For author's note and disclaimer, see chapter 1.

Chapter 2

"Do you still think about it sometimes?"

She said that so casually, looking icily regal with her wavy brown hair and her steely grey eyes, sitting behind her wide desk like a wall between them. Dean envied her calm. He kind of hated her for it, sometimes.

"About what?" he asked, and she smiled, barely. It was like a dance, one that they'd been practicing for more than two and a half years, since the first time he entered her office, his mind so wrecked that neither the world nor himself seemed to make any sense. No gain without giving up something; no giving in without fighting all the way. It was how they rolled.

"You know what I'm talking about."

He did. It was just a question of who was going to say the word first. Of course, he should have known it would be her.

"About dying, Dean. Do you still want to die?"

He folded his arms and raised his chin, all teenage rebellion, like Sammy after he'd turned fifteen and standing up to Dad had become his reason to live.

"What do you want me to say, Doc? Huh? If I say I do, will you think that all your efforts were for nothing and put my file in the 'hopelessly damaged' pile?"

"Is that a yes?"

He didn't answer.

"When do you think about it, for instance? When you're alone and Sam is away?"

Caroline – not that he ever addressed her like that, of course – waited patiently for him to answer. She knew him so well; in some ways, she knew him better than Sammy, or at least she knew every fucked-up thing there was to know about him. But well, it was her job, he guessed. She was beautiful but in a remote, otherworldly way, and he'd never felt any desire for her. His libido was shot to hell anyway, but it was more that she somehow didn't really feel human to him. He was aware that she had to hide behind a professional mask but he didn't care, and he wanted to keep it that way. It made it all easier, baring the ugliest parts of his soul.

"It… happens, sometimes. When Sam is at work," he said with some difficulty, each word coming out of his mouth like a solid object. "But I never do anything about it," he added quickly.

"Obviously." She smiled, in a way that would have looked condescending on someone else. "And what do you do when it happens?"

"I wait. I look at my watch and I work out how much time before Sam comes back. I focus on the seconds, on the minutes, how they add to each other until…"

He stopped, feeling the embarrassment grow as he realized how OCD it sounded. Dude, you're crazy. Get used to it already.

"And it's better when Sam is there? You never think about it when he's with you?"

He glared at her and kept his mouth resolutely shut, pressed his lips together in a pout. He couldn't answer that, couldn't. Caroline knew how to pick her battles, though, and she astutely asked around the subject, "Do you talk about it with him? Have you ever discussed the day you tried to kill yourself?"

"You kidding?" Dean said, eyes rolling. What a ridiculous question.

"I think I remember telling you to talk about it with him." She sighed. "I know it's not your way…" Her lips pursed at Dean's snort. "… but I'm convinced it would do both some good."

"Don't you think my brother has already enough sh… crap to deal with? He's supporting us almost entirely with his job at the library, paying for my meds and therapy, and really, since after the war it's been hell for him, with his headaches and me going crazy…"

"Dean," she interrupted him. "How many time do I have to tell you that you're not crazy? There's a difference between mental illness and psychiatric injury."

"I know, I know. I'm not crazy, I'm traumatized. Whatever. My point is, why would I make him relive one of the worst days of his life – and may I add that his life has had a lot of very bad days? I just… can't."

Especially since he still hasn't forgiven me for it. He didn't voice his thoughts – he was more open with Caroline than he'd ever been with anyone, but he really didn't feel like talking about this specific matter right now.

Caroline was silent for a moment, probably pondering whether to push the issue or not. She breathed in and entwined her fingers on the dark wood of her desk.

"Speaking of money, what about your project to start hunting again?"

"It's a done deal. We got our licenses – had to pass a stupid exam to get it, but now we have a card and everything." He almost asked if she'd like to see it, like a kid wanting to show his mom his drawings, but caught himself in time. "We even have a case."

She frowned at that, her pretty nose wrinkling.

"A case already? What kind of case?"

