"I know how my story ends.

It's at the edge of a blade or the barrel of a gun."

Dean

The sun had set long ago and nothing had happened. No visitors, no screams, no unusual occurrences. They should have acted immediately. This waiting got on his nerves. Dean rocked his foot on the floor plate of his baby. As much as he loved to be inside her... No, wait a minute, that sounded kind of wrong. But the old lady would probably be his only companion in the long run, the only constant. With the exception of his family, of course. Sam. And then there was Castiel, but he didn't count. Cas was just... Cas. He was a category of his own. He hadn't fit into any of Dean's previous patterns. Not just any angel, not just any useful comrade in arms, not just any friend. So he was just Cas.

"Dean, something's going on!" Sam poked him in the side. The older one had been so deep in thought that he hadn't even noticed how an obscure figure had sneaked out of the unlit house. That's what came out of him thinking, when he had too much time. He became distracted and inattentive.

"Seriously? By foot?" His enthusiasm was kept within limits.

"Did you see a car with her?", Sam asked rhetorically, "Well, I didn't."

Quietly they got out of the vehicle and left it there. The night smelled of wilted dead leaves and wet streets. In the distance, a dog barked. Dark clouds had settled over the firmament and swallowed even the last meager light of the stars. Fog had drawn in from the sea and made their clothes uncomfortably clammy. The swaths wrapped themselves in undulating tatters around the branches of the trees, which stretched into the darkness as if to welcome it.

The two men turned a street corner and followed the figure unnoticed through somber alleys to a church. Steeply its bell tower protruded into the night sky, as if it was holding out its hand, forever untouched, turned to stone, petrified and motionless. Lonely in its unheard call for help.

Dean unlocked his pistol and stepped through the heavy wing gate, followed by his brother. The hinges squealed. It took a while for their eyes to get used to the darkness inside. One could hardly see the hand in front of ones eyes, but illumination of any kind would have been too risky, the danger of being discovered too great. Their steps echoed in the aisle. It was cold. Somewhere a door slammed with a loud bang. The two hunters flinched and turned in the direction from which the sound had come, their guns at the ready, their bodies tense, muscles ready to fight. There, a faint light. They peered through the gap of a door that was ajar to the cantor's hall. In the glow of a few candles, Dorothy Good was drawing runes on the wood paneling of a wall.

Triumphantly Dean threw his brother a look. "You see, I was right", it seemed to be saying. A joyless grin graced his lips. Sam just shook his head acquiescently in resignation. In a sequence of hand signals that arguably only brothers could understand among themselves, they discussed their further course of action.

The old floorboards creaked under their heavy shoes as the hunters cautiously pushed open the door to the hall and entered at gunpoint. They were quick, effective, and quiet. Years of training since early childhood. Vigilantly they looked around the room, scanning every dark corner with their eyes. Where was the woman? She had just been right there in front of the septum. Too late the Winchesters realized that the witch must have noticed them from the start. They were thrown against a wall. Dean heard bones break. He hoped whatever it was belonged to him and not to his brother.

"You want to stop me?! I thought you hunters are hunting monsters", they heard her call out. Real incomprehension vibrated in her voice. "They made me testify against my own mother! They sold me for $ 50. But first I had to watch my little sister starve to death. She was a baby!"

The young woman struggled with herself. It wasn't difficult to recognize that it must feel to her like all of this happened days ago, not centuries ago. Grief, fear and anger were reflected in her gaze. So much anger.

"You couldn't have done anything, you were still a child yourself, it wasn't your fault", Sam tried to appease her with his hands raised. His pistol had slid across the floor and was located now a few paces away. And so he was defenseless in the face of danger. Still a little dazed, he had to admit that she had used their own surprise effect against them.

"Then they killed my mother! She didn't harm anyone! But they executed her!", she talked herself more and more into a rage. The dark hair stood out from her head in a tangle and her dress fluttered in the current of air.

"Those hypocrites were just trying to cover up the fact that one of them fucked her! So I'm going to show everyone how succumbed to the vice of lechery they really are. I want to watch them die a wretched death by their own rules."

"The people who did this to you have long been dead." Sam didn't give up. "And I'm sure they have already received their punishment, Dorcas."

Her lineaments darkened. "That's not my name!", she spat, "My name is Dorothy! They didn't even have the decency to use my real name! No, they came up with a new one to show how worthless I am!"

The light from the candles flickered erratically and cast leaping shadows on the walls. A dangerous tension made the air whir around them. One wrong step and that's it, that was clear to the hunters. In this condition she was unpredictable.

"You were only five years old, weren't you?" Dean drew her attention to himself.

She swallowed, her gaze glid into the far distance. Then, as if she had made a decision, she straightened her shoulders determinedly. "In those days I couldn't do anything, but now I can."

Meanwhile Sam had got up and wanted to approach her, but she noticed him. At the last moment Dean managed to reach his weapon, which was lying a meter away from him on the floor. When she saw that, she pressed her hand to the runes. A blazingly bright flash of light flickered across the room and it was as if an electric shock was searing through Dean's body. His knees buckled.

"Dean!" To see how his brother went down to the ground and no longer moved, put Sam in dread and horror. He lay there motionless. The younger screamed and writhed, but couldn't succeed in breaking free. Something was holding him against the wall with all its might.

Racked with pain Dean groaned. His skull throbbed. He was hit somewhere with the shoulder, it felt numb.

"Sam? Are you okay?", was the first thing he arduously managed to get over his lips. Trembling, Dean tried to sit up. Every movement hurt like hell. He tried to look at his brother to make sure he was fine.

