24. Hansel and...Nope, just Hansel
We've parked the Impala at the witch's house. The three of us are armed with flashlights.
"Looks like someone's home," I say, noticing a light on inside the house.
"Okay. Let's go in through the basement," says Dean. "Get Tina out first."
It turns out Dean isn't the only one who's been reverted back to their teenage self. Apparently, I was partially right. Dean had been talking to a woman at the bar. I'm sure neither of them expected their night to go like this.
Dean leads Sam and me around the house. Along the way, we pass a group of yarrow flowers growing on one side of the house.
"Still open," says Dean once we find the window that he'd previously escaped through. He goes to it, lifting it. "Tina?" We get no answer. "All right, let's go."
"Dean," says Sam, gesturing to the window, "I'm way too big to fit into that."
"Look, I may be slim, but I'm not teenage-boy slim," I say.
Dean smirks at us both. "First time you ever had to say that, huh?"
I roll my eyes. "Big talk coming from the dude wearing underoos."
"Okay, good one. Here, why don't you two go around back for another way in?"
Nodding, Sam and I branch off while Dean slips in through the window. Sam and I find our way in after getting through one of the other windows in the house. I wrinkle my nose, getting my feelers out. Doesn't seem like anyone's up here with us.
"Keep an eye out," I mutter.
"Always do."
We make our way to the basement, which feels musty and damp. Up ahead, I hear the scuffle before Sam does. I brandish a baton, running ahead, to see a figure holding my older brother in a chokehold. I sneak up behind him, whacking him over the head. He releases Dean, falling to the floor. Dean quickly gets up, being with Sam and me.
"Don't!" I say, as my brothers have guns brandished at the figure.
"Where's the girl?" asks Dean.
"Upstairs," says the figure. "Alive."
"What did you do to us?"
"Nothing. I'm no witch. I just work for one."
I scoff. "Crappy gig. Where is he?"
"She. And she is the worst person in the world."
"Is that so?"
"I've been with her for centuries. Things I've seen her do. My sister and I, she made us hurt people, kill people, and when we tried to escape, she caught us and tortured me." He gestures to his mutilated face. "And then she made me eat poor Gretel's heart."
"Wait," says Sam. "Witch? Gretel?" He scoffs. "What, are you saying that you're...?"
"Hansel. My name is Hansel."
"Hansel? And—and...and Gretel. Hansel and Gretel, like the—like the fable. Like Brothers Grimm?"
Hansel stands up. "It wasn't a fable. It was based on a true story. They just gave it a happy ending."
"Oh, okay," says Dean. "We get to barbecue a celebrity. Cool."
"You can't kill her. You're just men, and a woman."
"We're more than that," says Sam, who picks up a Molotov cocktail. "We're hunters."
"Ah. Then let me help."
"Help?" I repeat. "What's in it for you?"
"Because if you're going to fry that candy-coated bitch, I want in."
"You want to help? Tell us how to turn him back."
"Jo, it can wait," says Dean.
"Tell us how!"
"The hex bag that I'm wearing," Hansel explains. "It will reverse the spell. Squeeze it, and you'll return to your proper age. Look, we waste the witch, I give you the cure. Deal?"
I lick my lips in apprehension. We really don't have much time to debate whether or not to trust Hansel, so we give ourselves no choice but to.
"But just so you know," I warn Hansel, "you make a wrong move, I'll take great pride in putting you down."
Hansel doesn't say anything in response to that, so I don't know how much I scared him. He'll be scared if he tries to pull one over on us. He'll wish he'd never done so.
"Follow me," Hansel says. My brothers and I keep our distance as we follow Hansel out of the basement, towards the kitchen. My nose scrunches at the smell of something. I can hear a voice too, but not the words that are being spoken.
Hansel opens the door to the kitchen first.
"Hansel," the squeaky voice says. The three of us enter behind Hansel. This kitchen screams witch: from the tied up girl, to the witch herself, to the concoction she's making up.
"And pals," says Dean. I keep a grip on my baton while Sam and Dean have their guns on the witch.
"Well, our lost lamb. I thought we'd have to go looking for you. Maybe even abandon our home sweet home here. I never dreamt you'd be stupid enough to come back on your own." The witch chuckles. "Hansel, take care of them."
Hansel doesn't do anything.
"Yeah, he's not exactly your biggest fan," says Dean, who has the Molotov cocktail in his hand.
"Maybe you shouldn't have made him chow down on his sister," I say.
"I never made Hansel do anything," says the witch.
"Son of a bitch!" I shout as Sam gets assaulted by Hansel. Hansel knocks Sam's gun out of his hand, pointing it right at Dean and me.
"They're hunters!" Hansel hisses.
"Oh, you're a dead man," I growl, flashing my demon eyes.
"Rumpatur!" the witch says. I look. Dean's Molotov is useless here.
"You hurt me, I shoot them. You choose which gets the first bullet," Hansel says. He gestures with the gun. "On the floor."
Reluctantly, I comply, putting myself down on the ground. It's not that I'm afraid of Hansel doing damage to me; I don't want Sam or Dean shot because of me.
"Now...Who's hungry?" says the witch, with an evil grin on her face. She walks up to Dean, feeling his arm. "Ooh. Oh, scrawny. We'll have to fatten you up."
"Don't freakin' touch me," says Dean, who pulls his arm out of the witch's grasp.
