Maggie was out in the yard sorting through car parts when a blue Camero came roaring into the drive. Out of it came an older woman with dark brown hair.
"Well aren't you a sight for sore eyes!" Ellen exclaimed, throwing her arms around Maggie. "How are you sweetheart?"
"Oh so much better now that my best friend is here." Maggie answered. "What brings you all the way out here?" The two women headed towards the house, arms around each other."
"I ran into Sam and Dean in Lincoln, Nebraska. They told me Bobby's neice was running the old homestead. Well as soon as I heard that, I had to come see for myself."
"You know I couldn't exactly tell them the truth, not yet at least. I'm glad you're here. It's been a lonely few days. Coffee?"
"Love some. So what have you been up to?"
"Cleaning mostly. I've got most of the house in working order, and hunters have been helping with repairs as they pass through. I've been trying to keep tabs on as many of them as possible, trying to keep them safe, giving out jobs, doing research."
'Trying to live up to your, um, uncle's name?"
"Trying to at least." Maggie laughed as her text alert went off. "Looks like we'll have a fairly full house tonight."
"Oh?" Ellen asked, refillling her cup and putting on another pot to brew.
"That was Dean. He and Sam are on their way back. Should be here in an hour or so, and Gideon called earlier. He and Matt should be arriving in time for dinner."
"Getting texts from Dean, are ya?" Ellen gave Maggie a knowing smile and Maggie felt her cheeks grow warm.
"I told him to check in while they hunt. They went after a Lycanthrope, after all."
"And I'm sure Dean has been very diligent about that." Ellen mused.
"Alright, what do you know?"
"Only that that boy is head over heels for you. And judging by the look in your eyes you feel the same." Ellen studied Maggie for a moment. "Does he know?"
"He knows most of it, but as you probably already guessed, he doesn't know everything."
"Left out your true identlty and age, and I'm guessing your other little secret." Ellen motioned towards her mouth.
"Yes, I left that part out. He is a hunter after all. But he knows about my soul being sold and spending time in hell, VanHelsing and my penance."
"And what did he say to that?"
"That we woulld cross that bridge when we got to it."
"Of course he did. That's Dean for you. That boy only knows how to live in the now, something you still need to learn." Ellen squeezed Maggie's hand. "So what are we going to make these hungry fellas?"
"I've got a couple chickens marinating in some Jack, potatoes that need using and beans fresh from the produce stand down the road." Maggie started taking food from the fridge.
"Well, great minds think alike." Ellen disappeared out the door and reappeared a few minutes later with a large rolling cooler and a box of food. "I brought beers and the makings for peach cobbler."
Maggie was standing at the counter breaking beans when she felt a famiiar body behind her and a hand on her hip.
"I think we may need a hand." Maggie turned around and felt her breath leave her.
"What happened to you two?" Ellen exclaimed. Dean's face was bruised and swollen. His nose was definitely broken and there was blood on his shirt. Sam didn't look any better and held a blood soaked rag to his head.
"Lycanthrope." Sam said. "We have some new information to add to the collection." Ellen switched out the soaked rag on Sam's head for a clean one and an icepack and started to examining the cut on his head. Maggie meanwhile was searching Dean for the source of the blood.
"Take your shirt off." She ordered.
"I'm fine. I took care of it."
"You take that shirt off or so help me I will rip it from your body." Even Maggie heard the accent come out. Dean looked shocked.
"Okay, okay, you win." Dean started to try to wiggle out of his shirt. "I may need some help though."
"I'm taking Sam into the bathroom. This needs to be washed and stitched." Ellen grabbed Sam by the arm and directed him where she wanted him to go.
"Get upstairs." Maggie told Dean. "Matt!" She called into the living room. "Keep an eye on dinner for me."
"Yes, ma'am!"
Maggie followed Dean up the stairs and down to her room and bathroom. There she turned on the shower to warm up and grabbed the bottom of his shirt.
"Good arm first." She helped him pull his right arm through, guided the shirt over his head and down his left arm. There was the cut that he had supposedly taken care of. It reached from his collar bone, down a good six inches to his chest. "Pants."
"You know, this isn't how I planned to have you first see me naked." He muttered, watching her unbotton his jeans and slide them from his body.
"Yes, I'm sure you had some grand scheme of wooing and seduction." Maggie sat him on the edge of the tub before he fell over and started pulling off her own clothes. "Honestly I'm surprised you and your brother haven't died from infection yet." She turned to help Dean into the shower and found him staring at her. "What?"
"What are you doing?" He asked.
