#lfsappreciations

Charlie sighs, looking between you and Castiel. “Dean is my buddy, and I cannot screw this up, but my mind… it’s a wad of gummy worms.”

“Don’t have to listen to them, Angel,” Rowena’s voice rings through the room. “Couple of prima donnas, if you ask me.”

Charlie crosses her arms over her chest, raising her eyebrows at you.

You sigh. “Cas, keep an eye on the witch. We’ll be a few hours, tops.”

You and Charlie check into the nearest motel, and you don’t let her leave your sight for a second, even as her concentrating eyes dart across the screen so many times it makes your own head hurt.

“You know, Dean’s not going anywhere, and neither is the Mark,” you say after a while. “We can go back at the brewery, take a break. You don’t have to cram it all in at once. Don’t say it,” you add when you see her eyes light up like she’s about to make the obvious joke.

Her refusal is followed by a string of NO MATCH beeps from her computer, despite her typing away and talking through the problems in technobabble you don’t understand.

“A-ha!” she laughs.

“You got it?”

“I got it,” she nods, a beaming smile on her face.

“Good. Let’s get out of here,” you say.

“(Y/N), I think we can take a second to celebrate,” she remarks. “After all, I might be a genius.”

“We both know you’re definitely a genius. We can celebrate when we get back to—”

A pounding at the door cuts off your words. You and Charlie glance at each other before turning your heads to the door.

You flinch at the voice that pierces through it.

“I know you’re in here, Ms. Asimov.”

Your blood runs cold. You know that southern drawl. Eldon Styne.

“You have it. I want it,” he calls, following with another round of pounding so loud you think he might break down the door.

“Bathroom,” you shout in a hushed voice. “Now.”

Charlie scoops her tablet and phone into her arms before darting across the room.

You dig through her backpack until you find her knife and follow her toward the bathroom to shove the hilt in her hands.

“Close the door, and don’t come out, no matter what,” you command.

“Wh-what about you?” she stammers, her voice quivering.

All the triumph has left her tone, all the lightness faded away. Her hands tremble as they clutch her screens and the knife.

You grasp the back of her neck and kiss her. It’s rushed and clumsy and teeth-clashing. It’s not your best work, but you get the feeling it’ll have to be.

The Styne continues to pound at the door.

“It’s gonna be fine,” you promise.

The look in her eye tells you she knows you’re lying.

The closed bathroom door muffles the sound of Eldon Styne pounding on the one outside, but Charlie can still hear it.

She stands where you left her as she goes back and forth in her mind. She wants to help you, but every instinct she has tells her to curl up in the corner and wait this out.

And, she reasons, maybe you can win.

You haven’t been a fighter for as long as she’s known you, but in the Supernatural books, you had been raised as a hunter, and you were good at it. When Charlie asked you one day about why you stopped, why you were in the books instead of on the hunts, you grew quiet. Then, you changed the subject as if she hadn’t said anything.

The boys told her later that, on your last hunt, you killed someone you were sure was a werewolf, who turned out to be human, and you haven’t picked up a gun since then.

Truth is, it could’ve been any one of us, Sam said, but I guess it just got to her.

The pounding stops with a crack of broken wood. Slow footsteps land through the doorway.

Charlie sets to work. She dials Sam’s number and opens her tablet on the toilet seat cover. As she sputters out the name of the motel, she drags a file, everything Sam would need to decode the codex, and uploads it to an email.

Over Sam’s voice, she can hear a crash from the room outside, rustling sounds.

Dean is yelling at her now to give them anything she has.

Punches land. The man grunts.

“I can’t do that, Dean.”

Uploading Complete.

You cry out. More punches, then another crash. Then, nothing.

Charlie doesn’t hear anything after that. She sends the email and smashes her screen against the sink.

Footsteps sound outside, growing closer to her door.

It’s you. It has to be.

She grabs her knife, backing away from the door.

The knob creaks as it turns. The door inches open to reveal a man with his left arm severed below the elbow, tattered into a bloody stub. Parts of his shirt are ripped, and his eye is mangled beyond recognition.

Behind him, Charlie sees your figure lying on the floor. She wills you to move, to groan, anything that would let her know you’re alive.

Please, she begs you.

“You’re gonna give me what’s mine,” Eldon says, spitting blood. “Mine and my family’s.”

She holds out her knife.

He lunges at her, and she stabs the blade into his chest. She looks up at him, expecting to see the life flicker out of his eyes, but instead he only smiles.

He snatches her wrist, pulling out the knife, which clatters to the ground. He shoves her against the wall, his arm at her throat. Her head hits the drywall so hard she sees black for a moment.

“Where’s the Book?” he asks.

She can’t get air into her lungs, couldn’t answer him if she wanted to. She kicks at him, pushes him away with her arms, but he doesn’t budge.

Her vision begins to darken before he releases her and throws her to the ground.

She gasps for air as she feels him kick at her side. She curls her knees up, covering her head with her hands, but she still feels the bruising jolts.

Suddenly, they stop.

Charlie hears him grunt and turns around.

You stand in front of him, her knife in your hand. Cuts and bruises litter your face, blood pours out of a gash on your forehead, and your wrist, the one not holding the knife, is bent at an awkward angle.

But you’re alive.

You dodge a punch he throws. You send a knee into his stomach, and Charlie swears she hears a rib crack.

He doubles over, and you stab him up his throat and through his brain. He topples to the ground, his body limp.

Blood stains your hands.

It trickled down the knife from his throat, and now it collects in your palm.

You must have collapsed because you’re on your knees, his body in front of you. Blood pools on the tile where his neck landed.

You felt nothing but hatred for him and his family, but he was still a person, a human. And now he’s gone.

How could you let this happen, after you swore you’d never kill anything ever again?

Charlie crawls into your vision from behind you, and you flinch away. Hurt flashes on her face, but only for a moment. She reaches over to pry the knife from your grip. You didn’t realize you were still holding it.

She stands up and holds out a hand to you. Tentatively, you take it. Your hand coats hers with blood, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

She leads you to the sink and sits you on the toilet cover while she dampens a washcloth and gingerly wipes your face. You can’t tell how much blood there is, but by the time she’s done, the once-white cloth is almost completely red.

You realize it slowly, while you’re staring at her as she cleans you up—why you went into battle after so many years of sitting quietly on the sidelines. It was for her.

And she, you decide, is reason enough.

“I’m sorry,” she says, pulling you out of your thoughts.

“What?” you ask. “For what?”

She holds her arms out and drops them to her sides. “For dragging you out here. For bringing you into all of this again.”

You stand up to meet her. “Charlie, all that matters to me is that you’re okay. All right?”

She nods.

You wrap your arms around her, and you feel all the guilt melt away. Here, tonight, in this motel bathroom, she’s alive, and so are you.

It could have been much worse.

I don’t want to say this is a “fuck you” to the writers because it isn’t. Except I do and it is.