Thanks so much for all of the support. I was incredibly nervous to post this story, because of some of the touchy content. I'm glad to see it was received without a huge problem.

Warning: This story briefly touches on the aftermath of a fictional school shooting. This is for fiction only, and I don't mean to offend or hurt anyone.


Chapter 2

Dean tinkered under the Impala's hood, searching for something to fix.

The oil was nearly clean; the fluids full, the tires recently rotated; the battery brand new. Despite everything he'd neglected, Sam had taken damn good care of the car. Desperate, he headed inside and out of the blazing Arizona sun. Its interior smelled of Sam and a bit like dog. Dean grabbed an errant plastic sack and dove into the backseat, and collected some of the stray burger wrappers and crumpled napkins.

Wedged under the seat, he found Sam's journal, the trunk full of most of Sam's belongings. He'd barely had anything with him when he'd abandoned the hunt for Amelia. His stomach clenched with something tight and sour that resonated like guilt and stung like worry. Was sleeping? Was he starving? How upset was he? The past week had been an endless cycle of waking up instinctively seeking out his brother and feeling the same nasty pall of doom and solitude shroud him as he once again realized that he was gone.

He flopped back against the Impala's seat, exhausted from a night of restless, crappy sleep. He couldn't even find peace in his beloved Impala without Sam snoring behind him.

It had taken less than a day for Dean to understand just how much his brother's presence had kept him present and clear-headed. Without Sam to snark at or vent to, he'd found Purgatory taking over, anything from the glare of a slipstream trailer to the jingle of a car horn could yank him back to the proverbial coliseum.

His phone vibrated on his hip and his heart leapt wildly at the thought that maybe it was Sam, maybe they could fix this. The number was unknown, but Dean instantly knew who it was.

"Brotha. Gil's Tavern, Bakersfield, California."

Getting to the bar took a little under three hours. Dean strided through the dusty parking lot and inside the shadowed drive. It was surprisingly bright and quiet for a dive off on the outskirts of the city. A small set above the bar providing the only noise besides the clinking of ice hitting glasses.

"The entire nation is still reeling after seventeen middle school students and three teachers were..."

In Purgatory, it was all breakneck violence, constant vigilance and paranoia but as Dean lifted his fifth whiskey sour to his lips, he realized that it had made more sense than this earthly plane.

Purgatory, even though it had stripped him down to the barest of things, an animal that killed and tortured at the slightest provocation, the creatures he killed were only monsters. They weren't innocent children and the people who had dedicated their lives to educating them. Dean's stomach lurched in visceral sympathy even if the whiskey and the weight of the past week had twisted it into smoldering anger. He rubbed a callous hand over his stubbled chin, and beseeched the bartender for another drink and a channel change. "Can we, for the love of God, turn that off?"

The bartender regarded him with prickly disgust as if he was an escaped convict. So Dean tossed him a twenty and a dangerous smile and was watching football highlights a few seconds later.

"In all the bars in all the land, you had to come strollin' into mine, brotha."

The gravelly twang echoed behind him over the din of the country music, laughter and chatter. Dean turned around to fine Benny, his brother in battle, sitting casually in shadowed booth. He kicked out the chair in invitation and Dean slid in, smothering his joy at reunited with a friendly face.

"Dude," he growled.

Benny gulped from his glass of something red and viscous. "I know, brotha, I know."

"You were supposed to go deep, not vamp crazy Martin."

"That man hurt my Elizabeth. Dean, I tried with all the calamity of God, but I couldn't control it. It's fight or flight, and you and me always fight."

"What Martin did, Benny, I get why you reacted. But that just put you on every hunters' radar from here to Timbucktu—"

"And lemme guess that your precious Sammy is at the top of that very long list," Benny interjected. "I ain't worried about hunters, Dean. I've been dodgin' them since Eisenhauer. And what hunter would think to look for a vamp in sunny California?"

