Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, places, canon plotlines, or pop culture references you see herein. And I don't have a lawyer, but I do have a dog. So watch out.

Warnings: Violence, Profanity, some sexual situations, and cliché-ness abound.

A/N: Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages, I present to you: Ixnay. It is a labour of love, and I'm a bit nervous about it, but here goes nothing. Enjoy.

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Thud.

There was dust floating through the air in front of him, coloured red and green and blue from the light filtering through the stained glass windows. Above him, an angel with a hole through his face looked down, the coloured glass broken to show a single patch of night sky and the dark spaces between the stars.

Thud.

It took him a minute to realize that what he was seeing was wrong. Sideways. He was lying on the floor, face pressed against the cool dust. The moment it took to re-orientate himself gave him vertigo, and nausea followed.

Thud.

Shit.

He still wasn't quite all there- somewhere in the back of his mind his subconscious was cataloguing his injuries in a clinical voice- Just regained consciousness. Arm, broken. Concussion, likely. Situation, screwed.- but the rest of him was dizzy and questioning. Where was he?

Thud.

Oh. Right. Church. Well, cathedral. Abandoned and breaking down and being broken into by one pissed off ogre.

Thud.

By the sound of it, the ogre had either ripped a tree from the ground to use as an impromptu battering ram, or he was simply throwing his massive, fugly body against the door repeatedly.

Thud.

Really, he wouldn't be surprised by either. But he'd probably go with the latter- Ogie hadn't struck him as the sharpest needle in the haystack.

Thud.

Heh. Maybe he was still a bit more out of it than he thought, he doubted he'd be mixing his metaphors if he was running on all four cylinders.

Thud.

ROOAAWR.

Or, you know, be worried about mixing his metaphors when a two-tonne steaming sack of muscle and bloodlust was trying to smash down the door of his current hiding spot.

The church was old and crumbling, but the door should hold. Oak, sturdy and thick, it looked like it had weathered too many centuries of storms and bandits and heathens to be broken down by some jacked-up little green man.

Thud.

But, you know, better safe than sorry. He peeled himself off the floor, waited for the room to stop impersonating a merry-go-round, and evaluated the situation. Calm and professional, movements fluid. Nerves make you sloppy. And who gets nervous because of one measly little ogre?

His arm hurt like a bitch. It was probably only a minor fracture, but the skin was red and purple, bruised, and it looked funny. A Picasso arm, not quite how it was supposed to be. There was a bump there, in the middle, and he could imagine the bone bent out of whack just under his skin, spider webs of fracture snaking through it. It throbbed, sharp and slow. Well, that was one arm out of commission. But that was okay. He could take on Mr. Ogre one-handed. Sure.

He had a vague memory of splinting it tightly with a few straight sticks, courtesy of the apple orchard outside, and the remains of one of his dark-coloured t-shirts. His navy blue button down, the nicest article of clothing he owned that wasn't military surplus, had been sacrificed to make a sling. The arm was held tight against his chest, and would be fine for a little while longer until he could get professional help. It still sucked. But he took the pain in with a slow breath, controlling it.

Thud.

Weapons...hmmm...knife, knife, knife, and fuckin' bad ass huge knife? Check. Semi-Auto Pistol? Check. Shot gun? Eh, not so much. Bullets? A bit shy on those too. Cross bow? MIA. Cross bow bolts? Fat lotta good those will do. Wooden stake? Toast. Holy water? Who cares? Salt? Present and accounted for and not worth its weight in...well, you know.

Oh, wait...RPG? Hell yeah.

He was glad he had decided to invest in some heavy artillery the last time he cruised through Florence, and that the weapons dealer he'd been negotiating with had thrown in the grenade launcher as a bonus. Damn Ogie had chased him around the last three days through Bumfuck, Italy. Pretty cobbled streets, Tuscan sunrises and fields of nothing, yeah, would look very nice in a brochure or hanging above a mantel, but was a bitch to be on the lam in. It was a little unusual to see an Ogre this far south, but that hadn't seemed to bother Ogie or its rampage. His bike had been spread across the last paved road going into town like butter over bread, he was wet, hungry, tired, and bleeding, and the damn bastard wouldn't go down.

