Chapter 2 Anger


Light filled the upstairs room, flooding through the dormer windows to either side of the bed as the sun crested the mountain behind the cabin. It pierced his eyelids, prying him from the restful cocoon of dark silence, prodding insistently even as he tried to turn away from it.

What happened to the damned curtains?

The thought brought wakefulness closer and Dean opened his eyes irritably, finding himself viewing the pine lining of a sloping ceiling.

The hell –?

Warm skin. A gentle exhale. A vaguely summery scent, tantalisingly familiar. Turning his head, he saw Ellie lying beside him and conscious memory returned, reminding him of why he was sleeping in the upstairs bedroom, instead of waking on the couch downstairs. A very faint ache in his balls brought another memory. First time for everything, he thought sourly, but it'd come as an unwelcomed shock.

He listened to her breathing, soft and even. She was still soundly asleep, not even stirring with his movement. Two and a half days on the road, he thought, inching onto his side and propping himself on his elbow to look down at her. She'd told him she wasn't counting the cost, but he knew what kind of effort it took, a haul like that. Knew it intimately. He couldn't figure her out, sometimes. Why she did the things she did. If he asked. Or sometimes even if he didn't. Or what it was, he thought, reaching out to slip his fingers under a loose fall of her hair and push it back, she saw in him that made her want to.

At the light touch, she turned slightly toward him, one arm curling over his chest. The brush of her fingertips, even unconsciously, hiked up his internal thermostat, and his lids fluttered shut, jaw muscle popping out a little, resisting the instant and overwhelming impulse to wake her. He wasn't a hundred percent sure it wouldn't end up the same way and he wasn't, he decided, more than a little unwillingly, ready to face either the mental or physical consequences of another round like that. Moving away from her, he leaned over and left a kiss against her bare shoulder. She needed a lot more sleep anyway, he told himself.

The bedroom was cool, but not cold and he walked barefoot to the bathroom, turning on the cold water over the basin, cupping his hands under the flow and dunking his face in it. Restlessness filled him, edged in a steely feeling of frustration and below that, something stronger. Something darker. He twisted the faucet and ran a hand over his face, staring down into the basin.

After Missouri, he'd really believed his despair and the disorienting lack of direction had gone, disarmed by what he'd admitted, dissolved in the sudden but certain feeling he knew exactly what he'd wanted. He'd figured he'd get around to talking to Ellie about it, the next time they found some time together.

Of course, Bobby hadn't been dead then, he reminded himself bitterly, grabbing the hand towel from the hook beside the mirror and swiping at his face.

It was a mess again. Bobby's death. Roman's taunts. The lack of a lead from Frank. Even Ellie's absences, trying to find another base, seemed part of the conspiracy to ensure he couldn't take a step forward, back or even sideways. The inaction … the time to think … the fucking lack of everything was killing him.

Going back to the bedroom, he walked around the end of the bed and grabbed his clothes, looking down at Ellie as he pulled them on, sucking in a deep breath against the temptation to stop what he was doing and crawl back into the bed and go back to sleep beside her. It would be helluva lot more productive than anything else he could think of.

It's just I get to this place where I'm okay, and then you show up at our door. You keep doing that, every time I think I'm never gonna see you again. I'm trying to get over you.

The memory bounced into his head, arresting his hand halfway up the zipper of his jeans and Dean stared at the wall, the Battle Creek house coming back to him in Technicolour detail, Lisa standing there in a little black dress, hair and makeup done for an evening out, Ben surly and defiant about his lies.

Ben'd called, disjointed and incoherent, and at Sam's urging, he'd dropped the case he and his brother were working on and had driven from Jersey to Michigan in ten hours, going straight through.

He'd arrived, hopped up on caffeine and too much time at the wheel to think of all the possible reasons something could be wrong only to find the kid had lied to get him there.

"A date is not an emergency," he'd said to Ben, a lot later.

"Why can't you just say 'sorry' and come home?" Ben'd asked him, like it was the easiest thing in the world.

Ducking his head, he remembered the heartbreak in Ben's voice and his inability to answer that. Say 'sorry' for being who he was? Apologise for not wanting to keep pretending he was someone else? Your mom lied to me. She doesn't want me, she wanted something she knew, deep down, never existed. The words had been on the tip of his tongue and he'd swallowed them with difficulty, trying to address the betrayal the boy'd felt instead.

"Just because you love someone, doesn't mean you should stick around and screw up their lives", he'd told Ben. "If I stayed, you'd end up like me."

But that'd been later. When he'd stood on the threshold and looked at Lisa, it'd felt like a slap, realising Lisa was going out with someone else, someone normal, someone who wasn't called off at a moment's notice to go and deal with the underside of the world. It'd taken most of the drive back to Jersey, on empty highways and through the night, to understand that his reaction hadn't been about Lisa.

After the phone conversation when he'd been in Calumet City, he'd figured they were done. She'd rung maybe a half a dozen times after that, and he'd looked at the number and had thought about calling back, but he never had. He couldn't figure the point of it. He'd told her what he'd done to save Sam and at the time, it'd seemed like she'd understood. It was only under Veritas' influence that he'd found out she hadn't. It'd been too close to what happened with almost everyone else; opening up, trying to make someone understand him, having it thrown back in his face with contempt, or ridicule, or just plain old disbelief.

I'm not saying, don't be close to Sam; I'm close to my sister. But if she got killed, I wouldn't bring her back from the dead!

It hadn't hurt as much as he'd thought it would. He guessed that'd been due to the fact he'd been pretty much scar tissue from one end to the other by then, and the blow had barely penetrated. It'd hurt enough that he hadn't returned her calls, hadn't wanted to talk to her.

