2458/What Is, And Should Never Be

What Is, And Should Never Be
Date of Scene:	05 September 2017
Location:	Claire Temple's Apartment, Hell's Kitchen, NY
Synopsis:	Sam Winchester stops by to check on Claire Temple after her ordeal at Hydra's hands. She earns his implicit trust.
Cast of Characters:	Claire Temple, Sam Winchester
Tinyplot:	Tayaniye

---

Claire Temple has posed:
It only took a couple of days of Mercy Thompson's patient, sensible, and generous hospitality for Claire to begin to go stir-crazy. Gracious as she was -- to have people to have gone these lengths for her, save her from a certain death, and to offer to care for her after the fact --

-- it was hard to feel like herself again, sitting around with little to do but to examine and re-examine her thoughts, which were slowly worsening the more the initial shock lessened and thinned.

So she made a decision -- not Mercy's favourite decision either -- to go back to her apartment. See if what was once her home even still feels like one, or needs to be packed up and moved to somewhere else. To sort out what it even means to her. To chart the trajectory of her life.

It was a decision not made alone, either -- Bucky Barnes accompanied her, and testament to his caution that Hydra may still have targets and desire reprisals, he does not linger too far away.

But there have been no targetting, no reprisals: only the blandness of Claire trying to make all the phone calls to repair a month's disappearance. The first call was the easiest, ironically, to her mother. Her mother of eternal optimism, who believed her daughter safe and in hiding all this time.

Claire couldn't find it in her to speak the truth. A lie felt even worse, so she kept it vague.

The more difficult call is the one she's on right now -- sitting on her couch and currently arguing heatedly into her phone over a missing payroll. Terminated from Metro Gen for her absolute failure to arrive for her shifts is one thing --

"No, you check the records -- " Claire snarls. The yelling is audible through her paper-thin door. "What -- I paid into you ten dollars a month for you to do a little work when I need it! They're screwing me on all my hours in July -- I don't care, it's what I'm owed! And what the hell does anyone pay you for? This is what unions do! You go in and -- I know god damned well I'm not an employee, but I /was/ and --"

She stabs two fingers into her closed eyes to try to kill the migraine.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam has come bearing a couple of gifts, as it happens. He mentally tallies up a third, even as he hears Claire's distress spinning into the hallway. Nobody he has been close to for most of his life has ever held down anything like a day job, but people he has helped have. He has pulled men and women out of Wendigo dens and vampire nests, helped them survive something awful and intense...only for them to return, to find their lives in utter shambles. 'I was kidnapped' sometimes flies, but often doesn't when the supernatural-- and, he supposes, when strange secret societies-- are involved. Because there's no case file. No proof.

Well. This is something any Winchester of the three knows how to help with, though they've never shared this knowledge with those people across all those towns before. Not a good thing, drawing attention to how the Hunter family-- indeed, how //most// Hunters-- make their living. Sam is an oddity, an outlier among a specific community, if not a specific function, of outlaw and rogue heroes: someone who has tried to be both, tried to earn an honest living //and// Hunt, who has, in fact, tried to earn an honest living //while// Hunting.

But the knowledge is still in his head.

He's dressed down today, a black V-necked t-shirt and jeans. He's got a battered backpack with him. He didn't want to draw any attention to Claire, not really. He's got a black baseball cap over all that hair, too, and sunglasses. For most people, that's disguise enough. Old habits of caution guide him in these choices.

He taps very gently on the door. "It's Sam," he murmurs, against the bulk of it, knowing that she might still be jumpy, knowing that identifying himself immediately and without fail is the best way to respect her, and the sanctity of her space.

Claire Temple has posed:
The knock draws Claire out of her rant.

She doesn't deign the voice on the line any politeness of a good-bye; aggravated, she simply hangs up, because no single phone call is going to fix it anyway, and tosses her phone dismissively away to exile among her couch cushions.

It's Sam, says a very familiar voice, and she exhales in acknowledgment, pawing back her dark hair with both hands and trying to check her temper before she even goes for the door.

A moment is taken, and far calmer, Claire answers.

She doesn't look much different now than she did before her seven weeks of captivity: just as tired, just as sleepless, just as eternally put-upon. Even her weary smile is the same, forced on and turned up toward the Winchester on the other side of the opened door.

