A/N: Sorry for the wait! I forgot. Again. But. Go ahead and read!

Title: One and Another

Author: liketolaugh

Rating: T

Pairings: None

Genre: Drama/Mystery

Warnings: None

Summary: Dean stumbles across a strange child playing poker in a place where he does not belong. Shortly thereafter, the two of them walking together run across something even Dean's never seen before. Things only escalate from there. Stanford Era!Dean and Pre-series!Allen.

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, Supernatural is not mine. Neither is D. Gray-man.

"And if you shoot a ghost with salt, it disappears," Dean continued, checking the gun he'd gotten from the Impala. Then, just to check, he glanced back to Allen.

Allen was still looking at him. Intently. Absorbing every word he said.

It was creepy.

"Most of this hunt's already wrapped up," Dean told the kid, setting the sawed-off shotgun aside, "so all we need to do is go salt and burn the body. The gun is in case the ghost attacks while we're doing that."

Allen nodded. Seriously. What was this, some kind of information-stockpiling mode?

"C'mon," Dean finished, hiding the gun under his jacket and straightening up, businesslike. "Let's go." Then he paused, frowning. "Can you shoot?"

Allen nodded. "Master taught me – he said it was something I needed to know." He trailed off into grumbling, something about being taught everything he needed to know except the really important things.

Dean elected to ignore it and instead tossed the boy another gun, a smaller one, also loaded with salt. "Use this, kid. Hide it… somewhere."

Allen nodded, serious again, and the gun disappeared. It slightly unnerved Dean that he couldn't figure out where it had gone.

"This ghost is probably a girl called Felicia Hampton," Dean continued. He stopped by the door of his Impala and smirked at Allen. "This is my baby, by the way; she's our way to the graveyard where Felicia is buried."

"What kind of car is she?" Allen asked, clearly curious.

"'67 Chevy Impala," Dean told him proudly. "Cherry, too; nothing's too good for her." This, Dean judged, was an appropriate time for Allen to be taking mental notes. Which he still was. Briefly, he debated the merits of lecturing about his baby, or about the ghost, and finally sighed and continued, "Get in the back, kid, you're too young to be in front."

Allen nodded and climbed into the back, peeking forward to keep watching Dean as the man started the car and went back to the previous topic.

"Felicia Hampton was a girl in her early teens, murdered in the basement of her house. Place has been abandoned ever since, which is good for us." He turned. "If we're lucky, I'm right and it's Felicia. If I'm not…" He shrugged. "Then we've got some work ahead of us. Let's hope your master's willing to stick around, kid."

Allen's sudden blanching indicated that the man might not.

Dean pulled up on the side of the road and climbed out of his Impala. Allen followed a moment later, looking around curiously.

Dark had already been falling when they'd left the bar, but now it had collapsed over the town like a drunken man, wrapping it in shadow.

Given that Allen didn't do this for a living, Dean wouldn't blame him for being creeped out by the graveyard at night.

He did, however, blame him for not being creeped out. He was just looking around, unperturbed.

There was something seriously wrong with that kid.

He opened up the trunk of his Impala and pulled out his shovel, hesitated, and then pulled out Sam's, tossing it to Allen as soon as he could, not wanting to look at it.

"Use that," he ordered. "I haven't had time to find her grave yet, but I have a pretty good idea of where it is. You remember her name?"

Allen nodded. Of course he did. Dean was willing to bet he could recite back every word Dean had said.

Because Dean didn't want to contemplate that, he shut the trunk and started to head off down the eerily silent graveyard. "C'mon, kid."

Allen followed.

Silently.

He was going to be damn glad when he could hand this kid back off to his master.

Once they'd reached the approximate area of where Dean thought Felicia's grave was, he nodded to Allen, who seemed to pick up his meaning easily enough, because he split off, barely needing to squint to read the names on each grave as he passed. Dean headed off in a different direction.

For a while, they just read the names on the graves in silence. Finally, Dean found it.

Felicia Hampton

1987-2001

Dean grinned and straightened up. Sure, Felicia was a good bit younger than most ghosts he'd dealt with, what with most of them being fifty to a hundred or more, but it just meant the residents of this town had caught a break. He'd caught her early.

"Hey, kid!" he called, as loudly as he dared in the silent graveyard. "Found her!"

Allen looked up, clearly visible thanks to his white hair, and nodded with a smile, straightening up from where he'd been reading yet another grave and jogging over to Dean.

"Now for the fun part," Dean told him with a mirthless grin. "Time to dig up the body."

A flicker of a frown (Finally, Dean thought) crossed Allen's face, but he nodded (dammit) and put the shovel to the dirt only a moment after Dean did, starting to dig into the soil.

Soon after they started to work, Allen broke out of his… trance… thing… and started to talk to Dean, a curious look on his face even though he never looked up.

"Have you been doing this a long time?"

"Since I was a kid," Dean replied without thinking, then caught himself and frowned.

He was going to be damn glad to hand this kid off. Really.

"Is it always like this?"

"If it goes well," Dean answered, giving up on sanity. Screw it. No reason not to answer the kid's questions. Probably wouldn't ever see him again – that was how life on the road worked, after all.

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then it all goes to hell, doesn't it?" Dean snorted. "Who the hell knows what happens then? Different every time."

Allen nodded, like he knew exactly how that felt, and then asked, "Do you always do it alone?"

That made Dean pause. Allen looked up, silver eyes shining, but for just a moment, the expression on his face-

The eyes were hazel.

Dean shook his head sharply, and replied, shortly, "No."

Allen seemed to sense that he'd hit a sore spot – damn glad – and was quiet from then until Dean's shovel hit the solid wood of the coffin. Dean nodded for Allen to climb out of the grave – which, being that the wall was taller than him, he needed help with – and then cleared the dirt away from it while Allen opened up the salt.

He cracked open the coffin, releasing the familiar stink, and stepped aside to look at it for a moment.

Then he turned and climbed out of the grave with the ease of long practice.

"So," he instructed finally, "what you do now is, you dump that canister-" He pointed at the container of salt in Allen's hand. "-into the grave, on the body." He waited while Allen did that. "Then you take that," indicating the lighter fluid, "and dump that in, too."

Allen did.

"And now I burn it?" he questioned. Blithely.

Dean nodded. At least he wasn't the one to blame for scarring the kid for life. Apparently, someone else had gotten there first.

Allen lit a match and dropped it into the grave, face visibly losing its coolness as he watched the body burn.

Dean wasn't quite sure how he could make out enough of a real person in the rotten body to connect with it, but apparently he did, because he started to cry a little, silent and still.

Dean pretended not to notice.

And that's another done. I'd actually kind of forgotten I'd posted this... Oops? Anyway. Please review! (It'll help me remember that it exists!)