Supernatural: Dean's Witch Ch. 02

Calla looked between Dean and the man he'd just let into her place, trying to place where she'd seen the second man. He was taller than Dean, and vaguely familiar, but she was so confused by the dejection on Dean's face that it took her a moment to place him -- he'd been the lone, new graduate student who'd wandered into her office a week before... what, the day before she'd met Dean? Where had he come from, to end up here?

Focusing on Dean, Calla fought down the panic she could feel coming up into her throat. She'd been upset all morning, knowing that when she went to school she'd be saying goodbye to Dean for at least a few weeks, and maybe more, maybe forever, given that she couldn't be sure what he wanted and that he didn't live there in town. She'd been stressed about not being able to feel the magic in her blood, and so not being able to read his intentions at all, made more nervous by the fact that he had seemed nervous since the moment they'd woken up that morning. But none of that had been a surprise. She'd known two days ago, already, that she'd be a mess of emotions when it came time for him to leave. Whatever was happening now, though, was something that he'd clearly been preparing for, and she found herself leaning against the wall and hugging her arms around her chest as she watched the two men in her living room... who clearly knew each other.

"Dean?" she asked quietly. "What is this?"

"We have to talk, Calla," Dean answered her, forcing himself to meet her eyes. "This is my brother, Sam," he said after a moment, when she hadn't moved from the wall where she'd frozen upon entering the room. When she still didn't move, or even look away from his face when he introduced his brother, Dean swallowed hard, and hardened his voice.

"Sit down," he told her, and Calla found herself following the direction. She looked to Sam, who was grimacing, standing awkwardly near the door.

"You can sit," she told Sam automatically, looking back to Dean. "You're not... you're not who you said you were before, are you?" she asked, suddenly realizing that he hadn't even bothered to dress formally that morning, as if he was going to an office to meet with executives. "Fuck. You're a hunter," she realized, the signs coming together in her head. The tattoo, the fighting experience, the darkness she'd seen in his face, the assurance in everything he did... she should have seen it before.

Dean looked to Sam and shrugged, resigned; he was glad he hadn't had to say it for her. He'd thought, when she saw his tattoo, that that was the end of the charade. "We came after your mom," he said quietly as she leaned back into the couch, shutting her eyes with the realization of the scene playing out around her, with her at its center. "We didn't have any lead, but for you, and... we had to stop the killing," he finished.

"She killed a lot of innocent people, Calla," Sam added into the silence, speaking for the first time since he'd entered.

Calla nodded, holding her eyes shut and pushing her nails into her palms so that she had some physical pain to focus on, beyond the pain in her heart. She'd known, really, that hunters had already gotten to her mother. She just hadn't known she was falling in love with one of them as they hunted her. "I knew... I knew there were hunters looking for her, and I tried... I tried so hard to get her to stop," Calla said haltingly, fighting against tears. "I tried," she said again, and finally pushed one of her fists against her mouth, biting into her knuckles to keep from crying.

Dean watched her shrinking into herself and had to fight the urge to go to her and try to comfort her physically. It wouldn't be fair, and could only make things worse if he did. "I didn't mean for it to go so far, between us," he told her quietly, and then he looked to Sam for help, despite the fact that he'd told himself he'd do the heavy lifting here. Wasn't it his responsibility at this point, after all? Nevertheless, he found it hard to think, watching her.

"I... really liked you," Calla allowed herself to say, suddenly glaring up to Dean. "I let you in... I thought... I can't..." she let her voice trail off, not sure what she'd been about to say.

"I like you, too," Dean said quietly, wondering if he ought to be lying, or whether it was the truth or a lie that would be more painful at this point. "I shouldn't have let it go as far as it did, between us... it just did. I'm sorry," he added.

"Why are you still here?" she asked suddenly, turning her eyes up to Dean's and allowing all of her anger to come through in her face. She couldn't decide, just now, if she was more angry or heartbroken, but the anger was easier. "My mom... the coven's looking for her. She hasn't been heard from in days. I thought you already... but you've been with me," she stuttered out, realizing that it had to have been Saturday, after that rampage, when they'd reached her mother. "You found her on Saturday, didn't you?" she whispered.

"Yeah, we did. I'm sorry," Dean breathed out, grateful that she'd realized it herself, and he hadn't had to tell her.

