Chapter Text
When Ben was little, Halloween meant dressing up as a superhero and eating so much candy that his stomach hurt. Now, at seventeen-and-change, he's skulking around the children's ward of St. Martin's Hospital in search of the shtriga that's been sucking the life out of its young victims for the past month. Dealing with actual monsters takes a serious shine off the holiday.
When he finally finds his quarry, Ben is startled to see the shtriga feeding on a girl who looks old enough to be in college. But there's no time to wonder who she is or what she did to attract its attention: wispy light has already begun to glow behind her wide blue eyes and it'll be gone if he waits too much longer. Ben shoots the shtriga in the head. It sputters, fizzing, and collapses at her feet.
The girl looks down at the shriveled body, then at Ben. "What kind of bullet was that?"
Ben's used to civilians who are a little more grateful and a lot more bewildered. "Do you even know what that was?"
"Shtriga," she says. "Albanian, feeds on the life-force of the young." She kneels down, rifles through the pile of dead shtriga without a hint of disgust, and pulls out a long knife. "And apparently it's not as vulnerable to consecrated iron as I was led to believe."
"You gotta get it while it's feeding," Ben says, sort of dazed. She's beautiful—lean and blonde with a stare that could cut steel—but something feels a little bit off about her, something he can't quite place. Having the life-force nearly drained out of her doesn't seem to be slowing her down much.
"I'll remember that." The girl moves toward the door, scooping up a worn blue backpack and slinging it over one shoulder.
"Wait," Ben says. "That's it? You're just leaving?"
She gives him a sharp look. "I didn't ask for your help."
Ben puts his gun back in his jacket. "I didn't ask for your permission."
There's a slight hesitation when she opens the door. "Someone probably heard that gunshot," she says, and leaves.
"You're welcome," Ben mutters. She's right, though; there's clearly a dead something in here with Ben, and salting and burning the fucker isn't exactly feasible in a hospital room. Quickly Ben shoves open the window and puts on a pair of latex gloves. Grimacing, he lifts the shtriga and—after checking for security cameras—dumps it to the ground four stories below.
It lands in the perfect spot, concealed behind some thick bushes, and nobody seems to have noticed the thud. He turns the gloves inside-out and pockets them, just in case, then saunters out of the room as though he has every right to be here.
"Excuse me!" a man's voice calls.
Ben counts to three before glancing over his shoulder. A hospital security guard is waving in his direction. Ben speeds up, hopefully not enough to be noticeable, and ducks down the first hallway he sees. In the reflection of an open door, he sees the guard chasing after him. Always act like you haven't done anything wrong, Dean's voice says in his head, but it's all Ben can do not to break into a sprint. A hand clamps down on his shoulder and spins Ben around, and then—
"There you are," says a different voice, so warm and relieved that for a minute Ben doesn't recognize the blonde girl he just saved. She tugs his arm, subtly pulling him away from the guard who's just caught up with them. "You have to come back, she's fully dilated and they say it'll be any minute now."
Ben's brain says duh? but he manages not to let that out of his mouth. If the girl's tightening fingers on his arm are any indication, she's not impressed by his acting ability.
"Miss, are you with him?" says the security guard, looking nonplussed.
"His sister is having a baby," she gushes at him, still shifting Ben out of grabbing reach. "They said it could start crowning any minute now and we need him to man the video camera!" She looks the guard over and tilts her head. "Was there some kind of problem?"
The guard looks faintly ill. "Uh, I guess not." He straightens up and looks at Ben. "Don't go getting into any trouble, now."
"Yes sir," Ben says, and tries to follow the girl toward the elevator in the manner of someone about to videotape a baby coming out of their sister's vagina.
As soon as the elevator doors close, the girl drops his arm and leans against the far wall, rubbing her temples. Ben can't find any trace of the cheery smile or perky voice; it's like someone flipped a switch.
"Thanks," he says as they descend.
"I don't like debts," she replies.
Ben offers her a smile. "Don't suppose that means you'll help me burn the body?"
Her blue eyes widen. "What?"
"You know, the shtriga?" Ben mimes a cowl. "It's dead, but I still gotta drag it out of those bushes and burn the thing before anyone finds it. Just thought it might be nice to have someone watching my six for a change." She doesn't answer; he didn't really expect her to. He sighs. "Forget it."
The elevator opens at the ground floor, where a nurse makes impatient gestures for them to clear the way. The girl walks ahead of Ben toward the exit, and he figures this is the last he'll ever see of her, but she stops just outside the door and turns back.
"Look. What's your name?"
Ben stuffs his hands in his pockets. The name on his ID says Stewart Kirk, but he doesn't think that would fly with her. "Ben."
"Ben." She crosses her arms and looks him dead in the eye. "What exactly do you want from me, Ben?"
How about your number? he does not say. Ben's not the most perceptive person, but even he can recognize a bad idea when it's standing in front of him and glaring. "Like I said, I'd appreciate some help with the cleanup. But I'm not gonna try and make you stay if you don't want to."
The girl seems—not placated, but more confused than suspicious now. "And if I help you get rid of the shtriga, then we're even?"
"Totally square," Ben assures her.
An ambulance pulls out of the lot behind her, and she watches it until it passes. Then she turns back to him. "Did you say you had to drag it out of the bushes?"
He waves toward the spot where he's pretty sure the shtriga fell. "After you left," Ben says, "I kind of—threw it out the window."
