Dean could start a fight in an empty house (6buckstomyname) wrote in vascaptiolog, @ 2014-01-09 01:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | dean winchester, joey mccoy |
Characters: Dean Winchester and Joey McCoy.
Location: In the museum.
Time: Day 59, evening.
Warnings: Talk of death.
Summary: Difficult conversations were never his strong suit.
Status: Closed, complete.
Saying there was more guilt on his shoulders than ever would have been an understatement. Osiris would have a field day with him now if the god had been around to sniff him out. Tate was a kid. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen, if that, and Dean had essentially given the werewolves his blessing to tear them apart by virtue of turning a blind eye to what they were planning. Dean didn’t trust their plan was foolproof, he didn’t ask for all that much validation. He knew they were using the journals to narrow down the possible attackers, but he didn’t doubt the Management’s ability to twist and manipulate the circumstances. He had all these reservations, but instead of saying anything, he closed the journal and returned to helping Will and Emily like he had no idea what was about to happen. Dean had been focused on guarding the gym when Joey and Tate entered. He didn’t miss the way Scott had reacted to the blond teen, nor did he miss the way the tension in the gym managed to triple. When Tate left, Dean didn’t think there was much time left for him. That was who Derek and his wolves were looking for and even with his suspicions, with his knowledge that there would be another body tonight, Dean still said nothing. The news that Tate had died didn’t take long to get to him, but he had been expecting it and the guilt for it was already there. Dean had promised to save people and he basically killed that kid himself by doing nothing. Sam was angry. It didn’t take that fight over the journals for him to realize it either. Dean was angry too, but a lot of it was directed at himself. He’d already made the decision to tell Joey and any others in the museum that wanted to know the truth, so he packed up a few bolts, grabbed the crossbow and left Stiles in the hands of the doctors. Walking to the museum felt as if it had taken forever. Possibly because Dean felt the weight of the world on him and each step seemed hard to make. Piper had said she would unlock the door so he tried to keep his pace quick. Carl had been waiting by the door and Dean answered his questions as best he could before finding Joey. “I don’t think we’ve met formally,” he started, slightly stiff. His voice was even and distant. “But I felt you deserved to hear this in person. Stiles’ attacker was believed to be Tate.” Dean waited to give Joey a moment to catch up to what he was saying before continuing. Joey was sprawled out on her bed, the journal open to the page on which she’d asked Tate what time he was coming to get her. She assumed he’d gotten back without being attacked by the monster who’d hurt Stiles, because he’d written to her to tell her that he missed her already. Tate hadn’t ever really been the type to write and walk, because he had all the time in the world when he got back to the cabin. It was taking him forever to answer and Joey wondered if he’d just written her the note and then gone to sleep. He did that, he said, when she wasn’t there. Slept a lot. Tate didn’t have any other friends, even though she’d tried to integrate him with Stiles when the two of them had been tethered. Carl and Piper had made it clear that they weren’t interested and Tate had returned the sentiment wholeheartedly. But Joey got the feeling that Stiles didn’t like him, either, and she couldn’t understand why. Stiles liked everyone. It didn’t make sense to her why she was the only one that could see what a fun person to be around that Tate was. He took her on adventures; he showed her how to be brave. Maybe no one else needed it like she did and that was why they couldn’t be bothered. The sound of a foreign voice — an adult and decidedly male one — startled her and she looked up from the page, finally, seeing him stand in the door. Dean, she thought, or Sam. One of the men who stayed in the gym where Stiles used to walk her; then Carl. Where Tate had given her piggybacks to the showers and stood outside the locker room to guard it while she took advantage of the hot water Kaylee had managed to get to work. What was he doing here? Joey opened her mouth to introduce herself, too, but then he went on and she sat up, shaking her head. “No,” she said and it was confident even though it was quiet. “No, Tate wouldn’t ever hurt anybody. He’s not like that, no. It’s somebody else. I wanna find out who did it, too, but it wasn’t Daryl and it wasn’t Tate, so you all just have to keep looking.” Dean crossed his arms over his chest, holding his breath for a second that lasted forever. He wasn’t an idiot and he didn’t expect Joey to believe him. As far as she was concerned, she had every right to. He didn’t have any real proof it was Tate and something told him he never would. Unless the Management intervened, no one would ever know the truth. That uncertainty made telling Joey the rest of what he knew just that much harder. “They’re not looking anymore.” Dean held her glance, knowing this part was the worst. All his life, Dean had done his job, following murders across the country and killing the monsters responsible. Without wearing a suit and carrying a fake badge, Dean had never entered the lives of the people left in the wake of whatever he was hunting. There were always people like Joey, but his life and theirs never really crossed. Now, they overlapped because he had stood by and let the wolves kill a kid who could have been innocent. “Joey, they killed him.” They’re not looking anymore, he said and Joey couldn’t wrap her head around that. Why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they keep looking for the right person? Tate hadn’t ever done anything to anyone. He barely even talked to anyone besides her and he’d been nothing but a perfect gentleman when he was with her. He’d been kind and quiet and smart. And then Dean went on and Joey shook her head again, trying to understand the gravity of the words, because they didn’t make sense. He’d just written to her. It couldn’t have been ten minutes, maybe fifteen minutes, before Dean had arrived that Tate had left her that message. He couldn’t be dead in ten minutes...he just couldn’t. Joey shook her head again and got up. “No,” she insisted, because he was wrong. He was wrong and if he wasn’t wrong, she couldn’t handle that. She had to see for herself. Tate would be there at the cabin and he’d probably yell at her for coming out by herself when there was an attacker in their midst, but she had to know; she had to see. He’d be there. “You’re wrong,” she said in a low voice that didn’t feel or sound like her own, because something had been stirring in the pit of her stomach, anyway, ever since Tate had brought her to the museum. That sick sort of feeling, the kind of knotting when she knew something was wrong or something bad was going to happen, but it came out of nowhere and didn’t make sense, so she’d forced herself to ignore it. She’d gone into autopilot brushing roughly past him when she left her room; it hadn’t occurred to her that she’d started running once she’d gotten into the hall. It took too long for her to get the front door open, because her hands were shaking and she couldn’t turn the knob right the first time, but once she’d gotten it, she’d burst through the door and she’d disappeared through it. Tate would be there. He would be. He had to be. “I wish I was.” It was all he could say. If she had questions, he’d answer them. As it was, he planned on staying behind in the museum to speak with the rest of the people inside. If they wanted some kind of explanation, he wasn’t going to deny them that. As far as he knew, Piper wanted answers and he’d only spoken to Carl for barely a few minutes before finding Joey. Once he left this place, he’d have to go back to admitting his involvement in the death of Tate, deserved or not, so for as long as he could, he wanted to keep that at bay. It was another life lost because he hadn’t made the right decision. Dean didn’t have anything else to say and offering any condolences would have come out as awkward and pointless. Without another word, Dean left, assuming that if she had questions, she would find someone to answer them, be it himself or someone else. |