"Hey," she answers, with no real fanfare but to offer him her threshold to cross. She locks the door after him: she wants her indepedence, and though she's trying miserably to reclaim both her home and life, the paranoia is palpable.

"How're you doing? How's Fred?"

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam has a refrain, really, almost whenever he is asked how he is doing. He uses it now: "I'm fine." And he offers her a quick flash of a smile to prove it. Talk of Fred makes the smile fade just a little bit, but he won't tell tales out of school. "She's coping. She'll be okay." Nobody else needs to know about Fred's new and sudden bout with agoraphoria, or the new mathematical decorations-- I over heart equals real -- that are slowly filling up the walls of his nearby apartment.

To say 'how are you' would be conventionally polite, but Sam makes some judgments-- namely, one that says inviting her to talk about her mental state is not a good move right now. Instead he says, "You're looking good. Strong."

And she is, really, for the level of ordeal that she went through. She's looking...well. Very much like //herself//. The trauma never fades entirely, he knows, but...one can get back to...something. And Claire looks like she's taken a few, shuddering steps on that journey. Perhaps he can help her take a few more. "I brought you a few things. Two, I thought, but ah. I couldn't help overhearing your scuffle in there, so I might have a third thing, actually. Welcome home gifts, if you will."

He hefts the battered backpack as if to demonstrate that there are, indeed, things inside. That are apparently not his normal arsenal of weapons. He is armed, actually, but he's stripped it down for the time being. He pulls off the sunglasses and the baseball cap, setting them gently aside. Near the door, so he won't hamper her if she looks like she needs to run him out at any point.

Claire Temple has posed:
'Coping', he says. Universal translation -- diplomatic or not -- for 'not well.'

Claire exhales, arms crossing over her chest, eyes turned briefly away, unable to help but appropriate all guilt and fault for that. It was all for her sake, after all. He's fine, she's coping.

She should say more; say something. She can't seem to figure out the shapes of the words, and even less he seems prepared to talk about it. Maybe later. Maybe if she decides, no, he's not fine, and, no, Fred won't be OK.

"Haven't heard anyone call me strong before," Claire says again, trying to pull some wryness into her voice to cover up the confusion, the awkwardness, the fatigue. "I don't really feel it. But I'll take it. C'mon in, though. I can get you something. A drink? Something to eat?"

He says he's brought her some things.

The woman pauses, surprised by that, her arms settling comfortably where they remain crossed as she peeks questioningly over at the backpack in question. "You didn't have to get me anything," she chides, but gently, somewhat taken aback. "It's me who owes you. I owe all of you guys... a helluva lot."

Sam Winchester has posed:
"I owe everyone too. They had to come pull me out of a cell of my own," Sam says, not because he's looking for sympathy, or to pile more onto her, but because he simply wants her to know that she's not the only one, if she doesn't know that already. "Guess that's what having friends is about. We all look out for each other." He says it so solemnly, so earnestly, like he's still a bright-eyed sixteen year old, or maybe even younger, like he's the one assigned to say things like 'God bless us, every one' at the end of the show.

But he also believes it.

"Yes please," he says. "Whatever you have is fine. And...none of this is-- well."

He clears his throat, which he does in two instances: when he's lying or when he's uncertain. This time it's the latter.

"It's not expensive. Or anything. And it's just. Well. Um. The first is I'd like your permission to set some wards and protections on your doors and windows, and near them. I got a nice ward vs. runic magic from a friend of Fred's, and some devil's traps and other things might be smart. You've ahh-- kind of had a taste of my world now. I mean I guess Mercy might have set them, I'm still not sure if she does magic or just sort of smells it, or had Liam do it, but if she didn't-- ahh, if they didn't, then um. I can, and it's-- it's not a problem at all, and it won't put me out at all, and the materials don't cost much, uh-- well they don't cost much at all, so. If it's okay. With you."

He finishes lamely, smiling sheepishly.

Claire Temple has posed:
For a moment, she seems apt to propose sending him off with a small meal. For a moment, she looks on with interest at his proposal of installing wards within the weak points of her apartment. Something Claire would have scoffed at weeks ago, but now -- now she affords even conversation of magic its time and place.

But all that stalls, at least for now, under something more important.

Claire flinches against that first revelation.

"What -- " she stammers, "what the hell? They got you too? When?! How?"

