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Chapter 9

"Cas?!" Zoe shoved the squirrel into Daryl's hand as she came barrelling out of the trees and practically threw herself at the angel. He wrapped his arms around her tightly and lifted her off the ground with an easy smile.

"I missed you, where have you been?" she spoke into his shoulder, her arms tightening a little around his neck as he set her back on the ground. Ever since the two had met years before there was an instant connection that neither of them could explain. Maybe it was the Nephilim thing coming out in Zoe, responding to one of her own kind, or it could have been that she had always secretly had a bit of a crush on Castiel. Whatever it was, at that moment she felt safer and far calmer than she had in a long time.

"I'm sorry Zoe," his voice was soft as his arms fell away from her, "I didn't mean to disappear. I've had a lot happening."

"I know," her voice came out as a whisper, her eyes turning down to the rather sad looking grass under her feet, "but so have we."

Something in her tone hit a nerve inside of him, a hollow sort of pit forming in his stomach that made him wrap his arms back around her and pull her against his body once more. Zoe let her head rest against Cas's chest, her eyes closing against the watery film that had started to form over her deep blue eyes.

"He knows where I am Cas," Zoe's voice was so soft he had to lean down to hear her, "he'll find me here, he's not going to stop until I'm gone."

Castiel had grown a lot since meeting the three hunters. He had experienced life as a human, known hunger and guilt and pain. He was far more sympathetic towards the human condition than he had been when they first met. Sadly there were still many things that he hadn't had the chance to learn, though he was familiar with the sense of uncertainty and dread that hearing Zoe's words brought up inside of him.

He let the young girl go, his hands falling down to her arms lightly, "nothing will happen to you. I've warded you against him anyway, and even if he does manage to find you, I'll make sure you're safe. You have my word."

Zoe let her eyes meet Castiel's, something in the determined set of his shoulders telling her that she would be okay, with Heaven and now Hell rooting for her, how could she not be?

"Who's this guy?" Rick met Daryl at bottom of the stairs, taking the squirrel from him as he set down his crossbow.

"A friend," Dean replied instantly, his voice clipped.

"We need to discuss that," Rick exclaimed.

"Discuss what exactly?" Sam raised his eyebrows expectantly, "he's a friend. He found us here. That's all there is."

Rick handed Daryl the squirrel and rested his hands on his hips casually, he didn't believe them and he was just about to say something when Crowley came sauntering out of the church.

"Careful what you promise angel boy," Crowley smiled, "there's only so much you can do to stop this from happening."

Castiel's gaze turned to meet Crowley's, his eyes dark, "you know nothing of what I am capable of Crowley."

"Now there's the little uptight angel I remember," the demon smiled again and leaned against the door frame.

"Shut it Crowley," Dean snapped, "We don't need you rocking the boat any more than you already have and don't you have a weapon to go find?"

He shot Dean a quick glance before raising his eyebrows and with a click of his fingers he was gone.

Castiel turned to face the two brothers with a look of confusion, "I thought the deal was off?"

Sam ran his hand through his hair absently, "you know as well as we do you don't just back out of a deal with Crowley."

The angel gave him a curt nod before turning back to Zoe, "stay with the group, I'll make sure nothing happens. I've got to get back though. I'm sorry."

Zoe nodded and in the millisecond it took her to blink he was gone. She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, her hands resting on her hips as she looked over to the brothers. Dean was staring intently at her, his eyes still filled with anger and worry, whilst Sam was too busy being far away somewhere else caught up in his own thoughts.

"Friends don't disappear into thin air like that," Rick exclaimed from the porch, his gaze steady as the three new comers slowly turned to face him.

Dean let out a long sigh before nodding his head, "you're right. They don't."

It was going to be another long day.

Crowley picked at a small piece of dirt underneath his nail as he waited in the enormous foyer in the Atlanta based hospital room.

"Ah Crowley," a young dark haired man came sauntering out from the double doors in front of the demon, "how utterly tedious to see you."

"Tobias," Crowley gave him a curt nod, "still the crowd pleaser I see."

"Kings need to rule Crowley, though I don't suspect you would have any idea of that given your 'reign'," the boy's eyes flashed a horrible red as he took a seat opposite Crowley, "enough pleasantries though, what do you have for me?"

Crowley casually crossed one of his legs over the other, "the children know nothing of where you are, they are still looking to go to DC to find you. It's actually quite sad, how unwaveringly determined they are."

"Good, we need them to keep thinking they are on the right path," Tobias nodded, "we have their women here so I assume they will be coming for them soon, correct?"

Crowley nodded slightly, "those three can't keep away from a good damsel in distress story so I imagine they will come in all guns blazing."

"Good," Tobias's red eyes met Crowley's intensely, "I assume there is nothing else you need to tell me?"

Crowley didn't miss a single beat, his face remaining stoic as he gave the young man a brief shake of his head, "nothing, that group is incredibly bland."

Tobias watched Crowley for a moment more before waving his hand at him and just as quickly as he had appeared the demon was gone, leaving Tobias in the room on his own.

Daryl was sitting on the back steps of the church later that night, his crossbow sitting across his legs casually as he stared out at the darkness in front of him. He had explained everything to the group about Beth, how he and Carol had found a survivor who had told them she was being kept at the hospital and how she had helped him escape. He told them about the journey back to the church and how along the way they had met Crowley and how they had been swarmed and the kid had been bitten. No one seemed to flinch when Daryl said he had shot the boy in the head before getting out of there, it was just something everyone had come to terms with having to do. Though as Daryl sat staring into the remarkably loud woodland around him, he still couldn't shake the uneasy feeling in his chest.

