Chapter 10

Sometimes, you just can't see the things that are sitting right in front of you.

No, I'm not having a philosophising moment – or, hey, maybe I am – just reflecting on the blinkers that we all seem to wear, from time to time, that make life impossible. Or…at least, a pain in the rear end.

I kept thinking about what Dean'd said, in St Louis. What he'd thought about if it was him having to go through the process that Sam seemed to be. His time in Hell had changed how he'd thought of himself, and there were still far too many missing pieces for him to feel like he knew who he was. He was talking about it, finally, I guessed, to me, and he'd said he'd found some of the things he'd liked about himself, enough to take those first few steps back to finding out who he was, not the man he'd wanted to be, but not the monster he'd thought he was, either. I knew what he'd hated the most was that he'd given up. I didn't know if he would find a way to forgive himself for that.

In a book, or a tv show, for that matter, people have these epiphanies and it's somehow all fixed, they're stable, healthy, moving on. In real life, it's not that fast or that simple. Sometimes those realisations have to happen more than once. I had the feeling that what I'd said, months ago now, about him putting aside his own wants and needs, making a decision to never look at them, had sunk in deep, that he'd thought about it, had drawn some conclusions about it, but there were conflicts there. Sam was one. His guilt was another.

And since I was being so freaking honest about fear and doubt and love, I had to admit I wasn't much better at this moving on thing than he was.

I didn't even have the excuse of having so much to do. I guess it was because I didn't really know what I wanted. Other than him, I mean, that part was crystal clear. Whatever you do, don't misunderstand me here, I wasn't pining for an existence to serve a man, or whatever the current term was, I just didn't know…exactly…where I fit into all of this. Not a newsflash, right?

Right.

On the road back from St Louis, I leaned against the passenger door of the car and thought about what it was I thought I was doing here. I'd been reading, of course. Reading till I was cross-eyed mostly, and picking up a bit of background information, trying to make that fit with the bits I already knew. I'd been going through the initiate books of the order, and practising the thousands of thousand-year-old spell and protective symbols; memorising the lists of thousands of things that I had to know about; driving myself just about around the bend grappling with some of the some of concepts that magic and the different planes and the floating esoteric bits and pieces required. I couldn't honestly say if I was getting anywhere with it, although I guess I might've been. Trying to learn something new can be a real bind without someone to give you some kind of feedback.

But that was only a small part of the problem. I was from another world and while I hadn't run into more viral or bacterial opponents, I thought that one day, I might. I'd had several vaccinations, down in Lebanon's small doctor's office, spaced over the last few months and had certainly swapped enough bodily fluids with Dean to have given me some immunity from the more common nasties, not to mention the blood transfusion from Bobby. Crowley thought he could get some kind of whoopty-do power from my soul but I still didn't have the faintest idea of what power that might be. And it seemed, at least, that Metatron couldn't rewrite my history or feelings too well.

He'd tried, I thought, with that first fight with Dean, had tried and for some reason, the attempt had failed. Lauren thought that was because I was from a parallel dimension. Dean said it was because I was too much trouble to try and change, and I'd pointed out that should have left him immune as well. But I couldn't see what any of those things could do in this world that would make a difference, or be useful, or even provide a little light entertainment.

The music playing in the car dragged at my thoughts and I turned to look at Dean's profile as he drove, Metallica's most melancholy song filling the car.

…never free, never me
So I dub thee, unforgiven

They dedicate their lives to running all of his
He tries to please them all, this bitter man he is
Throughout his life the same, he's battled constantly
This fight he cannot win; a tired man they see no longer cares
The old man then prepares to die regretfully
That old man here is me

What I've felt, what I've known
Never shined through in what I've shown
Never be, never see
Won't see what might have been
What I've felt, what I've known
Never shined through in what I've shown
Never free, never me…

That's not him, I told myself, straightening up in the seat. That's not him anymore. But his gaze was fixed to the road through the windscreen, his face expressionless and I wondered if that was how he felt, and I realised that just because I loved him, it might not be enough to change that.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

When we got back to the bunker, Bobby gave Dean a hard stare and nodded. "Guess the pendants work then?"

Dean looked at him, reaching up to touch the gold chain that hung around his neck as if he'd forgotten he was wearing and gave the old man a sheepish smile. "Guess so."

"Hey."

We both turned around to see Sam standing behind us, on the library steps, looking a bit thinner but a lot better.

Dean looked him over critically. "Mrs Tran stop cooking?" he asked.

"He's eating," Lauren answered for Sam, appearing behind him. "Just getting back into it."

"So…he's – you're – okay now?" I asked, not sure I was prepared to believe that.

"Better," Sam said with a smile.

"Good," Dean said, looking like he'd decided that was as much touchy-feely as he could stand for the moment. It made me wonder again about what he'd been thinking about in the car. "Got any leads?"

He crossed to the library steps and thumped up them, heading for the kitchen and I trailed behind, stopping next to Sam and Lauren when I reached them.

