Chapter 1 Unexpected

February 2010. Nebraska.

Dean stared moodily into the glass of whiskey on the table in front of him. He didn't really want to be here, but he'd thought Sam would object if he sat in the room and drank without saying a word. Or would want him to talk about it. Share his feelings. Something.

At least here, no one cared.

It was just a small neighbourhood place. The short polished bar had a couple of regulars, drinking beers and watching a game on the television set screwed high on the wall in the corner. A dozen small tables were scattered around the rest of the long, narrow room. The walls were dark, panelled in plywood and stained an unlikely shade of reddish-brown. In the corner, a small jukebox, under strict control of the bartender, played nothing but blues and old folk ballads. It was enough to bring anyone down after a few of them. It certainly kept the bar's sparse clientele from speaking.

He was hunched over a small table in the corner of the room, where a burned out or missing bulb in the closest down light had made the corner darker than the rest of the place. It suited his mood.

Ever since Carthage, he'd been running on empty. And things had gotten worse since Carthage. A lot worse. Most of the time, when he was busy, or driving, he didn't notice it so much. But the evenings were killers. He couldn't think of anything but the failures. His failures.

Ellen and Jo. Sam, screaming in the panic room. That'd taken four days and he'd made himself stand there and listen, nearly the whole time. No help had come in response to the soul-shredding plea he'd sent out. When Sam'd staggered out, on the fourth day, he'd been braced for his brother's recriminations, but Sam'd just slept for two days and hadn't said a word about it since.

Michael. Anna. His parents. Nothing he'd done or said had helped. Bloodlines, Michael had said, all the way back to Cain and Abel. He stared at the whiskey in his glass, tilting it this way and that. More angel bullshit. Cas'd told Bobby and Bobby'd finally admitted that what Ellie had found out, months and months before, was true. All true. The bloodlines of fallen angels had been mixed and stirred to make keys and vessels. Just two.

The thought of her brought a dull ache and he tossed back the rest of the whiskey, slamming the glass on the table top and rubbing both hands over his face as he buried those thoughts again.

Bobby's dead wife and a whole town filled with zombies. Death. Not the peace he wanted, six foot under and left alone, but a carny trip to Heaven and memories of that place that he wished he didn't have. Bitterness at what the gardener had told them rose up through their spectres. Not his problem, Joshua had said.

Ellie parked the truck in the parking lot at the back of the hotel and turned off the engine.

He'll be at the bar, Sam'd said, his expression a mix of resignation and frustration, with what she'd thought was anger, underlying both.

What happened? she'd asked him, and he'd shaken his head, turning away and dropping into the chair at the table with hunched up shoulders. Too much, that closed-in posture had told her.

Are you alright, Sam?

He'd looked up then, something, some fleeting feeling spasming in his face and then he'd nodded, sucking in a deep breath and making a vague gesture around the room.

Yeah, I'm okay, he'd said and his gaze had slid away from her again. It's been – it's been a hard few months.

For everyone, she thought, pulling the keys out of the ignition and opening the car door.

Carrying her backpack and a long canvas duffel up the stairs to the small suite the desk clerk had given her, she wondered if it was such a good idea to go and find Dean now. For the last five months, it'd been all she'd thought of … surviving. Getting back. Seeing him again. But what she wanted wasn't necessarily going to be the same for him, and, if she was honest with herself, she wasn't sure he'd welcome the intrusion now. Bobby had been angry when she'd spoken to him. Angry at the things that'd happened in the last few months. Sam too, she thought, unlocking the door and flipping on the lights, her gaze moving absently around the main room and seeing the double glass doors to the right as she pushed the door shut behind her.

Ellen and Jo had been killed in the attempt to kill Lucifer. They'd managed to get the Colt back, courtesy of a demon who'd insisted that at this particular point in time, their goals were aligned, but it hadn't killed the devil. Had never been able to, Bobby'd told her sourly.

She didn't find that surprising. Lucifer was an angel, not a demon. There were things that could kill him. Not many, she knew, but some. A human-made gun, even with extraordinary supernatural power, wouldn't be among them.

The old hunter had been irritatingly vague on what else had been going on. Carrying her bags to the bedroom through the glass doors, she dumped the duffel at the end of the bed and the backpack on the armchair next to the window and turned for the bathroom, fingers pulling the hairband from the end of the long braid.

Lucifer had summoned Death, and released the Horseman. He'd passed on a message at the same time, via Bobby's dead wife, Karen, not to help the Winchesters with their quest to destroy him.

Turning on the bathroom light and stripping off her travel-grimed clothes, Ellie wondered why Lucifer would try to threaten an old man, even a hunter with Bobby's reputation. Surely the devil wasn't worried about them or what they might be able to do? He held the powers of Hell, the powers of an angel …

The righteous man who begins it is the only one who can finish it … the prophecy's words slid in a whisper through her mind and she paused, her hands on the taps. Was Lucifer taking the prophecy more seriously now?

