poison

who: lullaby
where: the orphanage
when: mid day

Lullaby had decided last night that she was going to do this, even if she hadn't said anything to anyone. She definitely wasn't saying anything to Dean, because well...it was something she wasn't pushing. Not in the slightest, and she didn't even want it to be crossing his mind unless it was of his own volition. Therefore, when she got the idea into her head that she was going to go check and make sure his gun was still locked up at the orphanage, and that it was still in working order, she just didn't happen to tell him. Besides, after texting with Joshua today, she kind of needed to get out of the house for a little while, even if it was to a creepy abandoned building to check on a gun that had been used to kill a family member. Out was out.

She traveled there by mirror, something she thought she was getting better at. And since Billy had put a nice one in there for her, she came out right where she needed to be. She had with her a lantern, which she set down on the dusty floor as she moved the crate that hid the locked cabinet aside. She managed to jab a huge wooden spike into her hand that way, or that's what it felt like. Really it was a sliver that was of impressive size, and she pulled it out as best as she could and dropped it onto the floor. She was bleeding pretty well, unfortunately, and she rolled her eyes at herself. That was just fabulous. Turning towards the cabinet, she unlocked it, absently keeping her hand closed tight to try and stem the blood flow.

Thankfully, his gun was still in there, safe and sound. It looked to her like it hadn't been moved at all, which was another good thing, and she took it out, ejected the clip, and started to make sure it was exactly how it needed to be--in working order. She'd brought what she needed to clean it, and started on that, taking her time with it. Giving it good maintenance. If the time came sometime where he actually needed her to get it for him? She wanted to be sure that it worked. That nothing was the matter with it, that nothing was going to malfunction or backfire. One thing she noticed while she was doing it, though. It had a charge. A light one, soft, almost, and it barely read over the force of the orphanage itself, but as she was taking it apart and putting it back together properly cleaned? She felt it.

She wondered if maybe that was something Dean didn't need to know either, and decided she really pretty much hated with a firey passion the idea that she was leaving anything out with him. Maybe she ought to just stop that, and tell him. She'd dropped into the habit of holding back when they'd been in England. He'd been incredibly fragile, for good reason, and oh right, it was all her fault. It had been her father, it had been her stupid situation...no matter what he said, she was always going to feel responsible for that. He hadn't dealt with it well, and nothing made it okay. He'd learned to think past it, but it was always going to be there in the background. Deep, deep down she was still sometimes afraid he was going to wake up one day and realize that she'd ruined his life.

Lullaby wanted to keep him protected. And when they'd been over there, when he'd been as fragile as he had been, she'd needed to. She'd been in a place where she wasn't really allowed to open up to him like she always had been before, because he couldn't handle it, and it was his turn to have a screaming mental breakdown. Unfortunately, it looked like Dean had pulled out of the drowning darkness, but she hadn't dropped her idea about keeping her shadows to herself now.

The stupid part was she even knew what he'd say about it. She could hear him, his tones, how he'd look at her. How he'd be very much unsatisfied with that whole thing, and it wasn't how they worked and it wasn't fair, and they didn't do this. And he'd be right. Pretty much with all of that, and he'd be justifiably displeased with her that she was keeping anything from him. She sighed and sat back against the cabinet, smacking the clip back into place with a sound that echoed in the room around her, even if she didn't hear it. The other thing she hadn't heard, but noticed then, was the odd thing happening over by the crate. There were rats there, which was wholly unsurprising, considering her location.

The surprising bit was that a couple of them seemed to be dead. And, as she watched, she saw another one twitch and die, spasming as it did so. Frowning, she pushed herself up to her feet, gun held in her non-bleeding hand, and she walked the short distance over. Pushing one of the bodies aside, she saw that what they'd been huddled around was the splinter she'd pulled out of her hand, that had been soaked with her blood. She glanced over as she saw more rats coming in, to eat their own, and try to eat some of the wood, she guessed, or...she wasn't sure. After watching for a few minutes, feeling quietly but deeply disturbed, she decided to try something. Holding her hand out in front of herself, she spread it wide, reopening the wound there, and then she squeezed it, letting her blood drip down onto the rat one of the live ones was eating, right where it was feeding.

Before her eyes, it froze, twitched, and died. She stared, then slowly stepped backwards, until her back hit the cabinet, and then she slid down it. A horrible hollow kind of feeling spread through her, and she just stared. She watched as more rats came in, and some of them were fine, but some of them she was assuming found a tainted patch, and then they died. She didn't hear any of the sounds they were making, but could imagine them there. And she realized she could feel it. Little, tiny bursts of death energy put into the room.

Oh god oh god oh fuck went through her mind in a steady stream, and then she squeezed her eyes shut tight, and tried to breathe. Did this mean she was poison? Toxic, as it were? And pretty fucking instantly so? God god god, what did that mean? And god, how many times could that have gone--

God she felt sick. She felt absolutely, immediately sick. Her temperature shot through the roof and a wave of nausea hit her, not that she had anything in her stomach to get rid of. But god. When she'd died the last time, when Dean had been all cut to ribbons, and she'd been bleeding all over. The bathroom, where it had looked like a bad horror flick had been filmed in it, her blood, everywhere and what about BB? BB scratched her all the time because he was a kitten and that's what kittens did, and how many other times had that been...she needed to calm down. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she didn't know if Dean paid that much attention to the heart monitor she'd given him but if so, he'd probably be wondering what the fuck was up with her. And that was not a conversation to have over text. Not to mention if she told him she needed to talk to him, that things weren't fine, then he'd probably just leave school and come find her. He'd missed enough school already. The homework she'd already done for him had taken her a while, and while she was happy to do it, it just highlighted that there was a lot of shit he'd missed.

So, calming down. Right. Even if she did feel that sick falling sensation like she'd missed a stair. She kept herself breathing, in, out, trying to keep it even. Eventually it worked, but she still felt like the world had shifted beneath her feet. After making herself check the Beretta over one more time, and spending a good fifteen minutes obsessively wiping it down with her sleeve, trying to make sure any traces of blood that could have gotten onto it were gone, she put it back in it's holdster, and back into the cabinet. She locked it, then stood, looking at the rats. "I'm sorry." she said, reaching over to tug the crate back into place. There seemed to be a lot of dead ones. Maybe it just looked that way. And she was trying to tell herself that if she had to accidentally kill something to find this out, rats were less horrifying. They were cannibalizing each other, after all. Still. That didn't really serve to make her feel better. Mostly, she was back to feeling the same way she had a long time ago, and had slowly worked at getting over.

She felt like a disease.