a wolf that night. Not that it mattered, Dean didn’t think any of the Winchesters were walking away from the mess they were in with a win.
“Cool.” Dean hesitated, debating on handing Harry his gun to hold on to while he napped before ultimately deciding against it. If the kid couldn’t stomach seeing her tied up, Dean didn’t think he’d have it in him to shoot her.
“You’re on wolf-sitting duty then,” Dean told Harry as he finally caved and dropped on the couch. “Wake me up if anything interesting happens.”
“She’s making us food, is that interesting?”
Dean snorted and shuffled around to get comfortable. He really hoped that nobody had to kill Madison… not many people made breakfast for the guys who tied them up and took over their house.
“Wake me if it’s scrambled hearts, otherwise you keep watch,” Dean muttered. Dean curled one arm under his head, the other held his pistol on his chest.
It was quiet for a few seconds and Dean let go of a heavy breath, relaxing his tense shoulders, ready to drop off to a quick rest. When he heard shuffling footsteps approach him, he opened his eyes just enough to peer through his lashes.
Harry had an impossibly tender expression on his face when he looked at Dean. It wasn’t a Sammy look, it was a Dean-looking-at-Sam look. Harry grabbed the blanket that Dean had kicked to the ground and swung it over him with a whisper for him to get some rest.
The kid was soft and Dean suddenly found that it wasn’t the bad thing that he had always thought it was. Harry not ending up hard and jaded like Dean and Sam wasn’t some character flaw… maybe it was the goal.
Christ. Dean really needed to get some sleep, he was getting sappy in his own freaking thoughts.
When Dean woke up, it was because something kept smacking him in the face. Dean tried to bat it away before he was once again hit in the nose with something small and irritating.
“God damn it…” Dean grumbled as he opened his eyes and began the excruciating process of sitting up. When Dean shifted, a pile of napkin balls fell to the floor.
“You sleep with a loaded gun in your hand, I didn’t want to get too close.”
Dean wiped the sleep from his eyes and looked from the pile of trash to where his brother stood across the room, watching Dean from a doorway. It wasn’t bad instincts to not shake Dean awake, but Dean always slept with a gun and never shot anyone yet.
“Sam here?” Dean asked, his voice gravelly as if he slept too long, too hard. The house didn’t smell like cinnamon anymore, Dean checked the time on his cell and saw it was nearly three.
“He’s outside in the car,” Harry said promptly. Harry pulled a face, not looking real thrilled. “He’s been out there for ages, I knocked on the window and he locked the doors.”
Dean toyed with that as he tossed the blanket off him. If Sam was locking Harry out of the car then it was a Samantha-feels-fest happening.
“Where’s Madison?” Dean asked.
“Her room,” Harry said, answering promptly again. “We’re watching the telly.”
Dean sighed up at the ceiling and firmly chose to blame the low-grade headache he could feel at the base of his skull on his brothers instead of the armrest he’d slept on and his general… Dean-ness.
“So Sam’s having a fit in the car and you’re snuggling a werewolf,” Dean said. “Awesome.”
Harry sputtered at Dean’s back on his way out the door to deal with Sam first. The kid was ‘not bloody snuggling’ Madison, but the chick only had a queen sized bed, so the facts spoke for themselves.
Dean stretched on the porch and tucked his pistol away. The Impala was back on the curb in front of the house and Dean could see Sam slumped over in the driver’s seat, his shoulders curled up like they did when he was upset.
Dean already assumed that the potion Sam had been searching for wouldn’t be a fix, but he didn’t expect Sam to be all curled up over it. Sam curled up when he wanted to hide, like if he scrunched down small enough the world would quit kicking him.
The world wouldn’t quit kicking him, Sam often seemed like the world’s favorite kicking bag. But he didn’t have to field the blows alone either.
Dean set his shoulders, locked his expression in one that Sam used to believe could protect him, and he strode confidently across the yard. Dean’s knuckles on the passenger window jolted Sam and it took a second knock before Sam seemed to unwillingly unlock the doors.
“You can’t lock me out of my own car,” Dean bitched when he opened the door. It wasn’t the overly supportive opening line he planned, but it was true enough all the same.
Sam had turned his head away, sitting stiffly in the driver’s seat.
“Sorry.”
Dean waited for a second, giving Sam time to spill, and then pushed when Sam didn’t give.
“She can’t take it, huh?” Dean guessed. Sam’s shoulders curled up a little more. “Will it not work?”
“It’ll kill her,” Sam said quietly, his voice strained with the emotions Dean was thankful he held back. “Aconite, Dean. It’s poison.”
Dean ran a hand through his hair, not understanding. Harry found the shit in one of his books. Was his memory that jacked that he sent Sam on a wild goose chase?
