Claire Winchester (née Bennet) (regenerating) wrote in parabolical, @ 2009-06-15 01:23:00 |
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Outside the man door leading into the garage, Claire leaned against the wall and waited for Dean, especially glad she was after he'd ended the call before she could tell him she loved him. Even with as much sense as Sam had made, and as much as she wanted to believe it all, she was still worried. Still a little scared. As he moved close to her, she straighted up, gaze falling to the sawed off shotgun in his hand. she bit back a sigh, taking the last two steps between them as he did the same. "You won't need that," she said softly. After all, as much as she'd gone on about him killing her, she didn't really think he'd shoot her. But that he'd come prepared to possibly use that on someone only made her feel more guilty for having made him think she was in trouble. Dean sighed heavily in relief when he saw Claire there alone. He couldn't get over how certain he had been that this was a trap. Something had been off with Claire from the start, and if she wasn't trying to give him a hint about someone having her, then what was it? His shoulders slumping as the tension decreased slightly, Dean realized he didn't care. He'd been out searching for Claire since this whole mess started, and now it was getting late. Maybe Sam was right, maybe he was just a paranoid, overprotective boyfriend. In any case, Claire was alive and in one piece, even if her voice sounded oddly soft. They could figure out the details in the morning. "Come on." He said, slinging an arm around her shoulders as he dropped the gun to his side. "Let's get out of here. I'm ready for some pie and you can tell me what's going on on the way to get some." Biting her lip, Claire shook her head, reaching up to take the hand of the arm slung over her shoulders, so she could lead him in the direction of the door. That he hadn't even asked where the Impala was parked was strange to her, and it unnerved her more because it was just one more step she had to make. "We can't, I have-" The words lodged in her throat so hard she couldn't speak around them, so she stopped in front of the door, the lights from inside making shadows play across her face. A breath in, a breath out, another few repetitions of the same, and then she tried to speak again. "I need- you should come- just-" She still couldn't find the damn words, so she settled for the only ones she could get out in one go. "I love you," she said, popping up on her toes to kiss him, brief but fierce, then pushed the door to the garage open and gave a twitchy little nod in the direction of the inside. Dean kissed her back, but the sinking feeling of dread returning. Although he said 'I love you' comfortably now, there was something about the way that she was saying it that made his stomach churn. Something was going on. He shot her a puzzled look and headed through the garage door. "I love you too, Claire, but wh--" The Impala was parked in one of the bays where Dean normally serviced cars. The garage looked almost eerie with most of the lights off, and the lights that were on (directly over his baby) only seemed to make more shadows dart around the room. Dean frowned, his heart beginning to hammer in his chest as his eyes focused on what had to be shadows near the driver's side door. They had to be shadows, because otherwise somehow the whole thing was caved in and... "SON OF A BITCH!" Stomach and heart both bottoming out somewhere in her toes, Claire stepped inside behind Dean, already tensing for the moment when he saw the car. Still, even braced, she jumped anyhow when the curse was all but shouted. She opened her mouth to begin to explain, but she found the words once more jammed sideways in her throat, stubbornly refusing to be said. It was likely fortunate, as she was nearly certain Dean was just getting started in his reaction to what she'd done to the car. His baby. Dean stepped closer to the car, circling it quickly to make sure that the damage was isolated to the driver's side alone. At least, he thought, the entire thing wasn't wrecked, but as it was things were certainly bad enough. Although he was silent for a long moment, the tense set of his shoulders and the low groans he let out every so often as his fingers felt over the smashed metal said more then enough. He was pissed, and it was plain to see. "Who crashed into it?" he asked a moment later, fingers still almost carressing the crumpled black metal. "I'm going to need a name, a license plate, and a social security number for the stupid bastard who broke my freaking car." In many ways, it resembled the calm before the storm to Claire. Another might think the groaning and the demands were enough, but Claire knew it was just the beginning of it. After all, he'd threatened death for strangers nearly doing far less to the car, and yelled enough about Sam being rear-hit by an old lady - and none of that compared to smashed in doors and broken windows. After clearing her throat sharply several times, Claire pulled it together. "I have his name and insurance, it's in my purse," she said. He already knew where exactly to find the other person responsible