Energizers, or Power Pellets - for Jeanny
Title: Energizers, or Power Pellets
Author: mymuseandi
Recipient: Jeanny
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Thanks to my awesome beta - she knows who she is - for doing such a wonderful job even as the deadline approaches. Any mistakes are mine, and I hope Jeanny likes this as much as I have the pleasure of stretching my writer's skills with an outsider's perspective.
Word-Count: ~2,300
Summary: The younger Winchester and the 'unofficial' Winchester spent a little time together while making their way to the morgue. Missing scene from S8's Pac man Fever.
“So where’re we driving to? The coroner's office?” Charlie asked as they made their way to the car. It was parked a little further away from the crime scene, in the opposite direction of which she and Dean had arrived. Thankfully, the bright headlights from the cars and the police spotlights lit the path clearly ahead of them, and she did not have to stumble her way through the night’s darkness.
“Yeah, that’s where the other body is,” Sam replied, walking carefully past the crime scene, and Charlie saw his eyes look briefly to the dead body on the ground. She glanced involuntarily at it, too, and could not stop the shudder running through her shoulders. “Come on, I’ll drive,” he continued, but she barely heard him, her attention now on two men - the coroner's assistants, she assumed - who were just coming up to the body with a stretcher between them. She wondered how they were going to bag the liquefied insides that was slowly oozing out of its stomach, and then gagged a little.
Shaking the disturbing, and not to mention gross image from her mind, she turned her eyes away, focusing on Sam instead. He was still pale and was even swaying a little as he walked, but she got the feeling that that had nothing to do with the oozing, liquefied corpse they passed by earlier.
“My car, it's mine, I'll drive. I have the keys anyway....” Charlie trailed off as she realized that she, in fact, did not have the keys with her. They were in the bag in Dean's beloved Impala.
“Yeah, no, they're with me,” Sam said as he reached into his suit and fished out the keys. He tossed them to Charlie. “I took ‘em from your bag when both of you were in the gun range.”
“Oh.” Charlie thought to make a fuss, but then she shrugged. It was better than boosting her car anyway, and it was surprisingly practical, just stealing the keys instead of messing around with the wiring. Although…
“You do know how to boost a car, right? I read that you stole one when you were running to rescue Dean from some Apple God in an orchard or something. That wasn't a lie, was it?”
“It was a pagan fertility god,” Sam said absently, as he reached for the door of the passenger seat, and looked across the hood to her, “and yes, I do know how to boost a car, but no, I'm not going to teach you.”
“Spoilsport,” she muttered under her breath as they got into the car. No matter, she knew of a few other - shady - people who wouldn't mind teaching her that particular skill.
She adjusted her seat to compensate for her smaller frame, a small grin tugging on the corner of her lips as an image came to mind of Sam initially squeezing into her seat and fumbling to adjust it, and glanced at him in the passenger seat to see him doing exactly that. She bit her lip to prevent herself from grinning like an idiot, revved up the engine and concentrated on reversing her car without hitting the other vehicles that were littered around her. A few minutes later they found themselves on a clear road and Charlie sped her way to the morgue.
Sam's cough broke her out of the zone that she always gets herself stuck in whenever she was driving. She turned her head and swept her eyes up and down the younger Winchester. He was nearly folding himself in half, coughing into the back of his hand. It sounded a little wet, and Charlie did not like the sound of it.
“I don't like how that sounds. Are you alright?” She took one hand away from the steering wheel and laid it on Sam's cheek. “You're warm.” Her concern kicked into gear. “Are you having a fever?”
“No, no, I'm fine.” Sam waved away her concern, and she retracted her hand slowly.
“Dean said you're getting sick because of the trials.”
Sam didn't answer, caught up in the coughing jag. Charlie waited it out by fumbling the dashboard open with one hand to grab the Tylenol bottle that she'd kept there, and placed it on his lap. “Water's in the backseat.”
Sam coughed twice more and took a deep breath, and the coughing seemed to ease. He picked up the Tylenol bottle, opened it and downed two of the pills without reaching for the bottle of water on the backseat. He then looked at Charlie, glanced away and muttered a hoarse “Thanks.”
Keeping her eyes on the road in front of her, she nodded wordlessly, impressed and horrified both at the same time. Her gag reflex was such that she would throw the pills right back up should she ever tried to swallow them dry.
