Supernatural - Chapter 7: Training Week (Patreon)

Bobby officially began training Murphy. There was no way to build up her physical fitness in a single week, so he planned to concentrate on teaching her how to handle firearms and what she needed to know about exorcising demons.

He'd never believed her claim to be a hunter in the first place.

What kind of hunter didn't even know how to use a gun? Had demon hunters in the future really gotten that useless?

Bobby took her to a secluded spot behind the hill, where hardly anyone ever came.

He held out a handgun, keeping the muzzle pointed at the ground. “Take it.”

Murphy looked from the gun to Bobby, barely containing her excitement. “Just take it like that?”

“Well, at least you had the sense to ask.” Bobby sounded unimpressed. “Three things to remember. Never point it at somebody, keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to fire, and never take anybody's word for it that a gun isn't loaded.”

He removed the magazine and pulled back the slide, showing Murphy what to check.

“See that?”

She nodded.

“Your turn.”

Murphy took the gun and repeated everything he'd just done. She was clumsy about it, but she didn't miss a step.

Bobby gave her a second look. He didn't comment, though. “Your finger.”

Murphy glanced down. Without realizing it, she'd rested her index finger near the trigger. She immediately moved it along the outside of the frame.

“I'm only telling you once,” Bobby warned.

“Got it.”

He corrected her stance and had her adjust her grip. Pointing to a target he'd set up a short distance away, he said, “Don't lock your elbows. You're not wrestling the gun, all right? Watch the front sight and squeeze the trigger slowly. Don't jerk it back.”

The target wasn't far away. Bobby clearly wasn't planning to make things too difficult for someone who'd never handled a gun before.

Murphy fixed her gaze on the generously sized target and held her breath without realizing it.

“Breathe,” Bobby reminded her.

A shot rang out.

Her first bullet struck the target, though nowhere near the red bull's-eye.

The sudden bang and recoil kicked her arms sharply upward. Murphy froze for half a second, then her eyes began to shine.

“One more.” Remembering the jolt of the gun, she felt certain she'd do better on her next shot.

Bobby frowned. “You're getting a little too excited about this.”

“I've never even touched a real gun before. Only in games. If real life were a game, I'd already be an expert marksman.” Her confidence was inexplicable, but she wore it proudly.

“This is real life, not a video game. What goes on inside that head of yours?” Bobby grumbled.

Murphy merely pursed her lips, raised the gun again and focused on the sight. “Watch this.”

The gun fired a second time.

Bobby stared at the target, his expression turning strange.

The bullet had landed almost dead center.

“Beginner's luck,” he said, searching for an explanation.

Bang!

Another shot. This time, the hole was right in the middle of the red bull's-eye.

Murphy arched her eyebrows at him provocatively and mouthed a single word: “Luck.”

Bobby closed his eyes and struggled to keep his temper. “Don't get cocky. You've still got plenty to learn.”

Over the next few hours, he moved the target to different distances and made her practice loading, unloading and shooting over and over.

Her movements were still far from polished, and she wasn't nearly as fast as a real hunter. But once someone pointed out a mistake, she almost never made it twice.

By the end, the bullet holes were consistently clustered in one small area of the target.

...

When Dean came back that evening, he found Bobby sitting on the couch like his soul had left his body, staring blankly into space.

“What happened? Was Murphy that hard to teach?” Dean asked with a grin. He'd figured her confidence had been misplaced.

“Depends what you mean by 'hard to teach,'” Bobby said slowly.

“No way.” Dean caught the implication, and his smile vanished.

“Way.” Bobby slumped farther back. “We even finished shooting practice early. Know what happened next?”

“...I don't think I want to.” Dean had a feeling he wasn't going to like Bobby's answer.

“I thought I'd move on to the basics about demons. Turns out she knows most of it already. Every now and then, she'd even mention something I've never heard of.”

“You're kidding.” Dean could only stare.