Sitting in her living room, he'd been ready to tell her it hadn't been his idea to come back, but when he'd looked at the conflicting expressions flitting over her face, he'd realised she'd known that already. At first, she hadn't mentioned the phone call, and he'd thought maybe she'd forgotten about it. Every word she'd said had been engraved in his mind, but seemed like it hadn't been that important to her. Then she'd raised it, apologising for throwing those things at him, but not for lying about it before and more than a little defensively trying to justify her opinions about the way he and his brother were too close, too co-dependent, too unhealthily tied together … too everything. He hadn't argued about it. He'd agreed with some of what she'd said. What had done the damage was the simple fact that when they'd been together, she hadn't said one fucking word about any of that.

What do you want from us?

He hadn't been able to give her an answer. Hadn't even been able to think of the answer back then. What he'd wanted was what she wasn't and he sure as hell couldn't say that. What he'd wanted was someone he could trust, with all that he was, all that he'd done and all that he'd felt. What he'd wanted, and had put every effort into denying, was the woman who was sleeping in his bed right now.

He looked down at his hands and pulled the zipper up, doing up the button. His heart had start to thump uncomfortably against his ribs and his palms felt slightly greasy.

What he wanted … felt impossible. Something he shouldn't even be thinking about. Things were complicated enough as they were, he didn't need to make them any more so. Still, that want clung to the edges of his mind, ambushing him at unexpected moments.

Looking down at the floor, he picked up his tee shirt, yanking it with unnecessary force over his head.

There never was a time when they weren't neck-deep in crap, he told himself, turning away from the bed to pick up the long-sleeved shirt, dragging it on with a similar, barely-restrained violence. The latest problems were worse in some ways than what'd come before. There had to be a way to gank Roman and get rid of the others, but nothing they'd found was looking the slightest bit optimistic on that score.

He pulled on his socks, leaning against the side of the bed, his gaze flicking unwillingly back to Ellie's sleeping form. He couldn't help imagining the worst that might happen. Just because you love someone, doesn't mean you should drag them into the line of fire and get them killed. He couldn't shut that out of his head when she wasn't there. And that, he acknowledged bitterly as he picked up his boots and walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him, took his mind out of the game as readily as everything else.


Downstairs, he could smell coffee brewing. He walked down the staircase slowly, and sat on the bottom step to pull on his boots. At the table, Sam glanced up as he got to his feet and crossed the room, heading for the pot.

"Hey." Sam put down the paper he was looking through, moving the open laptop to make more room on the table top. "How's Ellie?"

"Sleeping." Dean poured himself a cup of coffee and turned around. "She – uh – she drove pretty much non-stop from upstate New York."

Sam's brow wrinkled up and he shook his head. "You two are made for each other."

Dean looked down at his coffee, hoping his reaction to that hadn't shown on his face. He waved a diversionary hand at the table. "What you got?"

"Nothing on the current problem." Sam picked up the paper he'd been reading. "I've still got a few to go through, so there might be something."

"How long's it been since we gave Frank those numbers?" Dean asked, dropping into a chair opposite his brother and swallowing a mouthful of the hot black brew.

"Uh, five days," Sam told him, getting up to refill his cup. He glanced back over his shoulder. "Why?"

"Why hasn't he gotten back to us?"

"Well," Sam said consideringly, putting the glass pot back on the burner. "It's Frank."

It was … Frank, Dean thought. The guy was definitely sporting some defective wiring. Asshole charged like a wounded bull and his delivery was pretty damned questionable. The thought of the money they'd given to Frank – on his say-so with no guarantee of a return – brought back the image of the paper-wrapped bills Ellie had tossed on the table and his brow knitted.

"An' you knew Ellie had money? But you didn't say anything?" Dean asked. He wasn't all that sure of why that was still nagging at him. That Sam'd known and he hadn't? That she was loaded? Enough to chuck thirty gees their way without batting an eyelid?

'Uh … yeah." Sam glanced sideways at Dean at the abrupt change in topic. "She told me a while ago. I didn't mention it because – stupidly – since you two got together, I kind of thought you already knew."

Dean scowled at him. "Do I look like I check out people's financial status?"

"I thought it would've come up, that's all," Sam soothed. "She's worth about four million."

"What!?" Dean's cup hit the table with a bang, coffee sloshing up and dribbling down the sides of the cup. He stared at his brother. "You shitting me?!"

"Uh, nope. That's what she said."

"What the fuck – why t'hell is she hunting? She could be doing … anything!?"

Sam shrugged. "Why the hell are you asking me? I guess she likes doing it. Does that come as such a surprise?"

Dean thought back to a conversation he'd had with her in the heat of a New York summer. At least I'm doing something that means something, even if only to a few people. I'm not pushing paper or data around in a meaningless round, she'd said to him, in the warm, muggy darkness. At the time, he'd understood what she'd meant but he hadn't been able to really relate it back to himself. The devil had been out. The angels had been looking for them. It wasn't the same as the way he'd felt when he'd been younger. The weight of the fucking world had been on him and Sam, and Ellie'd known as well as him what that'd meant.

"You still want to get out of this life?"

For a second, he stared blankly at Sam as the question threw him. Did he? Maybe he did, he considered, belatedly noticing the liquid over his hand and wiping it off on his shirt, but it wasn't like it was a realistic option. Aside from the fact his face and name had been all over the national news for weeks now, he still had a job to do.

"Not much hope of that now," he said, picking up his coffee and swallowing a mouthful.

"You could walk any time, Dean."

Sam was studying him, he could feel the intensity of his little brother's stare against the side of his face.

"No. I can't."

"You were the one who told me that revenge isn't a good reason to be doing this."

Looking up, he frowned. He might've given Sam the impression that he was after Roman's blood because of Bobby's death, back in the hospital, but that'd changed and he thought his brother would've picked up on that in the last few. "This isn't about revenge, alright?" he said, setting the cup down, more carefully this time.