An awkward silence fell over them for the next ten minutes or so, as Sam attempted to catch his breath while Charlie tried her best to not comment on it or even look at him, feeling like as if she was invading on his privacy if she did. From the corner of her eye though, he seemed much calmer now and was just staring out the window, his breathing sounding less heavy and labored. She really did not want to bring the subject up again but who was she kidding? She definitely wanted to talk about it. Now that she had both feet into the supernatural world, she planned to get as much information as she could, and who better from than the infamous Winchester brothers?
Her eyebrows furrowed a little as she tried to figure out a way to breach the topic of the trials with the Winchester beside her, without causing him another coughing fit, that is.
She need not have bothered, really.
“So Dean told you about the trials.”
A beat, then Charlie nodded wordlessly. Again. She felt a little like a ventriloquist's dummy.
A small sigh drifted from the passenger’s seat to Charlie’s ears.
“Look, I get it, Dean's worried about me. I know he means well. He wants me to stay low and stay put. But the more I get benched, the more time I have on my hands to worry about the trials and Kevin, and the sicker I become. It's like a cycle. I need a case to distract me.”
Fair enough, Charlie had nothing to say to that.
Wait, actually, she did.
“You should tell Dean that. All he sees is his sick younger brother who won't take care of himself. It's like the two of you are having the same goal but totally opposite ways to get to it.”
Sam flashed her a humorless smile. “That's usually how we solve our cases actually. Besides, I'm also worried that if he knows how sick I am, then he won't want to continue the trials. And there goes the chance for us to close the gates of Hell.”
Charlie snorted. “He's worried. You're worried. Everyone's worried but they're not using words to express how worried they are. And all this worry is making me even more worried as well.”
Sam frowned. “What are you worried about?”
Charlie bit her lip. There was no way she was telling Sam what her biggest worry was. Her worst nightmare. She shrugged her shoulders, hoping that was good enough to throw Sam off the topic, and changed the subject.
“You’ve any idea what the third trial will be?”
Sam shook his head. “No, and we’re still searching for Kevin. He's the one who has the tablet and he's the only one we know who can translate it.”
Charlie pondered over the information, all the bits and pieces of it rolling around in her mind trying to set themselves into a fixed system. She knew the first task was to kill a hell hound and the second one was about setting an innocent soul free from Hell. She didn’t need much genius to realize that the third one was obviously going to be a thousand times more difficult. Talk about game levels.
“So, we have the hell hounds, then the souls, maybe the third one will have something to do with the demons themselves?”
Sam looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded his head slowly. “It's possible. We're getting involved with the residents of Hell, so demons might be the ultimate road-block. But it couldn't be as simple as killing a demon. It’s definitely something more.. something big.”
“Well, don't look at me. You and Dean are the experts here.”
Sam snorted. Charlie let out a small grin, and the tension in the car dissipated. Feeling satisfied and much more at ease now she looked out the window at her surroundings, noting that they were within the vicinity of their destination. Dean no doubt would have arrived, and is probably lock-picking his way in right about now. Dammit. She wanted to observe a master at work, and possibly pick up some tricks of the trade.
Sam's voice broke her out of her reverie.
“Why are you so interested in this hunting gig, anyway?” Sam asked. It was clear that he was curious as to why Charlie, or anyone for that matter, would want to join them to hunt evil monsters. And ghosts. And demons. Basically all that was supernatural and bad.
“Having a Leviathan for a boss and an enemy, and then kissing a princess elf in the middle of a cos-play session makes one prioritize her life choices,” she answered, still looking round at their surroundings. “Besides, like I said, I was in the neighborhood and thought you guys might want a case. If you didn’t already have one. What do you do when you have two cases at one go, anyway? How do you choose which one to work on first? Is there a pattern of some sort that you gotta fit, or -”
“Charlie -”
“- maybe you have your own internal system as to how you choose cases. A mathematical equation? I'm good with equations. And codes. Which are practically the same thing, no matter what anyone else says -”
“Charlie!” Sam's raised voice brought an abrupt end to her rambling.
“Sorry, geeking out moment.” Charlie apologizes as she turned to look sheepishly at Sam. Their eyes met and Sam’s face broke into a soft amused smile. He leaned his head back into the car seat, closed his eyes and massaged his temple lightly. His face was still pale and drawn, but when he spoke his voice was steady and his tone patient.
“Look, at the moment, we’re working two cases at once, technically. We are looking for Kevin, and we are searching for whoever that's doing the killings. We work a case at a time because it's always bad when we split up, although we do that anyway if the occasion calls for it.”