“Who knows? She says the rest won't be discovered until the future.” Bobby rubbed his face. “I got tired of playing twenty questions and dumped her in the study.”

“Oh, great! Another nerd around here!” Dean could already see himself running out of excuses to keep Murphy from joining them by the end of the week. “Sounds like she soaks everything up like a sponge.”

“Who's a nerd?” Sam asked, walking into the living room. “Murphy?”

“Who else? You and her. Neither one of you is any trouble at all,” Dean grumbled, folding his arms.

“She's not your little sister,” Sam pointed out meaningfully.

“I...” Dean was about to fire back when Murphy burst out of the study, looking as though she'd lost her mind.

“Ha! I did it!” She laughed triumphantly. “I feel incredibly powerful right now!”

Dean and Bobby rolled their eyes in unison.

“Oh, really?” An idea struck Dean, and he gave Sam a look.

Sam looked resigned, but he played along.

He walked over to Murphy without saying a word and gently poked her upper arm with one finger.

“Owww!”

It was as though he'd flipped a switch. A wave of muscle soreness hit Murphy all at once, leaving her barely able to lift her arm.

“So very powerful,” Bobby remarked mercilessly.

Murphy rubbed her suddenly aching arm, grimacing, and glared furiously at Sam.

Sam withdrew his hand, looking innocent. “Just reminding you. It's only the first day.”

“Thank. You. I know that perfectly well,” Murphy ground out.

“You should take a hot bath tonight. It'll help your muscles relax before bed.” Sam meant it as friendly advice, but as soon as he said it, he remembered what had happened the night before.

Ellen had left Bobby's house that day to look for her daughter. What if Murphy got into trouble in the bathroom again?

“Actually, forget I said that,” he amended quickly. “I'll find you some painkillers. Get washed up and get to bed early.”

Murphy remembered last night too, and an awkward silence seized her. “Uh, thanks. I can just stay under a hot shower a little longer.”

“Watch the water temperature!” Dean added loudly. “And don't do anything else to that poor bathroom door.”

“I get it!” Murphy stormed off, red with embarrassment.

...

For the rest of the week's training, Bobby gave Murphy little opportunity to let her success go to her head.

Stationary targets gave way to moving ones at different distances, and she no longer had the luxury of planting her feet in one comfortable position. Loading, unloading and clearing jams all had to be practiced until she could do them without thinking.

Murphy continued to improve at an astonishing pace.

On the afternoon of the second day, she'd just changed magazines when a loud crash came from behind her. She stepped sideways almost by instinct, turned and raised her gun. But before she'd identified the source of the noise, she made sure her index finger stayed well clear of the trigger.

Dean stood behind her. An overturned metal bucket lay at his feet.

They stared at each other for several seconds.

“Not bad reflexes,” Dean conceded reluctantly.

“Oh my God. If you've got nothing better to do, can't you go have some fun? Have a drink with somebody? Talk to people?” Murphy was more shaken than she wanted to admit. “I nearly shot you!”

“But you didn't.” Dean was still grinning.

From a distance, Bobby watched him with folded arms and a cold expression. “Try that again and I'll make you her moving target. Doesn't sound much different from what you just did anyway.”

Dean shut up immediately.

Besides handling guns, Murphy had to memorize a mountain of demon-related information. She knew most of it already. What she needed to learn was how to use that knowledge quickly when everything around her was going wrong.

Holy water could hurt demons, devil's traps could hold them in place, and only an exorcism could send them back to Hell. Even after a demon left its host, the host's injuries wouldn't magically heal. That was why shooting was never the first choice.

Sam slowly recited the exorcism in Latin while Murphy followed along. To his astonishment, she managed to repeat it, haltingly, almost immediately.

“Okay. Now I really get what you meant about your memory being annoyingly good,” Dean said, staring at her.

In all these years, he'd never once managed to memorize that entire Latin exorcism.

“You're sure you've never studied Latin?” Sam asked.

“Never.” Murphy closed the book. “But I can remember it.”