"Oh, I'm going to do more than that." She grabs Dean's jaw. "Children. Oh, they're so sweet and innocent." I look at the witch in disgust as she licks her fingers. "And delicious. You'll see. When I cook him up, I'll give you some, hmm?"
"If you like kids so much, why not go after kids?" asks Sam. "What's with this whole fountain of youth?"
The witch begins to unravel garlic. "Hmm, in the olden days, if a child went missing—ah, the young died all the time. Now, though, with all your amber alerts and your milk cartons, a person fillets one rugrat, and people get so angry."
"Yeah, I blame Obama," says Dean.
"So, I improvise. I take adults no one will miss and give them back their youth."
"And then Kentucky-fry 'em."
"It's the only way I can eat in peace."
"So, uh, is it worth it? I mean, word on the street is people kind of taste like chicken."
"A bit. European children are more, uh, free range, gamier. American though—ooh—they are heaven." The witch laughs. "Fattier. The meat, so finely marbles, it's almost buttery. I just can't get enough."
"Mmm. Awesome."
"No! I am in awe. This is my first visit to your country. And I have to say God Bless the U.S.A."
"Oh, so, you're a tourist," I say.
"No. It's business, not pleasure. An old friend is causing trouble, and the Grand Coven asked me to take care of her. Poor, stupid Rowena."
"Wait, Rowena? She got red hair, a thing for ritzy hotels?"
The witch drops the vegetable she's cooking with. "How do you know that?"
Sam suddenly springs up, punching Hansel in the face. I leap up, going for the witch. Sam aids me while Dean wrestles with Hansel. I jump back as the witch nearly slices into my body with a knife, but I quickly force it out of her hand. Sam and I go flying, me hitting the wall and him hitting the bookcase.
"Dean!" I shout, watching as Hansel repeatedly bashes my brother's head into the floor. I feel the sudden burst of heat as the witch throws open the oven. I cry out in pain, feeling something in my head stabbing my brain with a knife. It's not the witch's doing, it's my brain's. It's trying to poke through a memory of Hell. Not now.
"Now you'll burn!" the witch shouts.
Nearby, I see Dean get slammed into the refrigerator by Hansel. I can't do much, my brain is deciding to incapacitate me at the worst moment. Sam can't do much, he's too slow to get up.
"Turn him!" says the witch.
Hansel advances towards Sam, ready to touch the hexbag around his neck. But there's a problem with that, since it's gone.
"The hell?" Hansel hisses.
Yes! Dean's got a hold of the hex bag. A bright light fills the room, and my older brother is back to his old self. No more teenage problems. No more teenage body. No more teenage Dean Winchester.
I see the knife on the ground. I reach a hand out, and I watch in awe as the knife slides to me. Growling, ignoring the intense pain in my head, I rise up and stab Hansel from behind while Dean takes care of the witch.
"Told you I'd put you down," I hiss in Hansel's ear. I yank the knife out of him, and his body crumples to the door.
"No!" the witch screams. I'm panting, watching as Dean stuffs the witch into the oven, shutting her inside and letting her burn.
"Good to have you back, Dean," I pant. "Motherfu—" I have to lean against the wall, slide down it.
"Jo?"
I wave Dean away. "I-I'm good. Get Tina free."
I can feel the pain in my chest. Hear my screams of agony as though I'm back in Hell. I grab at my hair, wishing that tearing it out would help solve this issue. I see the red, hear the moans and groans of the tortured souls like me. I hear the rattling of the chains, and I feel like something is suffocating me from the inside.
"I got her," I hear someone say. "Jo, hey. Jo."
At the single touch, I react. I jump, growling, still holding the knife. I stop abruptly when I see it's Dean, who's got his hands out in caution, looking at me softly. It's not a demon version of any of my friends or family. By now, they would've shown their black eyes to me.
"Easy, Jo-Jo, you're safe," he says calmly. "Drop the knife, come on." My hand vibrates, but I toss the weapon to the ground anyway. "There you go."
"I-I'm sorry. It's just..." I close my eyes. "It's me. It's nothing the witch did."
"Come on."
"You sure you want me out there? Tina looked pretty spooked."
"She was spooked long before she saw your eyes."
At his gentle touch, I open my eyes. I notice the Mark of Cain is back. I sigh. "Damn it."
"All things come with a price."
"That was crazy," I hear Tina say as Dean and I are out of the house. She looks at me warily, as her teenage self. She's a pretty girl for a teenager. "Like psycho crazy. And you do this all the time?"
"All the freakin' time," says Dean.
"Not all the time," Sam corrects him.
"So...can you turn me back?" asks Tina.
"The hex bag went up in flames. I'm so sorry, Tina," says Dean.
"We may be able to reverse engineer the spell, though," Sam says, trying to give Tina some hope in all this.
"Or maybe you don't," she says, looking at her reflection in one of the windows of the house.
"Come again?"
"I got three ex-husbands, fifty grand in debt, and not much else. I was...kind of a crappy adult. Maybe I'll do better this time around. Get out of town, get a fresh start. This is my second chance. Everybody wants a second chance, right?"
"Sure you're gonna be all right?" Dean asks Tina.
"Like I told you, I always am."
"Can we at least give you a ride somewhere?" Sam offers. Tina thinks about it and nods.
"Give me the keys," Dean says to me. "Fun's over, Jo."
"It was fun while it lasted," I say dramatically, putting Baby's keys into my older brother's hand. "But she's always been yours anyway."
**Ah well, Teen!Dean ran his course. We shoulda just assumed he'd be a cutie teenager who likes Taylor Swift.**