"Getting in the shower with you." He looked at her increduously. "You can barely move. Water alone is not going to clean that and I need to see what type of damage has been done." The look on Maggie's face must have told him not to argue because he stood up and allowed her to help him into the shower. The water on his body felt good, and Maggie's gentle hands felt even better as she washed away the dried blood. "You want to tell me what happened?"
"Things didn't exactly go as planned." Dean said through gritted teeth, trying to focus more on the curves of Maggie's body than the pain that now came from his own.
"Obviously." Maggie turned the water off. She wrapped a towel around herself, then another around Dean's hips and helped him to a chair in the bedroom. "Sit, rest." She grabbed a washcloth to hold to the bleeding wound while she got dressed. Once she had pulled on a teeshirt and shorts, she found sutures, gauze and tape from the medicine cabinet. Looking at Dean, she thought about the best way to go about this next endeavor. "Now don't get any ideas." She said as she straddled his lap. "I'm going to stitch you up." Maggie quietly got to work, trying to spare Dean as much pain as she could. She could feel Dean's hand go to her hip, squeezing lightly as the pain hit him in bursts.
"There were two of them and we didn't know." Dean started. "While we hunted one, the other hunted us. It attacked and seperated Sam and I. It tried to rip my heart out, but missed. It's claw got stuck under my collar bone. I had to cut off it's hand to get free." Maggie stopped working.
"Did any of its blood get into the wound." Dean shook his head. "Did you get any in your eyes, nose or mouth?"
"I don't think so." Maggie climbed gently off his lap, Dean reluctantly letting her go. She went back into the bathroom and after some rummaging she returned with three bottles. "What's that?"
"Witch hazel, sage and holy water."
"You keep holy water in your bathroom?"
"You don't?" She poured a little of each onto a gauze pad and applied it to the newly stitched wound.
"Oh that burns." Dean grimaced.
"That means it's working. I'll go grab you and Sam some clean clothes. Wait here." Maggie returned a few minutes later and helped Dean into a teeshirt, boxers and pajama pants. Once he was clothed, she turned towards the door.
"Hey, hold on." Dean grabbed her hand and pulled her back to him. He lifted her chin to look at him and saw the tears in her eyes. "Hey, none of that. What's wrong?" Carefully he wiped the tears away. 'Talk to me."
"Dean you almost died. The lycanthrope missed by less than an inch. You're lucky to be alive."
"But that's the point. I am alive. I'm going to be fine."
"This is why I don't get close to people." She put her hand over the gauze that hid the wound. Her face stilled, thoughts raced inside her head, cravings arose that she hadn't had for a very long time. "I won't die, but you can."
"Then the only answer is to live forever."
"That's impossible."
"We hunt ghosts and lycanthropes and demons for a living." He lifted her face back to his. "Nothing is impossible." He leaned in and kissed her tenderly, slowly deepening the kiss and wrapping his arms around her to press their bodies together. Maggie's fingers raked through his hair, drawing his head even farther down to her. Dean's tongue tangled with hers and without even thinking, Maggie sank her teeth into his lip. The second she tasted blood, she pulled back out of his grip.
"I'm sorry," She said, quickly wiping her mouth and grabbing the washcloth to clean him up. "We should get back downstairs. You need food and I should check Sam out". Dean stood in place and watched her go. He wanted so badly to tell her that he knew, but he didn't know what her reaction would be. WIth a sigh, he followed where she had gone.
Down in the kitchen they found Ellen and Sam at the kitchen table. Sam sat with his head down, ice resting on top.
"What's the verdict?" Maggie asked, going over to inspect Sam's damage.
"Ten pretty stitches and a beautiful concussion." Ellen answered, going to the stove to prepare plates of food. "You?"
"Seventeen and a chipped collar bone." Maggie went into the side bathroom and pulled out replicas of the bottles from upstairs. She again poured a little of each onto a gauze pad. "Hold still Sam, this is going to feel funny."
"And by funny she means burns." Dean said, accepting the plate of food Ellen put in front of him.
"Burning means it's working." Ellen quipped. Sam had picked up his head so Maggie could work.
"I'm sorry about what I said the other day." He said quietly to her.
"Don't worry about it." Maggie gave him a little smile as she taped the gauze in place.
"No, I was wrong. It's been just the two of us for so long. I guess I got jealous or something. It wasn't fair to you." Maggie put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
"Eat. You need food."
Later that night, Ellen and Maggie sat outside with a couple of beers. They had put the boys to bed earlier with promises to wake them up every few hours.