“So you have hyperthymesia?” Sam searched his memory for a name for it. He couldn't think of anything else that might explain how her mind worked.

“Not exactly. Hyperthymesia is mainly about remembering things you've experienced yourself.” Murphy had looked into the question online before.

“Then what do you call this?” Dean asked. He didn't really understand what the two of them were talking about, but that wasn't going to stop him.

“No idea. Once I've seen or heard something, it's almost impossible for me to forget it. I guess you could call it a photographic memory.”

“Everything?” Dean asked with some difficulty.

“Everything.”

“Wow,” both brothers said together.

But Dean found himself thinking that if it really worked that way, she'd remember every terrible thing just as clearly as the good.

“What sort of family raises a kid like that? Or were you born with it?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Probably born with it. I grew up in an orphanage,” Murphy replied lightly.

And she meant it. Growing up without a family had never bothered her very much.

“Oh.” Dean was suddenly at a loss.

His big green eyes darted around the room while his fingers awkwardly picked at an imaginary speck of dirt on his cheek.

Sam could tell Murphy wasn't upset. To spare his brother any more of this bizarre embarrassment, he simply returned to teaching her about exorcisms.

Murphy herself pushed to speed up the rest of the training.

On the third day, Bobby made her draw a complete devil's trap by herself and practice reloading quickly after firing. By the fourth, Dean was showing her basic hand-to-hand techniques while Sam stood by, pointing out how she could improve her movements.

She couldn't possibly master in a few days everything the brothers had learned over more than twenty years. Even so, she'd come an extraordinary distance from the clueless newcomer who'd first arrived.

Every night before bed, she filled several more pages of her notebook. She planned to hide it beneath her pillow before they left, just in case she never came back.

After dinner on the fourth night, Murphy told everyone, “I think we can leave tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Dean paused with a forkful of pie halfway to his mouth. “Oh, right. All that stuff you said about getting there early and preparing, huh?”

“Right.” Murphy nodded.

Then she remembered what Dean would have been doing the following night according to the show's original timeline. Her expression turned a little odd.

“Come to think of it, you've really had it rough these last few days. We haven't given you any time to go out and have fun.”

Dean eyed her suspiciously. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Murphy lowered her head and sipped her water. “It's just that, originally, you were supposed to be having a much more interesting week.”

Sam heard the implication and looked up at them.

Dean narrowed his eyes. “How interesting?”

“Oh, about twice as much fun.” Murphy said twice, but she pointed at Dean and held up three fingers.

Dean dropped his fork. It clattered against his plate.

Sam stared for a second, then caught on and bent over, laughing under his breath. “Oh my God... You even know about that?”

“How much do you know?” Dean looked devastated. “That's my private life!”

“A little more than you'd like me to.” Murphy answered truthfully. “Sorry. I shouldn't have brought that up. It won't happen again.”

“Again? What does the future even mean anymore? God, I feel like somebody's stripped me naked in public.” Dean was so embarrassed he wanted to disappear into the floor.

He might enjoy chasing women, but that didn't mean he wanted everyone knowing the details of his sex life.

“Uh, I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have said anything.” Only now did Murphy realize just how much she'd upset him and how inappropriate the comment had been. She rubbed her hands together awkwardly.

Life these past few days had been so different that she'd briefly forgotten the social rules she'd set for herself long ago.

And now she'd gone and made a complete mess of things again.

Dean noticed how uncomfortable she looked.

He really was mortified, but he covered it with a joke anyway. “Well, now I know I was supposed to have one hell of a good night tomorrow.”

“Enough. I don't need any more pictures in my head,” Bobby growled, thoroughly fed up with these kids. “Keep talking and you can wash everybody's dirty dishes. We're packing tonight, getting everything ready, and leaving first thing in the morning.”

“Where exactly are we headed?”

Bobby's last question was clearly meant for Murphy.

She pushed all those chaotic thoughts aside and answered seriously, “Lincoln, Nebraska.”