Dean shushed her, turning as she spoke and jogging with her in his arms, back to where her bag had fallen.  He had remembered seeing it when he finally found her.  With a rough grunt, he dipped, not letting her go, and grabbed the straps of the bag.  He hoisted it around his shoulder and straightened himself with another groan.  He was in a bit of pain, himself but he wasn’t sure exactly what was hurting his back.  Right now, he had a mission.

As he followed her instructions on where to check for a way out, he spied his bag, still zipped and lying against the small wall.  Sighing, he ran over to it as well, going through the same painful motions and throwing it around the shoulder on top of her bag.

“You’re fine.  You’re going to be fine.  I don’t want to hear you talk like that, you hear me?”, he finally spoke, referring to her saying she was the one who messed everything up.  He clenched her tightly, and closed his eyes, feeling the air flowing through the cavern, “It’s this way…”

He whispered the last words, turning to his right and running through a tight tunnel.  He hugged her a bit tighter to his chest as he did, realizing that he was getting extremely winded, and his back was screaming at him.  It wasn’t something he normally paid much attention to during hunts, but couldn’t take his mind off, this time.  They were both injured, but she was bleeding badly.  Huffing, he finally reached the dark open air and stopped as he reached the entrance to the cavern, finding it surprisingly open.  He was just as surprised that he recognized most of their surroundings, once he walked out of the cavern a little further, and not far to their left was Mika’s car.

“Hey…silver lining.  You parked the getaway car, right next to the cavern.  Who would have thunk?”, he joked, attempting to keep her calm as he walked quickly through the wet gravel, closing the last few meters between them and the car.  He quickly used his free hand to shakily open the car door, and sat her down in the passenger seat, realizing in the interior light just how much blood was on his hands.  He carefully placed her legs in, raising the injured one up onto the dash, “Keep this up here…It’ll help with the bleeding.  Hey…everything is fine.”

As he finished his sentence, he reached down and cupped her chin, leaning in to give her a small kiss.  He pulled away with his eyes pressed closed tightly, showing his worry and then huffed and ran around to the drivers side.  Starting the car with a loud rumble, he peeled out of the gravel, his free hand on Mika’s thigh.

“Just talk to me…”