Rating: R
Characters: Ava, Dean and Bobby with hints of Sam/Ava
Summary: She'll forgive him for this later.
Authors Note: This is the sequel to Where Ghosts Fall Silent and although it sat on my hard drive for over a year it's finally finished. With the way season 2 ended it's now AU. Thanks to jazmin22 for her mad beta skills!
They steal Sam's body from the morgue a few hours after midnight.
Ava's quiet. She waits behind Dean, who talks their way past the night watchman smoothly, a smile on his face. He laughs, but it's too sharp, a forced sound that rings out in the empty space. There's a lot she knows about him but watching him now, seeing his face and body shift under the need of the moment, she realizes she doesn't know anything, not really. Ava barely knows herself anymore and maybe that's why she welcomes the spreading numbness inside as she watches Dean search through the metal draws, lets the weight of what they've come to do settle heavily.
The plastic of the body bag crinkles, loud and coarse in her ears, a sound she won't forget as they place Sam carefully in the back of the Impala. "I'll drive," Dean says and Ava feels her stomach lurch, bile burn its way up her throat and out onto the pavement in a warm rush. There is a moment, sharp and bright inside her, of relief, a sensation of freedom as her stomach settles. Then Dean touches the small of her back and Ava feels the press of his thumb against the curve of her spine, but he says nothing. He is patient as she works her way around her grief, this disgust inside.
When she looks at him again she sees the darken patch of blood on his side where he's bled through his stitches. She knows she'll sew him together in the hotel room later, after they've burned Sam's body and released him to his parents, to a place she knows Dean longs to go.
*
They build the funeral pyre together; repeating the catches of Latin between them as they wrap Sam's body. When they are done, but before Dean lights the fire, he draws her beside him. His hand is rough on her jaw, eyes bright. "It's for the smell," he says, thumb spreading something thick and oily over the skin under nose as she coughs, lungs burning at the familiar scent of mint and aloe. She watches him do the same to himself before he lights the pyre. She closes her eyes against the heat and the brilliance of the fire, and clears her mind.
The hours fall away and her body aches from the cold but they don't leave until there is nothing left but smoldering ash. When dawn rises, spreading warmth over them, they watch the wind take the last physical presence of Sam with it.
There should be some sense of closure, of relief, but there is only heavy silence in the Impala.
*
They drift without purpose, without reason, for three days before Dean's cell rings, the beat of a familiar ballad from before her time. Ellen is the only word Dean says into the phone but he listens for a few minutes before snapping it shut.
He doesn't say goodbye.
"Got a job," he tells her and Ava stares at the road ahead, hands flat on her thighs. She doesn't think about Sam.
*
He drills her the night before they go in, the whipcrack of his voice breaking over the pain welling up inside. Her aim isn't good but he gives her the shotgun and she manages ok. He does most of the work, his fathers leather bound journal tight in his hand, as the thing shrieks and wails under his words. Ava watches blackness twine around its legs, pulling it back into the earth where it belongs. When it's over there is only the faint smell of rotting wood, a cloying sweetness that steals away the hunger inside.
*
Ava calls her mother from a payphone in Indiana, a year after she disappears and a month after Sam dies, but the words she wants to say get caught in her throat. She hangs up with the echo of her mother's voice in her ear because there are no words that can make this right. She has no one to talk to, no one to understand this awful weight, this guilt that poisons all she might say to Dean.
She thinks about leaving, returning to the shattered life she left behind because she knows her family would welcome her again, knows it could be ok even with Brady's death. Already she can see her mother's opened face relief and feel her father's strong embrace but Ava doesn't leave, she can't, not until she finds something to bereave her of this responsibility she owes Dean.
*
Dean finds her sobbing in the bathroom, a pregnancy test in her hands, and even from the doorway he can see the little blue line. "Is it?" he starts to ask, the his going unsaid but Ava's crying too hard to answer and her face is bright red, fingers shaking around the plastic in her hand. Dean knows he should comfort her, tell her he's not going to make her go through this alone but he can't make himself move. He can't bring himself touch her, too afraid of what she'll ask of him or what he'll take from her, how he might hurt her to silence this need, this pain that festers inside. His brain is trying to understand, to process the mess his brother left behind for him, when she asks him to leave.
Out of desperation more then anger, Dean puts his fist through the drywall of the motel and feels the satisfying ebb of violence.
*
Ava dreams of miscarriages, drowning in a river of blood before Dean can get to her. She thinks about dying by Sam's hands, giving up everything quietly to him, slipping away. She wakes up sweating, a low ache in her heart as she feels for the baby growing inside.
Dean just calls her name quietly from half a room away and says Ava, Ava it's ok. He never touches her and she aches at the memory of Sam's hand, for the feeling of his skin.
*
He leaves her with Bobby when she starts to show, belly rounded out and gait widened to accommodate the baby growing inside. Ava doesn't argue with him when he brings the idea up. She knows it's better this way. The baby needs a regular doctor and she needs the kind of safety, the stability they both know he can't offer her.
He doesn't say goodbye on Bobby's rusted porch but he touches the side of her face, fingers dry and warm.
She'll forgive him for this later.
*
The room Bobby sets aside for her is small but he helps her paint it pale yellow that makes her think of summer. They get her furniture from Goodwill, a beat-up old dresser and a too small twin bed that makes her back ache. They don't talk much but when they do he makes her feel comfortable, content. He's gentler then Dean, he has the added wisdom of years, all his anger's smoothed over with the passing of time.
*
The baby comes on a Sunday, the coffee cup shattering on the faded wooden floor as Ava reaches for her stomach. The pain that tears through her is almost worse then the memory of her own exorcism and for a second she can't breathe, can't do anything until Bobby touches her arm, guides her to the bed. Push, push, push he says and Ava thinks about Sam, about this tiny life they've made together, the one she'll raise alone.
*
Ava can hear Bobby in the kitchen, taking to Dean, asking him to come back, she needs you to be a man he says. She already knows he won't come back for her, for his nephew, but she doesn't feel the hate she expects. She can't, not with this little life, her baby boy, pale and bloody in her arms.
He's quiet against her chest, little fingers curled around her hair. He doesn't look like either of them, doesn't look like anything but he gurgles happily and Ava feels something warm spread inside, washing over old pains.
"Hey," she says, soft and quiet against the crown of his head.