"You know, it's a good thing you're doing here. Everyone needs a place they can go to feel safe, get a home cooked meal and hide from the evils of this world. They need a person to worry about them and help bandage wounds, to listen without expecting anything in return." Ellen took a sip of her beer before continuing. "Hunters don't have the luxery of being ale to call a place home. Heck, some of us don't even have any family left. But in a very short time you've created a home, and given family to a group of people who didn't have either."
"I didn't really know what else to do."
"Well for someone in the soul saving business, you've saved a lot of souls in my book." She paused again. "Especially Dean Winchester."
"How so?"
"Honey, if ever there was a lost soul in this world, it was that boy. He had given up on just about everything. Not a speck of hope or light anywhere in him. First, demons use his brother, then angels use him, vampires, werewolves, the list is endless. But then he met you and let me tell you, if there isn't life in his eyes again."
"But he doesn't know the truth. If he did, he would never feel that way."
"Honey, I have a feeling that boy knows more than he's letting on. He must know something if he says he's going to find a way. And I'm telling you right now, there isn't a good enough reason in this world for you two to not be together." Ellen drained the last of her beer. "I'm going to make sure neither of them has slipped into a coma, then head to bed myself. Don't you stay up too late."
"You know I'm a night owl." Maggie joked. "But I won't. And thanks Ellen. I can always count on you to tell me what I don't want to hear."
"You know I'm not afraid to say the hard stuff. Good night, darlin'."
"Good night, Ellen."
Maggie sat outside staring at the sky, thinking about what Ellen had said. Suddenly her phone started to vibrate.
"Hello?"
"You're needed." It was VanHelsing.
"Where?"
"Lawrence, Kansas. You'll get more information when you get there." He hung up and Maggie sighed. Quietly she went inside, packed a bag and scrawled a note explaining her disappearence, then she hit the road.
A few hours, she pulled up in front of the first Catholic Church she could find and went inside.
"You must be Miss. Wesson. I am Father Paul." The priest extending his hand to her. Maggie politely folded her hands and smile apologetically.
"Hello Father. What can I help you with?"
"It seems we have some sort of demon problem." He walked with her towards the alter.
"Can you explain more?"
"Not really, just that it's a baby and something to do with the mother. I don't really understand it myself, but if you wish, I can show you." Maggie held up her hand.
"Thank you, but for your safety, I would like to take a look by myself." Father Paul nodded.
"Go to Orchard Street. You can not miss the house." Maggie nodded and left. Back in her truck, she checked her phone. She had a text message from Dean. Wanted to make sure you were ok. Maggie smiled and sent a quick response.
Just got started. Will contact you when I can. She hit send and turned off her phone back off. The last thing she needed was someone tracing the GPS and walking in at the wrong time.
Orchard Street was only a few blocks from the house. The priest was right - you couldn't miss it. On a street full of lush green grass, and vibrant flowers, this yard was completely dead, the windows curtained and dark. Maggie sighed. This was not a demon. It was a wraith. She parked down the street and started digging through her bag. A wraith took some preparing. She was elbow deep in her bag when there was a tapping on her window making her jump. It was Dean.
"What are you doing here?" She asked, opening the truck door. "How did you find me?"
"I followed you. Ellen had just woken me up when I heard the truck start." Dean shrugged. "So what are we doing?"
"We are not doing anything. You are still injured." Maggie slid out of the truck and slammed the door. "I am going to go take care of a wraith." She walked around to the back of the truck and dropped the tailgate. She pulled out two gallon jugs of holy water and a baby bathtub.
"Come on, Mags, I'm fine. Let me help you." Maggie glanced up at him. His brown eyes were clear, the smile on his face irresistable.
"Alright, but you have to promise to do what I tell you to do."
"I love being ordered around by you." The smile turned into a mischevious grin.
"If you're not careful, you'll be taking a lot more of my orders." Maggie fake punched him in the stomach, then rested her hand on his hip and stretched up on her toes to kiss him. She had to strongly refrain from the desire to go further. There was work to do. They walked down the street to the darkened house and Maggie quietly knocked on the door. It was opened by a young, blond haired man.
"My name is Maggie Wesson. I was sent by the church." She said quietly. The man nodded and opened the door to allow them to enter.
"Please, come into the living room. I should probably explain before you begin."
"I think that would be helpful." Dean and Maggie followed the man and took a seat on the couch as he took a deep breath.