"A shadow thing in Government Camp. Paul's girl – remember Paul, the French guy who rents the second floor of our house? Well, she said a shadow attacked a friend of her's."

"Is that possible? I mean… a shadow?"

He observed with fascination that she looked uneasy, and at first he couldn't figure why until it dawned on him suddenly – as a psychologist, she had to have a clear-cut vision of what was real and what wasn't. Lucifer and his demons roaming around the earth, not to mention the creepy zombie virus, all that had to destroy a number of Caroline's certainties about the world and about her job. He had talked about hunting many times over the past couple of years, but either she had been better at hiding her emotions, or he had been too engrossed in his own problems to notice them.

"Everything is possible, unfortunately," he said mildly to her, feeling something like compassion bloom inside of him.

"I see." She had found her cool again, her face as pale and smooth as a porcelain doll. "So you're going to go to Government Camp and investigate, I imagine."

"Do I sense some disapproval?"

"You know my opinion on the matter. In your condition, people generally try to avoid potentially triggering situations. Hunting seems to me full of these kinds of situations. You could even uncover some triggers you weren't aware of."

"Sam has my back," he said, irritated for some reason.

"I know he does," she said, lowering her voice in that non-threatening, calming tone she used when she was humoring him. "But I advise you to think about it some more."

"I've thought about it! I have done nothing but think about it while I do nothing all day!"

"You could find a day job."

"You don't understand. This is my job. It's always been my job. I'm almost thirty-five, I feel twice as old, and it's always been my life! What else do you want me to do?"

He realized he was almost shouting, leaning forward aggressively, and he forced his breathing to slow the fuck down. She didn't even bat an eyelid, but then she had seen a lot worse from him. He clenched his fists, frustrated with himself. He wanted to be back to normal already – had wanted it for years, now, but maybe this was his new normal and he just had to suck it up. She let a few more seconds pass, time for him to calm down, before asking gently "Have you had any flashbacks recently?"

"Not in the last three months or so. Not any full-on flashbacks at least. Some milder ones, but not in the last few weeks." He allowed himself a genuine smile. "I've been feeling pretty good. I need to do this, Doc."

He was asking her permission, he realized. Like she was his mom, or his boss – but the truth was, she was a lot more than that. She was his key to sanity.

"I'm here to help you, Dean. But ultimately, only you can make the decisions concerning your own life. To tell you the truth, I think you can do it. I don't think you're a threat to yourself anymore, or a threat to others…" His eyes shifted and she insisted. "You're controlling yourself very well. I'm just worried that you're going to expose yourself to more trials than needed."

"Well, my entire life is a trial, so." He shrugged.

She looked at him, and there was something akin to sadness in her eyes.

"It shouldn't be," she said.

About twenty-five minutes, Dean decided. Sam should be back in twenty-five minutes. Dean was sitting on the steps in front of their house, waiting, but pointedly not looking at his watch. He didn't really feel bad or anything, no, he was nowhere near the level of suffocating anguish he'd sometimes reached. He just was so… lonely, in there. Sam was at his job at the PSU library; Paul was out, doing whatever French people did with their free time; Kelly and Anna, who were renting the third floor, were probably both in class – or was it today that they were celebrating their fifth anniversary? The house was huge and echoing, a big empty space that could only be filled with thoughts. Thoughts could be nasty stuff, he'd learned.

So he sat on those cold-ass steps and watched people come and go. Their part of the campus wasn't the most inhabited – the tall buildings in front of the Simon Benson House were still abandoned, with ivy creeping up, eating the flaking walls with deep green, like they were ancient ruins in the middle of some wild forest in a lost part of the world. Still, there was the odd passer-by from time to time, hands in pockets and shoulders raised as a protection against the icy wind cutting like knives. Dean watched them hurriedly walk past the old house, and wondered who they were and where they came from, and whether they could still feel safe and happy four years after the end of the world. Whether they were crazy, like him.

You're not crazy, Caroline countered from inside his mind.

"Shut up," he groaned. He had it with inward voices babbling to him. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. He certainly didn't want to think about his oily voice seeping in his mind, through the cracks of his soul…

"Stop it," he said out loud.

