CROSSROADS ☁︎ Supernatural

PART 28 - SAM AND DEAN

"Riley," Dean was still enchanted by the reverie locked in his embrace. He held her at the length of his arms for a couple of moments to take in her features and then wound her into his tight hug again.

"Yes, it's me, it's me," she kept repeating into his ear. She was hugging him back but with only one arm. She held the other one down next to her body trying not to smudge his jacket. It was not his dad's old leather one anymore.

The blood from her scratched forearm streamed down and leaking through her fingers was dripping on the ground. At the given moment she could've just run dry of blood and wouldn't give it a single thought, but Sam noticed.

"Dean, we should probably take a look at her wound." Sam stepped out from the shadow to the light coming from the panic room. The momentum was disturbed.

"Oh, yeah, probably," Dean stopped squeezing every last breath out of Riley and suddenly became too self-conscious. He cut Riley again as a welcoming gift. The inability to stop hurting her wasn't something he could cope with easily but he tried to make up for it over and over.

He took her soaked hand into both of his wiping away stray droplets of the dark liquid while supporting it.

"Have you got something in here? Sanitation, bandages?" Sam asked, slowly advancing toward the panic room. He was extremely curious about how it came to be and what was concealed inside.

"Yeah, I do, but I should probably wash it upstairs. There's no running water down there." Riley bounced him right back, luring him away from the beacon.

"Yeah, okay, let's do that," Sam postponed his unsound concern and turned to join Dean and Riley on their way up. He still tried to catch a glimpse of the forbidden lair, when the salt Riley fired at him scrunched under his heavy boots.

Sam watched his step not to slip on the grains not bigger than specks of dust. The light from the panic room illuminated his way and the reflections from the little gloomy crystals teased his eyes like bubbles underwater. He wasn't walking on snow.

"It's not salt," he said aloud. His confused tone was alarming enough for Dean and Riley both to stop in their tracks.

"It's not salt," he kept repeating for himself as he tried to pinpoint the words rolling on his tongue. "It's not salt, it's ..."

He was examining his hands like he was seeing them for the first time. Little granite particles were stuck on his skin from brushing himself off.

"It's goofer-dust," he concluded and only then his sight left his seemingly empty hands and he looked straight into Riley's anxious face.

"Goofer-dust?" Dean turned on her.

"What have you gotten yourself into?" Sam followed suit.

Riley just stood there, panic filled her eyes, words couldn't get through the lump in her throat and got jammed inside her chest. She couldn't let them hear it. Not all of it anyway.

Their little reunion swallowed her whole, the adrenaline rush even made her forget they would sooner or later require an explanation. How was she even standing there with them?

"I..." She breathed, her big eyes skipped from one brother to another.

"What the hell is going on here?" Dean demanded answers she was not ready to provide.

"There is no time for me to explain. They know where I am, they're closing in on me. I'm living on borrowed time."

"Hellhounds?!" Sam followed her train of thoughts.