"My wife and I, we married young. Living in the bible belt, that's not all that uncommon. We wanted to start a family in the worse way, but ran into some problems. We tried everything to concieve - planning, scheduling, fertility treatments, specialists - but nothing worked. I thought we had finally agreed on adoption, when my wife started looking into holistic treatments. Only they were strange, things I had never heard of. She contacted a man, he called himself a herbalist. He came into the house and performed rituals over her. Honestly, it was a little scary, but my wife, she was so desperate. A month went by and we discovered that she was pregnant. She was over the moon and I was just happy that she was finally happy. We had a little baby boy."
"And at first everything was fine and normal, until one day, it just wasn't?" Maggie asked. The man nodded.
"It just got worse from there until -" He cut off and gestured around him.
"Where is the child?"
"Upstairs. The room at the end of the hall." The man answered.
"I have to ask you to remain down here. Do not come upstairs no matter what you hear." The man nodded and Maggie and Dean silently climbed the stairs and walked to the end of the hall. Outside the door, Maggie held up her hand for Dean to stay. She pushed the door open and slipped inside.
The pressure in the room was suffocating. It was all evil, unbearably so. Maggie retreated back out the door, taking great gasps of air.
"Are you alright?" Dean asked, putting an arm around her waist to help support her. After a moment she nodded, her breathing returning to normal. She placed her bag on the floor and began to rummage through it again.
"We need to exorcise and baptize the child." She said, pulling out an old, worn rosary and wrapping it around her right hand. "When we go in, you'll set the bath up. Pour in both containers of water, careful not to spill any." She pulled out a candle and lit it, placing it in the middle of the doorway. "Then I'm going to need you to keep me stable as I perform the blessings. Once the wraith has formed, you will plunge this into it's heart." From her boot, Maggie pulled a silver knife and handed it handle first to Dean. He took it and tucked it through the back beltloop of his pants. Maggie stood and took a deep breath. "Are you ready?" Dean nodded and together they slipped back into the nursery.
The baby boy laid silently in his crib. Maggie reached in and gently picked him up, cradling him against her and singing softly. Dean didn't recognize the song or the language Maggie spoke, but she seemed to know it well and the baby responded with laughs and giggles.
Once the bath was full, Maggie knelt next to it. Dean settled behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist and Maggie began.
Pmnipotens sempiterne. Dues, qui Filium tuum in mundum misisti, ut Satanae, spiritus mewuitiae, a nobis expellerent potestatem, et hominem, ereptume tenebris, in admirabile lucis tuae ragnum trasferret: te supplices exoramus, et hunc parvulum, ab originali labe solutum, tu ae templum pereficias maiestatis, et Spiritum Sanctum in eo habitare indulgeas. Per Christum Dominum nostrum." As Maggie spoke, the child began to squirm and growl. As she touched his chest with a holy water soaked hand, he emitted an earshattering scream. Dean tightened his grip.
"Ego te baptizo in nomine Patris," Maggie emersed the child in the tub of holy water, causing the screaming to get louder. "Et Filii," she emersed him again. "Et Spiritus Sancti." As she dipped the child a third time, there was a room shaking crack nd a black cloud burst from the child and began to take shape. Maggie didn't have much time left.
"Deus omnipotens, Pater Domini nostri lesu Christi que te a peccato liberavit et regeneravit ex aqua et Spiritu Santo, ipse te linit chrismate salutis, et, eius aggregatus populo, Christi sacerdotis, prophetae et regis membrum permaneas in vitam aeternam. Amen." The black figure had taken shape and was reaching once more for the child. "Now!" Maggie yelled, throwing her body over the child, shielding him from the creature.
Dean jumped to his feet and with a true aim, stabbed the silver knife into the creature's heart the dropped to protect Maggie and the baby. There was a blast of blinding light and the room shook with an unnatural force. As the light faded, Maggie and Dean looked up. The wraith was gone and the knife lay on the ground in front of them. Maggie looked back at the child in her arms and finished her prayer.
Dominus lesu, qui surdos fecit audire et mutos loqui, det tibi ut mox possis aribus accipere verbum eius et profiten fidem in laudem at gloriam Dei patris." Dean helped Maggie to her feet.
"That's it?" He asked.
"For the child, yes. But there's something missing from all of this." Maggie carried the child downstairs to his anxious father. "Your son is fine." She said, handing the baby over. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and produced a small cruicifix on a silver chain. This she clasped around the child's neck. "This has been blessed with the waters of the Vatican. He should wear it always. It will protect him from the unseen evils of this world."
"He will, and thank you, for everything." The young man said, hugging his child.
"We aren't done yet." The man froze. "Where is your wife?" It wasn't fear that came into the man's eyes this time, it was sadness.
"In the basement."