"Complex PTSD," that was what Caroline had diagnosed him with. Was that some kind of upgraded PTSD? he'd asked derisively the first time he heard the expression.

"You could say so," Caroline had replied with her usual absent smile.

And she'd started to give detailed explanations in that precise tone of her's: complex post-traumatic syndrome usually resulted from prolonged exposure to a traumatic event or series thereof, with lack or loss of control, disempowerment and in the context of either captivity or entrapment – including, being an hostage or a prisoner of war, a concentration-camp survivor, having been subjected to domestic battering, prolonged physical or sexual abuse, torture. The words had washed over him and he'd blinked at her, only catching now and then words like "captivity" and "torture," bewildered that there was a word for the breaking of his mind in thousands pieces, and feeling, finally, some kind of relief.

"You talking to yourself?"

He jumped, cursed inwardly, his heart beating a thousand miles a minute, hand hovering at his back where there used to be a gun. He glared at the young woman who had just come and disturbed his peace. Kelly, who was for once without Anna, held his gaze with fiery dark eyes, and not for the first time Dean thought about how the short black hair and the scar barring her left cheek made her look like some warrior princess. He would have been all over her, once upon a time – hell, he would have been all over the fact that there was a goddamn lesbian couple living in his house. But right now, he just felt uneasy that someone who wasn't Sam was standing so close to him.

"Some warning before you sneak up on me, please," he said.

"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you."

"It's okay."

He thought she was going to leave him alone now, wished for it, but she didn't move and just stood there, until he wondered what the fuck her deal was. It occurred to him, however, that she maybe wanted to go into the house, and that he was on her way.

"Um, sorry," he said, standing up and moving away to let her climb up the stairs.

But she kept staring at him, head tipped on the left, with an air of undisguised morbid fascination.

"What?" he snapped. "Take a picture, it'll last longer."

She blinked like she'd just woken up, and her severe features softened a little in apology.

"God, I'm sorry." Her fingers combed through her hair. "Anna keeps telling me how fucking rude it is to stare at people, but I keep doing it anyway."

"Is it because of my drop-dead gorgeous face, or my godlike body that you can't keep your eyes off me?"

She snorted, obviously amused by his bragging, and he thought about being offended.

"I'm just intrigued by you," she answered frankly. "Anna and I have been there for three months, and we've only seen you a couple of times. It's always your… brother we're dealing with."

He almost wanted to laugh at the hesitation she had before she said the word 'brother.' People and their assumptions, really. Like with all the shit they had to deal with they would be worried about coming out of the closet.

"Sam is my brother," he assured her. "Honestly, at this point I wish we were fucking, because then at least I would be fucking someone."

He'd said that impulsively, wanting to shock her for some reason, and he waited for her to gasp and for her eyes to widen, but she only raised eyebrows at him.

"What'd you mean?"

"I haven't had sex in… god, in years."

"Wow. I don't think I could ever be without sex that long. Don't you miss it?"

He shrugged. He missed the idea of sex, sure, missed the man he used to be, a little fucked up in the head but nowhere near as damaged as he was now.

"I don't have the urge anymore. Maybe forever, I don't know. It's just the way it is, I guess. But I'm not crazy," he said pointedly, thinking of how proud Caroline would be to hear him say that. "I'm traumatized, and it's a whole different animal, according to my shrink."

She did look, this time, a little overwhelmed by this flow of unasked information, and it made him feel darkly satisfied.

"Is it because of the war?" she asked, a little hesitantly.

"The war, my life," he said vaguely. No need to dwell on the subject. "Sam and I are hunters, we've been doing the job since way before the war."

"But now you need a license to hunt, right?"

"Yeah. We have new shiny licenses. Speaking of, I should let you know that Sam and I will be gone for a few days. Paul is coming with us. The kid found us a job in Government Camp."

"Government Camp?"

Something in her voice when she said the town name made him ask, "You ever been there?"

