Switchy Changy

Who: Billy and Lullaby, then with Oz and Dean thrown in
Where: Oz' house
When: Wee small hours

Lullaby had not slept much. At all, really. She'd shut her eyes, and removed her bells so she didn't wake Dean up--she figured even if he were asleep in his room with the door shut, he'd hear it when she moved and she thought he needed a ton of sleep right now. And she'd tried. She'd really, really tried, but it hadn't happened. She thought maybe she drifted a few times, but she never actually stopped being awake. Eventually, she got up, and wanted to head downstairs, just to sit quietly for a while. When she crept into the hall as quietly as she could--invisible in the darkness that was starting only faintly to turn into morning, she stopped and looked over at Dean's door.

It was open. Frowning a tiny bit, she moved as silently as she could manage to look in the doorway. He was asleep, laid out on his bed, and she felt a little relieved. He'd gotten to crash at some point after all. Thank goodness--he'd needed it. So, witness her retreating away from it and down the steps quietly, so she didn't do any noise making to interrupt that. She got down the steps, and sort of half looked around, not sure where to go from there. So she wandered slightly, finding the living room easily enough. She was silent as she walked in, looking ghostly in the pale light in there. Someone was on the couch. Wait...someone was hurt and on the couch, weren't they? She tried to remember the name...Dean had said it. It started with a B.

Billy wasn't sleeping. He wanted to, but Sophie had said at some point that he had a concussion and wasn't to go to sleep and Maddie seemed to have latched onto that and every time it seemed he was dropping off, she touched him and, really, he was sick and tired of the cold. The pain he could handle - the cold was just damn annoying. And so he was lying there in the pale light, still because it hurt slightly to move, generally feeling petulant about everything and nothing.

It took her a minute before she realized that his eyes were open. "...are you awake?" she asked, voice soft and quiet. She was kind of ever aware that Dean had those really great ears and she didn't know how well that worked in houses or rooms and the like. She walked a little closer, the pale light from the window lighting her up better, though she still looked ghostly.

Billy turned his head and looked at her, and then frowned a little. That was... weird. She looked like - well, his mind supplied 'a ghost', but that wasn't right. Because he was him and ghosts looked like normal people. But she didn't - she looked like what normal people thought ghosts looked like when they saw ghosts. And it was far too late and his head throbbed far too much to think that one through. And so he simply accepted it. "Yeah, I'm awake," he told her. "You'll be being Dean's friend then?"

She nodded, going to sit down on the floor by the couch, putting herself better in the light. "Sorry about um..." she made a vague gesture at herself. "I can't help it. I try to keep myself here-here, but it doesn't always work, and it takes a lot of concentration. I'm not very good at it yet. I'm Lullaby." she greeted. "Can I get you anything?" Her voice was still soft, but clear enough.

"A new head?" he suggested, with half a smile. "And don't worry about it - I see ghosts that seem corporeal, why not see someone corporeal that looks like a ghost?" He turned slightly, shifting towards her, grimacing slightly as his rib twanged with pain, knowing that Sophie thought he'd cracked it. "You are corporeal, aren't you?" he teased lightly, reaching out to poke her arm with his good hand.

She giggled at the first bit, a soft, tiny laugh, but then she was squinting one eye shut as she grimaced. "Yes," she started, with a little tired but genuine smile on her face but something weird happened. When he poked her, she felt kind of a...spike. Like a feeling almost like an electric shock, though she had absolutely no idea what it was. It was only there for a second. "I'm corporeal. But I'll win every time at hide and seek now, for sure." she added.

He settled down again and the pain in his side lessened. Maybe this position was better for him. Not that the pain was too bad - he'd always dealt well with pain, lord knew he'd had enough of it in his life, and Sophie had given him some pills for it earlier on. It just ached constantly, interspersed with sharp spikes when he tried to move. "Good, I won't have to live with more people accusing me of talking to myself then," he told her. He wanted to be nice to this girl. So she'd died, but she was still around - Billy had far more experience of dealing with that than most. To him, death wasn't exactly a barrier to anything. And he knew Dean cared about her, he'd walked in the guy's dreams, he Knew. if she was any kind of a danger to him, Maddie would have let him know by now, so he'd concluded she wasn't - she was just a teenage girl who needed people right now. A dead girl who was probably lonely. "You couldn't sleep?" he asked her.

She shook her head, and made a bit of a face. "No." she said. "I've um. There's a lot on my mind." she admitted. "I don't know if everyone here's...okay with um." she drew in a breath. "Me." Which actually, had her looking back at him again, and her head tilted to the side as it dawned on her that he seemed...kinda perfectly fine. That's more when things clicked into place with her. "You're Billy, aren't you." she said. "You have...there's a spirit. Maddie? I saw her once."