Dean and Maggie started down the stairs into the dark basement. Dean pulled a flashlight out of his jacket and shined it into a far corner where a woman crouched. Only, she wasn't a woman anymore. Her face was grey and cracked, blood dripped from her mouth and nose, her eyes were red and white.
"Tell me you brough the knife."
"What am I stabbing this time?" Dean asked, taking the knife from his beltloop.
"Her." Maggie nodded at the creature in the corner. "She is too far gone to be saved." There was a sadness in her voice, but Maggie advanced on the crouching figure, Dean close behind.
As soon as they were within arms reach, the creature lunged for Maggie. Dean didn't even see her move, but the next second Maggie had the creature pinned to the wall, the cross of her rosary pressed into its forehead.
"May Christ compel the evil from your soul!" Maggie yelled over the creature's screams. "May the evil inside you die with this physical body and your soul be saved for God!" Dean took the knife and plunged it into the heart and the creature fell to the ground. "Leave the knife." Maggie turned without another word and left the basement. Dean found her upstairs talking once more to the father.
"Go to the church. Tell Father Paul about your wife. He will arrange for everything to be taken care of. Light a candle behind the alter. Say a prayer." She started towards the door but paused. "And do not every go to a witch doctor again."
The two were silent as they walked back to the cars.
"Are you alright?" Dean asked as Maggie threw her bag into the passenger seat and leaned back against her truck.
"I don't know," she shrugged. "Recently, having to kill people has been taking a bigger and bigger toll on me." Maggie rubbed her face, sniffling in an attemptt to hold back the tears. Dean reached out and took her hands, pulling her into him and holding her protectively.
"As hard as it is, just remember that you saved that baby. No one else but you could have done that." Maggie snuggled against him, breathing in his scent. "This job sucks a large amount of the time, but every once in a while, something good comes out of it. We have to focus on that, or we'll go crazy." Maggie picked up her head and looked up at him.
"I'm glad you came. I don't know what I would have done without you here."
"I will always be there when you need me." He leaned down and kissed her. Maggie leaned back against her truck, pulling him with her. His hands went to her sides, his thumbs carressing the edges of her breasts as he slid them down to her hips, pulling her close to feel the building hardness in his jeans.
"I think we should find a place to stay for the night." Maggie gasped between kissing him.
"I've got a room at a place around the corner." Dean pressed his forehead against hers, breathing hard. Maggie gave him a flirtatious smile.
"Race you there."
Minutes later, the two fell through the door of the motel room, starting to pull at each other's clothes, unable to get them off fast enough. Dean pulled Maggie's shirt up over her head, backing her up against a wall, his lips going to her neck and collar bone.
"HEY, HEY!" There was a shout from the other end of the room. The two jumped apart, Maggie grabbing for her shirt. "Do you two mind?"
"Sam!" Dean yelled. "What in the hell are you doing here?"
"I came to find you. Randy called. He's got a job for us." Sam answered calmly. He sat at the room table, laptop open.
"And you didn't think it would be a good idea to, I don't know, call me?" Dean grabbed his own shirt from the couch and pulled it on, shielding Maggie from view as she got dressed as well.
"Well I wasn't exactly expecting you to come in in that fashion." Sam tried to defend himself. Dean glanced over his shoulder to make sure Maggie had her shirt back in place before moving from his spot. "You in, or what?" Sam asked.
"Does it have to be taken care of right this instant?" Dean asked. "Because I had other plans." Maggie put her hand on the back of Dean's neck, smoothing his hair.
"It's okay." She said quietly. "You and Sam go help your friend. I'll be home when you get done." Dean put his hand over Maggie's and pulled it around to kiss it.
"I'll walk you out." Maggie looked around Dean to Sam.
"I'll see you at home too, Sam. Keep each other safe."
"Will do Maggie. See you at home." Sam waved as Dean walked Maggie out of the room and back to her truck.
"Well, now that I need a very cold shower," Dean muttered.
"I've always been told that the best things are worth the wait." Maggie smiled, grabbing hold of the top of Dean's jeans and pulling him to her.
"If that's the case, then this is going to be cosmic." Dean responded, putting his arms back around her. He reached up and brushed her hair back away from her face, cupping the back of her head and pressing his lips to hers. "I could kiss you all day, every day." He whispered. "If only people would let us."
"One day," Maggie promised him, kissing him one last time. "Now go, take your cold shower. I want you home as soon as you can get there." She pushed him away playfully. He held onto her hand until he couldn't any longer and Maggie watched him saunter back into the motel room. With a sigh, she ran her hand through her hair and jumped up into the cab of her truck. It was going to be a long, agonizing trip back and she wanted it over quickly.