I'd forgotten what it was like to be trapped in a car for hours on end. In purgatory, there was always something to fight, always something to guard against. Fight, run, guard so someone else can sleep, sleep, repeat. Now, though, I was trapped in a car, staring at books that made no sense and weren't important. It made me angry. What was the fucking point?

It was a 29-hour ride to where we were going, at normal speeds, and the idea of holding still for that long was driving me bonkers. We'd driven through the night, and now at about sixteen hours into the ride, I'd given up and was just staring quietly out the window. Sam and Dean were alternating between what passed for small talk between the two of them and uneasy silence. I really wished they would start working their shit out, but there wasn't anything to do about it. Nothing I could say would get them talking, and past experience had proved that being pushy was bad for my comfort on long car rides.

The trees were swishing past in a blur. Pine, pine, maple, oak, pine, pine, pine. All that wood and nothing I could burn. I closed my eyes and imagined the trees lighting up in the beautiful orange glow of fire… Damn it, I couldn't hold still for any longer! I shifted up onto my knees on the seat and leaned onto the back of the front seat.

"Hey guys," I said, interrupting their current spate of interminable silence, where Dean was staring doggedly out the windshield and Sam was staring down at his laptop, reading up on something. I didn't really care what. "Pit stop might be nice."

Dean rolled his eyes. "You have the bladder of a little girl," he grinned at me.

"You bet," I said.

Sam didn't look up. "Why's your seatbelt off?" he asked.

"You try wearing a seatbelt for 29 hours straight," I responded grumpily. He looked up from the computer and met my eyes. I didn't like the threat I saw there. "Fine. Jesus, overreact much?" I slammed myself back into the seat and fastened the middle seatbelt across my waist, rolling my eyes as obviously as I could so that he would see how very put out I was at the suggestion that I wear that fucker all the time. "Dean, when are we going to stop?" A distinct whine had crept into my voice, without my meaning it to.

"First place I see," Dean said. The two of them lapsed back into a more companionable silence. I stared out the window. The need to burn itched its way up and down my arms. I started scratching them, trying to make it stop. There was nothing to light in the car, or at least, nothing safe to light. My ass would be toast if I lit something on fire in the car, on purpose, with no real reason other than this incessant need to burn… something.

I stared out the window. More trees. I itched; I scratched. I ran my fingers through my hair and fiddled with my necklace. I contemplated setting one of the trees on fire, just for a moment, and then quickly discarded that idea. Yeah, I didn't think I'd get caught, but I also wouldn't be able to put it out, and I could cause some real damage to the area before it burned itself out. That was inexcusable, or so I'd been taught.

I stared at my schoolbooks. I could burn them, right? I mean, not right now, but I could… We were on the move now. There was no ordering schoolbooks if there was nowhere to have the books delivered to. I shook my head to try to get rid of that temptation.

And then Dean was pulling off the road at a rest stop. Oh, thank goodness. I was practically dancing in my seat with relief when we stopped. Sam got out and headed towards the men's room. I reached for my car door, but Dean turned around and looked at me. "We're not staying here a long time, Jessie. In and out and back on the road, understand?"

My face fell. "Dean, I can't sit still. This is so different than what I'm used to now. Can I just… can I go for a run? Do we have time for that?"

Dean shook his head. "Nope, sorry."

"Mother…" I started, and then stopped when I saw the look on his face.

Dean sighed. "I get it, Jessie. For the last year, you've been in full on combat mode. You're used to moving, to action, and staying in the car isn't cutting it for you. We're going to be stopping at a motel later. If it's not too late, you can go for a run then. If it is too late, you can run before we get back on the road. Ok? I'm sorry, but we need to find Kevin a.s.a.p."

They were always so reasonable in their demands, most of them anyway, and they always tried to take what I wanted or needed into account. It made me feel like shit for resenting the demand in the first place. I sighed. "Fine," I said again. With shoulders slumped, I got out of the car and headed to the ladies' room. I heard Dean get out and follow along after me.

The rest stop was pretty deserted. There was no one in the side of the ladies' room that I went in. I went into the handicapped stall because it had more room and did my business, scratching at my arms the entire time. Then an idea occurred to me, and I acted without thinking about it.

I used my knife to open the toilet paper holder. It was one of those industrial-sized things, but it was more than half-empty, enough to do the job without bringing too much attention to me. I set the roll into the sink and stepped back as far as I could to stand in the corner opposite the toilet. I reached out a tendril. Control. I had to maintain control. I touched the roll with the tendril and let go.

I shouldn't have let go. The tendril engulfed the roll like there was gasoline on it. Flames went shooting up towards the ceiling, bright, orange, and beautiful… but way too big! I panicked and instead of quenching the flame with my mind, I took two steps towards the sink, reaching to turn on the faucet. But the flames suddenly died down and went out. Not enough fuel to maintain the fire. I slumped next to the sink in relief. I leaned my head against my knees and let myself cry.