It appears she hasn't yet been told; probably rightly so, considering the last few days has been a slow diet of information for her to regain independence and normalcy. No considerable dumps of what she missed. No unabridged version. Kept in segregation away from him, she had no idea, and it was probably within neither the Winter Soldier's authorization nor preference to tell her.

She looks him over; he seems complete and unhurt. Her voice thickens. "It wasn't because of me, was it?"

Sam Winchester has posed:
"No. Absolutely it was not," Sam says, with utter and complete conviction. "I know that for a fact, Claire. Don't give that another thought."

It's so weird, how he shifts from child to adult. Sometimes he's 21 going on 50, and sometimes he's 21 going on 12. Right now he's 21 going on 50, and his hazel eyes are steady. "I was taken just after you were, I think. They found me first, but only because Hydra's running some screwy scheme. They did some things to me and they wanted me turned loose after they were done doing them, so they didn't work too hard at hiding my location. They were not so accomodating with your location. We had to capture Sergeant Barnes and fix him before we could begin to find you."

He doesn't press the matter of the wards. Instead he brings out his second gift. It's a stack of loosely bound, photocopied pages, which he sets down on her kitchen table. With this she might well be able to build her own, come to think of it, but it's just in his nature to offer to //do it//. Hedge magic isn't hard, but it does take a bit of practice. It still requires a //little// belief, a //little// will.

He seems complete and unhurt only because of the plaid shirt over his t-shirt, keeping his arms fully covered; he's sure if she saw the trackmarks she would be the next to join the litany of the angered and concerned. But that is too much, too fast, too soon.

Claire Temple has posed:
He tells her it wasn't her doing, whether direct or indirectly so; Claire seems apt to be stubborn about it for a moment, before she relents.

"I'm sorry they pulled that bullshit on you, Sam," she answers wearily. "It's good you got out. What did they do to you? It wasn't -- was there something they put you on? Like a drip? Only a solution that was black -- hurt like absolute hell? Called it media?"

Her eyes still run him over, those quick, rapidfire assessments of a seasoned nurse, though with his layers and clothes -- of course Claire misses what could be and is lurking along either one or both of Sam's arms. She touches her own arm briefly, self-consciously, as her distracted eyes only cut off him to give those paper-written spells a glance.

"Any of that sound familiar?"

Sam Winchester has posed:
It's not just spells; he'll explain in a moment though. Still, she can see for herself with the very first page that it's not just that. It seems to be a handwritten descriptor of a 'woman in white', how they're identified and how they can be defeated. A homegrown encyclopedia of whackadoo.

He tilts his head at her, brow furrowing in concern, for a wide variety of reasons. He's never heard of 'media', though she can bet he will now be researching the crap out of that. Black stuff could be a whole lot of anything. He shakes his head, more determined than ever to tackle the lore and find out more. And to ask a few others about 'media'.

"I'm sorry it happened to you too," he says softly. "Mine was different."

He hesitates. Is showing her a matter of solidarity, or a matter of overload? She seems to want to know, need to know. She's self-conscious. The same sort of self-conscious shame lingers in his eyes.

Finally he sits down, resigned, touching his own arm. The same. But maybe also different.

"Mine didn't hurt. Mine was-- was addictive. It-- it changed me."

He's sure she'll hear //all// about Sammy's disgusting addiction later, from one of the others, but he can't bring himself to go further than that now. For one thing, she's //just// getting Supernatural 101.

And then, more firmly: "I don't know what game they're playing, but we're going to get to the bottom of it. This won't stand. Volkov has a //lot// to answer for."

Claire Temple has posed:
With equal parts horror and anger and a keen need to learn, Claire listens.

"Sorry it happened to both of us," she concedes.

Her expression knots as he talks of symptoms -- namely /addictive/ -- and that draws Claire closer, ever the nurse in all kinds of situations. Even those involving monsters like Hydra and their weird machinations within the magic world. "Nothing can change you until you let it," she answers sternly, refusing the notion outright that those sons of bitches are going to affect anyone indefinitely. Her worries about the emotional state and soul of James Barnes are more than enough.

"If you need me to look -- I'm no good if it's dealing with the weird shit, but anything else --" she murmurs, then just interrupts herself with a sigh. "I should show you mine, either way. You might have more an idea than me."