"You sure about that?" Sam asked.

"I want to blow a big hole in Dick, I'm not gonna tell you I don't, but that's not the main issue," Dean told him, aware that he was choosing his words carefully, his voice clipped and forced a little too deep. He took a breath and shook his head. "Cas brought these things out – and then the sonofabitch died."

He didn't think he had to add that he couldn't walk while his brother was still having visions of Hell and the devil, or while the woman he was in love with was still searching for answers to the main problem. Or, he thought, with another internal grimace, while the man he'd considered closer than his father was a pile of ash.

"I'm doing alright, Dean," Sam reiterated, his brow furrowing. "You don't have to worry about me."

"Yeah. Well … no. I'm not worrying about you. I'm worrying about finding a way to get rid of these things and get back to something approximating normal. For us." He looked at the piles of papers on the table. He needed to do something. "How many you been through?"

"That pile." Sam gestured to the smaller of the two piles and picked up a handful from the larger, passing them over. "You want to find a job? Start reading."

"Now? What about breakfast?"

"Later." Sam typed in a new search on the laptop, ignoring the aggravated rustle of the newspaper across the table, and concentrated on the results.

Dean watched him for a moment, over the top of the newspaper. It wasn't about revenge, he thought again. He wanted – he needed – some kind of a life back before he could even consider the things that'd hit them both in the last few months.

It was about getting the job done, he told himself again. He barely remembered the old Charlton Heston movie about the end of the world, but he wasn't capable of walking away from a monster that thought it could medicate the global population into complete submission and then dine on them at will. That wasn't happening while he was still breathing.

He dropped his gaze to the news, eyes moving over the page without registering a single item. He remembered how he'd felt under the influence of their grey goop. Happy. The weight and the stress had just vanished without a trace.

No, he corrected himself tightly. Not happy, just not giving a shit about anything. Not the leviathans or his life or the things he'd wanted. Except somewhere in that out-of-this-life time, he seemed to have said something he couldn't remember to his brother that was prompting this latest round of 'get out while you can' crap.


Ellie blinked in the sunshine that poured through the windows and onto the bed, stretching out slowly as she realised she was alone. Rolling over, she picked up her watch from the nightstand and looked at it, mouth quirking up as she saw the time. Past ten. A couple more nights like that and she'd've caught up. She closed her eyes, letting memory seep back.

She hadn't been especially surprised it'd hit him that way. He had a long, long road of losses and she didn't think he'd really dealt with any of them, despite the fact he'd been letting go of some of his guilt, most of that misplaced to begin with.

It wasn't enough, she thought, pushing aside the covers and getting up, going to the bathroom to brush her teeth. So much of what he'd been through, what had happened, what he'd done and the way he saw himself through the distortions of those events was tangled up with emotions he refused to acknowledge. Every single thing in his life, back to the deaths of his friends and his father's sacrifice, was intertwined and the longer he tried to ignore all those things, the worse it all got.

And he was angry. Angry at Bobby's death. Angry at being manipulated and pushed and pulled again. Angry and frustrated at the lack of progress and justifiable action he could take. She had a feeling he needed that anger, right now. It was going to make it a lot harder for him to find his way through the rest.

She thought of what he'd told her in Missouri, cheeks warming a little at the memory. He'd seemed clear, but Bobby'd still been alive then. They hadn't known about Roman and despite her perpetual criss-crossing the country, they'd spent more time together in the last month than they'd managed in the previous four.

It didn't matter, she decided, rinsing her mouth and wiping her face. She was here and she'd stay until he figured out how he felt about it, do whatever she could to make it easier for him.

Even, she considered, looking around the room critically, if that included cleaning up. Living mostly in motels and hotels, where housekeeping wasn't an issue, she nevertheless drew the line at being able to feel the crud under her bare feet, she realised, looking down at the hardwood floor. It was speckled with crumbs of mud and grass from their boots, and layered in dust.

Pulling out a clean tee shirt and jeans, she dressed quickly, brushing her hair and leaving it loose. She could smell fresh coffee, rising up the stairs and her stomach was rumbling.


"Hey."

Sam's gaze snapped up hearing the unfamiliar softness in his brother's voice. He looked past Dean to see Ellie walking down the stairs.

He'd heard his brother sound a bit like that once or twice, he thought, looking back at him and seeing Dean's expression match the strangely gentle tone, but not quite the same.

"Hey," Ellie replied as she hit the last step. She looked ridiculously young, Sam thought, barefoot in old, worn denim and a thin white tee shirt, half tucked into the jeans, her hair a loose fall over her shoulders and down her back. Her voice, he noticed, held the same softness, filled with checked emotion.

He'd known there was something between them, even back when they'd first met her. It'd taken a long time for it to develop. He'd never seen Dean as closed-off as his brother'd been when she'd disappeared, swinging between anger and hopelessness like an out-of-control compass. He'd never seen Dean as relaxed as he'd been when she'd returned, back at Bobby's. Whatever it was between them, it ran deeper than he'd imagined. Dean hadn't said anything about the year he'd spent with Lisa, other than being pissed that he and Bobby had kept his resurrection a secret, but Bobby'd told him later that Ellie had turned up a few weeks after Dean had left. Turned up, gone to Indiana, then turned around and gone away again. Rubbing his fingers over his brow, he knew he never should've made Dean promise to go find the Braedens and make a life with them. He'd thought … he'd thought it would help his brother. He couldn't have been more wrong about that.

"You get enough sleep?" Dean asked Ellie, getting to his feet as she came up to the table, and going to the coffee pot.

"Not quite," she admitted, stopping at the table. "I'll catch up a bit more later on."