His mouth twisted into a smile. "You make it sound like I have a pet. But yes, my girlfriend is a spirit and her name's Maddie," he told her, shifting the wording. "She's around here somewhere, don't know where. I don't know if you'd be able to see her now, or anything. If she was here." He looked around, in case she was, craning his neck and then wincing as there was another stab from his chest. It made him dizzy a little and he rocked forward, reaching out a hand and steadying himself on her shoulder, before pushing himself back into position. "Sorry," he muttered.

"God, I'm sorry..." Lullaby said, and she shifted, reaching up to put a hand on his arm to help him. "Here, let me hel--" And that was all she got out. When she touched him, reaching up, hand clasping around his forearm, there was that jolt again. Only it was different. It was like suddenly everything got quiet. The world dropped away entirely, and she could feel it. All the sharp, jagged lines, all the black piercing shards that spiked through Billy's form. They were everywhere, like daggers, shadow knives sliced through him. And without even truly meaning to--she took them. It was all right there, in front of her, in her grasp, and it was instinctual. Automatic. She could take it. She could take all of it. And she did.

When she dropped back into the world, it wasn't the same as a few seconds ago where it seemed to have tilted. Because all of a sudden, everything hurt. Everything. She let out a short, sharp little scream that almost ended before it started, and dropped directly back down to the floor on her side, which was also a stunningly bad thing to do and it got another cry out of her.

Billy's head cleared suddenly as she fell and he reached to catch her unthinkingly. "Thia!" he exclaimed, not even noticing the fact that he'd used Dean's name for her - the way he thought about her naturally after walking in the teen's dreams. He rolled off the couch, all his hurts disappeared, moving easily and smoothly. "Are you okay? What happened?"

She couldn't talk. She knew he was speaking--she could hear worried tones, and some vague sounds, but she couldn't actually figure out what he was saying. Though that could have had a lot to do with the world of pain she'd dropped herself into. She felt like she was going to pass out. She was so tired. And if she fell asleep, it would stop, right? Her arm felt like it had it's bone's replaced with broken glass, her side was aching and spiking out pain when she tried to breathe...he head felt like she'd taken a bat to the back of it. And that wasn't counting the scratches. She could feel them, lacerations in her skin that hadn't been there a minute ago. What she didn't quite realize was she was mumbling under her breath as she tried to curl up into a little ball. "Oh god oh god oh god make it stop ow ow ow..." and then it was a pained sob as the tears started.

There was a thundering on the stairs then, someone coming down them two at a time and Billy looked round as Dean ran into the room, skidding across the floor to land at her side, his arm going round her shoulders as he looked at the dreamwalker accusingly. "What did you do?" he demanded of a blank-looking Billy who didn't have the first clue what had just gone on here.

"I don't know - she came in, she couldn't sleep, we were talking, it was all fine and then... I don't know - I was looking for Maddie, I got dizzy and then she just collapsed," Billy told the other guy as all three of them sat in one position or another, sprawled on the floor.

Lullaby made another pained sound as Dean got there and touched her. She tried to curl up further but that didn't work out for her and she sobbed again. Was she bleeding? She felt like she was bleeding. Or something, she had no idea. She felt like she'd been run over by a truck, like that vampire earlier. She kept hearing the muted tones of speech. Billy. More familiar than that, Dean. And there was a crazy thought in the back of her head that he was supposed to be sleeping.

There were more footsteps on the staircase, and down came Oz, stopping just short of Billy and Dean. "What the..." he started, not even sure what he was looking at, and he reached out to flip on the light, one hand clapped over his bad eye so he didn't give himself a migraine straight off.

"What did you do to her?!" Dean repeated, practically growling. He didn't raise his voice though, Dean rarely raised his voice - even when he shouted, it wasn't usually something most people would class as 'shouting', just louder than his usual tone. He looked round at Oz. "I came down here because I heard a scream and... I found her like this."

"Not me - I didn't do anything, I hardly even touched her - we were just talking," Billy promised, scooting a little away and holding up his hands in the universal 'I'm innocent' pose.

There was a moment there where Oz was seriously looking at his best friend, and Dean, and wondering if he was going to have to pull Dean off of Billy. Which was the strangest kind of thought ever. Either way, it had him moving a little between the two of them, and he was looking down at Billy. "...Billy, you're..." he started, noting pretty damn quickly in the light that his friend lacked all the bruises--plus he was moving a hell of a lot better than he should be. He knelt down next to Lullaby's head, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder, though he immediately took it back when she flinched.