With that, self-conscious or not, Claire makes a choice and rolls up the sleeve of her left arm, proffering it forward for Sam to look at. The injection site at the inside of her elbow is scar tissue, rippled and braided flesh like it's been burned a dozen layering times over, and spreading out in a spidering discolouring of all her veins and blood vessels. Tattooed black.

"From that crap. Media," she explains. "I gave Mercy the story, but I need to tell the rest of you the same thing. I have no lingering symptoms that I can perceive. No addiction. It felt like fire going in."

He mentions Volkov needing to pay; Claire tenses a little against the name, the fingers curling up on her left hand. "Yeah," she says to that, brief, succinct.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam doesn't touch her, but peers forward to have a look. "I've never seen anything like this," he admits. "May I please take a picture, Claire? It might help me find some answers. This is-- " He shakes his head.

He starts there, because he has to circle back around to it. He just takes off his outer shirt, solemnly letting her see that both arms are a mess of trackmarks now, where they never were before. His left is the worst; he favors the inner elbow there. He won't move for his phone, to snap that photo, without her express permission, but he shows her.

And thinks perhaps she might...get it.

"It changed me," he says again. "Because it's demon blood. And because a demon named Azazel fed me demon blood when I was an infant, setting up some sort of...latent species change. I am about 90% sure I die without the stuff now, that exposing me to it basically woke up whatever was set in me when I was a kid. I could test the theory, but there hasn't been time."

He sighs, tired, so very tired of demon blood, so very tired of wondering what the Hell Hydra could possibly be doing, because letting him go makes no //sense//. But he's not the only one who is tired, and he hasn't looked up much from his study of her arm, trying to locate any kind of a sensible pattern that might generate any kind of clue, wracking his brains for some thread of lore that might help.

Claire Temple has posed:
"Photograph away," Claire says, some askance in her voice, but she appears to trust Sam well enough with the process. He's the expert in all this, after all.

She holds still to allow him to do so, left arm extended -- then freezes up. Her abject stillness, in the end, is not so much out of care to help him take that shot as much as it's shock to see the state of his own arms.

"Good lord," she says. Demon blood, she hears, and the name 'Azazel' is the kookiest fucking shit ever, and she's listening, but she's not; he takes substantial etiquette not to touch, but Claire Temple is a nurse, and examinations are immediate, reflexive, and tactile. She tries to take him by the left arm, though her hands are immeasurably careful, gentled by years of handling countless addicts, and her fingers never stray close enough to those raw injection sites to threaten infection.

"I'm not a pathologist by far, and I sure don't have a lab on hand, but I think it would be worth taking a look at that demon blood," she says, still wrapping her head around that /this is a thing now./ "It ought to be cultured. See if it has its own cellular structure. See what it's doing to you under a lens. Do you have any symptoms from using it? Nothing negative? Other than the obvious 'demon' part stuck in there?"

Equally so, Claire's mind is moving. She's just as tired, but it's a nice break -- a way to play hookey from the inside of her own head. The more she thinks about it, the less she wants to.

Sam Winchester has posed:
He doesn't mind the touch. He takes his photos and then lets her do what she wishes. She'll find a few things. His veins are all...great. They're strong, and there's plenty, if a nurse wanted to choose one, to stab. It's way abnormal, but beneficially so.

Sam is looking at her. There's something in his eyes. It's like a boy with a lot of hurt in him who is finding the first person who is treating this in any kind of way he can handle. Claire is matter-of-fact but not giving him long, worried looks. There's no judgment going on here. She's just...just analyzing it.

His eyes go a little red-rimmed, and he gives that uncertain throat clear. He'd already trusted Claire a lot, but this is the moment that trust becomes implict, where she earns her way onto a very short list. It's not that he /blames/ anyone for their reactions, but they've been...very. Hard. To bear. The gratitude on his face is intense, and he swallows and decides. He reaches into the outer pocket of his bag and brings out a vial of his precious supply, giving it to her, letting her help him as he's trying to help her. And softly: "You can have a sample of mine, too."

And then he explains: "No. The negative symptoms come when I don't use it. It gives me a pleasure rush, but that's more like...what you get from a nice, cold Coke. It helped with the pain from the um."