"Don't mind him, he got beaten up by a demon and he won't admit he's still sore," I told them, waving my hand vaguely in the direction of Dean's rapidly disappearing form.

"Demon?" Sam looked at me, his brow wrinkling worriedly. "I thought you were going after a witch?"

"Mmmm," I said, looking back at him. "The witch figured out a way to control the demon, right up until we threw the witch-be-gone potion at it. Then the demon got free."

"You'll write it up?" Sam asked. "We need all the accounts –"

"Yep, I'll write it up," I reassured him, inching away down the library toward the doors at the end. I was hungry too.

"Don't run off, Terry," Lauren said, following me along. "Bobby's heading out again, and Charlie's gone. We tested her database and she said it's all working."

"How's Kevin?"

"Still translating, the nosebleeds seem to have stopped," Lauren said distractedly. "We also found a spell to track Metatron, at least, we think we have."

I stopped in the doorway to the hall that led to the kitchen. "Really?"

"Really," Sam confirmed. "We're going to use what Kevin says is his sigil, from the notations on the tablet."

"Bobby's idea," Lauren said, turning to look at the hunter who'd remained in the comms room. "It's a unique identifier that is very powerful to angels."

I frowned as I continued down the hall, turning to look at her over my shoulder. "What about you – the nephilim, I mean – do you have things like that too? That can control you or show others where you're at?"

"No," she said, slowing a bit as she waited for Sam. "Our human heritage seems to void all of that, unless –"

I looked around. "Unless?"

"Unless we're the only thing left of the angel that created us," she said.

"What happens then?" Sam asked her, walking close and putting his arm around her shoulders.

"I don't know," she said, biting her lower lip in thought. "I mean, there were a lot of legends, about wars and the deaths of the angels and things like prophecies that we never knew if they were based on anything or just – you know – angelic fairy tales, but my father said they weren't real."

"Deaths of the angels?" I asked, plucking that one rather ominous phrase from her comment. "All the angels?"

She looked up at me and nodded. "There was a story, about the angels being cast out of Heaven for some crime, I can't remember how it went, exactly now. But they Fell to earth and became human and they died, in a war."

"A war?" Sam repeated, his forehead creasing. I didn't envy Lauren these conversations, sometimes it was like conversing with macaws. "A war with who?"

"Uh, each other and Hell, I think," she said, a little apologetically. "I didn't really like that story."

"I'm not surprised," I muttered, turning into the kitchen.

The room smelled very appetising. Dean was managing burgers, onion rings, what seemed to be chicken flambé and he looked up and waved his knife imperiously at the table as he started to load plates with food.

"You're cooking?" Sam stopped dead in the doorway and stared at him in surprise.

Dean looked back, mouth twisting up. "What? You think I can't?"

"It's just – I've never – I didn't think – never mind," he stammered and sat down at the table.

"I can cook," Dean muttered at him as he put a plate of grilled chicken salad in front of his brother. "The hell you think got you dinner when Dad was away?"

"Uh," Sam hesitated, leaning over his plate and sniffing appreciatively. "I remember a lot of SpaghettiO meals."

I picked up my burger and took a bite, moaning a little as the tastes hit my tongue. "S'good."

"I know it's good," Dean said, frowning at his as he put it down next to me. "Don't have to tell me it's good."

Lauren got chicken salad as well, her brows shooting up a little in surprise as she tasted it. Bobby rolled into the kitchen a few minutes later and served himself from the grill.

"Got movement on the tracker," he said, after a few mouthfuls, looking blandly around the table as Dean half-choked on the over-sized bite he'd just taken from his burger. "Looks like your legacy buddy might be coming back."

"Wha-when?" Sam chewed and swallowed fast, staring at him.

"Straight line from Boston to Kansas City," the old man said, chewing calmly on his mouthful. "Be here in the morning, I 'spect."

"Does he know where the bunker is?" Dean washed down his food with a swallow of beer as he asked. "Aren't we supposed secret, from everyone?"

"There are no records here of any of the other locations, only about the groups," I told him. "Only the Legacies and the Hunters of each location knew the whereabouts. Even the Initiates didn't."

"So, how'd he find us?"

"Well, he ain't yet," Bobby pointed out. "You check your messages?"

Dean looked guiltily at his coat pocket. I think he'd turned off his phone somewhere on the way back from Missouri.

"Uh huh," Bobby said, nodding as he bent over his plate. "Good burgers, by the way. Who cooked 'em?"

Dean glowered at him and I hurriedly looked back at my burger.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Three hours later, I was straddling Dean's hips on the bed in our room, smearing copious quantities of blue cream over his back and shoulders, working my way down his multi-hued skin. He wasn't black and blue anymore, there were some very nice shades of green and purple there as well now.

"You know," he said, a little drowsily from under me, his voice muffled by the pillow. "Me and Sam did a lot of stuff."

"Sure did," I agreed readily. He'd quaffed about a half a bottle of whiskey after dinner, sitting in the library and reading through the histories of the Order, with Bobby, Sam and Lauren, while I'd been dutifully typing up the full notes of the witch job.