Lullaby, for her part, had her eyes squeezed shut tight, and she was trying to think past the pain. She had to move. She had to. Her side hurt really badly, and she needed to not be laying on it. So she let herself fall onto her back, even if she immediately tried to curl back up again. Drawing in a sharp, deep gasping breath, she tried to say something but all that really came out was a pained mumble about dark spikes. She tried opening her tear-blurry eyes to look around and her eyes fell on Dean. Half reaching up with her arm that wasn't made of broken glass, she flopped her hand against his arm, though who knew what the purpose was there. Some vague part of her noted that he looked...really upset.

"It's okay, it'll be okay, it's okay," Dean told her, even though he knew that she probably couldn't hear him. He couldn't think what the hell had happened - she looked like someone had just attacked her and she was bleeding. He looked up, then round, grabbing for the first aid kit that Sophie had left by the side of the couch from earlier when she was patching up Billy's wounds. Something flickered in the back of his mind at that - something there that he knew didn't make sense, but how could he think of anything when she was bleeding? He grabbed a pad or something from the kit and pressed it to the first wound he could find.

"I'm what?" Billy asked, his attention on Oz. Hopefully he wasn't about to say 'you're about to get beat to shit for something you haven't done'. "Look - we were talking and all of a sudden she collapsed. I have no fucking clue what's going on here, honestly. I didn't touch her," he protested again, standing. And that was when it clicked in for him and he looked down at himself, his clothes still torn in places and dotted with dried blood. He lifted his broken - or, apparently formerly broken - arm and twisted his hand round. "Oh," he said, looking first at Oz, then down at the two teens on the floor.

Oz was blinking. "Did she just--" he started, thinking that was a little...well. Insane was a weird word to use, but he'd never seen anything like that. He didn't have any experience with instantaneous healings. And..apparently it hadn't been a free deal. Because looking down at Lullaby, he could even see where some of the wounds she had corresponded to what had been on Billy. Fuck.

She made a weak sound when Dean pressed against one of the wounds, a light 'ow' in there somewhere, shakey. She was trying to think. It was just...difficult with her head feeling so fuzzy. It was all so sudden. But she tried to talk. "It's okay." she echoed Dean in there somewhere. He really really looked upset. She reached up to half put her hand over his but there was no pressure there. She was still trying to figure things out. "There were all these black spikes, and I took them." she rambled. She realized that probably didn't make sense but she didn't know how else to say it, and she thought some explanation was really needed. And maybe then she could take a nice long nap.

"No, no - stay awake, you have to stay awake," he told her. Oh god, Joshua was going to kill him. He was supposed to protect her - he'd promised that he'd protect her, he'd promised that nothing was going to happen to her and now, this. "Stay with me, stay with me - you don't..." At least part of him was convinced that she was going to die. here and now and just a week after he'd first lost her. This was too soon, too soon and it would always be too soon. He looked up. "Help me." He didn't know what to do here, he didn't know what to do - he'd never had to deal with this and they were just standing there

Oz immediately dropped back down to the floor, and he started looking her over. He grabbed a pad to hold over another wound that was bleeding. "Billy...we either need a full rundown of what you did have, or we're going to need Sophie." he said. Because he knew what some of what was wrong was. Concussion, probably a broken wrist or arm...cracked ribs? Lacerations that he should have been getting stitches for and son of a bitch. Oz swore softly under his breath as one things hit him loud and clear--they'd been meaning to take Billy to the hospital in the morning. Lullaby was dead. She couldn't be brought in.

"Hurts." she said to Dean. Or mumbled, in a slightly slurry manner. She was wishing the world would pick something. Either fuzzy blackness that wanted to overtake, or sharp pained awakeyness. One of the two, really. "Hey...don't worry." she said to Dean. "You look worried. I'm...there were spikes and I saw them and I took them all. Is he okay?" She didn't even know if she was speaking clear enough. Tears kept running but she was starting to get over the initial shock. Kinda.

"What I had? i don't know, erm..." His head had been fuzzy throughout it all, after all. "Concussion, scalp wounds, cracked rib - ribs? on the left side. Broken wrist on that side as well, more lacerations on my back and side... I think that's it. Apart from general cuts and bruises - how in the hell did she do that?" he asked, a little slow on the crisis-scale uptake at times.

"Pain killers, we need painkillers," Dean demanded, because he couldn't stand to see her hurt like that. "And someone help me to lie her down. Yeah, he's fine, just fine - don't worry about anything, Thia, don't worry, it's going to be fine," he told her, not really caring what he was saying, or really thinking of anything at all. He'd got used to her talking about black spikes - he was assuming they were the same as the black tendrils she saw from him. But her seeing his never led to this. But maybe that was simply because he hadn't been hurt, maybe if he'd been hurt, been near her and hurt, this would have happened from him as well. Did the blackness that she'd described as being so good for her attack her as well? Did she have a backlash from what she was just as he had, only worse - much worse.