for this. Dean tried to tell himself to stay calm. He knew how to fix this--he fixed things like this and a hell of a lot worse everyday--and the poor bastard's insurance would likely cover any costs, but Dean wasn't satisfied. His car, the 1967 model of Detroit's ingenuity was standing there like a condemned building that might cave in if you looked at it long enough. It was something sure to send him into a rage, especially when added with the memories of how wrecked up the Impala had been after his father's death, and how long it took to put her back together. They were entirely different situations--one a collision with an 18-wheeler that left all of his family in the hospital and seriously injured, the other likely little more than a traffic ticket, but Dean still couldn't stop himself from seeing red. "Goddamn it!" He growled, seeing that the damage on one side of the dent had damaged metal he thought to be fine on the first inspection. "What the hell happened, Claire?" Lacing her fingers together in front of her, Claire spoke to her hands at first, rather than look up at Dean. She was trying to remember that the anger could pass, that things could be okay, but it was proving to be hard. Still, he'd asked, and she owed him the truth about what had happened to the car. "He tried to pass me, even though I was doing over the speed limit. There were vehicles coming the other way, and he didn't move, not until he veered off and slammed into me to try to avoid them." Even now, the effects of the collision of her were the furthest thing from her mind. Since the night she'd slammed Brody's car into a wall, car collisions didn't even make her blink, because she knew she'd survive them. Swallowing hard, she forced herself to finish. "I didn't slow down to let him around me because I thought he was being an asshole." It was then that she finally looked up at Dean. "It was my fault. I'm so sorry, Dean. I'm so unbelievably sorry." Dean felt over the car as Claire spoke, his jaw working on clenching and unclenching to keep him from saying something before he was really ready. The accident was not her fault, he reminded himself. How many times on the road had he done asshole-ish things to drivers who were doing stupid things? How many times had he sped slightly or not let someone around or... He felt around the frame of the door, trying to determine if the window was just down or if it was broken, but after he peered into the car and saw the glass in the floorboard and on the seat the answer was clear. "Son of a bitch," he growled, gripping the frame where the window used to be. He tried the handle, not liking the look of all the glass in the bottom of his car (because the dent was more than bad enough) and to add insult to injury the handle wouldn't work. "SON of a BITCH." Anger clear he all but stomped to the passenger side, yanking the door open and climbing inside. His jaw was set in a hard line as he inspected the door from the inside, mentally cataloging the work that would have to be done to get the door back in working order again. He sighed heavily, then leaned over to clean up the glass, sprawled across the driver's and passenger's seat. Closer to the shattered pieces of glass, Dean could notice the blood on them that he couldn't before, and he sat up quickly, clearly in shock. Once he sat up, he looked down at himself and could see blood that had been on the seat now on his bare arms. Claire had been hurt this entire time, and rather than call him from the side of the road, go to him and ask help, she texted him with vague answers and avoided him and God only knew when she was actually going to TELL him she had been bleeding. Clearly more pissed than ever, Dean forgot all about the glass and got out of the car, striding quickly to her. He didn't ask her what was broken, didn't ask permission, he just started trying to take his jacket off of her so that he could see her stained clothing. She might be all healed up, but Dean was a hunter, and he was going to use every shred of evidence available to figure out just what the hell had really happened to her. For the most part, Claire watched silently, wincing at every curse word and moving closer when Dean rounded the car and got inside. It was how she was close enough to see when he started to clean up the glass and realize, too late, her error. She'd cleaned herself up before Sam arrived, but she'd forgotten about the glass since then, shards of which had led to some of her injuries, shards that still had her blood on it. "Dammit," she swore softly, backing away from the car, but stopping when Dean approached her looking even more pissed than before - something she hadn't thought possible. It wasn't that Claire hadn't expected him to notice the blood on her clothing - it was why she'd dug a spare jacket of his out of the trunk to cover the worst of the evidence of her former injuries - but she had expected that to come after a lengthy rant about the car. "I'm okay," she said, not really fighting him as he stripped the jacket off of her, but not exactly helping him either. "And I'll pay for everything you need to do to fix her, so you can do it now and not wait on my insurance company. If you tell