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Dean would prefer to be not worried. He’s been arrested before. He’s even been to court before but only to plead to drunk and disorderly. He was released on bail and they were gone the next day. This...this is not the same and he’s looking at life in prison. Standing between him and that is his kale loving brother who wears glasses he doesn’t need (it’s all theater, Dean, gives gravitas).
They have him, with a dead body of a werewolf at his feet and a string of warrants across 19 states. He didn’t even try to come up with a story. The werewolf was ‘human’ again, at least the body was. So it looks to Dean like he’ll have a roommate soon in a 12’ by 6’ cell.
Honestly, Dean’s kind of ready. He’s been hunting alone for years and he’s been feeling like he’s past his expiration date, like no one can keep doing what he’s been doing, beat up, without back up, for this long. Every hunt now, he has a feeling, this is the last one. He dreads prison, but at least it will be over.
The courthouse was built in the seventies. Wall to wall carpeting, no wood, no history. It’s more like a big room in an office complex than anything else. It’s got all the architectural beauty of a big box store. It is Dean’s luck that his fate is about to be decided in something Crowley could have used back when he was torturing people with bureaucracy.
Sam has a witness that he’s calling. She’s ‘an expert on the paranormal’ and her name is Karen Wilson. She’s...a Karen. White, with hair touched up to be blond. She doesn’t look like an expert. She looks like an office manager or something and she’s nervous.
“You’re kidding,” Dean whispers to Sam. Sam is thrumming with energy. He reeks of high-powered lawyer although he told Dean he hasn’t been in court for a couple of years. He runs the law firm. He’s $500 an hour. No one can afford him. His hair is swept back the way it is in his videos. He is wearing a suit that Crowley would envy. Dean is wearing a fricking button down. Not a suit, Sam had insisted. A suit says powerful, apparently.
The prosecutor questions her first. She states her name. The prosecutor is a woman. Middle-aged, navy suit. She takes no guff and she hates Dean. Of course she hates Dean. Dean is a serial killer, a thief, and a grave desecrater. They always get so incensed about the grave thing and he always wants to say, really? That’s the big deal?
“Can you tell us what you do?” The prosecutor asked Karen.
“I’m a realtor. For Country Real.” Karen clutches the edge of the desk. “Oh, I wasn’t using the mic, do you want me to say that again?” She looks at Sam but it’s the judge who says, “You’re fine, Ms Wilson.”
Sam isn’t even writing on his legal pad. He doesn’t look surprised that she’s a realtor.
“You do real estate?” The prosecutor says. “And you, what, teach about the paranormal?”
“Um...no. I just know something about it,” Karen says. The prosecutor looks at Sam, and the the judge, and lastly the jury and she might as well just say, “Can you believe this?” Instead she says, “No further questions.”
Sam stands up and stalks across the court room. He steeples his fingers. Thinks for a moment. Dad never should have let him be in that play, Our Town.
Dean kinda hopes Sam visits him in prison, but kinda thinks his brother is a d-bag. Dean leans back and pretends he hasn’t a care in the world. A sketch artist is staring at him, drawing furiously. He thinks about winking at them but Sam would kill him.
“Thank you for doing this,” Sam says to Karen. She smiles weakly. “Members of the jury, you have all heard about Dean Winchester’s delusions. How his father brainwashed him into believing in the supernatural. Ms. Wilson, what is your area of expertise?”
“I don’t know that, I mean, um...” she hesitates. Sam nods at her, reassuring. “Um, vampires.”
“And what is your knowledge of vampires based on? Did you study mythology or folklore in college?” Dean realizes, hearing Sam’s easy, unruffled tone, that he is moving in for the kill. And a second later, what Sam is doing.
He is on his feet yelling to stop but no one hears him because Karen has just bared her teeth. Her second set. Her vampire teeth. And she doesn’t look like a Karen anymore.
The court room is chaos. Someone is screaming. The bailiffs are not sure what to do. Afterwards it will be remembered as the day everyone learned what was really out there. There will be upheaval. Governments will fall. Sam is looking at Dean and for a moment it is all there—the way Sam used to look at him. Like he was the most important thing in the world. Like he would burn the world down. For Dean.