He hesitates. He again is concerned that if he tells her about //his// time that he might somehow /her//, but/minimize /hers/, but//her//, but...he finally falls down on the side of a raw honesty for patient to medical practitioner. "They'd beat me," he explains. "And then an injection. The injection helped with the pain. I started looking forward to them just for that, but when I came back...I started fantasizing about demon blood right away, even though they wouldn't let me see. What it was."

He can't quite meet her eye, but he tells her. He swallows, his voice hoarse. "I lasted a week, Claire. The pain...it starts with headaches. And hunger like you wouldn't believe. And then weakness. Shakes. And then cramps. You ever had a Charlie horse? The kind that wakes you up screaming? It's like that, over the whole body. I fought past it but I was a mess when I finally...did it to myself for the first time. I'm not even sure how I managed that hunt. A lot of it was a blur. I do know it feeds my um. My powers. And if I use them too much or push them too far I need a dose faster, or a larger dose. I know I'm stronger. I can lift twice as much as Dean now. I could always lift a little more-- but it's noticable now."

Claire Temple has posed:
There is little judgment in Claire Temple. Nurse Temple, who may not be employed at the moment, still has years of countless addicts taking space every night in the emergency room. Addicts in far worse states than this. She runs a cursory physical, little she can do without her tools and access to a hospital, but Hell's Kitchen has survived strong this long because she's a hell of a MacGyver.

She listens, and takes in this no differently than she would Sam describing his symptoms from the common cold. It's all the same to her; addiction is yet another failing of the flesh, which was never perfect. Not a failing of the soul -- though that's usually where the meanest effects hit first and worst.

Trusting that he seems as healthy as he tells her, she lets him go, instead taking in hand that offered vial. Claire exhales out through her nose as she studies it. She no longer has Metro Gen, but -- whatever. She can find a way.

She crosses the kitchen and opens her fridge to store it. And Claire has quite a fridge: packed with food in one extent (a lot of food -- might be in correlation with a super soldier) and pharmaceuticals in the other. She leaves it to stay preserved.

Hydra beat him, Sam confesses, and Claire pauses halfway through her trip back. Trauma begets trauma, and -- she remembers. That's right, she was too, before the Winter Soldier saved her. Staked his claim and kept her untouched for as long as he could. Emotion wells up --

-- and she forces it back down. Safer working, being of use again, after so long doing /nothing/. "This isn't going to go across as sound medical advice, but don't cold turkey it," she tells him. "You could do as much, or more damage, than to keep what you're doing. From what it sounds like, you're not suffering anything. Which doesn't mean this shit ain't twisted, and it's probably in your best interest to get you the hell of being dependent on /anything/ -- but not until you've studied it more. And I don't want to get a call from Fred freaking out you've gone into cardiac arrest over some magical DT. Get me?"

Sam Winchester has posed:
He could seriously hug her right now. He won't, but he could. He has to swallow back tears of his own. He nods quickly, and then exhales. It's his job to be there for others, for her, but he can see that being /of use/ is having a positive impact. He understands. He feels the same way. "Yes ma'am," he says.

When it's time to get off, Claire Temple is, he now knows, the /only one/ who can help with this. And she's studying it. He'll go to SHIELD R&D because May ordered it, but it's Claire who is going to do this. He knows this from the bottom of his heart. In a few days, when SHIELD R&D is shocked and horrified, it will be reinforced for him.

He sniffles it all back, and clears his throat yet again, before he says, "So quick explanation on the stack of papers. That's a combination of my journal, and a copy of my Dad's journal. My father is a raging prick, but he is a good Hunter, and he was the one who taught me how to obsessively catalogue everything. You won't know everything I know after reading that-- it would take a lot more books-- but you'll know everything Dean knows, and Dean remains one of the country's top Hunters. The key to most of this stuff is every nasty monster has a weakness, and if you know what it is and go in armed with the right stuff, you have a chance to punch above your weight class. Knowledge is power. There's a sort of...Hunter's grocery list in there for a basic kit. I'm not saying you are looking to do this or anything, but..."

He gestures ruefully at her arm.

"Which ahhh...kind of brings me to the...third thing?"

Claire Temple has posed:
The man's eyes shine in a way that's also familiar -- Claire Temple has seen the strongest strip down into absolute vulnerability when alone, ashamed, and without a healthy body to even ground them -- and she neither judges that too. It's a part of this.

