Outside the motel

Jenny lingered outside the bathroom, feeling a lot like an outsider now. "If you want I can go..." she called out after the coughing of Sam had slowly faded out.

Dean looked up at Jenny, and then heard the sound of Sam retching into the toilet again, this time nothing coming back up.

"No, it's alright," Dean said, after a few moments, waiting for Sam to stop, grimacing at the sound, "I just need to get him back to bed."

Jenny lingered for a little longer before heading back over to the chair and sat down. It really made her tired after. She glanced down at her phone as she got an incoming call from Davis. Of course, she hadn't sent him a text back in five. That was their rule - five minutes or he calls.

"Hey." she said, putting the phone to her ear. He started going on straight away, asking her how it was. "It was fine." she said. She rolled her eyes. "Yes, I remembered the salt. Like I would forget." She made sure to keep her voice low enough without being suspicious. "6pm, this Friday. You don't have to keep reminding me, Davis, I know." she told him, though smiling at his concern. She was keeping vague enough so that Dean wouldn't know anything, neither would Sam if he was listening.

Sam's throat ached, the taste in his mouth was vile. He hated being ill, and feeling so helpless as a result. The nausea was making his head swim, his thoughts foggy. The soup had been a bad idea, he had known that taking it would result in this.

He sagged back against Dean's hand, his mouth still hanging open. He looked around wide eyed.

"Where's Jenny?" he rasped, coughing in an attempt to clear his throat. Had she not been in here a minute ago?

Jenny didn't hear Sam ask where she was as she listened to Davis on the other end of the line. "No, no I can't do anymore. It's too painful."

She was tired of having this conversation with him. He kept trying to find new ways to help her with the curse but it was never anything better. They'd tried so many different things but it either hurt her more, or reduced the days she had until the next time. "Davis. I'm not going to try that unless I'm back with you. Besides I'm working on a case. I can't do it."

Dean could hear Jenny's voice in the other room, though he couldn't quite make out what she was saying. Something about it being painful, and Davis. Was she talking to that other hunter again? Dean frowned. He was going to have to meet this guy, make sure he was decent. If he was leaving his cousin to do cases on her own then Dean wasn't so sure on the man.

"She's in the other room," Dean said, answering Sam's seemingly random question. He moved his hand, looping it under his armpit and dragging them both upwards. Sam seemed to have more or less stopped throwing up, so bed would be the best place for him now.

Jenny glanced up as Dean and Sam came back in - Dean pulling Sam towards the bed.

"Davis, I can't talk about this right now. I've got company." she hissed into the phone. "My cousins. Yeah, they're on the same case." Jenny sighed. "No. I didn't mean that. No, listen... You know I can't do that."

She paused for a moment, her face hardened in anger. "Don't you even dare call me tomorrow." She hung up, flipping her cell phone shut louder than normal.

Dean pushed Sam onto the bed, frowning as he heard the sound of Jenny arguing with whom he assumed to be Davis on her cell phone. She sounded pretty pissed off, making Dean wonder what Davis had done to make her so angry. This Davis guy was looking more and more suspicious the more he heard about him. He handed Sam the ibuprofen and water from the table next to the bed, Sam swallowing them without complaint. Neither talked as Dean listened in on Jenny's conversation.

He turned round once Sam was settled, looking at Jenny inquisitively. "Everything alright?" Dean asked as she hung up.

Jenny swallowed. "Fine." she muttered, sitting down slowly. "Sometimes Davis just... well, for one he doesn't get it, and he..." she sighed, shaking her head. "It doesn't matter."

She looked over at Sam, her immediate reaction was to change the subject, like so many times she'd had to. "How're you doing Sam?"

The nausea had passed, mostly, though he still had that horrible taste in his mouth, and his head was aching from the effort of staying awake. He pressed the side of his face into the pillow, bringing the itchy motel blankets up to his chin.

"I've been better," Sam murmured, his voice scratchy as he spoke. His eyes were half open, staring vacantly at the wall at the other side of the room. Dean was still standing by his bedside, and the pain in his head had reduced to a dull ache as the pain medication took effect. He really wanted to sleep.

Dean looked down at Sam sympathetically. He really didn't look good, though there wasn't really anything that he could do for him, besides letting him sleep. He looked back over to Jenny, now realising that her question to Sam was there to change the subject, though it would probably be inappropriate to bring it back up.

"So," Dean started, pursing his lips as he thought over what to talk about, seeing as the topic of Davis was out of bounds, "How long are you gonna be in town for?"