me what to do, I'll even do the work on the parts I can fix." Dean gently but firmly pulled the jacket off of Claire, not caring that her help was minimal because he was determined to see the evidence of what he suspected even if he had to cut the jacket off. Once he had the jacket off he tossed it carelessly to the floor of the garage, his eyes already looking her over. For once Dean didn't like what he was seeing. He circled her the same way he had the Impala, mentally making note of every speck of blood or debris on her. If his anger had been clear when he saw the Impala, it was that much more clear now, as his jaw clenched and unclenched and he swore intensely under his breath. He all but growled 'son of a bitch..." when he came around to her left side and saw the blood on the neckline and side of her breasts. Claire normally healed up pretty nicely, so if there was blood, it meant... "Goddamn it!" He all but ignored her as she offered to pay for the damages to the car and talked about the insurance company, because his attention wasn't on the Impala at all at the moment, it was on her. He walked closer, picking up her wrist gently. Was that where the blood on her jeans came from? It looked normal now, but he couldn't get the image of what the crash must have been like out of his head. He knew what a crash in the car sounded like, the sickening crunch of bone and metal and screeching tires. She'd gone through that alone, probably popped a few bones back into place herself, then tried to hide the whole thing from him. "Claire, I swear to God if you ever--" Dean didn't even finish with his threat, turning his attention back to following her arm up to where it met the shoulder. He inspected her both with his eyes and with the light, careful touch of his fingertips, trying to find damage he knew wasn't there...at least not anymore. Knowing that critical gaze from the outside, in watching him inspect the Impala now and any time he thought there might be damage, even in inspecting the vehicles that came into the garage, was one thing. It was entirely another for Claire to be the one under it, him circling her and sizing her up like this. The difference was, there were no repairs to make, as she'd healed. But she also knew her boyfriend and knew that the healed injuries didn't mean it was done and over with for him. He'd said it all along, even back when they had only been friends - just because she could heal didn't mean he ever wanted to see her get hurt. That was why she bit back another 'Dean, I'm fine' before it was spoken out loud and his veins really did start popping. What was tripping her up was the ferocity of his reaction. He was acting just as pissed about her injuries as he had about the Impala's (perhaps even more, really) and she hadn't expected that. But the threat - at least the threat as she read it, which was very wrong - tipped the balance back again to anger about the car, which was both familiar and painful, because she knew this was it, at the very least, as far as her and the car. "I won't. I- I'll give you back the keys now, I won't ever drive her again," she said, using her free hand to dig out the keys. Once out, she fumbled with the keyring, trying to disconnect the loop of Impala keys from her others. "Stop," Dean all but growled when she started fumbling with the key ring. She was wiggling and that was hindering his careful inspection, and he didn't like that. He placed one steadying hand on her right hip briefly as he pulled up her shirt with his free hand. Of course the skin he saw was as clean and flawless as it ever was, but Dean's too vivid imagination easily filled in the missing details. One of her ribs (or more) had likely been broken and might have broke through the skin...or maybe not given that her skin didn't have dried blood on it. Then again, given how she had tried to cover up her injuries with his jacket, maybe she had cleaned that off? Dean was feeling more frustrated than ever because he didn't know. "How could you hide this from me?" he asked, frustration coming out heavily in his voice. He released his hold on her briefly to motion at her blood stained shirt, then went back to the inspection, this time starting at the neck of the sleeveless shirt as he pulled it away from her body and tried to gauge what injuries she had sustained to her neck, shoulders and upper body. Going quiet and still almost immediately at the growl, an unusual obedience for Claire, she bit her lip and watched him look her over. Other than cleaning her face and arms and rinsing her hair before Sam showed up, Claire hadn't done more to clean herself up, and apparently even that much had been enough to set him off. If Dean hadn't indicated her when he finally spoke, she would have started babbling about her reasons for not calling him, but the gesture of his hand made her think he meant the more immediate fact that she'd covered up the shirt. Her reasoning for that had been relatively simple, if misguided, and his reaction to the shirt was proving that for her. "I wasn't," she said once she'd let go of her lip, "I just- you needed to deal with the car first. I didn't want you having to do both at once, not with how bad she'd