han_solo | (no subject)

Rachel gasps, hands out against the dashboard, turning sharply to see where the figure went.

"Oh my god, wait, she's not on the road, she must be stuck under the car!"

"Don't be fucking stupid," Dean snaps, checking his pistol before getting out of the car. "She look real to you?"

He doesn't tell her to stay in the car because that wouldn't do any good.

He gets a sharp glance in return and it's the first time in since they got in the car that it isn't accompanied by a glare - just surprised. "What?"

She gets out of the car when he does anyway, slamming the door and crouching in flip-flops with her hands pressed to the road to see beneath the car.

Dean isn't paying any attention to her; he's looking around at the road. It's cold, there's a glittering coat of frost over everything -- as they watch it creeps over the Impala too, drawing together over the hood and sliding up the windshield.

(It's summer.)

Damn.

Damn.

"Spirit," he answers Rachel tersely. "And we're in the middle of fuck-off nowhere, goddamnit, and no freakin' Internet." Or access to local papers, or anyone still alive nearby.

With nothing beneath the car, Rachel gets to her feet - just in time to have the first layer of skin ripped from her palms when she pulls them off frosted asphalt.

The look she gives Dean says that she believed him when he said he hunted spirits, she just didn't believe him.

"What do we do?"

"We wait."

Dean doesn't even bother rolling his eyes. He gets that look a lot.

"She's making the rules now. We wait, we try'n figure out what she wants and why. And then we try to find her corpse and salt'n'burn the shit outta it."

Rachel's nose wrinkles automatically - wait - but she doesn't argue.

"How do we figure it out?

"Don't worry," Dean says grimly, checking his shotgun.

It's dark, quite quickly, even though it was barely twilight before.

"She'll let us know."

Rachel's eyes drift up to the darkening sky, narrowed blue and frowning.

"I hate waiting."

"Really?"

Dean does roll his eyes, this time.

"I'd never've guessed."

"Try using your brain for activities other than wisecracks," Rachel replies. She leans against the Impala, folding an arm on the roof.

And shivering. A lot.

"Shit, unlock the car, I need my clothes."

"It's not locked."

They might need to leave in a hurry.

That's true, they might.

Rachel takes hold of the handle, catches Dean's eye, and tugs uselessly a few times.

Edited 2008-08-18 00:04 (UTC)

"...well, shit."

Dean frowns, looking around sharply. The wind is picking up, noisy in the otherwise silent world.

Ahead of them, several hundred yards down the road, the figure flickers again. It's a woman, in a ragged white dress, pale skin, straggling blonde hair.

She's calling to someone. They can't hear words, but they can hear the desperation in her voice.

Calling desperately, needy, searching for someone that doesn't exist.

Maybe Dean attacks creatures like this for a living, but all Rachel feels is pity.

For half a second.

"Do you need the trunk open?"

"You damage my car and I'll damage your head," Dean says sharply. "We're fine."

At least he has his duffel out of the car, having thrown it to the road while getting his shotgun out.

"We better go see what she wants."

"Oh right, I forgot how much you hate help," Rachel snarls, but it's half-hearted at best. She side steps a patch of ice in her flip-flops and meets Dean at the head of the car to walk toward the soft crying spirit.

"What do they usually want?"

"Us dead," Dean says, without any particular emotion. Eyes forward, he shrugs off his jacket and hands it to her without looking.

"Sometimes they just wanna know why. I'm hopin' that's the case."

The woman doesn't look friendly. But then, nobody so obviously dead could look very friendly. She's corpse-mottled-white with sunken eyes, neck twisted in a way that nothing living could mimic, and her white dress is stained with blood and grime and filth. Her feet are bare.

Dean yawns.

She looks over when he offers the jacket, frowning. He's changing the rules again.

This time, though, she's too damn cold to question it.

"Anything to tell just from looking at her?" Rachel's seen her friends turn into cockroaches, a walking corpse isn't turning her stomach just yet. "Should I be morphing?"

"You're not gonna be able to hit her any more with a gorilla-arm than with your own," Dean says flatly. "Just -- be quiet and try not to do anything dumb."

The ghost is still now, watching from sunken eyes, flickering occasionally. Beneath her feet the ground is white with the frost.

One hand is holding a small but lethal-looking knife.

Well, that's no good. Though Rachel's somewhat more confident to note that the ghost's arms are even thinner than her own. How likely can it be that she'll get an attack over on either her or Dean?

"So we're just going to keep walking until she flips out?"

"Basically, yeah. Ghosts never do anythin' without a reason. If she can't attack us till we're in a certain location, that means there's somethin' important about that spot. So we gotta find out what spot it is."

"Using us as bait." It's a soft comment, more to herself than to him.

(it might be a little approving, too)

With Dean's jacket on, she crosses her arms tight around herself, eyes steady on the spirit as they approach her.

"Yeah. Sorry." He doesn't sound particularly apologetic.

The spirit is watching them, flickering and hazy, and by the time they're close enough to make out the pattern of gashes in her neck, they can also see the look in her eyes -- pure cold rage.

"Hey, there," Dean says, quietly. "Can we help you?"

In answer she lifts her knife, lips twisting in a snarl -- and in another flicker of focus she's on top of them.

Rachel doesn't think - not about her size and strength, not about spirits, not about anything.

Just launches straight at the thing to tackle her off of Dean.

...of course, spirits, as a general rule, are discorporeal. Rachel hits snow and rolls, skidding to a stop and sending a glare back to Dean who's...

No longer being straddled by a skinny, angry ghost.

"What the hell was that?!"