"Same as usual. Stay for the case, then back to Iowa. Wait for another case." She stated simply. "What about you? Still just keep driving like before? Staying in motels."

She smiled. "Davis hates motels, so he won't come with me. Wish he did though. It gets hard when you're FBI and you're supposed to have a partner. Gotta do it the hard way." Well, that was one of the reasons she hated being alone anyway. "What about you?"

"Still the same as ever," Dean said, just the way he liked it. The idea of doing anything other then driving - namely flying, getting the plane - was not an idea that appealed to him in the slightest. He had always hated flying, just the thought that it could crash at any given moment was enough to put him off for life. The 9/11 incident several years ago had deepened his beliefs that flying was always the wrong way to travel.

He raised his eyebrows. Davis didn't like motels? Motels were pretty much an integral part of hunter life, or at least they always had been to his family. He had spent the majority of his life in them. Twenty two out of twenty six years and counting. It didn't seem fair for this guy to back out of hunting with his cousin just because he disliked motels.

"So does he usually let you hunt by yourself?" Dean asked, his features creasing into a frown.

"Let me hunt by myself?" Jenny laughed, exasperated. "I was hunting for about four years before I met Davis at some abandoned warehouse. He hates hunting. Pain in the ass, but he's done so much for me so I gotta respect what he's doing. He just wants a normal life... you know? But fate doesn't really want that life for him... so it killed his sister. He's not one of those guys that will just go after for revenge or justice... He just wants to stay out of everything." She started leaning on the table again. "I think he's used me to fill the gap. Hunting with his sister again, like old times. But he's not really there. He does the research, and he's my best friend. It's never going to be anything more than that. That's why I know I can rely on him. Because if he thinks of me as his sister, then it's gotta be real."

"You were hunting by yourself when you were what? Fourteen?" Dean frowned, shaking his head. Surely that was way to young an age to hunt on your own. He hadn't done his first hunt alone till her was 16, and even then his Dad and Sammy were just a phone call away, "you should have stayed with us."

As much as it made him uneasy, it was fair enough that Jenny was hunting by herself on her own, now that she was older. He had been going off on his own pretty much since Sam went off to college, sometimes going weeks, or months till seeing his dad face to face again. But still, this Davis guy could go with her, should really, even if he did not really enjoy the whole hunter life style.

Ugh, Jenny really hadn't wanted this to come up. She knew it would, though. Ever since she'd seen Dean outside her room she knew that this would come up. Since she hugged him she dreaded the moment that it would come up. And now it was here, it sucked. "I wanted to." She said numbly. "I couldn't."

She didn't want him to blame Davis for not coming with her. Davis was hurting, he was always hurting. And she couldn't complain to him, she couldn't moan at him at all, because if she did she would be even worse than now. She would be completely alone. She wouldn't have anyone to phone, anyone to go through the ritual with her that she had to go through every 72 hours. She needed Davis to keep her sane, because otherwise she would become the exact opposite, unless she found other hunters, which would no way accept her for who she was. "You know I've always been okay on my own anyway, Dean." She tried to keep the conversation calm. Arguing wasn't the way to go, especially since she'd just had another fight with Davis.

She was right, she had always been alright on her own. She'd survived up until she had met them, anyway, and after so it seemed. Whether that was down to luck or not, Dean was not sure. Either way, whether she was okay on her own or not, hunting alone at such a young age was wrong, and really she should have stayed with them.

"You could of," Dean said, shaking his head, he kept his voice down, not wanting to prevent Sam from getting to sleep, "you should have stayed with us, even if you could have handled it. We're your family." John Winchester had always instilled in him and Sam the importance of family, a value that had never left him. Jenny was their cousin after all, and there was no reason that he could see to stop her staying with them in the past.

"Yeah well." she looked away. "My mom didn't kill herself, she dies. Something comes after me, and by short luck the family I'm with has silver knives in the kitchen. And other stuff too. Everyone who ever knew my aunt - your mom - a load of them are dead now. I didn't want to weight down any of you guys with my crap. It's so much easier when you don't have to watch anyone's back but your own. Sept' maybe sometimes it gets bad, but here I am."

She looked back at Dean, apologetically. "Sorry, I'm still weighing you down with my crap."

Dean looked down at the floor at the mention of his mother, a brief flare of grief going through him. He pushed it away instantly, focusing on the rest of what Jenny was saying. She was talking about the deaths surrounding her aunt, but it all seemed pretty irrelevant to Dean.