The ogre really shouldn't have been a problem. A couple of worried villagers, some No Signors and Yes Signorinas, a little firepower and bam- he should've been in and out before you could say lasagna.

Nah, the ogre hadn't been a problem- it was the hoarde of vampires who were using the ogre as a handy distraction that had put up a fuss.

A few beheadings, some shish-kabob action, one seriously hot potential nun-to-be, and a car chase involving a Lamborghini and his now DOA motorcycle later and the vamps were extinct. Expunged. Exterminated. Ex- dammit, he had to have a concussion.

Anyway, he had somehow managed to drag himself through an orchard, trying to get back to town, when Mr. Ogie decided to make his reappearance. He thought he had bought him some more time by holing up in the empty cathedral, but apparently Ol' Green and Ugly had caught up. Huh. Maybe it was smarter than it looked.

Wait...something was missing. He looked around the cathedral slowly, taking in its stone-and-mortar carcass. Vacant pews, vacant altar, dust and shadows. Nothing to see here folks, move along. The air was still, silent.

Oh, shit.

The ogre hadn't made a sound in the last...he checked his mental clock, furiously back-pedaling and cursing, trying to fight his way through the steam and fog of the concussion. Fifteen minutes. Tops. Absolute silence.

Oh, shit, shit, shit.

Apparently Ogie had abandoned trying to phase itself through the door, beam me up, Scotty. Which posed the question...where the fuck was it now?

He raised the RPG, and spun in a slow, slow, fuck concussions, circle. Dead silence. Dead still.

Bad choice of words.

"Here kitty, kitty, kitty," He called into the darkness, eyes glinting, taking in every shape and movement, predatorily.

"Come on out to play, kitty..."

The hooded leather jacket rustled just a breath above silence. He moved with the quicksilver grace and violence of an animal on the hunt.

He was.

The wind was silent through the leaves of the apple trees in the orchard. The faceless angel, arms out, belied no movement in the shadows of the night behind it. The sun was still an hour or so off from rising, but the air was thin and moist with the expectance of dawn. His breath came out in puffs of fog.

Dammit, he was getting edgy. Still, he didn't so much as twitch or sneeze. Almost two years of practice, and a brain-load of instinct had trained him well. He could play the strong and silent card, too.

SLAM!

The faceless angel shattered into a million pieces of colour, splinters of glass hitting the stone floor and sending dust-devils whirling into the air. A hulking shape, huge and tightly muscled with coils of sinew, bulgy and sweating and ugly, launched itself through the window right at him.

He threw himself to the left. Little needles of red and gold and green glass gored into his skin, but the dark body of the ogre overshot. The ogre hit the hard floor with a smash that rattled the tiny church and probably woke up god, before wheeling around to face him with a roar. The thing was freakin' huge- he was six-foot-ridiculous himself, and the monster hulked and loomed over him.

A huff of laughter escaped him, "You wanna play, kitty? Hit me with your best shot."

The ogre roared and charged. He dodged, swirling like a matador to face him again. Okay, plan. He just needed a little distance between them...

Ogie swung a fist the size of a Dalmatian towards his head, he ducked and rolled. There was no use hitting the fucker, its skin was like lead. Swollen, pimply and scarred lead.

The blood in his veins felt carbonated with adrenaline. Zingy. Tangy. Boosted. Red Bull...Concussion. Hooh-boy.

Another hay maker came his way, and the momentum carted the ogre forward, crashing into the empty pews, sending them shuddering and scraping across the flagstone floor.

His back was now against the gaping hole where the no-faced angel had stood and shattered. Cool, Italian and sweet night air washed over him. Heavy with the scent of apples. The perfect chance.

"Hey kitty!" Obsidian eyes bored into his sea-coloured ones. The ogre huffed and snarled, hunched and ready to charge at him. Puffs of steam rose from his slitted nostrils. It had a face like a Pekingese. One clawed hand rested its fingertips lightly on the flagstones in a sprinter's ready position.