damaged." Granted, she'd gotten what she'd been after, but it wasn't playing out quite as she'd imagined. "And I shouldn't have tried to hide the car. I'm sorry. I was just scared, okay? I wasn't really thinking." Dean felt his anger grow to an almost white hot rage. She still thought this was about the car. She had been bleeding and hurt and by her own admission scared, and she still hid this so he could fix the car first. He knew first hand the car's injuries weren't going to run away, they'd still be there in a week or a month or a year until he fixed them, so rebuilding his 'baby' hadn't really been that urgent, but she though it was more important for him to come down here and fix the freaking car than to get her out of the bloody clothes or have Peter look her over or even just go home and get some rest so her Supergirl body didn't exhaust itself. "I needed to deal with the car first?" He asked, disbelief clear in his voice. "The fucking car?" Without thinking the action through, Dean reached for the long handled wrench sitting on a nearby toolbox, then walked very deliberately to the hood of the Impala and started hitting. He didn't blink as paint chips on the smooth black hood started to fly or dents started to appear. He didn't think, he just hit. Dean hit "her" again and again, taking all of his rage and frustration and anger out on her. He hit her until he was out of breath and his muscles were aching, then he threw the wrench at the windshield of the car, barely batting an eyelash when it cracked the glass. Still breathing rapidly, Dean turned back to her. "That's how worried I am about the car, Claire." Claire watched in horror as he attacked the car, by no means doing as much damage to it as she had, but still doing a level of injury to his baby that she couldn't seem to wrap her head around it. She stepped forward to stop him, but each time she reached for him, he'd do something to evade her grasp - not consciously, she didn't think, but still bad enough. When he turned back to her, she gaped at him, scrambling to make sense of what he'd just done to his car. She'd expected anger, she'd been prepared to never be allowed to drive it again, she'd wanted to believe what Sam said while still being afraid for the worst, but none of that was close to this. "What are- That- Dean, I- Why would you do that?" she finally got out. Maybe she was hallucinating this. That seemed more likely to her, somehow, than the idea he'd ruin his car further just to prove some point to her. After all, if that was the car, then her trying to hide the car in the beginning really had come from a complete lack of understanding about Dean's priorities where the car was concerned. Dean shrugged, looking back to the damage he had done with an almost apathetic look. He'd fixed worse everyday, and although this might be his 'baby,' Dean knew that it didn't even remotely compare to his actual son, or his father or mother or brother...and it didn't compare to his girlfriend. It was the most valuable piece of property that he owned, but as much as Dean liked to protest, he knew the car was just an 'it.' It might have character, and it might be one of the most consistent things in his life, but the Impala wasn't as important as any one of his family. "You could have died," he said quietly, taking another step toward her. "Hell, if you were anyone else, or if your mojo was having an off day, you probably would have died. It probably even hurt a hell of a lot for a minute, and you're standing there and telling me that it doesn't matter, that I need to pound out dents and fix glass and clean out a freaking car when you're still all bloody." Dean looked away, shaking his head. It wasn't right. She didn't call him, didn't tell him....because she thought the fucking car was more important. "What would you have done if I got all banged up in the Rogue and I called ABC to help me instead of you?" It was one of Claire's sorest spots, the idea those that were solely her friends, the ones she didn't share simply by virtue of having a double, would go to ABC instead of her. Though latent all along while living in L.A., it had been especially sore since Sam had already done that once. It didn't matter if, in reality, Dean would be even less likely to take ABC's blood than he would hers, because of how stubborn he was about her not seeming like some kind of cure-all commodity. All that matter was that he'd just said that. "It's not the same thing at all!" she spluttered, then folded her arms over her chest. "I didn't call anyone to heal me, it's not like I had to go to the hospital and get stitches and casts without telling you! I wasn't going to hide it forever, I just didn't want you having to deal with both at once when I was pretty sure you were going to completely lose your shit over the damage to the Impala!" Biting back the rest, she focused on what he'd been saying before. "I'm not anyone else. I wouldn't have died. My 'mojo' doesn't have off days. It didn't hurt in a way I even noticed, at all. It was already done and over with for me before I even got out of the car to see the damage to her. I wasn't even thinking about me anymore, I was thinking about how furious you'd be about the car. You