The bathroom smelled like smoke now. The fire had been so suddenly there and so suddenly gone, that the fire alarm hadn't gone off and the sprinklers hadn't been activated. I'd been lucky.

"Hey," someone said in a disgruntled, crotchety voice. "You can't smoke in there." She banged on the stall door.

"I'm not," I said, getting to my feet. "It wasn't me." I glanced at the sink. It was covered in soot. So was the mirror and parts of the wall. I'd never been so glad that I was a girl and Sam and Dean weren't allowed in here. I opened the stall door to see an older lady moving her way down the stalls. When she got to the one that she wanted, she turned to look at me.

"Shouldn't be smoking, girl," she said. "It'll kill you. You'll get cancer, like my late husband."

I rolled my eyes. "Ok, I'll remember that," I said.

"If you want to fool your parents, though, you'd better clean up a bit before you go back out." And with that, she closed herself into stall and started singing.

Weird old lady, I thought; then I looked in one of the mirrors over the sinks. My face was pink and streaked with some soot from the fire I'd set. If I'd walked out of the bathroom looking like this, Dean would have known I'd been up to something. I owed that old lady big time, weird or not.

Unfortunately, it was one of those new rest stops that had moved away from carrying almost any kind of paper product. I had to resort to scrubbing the soot off my face with my hands, soap, and water. It took forever. Soot is not the easiest thing to get off. Eventually, I started using the sleeves of my hoodie to scrub at my face, and that's when I realized the sleeves were scorched from when I had tried to turn on the faucets. I started to panic.

"Breathe, Jessie, breathe," I whispered to myself. "You can figure this out." I used the hoodie sleeves to finish scrubbing at my face by pulling the cuffs down over my hands and using them like a washcloth. Then I pulled the hoodie off and tied the sleeves around my waist, trying to make sure that the scorched bits were tied off.

I did a final check in the mirror. It seemed like I had gotten everything. I might need a story if Dean or Sam wanted to know why I wasn't wearing my hoodie when it was this cold out, but I thought I could fabricate something about having gotten the sleeves wet while I was in the bathroom. It was true, after all, just not the exact truth.

I was just leaving the bathroom when I realized that the singing had stopped. I called back over my shoulder, "Thank you!" I got no response, but I headed on my way anyway.

Dean and Sam were waiting by the car. Dean was sitting on it, while Sam was standing in front of him going on about something. As I got closer, I realized they were talking about the plan again. I walked around them and got into the back seat of the car. The less they noticed me right now, the better.

Dean stood up and got into the car, arguing with Sam the entire time. I hurriedly took the hoodie and shoved it into my backpack. Then Dean sniffed a couple of times.

Shit. I hadn't thought about the distinct smell of smoke and burning that I would carry with me on my clothes.

I tried to act nonchalant as both of them turned around to look at me. "What?" I asked.

"Why do you smell like smoke?" Dean asked me stonily.

I pulled the front of my shirt out and took a long sniff; then I shrugged. "I do?"

Dean's glare got fiercer. "You do."

"Someone was smoking in the bathroom. Maybe it's from that." Dean stared at me for a long time. I didn't dare break eye contact.

"I'm going to ask you this once, and you better not lie to me," he said slowly. "Did. you. light. a. fire?"

"No, Dean," I said, fighting to maintain control over my wavering vocal chords. I blinked.

"What's the punishment for lying, Jessie?" Dean asked.

"Twice whatever I have coming for what I did," I answered. I curled my hands into fists in my lap and fought to not give any kind of indication that I might be lying.

"You'd better not be lying then," he said. Then he turned back around and started the car. Sam looked at me for another minute before he turned around, too.

The worst part of it all was that I was still itchy, and the flame still wanted out.

We finally pulled into the Palm Motel. Sam wanted to rest and Dean needed a break from driving, even though he wouldn't admit it. Sam pointed out that we had been on the road for twenty hours by then. We ate dinner at the diner across from the motel and then settled in for a few hours of rest.

I was exhausted. I didn't even want to run any more. I just wanted to sleep. "Shower, teeth, and then bed," Dean said. He sat on the bed, lost in thought, while I went about my business. Sam left to go get a roll-away bed from the front office for me to sleep on. When I came out of the tiny bathroom dressed in a long t-shirt, Sam had the roll-away set up. He kissed and hugged me goodnight before going into the bathroom to do his own thing. Dean tucked me in, kissing me goodnight. I fell asleep immediately.

A little while later, I was awoken by Dean saying, "Hey, the rules are simple, Sam. You don't take a joint from a guy named Don and there's no dogs in the car!" I didn't move, though. I just listened as Dean said that purgatory felt pure, but then he said something else.

