Hunteri Heroici

and the door creaks inward

As the engine stuttered back to its sleep the three piled out of the car. It was brighter now; the sky having finished it's sulking and whipped away it's rough start with a happy blue – a couple hard to reach grey clouds clung to the sky – however the chill remained. Dean moved to the car's back once the engine had gone into a deeper slumber and stopped releasing its near invisible fumes, to retrieve what they needed. Propping up the false bottom with one of the many shot guns, he went through his mental list, checking off each once safely in the battered duffle bag:

Salt rounds – check.

Holy water – check.

Lighter – lighter...

"com' on where is it -?"

Lighter – fell into a gap somewhere but, check

And so, it went on. He knew they'd hardly need half of this stuff, but it appeared to be trickier than Bobby had said already so better safe than sorry. Eventually, bag full, Dean turned away from his beloved car and set off towards the condemned building.

It was a wonder it hadn't been torn down by now: the door, less closed and more chained to the building, had been almost completely replaced with layers upon layers of plywood spreading over the door like an infectious; the window frames lay empty of glass, those that could be seen through the wooden planks that is, some weren't even windows but holes worn in seeming more like they were left by used cigarettes than anything else. Cas had already made a door through the layers of plywood where one theoretically already was, waiting for the small group to go inside. The state of it seemed more like a burn' n' turn job than someplace worth saving but, if what they found was true, the past of this place would only rear its ugly head a few years down the line when someone finally puts this place out of its misery leaving some shiny new high rise in its place. It had to be done.

"So-" the duffle hit the ground with a hefty thud "who's goin' in first?"

Before Castiel could answer the brothers looked at each other, nodded once and – in perfect cinque – had readied their left hands into a fist over their out-stretched right. They can not be serious was all Cas thought once he saw what they were doing.

*tap*

*tap*

*tap*

"Oh, come one, how do you always win! This game is so rigged"

"Maybe you'd win if you went with anything other than scissors Dean !" Sam replied smugly as he took his hand – curled into a fist – away from Dean's two fingers Honestly, you'd think he would pick something else by this point.

With that a huffy Dean first entered the dilapidated building. With an eye roll Cas, then finally Sam followed him in, closing the door behind him.

~***~

It was hard to tell whether this was real or just an extremely vivid memory their head ran through while film reel reset. However – real or not – tearing up this space always felt good no matter how many times they'd done it.

The first few runs of this they tried to get to grips with what was happening. Surely Drew didn't know what had become of their studio, right? (His studio, they hadn't shared it for a long time) That this was just a memory, no more meaningful than the number of boards in the floor or tiles on the ceiling! But that all changed on their in and around the hundredth run – at least they think it had been then, there was really no telling just how long they had been going through the motions at that point or how long it took them to start remembering past runs – That's when they saw it.

The ink machine.

Out here, bold as brass. In his fucking living room. That's when they *might* have lost the plot, just a little bit. The letter from here and what came after didn't seem as disconnected then, when it had dragged him away from- away from-!

This came the second in a lengthy series of break downs, where they slowly began to realise that they didn't know who they were apart from when they were at the studio; the scattered audio tapes of themselves and others trapped with them; what little they could gleam from their 'conversation' with Drew.

Speaking of, that traitor lets see if this could finally get him to say something different as they pick up an award for something or other that he probably took credit for, walking over to the door that joined this room to the small kitchen and took a moment to admire their handy work: the carefully displayed letters on the cork board, meant to give some hope that some had escaped – all fake – had been ripped to shreds and scattered around the room , the message written in a dripping mix of black and golden ink read 'dreams never come true, only nightmares' dripping slightly down the board ; the now empty plant pot lay on it's side on the corner, it's soil stamped so deep into the carpet it's colour changed ,muddying the putrid green even further; the walls and ceiling – in a feat they were quite proud of – had inky foot prints running every which way with the help of toon logic ,one of the few good things to come from their 'current state'; the few shelves across the room had been pulled down, with the curtains – ripped from their place annoyingly neatly – laid over them, looking almost like a blanket fort albeit with more splinters and ink.

They knew that it would all be undone by the time they retuned, but even causing such a small amount of mischief and rebellion made something within them feel right. Trying not to linger on that dozy of a soon to be existential crisis, they instead thought of how infuriating it would be to clean up. With that they turned, lobbed the trophy as hard as the could at the countertop and stepped inside.

__________

As usual, this did nothing to change the words of their one-sided conversation, but the infuriated flare in Drew's eyes made it worth their while – they would have smirked or laugh at him if they weren't frozen to the spot. With their 'friendly chat' over they went to the door as they always did and opened it.

"Alright Joey, I'm here. Let's see if we can find what you wanted me to see"