Dean crackled his knuckles and glanced away. So many emotions tornadoed through him, it was impossible to discern or process everything that had happened, and the sheer fact that they hadn't spoken since Sam had hung up on him a week ago. That Sam had dumped all of their phones and dropped off the grid as if he'd never existed.

"So Sam's not on your ass?"

Benny chuckled. "I'd smell that kid comin' a mile away, you know that."

"He's got ways around that."

"I hate to break it to you, but those hexbags and voodoo powders are jus' somethin' scared hunters dreamt up. Good vamps can smell those too. After Martin…I went deep like we'd planned. I haven't even checked on Elizabeth."

"She's on the mend, confused as hell though."

"I could always count on you, brotha," Benny's face grew wistful in a way that made Dean's chest hurt. As much as Benny had longed for his freedom, Dean knew that the one thing he liked about Purgatory was that his hunger for blood hadn't followed him down the rabbithole. It was a struggle for him now, one Dean knew from his short-lived romp as a vamp himself. "Remember all those nights in Purgatory when we'd huddle back-to-back in some dank, dark hole, always on guard, and you'd tell me stories about Sam. How whip smart he was and how he kept you sane while you were growin' up…after your daddy died. I'd be lyin' if I wasn't lookin' forward to meeting the kid." Benny began. "I appreciate you keepin' an eye on my kin, but now it's time for you go to find yours."

Dean sat back, challenged and a little angry. He wasn't sure when it had gotten so complex and painful and treacherous between him and Sam. Something traitorously told him it happened around the time he'd used Amelia as way to manipulate his little brother or maybe he'd just brought to light something that had always lingered there, that Dean was thrilled when Sam towed the line and followed orders, but lashed out the second he spoke his own mind and disagreed with him.

The music was cut and two uniformed police officers stood up on the bar, silencing the crowded bar. "I think we're all sickened by what happened back east. I've seen a lot of things in on my beat, and even a cop isn't prepared for something like this, something so...evil. The only way to combat such hatred is with...love. We're passing around a basket, so please look within yourself to donate whatever you can. The money will help with counseling for the kids and parents, to buy them toys for the upcoming holidays and future scholarships."

Even though Christmas was fast-approaching, the basket was nearly full by the time it reached Dean and Benny, but they added their stack of bills. Afterwards, there was a moment of silence. Dean stood still, watching as people bowed their heads, offered their love and money and prayers. People were crazy, but they were also generous and empathetic and self-sacrificing. For the first time in a long time, he knew why he fought and bled and died and suffered.

And he longed for the person who'd been at his side the entire time.

-SPN-

The once impressive interior of the luxury log cabin had been gutted—hand-woven rugs removed, Pottery Barn lamps packed away, custom-upholstered sofa cleared out. The only thing remained was a bold black Devil's Trap, nearly twenty-one feet in diameter, the gothic black chandelier suspended from ceiling and their reclaimed wood dinner table holding various containers of salt, weapons, hammers and gallons of holy water.

Sam hauled the shooter out of the dwindling storm and through the doors, ensuring the possessed man wouldn't weasel out of the devil's trapped head bag by twisting it taut like a noose. It was difficult to reconcile the heavily armed, uniformed man as hunters, but this time, the law was on their side in the form of State Trooper Saul Parkman and his wife Li. Sam offered his free hand to the state trooper Garth had hooked him up with. "He's locked in?" Sam asked, forgoing pretense. The bleak situation made it easier to dispense with niceties.

Saul was a broad-shouldered hulk of a man who looked like he was carved out of granite and just as tough, but he kicked the trussed up prisoner, chin trembling and eyes shining. "Yes." He managed as he gestured to the branded sigil on the man's forearm. He helped drag the prisoner into the middle of enormous devil's trap and lashed him to the cushioned dining chair with salt-crusted chains. "It worked just like you said. I gave him a holy water shower, the demon smoked out, right into the nearest body. We branded him in right after."