"Dean said you came straight through, from Albany," Sam said, twisting around in his chair to see his brother walking back with a cup for her.

"Uh, well, yeah," she said, shrugging with one shoulder as she took the cup and sat down. Her gaze skimmed over the papers spread over the table's surface as she sipped the hot black liquid. "Anything in those?"

"Not so far," Sam said.

"No," Dean answered at the same time. "Can't find a damned thing."

"What about that?" she asked, waving a hand at the adhoc pinboard that took up the back wall of the room.

Still cradling the cup, she stood and walked around the sofa to look at it. Sam watched Dean get up and follow her.

"That," his brother said, his tone just short of caustic. "Is a steaming pile of nothing."

Sam winced a little at the raw tone. Everything they'd found – everything Dean'd had found – about Dick Roman, Roman Enterprises, the biblical and pre-biblical lore they'd been able to scrape up on the leviathan, pictures of the levis they'd both seen, usually in the backgrounds of Roman's press conferences – was there, laid out and providing no clues about the monsters that they could actually use. Ensconced within a business empire, Roman was virtually untouchable and the rest of the levis were buried deep in his enterprises or in government agencies, invisible and untraceable. In the centre of the wall, the numbers Bobby had written before dying stood out, scratched deep into the paper in his brother's frustrated hand.

45489.

Dean'd started working on it the day after he'd called Ellie. Sam wasn't sure if it was a healthy outlet for his brother's feelings or not. Since they hadn't been able to match the numbers to anything, both their frustration levels had been climbing without relief.

Ellie leaned close to the wall, looking at the photographs, nodding a little as she seemed to recognise a couple. "This one is dead," she said, turning to look at Dean. "And that one. They're in pieces and buried in concrete and steel."

Dean pulled a red pen from his shirt pocket and uncapped it with his teeth, putting a cross through both faces. "Good."

"Those are the numbers?" Ellie stared at them. "How'd Bobby get them?"

"He found something in Roman's office," Sam said, getting up and walking over to them. "He didn't have time to tell us anything about it, just wrote down those numbers before he – uh, died."

"And you've got Frank working on this?" she asked.

"Yeah," Dean confirmed. "Gave them to him over a week ago."

"A few days ago," Sam corrected quietly.

"Has he come up with anything?" Ellie asked, looking at him.

"No." Dean snapped the word out, turning away.

"Not yet," Sam said. "I'm running searches as well, but –" He looked back at the laptop on the table. "– it's slow on that."

"Did Frank wipe your details from the federal and state databases?" Ellie asked, turning away from the wall and looking from Sam to Dean.

"No." They answered in unison, glancing at each other self-consciously. They'd asked, Sam thought, his gaze cutting away from his brother. Frank had been dismissive of the idea.

"He said it'd attract too much attention," Sam told her. Dean scowled at the floor and walked back to the table.

"What?" Ellie watched him go, and turned to Sam. "Dammit, I knew I should've–"

She cut herself off and turned for the stairs, leaving Sam standing on his own.

"Where's she going?" Sam asked his brother. Sitting at the table, Dean shrugged, staring sightlessly at the front page of the Seattle Times.


Upstairs, Ellie ran into the bedroom and grabbed her pack, pulling her laptop from it and putting it on the bed.

Should've known she needed to say something to Ray when she'd been down there, she thought, logging into the forum and scanning the list of names. She'd meant to get hold of him and get that business taken care of. She'd gotten sidetracked by other stuff.

He was online. He's always online, she reminded herself acerbically, unsure of who she was angry with as she typed in the query. There'd been a lot going on in the last few months but she couldn't consider that a valid excuse for forgetting how important it was to get the Winchesters back to anonymity.

Ray's response came back seconds later and she let out a harshly relieved exhale. A window opened on the screen and she started typing, calling up the details from memory.

News stations, international news agencies, law enforcement databases, from local to national, and checking in with Interpol as well. Newspapers. Re-feeds. Blogs. Her face screwed up a little as she thought of how much coverage there'd been.

Should've. Could've. Didn't.

Ray's confirmation came back in moments and she typed in another question. He confirmed that as well.

Down in the depths of Florida, hiding in between the wealthy retired and the young who flocked to the region every school break, Ellie envisaged the small, skinny man sitting in his ordinary-looking, average-sized bungalow, unnoticed by any of his neighbours, or anyone else. On the outside, the little house deflected attention like a deft magician. On the inside, however, it was a different story. Gutted, entirely open-plan and filled, wall-to-wall and ceiling-to-floor, with state of the art technology, and enough processing power to run a small country. State of the art because Ray wasn't just a programmer or just a designer. He wasn't just anything, she thought with a small smile. He was one of those rare individuals who possessed both the imagination and the technical skills to improve – or build from scratch – anything he needed.

She closed the laptop and stood up. He would come up with a couple of pictures that looked very like but weren't the Winchesters and change the details everywhere he could reach. He'd change the histories and the aliases and the locations and it would be updated and replicated across as many databases as he could access without being noticed.

Which, she thought, rolling her shoulders and stretching, was pretty much everywhere.


Dean closed the computer as Ellie came down the stairs. He'd set up a dozen news feeds on Roman in the last five days, and the compulsion to check them all the time was fucking near overwhelming.

"What was that?" he asked, gesturing at the stairs.

"Something I should've done months ago," she said, crossing the room and dropping into a chair at the table. "I asked Ray to do something about your records."

"Not that it's not appreciated–" He gave her a sceptical look. "–but what the hell can he do?"

"Well," Ellie said, leaning on her elbows as she looked at him. "For starters, he can change the photographs everyone has of you and Sam, change the details, identifying marks, case histories." She shrugged. "The idea being to convince the interested parties that the perpetrators of the crimes you two were supposed to have committed looked a bit like you but weren't actually you, and in fact, the name Winchester was a little known alias that the press got hold of prematurely and the real spree killers were a couple of men with a different background, not even brothers. Most of the live footage the media got hold of and the stuff that went viral is poor quality. The two of you aren't perfectly identifiable from that anyway, so it'll be a matter of a close match."