“Harry said—”
“Harry had it right.” Sam took a deep breath and turned so he faced out the windshield, his eyes closed and face too passive. He spoke on autopilot, apparently having had too many hours in the car to mope about it alone. “Harry had it all right. There’s… she’s not a witch, so she takes it and she dies.”
“Fuck.” Dean hadn’t considered that there could be normal (?) werewolves and magic ones, but he should have. The kid really opened the door to a whole new world of possibilities.
“Alright, well, I’ll go find the bastard that bit her and see if that works,” Dean said, interjecting all his confidence in his plan.
Sam’s lips curled up in a soft smile, too bitter when paired with his dead eyes.
“I called White,” Sam said. He tilted his head and Dean looked down by his own feet, only then realizing that it was Sam’s phone in twenty different pieces.
Sam loved his phone, he loved it like Dean loved vintage bourbon. If he broke it, then that was another kick from the world.
“And he said killing the wolf that turned her would totally work?” Dean asked sarcastically, knowing what that broken phone meant.
“It’s a myth, there’s no way to reverse it.” Sam swallowed hard and repeated himself. “She’s got no idea what’s happening to her and - and there’s no way to reverse it, De.”
Dean knew that, he knew it from the start. He thought Sam did too. Even if Sam took off on the wing and a prayer of a chance, Dean thought Sam knew that Madison was doomed.
It wasn’t fair, life wasn’t fair, they knew that.
“White didn’t have any other ideas?” Dean asked.
Sam shook his head and laughed, the sound getting suspiciously close to a sob.
“He said lock her in a room at night or put a bullet in her chest,” Sam said. He laughed again and Dean knew that it was one laugh away from a crying fit.
With nothing for it, Dean reached over and grabbed Sam by the shoulders to pull him to his side. It was all it took for Sam to break and Dean had his grown brother trying to crawl in his chest to hide all his pain there.
That was fine, Dean could take it. That was what brothers were for - someone to take some of the kicks when they couldn’t anymore.
Sam was sobbing his broken cries in Dean’s chest and Dean just put a hand on the back of his head, letting him do what he needed to do.
Dean thought Sam knew… but clearly he hadn’t.
*****
“Where are we going?”
“We’re finding the bastard that bit her.”
“And we’re… killing them?”
“Yup.”
Harry shifted in the passenger seat and Dean didn’t have any pep talk to make him feel good about what they were doing. Hell, Dean didn’t feel good about it.
Sam insisted on staying with Madison and Dean insisted on finding the dick that bit her.
They all had their ways to deal. Dean wanted to kill something and Sam… fuck, Sam would probably be coordinating some way for Madison to sit out the transformations every month, locking herself up and spending a week every month in silver chains.
It wouldn’t be much of a life, but at least it was a life.
“What happened to the potion?” Harry asked. Harry hadn’t asked anything after Sam returned and Dean dragged him in the house with two different plans. Harry had been quiet and confused and compliant when Dean told him to get in the car.
“It’s poison,” Dean said curtly, his eyes trained on the sidewalks.
Dean had the car parked by the river and his pistol tight in his hand. Madison didn’t have many ideas on who it might have been, but she mentioned a neighbor at her old apartment complex that she thought ‘maybe had a thing for her?’ She gave Dean a photo and Dean gave her a quiet apology before he took Harry with him, giving Sam some space.
It was just Sam’s luck to fall for a chick like Madison. Sam loved a hopeless cause.
“I didn’t know…” Harry said, the unneeded apology dangling from his lips.
Dean glanced over at Harry and saw that the kid was pale and looked like hell. They should never have taken the damn case.
“Nobody’s blaming you,” Dean told him. He huffed, pissed off at the world. “Life’s just unfair, kid. No rhyme, no reason. Bad shit happens to good people and we just gotta deal.”
Harry hummed and Dean wished he had better words for him. Dean wished they hadn’t taken the case that was going to break Sam’s heart and push Harry another step toward the jaded hardness that Dean had built up young.
“Last case,” Dean said when it began to get dark and he could spot the gals that worked the corners appearing. If Dean’s research wasn’t shit, if Dean got a single thing right, then the werewolf should be showing up soon.
“Last case,” Harry agreed quietly. He hesitated for a second. “Why - why are we saving her but killing this one?”
Because life was unfair and Dean didn’t think that Madison was going to want to spend her nights locked up in silver chains. Dean didn’t think they were going to save her… Dean was pretty damn sure he was going to have to gank two monsters that night.
“‘Cause life sucks then we die.” Dean cocked his gun, glancing up at the moon in the sky and knowing it would be soon. “And if we’re real lucky, kid? We get to take some assholes with us when we go.”