"Yeah, Anna and I went there. It was three years ago, right after the end of the war. But we didn't stay for long; the people in that shit hole are fucking crazy."

The words had Dean's spidey sense tingle, and he felt the hunter in him stir a little.

"Crazy how?"

"I don't know, it's hard to explain. They were pretty paranoid but given… everything, I can get behind that. It's just… There was a fire in town, one night. We tried to go see what was going on, but they wouldn't let us. And then Anna totally freaked out on me for some reason and we had to leave in the middle of the night. Weirdest fucking night of my life, I'm telling you."

"What was burning?"

"Don't know, and we didn't stay long enough to find out."

Dean was about to ask for more details, but he caught sight of Sam coming from above Kelly's shoulder.

"My brother's coming," he said, trying to sound as neutral as he could to hide the relief he felt flowing in.

Sam stopped near them, nodding at Kelly in greeting.

"Hey."

"Hi, Sam."

Sam's eyes went from Dean to Kelly, then to Dean again, silently asking, you okay? It was somewhat irritating, but Dean knew he had given his brother enough reasons to worry in the passed years and that he only had himself to blame.

"What were you two talking about?" Sam asked, making a visible effort to look casual rather than creepy.

"Kelly and Anna have been in Government Camp," Dean told him.

"Oh yeah? Did you notice anything… strange?" Still casual, and Dean was amused by how hard Sam tried to hide the intent behind the question. Sometimes it was difficult to remember that they didn't have to hide what they knew about the supernatural anymore.

"I want dinner, Sammy, so let's go," Dean said. "I'll tell you on the way."

Dean had had enough socializing for today, and he was suddenly eager to get away from Kelly, uncomfortably aware of how much he'd been spilling his guts to her. He had no idea why he'd done that. Most of the time he avoided people who were not his brother, Caroline, and several carefully chosen others, and he'd barely exchanged a few words with Kelly and Anna since they'd moved in the Simon Benson House. Maybe it was because of therapy; he always felt weirdly out of touch with himself after coming from Caroline's office.

"Well, I'll see you later, then," Kelly said.

"Um, yeah. Sam, you ready?"

Kelly went up the stairs and disappeared into the house. Dean started to walk away with long strides, hearing the thump of his brother's footsteps trying to catch up with him, feeling his eyes boring into his back.

"How was therapy?" Sam asked after a long silence.

"What kind of fucking dumb question is that? Therapy was therapy. Caroline kept pestering me with her questions, I kept trying to avoid answering them, and we danced around like that for a while until I told her everything she wanted to know. How was work?"

"It was okay. What did Kelly tell you about Government Camp?"

"That the people there are creepy. And that they're obviously hiding something."

Sam was now walking next to him, and Dean could see him smile. It was his secret smile, the one that meant he was being tentatively happy about something.

"If it sounds like a job, looks like a job…"

"…. Smells like a job, then there's probably something fishy going on. I think we're back in business, brother."

Sam laughed, and the warm echoes of his laughter surrounded Dean like a blanket.

Dean moved a little and the leather creaked under him; he brushed the wheel with his fingertips, feeling how smooth but cold it was, because it was winter and the car hadn't been used for so very long.

"Do you two need a room?" Sam said, and the words were mocking but the tone was wistful.

Dean shook his head, no witty retort coming to him, but he still didn't turn on the engine. He hadn't been behind his baby's wheel for what felt like an eternity. Sam and he were settled, they didn't need to move around as much now, and gas was so expensive anyway, it was almost a luxury… But though true, those reasons weren't the crux of the matter, not really. The truth was, the Impala was such an important part of the old Dean, and Dean hadn't felt like that man in so long. Nowadays, he sometimes barely felt in control of his own body and mind.

Paul was sitting in the back and hadn't said a word in five minutes – very unlike him, Dean mused. He poked his head between Dean and Sam and said gravely, like he wanted to make the words heavy with hidden meaning, "You have a very cool car, man."