"He can do that?" He felt a flicker of hope rising in between his doubts. It would mean getting a lot of his life – their life – back.

"Yeah, with enough time, there isn't much he can't do so long as it's all binary."

"Huh."

She smiled, glancing around the cabin. "Where's Sam?"

"He went into Kalispell. Said it's too slow up here to check out some things," he said, rubbing a hand over his face and looking around restlessly. "You, uh, wanna get out of here? Go for a walk or something?"

"Sure." She got up, going to the stairs. "Lemme get some boots on."

Getting to his feet, Dean walked to the door, not sure what was behind the impulse that was driving him out of the house. He heard Ellie come back down the stairs behind him, and stepped out onto the porch, leaving the door open.

To the left, a narrow walking track led up and around the mountain. He'd gone up there a few times. There was a stand of trees, downed or dead; they cut their winter firewood from about halfway along it. Beyond that the trail got steeper and led to a granite outcropping, a lot higher up.

The door closed and he heard the clunk of Ellie's boots on the boards, turning and waiting until she was beside him, then starting for the trailhead. They walked up the trail in silence, Dean slowing after a few minutes when he realised he was leaving Ellie behind, his strides long and hard, impelled by his thoughts.

Everyone leaves you, Dean. You noticed?

He tried to push that away, tried to force it back down where it belonged. It hadn't been Mary Winchester, just the manipulations of the god squad in their attempts to get him to consent to being a walking, talking condom for an archangel. He'd tried to tell himself that's all it was. Tried to tell himself he'd never thought the same thing. He could lie to anyone, but not to the people he loved. And not to himself.

"There's a bit in the bible that says God took a sword and slayed the leviathan," he said, slowing down again as he tried to get his head back to where he wanted it. They'd been scavenging information from everywhere they could think of. It was just one of a thousand unrelated pieces.

"You're reading the bible now?" Ellie asked, catching up as they reached the steeper section of trail.

He glanced over his shoulder at her, his nose wrinkling up. "That's pretty much all we got."

Her smile was fast, gone again before he could enjoy it, and she said, "Guess so. It's, um, Isaiah, I think. 'In that day, the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent.'"

"Right, so what happened to that?"

She snorted softly behind him. "Dean, don't forget who wrote the bible – men. Just men. Most of them trying to interpret translations from other men who'd been translating and interpreting before them. Half the references to the levis in the Old Testament are actually references to Lucifer – also known as the great serpent, or a dragon."

"I thought you had faith."

"In God? Sure. In men? Uh, not so much," she said. "Look, basically it was an attempt to put a lot of information that some of the smarter folks thought was important into a framework they could keep teaching to the masses. History was thrown in, the really big events, but no one wrote about them at the time they happened, so of course a lot of exaggeration was going to slip in." She thought for a moment, then added, "I think it's in one of psalms, God crushed the heads of the leviathan and gave them as food to the creatures of the wilderness – what does that tell you?"

"Uh …"

She stopped and he turned around. "No one could find any evidence of these massive sea monsters, so they came up with an explanation. They didn't know about Purgatory, or how the monsters were locked up. They figured it's what a mighty warrior might do. That's it."

"Great."

On some level, he was aware that nothing she was saying was new to him. He'd known it, in the same way he knew that his father's journal could only hold John Winchester's experiences, not the last word on every detail of the things he'd run across. He wondered distractedly if Ellie's journal was more objective.

"The pre-biblical stuff is more accurate," Ellie said, taking a couple steps closer on the track. "I gotta call from Patrick a few days ago and he said the Vatican is going to be more helpful in handing out the information they have."

"The Vatican?"

"Don't kid yourself," she told him, her tone holding a slight edge. "They've got a hell of a lot of knowledge tucked away in their vaults. They just don't like to share."

"Huh."

He turned away, walking slowly up toward the granite block. "How'd you get contacts like that anyway?"

"Right place at the right time," she said. "Or wrong place at the right time, sometimes."

What do I do if I lose everybody? He'd asked her a while ago. Start again, she'd told him. And again, if need be. He didn't think he could keep doing that.

"What's going on?" Ellie asked as they reached the top, walking past him to the edge of the enormous boulder and looking back over her shoulder at him.

Following her, he looked down the slope of the mountainside, over the forest. He could see one bend of the highway, much further down, far enough that the noise of the occasional traffic didn't reach them.

"What'm I doing wrong?" he asked, his head ducking against a sudden surge of guilt. This had been Rufus' place. He'd left it to Bobby. Bobby was gone and now it was theirs. It wasn't right.

"Nothing," Ellie said. "This is the life, Dean. It comes with risks. Bobby knew that, better than most."

"He wouldn't've been there if it wasn't for –"

"He would've been there–" she said, cutting him off with an impatient gesture. "–because he was a hunter and he had a good reason to be there. They knew about him from Cas. They blew up his house. He was in it up to his eyeballs. This isn't on you, Dean."

"It doesn't feel like that," he said, turning around and dropping to the flat stone surface, looking out across the mountain. "It feels like I'm the one who fucked up."

"Over-developed sense of responsibility," she said, her tone light as she sat down next to him, following the direction of his gaze. "Too much on you too young and no way of separating what was yours from anyone else's. Tearing yourself up about it isn't going to help you, or Bobby, or Sam."

"Maybe that's who just who I am?"

"I might've agreed with you, you know," Ellie said. "If it wasn't for the fact that when I met you, you weren't trying to carry the world on your shoulders."

