Hit List

Chapter II: Bloody Hands

He cleared his throat a bit and prepared to speak once it became obvious that Dean wasn't going to.

"So as you guys all know, Ellie is missing... And she isn't exactly herself, either. From what we can tell, her soul is completely gone and is contained in the amulet, which we're assuming would need to be broken to get it back out. Only issue is that no one can get anywhere close to breaking it without her seeing them first... it's like she's got a sixth sense that she can see people with. And so far it seems like nobody can hurt her, either. She's got practically limitless power, so... we don't really know how to handle this. We tried sending in a spy who successfully infiltrated the group, but the last we heard from him, he was trying to see if he could break the amulet, and we haven't heard from him since which means...."

"He's dead." Dean finished Sam's sentence bluntly. "She's killed over sixty people. Most were douchebags, criminals. So I don't exactly blame her, but... the more people she kills, the harder time she's going to have coming back from all this."

Garth raised up a skinny arm, like a student asking a question, and Dean gave a quiet sigh.

"Garth?"

"Where's Castiel?"

Sam opened his mouth to speak, but Dean interrupted his breath.

"Don't know."

Dean didn't want to go into detail about how he had sent Cas away nearly two months ago, and hadn't heard from him since. Discussing it only added to his feelings of guilt, which he already had enough of. A few seconds later, Donna also raised her hand.

"You... don't have to raise your hand." Sam gave a wry laugh in acknowledgement. She flashed a wide smile with both rows of teeth and asked her question.

"So you were soulless before, weren'tcha Sam?"

Sam nodded in response.

"And if I remember the story right, you didn't kill nobody, didya?"

"Not really."

"Well if you didn't kill nobody, then why is Ellie?"

Sam gave a long sigh before answering. He already felt drained.

"Soullessness is a lack of moral compass... but it's not a lack of personality."

Dean quickly glanced over to Sam, almost surprised by the response, like he hadn't really considered it before. He had just kind of assumed this whole time that her murderous tendencies were a consequence of the soullessness, but Sam was right. When he was soulless, he was nothing like this, which forced Dean to acknowledge something that he really, really didn't want to consider: perhaps this part of her was in there all along.

"If I may add something real quick," Karter contributed, scooting her chair in a little closer to the table. "Ellie has always been kind of like this. I mean, she'd never kill anyone, but she was always pissed off whenever she saw anything she knew was wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if the thought of killing them crossed her mind before. Perhaps her moral compass was the only thing stopping her acting on it. I mean as of now, those are the only people she seems to be targeting."

"You don't really have an anger like that, Sam," Jody added on gently. "If you were as pissed as she is, maybe you would've killed people too."

"You guys haven't been friends with sleep lately, have you?" Claire interjected, completely shifting topic. Sam gave a forced chuckle.

"No, not really, it's.... It's kinda hard when your friend is a serial killer."

"She's not a serial killer, she's not HER," Dean quickly interrupted, shooting Sam a sideways. He cleared his throat, mentally apologizing for snapping at him but too prideful to admit it out loud.