Li, the woman who'd offered him their dream home, made the holy water and procured the weapons, stepped forward, ignoring the bound murderer and looked at only Sam. Even though she was had a tiny frame and a slight height, she emanated fierce might that Sam tried to absorb. She ran her fingers through her short hair and looked up at him, tipping her head back. "We can stay, Sam, give you some back up. You don't have to do this alone."

Sam gripped her hand, touched by her generosity. The Parkman's weren't full-fledged hunters. They knew about spirits and demons, and often provided food, shelter and back-up, but had never trapped one and certainly never lit into one for information. Li's grief and maternal ferocity had pushed her this far and he wouldn't let it go further. "It's better this way, trust me. Head back to town with Saul. I'll try not to destroy your house too much."

She waved him off, but her response was truncated by the prisoner. "These are just things. I can get new stuff, Sam. Those children…"

"Don't listen to him, Li, we're gonna burn this mother down."

Li whirled, fist raised, and clocked him right in the face. Sam chuckled as she wailed on him again. He and Saul let her until the sobs began and the attack became more hysterical than purposeful. Sam hauled her back, shocked by her strength. "They were children, all children, you disgusting pile of shit!"

"Saul, this is why you have to go." He explained while Li cried against him.

Saul nodded and flung his own coat around his wife's shoulders, whispering to her as they left. "Call me if this gets hairy, Sam."

"Sure thing."

He waited until their SUV ambled down the snow-slicked driveway before he barred the door, and approached the prisoner, snatching the blood-stained head bag off to behold the mass murderer for the first time.

He smelled like death, and looked barely older than the children he'd killed.

This was bigger than him, bigger than this town and the magnitude of going it alone was overwhelming. Concealing how overwhelmed he was, Sam whistled at Li's handiwork. "She's got a decent right hook."

The demon, who was locked inside the fresh corpse of a junkie, gazed at him with intense, dark eyes, crossing his legs comfortably, lapping at his bloody nose. When it smiled, it was slow and deliberate and decadently evil. "Sam Winchester. I was hoping it was you who'd come for me."

"Don't make me blush, dude."

"My name is Zad."

His eyebrows climbed. "Zad? As in Zadkiel, the archangel?"

Zad was grinning now. "So you are as smart as I heard. I can tell you will be a great conversationalist. Pardon me if I'm not feeling overly chatty."

Sam rolled his eyes and stepped away from the table he was leaning against. "This will be a regular dance party."

"Oh, spooky." Zad trembled theatrically. "They talk about you, Sam, in the pit. You're a bit of a legend down there."

Sam was instantly sweating. He fiddled with the rows of shiny, foreboding instruments on the table. "When you fell with Lucifer and Michael in tow, the bowels of hell were illuminated; they glittered like the Heaven itself. And for one second, the pain and torture and murk stopped. To bring such beauty in a place like that…my dear Sam, I am honored to meet you."

Even after living with a year of demonic torture thanks to Lucifer camping out in his broken brain, the few clear memories he had of the cage were far worse. It was torture beyond description. The only thing he did remember in vivid Technicolor, that haunted his nightmares, was the never-ending descent through earth and rock, through sulfur and brimstone, and into the very knowledge that he would never be topside again. He braced himself against the table as his stomach lurched and his heart ached as he was assaulted by the memories of being stripped of his life and his body until he was nothing but vulnerable, ripe soul and an outlet for Lucifer and Michael's hatred. Vengeance welled up from places Sam had walled off a year ago, and he knew that he just might enjoy carving answers out of those demon.

"Your remaining time can either be painless or they can be the warm up for what's waiting for you below. It's up to you."

"I am an open book." He said leisurely. "Read me, Sam."

"Why did you slaughter those children at the middle school?"

"Children? What children?" He asked dumbly.

Sam advanced into the demon's trap, yanked Zad's head back by his long, greasy black hair and dumped a steady stream of salt down his throat, the flaky kind that would slice and burn like a thousand little knives on the way down. Bucking against his bonds, Zad gagged and choked on the stuff, nearly tipping the chair as he jogged his head to escape it. "You want me to stop?"

