Her pen hesitated over the paper like a nervous bird. It would land, scratch a few lines, then alight, wary of the predators prowling the ground.

She heard a squawk through her hearing aids. She'd tuned them to pick up sudden electrical changes: a useful tip-off when hunting ghosts. In this instance, they cued her to look at the attendant who had just turned on her microphone.

"Flight UAL2121, prepare for boarding."

Her flighty pen made a few more hasty descents. There was so much she wanted to say, but no time and no safety to do so. She would just have to weather this storm as best she could and hope there was a warm nest waiting for her on the other side. Eileen quickly pecked the envelope before releasing it into the mail chute. Her ticket might say she was going to Charleston, but she was really flying home.

~Patience~

The sound of Jack's excited voice carried throughout the Bunker. From the beeps and explosions, it sounded like he was playing some video game with Sam. Dean stared at the ceiling of his room and seethed because his only other option was to be afraid.

It was all Jack's fault. It didn't matter that the freak was less than a month old: he'd made promises to Cas, brainwashed him even (as if the poor guy hadn't had enough of people messing with his head already, what with the Leviathans and Sam's Hell scars and Naomi and Lucifer's possession and all) to betray them. That betrayal had caused them to be unprepared for Lucifer, and those hasty attempts at a reckless plan had been the direct cause of Dean's family's deaths. Their slaughter, really. That blood was on the nephilim's hands, and Dean was going to find a way to make him pay, and pay dearly.

Sam, on the other hand, thought the damn kid was the key to fixing everything. As if they hadn't been down this road, with all its disastrous consequences, before. Every time they had tried to partner with some evil thing to try and fix some problem it had ended badly. Usually, it ended up with the world almost ending or one of them dead. Sometimes both.

No. Dean wasn't going to let that happen. Jack was Evil, with a capital E. Just because he hadn't gone nuclear yet didn't mean that the timer wasn't ticking.

Every instinct Dean had told him to gank the nephilim immediately if not sooner. Sam disagreed. Vehemently. Not a huge surprise: Sam was like a freakin' bloodhound at finding the closest most evilest thing and thinking it was a solution. See examples (A) Jack, son of Satan (B) Ruby (C) Rowena (D) British Men of Letters… shall we continue? Between the two of them, Dean was far better at figuring out what was evil and what should be avoided and who they could trust. His big failure was Gadreel, and even he turned out to be more misguided than evil in the end. Not that Sam would ever see it that way. Just like he'd never see that Jack, despite his puppy eyes, was not innocent.

Dean could see that Sam thought he was redeeming himself for the whole Apocalypse mess. It was ironic that he'd chosen Jack to be his protege: Sam had been corrupted by his demon teacher Ruby, and now he was playing Yoda to a basically-demon kid. Same mistake, only mirrored. Sam thought it was the Right Thing to do, and he would do it, his older and wiser brother's warnings be damned. Again. And Dean would have to save his brother from himself. Again. Dean was sick and tired of watching their painful cycle of mistakes and anger repeat. Again. He was already dreading watching his brother die to atone for his sins. Again. Couldn't Sam ever admit that he was wrong and Dean was right? They didn't have to do this again.

Of course his little brother wouldn't. Of course the Winchesters would. Because if he chose differently he wouldn't be Sam.

By the set of his shoulders and the tone of his voice, Dean knew it would probably take a literal act of Chuck to change his brother's mind. He'd always been stubborn like that. Sam would set his viewpoint a certain way, and that was how things were going to be, like it or not. It was how he'd conned Dad into taking them to Disney World when he was ten and it was how he'd gotten into Stanford with a full ride and it was how he'd started and ended the Apocalypse. It was how he'd survived the Hellucinations and how he'd saved Dean when he was a demon. And now, it appeared, Sam had Decided that Jack was good.

Sam thought that since Dean saved him from his evil powers, he would be more than willing to save Jack from his. That wasn't how this worked. Dean knew Sam, knew him better than the kid knew himself, knew deep in his bones that he was good in ways that Dean had never been and never could be. Dean didn't know jack diddly about Jack, other than he was the spawn of Evil himself. He had no clue what to expect, no idea what kind of dangerous mojo the teen would spew out at any moment. It was also an issue of scale: Sam had been messed up in his time, sure, but until he said 'yes' to Lucifer he didn't have enough firepower to gank more than a few demons in one go. For all they knew, Jack could sneeze and wipe out North America.

Dean supposed he should just take Sam at his word and start treating the abomination like he was a Real Boy. It wasn't like the nephilim had any choice, really. Sam had made a Decision, after all. History had shown that Heaven and Hell and everything in between could and would be bent to his reality. Dean would have considered agreeing with his brother, even helping him despite his best instincts, except for the fact that every time he saw Jack's face he remembered pulling that sheet over Cas's. Every time he met the nephilim's eye, he remembered the triumphant glint in Lucifer's as he pulled the blade from his guardian angel's back. Every time he saw Jack's hair as he turned away, he remembered seeing Mom's vanish into the rent in reality. Every time he saw Jack smile, he imagined Sam's teeth red with blood and his eyes lifeless and dull.

Dean wanted to believe Sam, he really did. But he couldn't see Jack as anything but Evil, because how could anything good cause this much fear and pain?