Sam paused, and for a moment Charlie thought he was about to cough again, but after a couple of deep breaths, he continued, “And we take cases that come along in our journey, but there's no fixed pattern or system to our accepting of cases. That's about it.”
Oh. That was unexpected, even though she should have guessed it from the way these two handled their cases. She wondered what would happen if she created some sort of template for hunting. The one in her iPad was just the basic programming that she had coded when she first started her research into the big bad world of hunting. With more time, she could seriously come up with something way more sophisticated.
She focused back on the road and saw that they had just about reached the parking lot leading to the coroner's office and morgue. She eased the car slowly into the lot and saw that it was deserted. There was no sigh of Dean's car anywhere.
“Go to the back of the building,” Sam instructed, having the same thought as her. “Maybe the Impala is parked there.”
Charlie did as she was told and drove through the lot to the back of the building. There was a big empty space that could have been easily converted into a second parking lot, but didn't. It was also devoid of cars. She frowned. “Dean hasn't arrived yet?”
Sam mirrored her frown. “Let's just break into the office and wait for him inside.”
The words 'break into' brought a huge surge of excitement in Charlie. Finally, she was going to be shown something cool and useful after all. She parked the car by the darkest corner of the building, and killed the engine. Sam was already halfway out of the car, so she quickened her actions and hastened her pace to keep up with him.
When she reached the door, Sam had already taken out his lock-picking set, and was carefully inserting two of the picks into the keyhole. She crouched down and paid careful attention to the way Sam was manipulating the tumblers. A few seconds later, she heard the clicking sound as the tumblers aligned and the lock was opened. Sam reached for the handle and pushed the door open soundlessly.
“Awesome,” Charlie breathed out. She had to make him teach her this particular skill. Sam just grinned and ushered her in, locking the door behind her.
The entrance was right beside the morgue, which was convenient for them. She had a feeling though, that both brothers had known about this particular door when they were 'casing the joint', as she called it; they were that good.
All that was left was to wait for Dean to arrive before getting the party started. Charlie suppressed an urge to jump in joy. This was going to be fun.
Author's Notes (2): The title comes from the game itself, the terms used in regarding to those flashing dots that make the enemy move slower, change directions and allow the Pac Man to eat them. Just a throwback to the happy days of arcade games!
Author: mymuseandi
Recipient: Jeanny
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Thanks to my awesome beta - she knows who she is - for doing such a wonderful job even as the deadline approaches. Any mistakes are mine, and I hope Jeanny likes this as much as I have the pleasure of stretching my writer's skills with an outsider's perspective.
Word-Count: ~2,300
Summary: The younger Winchester and the 'unofficial' Winchester spent a little time together while making their way to the morgue. Missing scene from S8's Pac man Fever.
“So where’re we driving to? The coroner's office?” Charlie asked as they made their way to the car. It was parked a little further away from the crime scene, in the opposite direction of which she and Dean had arrived. Thankfully, the bright headlights from the cars and the police spotlights lit the path clearly ahead of them, and she did not have to stumble her way through the night’s darkness.
“Yeah, that’s where the other body is,” Sam replied, walking carefully past the crime scene, and Charlie saw his eyes look briefly to the dead body on the ground. She glanced involuntarily at it, too, and could not stop the shudder running through her shoulders. “Come on, I’ll drive,” he continued, but she barely heard him, her attention now on two men - the coroner's assistants, she assumed - who were just coming up to the body with a stretcher between them. She wondered how they were going to bag the liquefied insides that was slowly oozing out of its stomach, and then gagged a little.
Shaking the disturbing, and not to mention gross image from her mind, she turned her eyes away, focusing on Sam instead. He was still pale and was even swaying a little as he walked, but she got the feeling that that had nothing to do with the oozing, liquefied corpse they passed by earlier.
“My car, it's mine, I'll drive. I have the keys anyway....” Charlie trailed off as she realized that she, in fact, did not have the keys with her. They were in the bag in Dean's beloved Impala.
“Yeah, no, they're with me,” Sam said as he reached into his suit and fished out the keys. He tossed them to Charlie. “I took ‘em from your bag when both of you were in the gun range.”
“Oh.” Charlie thought to make a fuss, but then she shrugged. It was better than boosting her car anyway, and it was surprisingly practical, just stealing the keys instead of messing around with the wiring. Although…
“You do know how to boost a car, right? I read that you stole one when you were running to rescue Dean from some Apple God in an orchard or something. That wasn't a lie, was it?”