"You had a brother didn't you?" He turned to look over his shoulder as Zoe came out of the doors and took a seat next to him on the steps.

Daryl shifted a little uncomfortably as she sat down, adding a little bit more distance between them before replying, "yeah I did. How'd you know that?"

"I remember you," she smiled fleetingly, "I remember both of you."

His eyebrows narrowed as she leaned her elbows on her knees and looked down at the stairs, "how?"

Her blue eyes remained where they were as she spoke, "years ago, when things were really simple, when all we were doing was saving people and hunting things, Dean took a call from this guy in Atlanta saying that there had been a really strange murder at this tiny little shack of a house and we should go check it out."

Daryl sucked in a deep breath as she recounted what had happened, an event he knew all too well, and was even accused of being involved in, "Merle's hooker that got smeared all over the wall right? I don't remember you at all from that though."

Zoe bit the inside of her lip and nodded, "yeah that's the one. When we got there it was pretty clear what had done it and it definitely wasn't you or your brother. I remember seeing the cops dragging you out of the house and even then I remember thinking you were pretty damn cute for a potential murderer."

Daryl glanced at her sideways, "liar."

She couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled up and out of her, "no I'm serious. I also remember the look of sheer devastation on your face when you realised who it was that had done it."

He fell silent for a moment, his body tensing at the thought, his voice angry as he spoke, "that was a long time ago."

Zoe nodded slightly, her hands clasping together tightly, "yeah. It was."

The two sat in an awkward silence before Daryl finally managed to pluck up the courage to speak, "Merle was convinced that it was all just drugs and alcohol related. That I imagined the ghost thing and that she blew her brains out 'cause she was high. He refused to believe that it was anything else, no matter what I told him. I wasn't allowed to talk about it at all after that."

"Weren't allowed?" Zoe questioned.

Daryl let out another sigh and played with his crossbow, "yeah."

"Why?"

His heavy eyes met hers in the darkness, "because that's how it was with Merle. I ain't like Sam, I didn't get along with my older brother that well. We lived together because of circumstances, not 'cause we wanted to. We never got along that well. We got into a massive fight over the whole Mom's ghost thing that he broke my wrist and told me I deserved it for being such a little bitch."

Zoe nodded slightly and went back to staring at the bottom step.

"Sorry," Daryl mumbled after a while.

"Don't apologise," she shook her head slightly, "everyone has their thing, their own personal demons that they are battling, or have battled. Trust me, I know."

Something in her tone made Daryl ask, "what's your thing?"

Zoe lifted her eyes to meet Daryl's watching her, "my thing?"

"Yeah, the personal demon or whatever," he leaned back onto his hand.

The young girl gave him a heart breakingly sad smile, "I got more demons in my past than I care to even think about. Trust me, you don't want to know."

"Try me."

Zoe watched him for a few seconds before shaking her head sadly, "no. There's too much, it's the nature of what the Winchester brothers do, what all hunters do. You travel from place to place and you kill whatever it is out there, regardless of whether it's human or has a family or anything. You do what needs to be done to make sure people can live. Most of the days are spent trolling through newspapers and the internet and everything to find weird deaths or picking up hints of something strange happening. Then you go out there, to some town in the middle of nowhere, you lie, you steal, you do whatever you have to do in order to get information. Then you get your weapons together and you go and kill whatever it is that is raining destruction on the town."

She bit her top lip and looked at her hands, "but sometimes you kill the wrong thing. Sometimes you kill someone who had a family, had children, and was living a good life in spite of their being a monster. The worst is demons, because they take over some poor person's body and you have to stand over them and watch as that person comes back for the briefest of moments. You get to see the utter terror in their eyes as they realise what is happening to them, as they take their last breath and slip into an abyss of nothingness."

Daryl watched her closely as she closed her eyes, "you ruin people's lives, you become your own special sort of monster and the destruction you leave behind never ever goes away. You can't get close to people because somewhere down the track they'll die because of you. Some fucked up monster wanting revenge will take advantage of everything that you hold dear, use it against you and I'll tell you what. It ain't like the movies. They don't just give you back what they took, they will slit that person's throat and make you watch regardless of whether you give them what they want or not. That sort of destruction, that sort of guilt it follows you everywhere. Every single day and no amount of talking or travelling or fighting ever eases that pain. We have lost people, friends, family, people we loved for this cause. People that protected us, loved us, trusted us. We were the reason they died, and you have no concept of what it feels like to know that every single last one of them died because of you. Because of a cause that doesn't even matter now considering all those people we saved are probably brain dead killers. So no, I don't want to try you Daryl, because I don't want another single person to die because of us, because of me."

Dean ran his fingertips across his forehead trying to let what Zoe had said go, his eyes watching her as she pushed herself off of the step and walked down and around the front of the church. Daryl stood up, turning to go and find who his replacement was for the watch but instead was met with Dean's tired green eyes staring back at him.

"You should go get some sleep, you're gonna need it for tomorrow," Dean said softly, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

Daryl nodded slightly in response his hands grasping his crossbow as he walked across to the doorway. Just as the older Winchester was walking down the steps to take a seat though Daryl turned backed to face him.

"Hey, I, uh," Daryl chewed on his lower lip as Dean turned and looked up at him expectantly, "I'm really sorry about the life y'all have had to lead. Don't sound like much fun."

Dean looked down at his scuffed and worn out boots before meeting Daryl's gaze once more, "It isn't. But having my brother and that girl around to share the load, makes it just that little bit more bearable. Like if they're there, if we stand together, we can take on anything."

Without another word Dean sat himself down on the step quietly watching the woods while Daryl silently walked back inside leaving Dean to his own harrowed memories.