"Jessie, though, she didn't handle it as well. She was a trooper, but she was using her abilities all the time, Sam. Burning monsters; lighting fires to see, to cook. I tried to restrain her, warn her not to use it for just anything, but there was always a reason. She was using it every day. She got used to using it every day."

Sam didn't say anything for a minute. "That means she's going to want to keep using it like that."

There was a pause, and then Dean said, "We're going to have to keep an eye on her. We don't want her abilities getting out of control. It's bad for her and it could be bad for a lot more people."

The next morning, Dean woke me up by shaking me. It was the deepest I'd slept since we'd gotten back. Something about safety in old habits, I guess. Hotel rooms feel like home if it's most of what you've known.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Dean crouched down in front of me and handed me my hoodie, scorched sleeves on top. "You wanna explain this?"

I blanched. There had to be a way to salvage this. "You went through my backpack?" I demanded angrily.

And then Sam was standing right next to him. "So completely not the point, young lady."

I looked back at Dean and realized that I had no out. I started crying. "I had to. It had been days. I couldn't help it. I had to let it out."

Dean raised an eyebrow at me. "Talk to me," he said.

Through my tears, I said, "I set a fire in the bathroom sink, but I used too much and it got out of control, but it burned itself out because it didn't have enough fuel to keep going. I wasn't in any danger. I was across the stall by the toilet."

"If you were all the way across the room, how did your hoodie get scorched?" Dean demanded.

I struggled for a reasonable explanation, but couldn't come up with one. I dropped my eyes. "I thought it was going to keep burning, so I was reaching for the faucets. Then it went out."

Sam cleared his throat. "So, let me sum this up," he said. "You went into the bathroom, broke into the toilet paper dispenser, stole the roll, put it in the sink, and set it on fire. When it got out of control, you rushed over to turn on the water to put it out instead of putting it out from where you were, using your abilities."

I nodded sadly, but he wasn't done. "Then, you came out of the bathroom, hid the hoodie from us, and then told us someone had been smoking in the bathroom and that's why you smelled like smoke. Does that just about cover the whole thing?"

I was so fucked. I stared at my hands on top of the blankets and just waited.

"How many other times have you lit a fire without telling us?" Dean asked in a deadly calm voice.

"None," I whispered, hoping that wouldn't come back to bite me later.

"Why should we believe that?" Sam asked. "You've proven that you are entirely willing and capable of lying to us."

I squirmed. "I don't know. You shouldn't, I guess."

"Have you?" Sam pressed.

"No, Sam."

Dean shook his head and stood up. "We don't have time to deal with this, but we have to. I can't have you running around with me on hunts if I can't trust you, and I can't trust you right now."

I started sobbing, still staring at the blankets in my lap. "I'm sorry, Dean. I won't do it again. I promise." I looked up at him, my eyes big and leaking tears. He looked at me for a long time. "I just couldn't help it," I insisted.

He tilted his head. "Jessie, I need to know that you are going to obey me, and that you are going to control those abilities of yours. If you aren't and you can't, then we need to send you off to someone who will show you how to use them, how to control them. You can't just be setting fires willy-nilly at rest stops. You certainly can't then lie to me about it. That is unacceptable."

"I won't. I can control it. I won't do it again. I swear!"

Dean went and sat down on the end of the bed he'd spent the night in. "Come here."

So fucked.

I got up and walked over to him. When I got near him, he reached out and pulled me over his lap. I'd barely landed when his hand was swinging down onto my panty-clad behind. Two, three, four smacks and I was breathless. Six and I was crying, although it was more because I'd let him down, because I'd lied to him than it was because the spanking hurt. After twenty, I lost count like I always do, and soon, I was wiggling and fighting to get away from his descending palm.

"I'm sorry, Dean. I'm sorry! I swear!" He didn't answer me. The swats continued to fall despite my pleas and my cries. And then it stopped. I caught my breath while he rested his hand on my lower back.

"We'd be done now, if you hadn't lied to me," he said. And then his hand fell again, and again, and again. I can only assume that he did as he promised and doubled the number of swats I'd already received, but I really don't know. I couldn't count any longer.

When he was done, I was sobbing. He helped me up and pulled me into his lap to hug me and hold me close to him. I cried into his shoulder. "Don't start fires without my permission," he said gruffly into my ear. "And don't. lie. to. me."

"Yes, Dean," I whispered. I clung to him, but it was the first time I'd felt at peace since we'd gotten back.

He held me for a few minutes and then he said, "Sam, your turn."

I looked up in alarm to see Sam laughing. When I looked back at Dean, he had a twinkle in his eye, and I knew I was forgiven.

"Go get ready so we can get on the road," Dean said. "We've got a college to get to and a prophet to find."