Dean found the werewolf, not without some effort and he didn’t take him down before catching a nasty swipe at his chest. It wasn’t guilt that Dean felt when he managed to pull the trigger, sending a silver bullet through the dick’s heart - the guy had been attacking a girl when Dean found him. It was something though, something that didn’t sit right when Dean watched the wolf features melt away and then it was just some dude lying dead on a sidewalk.
Even better, the guy took his last gurgling breath when Harry finally caught up, the kid’s heavy pants from the chase cutting off in a shocked gasp.
If Dean’s goal was the raise Harry to be a little softer, a lot less hardened by death than Dean and Sam were, he was doing one hell of a job.
Dean looked at the man he killed, the one who had probably changed Madison and killed a dozen hookers that Dean knew of. For the first time, Dean felt regret twinging in his chest, just as hot as the blood on his hands.
“Let’s go,” Dean said, a rough whisper. He lifted the man’s body off where he had fallen on Dean and Dean left him right in the middle of the sidewalk. It would be someone else’s problem to find him, alert the cops.
Someone would call the dude’s family and they’d bury him, never knowing that Dean had killed a monster and the man was only a casualty.
“We’re just leaving him here?” Harry asked, stricken and choking on his shock.
Dean stood up and wiped his hands on the sides of his jeans. Dean let himself look at the man one more time, reminded himself that the dude was a monster - knowingly or not.
Then Dean turned away, put his hand on Harry’s shoulder to make him do the same, and knew that there was one more werewolf that needed taken care of. Sam shouldn’t have to do it; Dean could.
Dean could take care of it and sleep okay afterward. Call him a monster of his own, but Dean wouldn’t hesitate even if he hated himself just a little.
Except Sam made his own choices while Dean was gone and when Dean pulled up to Madison’s house, Sam was sitting on the porch steps with his gun in hand and blood splattering down the front of his chest.
“She - she didn’t want to turn again,” Sam said, sliding in the car and pretending that his face wasn’t soaked with tears and his shirt covered in the blood of a nice girl.
In another world, that girl could have been something good for Sam. In another life, Sam could have been happy with a girl that liked to cook and worked for a law office.
Dean hated that fucking world because why couldn’t his brothers have that?!
“I would have done it, you didn’t need to,” Dean said. Dean would have done that, Sam didn’t need to have another dead chick haunting his dreams and making him hate himself any more.
“She asked me to do it.” Sam’s voice wobbled and he ducked his head. “She asked me to.”
“Sammy…” Dean didn’t know what to say.
Sam shook his head and pulled his feet up in the seat, Dean pretended not to notice the blood getting on the leather or the way that Sam’s socks were missing.
“Can we go home?” Sam asked, miserable as fuck. “I just want to go home.”
“Yeah.” Dean could do that, just drive. Dean could drive them all home, be there by morning, leaving dead girls and monsters that couldn’t be saved in the rearview mirror.
Sam and Harry didn’t sleep the entire drive home and Dean only stopped long enough to fuel up. Nobody talked, Dean didn’t even have the heart to sing along with the radio.
They could get home, Dean could make them both get hot showers, go to sleep. Dean still had some sleeping pills from some old script he had filled back when Sam had been at Stanford, they were probably still good. Sam could take one, Harry could fuckin have one too for all Dean cared.
They would sleep and when they woke up, Dean would make something for everyone to eat. Burgers? Pie? Something to make everyone lighten up. Sam could take a few days off work, he’d put more than forty hours in the last few days. They’d have a stay-home-vacation.
And in a few days, they’d be alright. Maybe not great, but alright was good enough.
Dean pulled up to the trailer not long after the sun rose. It was the sunrise that blinded Dean for a few seconds, he parked on memory only.
“Home sweet home,” Dean told his brothers. Sam started to shift, finally stretching out from the ball he had been curled in for the drive. Dean had watched Harry for a third of the drive, checking his seatbelt at first then just watching the kid watch the scenery fly by them with tired eyes dulled with the loss of the case.
“C’mon.” Dean swatted Sam’s leg. “Shower, sleep, dude.”
“I’m going.” Sam stretched his ridiculously long legs out and opened the car door, spurring Harry to copy him from the backseat.
Dean was the last one out of the car and the first one to notice that there was someone sitting on their porch. At first, Dean had an annoyed thought that it was Sirius, there to apologize to Harry in person. It was only when Dean squinted against the sunlight that he recognized the purple robes and the long white beard.
“Harry…” Dean sighed and had a feeling that the half-assed plans he made were about to be screwed to hell. “Why the fuck is Albus sitting on our porch?”