Be ready boys, for hell is here.

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

Dean had stepped in to watch. Only for a moment, but it was enough to reach the depths where he had buried it all. And bring it to light. Just for a moment.

A moment enough to make him run outside, and bend over, puking up the remains of the slop from earlier. A unsteady hand briefly rose up to wipe the sick away from his lips as he stood up again. He didn't realize how much he was shaking, or how as he watched, he remembered Alastair's careful instructions. He didn't want to think how the demon would have approved, and felt it was an excellent demonstration.

And he really didn't want to think how he could have *improved* on it.

He stumbled his way along to the hangar, and fumbled with opening the car door to the Impala.

"Honey, I'm home," he gave a shaky half crazed laugh as his hand touched the familiar seats. He curled into the back, his knife and gun ready by him like a child's preferred teddy bear. He stayed like that through the night.

Comments

[on_errantry]

A small black cat crept into the house, ears canted out to the side. Her tail, normally held high, drug the ground. It felt like a large hairball had lodged itself in her throat, and refused to come up no matter how she hacked at it.

Wordlessly, she jumped up next to Dean and curled in a tight ball up against his chest. She had trusted Stacy. She had been happy when Arhu was awoken from the pods. Now... now she almost wished he had stayed asleep. Had he even been there to witness? She didn't know.

Rhiow pressed her ears flat against her skull and pulled her paws over her nose like it would block out the universe.

he's actually in the Hangar and in the car, but it's ok.

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

Dean almost startled when he saw the dark furry streak jump up on him, but he then set his weapons a little to the side as to not hurt her. His hand reached out to gently stroke her fur, and curled close to her silently. He was still shaking a little as he held her, but the offer of comfort was appreciated as he tried to block out the images of hell from his mind.

Reading comprehension fail

[on_errantry]

The comfort was mutual. Rhiow hadn't wanted to see a single second of that, and yet she had stayed for the whole thing... it was better to know than to linger on in ignorance.

"...How could she?" was what finally tumbled from her mouth when she mustered the power to speak. Stacy had been a solid presence - a solid, comforting presence - since she had arrived on the ship. One with a vested interest in protecting the crew, or so it had seemed.

*snugs*

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

He shook his head, "I don't know. She's one sick screwed up ship."

He was trying not to think about what happened, but he was barely paying attention as his green eyes gazed about dully. Hard to keep those thoughts in the here and now.

It's been a long month

[on_errantry]

Rhiow didn't want to leave it at that, but it didn't look like Dean was very eager to discuss it further.

Sometimes she wished that she didn't have so much personal knowledge imbued on her when she spoke a name. She knew that Dean had been through horror - she herself had seen some terrifying things in the course of her wizardry, but what he had seen... it didn't compare. "Are you all right?" she asked.

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

He was still petting her, but Dean was too quiet and unfocused to pay attention to her. So no, he really wasn't all right now. Not when his memories were dragging him back into the Pit again. He could even smell the familiar mix of blood and sulfur from there again.

[on_errantry]

It was kind of obvious that he had drifted off into his own little world of memory - and not good memories, from the smell of him.

Rhiow leaned forward and butted her head against his chin, getting up into his face where he really couldn't ignore her. She might act like a dignified not-quite-housecat most of the time, but she had many long years of experience in breaking ehhif out of their silly little funks. "We should be planning, not moping. I for one would like to know who originally programmed the Warden section of the ship's personality. If it was the Daligig... well, we have a problem."

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

Dean twitched at even the slight contact, almost thinking it was a brush of a knife's edge. He started to shrink back into the seat, briefly terrified. He gulped and blinked as he finally saw what his eyes were trying to show him.

"What? What?" With his free hand, he wiped it over his face, and sagged a little.

[on_errantry]

Rhiow sighed internally, her tail switching back and forth. Ehhif were different than People, she reminded herself firmly. They reacted to trauma differently. She might be able to expect a Person to push the reaction down and get back to business, but obviously ehhif were vastly different and needed more delicate care.

Poor things. Good thing they had People around, in any case. Rhiow leaned up, purring soothingly in the back of her throat - and began grooming Dean's ear like she would an unsettled kitten. "It's all right," she said. "You're not there anymore. You're relatively safe here, as long as you curb your impulse to punch people in the face."

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

Ok the licking was a little disconcerting, but the purring offset it. At very least his heart wasn't galloping in his chest now, and slowly reaching a steady beat again. He drew in a few long breaths, inhale and exhale.

It didn't help the extent and prolonged length of trauma Dean had experienced, and this was on top of previous exposure to other traumas before that. Couple that with that yes, he usually did bury his emotions and focused on the job on hand for too many years, and it lead to a not entirely stable mental state.

"Shit... Sorry Rhiow, it's good, I'm fine. Don't have to treat my ear like it's an ice cream cone, thanks."

[on_errantry]

Rhiow thought for a second about giving him a little nip and reminding him that he had powerful friends on the ship who wouldn't stand for any nonsense like that happening to him. Then she simply sat back on her haunches and began to groom herself, washing the bad taste of what she had seen out of her fur. Her ears went flat at the thought of it.

"I wanted to tell you," she said, changing the subject, "one of the People on my team woke in the last podpop. I'm not sure if you've seen him but I told him where you are, and that the house was a safe place for him to come. He's a wizard, like me, but he's young in his wizardry." Young otherwise, too.

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

He was still shaken from the memories of hell, but grateful for the subject change. If she didn't mind he was going to continuing petting though.

:e then asked, "Yeah, hey he's your family, he's welcome to visit. What's his name?"

[on_errantry]

Rhiow put her whiskers forward, but refrained from saying that family was probably the wrong word for it. Sam and Dean had odd notions when it came to pride, she knew.

"Arhu," she said. "He's younger than I am, not far out of kittenhood - so he's got a smart mouth I'm still trying to break him of. He also has the Eye, which can make him sound a little strange sometimes when he mixes up his tenses."

Rhiow was used to working with someone for whom 'now,' 'then,' and 'to come' were interchanged often and with no seeming regularity. To Dean it might come as a little bit of a surprise.

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

"The Eye? Ok, so how does that one work? And Arhu, ok we'll keep a lookout for him."

[on_errantry]

"He's a seer," Rhiow explained. "Although that doesn't very accurately describe how the Eye works. He experiences multiple times simultaneously - much like Stacy, on a much smaller scale."

It was nice to be able to definitely explain to herself why her wizardry had not been functioning quite correctly while giving every appearance of doing so. She felt sorry for Arhu, though - while the problems with her wizardry had been more or less solved, the problems with his were only beginning.

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

"Great, sounds damn confusing, poor kid." He shook his head a little. "Gotta be even worse than Sam's vision moments he used to get."

[on_errantry]

Rhiow nodded - a gesture that she'd picked up from her time on the ship. Working with ehhif who had no idea how to interpret feline body language was... challenging, at times.

"He also has a little bit of a mouth on him, but I'm pretty sure you can handle whatever comments he can dish out. He has some nasty preconceived notions about anyone who isn't feline, and I'm hoping he'll get over them eventually. He had a rough kittenhood."

Making apologies in advance for Arhu wasn't exactly a new thing for her. She had to do it practically whenever she took him anywhere.

[notadamnangel.livejournal.com]

"No worse than how Sam was as a bratty teenager," Dean remarked, and scratched her cheeks a little with his fingers. "Kid will learn better."

[on_errantry]

"I hope so," Rhiow said dryly. "Or he's going to insult some huge tom and have his ears pulled out through his throat before he has the chance."

The People were much less forgiving about the brattiness of teenagers than humans.