"I wasn't?" He couldn't remember how he'd been back then. Seemed like a million years ago. He'd been a different person.

"No, you were limiting yourself to worrying about Sam, not saving the world."

She was right, he realised. There'd been more than enough to worry about his little brother in those days. Saving the world'd never entered his mind.

"Is there something I c-can take to get rid of it? Like a-a pill or something?" he asked, turning to look at her and forcing a one-sided smile to take the edge of bitterness from his voice.

She smiled, leaning against his shoulder. "Sure, I packed a bottle, just in case."

Looking back at the view, he felt the restlessness begin to settle, the tension that climbed every time he looked at that wall in the cabin, Roman's face sneering at him from every photograph, start to very slowly ease back. Maybe he was making it all too personal. Needing the anger. Needing something. He pulled in a deeper breath.

"You think we have a shot at these things?"

Beside him, he felt her exhale, shoulder rising and falling slightly against his.

"Yeah, we do," she said quietly. "But this isn't going to be a short haul. We've got to get our heads around the idea that it's going to be a marathon. They're too well-organised now and we've fallen behind. We can catch up, but running in blindly is not going to work."

He couldn't disagree. With the best of intentions, Cas'd screwed them up in more ways than one, given the levis the upper hand from the second they'd landed. He heard his father's voice in his mind, an old memory.

Yeah, so it's fucked to hell. What do we do? We pull back, regroup, rethink, check the intel. Then we go back in prepared.

He had the feeling his father would have liked Ellie.

She leaned her head against the top of his shoulder and asked, "How's Sam doing?"

"Better," he told her, glad to be able to say that straight out. "He's not jumpin' at shadows and he says he can still keep the hallucinations under control with pain. Says it just disappears."

"That's good," Ellie said, lifting her head. "But I meant, how's he doing with losing Bobby?"

"Oh," he said, looking away. "Uh, you know … I guess …"

"You haven't asked," Ellie said, making it not quite a question. "And you haven't told him anything either."

"He knows," Dean argued, half-heartedly.

"Of course he does," Ellie said, tilting her head a little to look up at him. "That's not the point."

He knew it wasn't. He didn't think he could let go of the pain without losing his anger as well. That was the point. She was right about it being a marathon and he wouldn't last the distance.

"Why didn't you tell me you were loaded?" he asked. Not the most subtle subject change, but she seemed willing to let it go.

"It didn't seem relevant," she told him, after a moment. "You didn't ask. I just assumed Sam'd told you."

"You looking for a new base now?"

"Not right now," Ellie said. "But yeah, soon."

"How long can you stick around?" He looked out over the mountainside as the question came out.

"Oh," Ellie said, following his gaze. "Till you get sick of me, or find a job."

Surprise caught him by the throat. "Uh, yeah, well, that might take some time."

He heard the smile in her voice as she answered, "That's okay with me."

"Uh, about last night …" he said, turning to look at her.

Her eyes were half-closed against the bright morning sunshine that lit up her hair, the long smooth column of her neck slightly curved as she lifted her face, studying the sky.

Sometimes he just wanted to be able to look at her, he thought, the unconscious grace of her, the unlikely perfection of her colouring … the expressions she rarely tried to hide.

"Uh … that was probably, you know, just a one-off. Stress, uh … you know."

"I never doubted it," Ellie said, straightening a little to lean on one arm and turning to meet his gaze with a frank gleam in her eyes.

A flickering rush of heat filled him. "We could, uh, check it out. Make sure, you know."

"I thought you'd never ask."

He laughed, pretending it wasn't relief he could feel and relishing the abrupt disappearance of the steel-edged emotion, the knots and the restlessness. Rocking back onto his heels and rising, he held one hand out to her.

"You just can't get enough of me," he said, absurdly pleased he could say something like that to her and know she wouldn't misinterpret it or take it the wrong way … or even think he was some kind of self-centred jerk for saying it.

"You got that right," she agreed, taking his hand and letting him pull her to her feet.

The forthright response made him smile, at the same time as he internally shook his head at it. She didn't play games about feelings, didn't seem to want to try to make him jump through hoops to prove how he felt … he told her and that was all she needed, apparently. That hadn't been his experience with most of the women he'd known, long or short term.


There was no stemming his arousal this time. It pounded in his blood, suffusing nerve and muscle with aching pleasure, growing with every touch and taste, a rapacious vortex he wanted desperately to lose himself in. His body trembling under the onslaught, Dean wrestled against his enjoyment. Guilt, formless and piercing, stabbed through the waves of sensation. He was alive. Everyone else had died.

I don't want to die, he'd said to her, and she hadn't let him off at that. That's not enough. Do you want to live?

Living meant accepting the pain, she'd told him. It meant not hiding from it, not trying to bury it or drown it, not pretending it didn't exist. It meant knowing that the risks were always there and everything could be taken away at any time, and wanting to fight anyway.

He remembered arguing that he'd known that, that he'd done just that his whole life. It hadn't been until later that he'd realised that somewhere along the line he'd stopped doing it. He would weigh the risks and consequences for himself, and for those he tried to save, but he'd stopped accepting the fallout for those he cared about. He'd stopped doing it after Hell, he thought.

How I feel ... this ... inside me ... I wish I couldn't feel anything, Sammy. I wish I couldn't feel a damn thing.

He'd wished that for a long time. He'd tried to make it happen, tried to block out everything, through whatever avenues he could think of. It hadn't been until he'd watched her leave the parking lot, her words echoing through his thoughts, that he'd realised he couldn't keep pretending he wasn't feeling anything. Bad timing, he thought. It hadn't been long after that Sam'd picked Ruby and he'd been smashed by the aftermath.

Ellie's hips rocked up against his, and he shuddered with the feel of her, hot and swollen tight all around him, his thoughts barely coherent but his struggle going on and on.