The woman soften a little, but holds herself back; she comes from the projects, a culture where machismo is more than important -- it's vital -- and most men in her life prefer support in the way of pretending the emotional vulnerability never happened at all. In her experience, Sam Winchester seems an exception to that stereotype: but best to err on the side of caution.

She exhales in quiet approval as he accedes to her medical advice; been too long since someone just /listened/ to her.

With the vial stored safely away, and her mind trying to pace itself carefully on far safer sorts of thoughts -- namely, anything at the moment that isn't thinking about what happened to her -- Claire's attention averts back to the notes as Sam gives them their due introduction. She helps herself to the papers, thumbing through them curiously, the last few months having lost much the skepticism that would normally be in her reading eyes to parse -- a catalogue into a world she's never known.

That only ever existed in sci-fi shows and in fairy tales. She looks back up at him, at the same time looking quietly overwhelmed -- it's so much -- but still grateful. She shares the glance he gives her arm, her expression going grim. "I'll read it," Claire promises. "Thank you."

And then -- the third thing,

Looking very much like someone who's been given well-enough lately and isn't sure hw to begin to repay it, Claire answers affectionately, "And the third thing?"

Sam Winchester has posed:
The third thing makes Sam bend his head sheepishly, flashing the same rogue's grin that he once gave her after playing orderly at her hospital.

"So um," he says, "I couldn't help but hearing your disagreement with your-- union? Ah. You. Wouldn't be the first person I've met whose life kind of got derailed by kidnapping."

Man, Dean is going to laugh his ass off or call him a hypocrite, but he bulls ahead anyway. "So um." He clears his throat. "Hunting doesn't really pay. And we're not um. Trust fund babies. We ahh-- engage in some Creative Funding, so to speak. We always figured...we were doing the world a service, so fat cat bankers could keep us in burgers and gas. And the way I see it, you pretty much are doing some services of your own. Long story short, if you'd like an easy way to ahh-- tide yourself over financially until you find your next career opportunity--I can show you how to um. Do that."

Well, it's not every day that one just drops 'oh by the way, I help folk but I'm also seriously a /criminal/, would you, too, like to take new and exciting steps into a fresh new life of crime?'

Especially given his own incredible ambivalence about that, the same ambivalence that has somewhat driven him, however uneasily and perhaps temporarily, into SHIELD's eager arms. For now he's enjoying the steady paycheck, but he's still looking for that other shoe, the one that experience has taught him /will/ drop.

Which is why he hasn't entirely turned his back on the old ways either. Maybe he never will.

Claire Temple has posed:
Claire Temple listns to the proposal. Then, liquid-slow, she tiiiilts her head to one side and her right eyebrow shoots up.

Creative Funding, he calls it.

"Mm-hmm," she casts her judgment, looking straight up at him, in a shocked I-thought-there-was-something-too-innocent-about-that-pretty-face-of-yours. And then, despite all that's happened, a raw, shaky laugh barks free of her. "You're tripping. Son of a bitch. Here I thought you and your brother were paying the bills from a couple of Hugo Boss modelling contracts or something insane. 'Cause damn, son. You're for real? For real-real? You don't get caught?"

And he's proposing to -- /teach/ her?

Her first reaction is to seriously consider it. "My uncle would stand up from the grave and kick my ass if he knew. Always went on about a fair day's work. But --" She glances up at her crumbling apartment all around her. "How risky is it? And -- no one suffers, right? No one's stuck holding the bill in a worse off situation than me?"

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam laughs and says, "Hey I suggested it one year, but Dad was less than amused."

His features darken a little bit. Forget Volkov and Hydra, it's /Dad/ that brings the shadows out. But he dispels them with an uptick of that grin.

He shakes his head. "No, nobody gets hurt but the bankers issuing the cards, the way we do it. They just use it as a tax write off anyway. And the way we do it, the chances of getting caught are low. I mean it's not impossible to get caught, but to be honest the times Dean and I got in trouble with the law was never over this stuff. It was always over our work."

He thinks for a moment. "Gotta adapt it a little to one urban area versus a bunch of rural areas, but I see how to do it and it's easy enough. There's some caveats, things it's more safe and less safe to do, but I'll walk you through those."

And then, innocently, "Though if you know any of those Hugo Boss people..." He's joking. He's grinning like he's joking. Though he bets Dean would secretly love the Hell out of strutting in front of a camera.

