han_solo | (no subject)

(no subject)

Dean is Over It.

Nebraska and the Roadhouse cannot come soon enough.

Rachel's getting increasingly more annoying, and Dean's starting to wonder if travelling on his own would be better.

Anything would be better that this, for sure.

... although possibly not, he thinks, stamping on the brakes hard as they cross the border into Kansas and a flickering figure in white appears, screams, falls under the car and disappears -- possibly not this.

Damn.

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Rachel demorphs quickly, watching Dean work, lifting her gaze to the spirit again.

She watches her, nothing else. She can ignore the cold and listen to the chanting and honor this-- thing that doesn't need to be understood to be pitied.

As Dean reaches the end of the rites, salts the bones, and tosses a lit match down into the hole, the spirit looks up again. Straight at Rachel, this time, and -- she's smiling.

And then she starts getting brighter -- and doesn't stop.

Slowly, weakly, Rachel smiles back. Apparently, she's been forgiven for being blonde and thin.

Though, she is bright, bright enough that Rachel squints, lifts her arm to shade her eyes, foot sliding back-

And hitting a patch of ice, slipping straight to the ground and cracking her head on a tree root.

Dean snorts in amusement, dropping his hands as the spirit flares and vanishes. Job well done, and Rachel falls over her own feet at the end?

"You havin' fun down there?"

"...ow," Rachel mumbles, groaning as she sits up and lifts a hand to the back of her head.

It comes away bloody. Not a lot, a shallow cut, but there. Rachel groans again and doesn't look at Dean, struggling to get to her feet. Just what she needed, another reason for Dean to be a jerk at her.

Dean has the strangest expression on his face, though.

"Hey -- stay still," he says sharply, dodging the edge of the grave to hurry around and kneel beside her. "Let me see."

Strange expressions do not make a happy Rachel. She shoots him a suspicious glare and leans away when he comes close, eyes narrowed. "It's fine."

"Shut up, let me fuckin' see."

He's not letting anyone die on him. No. No, no, no, no, no.

His hands are surprisingly gentle -- if quite firm in pushing her own out of the way.

She's tense and angry and worried, arms wrapping around her knees while she lets him inspect the wound, blonde hair stained red.

Very, very tense as soon as he touches her.

"It's fine, just a scratch."

"I'm not gonna fucking hurt you." Dean's more irritated than he really has a right to be by her tension, angry and annoyed. "Can you see straight? There's a lotta blood."

"It's a head wound, of course there's a lot of blood," she grumbles, not relaxing even an inch, flinching at one of his touches, no matter how gentle. "Yes, I can see straight. I have a headache, shocking as it is."

"No shit," Dean murmurs, probing the wound very gently, and then reaching for his duffel bag again to get a bandage. "You're gonna have a headache for a while. You okay to walk?"

"Yes."

Maybe. Damned if she'll admit to being a little dizzy, though.

She's still tense, still uneasy, and shivering in the frost. She glances at the fire with a frown, making sure not to touch Dean, or look at him. "So it's done? The ghost?"

"Yeah. She's gone."

With more subtlety than usual, he bandages her head quickly and moves back, watching her with a frown.

"A'ight, soldier, let's move."

It's probably the gentleness more than anything else that tells her how severe the wound is.

...great. She groans, mostly to herself, and gets up with a very specific lean away from Dean.

He also gets a sharp glare for 'soldier.'

"When does all this go away?" she asks, eyeing her flip-flops for a moment before deciding she has better traction on ice with bare feet - and she doesn't want to slip again. She gestures at the frost and snow with a glance at Dean.

"Should be fadin' already." Dean frowns down at her bare feet, turning blue with cold, and at the ice and snow.

Melting ice and frost will make it only more slippery, and she's already dizzy.

Great.

"Okay, don't take this th'wrong way, but I'm gonna carry you."

"You put a hand on me, you're pulling a stump back," Rachel snaps in return, glaring at him sharply. "I'm fine. I did not just face a liquid human, nearly get my head rock-salted, burn down a house, and dig up a homicidal ghost's bones to get taken down by a tree root."

Dean raises an eyebrow at her. "Well ... technically ... you kinda did."

"Sorry."

Rachel glares. Because he's right.

This realization does not stop her from continuing to walk toward the car.

If she can't do it in a straight line, it's totally not her fault.

Dean sighs.

"Look -- you can keep walkin', and you'll hurt yourself again, and then I'll basically never let you live it down. Or you could just suck it up and let me getcha back to the freakin' car."

"Screw you," Rachel growls, pulling his jacket off and tossing it to him.

Yeah, she'll take the wolf morph over being carried any day. Also, she is faster and warmer this way.

Oooh hey. Jacket. Dean yanks it on with maybe even a touch of thankfulness -- it's fucking cold out there.

And it's reassuring to see that the wolf doesn't have a gash in its head, that Rachel runs as fast as ever. Even if he'd never admit it.

By the time they reach the car, the frost is gone -- although everything's covered in a fine layer of greasy soot from the burning house, which is by now sitting at the base of a pillar of thick black smoke. The car's unlocked.

Dean gives the wolf a doubtful look. "...are you gonna shed on my leather?"

[I'm gonna demorph,] Rachel reports, padding up onto the road and sitting beside the car, fur starting to melt away. She's silent during the morph, not wanting to have her words cut off, and puts a hand against the roof of the car to steady herself once she's finished. "I won't heal so long as I'm not in this body," she adds, poking gently at the back of her head with a frown, checking for blood.

Dean frowns. "The morphing-out-thing doesn't heal you? Well, shit."

"It's my body," she explains, bringing her hand away with a frown for the dots of red on her fingertips and reaching for the bandage Dean had given her before. "The animal DNA, that's borrowed, it isn't affected by an injury. My body is still mine - it ages and it heals."

And... she somehow forgot about all that in her goal to learn to fight as a human. It's harder, much harder, to run full tilt into a fight when you don't have the failsafe of morphing out to protect you.