But he just stared over at the young woman. Amazement was written on his face. Her face, on the other hand, was distorted into a grimace.

"Dean, she's scared of us...", he whispered.

"She definitely should", the older one replied grimly.

"No, look, she's just scared."

And indeed, although the hunters were clearly on the defensive with the wall behind them, the fear spoke out of her. Like a cornered animal she stood there, ready to attack again, the possibility of escape already excluded a long time ago.

"We're not like them", Dean thereupon addressed the word to the young woman.

"It will soon show what kind of person you are", she assured him.

"I know what it's like to lose your mother at this age."

Take your brother outside as fast as you can and don't look back! Now! Dean, go! His father's voice frightened. The heat on his skin, he still felt it. The moment he had stopped being a child.

"You think you are like me? You're not!" She took a step closer and looked searchingly at the blond man in front of her. Her gaze pierced right through him. "You had something I never had. I can see him on your soul." Unconsciously, Dean touched his left shoulder.

A realization hit Sam and an idea was formed. What if she did after all? "Who drew that?" He held out to her the drawing from the city archives.

"I don't know! I don't remember...", the woman repeled.

"Try it. Who drew you?", Sam persisted.

She stared at the image of herself. Black charcoal on yellowed paper, the lines carefully, soft in detail, almost devoted. The Dorothy in the picture gave the draftsman a smile that bestowed her countenance an indefinable glow, an expression of her affection. Her eyes widened as a long-forgotten memory flared in her mind. "Jim... His name was Jim..."

"Who was he? Who was he for you?", the hunter asked gently.

"I... We...", broken her voice barely drowned out the beating of Sam's heart, "We loved eachother..."

"Dorothy, your body may not be affected by time, but your memory... it... it disintegrates bit by bit. At first it was only the last decade, wasn't it? Then the last century, then the last two." All the good that had befallen to her after her imprisonment, she remembered no longer. All that was left was the frightened child whose mother was taken away from.

"I'll forget everything... I'll forget Jim..." The consternation and grief of a woman who had lost everything, her dignity, her family, her faith, her love and now also this one good memory.

"At some point the moment comes when it is enough. Maybe it's time for you to go. "

Dorothy whiped out a knife and stepped up to Sam. Dean made a leap forward, ready to fend off the supposed attack, ready to put his life at risk for that of his brother.

But the woman held out her hand. "Don't worry, it's true. And I'm glad that all of this is finally over. But you'll have to help me with that", she said composedly with a clarity and bravery that astonished even the hunters. A broken woman's pride.

She intended to hand the younger one the knife. It was obvious what she wanted him to do. She wanted him to kill her, to put an end to her.

However, Dean held her back: "No, let me do that."

She didn't seem surprised at this and nodded curtly. One last time she addressed the taller one: "Sam, never forget that some monsters still remember what it is like to be human."

"And if not, I'll remind them", he said and gave her an affirmative smile.

Doing bad things didn't make people bad people automatically, Dorothy had reminded him of that. Even vampires could choose not to kill. Even ghosts could find peace. Even demons could be healed. Everyone was worth saving, but not everyone could be saved.

"Good luck with that...", she mumbled, turned to Dean and put the knife in his hand. "I suspected you would make that decision." After all, the older Winchester believed that he was long depraved, but his brother's soul could still be saved. And so he did not understand that he himself was already saved.

She looked him in the eye. "Your time will come someday, too, Dean Winchester."

He looked back at hers. "I know, and I'll be ready."

"You will, but will he be so too?" It was ambiguous who she meant by that. For a long time it wasn't any more just one person who meant something to Dean.

Maybe she wasn't expecting an answer or maybe she already knew it, for she uttered: "Come on, no need to delay it."

Slowly Dean turned the stabbing weapon in his hand. "Are you afraid?"

She didn't answer, yet he could see it in her storm-gray eyes. He placed a hand on her shoulder, a gesture intended to comfort her. Or himself? This was more than euthanasia. The hunter was used to kill and nonetheless had to bring himself to do what had to be done. This girl had indeed done bad things, but behind her facade of bravery lay profound sorrow for what had been and great fear of what was to come.

"I'll do it quickly." Dean didn't want her to suffer. "Think of something nice."

Her eyes widened as he thrust the blade between her ribs. A pained sound left her throat. Her knees buckled and he caught her. She tried to look at him, but the eyelids fluttered in front of her searching pupils. She lay in his arms, her muscles spasmed, the pain made her body tremble.

"Dorothy, let go ..."

"Where am I going?" She gasped chokingly. It was difficult for her to speak. Blood ran from her mouth in a thin trickle. Her fingers dug into his jacket.

"I don't know..." He wished he could have given her an answer. He took her hand and held it while she exhaled for the last time. There was something in her eyes, at the moment of death, redemption. Then she was silent. Dean sank to the ground next to her lifeless body. His blood-stained hands didn't stop shaking.

Sam knelt next to his brother and wanted to pull him into his arms, but he got up abruptly and left, left the room, left the building, leaving the helplessness behind.

Thirstily the blonde absorbed the cold night air into his lungs. Just getting away from this church. Nearby he found a vat of rainwater. His image, brokenly reflected in the rippling waves of the water, looked at him exhausted and empty as he dipped his hands into the cool wet, washed off the blood and moistened his face with it.

"Dean, you have been hit by a curse", the younger one addressed carefully to him.

"I'm fine, I feel like I always do", he replied tersely, avoiding his brother's worried look.

Sam sighed. "As if that's a good sign."

"I don't care what happens to me. I never really have."

Dean 13x20

(song to the chapter: The Witch’s Curse – Peter Gundry)