He looked back up at her, a soft look in his eyes. "Our mom," he began, inhaling quietly before continuing, "She died way before any of that stuff happened to you. We already had all that shit before that happened. You staying with us, it wouldn't have made it any worse."

Jenny took a calming breath, trying not to let her temper get out. She had to keep a firmer hold on her tongue if she wanted to make it back to Iowa alive. And Davis. She wanted Davis to live on as well.

"You don't know about half the shit that's followed me around, Dean, so don't talk about it like you know everything." She wanted to yell it at him. She just wanted to tell him everything right there and then. But no, she couldn't. Maybe if she ended it with an argument, she'd never have to bother Dean or Sam with anything else again, and they would at least be safe from her.

Dean pressed his lips together, watching with a frown as Jenny spoke. It looked like the topic of their conversation was starting to get to her, and she was starting to look a little angry. Luckily she managed to keep her voice down, arguing loudly in here while Sam was trying to sleep off his illness would have been a bad idea after all.

Her words puzzled him. What could be so bad following her that she got so defensive about it. Dean was aware that her life had been pretty crap before she met them, what with the deaths of her mother and foster family, but really he had no idea about the period after. He still did not understand how any of that would have been enough to drive her away from them.

"It can't be any worse then what we've had," Dean said back to her, his own voice a little irritated but well below the normal speaking volume, "Even if whatever it is is as bad as you say, you'd still have been better off with us, we would have looked after you."

Jenny scoffed. "Yeah. Like I need someone to look after me." she muttered darkly. No one had looked after her since her mother. Well, not properly. Maybe the foster family had given her somewhere she could sleep - a roof with food and they'd offered her comfort that she hadn't taken any of, but it was more like a shelter there than anything. She could never call anything else home, never call anyone else her family. And then they'd left her, too. Just one night they'd been downstairs. She walks in just as their throats are slit by something that looked like her, but wasn't her. She saw herself kill that couple that were only just starting out their lives together. Just like she'd seen her mom hanging from the ceiling fan by that rope Jenny was four. Her fragile skin frail blue, and her lips slightly parted as she'd tried to get the air she so desperately wanted, but was out of her reach. She remembered how she'd hidden in one of the kitchen cupboards for hours until the authorities found her in the morning when the neighbour had seen the silhouette of her mother through the curtains. Apparently John had come to see her, but she hardly remembered anything that followed that night for months, only reliving it over and over.

"I've done just fine by myself." She folded her arms leaning back on the chair. "See?"

Jenny's mood seemed to be worsening the more they talked, and she seemed to genuinely believe that she was fine without them. Maybe she was, maybe not. He didn't know, though he was sure that she would have been happier with them. Hunting alone got lonely, he knew that. He may not have admitted it, but he preferred hunting with Sam. It really made a difference, watching each others backs, looking out for each other.

"You've done good," he agreed, as he tried to pacify Jenny's bad mood that had arisen from what he had said. He slowly sunk back down, sitting at the edge of Sam's bed, "I'm just saying you didn't have to go."

"Maybe not." She agreed. "Maybe it was just the rebel inside me making me want to prove that I could hunt by myself, and I was just looking for a reason to justify it." She shook her head. "It's just all hazy to me." Which was probably why she couldn't remember Sam. Oh twelve year old Sam must have been cute. She hadn't seen much of her cousins growing up. Maybe she had a few times that she didn't remember. Like when auntie Mary was still alive. Dean probably remembered. She was just bad with remembering when she was a kid. All the hunting and information about creatures and demons swam through her head now. Memories seemed like something she couldn't afford to cling onto when all they ever would be were memories. Not useful, except when she needed to comfort herself, now.

So Dean, Sam and uncle John had stuck together all that time when she was moving around to a foster home, all over America pretending to be eighteen, and then finally meeting Davis when she actually was eighteen, and then hunting ever since. Just long, cold, hard, hunting. "When did you start hunting on your own? Or has it always been with Sam and uncle John?"

Dean rubbed the back of his neck, thinking back to when he had first started hunting alone. "First time was when I was seventeen," he said after a while, watching the space on the wall next to Jenny, his mind flitting back to that salt and burn gig that his dad had gave him to do back in Wyoming. "Though I didn't really do much on my own properly till Sammy went to college," he frowned, tapping at the bed with his fingers, "I still hunted with dad though, but just started doing my own thing more." They had always kept in contact while Dean was away though.

"What about you?" Dean asked, looking back to Jenny, "You been hunting on your own since you left us?" He really hoped not. She didn't have the same safety net that he had when hunting.