State of Seduction. // Dean Winchester COMPLETE

43.

(URGENT AUTHOR'S NOTE AT THE END — PLEASE READ)

After Castiel had presented that we attacked Jacob's lair that night, we all decided as a team to not attack till the morning — where Jacob would be at his weakest, if he even had a weak side, because I wasn't sure that he did. It was first light now, and I was on my knees in my bathroom by the toilet, my face in the bowl as I vomited into it, the thin streams of light shining over my face as I was sick. The stress and the fear of everything had just overpowered me, and when it counted, I couldn't pull myself away from the toilet long enough to save anyone. Not even myself. I threw up once more, the smell burning my nose as I coughed and wiped my mouth, thinking that I was finally done when there was a rap on the door and I quickly managed to flush the toilet before clambering up to brush my teeth. That was what I was doing, brushing my teeth, when Olivia opened the door and came in with puffy eyes and frizzy hair. She looked at me, her eyebrows furrowed as she glanced from me brushing my teeth before she coughed and waved her hand in front of her face.

"Are you sick?" She asked, bringing my attention to the fact that she could smell the vomit. I finished brushing my teeth and turned to look at her, leaning against the sink, having trouble holding myself up. As much as I wanted Jacob Kane dead and as much as I wanted to be the one to kill him, I felt as if there was something wrong with me. No matter how stressed or how scared I felt, I shouldn't have been throwing up as much as I had been every day. I was beginning to think, with Olivia staring at me like she was, that maybe I was sick. For a split second, I wondered if the Crimson Plague was making a comeback before pushing the thought out of my mind — whatever was going on with me now, it didn't feel remotely like the Crimson Plague had, I would know if that was happening all over again. I mean, I didn't feel like I was dying, not physically, anyway.

"Just stressed," I replied to Olivia, giving her a small smile that I had planned to be bigger, nevertheless a fake smile, but bigger than the one I had given, so that she would think that I was okay. That I could handle running head first into Jacob's lair and being faced with whatever happened next. The last thing I needed was for Liv to go telling Mason that I was throwing up and him banning me from helping. They needed me. They couldn't do it by themselves. I was the bargaining chip. Olivia looked worried, and not in the way she had looked since she had found out Bianca had been taken. It was a kind of worried that was directed straight at me, like she also thought that there was something wrong with me. I tried harder to give her a big fake smile this time and I barely succeeded, but I managed to smile and push myself off of the sink and stand on my two feet in my ill-fitting jeans and a shirt that used to fit but now felt way too tight in weird places. "Don't worry about it, I'm fine", then I walked out of the bathroom and into the living room where Mason was handing out weapons.

"Kale, its about time. What do you want?" Mason asked me, motioning to the array of sharp and pointy objects on the table. I took one look at the large stash before staring up at my older brother and blinking. "I want the biggest knife you've got". Mason stared back at me for a moment, before coughing awkwardly and sliding a tomahawk across the table along with some dead man's blood and into my grasp. I assumed that this wasn't actually the biggest knife that he had, but the biggest he would let me carry in the situation. Mason narrowed his eyes at me, silently asking me if I could handle what we were about to do. I nodded back, assuring him that I would be fine. In the end, I would have to be fine. I was the only one that Jacob Kane would care about seeing. I wouldn't be able to do it alone, but they wouldn't be able to do it without me and that was the only reason Mason was letting me come instead of arguing. He moved on to ask Olivia what she would prefer when she whisked out her werewolf claws and smiled wryly. "I already have my weapon".