Whether he was or wasn't, she realised, twisting the taps on, he should've been. The Winchesters were changing things, faster and most profoundly than anyone could've foreseen.

Stepping under the steaming water, she loosened her hair and picked up the shampoo bottle, lathering distractedly as she methodically reviewed everything she knew about the end of days omens and where Dean had already changed the angel's path.

There was no reason for the devil to be afraid, she thought, detangling the long strands with her fingers. But he was afraid – or at the very least, much more cautious about the prospects of his success. Bobby had said that in addition to War being defeated, Dean and Sam had destroyed Famine. That was two Horsemen who would not go about the world. And what the hell did that mean? For the countdown? For the world?

She turned off the shower and reached for a towel, drying off quickly and stepping out onto the mat.

How could Dean – or either or both of them, for that matter – defeat an archangel who commanded Hell? Holy oil would trap Lucifer, as surely as it would trap any angel. Would an angel's sword be able to kill him, she wondered? Or only Michael's sword? Wielded by Michael in his vessel?

The sight of her face, reflected in the mirror over the sink and starkly unadorned under the uncompromisingly harsh bathroom light, caught her attention as she picked up the comb and ran it through her hair. The last few months had left their scars. One red line ran from her brow into her hairline. Three knotted and still-red lines marred her stomach, from ribs to hip bone. She was still too thin, she decided critically, seeing the shadows under her cheekbones and jaw.

Was it a good idea to go and see him now? She didn't know, turning away from the mirror and walking out into the bedroom to get clean clothes from her duffel. She didn't want to make anything harder for him, or even for herself.

Underwear, jeans, tee shirt, button-through shirt. Ellie dressed without looking at what she was putting on, wondering if there was a single good justification for doing what she was about to do. The attitudes of the hunters she'd come across in the last two weeks came back to her. The Winchester name had been bandied around a lot. Not always admiringly.

I'll just see how he is, she decided finally, pulling on her socks and boots. If it gets complicated, I'll leave. Her fingers deftly separated and braided her almost-dry hair into the familiar long plait. She was aware that she couldn't quite admit to the fact that she needed to see him, needed to see him alive.

The clerk at the desk gave her directions to the town's single bar, two and a half blocks away on the Main Street and Ellie walked down to it, stopping in the doorway to scan the room. In the background, the jukebox was droning out a funereal dirge that was vaguely familiar, and for a moment, Ellie wondered if he'd gone further, to sit and drink in a bar with a more cheerful outlook. Then she saw him, hunched over the table in the darkest corner of the room, the closest downlight picking out the tips of gold against the short dark cut, his head bowed over his glass.

"Dean."

Dean looked up and felt the air in his lungs evaporate, his pulse shudder to a stop and the chaos of thought that'd filled his head two seconds earlier wiped away completely. Ellie stood there, a couple of feet in front of his table, her hair blazing under the small recessed ceiling light.

For an endlessly long moment he couldn't say a word, aware that his mouth was open, that he wasn't a hundred percent sure if he was seeing things. He saw her expression soften a little, and it was the abrupt realisation that the compassion he could see in her eyes was for him that broke him free of the shock.

"Sorry, I would've called first, but I've been driving pretty much non-stop for the last couple of days," she said.

"Wha-how – uh, how'd you find me?" It was the least important thing he wanted to know, but the only thing that came out. She was here. Standing right here. As if nothing'd happened. As if –

"Okay if I join you?" She looked down at the second chair at his table and he nodded numbly.

Watching her as she pulled out the chair, dumping the large leather backpack on the floor beside her, he was aware that he had a lot of questions for her, but he couldn't think of any of them right now. There was a new scar that ran from her left eyebrow over the ridge of her temple and into her hairline, he noticed, brows twitching together. Other than that, she looked the same, copper-red hair in a loose single plait, her skin stretched a little more tautly over the bones of her face, as if she'd lost some weight. When he'd looked up, seen her suddenly there, it had felt, for a second, as if he'd seen her only yesterday and all the things that had happened during the intervening time had been wiped away. Now, he felt the weight of the last few months descend again. She'd been gone for seven months, for long enough that he'd been afraid that she'd died.

She turned and nodded to the bartender, holding up two fingers and Dean saw the man grab the bottle and pour the drinks with a flash of surprise, tinged with annoyance. He'd had to go over to the bar to get a fresh drink.

"Sam told me you'd be here," she answered his question, folding her arms on the table in front of her, her tilted a little to one side as she studied him. "And Bobby told me where to find Sam. I heard you tried to kill Lucifer."