Living meant understanding what he'd done. It meant going back and looking hard at everything that'd happened. He wanted to. Most of the time he put it off, pushed it back down or aside, tried to find diversions in other things. Jobs. Worry about his brother. A bottle.

Well, I guess I'm not the man either of our dads wanted me to be.

Admitting that, to the angel, to himself, had torn a piece out of him. There were … there had been … times he'd thought maybe he could find that piece again. Get it back. Times when he'd been close to understanding – to really getting – what'd happened to him. What he'd done. What he'd felt. Then something would happen and he'd miss that last grasp, bury it all again, try to pretend it didn't matter. What was done was done. Not all the wishing in the world could undo it.

Under him, Ellie arched up and he lost those amorphous background thoughts at the same time as he lost his breath; palpating spasms encircling him and dragging him down, coruscating waves of pleasure too intense for definition, barely manageable as feelings, fluxing and flooding through him; and the world, and everything in it, except the two of them, gone. Wiped out.

He wanted to live when she was here. Wanted to have this all the days of his life. It wasn't enough, and he knew it. Even without her, he had to find his reasons.


Two days later

Sam leaned back in his chair, pushing his cleaned plate aside and sighing with contentment. For the first time since they'd gotten back from Jersey, he felt like he might be able to relax, just a little, his stomach full of home-cooked food and the surroundings no longer covered in dust, cobwebs, unidentifiable muck with an underlying scent of long-damp socks.

Looking at his brother, still wiping the sauce from his plate with a hunk of bread, he thought Dean might be benefiting from the change as well. For a man who thought nothing of binding up a wound with a greasy car rag, or eating leftovers that'd been in the fridge for unknown lengths of time, his brother had an odd streak of finickiness when it came to general hygiene.

In the third chair, Ellie leaned over and picked up his plate, stacking on top of her own. "FBI, Homeland and Marshall Services have all issued an 'error in ID' notification to law enforcement nationwide," she told them, taking Dean's plate when he pushed it toward her and leaned back in his chair.

"Nothing to stop John Q from identifying you, of course, they couldn't publicise a retraction since all parties were believed dead." Getting up, she continued over her shoulder. "You, twice, now. But a little appearance modification and –"

"I'm not dying my fucking hair," Dean cut her off, snatching his beer and swallowing a mouthful belligerently.

Ellie stacked the dishes in the sink and turned around. "Wasn't going to suggest it," she said to him, her voice light. "Maybe using the fibbie IDs more for the time being, and shaving a bit more regularly. Maybe staying out of Manitoc, St Louis and Ankeny for the next twenty years."

Sam looked from Ellie to his brother, and shrugged. "Okay with me."

"Fine." Dean thunked the bottle on the table. "What about Roman? Your friend come up with anything more on him?"

"He's working on the security," Ellie said, sitting down. "Roman's got layers –"

Dean got to his feet abruptly, catching his chair before it flipped over and dragging it back to the table. "I'm going out."

"What?" Sam sputtered, shooting a fast glance at Ellie. "Wait a minute – where –?"

"Out," his brother said through his teeth as he hooked his jacket from beside the door and snatched up his keys from the counter. "I need to – I – I just need to go out, alright?"

The front door slammed and Sam looked across the table at Ellie. "What the hell –?"

She shook her head. "Leave him to it, Sam."

"You're alright with that?" he asked. He'd never seen his brother like that with people he cared about. No, he thought a second later, the house in Sioux Falls returning too vividly. He had. Once. Dean had turned on Bobby like a wounded dog once. Cas too. And him. When they'd dragged him back from trying to contact Michael. "Ellie, he –"

She was rubbing her temple lightly with one finger when she looked up at him. "He's angry, Sam. That's all. Angry there are no solid leads, nothing for him to do. His grief is pushing at him to deal with it, and he can't."

Digesting that, Sam shook his head and got up to pace restlessly. "Doesn't mean he can take it out on everyone else," he said.

When she didn't answer immediately, he stopped to look at her. She was smiling slightly.

"When you and Jessica were living together, and you had a fight," she asked. "How'd you get through it?"

It was on the tip of his tongue to say that they'd never fought, but he knew that wasn't true. The secrets he'd kept from her back then had caused a few disagreements, a couple of outright fights.

"One of us usually calmed down quicker," he said, remembering the ice-cream fight. "And talked the other one out of it."

Ellie nodded. "He can't be calm right now," she said, glancing at the front door. "There's been too much. Too fast. But I can. And one of us has to."

"Doesn't it hurt?" he asked her, the agitation gone as suddenly as it'd arisen. He walked back to the table, dropping into his chair. He didn't want to see Dean screw this up.

"It might, if I let it," she told him. "He's not doing any of this deliberately. He's in pain, and unrelieved pain can make even the mildest person savage. When he gets back, he'll've thought about some of it. He's got a very strong feel for fair play; I know you know that, Sam. He'll be calmer when he's had a chance to let go at least a part of what he's carrying."

She was right, Sam thought. Dean did have a wide streak of justice. He couldn't count the number of times the two of them had fought and Dean had apologised afterwards, sometimes not in so many words, but tacitly, offering his tokens of peace and whatever it was he'd figured out about himself or the situation. It was rare for his brother to deliberately aim to hurt. He'd been steeped in the idea of saving others from the moment their mother had died and that down-to-the-bone protectiveness wasn't something he could readily shed, even when he wanted to.

