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⁰︎⁰︎ °. A BAG OF food was placed in front of Caroline on the table. It had finally drawn her attention away from the book she was reading from to see Bill standing at the edge of the table.
The diner Bill had dragged her to was crowded, but he figured she needed to get out of Bobby's stuffy house. She had been shoved up in a room for a week already while she healed from her concussion. Bill took the time to fix up his truck, but Caroline had her nose in a book for the last five days. She had read it through three times at that point, Bill just needed to get her away from it.
"You gotta eat," Bill instructed, rather harshly but it had been days since he had even seen her touch a piece of food. He placed down the pieces of chicken he had ordered her, figuring it was the only thing she could stomach anyway.
"'M not hungry," she muttered. She went back to picking at her lip as Bill sat across from her. Leaning against the table with his arms crossed and leaning closer to her.
"Staring at that book all day is not gonna help anything," he promised. "You heard Bobby already, he said there was nothing about any demon deals in any of his books. And if you keep trying to dig something up to get Dean out of this, he said the deal was off. You remember that part?"
They had spent two days at Bobby's so Bill could fix up his truck. And during that time Caroline had practically raided Bobby's house top to bottom searching for books she thought would help. Apparently not even a concussion was enough to get her to rest.
Bobby had given up after the first day. He could see there was no point in trying to get his niece to lay down. She had slept a full night once. It was when they got back. She had been in the shower for hours, it was ice cold by the end — but she needed to scrub herself clean. The rash on her arms was evident of that, but she needed that layer of skin off of herself before she was driven insane. Maybe one of these days she wouldn't always have a compulsive need to keep herself clean after a hunt, but it certainly wouldn't be any time soon.
The only way she was able to not scratch at the rash now, was a long sleeve shirt over it. Sam's shirt, Bill had noticed. Once she had scrubbed that clean too, he noticed she was wearing any chance she had. A trauma response maybe. A state of shock. He had no idea. Sam was the one who got her out of there, and now there was nothing she could do to help him and it would eat her alive before she could figure it out.
Bill was sure of that.
"Care," he started softer this time. "You don't owe them anything."
"They need help, Bill," she finally looked up from the book, her hand picking at her soon to be bloodied lip dropping to the dusted pages. "He's in this mess because of me."