That startles a real laugh out of her, and though she subdues herself quickly, it was totally worth it. Ben grins at her. In response, she gives the tiniest of nods.
"So uh," Ben says, "do I get to know your name?"
She begins to walk away again, but this time she lets him catch up with her. "Claire," she says over her shoulder. "I'm Claire."
S Y N C H R O N I C I T Y
Between the two of them, they get the shtriga stuffed in a trash bag and into the back of Ben's truck without anyone the wiser. Ben drives to the outskirts of town with Claire in shotgun.
"It's actually better to do this kind of thing while it's light out," he explains. "People can see fire in the dark from a lot further away than you'd think. Good way to get the cops called on you."
"Lucky tonight is Halloween, then," says Claire, watching the sun set. "They'll have their hands full with the fake monsters."
In the overgrown lot behind an abandoned auto mechanic, Ben scrapes a patch of ground clear of weeds and arranges the pile of scrap wood that will serve as fuel. By the time he's finished, Claire has hauled the shtriga's body out to be burned.
"Do we deliver a eulogy?" she asks dryly.
"Just salt and lighter fluid," Ben says, liberally dousing the pile in both. He offers Claire his box of kitchen matches. "Want to do the honors?"
For a second it looks like she's about to say something. Instead, she takes the matches and sets the corpse ablaze with ruthless efficiency.
Ben watches Claire while Claire watches the fire. "Have you been doing this long?"
A shrug. "Finding that shtriga was an accident. But I've known about monsters for a long time."
"Yeah?" Ben fumbles for his wallet. "You ever heard of the Winchesters?" He hands her the picture he's been carrying around all these long months. "They're hunters, like us. Some of the best."
Claire takes the picture, silent. Ben scans for any hint of reaction.
"They went missing this past spring," he continues. The photo was taken longer ago than that, back before Ben hit his growth spurt; Sam and Dean tower over him with their arms around his shoulders. Ben's rifle didn't make it into the picture, but he knows exactly where he's holding it out of the frame, so proud of finally being able to hit every bottle on the fence. He clears his throat. "I'm trying to find out what happened. You seen them?"
Claire's fingers tighten on the photograph. Finally she says, "You know Sam and Dean Winchester?"
Ben's heart starts pounding. "Do you?"
For a long moment Claire doesn't say anything. It takes everything Ben has not to grab her and shake the answer out of her, but if he pushes too hard she might decide not to tell him anything. He doesn't know what she's searching his expression for, but at last she seems to find it.
"When I was eleven," she says, "a monster destroyed my family. The Winchesters showed up not long after."
"Where?" he asks immediately. "What kind of monster?"
Claire hesitates. "The kind of monster like nothing I've ever seen." She gives back the picture, hands balling by her sides. "I thought they would kill it then and there, but it got away. And I was just supposed to go back to my life, knowing that somewhere out there is this thing that—" Her voice cracks, and she bites her lip into silence.
"But you can't go back," Ben says quietly. "You find out monsters are real and then it's like every nightmare you ever had is following you around. Not much you can do except hunt them, try to make the world a safer place for the next kid."
Slowly, Claire meets his eyes and nods. "Is that what happened to you?" she asks. "Is that why you know the Winchesters?"
Ben gives a tight smile. "Changelings. I was eight." He stares into the shtriga's smoldering embers and for a minute he's watching the nest-mother go up in flames all over again. "Dean was—well, it's kind of complicated, but he's saved my life three times over at least. Taught me everything I know about hunting, too." His fingers tighten on the photograph. "At the very least I owe it to find out what happened to him."
There's not enough left to call this a pyre anymore, just some ashes and a few scraps of cloth. Behind them the sun has long finished setting. Claire shakes her hair back, tucking one gold strand behind her ear, and Ben thinks that's it, we're done, she's gone.
"Hey, can I give you a ride or something?" he asks. "Back to wherever you're staying?" He knows better than to ask her for anything more, but at least he can leave her someplace safe. At least he can know he saved this one person.
Her mouth twitches. "Haven't decided where that is yet."
Ben looks at the dark sky, then back at Claire. "Are you not—don't you have someplace to go?"
Another shrug. He thinks about the backpack she's been carrying around, straps worn down, sides stuffed a little too full, and a lifetime of Braeden hospitality lessons come bubbling to the surface.
"You can stay in my hotel room," he says. "Not like—I don't mean, not like that, but tonight's already paid for and the front desk guy definitely doesn't give a shit. I'm just saying, if you need someplace to crash, there's a spare bed. That's all."
"I don't need charity," Claire says.
Ben crosses his arms. "But I bet even you need to sleep sometimes." It's stupid, treating her like—like Katie, like someone who'll have his back, when he just met her a few hours ago and the only thing he knows about her is that she hunts monsters too. But she knows Sam and Dean. "It's just one night."
He expects more argument. What he gets is a sharp nod. "All right," she says. "One night."
Ben starts towards the truck, and she follows. "You, uh, had dinner yet?" he asks.
"No," Claire says forcefully, turning down the very idea rather than answering the question.
"Come on," Ben wheedles. "I saw this pancake joint over by the exit ramp, and hunting always makes me crave carbs—"
"I don't like pancakes." She looks like she'd be more than happy to fight him about it, in what he's already thinking of as her default mode.
"Or we could go for burgers," Ben hastily amends, holding up his hands in surrender. "I'm cool with whatever."
"Go with driving," Claire says, and gets in the truck.