"Eat shit."

He flung himself backwards, out the window onto the soft grass and hard ground beneath.

"Oomph." The air made a break for it from his lungs.

Half a second later he twisted up and was off and running. The Ogre roared, came charging towards the window. But the point wasn't to get away from him.

It was to get away from the church.

He turned, leveled the RPG, aimed and Die Motherfucker! shot, the force jerking his whole body. The grenade zoomed through the air, a dark falcon spiraling in on Ogie's face. For an instant he saw its confused face, cross-eyed as it focused on the missile, framed by the remaining shards of the stained-glass window.

The cathedral exploded.

He ducked, knees hitting the grass, launcher falling beside him. He threw his good arm up over his head. Stone and oak and holy ground flew up and rained down on him.

After a while, the world stilled.

He breathed slowly into the damp earth. Okay, so it hadn't been a great plan. But it had worked. Concussion still there, arm still broken and hurting like Charles Dickens, or whoever the fuck. Church gone, though. He felt a little sad. It had been a neglected little thing, but he had spent the last few hours- days?- holed up in there, sheltered for a short while, bleeding on the flagstones. It was still a place of prayer, even if no one had come to pray for a good long while.

Or, it had been until about fifty seconds ago.

He sighed, breath muffled against the soggy grass. Okay. So. Hospital.

Slowly, he stood up. The orchard stretched ragged and unkempt around him, as neglected as the little steepled cathedral had been. The gently curving hills of northern Italy were rolled out beyond that, the skin of the earth stretched loosely over them, mostly in darkness, with pockets of light from the sparse country towns. He was fairly certain there was a town about a mile to the east, Abbascia-something-or-other. He was even fairly certain it had a hospital.

He thought about going west instead, maybe hitching a ride to Milan or Pavia or whatever city was closest, forgoing the hospital trip altogether. He could set his own arm...he had done it before, once, in the sewers of Paris, and while it wasn't an experience he was eager to make a habit of, it was almost better than the ospedale.

Still, there was the concussion. The nagging, buzzing concussion that hovered and quivered over his mind. And he didn't dick around with head injuries.

With another drawn-out, dramatic, perfectly appropriate sigh, he set off. Trudged. Hospital it would be. The apple trees passed by him one by one. Dawn was slowly rising in front of him, a thin band of bronze and smelting fires on the horizon.

He didn't dick around with head injuries, wasn't willing to take that chance. Not for the last one-almost-two years.

Not since he had woken from a short coma in a Nevada hospital, bruised, crying, choking, and completely unable to remember anything about his life. Who he was, where he was going, where he had been, and what the fuck he was going to do now.

He had remembered nothing, not a name, a town, or any of the answers to the million and one questions he had.

Nothing, that is, except that, in the darkness, there were darker things. Ghosts and demons and werewolves. He remembered those.

And he remembered how to hunt them.

His steps were driven and determined, hiding away the exhaustion and fine edge of pain. Last night had been a bitch. Injured and hiding, the loneliness- even in the house of God, where he should have found some sort of comfort- had been oppressing. Nobody was there to ride out the pain with him, or the fear that he would've sworn he didn't have if anyone had asked.

He wiped his brown hair out of his eyes. Dammit. It was getting far too long, he'd have to cut it soon. Something like that could be dangerous, a distraction on the hunt.

Rexford Doe looked gauzy-eyed up to the slowly rising sun. The town Abbascia-something-or-other sat cowed on the hillside, warm and inviting and despicable in its charm.

Six minutes from now, a woman sprinkling corn on the dirt for her chickens would give a shriek as a thin, wobbling stranger collapsed on the road in front of her, mouth hitting the dirt. Six minutes later a group of good Samaritans would carry his unconscious body to the hospital.

Six minutes from now, the boy who used to be called Sam Winchester would collapse from exhaustion, after surviving on nothing but will-power, cigarettes, and caffeine for the past two days, in a little whatever-named town in Italy.

Sam was as good as dead.