“It was a pagan fertility god,” Sam said absently, as he reached for the door of the passenger seat, and looked across the hood to her, “and yes, I do know how to boost a car, but no, I'm not going to teach you.”
“Spoilsport,” she muttered under her breath as they got into the car. No matter, she knew of a few other - shady - people who wouldn't mind teaching her that particular skill.
She adjusted her seat to compensate for her smaller frame, a small grin tugging on the corner of her lips as an image came to mind of Sam initially squeezing into her seat and fumbling to adjust it, and glanced at him in the passenger seat to see him doing exactly that. She bit her lip to prevent herself from grinning like an idiot, revved up the engine and concentrated on reversing her car without hitting the other vehicles that were littered around her. A few minutes later they found themselves on a clear road and Charlie sped her way to the morgue.
Sam's cough broke her out of the zone that she always gets herself stuck in whenever she was driving. She turned her head and swept her eyes up and down the younger Winchester. He was nearly folding himself in half, coughing into the back of his hand. It sounded a little wet, and Charlie did not like the sound of it.
“I don't like how that sounds. Are you alright?” She took one hand away from the steering wheel and laid it on Sam's cheek. “You're warm.” Her concern kicked into gear. “Are you having a fever?”
“No, no, I'm fine.” Sam waved away her concern, and she retracted her hand slowly.
“Dean said you're getting sick because of the trials.”
Sam didn't answer, caught up in the coughing jag. Charlie waited it out by fumbling the dashboard open with one hand to grab the Tylenol bottle that she'd kept there, and placed it on his lap. “Water's in the backseat.”
Sam coughed twice more and took a deep breath, and the coughing seemed to ease. He picked up the Tylenol bottle, opened it and downed two of the pills without reaching for the bottle of water on the backseat. He then looked at Charlie, glanced away and muttered a hoarse “Thanks.”
Keeping her eyes on the road in front of her, she nodded wordlessly, impressed and horrified both at the same time. Her gag reflex was such that she would throw the pills right back up should she ever tried to swallow them dry.
An awkward silence fell over them for the next ten minutes or so, as Sam attempted to catch his breath while Charlie tried her best to not comment on it or even look at him, feeling like as if she was invading on his privacy if she did. From the corner of her eye though, he seemed much calmer now and was just staring out the window, his breathing sounding less heavy and labored. She really did not want to bring the subject up again but who was she kidding? She definitely wanted to talk about it. Now that she had both feet into the supernatural world, she planned to get as much information as she could, and who better from than the infamous Winchester brothers?
Her eyebrows furrowed a little as she tried to figure out a way to breach the topic of the trials with the Winchester beside her, without causing him another coughing fit, that is.
She need not have bothered, really.
“So Dean told you about the trials.”
A beat, then Charlie nodded wordlessly. Again. She felt a little like a ventriloquist's dummy.
A small sigh drifted from the passenger’s seat to Charlie’s ears.
“Look, I get it, Dean's worried about me. I know he means well. He wants me to stay low and stay put. But the more I get benched, the more time I have on my hands to worry about the trials and Kevin, and the sicker I become. It's like a cycle. I need a case to distract me.”
Fair enough, Charlie had nothing to say to that.
Wait, actually, she did.
“You should tell Dean that. All he sees is his sick younger brother who won't take care of himself. It's like the two of you are having the same goal but totally opposite ways to get to it.”
Sam flashed her a humorless smile. “That's usually how we solve our cases actually. Besides, I'm also worried that if he knows how sick I am, then he won't want to continue the trials. And there goes the chance for us to close the gates of Hell.”
Charlie snorted. “He's worried. You're worried. Everyone's worried but they're not using words to express how worried they are. And all this worry is making me even more worried as well.”
Sam frowned. “What are you worried about?”
Charlie bit her lip. There was no way she was telling Sam what her biggest worry was. Her worst nightmare. She shrugged her shoulders, hoping that was good enough to throw Sam off the topic, and changed the subject.
“You’ve any idea what the third trial will be?”
Sam shook his head. “No, and we’re still searching for Kevin. He's the one who has the tablet and he's the only one we know who can translate it.”
Charlie pondered over the information, all the bits and pieces of it rolling around in her mind trying to set themselves into a fixed system. She knew the first task was to kill a hell hound and the second one was about setting an innocent soul free from Hell. She didn’t need much genius to realize that the third one was obviously going to be a thousand times more difficult. Talk about game levels.