He blinked, disoriented at the change in topic. The last thing he wanted to talk about was the goddamned devil, but that was overridden by the fact that she knew he'd tried. How many others knew that? Was it common knowledge?

"Yeah, how did you know that?" he asked, his voice dropping as the bartender approached the table, their drinks on a tray. Ellie gave the man a dazzling smile and coaxed a return smile from him. After listening to Leonard Cohen for the last god knows how many hours, Dean thought distractedly that was an achievement.

Ellie picked up her glass, swallowing a mouthful before she answered.

"I went to see Bobby. He's the only person I can trust to tell me the truth about you two now." She looked at him over her glass, her expression sobering. "There's a lot of misinformation circulating about you – and Sam."

Another irrational spurt of anger overrode her last few words. She'd called Bobby, he thought. Not him. Not even Sam. Hadn't thought that he might've been worried about her. Might've needed to know she was alright. The accusation rose up his throat and he clamped his teeth together, not wanting to let it out. She knew too much about him already and he knew she'd see it, the reason for his anger, if he let it out.

"You know Ellen and Jo are gone?" Looking down at the table, he felt himself shrivel up inside, hating the way that had come out. Casually. As if he'd had nothing to do with it.

She nodded. "I'm sorry, Dean."

The depth of compassion in her voice made him shake his head, trying to brush it off. He didn't want to talk about the failed attempt to ice the devil, he realised. He wanted – he didn't know what he wanted, exactly, but it wasn't to talk about him – or Sam – or the things that had happened since she'd disappeared.

"Where – where the hell you been, Ellie? We thought you were dead."

Grimacing inwardly as he heard an edge of anger in the words, he was relieved when she didn't seem to notice.

"Well, you were almost right," she said, her voice light as she looked away. "It's, uh, a long story. Not a very interesting one."

"What happened?" He tapped his own temple then looked pointedly at the scar on hers.

"Alaskan job. Got a bit out of hand for awhile." She sipped at her whiskey, then lifted her gaze to look at him curiously. "What about you? You and Sam hunting together again?"

"Yeah. Turned out the Apocalypse was too big for me to handle alone." He shrugged, clearing his throat. "You were gone for a while."

Ellie nodded as her gaze slid away again. "It was a mess, took me a while to get back."

He wanted to ask what'd happened, but something in her expression stopped him. It might've been the truth, he thought. But it wasn't the whole truth. And she didn't want to talk about it.

There was a part of him that did want to tell her everything, he realised, keeping his gaze on his glass. Everything that'd gone down since she'd walked out of that crappy hotel room in Manhattan. He thought of Famine and the Horseman's words echoed in his mind.

"You don't look happy any more, Dean."

The memory of their last conversation came back clearly and he looked across the table at her, a flush of disbelief and a residual anger and a sense of longing he couldn't understand filling him. She wasn't the only person he could talk to, he reminded himself impatiently. But, the thought intruded a moment later, she was the only one he wanted to talk to, the only one he thought was safe enough. Sitting there, on the other side of the small, round table, she was close enough to touch, real and alive, and he closed his fingers hard around his glass, to keep from reaching out.

"No, can't say that I am," he agreed.

"What happened?" she asked, leaning a little closer. He looked up, his eyes meeting hers. She didn't ask questions to keep the conversation going. The concern he could see was genuine, and something inside him unwound, very slightly.

"I missed you."

Dean's gaze dropped instantly, brows drawing together slightly as he stared at the table top. He hadn't meant to say that. He had, missed her, but he'd meant to say something funny, something to brush off her concern, something snarky to get the conversation back to where he could feel comfortable instead of feeling like he was sitting there with no armour, no walls. What the hell was he was doing, he wondered, flicking a fast glance at her.

She was looking at him, her face expressionless, and their eyes met briefly. Then she looked away, her gaze scanning the room as if the break in the conversation was just that – a break. Nothing important to say. Or answer.

Studying the half-empty glass in his hand fixedly, Dean's pulse stuttered for a second. The hell did that mean? Did it mean she hadn't missed him? Hadn't spared a thought for him in the time she'd been gone? He'd thought about her. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about her. More and more in the last few weeks, as the failures started to pile up thick and fast. He'd dreamt about her and told himself she couldn't be dead.

He closed his eyes, finishing the whiskey in his glass.

"I'm not sure if it's news, but a lot of hunters are talking about you and Sam. There are some vicious rumours going around," she said, a moment later and he swallowed the raw feeling of disappointment, pretending not to even feel it as he kept his gaze on his empty glass.

Wasn't the first time he'd misjudged someone's interest, he told himself. It didn't happen much but it probably wouldn't be the last time either.

With a casual shrug, he said, "Yeah, we ran into a couple."

Walt and Roy were living on borrowed time. The edge to his voice had deepened, and this time, he realised she had noticed.

"You don't seem all that worried about it."