Claire Temple has posed:
Free money, and a victimless crime. Claire is more than tempted.

The institution of banks don't have any love from her; all she knows is the trickle-down from the government bailing them out too many times cost relatives, friends their jobs. Good people. Hard-working people.

She's a good, hard-working person too, maybe was, maybe still is -- and just has to supplement by cutting a few corners. "It's -- I might sleep on this, but I think my answer is probably yes," Claire answers softly, a knotted quiet to her voice like she's certain, somewhere, her mother is overhearing this and already clucking her tongue. Her mother, who once pulled three legitimate part-time jobs to feed her once. The guilt is strong.

But the overhead, especially supporting a neighbourhood that can't support itself -- and with no foreseeable incoming as it is?

Moral dilemmas.

"Yeah," Claire adds airily. "Count me in on that. I'd love to know. At least until I can get another job -- at least know what my next job will be." She pauses, and her lips pull into a brief smile. "Thanks, Sam."

Sam Winchester has posed:
"No problem," Sam says, smiling back at her.

"It's actually pretty simple."

He scrawls down a web address. "That's what we call the Deadabase. It's a database of social security numbers, dates of birth, and names for dead people. You buy them in batches. I usually buy a batch of 50, and you can buy your first starter batch with..."

He digs out a credit card which says C. Petrowski on it. "That has a $2500 limit on it and I've only spent about $16 on there, so it should tide you over both for your first batch and opening expenses."

"Then what you're going to do is jump online to //this// address. It is going to show you a long list of bank repos in any zipcode you care to enter." He writes that down. "Those things sit on the market forever, making them ideal for our purposes. Houses with exterior mailboxes make this easier, so if you can take a trip out into the suburbs every now and then to do this so much the better. A mailbox lock is easy to pick but you run the risk of someone noticing. So. 50 dead guys, 50 repos. Match each dead guy to each repo on the list. Then jump on line and fill out a credit card application for each of them. You do this in batches of 50 for several reasons. First, you have no idea what their credit is like. You can buy pre-screened guys on the Deadabase, but that's more expensive, and it's riskier because sometimes law enforcement is putting those out to see who bites. You know the card is going to show up in 7-15 business days, so you make plans to visit each of those addresses, and you check their mail. If /anything/ spooks you, if your gut says don't go to the house, if there's a cop car parked there or a nosy neighbor staring out her window or someone seeing the house, you drive on and you go to the next one and you leave that card in the mailbox, no questions asked. Cross that off your list and consider that house burned. So you'll go try to pick up 50 cards, you'll maybe get to pick up about half of those. Half the time what you get are denial letters, half the time you get approval letters, though the percentages on any given batch vary. So anywhere from 5 to 15 cards, all with different limits. You're going to need to activate each one. You're going to do that from a different IP every time. Take your laptop, go to Starbucks, go to the library, go to the mall, whatever, jump online, do the activation. By the time you're done you have anywhere from $1,000 to $15,000 at your disposal...but there are caveats to that, which I'll go over in a sec."

He lifts his eyebrows at her though, as if to ask whether she has any questions.

Claire Temple has posed:
And Claire Temple, who has for her entire life lived the straight and narrow, brought up on the basic moral promise that working hard enough and conducting herself true, and noble, and honest will reap great benefits --

-- stands there and listens to how to take the easy way because it's really all a huge dish of bullshit.

And it is -- she's a realist enough to know -- so she takes it all in with bright, slightly-widened eyes at the sheer ease Sam recites calmly, casually how to defraud a bank systematically of thousands of dollars.

There's a part of her that twists up -- twists up at the thought of someone using a dead relative's name to finance a lifestyle, to take from something that /isn't theirs, and invoke a loved one's face to it/, but if she uses the proceeds well, maybe the ends will justify the means. Just use it toward the neighbourhood. Use it only for the moonlighting, the illegal and free supplemented healthcare, the drugs and treatment plans to hurt masked people. Not on anyone else but herself, and once she can stop it --

Still so soft, Claire, she thinks to herself, as her lips move soundlessly to recite some of Sam's directions to memory. Wants to get hard, but she's still soft in many ways.