Sam watched Ellie get up from the table and turn away, going to the sink and twisting on the tap to run hot water. He was damned if he knew how his brother had managed to find a woman who understood him so well. She knew Dean better than he did, he thought, although to be fair she hadn't been saddled with a mountain of baggage from their dragged-around upbringing to contend with first. Dean didn't have to say anything about it; he could see the way his brother relaxed when she was around, how – until Bobby had died – his walls seemed to crumble and he smiled and laughed more often, and easier. He felt a peculiar shiver run up his spine as he looked at her. He didn't want to know what Dean would be like if he lost her again. Not that his brother would, he told himself, crossing his fingers, like a superstitious child, under the table.

"You were, uh, saying … about Roman's security?" he said, reaching to the armchair for the laptop. "How deep is deep?"

"Really deep," she told him, adding detergent to the hot water and exhaling. "It'll take Ray some time to get around it, I think. In the meantime, our best bet of getting ahead of them is going to be thinking like them."

"How do we manage that?"

"Well," she said, turning around and walking slowly across the room to the wall of printouts and photographs. "If you were planning on docilising the entire human race and taking over, what infrastructure would you be looking at?"


Dean sat in the black car, his fingers tightening and loosening around a bottle in a brown paper bag, his gaze fixed straight ahead and staring at the black nothingness of the shadows of the forest surrounding him.

Seven days and they were still nowhere, he thought savagely, hardly noticing the protesting rustle of the bag as his hand clenched on it. Seven days and Roman was running around free as a bird and Frank was doing god knew what and Ellie'd given them some background but not one solid lead.

He needed to do something. When his father had been taken, he'd rebuilt the car. When Ellie'd disappeared, he'd found case after case to work on. When Sam'd jumped in the hole, he'd tried to make himself fit into a normal life and drink the nightmares and his grief into submission. He couldn't sit around and just wait. He wasn't wired that way.

The cap of the bottle was unscrewed without his recognition of doing it, and the first swallow lit up his tongue and throat with a fiery roar, hitting his stomach and providing a fake warmth against the bleakness of his thoughts. No chance of getting drunk after the meal he'd had and he didn't want to blot anything out, just dull down the edges for a while, let him think without the surge and turmoil of his emotions getting in the way.

His brother was searching the news. Looking for jobs. Looking to keep them both too busy to think about the big picture. He felt a flash of impatience with the tactic. The big picture wouldn't go away if he didn't look at it. Killing more run-of-the-mill monsters didn't get them any closer to taking out the levis and getting back to square one.

There was a good chance that sooner or later, Sam'd come up with a job he couldn't ignore and they'd have to go. He was barely holding it together now. He didn't think it'd be an improvement when she wasn't around to give him an anchor for his rage and grief and guilt.

He tipped the bottle up, swallowing fast, eyes closing. He'd been acting like a dick more often than not in the last couple of days, even with her here. She understood, he told himself, with an edge of defensiveness. She'd always seemed to know what he was he thinking before he did. What he felt. What it meant. Where all the cracks and fissures were.

Lowering the bottle, the bag holding it crackling a little, he stared at the neck, discomfort beginning to seep through his anger. It wasn't something he should be taking for granted, that knowledge of who he was. Not something he should assume would always be there, no matter what he did.

Almost everything he'd tried to do had been fucked over. But not that. He felt around the seat and found the bottle's cap, screwing it on and tossing the bottle into the back seat. Leaning back, letting his head rest against the seat, the whiskey warming him, memories of that pink motel room in Missouri filled his mind. What he'd said and how it'd felt, to think those things. To say them out loud.

Like the first time, it'd felt right. Like he could say it honestly and mean it, 'cause somewhere, he'd known he'd never be saying that to anyone else. He hadn't wanted to make it come out lighter, or less than what it was. Those times he hadn't felt the squirm of embarrassment at opening up. Had just felt the need to be as honest as he could be. To be himself, he thought. Not needing walls and barricades. Not being afraid of showing her.

There was one other time he could remember being that agonisingly honest. That'd been with his brother, watching Sam's desire for revenge flare up into rage, knowing already in his heart that his father was trapped somewhere, maybe dead, and he had to get through to his brother, had to tell him that he wasn't going to be able what they had to do if Sam went his own way. That'd hurt like hell to get out but it stopped Sammy cold. Brought him back. For a little while, anyway.

He leaned forward, fingers closing around the ignition key and turning it, the engine rumbling into life with its familiar, comforting song.

He had to find a line between the rage that wanted to eat him from the inside out and the grief that made him want to stop fighting for good. Had to find a line where he didn't let it spill out over everyone else and risk what he had. Had to find a way to deal.

The car rolled forward, engine idling and he shifted into gear, following the road back up the mountain.


Ellie opened her eyes as she heard the thud of boots on the floor beside the bed.

"Hey."

Dean jumped a little, swinging around, his jeans halfway to the floor. "Shit – sorry, I was trying not to wake you."

"You didn't," she said, moving over and pushing the covers down as he dropped his tee shirt on the floor.

She caught the cold scent of moisture, under that the sharper smell of whiskey as he slid in next to her, felt the dampness of his hair.

"It's raining?"

"Just started," he said, burrowing deeper under the quilt but not getting too close to her.

She could feel the tension radiating from him. She had the strong impression he was almost certain that she understood. But not all the way, not quite. He was waiting, she thought, her breath escaping in a soft exhale. Waiting for her to tell him he was screwing things up. Waiting for a recrimination.

Sliding closer, she felt his tiny flinch as her arm slid over his chest and curled around him, felt a faint shudder ripple through him when she settled her cheek against his shoulder, his breath huffing out as if he'd been holding it. His arm curved around behind her.

"Sorry," he breathed, softer than a whisper. "It's … there's nothing I can do …"

"I know," Ellie whispered back, tilting her head up a little. "It's okay."

For a moment longer she could feel the tension, still there in the hardness of the muscle under her cheek. Then he let it go, taking a deeper breath, his chest rising high and falling low beneath her arm, his body starting to relax and she closed her eyes as his arm tightened around her.