Dean nodded curtly – it was true, after all – and reached out to the key in the ignition, but a sharp knock on the window on his side stopped him.

"What…?"

He turned his head, and saw that two black eyes were looking right at him, almond-shaped and widened in a heart-shaped face with delicate Asian features. Dean rolled his window down, brow furrowed.

"Anna?"

He glanced above the girl's shoulder and saw Kelly, standing two feet behind and watching her girlfriend with hawk-like attention. Her eyes met Dean's and she shrugged in a I don't understand this anymore than you do kind of way.

"What's up?" Dean asked, trying to give his voice a reassuring inflection – Anna had always looked a little frightened by him, and he didn't want to make it worse. He was probably out of practice, because the girl took a step back and her breath caught.

"Kelly told me you were going to Government Camp?" she said softly, her intonation slightly questioning.

"Um, yes. Why do you ask?"

"Be careful. Something there is very wrong."

"Well, that's kinda why we want to go. 'Wrong' is our reason to live."

"Anna," Sam intervened, "Kelly told my brother that it was you who absolutely wanted to leave Government Camp that night. Why was that? What were you so scared of? Can you tell me?"

Anna's slim fingers found a strand of hair and clung to it. She licked her lips.

"Kelly was gone to ask what was happening with that fire, because it was burning so hot but no one was making any effort to put it out. I was alone in our room when a man came in suddenly, not knocking or anything. I tried to scream but he put his hand on my mouth, and he whispered to my ear, 'Run away, Anna, run as far as you can. Don't let them get you.'" She paused. "He sounded so urgent. Before I could ask what he was talking about, he was gone."

"This man knew your name?" Kelly said, sounding like she didn't know whether to be angry or worried. "You didn't tell me that. You just said that a dude told you to run… But you never said he knew your fucking name!"

"I didn't want to worry you."

"Oh, I'm not worried, I'm pissed!" She angrily thrust her hands in her pockets. "Who the fuck was this guy?"

"What did he look like, Anna?" Sam asked. "Did he look familiar?"

Anna nibbled her lower lip anxiously.

"It's hard to say. He was disheveled, his hands and face were black – burned, maybe. His voice sounded kind of familiar, though, but I've thought about it again and again and I've never been able to place it."

"He didn't try to hurt you?"

"No. I really think he was trying to protect me, that's why I begged Kelly to leave… He just sounded so earnest, you know. Oh, and there was something else. He was crying."

Dean and Sam exchanged a long look, but it was Paul who said, "Crying?"

"Yeah. Or more like he'd just been crying – the tears had left lighter traces on his face, and his voice sounded congested."

"Did you see any… weird shadows that night? Or when you were at Government Camp?" Paul asked, and the girls both looked at him with a genuinely puzzled expression.

"What do you mean?" Kelly said.

"Like… human-shaped shadows when there's no one else in the room. Moving quickly. Maybe with red eyes?"

"No, I think I'd remember that," Kelly snorted. "Anna?" Anna shook her head.

"Okay," Dean said, putting two hands on the wheel as a sign that he was more than ready to go. "Thanks for the tip, Anna. We should go now, we're burning daylight. We would have left this morning, but someone," he sent a reproaching look in Paul's direction, "took forever to get ready."

"Will you be careful?" Anna asked concernedly, and Dean wondered why she cared so much when she barely knew them.

"Careful is my middle name, sweetheart," he smirked.

Kelly glowered, Sam tried to hide his smile, and Paul lifted a surprised eyebrow. Dean shifted uncomfortably on his seat, making the leather creak again, and cleared his throat.

"We're going, now, move away," he grumbled.

Kelly and Anna stepped away as he turned the key in the ignition. The sweet sound of his baby's rumble filled the inside of the car, and he couldn't help but grin, his usually frayed nerves soothed by the comfort and the familiarity of the noise.

The car smoothly slid on the road. Sam and Paul were waving like dorks at Kelly and Anna. Dean just looked right in front of him, at the never-ending line of the road, and lost himself in the mindless bliss of driving.