"Yeah, well, there's a few things higher on our To Do list," Dean told her. His fourth double was finally starting to have some impact, and he thought that just one more and he really wouldn't care.

"Lucifer raised the Fourth Horseman at Carthage?"

"Yeah. Death." His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at her. "Bobby tell you about his wife?"

She nodded, seeming to relax a little more as she met his gaze. Probably because it was a helluva lot less embarrassing talking about the end of the world than his blurted out and unreturned feelings, he decided.

"It struck me as strange that Lucifer would be worried about whatever help Bobby could give you."

He bristled a little. "Bobby's a –"

"I don't mean that," Ellie cut him off. "He's human. You're human. As contests go, the odds are high on Lucifer's side."

She had a point, Dean thought, glancing at her again. "I don't know."

"You took out two of the Horsemen," Ellie said.

"The hell, Ellie," he burst out, scowling. "Bobby just blow his wad whenever you ask him anything?"

Her brows rose a little. "Is it a state secret?"

"No," he admitted. "But – how is it you always know everything that's happened to us and we don't know –"

He cut himself off, turning his head to glare at the bartender. The two glasses were on a tray and the man looked blandly back at him as he picked it up and began to walk slowly to the end of the bar.

"Anything you want to know, just ask," Ellie said.

Just ask, he thought derisively. Like he could do that.

"What d'you know about the Horsemen?"

"They're seals in the countdown to the final battle," she said. "Each one is released and the faithful are protected and the sinners are tortured. That's the take in Revelations, but it's not really what's going on now."

"And what's that?"

"Lucifer wants to get rid of as much of humankind as he can before he faces Michael, I would guess," she told him. "But without the Horsemen, that's going to be a lot harder."

"Two left," he said, almost snatching the glass from the bartender as he reached their table.

"The most powerful two," she agreed. He caught a glimpse of a worried expression flickering over her face as he swallowed half of his drink in a single mouthful.

"Why are you here?"

For a moment, he thought she wasn't going to answer that either, watching her fiddle with the coaster under her glass, her teeth catch her lower lip as she stared at the table top. Then she looked up at him.

"I wanted to see how you were doing," she said.

"Doin' fine," he told her, leaning back in the chair. "All our ducks in a row."

She looked pointedly at his glass but didn't comment and he shrugged off the tacit rebuke.

"There's something else, Dean," she said, finishing her whiskey. "About Death."

"Something else like what?" he asked, and Ellie saw his face shutter up.

She knew the admission of missing her had come hard for him. She just wasn't certain that it hadn't also come from too much whiskey and too much pain.

"How 'bout we finish this conversation someplace more comfortable?" she suggested, seeing him look casually around, his eyes just slightly unfocussed.

He smirked half-heartedly at her. "Like your place?"

Tilting her head a little, she nodded. "Yeah, like my place."

"This mean I'm gonna get lucky?"

"It means," she said, leaning over to grab the straps of her pack. "That if you pass out, I won't have to call Sam to come get your sorry ass."

"Tell me what you really think."

"Wouldn't do anything else."

He looked over at the bartender, lifting his glass. "I'm fine here."

The bartender's gaze shifted to Ellie and she shook her head, registering Dean's disbelieving snort as he saw the byplay.

"Hey, I'm legal, you know."

"Yeah. But you've had enough of this cheap rotgut."

"I'm not going anywhere," Dean said, his mouth turning down mulishly. "I like it here."

Ellie picked up her bag and looked at him.

"But I like my hotel room better, and I have a much better class of whiskey there," she said, her tone reasonable. "One that won't give you the hangover of the century in the morning."

Dean's eyes narrowed slightly. "Tell me about Death."

"When we're there."

He let out a frustrated exhale and she relaxed, seeing him give in. Not, she thought, because he wanted to. He just looked too tired to keep fighting.

"Alright."

Ellie looked dubiously at the Impala as they came out of the bar, turning back to him. "Can you drive?"

"Since I was thirteen," Dean said, walking to the car to open the passenger door for her. He waved a careless hand at the seat. "You don't trust me?"

"I trust you, just, um, not your reflexes," she hedged, looking past him to the black and beige interior.

"You think the angels'd let me get away with a fatal car crash now?" he asked her, his voice mocking.

"Good point," she allowed, getting in.

He closed the door behind her, and walked around the car. Ellie watched him in the mirrors. He looked steady enough. She wasn't sure why she'd insisted on going back to the hotel. It would be more comfortable and she did have a bottle of Blue there, a much better class of whiskey than the crap the bar had served. That was the excuse, though. The reason, she didn't want to look at it.

"Next left." She told him as he started the engine and pulled out onto the empty street.

If nothing else, she thought as he drove smoothly through the empty streets, following her directions back to the hotel, he could at least handle the quantities of liquor he was putting away.