Well, being the couch already had blood on it, it might as well have more. Though if she had lacerations on her back to tend to...this was messy. "I have no idea." Oz said to Billy. He lifted up the bandaged he'd had pressed to her skin, and noticed that it wasn't bleeding too badly. "Should be some in the medicine cabinet...the shit we gave you earlier, Billy." He looked down again at Lullaby then up at the couch. "Let's move her up, on her good side. We'll have to get a look at her back." he said, and he moved to position himself on the other side of her, so they could try and lift her at the same time. She didn't look terribly heavy and she wasn't going far.

"Okay." she said. What that was in relation to, who knew, though in her head, it was to Dean's telling her it would be fine. And maybe it would be! After a nap. Or something. "It'll be okay." she added in there a little randomly.

Billy nodded and headed off to find painkillers as Oz and Dean lifted her carefully onto the couch. This was just too weird - he felt fine, like nothing had ever happened - in fact as he walked out of the room, he dragged the bandage off his head and felt at his scalp. Dried blood aside, there seemed to be nothing there, no suggestion of any kind of cut in his skin. He threw the bandage onto a table, rooted through the medicine cabinet, coming up with some fairly strong painkillers, before heading back in again, stopping off to grab her a glass of water to swallow them down with.

She tried really hard not to cry more when they moved her, but being jostled around like that didn't help out the pain levels at all. What it did do was make her slightly clearer. Especially when she tried to move her hand, and she snapped her jaws shut tight on her lower lip, hard enough to make it bleed so she didn't scream again. She didn't keep herself entirely quiet either, but she didn't scream. "Fuck," she breathed, drawing in shallow, fast breaths until the worst of it subsided into only mostly-blinding pain. Her eyes fluttered open again, and she looked at Dean. "Did it...fix him?" she asked. That's kind of what she was thinking about. That could be it...right? Maybe?

Dean didn't answer, but he didn't have to as Billy reappeared and squatted down beside her, holding out the glass and the pills. He was more with it now, having gotten over the initial shock. "Yeah, it fixed him," he assured her with a reassuring smile. "I don't know what you did, Thia - but thank you." And right now, Billy would be ignoring Dean, because he'd settled on the fact that he'd done nothing, that whatever had been done had been done by the girl and he refused to take the blame for her injuries. And if Dean wanted to try and blame him? Well, then Billy was going to let Oz deal with that.

She took the pills and the water with it, thinking it was weird that the first thing in her system since she'd died was painkillers and water. That was just awesome. "Good..." she said, when he said she'd fixed him. Okay so that was what she'd done. She'd taken all the spikes of blackness away. Which meant she got them, as far as she could tell, but he didn't have them anymore. "Welcome." she added belatedly, and there was a very faint smile on her lips. The implications were still sinking in, but she'd healed someone. Or she thought she had.

Dean wasn't a fan of basically being pushed to the side and he bristled, but Billy had pills that would take the pain away and so he took a step back and just glared. It was starting to filter through, what everyone else seemed to have figured out. Somehow Thia had healed Billy, taken his injuries. Everything he saw on her now was what Billy had had before and Billy was walking around just fine. That wasn't right, that wasn't fair. That she could be hurt that easily. But... at least it meant she wasn't dying. Billy had been here for hours and Sophie had described him as stable and... She wasn't going to die. That had been him overreacting. He'd never been so happy to overreact in his life.

Her eyes fell shut, and she concentrated on breathing for a few moments. She was aware that people were worried and she was in a whole lot of pain. But it had hurt worse when she'd been shot through. So there was that. Only, she supposed, when she'd been shot through, she'd at the very least died, so the pain had then stopped. Her mind was less on that though and more drawing over what had happened. She tried to get her memory to clear more, and very lightly moved her hand again to send the shooting, horrible pain through her arm, because that helped clear the head-hurty-fog. She'd touched him and seen all the...whatever-it-was. Must have been so bright and fully there because of how fresh it was, and how extensive the damage was, or that was her current working theory. Okay. So. She'd touched him, and sensed all the badness. Apparently, it wasn't just emotional, or residual from events, and that made sense to her. Pain was bad. It caused badness. And she could kind of see weird patterns, like the knowing or thinking she knew when the hinges were going to go on the trunk at Journey's. Injury was like that, right? Just on a different scale? So, she reasoned that that must be another level. And she'd seen it, and since she'd already established that she could draw in--in fact fed off of--bad energy...she'd taken it into herself. Which had healed him, only it hurt her. But she could deal with that, if she could do this again. If she could literally heal people...maybe that was a start. Maybe she wasn't so useless after all. Maybe, she wasn't bad. Or evil.