Retching, Zad rocked head forward, groaning. Sam snorted and continued on, pouring until the container was empty.

The demon was strong, Sam could feel its power thrumming uselessly within the wasted body of some poor teenager, but it was contained by the devil's trap. He stood back, watching Zad hork up a good pound of salt.

With his arms chained to the rungs of the chair behind his back, Zad craned his head to wipe his face on his sweat soaked shirt. He spat distastefully at Sam's feet, but seemed to recover more quickly than he would have expected.

"I suddenly find myself incredibly parched. Can I trouble you for some water? Evian, though, not holy."

Sam's hackles rose and he glared at the demon, set more on edge by his arrogance and the power that seemed to hover in the great room of the cabin like a nefarious fog. Instead of going for the gallons of holy water, Sam opted for the large bore syringes filled with a nasty combination of holy water, salt, silver ore—one of a thousand inventions from the mind of Bobby Singer.

He stabbed the needles deep into his neck and chest, and injected it fast. With other demons, they'd sizzled and seized and mewled like some rabid, suffering animal. Most demons broke, but the stronger ones held on out of sheer tenacity. Zad, however, hissed and wiggled a bit, coughing up a lungful of smoke. "It itches," he said with an air of annoyance.

The niggling foreboding that had taken ahold of him snowballed, and he somehow knew that this was far more complicated than a rogue demon with bloodlust. Sam jabbed in the last syringe right at the base of his skull with a determined growl. "I can do much better than that."

-SPN-

Cars whizzed by the black Chevy Impala parked sloppily on the side of the road. Its driver cursing angrily as he wheeled a tire from the depths of the trunk.

Dean had made it as far as West Colorado until the Impala rolled over a jagged piece of metal in the road. The popping off the tire had been so explosive, Dean, travelling well above the speed limit, had nearly careened off the road. Impatience with his inability to locate his brother had rendered Dean into a volatile, profane mess. He kicked at his car with the heel of his boot and didn't even regret it when he scuffed the pristine paint.

Sweating and sore, Dean gently lowered the car so it rested into its new tire and rolled the destroyed one out into the ditch. He tossed everything back into the trunk and scrubbed the grease off his fingers. It had taken him nearly an hour to change the tire. As he steered his car back onto the highway, driving a bit more slowly to test the new tire, his cell phone rang. Sam's last cell signal had bounced off a tower in central Illinois, so that's where he was headed.

"What?" he barked, steering the car with one hand.

"Simma down, Holmes. I'm just callin' to make sure you're okay." Garth shot back.

Dean rolled his eyes as he took an exit without signaling. With a couple buckets of caffeine, a pile of junk food and Metallica blaring, he'd be able to push all night. "I'm appreciate the concern, dude, I'm but I'm not even on a case right now. Don't you have a prophet to nag?"

"Nag? The kid is doing my taxes, and his mom makes a mean pot of Pho. I was ring-a-dingin' do see how the torture-fest went with the demon. I told Sam that Saul's a kick-ass helper monkey, ain't he?"

Dean nearly drove off the road for the second time in as many hours. His mind whirred with dread. "Sam…torture-fest, what the hell are you talkin' about? Garth, have you talked to my brother?"

Garth grew quiet for several long moments before answering. "You two are a matched set…I just figured…you were workin' with him."

"Working with him on what? Dude, I haven't talk to him in more than a week. Where is he?"

"The school shooting…I hooked up with a hunter-friendly lawman. They trapped the demon who offed all those kids. He said the demon's eyes flared in the video."

"By himself?!" Dean seethed. "No, no, no, Garth!"

"Uh, yeah, it seemed pretty cut-and-dry, dude. Trap black eyes. Get some answers. Gank the bastard."

"Yeah, except the fact that demon's eyes don't flare on video, you stupid son of a bitch!"

Garth was quiet for a long time. "If it's not a demon, then what the hell is it?"