The Youngest Winchester - Supernatural Imagines

Hunt Gone Bad (2/3)

⚠️Trigger Warning: verbal abuse, blood, slight gore⚠️

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"It fucking stinks down here." Kate gags, covering her mouth and nose,

"It's not- you know I was gonna say it's not that bad, but you're right it fucking reeks." Dean replies, screwing up his nose and gagging too, after taking in a breath of the rancid air.

Sam, Dean and Kate, had followed the ghouls trail, down into the sewer system, where he had been both stashing and eating the bodies of his victims in the privacy of the tunnels.

"I guess the worse the smell gets the closer we're getting to his feeding site." Sam said followed shortly by an exasperated, "Ah, crap."

Dean and Kate looked up to see what had frustrated their brother. The sewer, forked off into two seperate paths.

"Which way d' you think the smell is coming from?" Dean asked,

"Which smell? The rotting bodies or the human shi-" Kate cut herself off as she recieved a sharp glare from Dean, "Ok. Watch my language. Got it."

A scream suddenly echoed through the winding catacombs, attracting the attention of the three,

"Where did that come from?" Sam wondered aloud, "there's so much damn echo down here, I can't tell."

"Split up. Sammy, you and Kate go right. I'll go left; we'll meet in the middle."

Not waiting for his sister to catch up, or stopping when she called his name; Sam ran ahead down the right tunnel; searching for the source of the scream. Splashing through the sewer water, he remained vigilant, keeping his eyes open and listening closely for sounds of life.

The two ran even faster when a second scream was heard, however, they soon came upon a dead end in the path; almost like a cul-de-sac in a street. It was filled with makeshift coffins for the ghouls victims, the smell of rotting flesh had increased tenfold and both siblings immediately covered their noses.

"Dean! We found it!" Sam alerted, creeping around the room, observing.

There were at least 15 bodies, some were fresher than others, the majority of them were rotting. Skin falling off, bones and organs exposed.

"Is this where the screams were coming from? Who was that?" Kate asked her brother,

"Me." Came the sinister reply.

Kate whipped around on her heel and was immediately tossed into a nearby wall by the female ghoul; cracking her head on a pipe with a grunt.

"Kate!" Sam shouted, immediately moving into a fighting stance to kill the monster.

Kate attempted to stand, wavering on her feet, but stopped when she spotted something out of the corner of her eye; a boy. A long-dead and decaying boy.

Laying crumpled in the corner of the room. He looked to about the same age Adam had been, and he looked strikingly similar to the Milligan boy. She was caught off guard and froze in place.

Sam was now grappling with the ghoul on the floor, she had the upper hand, straddling the man; she pulled a knife from her belt and stabbed it clean through his hand, he released an agonised scream, then promptly passed out from the pain.

"Help him, idiot." Kate thought, and yet she couldn't bring herself to move, everything came crashing down upon her all at once. All the grief about Adam she had never processed, coupled with her injured and pounding head, held her in place like an anchored ship.

With a squelch and what sounded like metal-on-bone the ghoul twisted the knife in Sams hand before she ripped it out and held it to his throat, ready to slash it.

Finally, Dean ran in, spotting one of his siblings unconscious with a knife to his throat and the other staring, standing and shaking.

Thinking quickly, Dean kneed the ghoul in the face causing her head to reel back and her to fall off of Sam; with one hand, he held her hands above her and with the other he beat her head with a crowbar that he found on the floor, until it was simply a mushy mess of bone and blood.

Standing, and releasing the limp body, he ran to his brother, Dean fell to his knees next to Sam and asked, "Sammy, can you hear me?"

Kate was coming back to her senses and slowly approached Sam as well, but kept her distance.

Dean began to tap Sams face lightly and he began to stir, eyelids fluttering.

"What the hell was that?!" Dean asked aggressively, attention now on Kate, "He could've been killed!"

"I don't know, I saw- I saw a body and I just- I don't know he kind of looked like Adam, it shook me up. I'm-" She stuttered,

"You're what? You're sorry? Sorry you froze like a god damn child. We see dead bodies every day of the week. The problem isn't the dead kid, it's you!" Kate flinched as Dean raised his voice, his face going red in anger, hers in embarrassment.

Dean hoisted an only-slightly-conscious Sam to his feet, putting an arm over his shoulder and leading him out of the tunnels; not knowing or caring if Kate was following.

She was, and gingerly holding the back of her throbbing head.

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The impala tore down the asphalt, the air inside tense. Sam was coherant now although he was slowly slipping in and out of consciousness, his hand pouring out massive amounts of blood.

The car pulled into the ER and Dean got out, once again hoisting a limp Sam over his shoulder to carry him inside; a group of nearby nurses pulled up a gurney to wheel Sam away and once he was gone, Dean turned to the girl standing a few feet behind him,

"Go back to the motel, I can't even look at you right now."

"Dean, I'm-" Kate began to apologise, but stopped when she saw the fury raging across his face, fists clenched at his sides.

"I don't have the car keys." She muttered, looking at her feet,

Dean scoffed in reply, "You're not getting the fucking keys, you can walk."

"It's at least 6 miles from here to the motel, are you serious?" She replied, incredulous.

"You stupid or something? I said leave. Now." He said.

That word. Stupid. A simple word that brought so many memories back.

Despite her eagerness to learn how to hunt, Kate was always quite a scrawny child, so her physical ability was always something that John had targeted during his regular degrading sessions. His words never really bothered her though as Sam and Dean were always there to reassure her she was doing just fine.

But there was something about the way John insulted her intelligence, something about the way he'd call her incompetent, useless, an idiot; it dug down into her young brain, forming a deep self-consciousness that years later, even after his death, was still blooming.

He was right about one thing though, she thought, about her being 'useless'. Here she was, standing in the buzzing halls of an emergency room; one brother being rushed off to surgery and the other not even being able to withstand her presence, and yet she still did nothing.

Dean had promised. He promised he'd never become like John. But he had. And that scared the hell out of her.

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Words: 1264

A/N: I was intending for this to only be two parts but I realised I had more to write than I thought, third and final part will be up sometime this week :)