The Monsters In Our Heads (Book 7 Arrow/SPN Crossovers)

How Things Change

We locked up the armory, I left it to Sam to check in with Krissy and Jacob and I headed into my room to curl up next to Coyote. Sam and I planned to leave before sunrise so I wanted to get as much sleep as I could. We wanted to get to the nest early, track the vamps, try to take them out fast and get back. Gerald had texted Sam and I a few addresses where he thought the nest was, he hadn't been able to narrow it down yet as the vamps had been using a few different houses as places to hole up. They'd been smart in splitting up their numbers and he was worried about taking a few out and the other's noticing. As I was walking down the hall I got another text from him saying that a few other hunters were interested in helping since the nest was pretty big so he was going to stay and help. The rough plan was to split the houses up and nail them all at the same time, wiping out the whole nest between us. He'd counted about ten or twelve vamps total. If I still had the Mark, that would have been a walk in the park, now, not so much. I was getting more and more curious as to how Sam was running hunts now. It seemed that he'd gotten hunters to put aside their usual independent nature and work together a lot more over this last year, which, if nothing else, must really be pissing Crowley off. Sure, Sam wasn't tangling with demons face to face but I seriously doubted he wasn't somehow coordinating other hunters who were. Hell, for all I knew he was running online exorcism classes now. Wouldn't surprise me one bit.

I opened the door to my old room as quietly as I could, I didn't want to wake her up. I got undressed, got into bed, laid my arm over her waist and closed my eyes. She didn't say anything but I felt the tension in her muscles, she wasn't asleep. "Do you want to talk about it babydoll?" I asked. The fact that she hadn't said a word even though she was aware I was there kind of worried me.

"When are you leaving?"

"Before sunrise, Gerald has a bead on a pretty large nest. He's recruiting a few other hunters. Sam has a whole armory full of new toys, which I am jealous of now by the way, but it should go pretty smooth. Sam's running the hunt, I'm riding shotgun. He's way too happy about that since he gets to pick the road tunes this time. I'll probably come to regret building him that car by the end of this." I tried to lighten things up some, but she wasn't going for it.

"Sam tell you we'd been talking about you during the day?"

"Yeah, not sure how I should take that, but I'm not surprised. Don't blame you."

She rolled over, "You're letting him take the lead?"

She'd put her hair in a loose braid but there were a few strands across her face that I brushed away from her eyes. "Yeah, he told me he wouldn't go back to our old way of doing things and his way seems to work pretty well. I told him that the old dog would be willing to learn some new tricks."

Her hand slowly moved across my face, tracing along my cheeks and forehead. Normally that would be a start of something a lot more intense but there was so much worry in her eyes I didn't move, just let her do what she felt she needed to. I knew I couldn't really soothe her fear away, she knew too much about the life for me to to try to dismiss what she was feeling. "I may have been wrong."

"About what?"

"Before we came I told you that doing this wouldn't help you heal but what I saw today, how you've been listening to everyone, letting other people take charge. I never thought you'd be capable of that on something like this. At home it's different, you let people take charge because you don't know that world, you had to learn, try to fit in. But this? This is your world, but you aren't rushing back in. It's good for you."

"But you're still afraid."

She gave me a lopsided smile, "Well, you are going to be hunting vampires."

"True, but that's not what you're scared of."

"Babe, I'll be scared until you and Sam are back and I know that you're not lost in some way."

"I won't let myself get like that again, I promise." I kissed her, "I'm starting to understand why Sam and Roy hunt like they do. I never would have looked at hunts like that, but I've always had certain ideas of how things are supposed to go. Sam's got different influences going on now, good influences, more strategic ones. There's a lot of reasons I'm letting him take charge, not just to limit myself."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm still feeling my way through them but let's just say that the people I learned to hunt from weren't all that keen on seeing it as a job." She'd never asked too much about Dad, she knew Bobby of course but he was a lot less intense than Dad had been. I'd patterned myself after Dad and with the way we grew up, what we faced, we'd never had a choice to see the job as just that, not a life. I was starting to see how it could be a job, not something that you sacrificed every damn thing you wanted for. "Sweetheart, this isn't Sam and I against the world, we've got help and wiping out the nest is just part of a solution, not the goal. I have to come back in one piece to help Jacob, that's the whole point after all. I won't tell you not to worry, I know better, but I'll be playing this a lot different than before. Trust me."

Her lips pressed against mine, I put every last bit of love I felt for her into that kiss. She pulled back after a minute or two, "I do, always have, always will.

"You could come you know," I offered.

"Thanks, but I need to stay here. I want to keep trying to get Jacob more stable and Krissy needs a break. I know she's got the other kids helping her but she's exhausted. I can get him to sleep if nothing else and give her a chance to sleep herself."

"All right," Her eyes were pulling me in and my mind started swimming. To be here, in the Bunker, where so many fucked up things had happened, while laying next to the person who'd brought so much good into my life really drove home just how much my life had really changed, how much I'd changed. Our life on the Reservation, my life with her, wasn't some surreal break from hunting, it was my life and nothing would ever change that. I'd been deathly afraid that I would walk through the doors here and just morph back into who I'd always been, but I hadn't. I'd been able to stop myself, to see all those patterns for what they were and push them away. Something inside of me melted away, some knot of fear and I had the stupidest urge to start laughing, which really wasn't the best thing to do but I couldn't really stop myself.

She frowned at me, "What's so funny?"

I shifted so she was underneath me and kissed her hard, with something a lot more primal than love behind it. "I love you Running Coyote and not a damn thing in this, or any other damn world will change that. I'm yours and all that darkness crap, it's done, because all that matters to me is to end up right here, next to you."

A large amount of worry left her eyes and her hands snaked around my neck, "Careful Winchester, that sounds a lot like a declaration of intent."

"Did it? Good." I'd never been with someone that I felt like I couldn't get enough of. It didn't matter if we were as close as was humanly possible, I always wanted more. I wanted to touch her more, smell her more, taste her more. I'd run my hands over every inch of her plenty of times but it didn't matter because I always felt something different everytime I did, some new emotion, or found some new way to get a reaction out of her. There'd been quite a parade of women in my life, a lot of them I didn't remember their names, or even their faces anymore, which doesn't say anything all that great about me. I could blame the life I guess, but Sam had been raised in the same circumstances and was completely different. Fact was it had been my choice. I'd seen what losing a wife or lover could do twice, up close and personal. I'd decided early on that the pain wasn't worth it. I saved all of my emotional ties for Sam, it's why he was the only thing I held onto over the years. What I never understood till this last year was that letting all that go, all those fears was the only way to rebuild myself, try to regain some sense of self. Maybe fate had finally tossed me a good hand with the job that had brought Coyote back into my life, giving me a second chance. I didn't know but it didn't matter, what I felt as we moved together went far beyond anything I'd allowed myself to feel before, ever. I felt whole, for the first time in my life and no lurking memory of a demon or monster was going to stop me from feeling that way. Not anymore.

There aren't wolves in our neck of the woods but I thought I caught the sound of a distant howl, it wasn't a lonely, sad sounding one either, it was quite the opposite actually. Or maybe it was all in my head.