Maisie Winchester: The Cursed Hunter

.six.

DISCLAIMER; SUPERNATURAL ISN'T MINE AND THIS WORK IS COMPLETELY FAN-MADE AND HAS NO RELATION TO THE CANON STORY BESIDES THE FOLLOWING OF THE SEASON EVENTS (SEASON 11).

***

BOLTING UPRIGHT IN HER bed, Maisie continues to scream at the top of her lungs. Her throat is raw and hoarse. Obviously, she had been screaming for a while. She starts to sob as she looks down at her hands. They were covered in blood from tossing and turning in the bed full of glass shards. But that's not what she saw. That's not what she felt.
Instead, she saw the much younger, less calloused hands of her ten-year-old self covered head to toe in the hot red liquid. Some of it was hers, yes. But most of it came from her mother. She remembers the way the demon had taken control of her. Like a mangled puppet with broken strings, Maisie almost felt that she was experiencing the same thing.
It felt like she was suffocating, all of her muscles tightening and constructing to impossible magnitudes. When she feels a hand touch her skin she doesn't even bother looking to recognise the owner. She just swings, fist connecting to the bone. She swings again, and again, and again... it isn't until her assailant is able to grab hold of her wrists, spin her around and hold her tightly against them that she starts to calm down.
"You're okay," the voice hums gently into the girl's hair, slowly allowing the pair to relax on the floor, still in a tight embrace. "It was just a nightmare, Mai, you're safe. You're safe."
After a few minutes, her mind and heart slow back down to the rhythm of the universe, allowing her eyes to travel up to the face of the person cocooning her. His dark scruffy curls cast a shadow over his face but Maisie could recognise this face in complete darkness. Despite the harsh edges of his jawline, his face showed nothing but softness towards the girl. It always had.
"I hurt you," Maisie realises, jumping from Max's grasp, turning around to face him front-on and placing a gentle hand to the dark bruise under his eye. He winces slightly but still pulls a smile.
"It's okay," he laughs, gently pulling her hand down, frowning as he looks at the gashes on her skin. He then looks over at the bed. The shattered frame, the blood... the picture of her and her mother. "It's not the first time and I'm sure it won't be the last. I'm a big boy... let's get you patched up."
Max helps her to her feet. As soon as she is standing, she realises that Sam and Dean were standing at the door watching the interaction. Her face immediately goes bright red. They hadn't interfered with one of her nightmares since her first month of living with the men. "You okay, Mai?" Dean asks tentatively, looking her up and down like she was as fragile as the sheet glass laying on her bed.
"Yeah," Maisie clears her throat, pulling her hair out of her face. She walks to her nearby dresser, rummaging for clean clothes. "I uh... its nothing. Bi-annual reminders of my life story apparently don't mix well with getting your ass handed to you on a plate."
"What are you talk- woah!" Dean begins to question before he and the two other men shield their eyes at Maisie changing right in front of them. It takes him considerable amounts of strength not to double-take at the quick glance of scars lining her torso or the deep chunk of flesh missing from her shoulder. "What happened to your arm!?"
"Oh, that happened ages ago," Maisie shrugs, slipping past Sam and Dean still standing at the door, making her way down to the kitchen. All three men followed behind her dumbfounded. "Baby vamp tried eating me, Craig saved me. End of story, really."
"How have you never told us that?" Sam asks, now sitting at the small dining table near the kitchen. Dean stood at the doorway again, Max on the opposite side of the bench as Maisie rummaged the kitchen cabinets.
"Because it's not important?" Maisie looks back at him for a second before pulling a large bottle of whiskey from the shelf, followed by a glass, followed by a stack of bacon. "Last I checked, we've almost died half a dozen times each this past year. We haven't really had time for detailed backstories."
Maisie puts the whole batch of bacon on the pan, 'oiled' with a splash of the brown alcoholic liquid before she pours herself a considerably sized glass. She stares at it for a long moment before sliding it across the bench to Max, raising the bottle. "Cheers." She takes a swig, coughing and scrunching her nose at the intense burn that fills her insides.
"Mai," Dean clears his throat. "You've been having nightmares about Náli ever since well- y'know. This is the worst I've ever seen it. What's going on?"
"They're not gonna judge you, Mai..." Max says softly when Maisie ignores him, instead tending to the bacon. "They're your family, better than we are. They're blood."
"Because you chose me. You knew I existed, you knew I was alive... My mom keeps me a secret, gets herself slaughtered and leaves me stranded. I didn't have blood family until last year!" The room falls silent. Only the sound of sizzling strips of fat echoes through the room. "I didn't mean that."
"Yeah you did," Dean is next to speak, still unmoving from his spot by the door. Everyone is looking at him unexpectedly now. "And I don't blame you. You should be mad. Hell, be pissed! Kate could have called me any time. Instead she wrote in a diary and locked it up for eternity. Hell, she didn't even mail her goodbye message! She kept it in the damn box with the rest of them and buried her head in the sand. What did she do to protect you from the supernatural? Oh, right, put you in martial arts and sent you to school. Except you weren't safe in the school either! That fire you got expelled for? You wanna know why your mom didn't get you in trouble for that? Because it what a damn ghost! But she protected you from demons, you might say! No, she protected you from being possessed by giving you a damn necklace. Her necklace! So instead she gets possessed and damn near kills you along with her. So I get it. Be pissed, Maisie! That's the only damn way you're gonna get over this."
The room is silent again. It lingers for just short of an eternity. "Bacon's ready..." Maisie says softly, reaching instinctually for the metal pendant only to find bare skin. Stifling her panic, she dumps the meat onto a plate, sitting it in the middle of the table by Sam.