"Why are you still here then?" she asked again, her eyes suddenly wide against his.

Sam watched his brother freeze, and stepped forward, taking a seat in front of the girl who'd curled into herself after sinking into her couch, and he leaned forward, feeling Dean turn away and move toward the window. "Calla, there's no easy way to say this, so I'm just going to say it. We couldn't chance you turning into your mother, years from now, and we had a way... we took your magic," he finished.

Calla stared at the man in front of her, waiting for something more to come out of his mouth. Then she turned to Dean, who was staring out her window, his back to her. "Dean?" she asked, hating herself for the way her voice cracked as she said it.

"Like Sammy said, we didn't have a choice," Dean answered, still staring out the window. The hardness he'd forced into his voice earlier was still there, gruff and distanced, and he told himself that this was the only way he could be right now.

Closing her eyes against the men in her living room, Calla took a deep breath and pushed her focus into her center, into and through her veins and her beating heart as her mother had once taught her to do when she was trying to bring out her magic. In her mind, she pictured her magic as a small ball of energy attached to her soul, and the way it would spread through her veins from her soul and from her heart and from her blood, running through her. She could picture it, as she had all these years... and she still couldn't feel it. She couldn't feel even the smallest sense of it, but for a memory of the warmth it should have been offering her as she called to it. It wasn't there.

"It's not possible," she muttered, her eyes still closed as she clenched her fingers into her skirt and kept searching, barely processing Sam's voice as he spoke from in front of her.

"It is, Calla. You're going to be fine without it, and hopefully you'll forgive us someday, maybe," Sam said quietly, watching the struggle running over her face as he spoke.

She shook her head, forcing herself to focus only on the present. "Get out." She looked up, between Sam who still sat in front of her and Dean who still stood at her window. "Get out, I said," she repeated, and finally they moved.

Dean followed his brother to the door, barely remembering to pick up his bags from the space where he'd left them near the door after he'd packed up that morning. He didn't know what else to say, and Calla wouldn't look at him. She'd stood up, but was stock still in front of the couch, glaring at the floor and breathing heavily. She wasn't crying, which was something, but Dean could see from the set of her shoulders that she was going to break down the moment they left, or the moment someone touched her, and it was just stubbornness that she had holding her together at the moment. If he spoke, she'd break, and he couldn't do that to her, after everything else, so he followed his brother to the door and walked out first, hurrying down the stairs and leaving his brother to follow him. If he wanted to say something else, let him, but Dean wouldn't stay around for it or listen to whatever Calla said in reply.

Sam waited for his brother to get two flights down, out of earshot. The door still stood open beside him, and Calla was still frozen by the couch. He couldn't leave without asking, though.

"Calla, I hate to ask... but I found, in one of your mom's journals... a spell, it sounded like she cast on you, for when you... gave yourself to a guy, for the first time. I have to ask," he added when her eyes shot up to him, wet and wide. Like his brother, he'd known she was about to cry -- apparently, it had only taken Dean's actual exit for the dam to break.

"Don't tell him," Calla said, surprised that her voice came out so solidly as it did. She kept her eyes on Sam, and then repeated the command, thinking to herself that him knowing about the spell she'd be dealing with would only make things that much worse. Dean would see her as that much more pitiful, that much more pathetic than he must already think her to be, for having fallen for him like she had, if he knew. She couldn't handle the thought of him laughing at her, though she still didn't really think he would. He hadn't faked all of his emotion, she knew -- she'd seen it in his face. So that meant, perhaps, that knowing of the spell would only make him feel more sorry for her, and after everything else, the last thing she wanted was his pity.

For a third time, she hardened her voice and demanded of Sam, "You don't tell him. If you're sorry for what you did to me, or you care about your brother, you don't tell him. Promise me," she added when it looked like Sam was just going to turn around and walk out, but finally he nodded, his brow creased with some emotion she didn't have the energy to puzzle out at the moment. She just wanted to go back to bed, and forget everything.

Finally, Sam nodded again, and apologized again. After he'd left, Calla pushed herself to her feet and bolted the door's deadlock, and then she turned around and fled to her room. Now that they were gone, she could cry, and she could sleep, and she could pretend for at least a little while that the last week had never happened.

To Be Continued...