"That... makes sense," she says, with the airiness of someone who understands what he's getting at, and is just still getting down the mental picture of seeing herself doing it. "I appreciate this."

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam smiles sympathetically to her reaction. He has felt it before. Felt that seesaw before. "It's no problem. So here are the rest of the rules."

He clears his throat. "First, once you start using one, the clock is ticking, because you don't have a way to pay it. I mean you've got someone else's credit card, and an online account, but most of them these days require bank accounts, and that's the last thing you wanna do. So each of these has a 30 to 60 day shelf life once you start using it. That one I just gave you has exactly 26 days left on it. Write the date in the signature line so you can remember it."

He ticks off the next point. "Second, you gotta walk small. You can't link any of these to your address. You can use the cash advance feature to get your utility bills paid, but you dont' use them to pay stuff like that directly. If you buy groceries, you go to small grocers, neighborhood people. Small diners. Gas stations. No-name thrift stores. Motels, never hotels with any kinds of stars. Nobody who checks IDs or cares. You can also use them with people who are also breaking the law of course. But if you take this thing into Macy's...you're asking for trouble."

He smiles sheepishly. "Not that you seem like the type. But. Just. It's worth repeating. If /anyone/ questions /any/ card for /any/ reason you pretend to take an urgent call, you dump the card, you walk out. You always go into any place with cameras with a hat on if you're going to use them."

They didn't use motels and backwater roads and diners simply for the Hell of it. There were reasons.

"Other lawbreakers will trade cards for cash almost always. We used biker bars for that. Cash always spends, so if cash is more useful to you, that's always an option."

And with that he spreads his hands. Scoundrel 101, complete.

Claire Temple has posed:
The real question is why Claire isn't begging Sam Winchester to write this down -- it's a lot to take in, and probably especially for a woman who may (and probably is) in some sort of shock.

Though she seems to absorb all his instructions without too much difficulty, and her dark eyes aren't that glazed-over in-too-deep veneer either, so maybe it's just the talent of a good emergency nurse. Learn on her feet, learn it only once, and do it in any sort of climate, environment, stressor, or mental state.

Claire Temple is good. She'll remember this as long as she lives.

"Got it. Lots of caution. Lots of judgment. Lots of common sense," she says, ratifying all this on-the-spot education with a brush of her hand through her dark hair. "I guess I'll -- I have some catch-up to do, seeing to the neighbourhood again. This is going to really help with things. I wasn't sure --"

Maybe that homegrown machismo has rubbed off on Claire, because she doesn't vent her own worry past a slightly-roughened sigh. She's tough. "It's really not often I tell people this, in the biz I'm in. But thanks. Seriously. Thanks. You're going to be helping a lot of people."

Sam Winchester has posed:
"That's the hope," Sam says quietly. "And if you need a good fake orderly, give me a call and I'll help where I can. I don't really know medicine other than...you know. Field medicine." He knows how to dig bullets out of his brother, is what he means. "But I follow instructions well."

He flashes her a grin. "Though try not to aim me at too many strange women who want all the wrong sorts of help. Do you know how many ladies asked me to help them pee that day? It was really frightening!"

But with that, he says, "I should run these wards for you real quick and get out of your hair, I know you have a lot to do." He doesn't want to wear her out, and they've covered a great deal in a short period of time. "If you want them." Cause she never said one way or another if she did.

Claire Temple has posed:
The memory of Sam Winchester the Beefcake Orderly inspires a short laugh from Claire, coupled with a strange tightening at the corners of her eyes.

It feels like it happened yesterday. It feels like it was ten years ago. Seven weeks of the same room, day in and day out, bends and distorts the passage of time. Dilates it to some endless tunnel with no end. She can't imagine how it must feel for James. Seven weeks is too much for her.

"There was a record of walk-ins asking for physicals the next day," she confesses. "All women. All hoping they could get it in an emergency. Some swore up and down it was covered by their insurance. /You're/ a disruption, is what you are."

That wryness gentles out of her. "Still. I'll keep that in mind."

As for the wards -- Claire remembers. The thought was jarred after so much demon blood talk. "Right. No. Go ahead. Voodoo away," she invites with a wave of a hand. "You and my abuelita would've been best friends. I ever tell you she was a curandera? Thought it was all bull."

With that, and older memory in her head, the woman retreats. "Just know that when you're done, I'll send you off with something to eat."