“So, we have the hell hounds, then the souls, maybe the third one will have something to do with the demons themselves?”
Sam looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded his head slowly. “It's possible. We're getting involved with the residents of Hell, so demons might be the ultimate road-block. But it couldn't be as simple as killing a demon. It’s definitely something more.. something big.”
“Well, don't look at me. You and Dean are the experts here.”
Sam snorted. Charlie let out a small grin, and the tension in the car dissipated. Feeling satisfied and much more at ease now she looked out the window at her surroundings, noting that they were within the vicinity of their destination. Dean no doubt would have arrived, and is probably lock-picking his way in right about now. Dammit. She wanted to observe a master at work, and possibly pick up some tricks of the trade.
Sam's voice broke her out of her reverie.
“Why are you so interested in this hunting gig, anyway?” Sam asked. It was clear that he was curious as to why Charlie, or anyone for that matter, would want to join them to hunt evil monsters. And ghosts. And demons. Basically all that was supernatural and bad.
“Having a Leviathan for a boss and an enemy, and then kissing a princess elf in the middle of a cos-play session makes one prioritize her life choices,” she answered, still looking round at their surroundings. “Besides, like I said, I was in the neighborhood and thought you guys might want a case. If you didn’t already have one. What do you do when you have two cases at one go, anyway? How do you choose which one to work on first? Is there a pattern of some sort that you gotta fit, or -”
“Charlie -”
“- maybe you have your own internal system as to how you choose cases. A mathematical equation? I'm good with equations. And codes. Which are practically the same thing, no matter what anyone else says -”
“Charlie!” Sam's raised voice brought an abrupt end to her rambling.
“Sorry, geeking out moment.” Charlie apologizes as she turned to look sheepishly at Sam. Their eyes met and Sam’s face broke into a soft amused smile. He leaned his head back into the car seat, closed his eyes and massaged his temple lightly. His face was still pale and drawn, but when he spoke his voice was steady and his tone patient.
“Look, at the moment, we’re working two cases at once, technically. We are looking for Kevin, and we are searching for whoever that's doing the killings. We work a case at a time because it's always bad when we split up, although we do that anyway if the occasion calls for it.”
Sam paused, and for a moment Charlie thought he was about to cough again, but after a couple of deep breaths, he continued, “And we take cases that come along in our journey, but there's no fixed pattern or system to our accepting of cases. That's about it.”
Oh. That was unexpected, even though she should have guessed it from the way these two handled their cases. She wondered what would happen if she created some sort of template for hunting. The one in her iPad was just the basic programming that she had coded when she first started her research into the big bad world of hunting. With more time, she could seriously come up with something way more sophisticated.
She focused back on the road and saw that they had just about reached the parking lot leading to the coroner's office and morgue. She eased the car slowly into the lot and saw that it was deserted. There was no sigh of Dean's car anywhere.
“Go to the back of the building,” Sam instructed, having the same thought as her. “Maybe the Impala is parked there.”
Charlie did as she was told and drove through the lot to the back of the building. There was a big empty space that could have been easily converted into a second parking lot, but didn't. It was also devoid of cars. She frowned. “Dean hasn't arrived yet?”
Sam mirrored her frown. “Let's just break into the office and wait for him inside.”
The words 'break into' brought a huge surge of excitement in Charlie. Finally, she was going to be shown something cool and useful after all. She parked the car by the darkest corner of the building, and killed the engine. Sam was already halfway out of the car, so she quickened her actions and hastened her pace to keep up with him.
When she reached the door, Sam had already taken out his lock-picking set, and was carefully inserting two of the picks into the keyhole. She crouched down and paid careful attention to the way Sam was manipulating the tumblers. A few seconds later, she heard the clicking sound as the tumblers aligned and the lock was opened. Sam reached for the handle and pushed the door open soundlessly.
“Awesome,” Charlie breathed out. She had to make him teach her this particular skill. Sam just grinned and ushered her in, locking the door behind her.
The entrance was right beside the morgue, which was convenient for them. She had a feeling though, that both brothers had known about this particular door when they were 'casing the joint', as she called it; they were that good.
All that was left was to wait for Dean to arrive before getting the party started. Charlie suppressed an urge to jump in joy. This was going to be fun.
Author's Notes (2): The title comes from the game itself, the terms used in regarding to those flashing dots that make the enemy move slower, change directions and allow the Pac Man to eat them. Just a throwback to the happy days of arcade games!