yell when shopping carts come too close to her, you flipped out at Sam for being in a rear end fender bender and forced him to fix the car until you got fed up with his help, and I was scared what you'd do when you saw this," she said, nodding miserably to the car. "That's all I could think about." Dean shook his head. "Everybody's 'mojo' has off days around here. People come in with freaky powers that mess with everybody's head or body or thoughts or anything else. What's to say someone didn't come in two minutes before the crash who was gonna screw with your powers. You know all I can think about? Finding you on the side of some road bleeding to death and you're too scared of me being pissed about a freaking car to call me." Dean's hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, for a moment considering going to punch the car just to distract himself from that image, but he decided against it. "How bad was it?" He asked, not caring that she tried to brush off acknowledging how bad her injuries were by saying they were done by the time she got out of the car. He had to know where she had been hurt. Again, that was an argument that Claire couldn't quite argue against, not because things happened to others, but because the literal Apocalypse had kept her blood from bringing back people from the dead, so there was a force out there powerful enough to slow or negate her blood, likely her ability in herself as well. "It's not like I wasn't going to tell you ever." Her panic hadn't been about hiding the car and her own injuries forever, but in fixing as much or all of it as she could before telling him, to avoid the explosion she apparently had wildly misjudged. "I didn't forget the promise I made, Dean." That one, the one that had come out of fights after the virgin sacrifice thing, that she'd always tell him if she'd been hurt. "I was just waiting to tell you later." And because of that promise, she laid out - albeit very quietly - all the injuries she'd noted. There had likely been more, but if she hadn't even felt them in her distraction, she couldn't tell him about it. Dean listened carefully, relieved to find that there was nothing on her list that he had not suspected himself both from experience and by the evidence of the blood stains. He pulled up her shirt again, giving her one last look to confirm that she was indeed whole before pulling her close into a tight hug. "You could've been killed," he said, voice rough. His anger was fading now that he saw she was mostly ok. He could fix the car, he could get her home and clean...this was gonna be ok. "I swear to God, Claire, if you ever do this again with the hiding things....you call me next time, ok? The next time you're bleeding on the side of the road, you call me, because I promise I'll be a hell of a lot less pissed that way. I like that car a hell of a lot, and some days I even love it, but I love you, Claire." This time, Claire didn't argue the merit of the possibility of her being killed, as she knew that would just set him off further. Instead she wrapped her arms around him, rubbing at his back in a soothing way, still feeling guilty for upsetting him this badly. "I love you too, Dean," she whispered, holding on tighter, body shaking slightly. There was a difference between being told things were likely a certain way and being shown that it was the truth. In the end, it hadn't just been about the car, but about anything that Claire thought could outrank how he felt for her, that could end what they had. The car was just one of the worst examples of that sort of thing, and she'd been proven wrong about it, very, very wrong. It was a little overwhelming, having her understanding of the order of things in his life change in this way, but in a good way. "I'll call, I promise," she said, and she meant it, because she didn't make promises to him she didn't think she wouldn't keep. It wasn't an easy promise to make, much like the one months ago about knowing about her healed injuries, but it was one she made because she loved him and this had shown that trying to hide things just made it worse. It might be hard to always remember that in the future, but she'd try. Dean leaned in, kissing her fiercely on the lips. She was ok, he reminded himself. He pulled back after a moment, getting his jacket off of the garage floor to drape it over her shoulders. He took an extra moment to make sure that it was resting just so under her neck, then grabbed her hand. "Come on...it's late. It's late and I'm tired and you've been hurt and all of this..." He waved his hand at the mess that was the Impala. "Can wait until tomorrow." He knew that Ralph would be less than thrilled to find the classic Impala he had long admired in such a state in the garage, but it was safe there and in the right spot where Dean could get to it first thing in the morning. "Let's go home, Supergirl." Claire might not live with him, but Dean didn't even consider the thought of taking her back to her own house. He wanted her at his side, where he could keep an eye on her, maybe even watch over her while she slept. He had been worried, so worried, so he didn't think much about how chickflickish such a thought was. He didn't care. |