"No," he argued, a bit peeved that I hadn't gotten it straight away. "I mean – a lot of stuff."

I let out a little sigh. "I know."

"You think that's why Metatron wants to rewrite our history?" he asked, and I realised he wasn't as dazed as I'd thought. "'Cause he thinks we might throw a wrench in whatever he's got planned?"

I thought about that. Metatron's rewriting – so far, at least – had consisted of setting the brothers at odds with each other, and then setting Dean and I at odds. I wasn't sure how that was supposed to equate to messing them up enough to stop them from doing anything. It sure hadn't stopped them from trying to close Hell.

"Would getting the two of you pissy at each other stop you from doing anything?" I asked him, thinking of the years I'd watched on the show where they'd been pissy at each other for other reasons.

"P'bly not," he admitted unwillingly. "Screwing me up over you might've."

I stopped rubbing for a moment and he twisted around to squint over his shoulder at me.

"Don't look so surprised," he said, one side of his mouth lifting.

"You were desperate about being there for Sam," I reminded him. "Not about ditching me."

He turned back to the pillow, saying in a very soft mumble, "Shows what you know."

Sliding my hands in long, hard strokes up his back, the lotion disappearing into his skin, I remembered what he'd said, about turning away if I'd asked him to.

He groaned a little, the sound even more muffled by the pillow.

"Cas said the angels couldn't find him," I said, feeling him stretch right out under me, watching the smooth play of the muscles in his back and shoulders with absent appreciation. "Why would he think you and Sam could be a danger to him, if they weren't?"

"I dunno."

Something that had been mentioned a couple of times on the show but never really followed through popped into my head and I stopped rubbing.

"Uh…Ter…don't stop," he said, lifting his head a bit.

"Dean, you remember what Michael said to you, when you went back to save your parents?" I leaned forward a little. "In 1978?"

"Uh, shit, Terry, dude said a lot of crap."

"He told you it was in the bloodlines? Yours, your family's – you remember?"

"Being his vessel? Yeah, okay, why?" he asked, twitching to one side. I lifted myself higher and he rolled over onto his back underneath me.

"What if it is about the bloodlines?" I asked him. "All of it, about the bloodlines."

"What do you mean?"

"They needed a Winchester to break the first seal, right? You or your dad – but not Sam," I said, staring at the wall behind the bedhead as I struggled to remember what else had been said about it. "And Adam was a suitable vessel for Michael but not his true vessel, any more than your dad was his true vessel. Why?"

His brows shot up as he looked up at me. "Fucked if I know."

"You and Sam are both Winchester and Campbell, but your father wasn't and Adam wasn't…" I stopped, feeling like I was so close to seeing something but not there, it was dancing away through my memories as I tried harder and harder to grab hold of it. "Why was Sam's Lucifer's vessel? Why not you? Why were you Michael's? Why was it only you could break the first seal and not Sam? Was that just because of what Yellow Eyes did? Giving him the blood? And Ruby? Making him crave it?"

"Whoa, hey, slow down," he said, wriggling up the bed and sitting up, his hands settling around my hips. I looked at him, focussing again and saw that I was making him nervous, dragging up all this old stuff.

"I'm sorry, I am, Dean, but why?" I asked him, feeling my fingers clench in the covers under us when I reached for the stupid memory again and felt it slide away. It was important, this – this – thing that was hovering but just out of view.

"I don't know," he said, his voice getting a bit deeper. "You think that's got something to do with why Metatron wants us out of the picture?"

"Or in the picture but incapacitated," I said, feeling as if that was a part of it too, although I couldn't, for the life of me, work out why. Why not just kill them? Was it that he couldn't? Wasn't allowed to?

"The Cupid, in, um, you know, when you ran into Famine, he said that Heaven was very specific about the union of John Winchester and Mary Campbell," I said, more slowly. I'd been a fan of the show, and I'd watched the episodes a lot but there were a lot of them and some of the writers had thrown a lot of stuff in that didn't match what had previously been said or had happened on the show, and I had no way of working out which things were really important, had really been a part of their lives here, and which things had seemed like a good idea at the time.

"Yeah, Heaven was stacking the deck so's Hell could free Lucifer," Dean said, nodding. "Even back then."

"Right," I said. "And they could only use you and Sam. No one else. Just you two. One for the beginning," I said. A voice muttered in my mind, and I blinked at what it said…(the Alpha). "And one for the end…" I continued hesitantly as the voice came again…(the Omega).

Shaking my head, I wondered if I was going nuts, or if something had just spoken to me. The question – the frightening, creepy, knee-shaking question – was what?

"What?" Dean asked, ducking his head a little to peer into my face. I was listening for it to come again but it didn't.

"Nothing," I said, not sure that it was anything. There was certainly nothing to stand in the way of me going a bit off the rails, given all that happened and where I was, after all. "The beginning…and the end…" I repeated. "Except that you really screwed that up for them because you wouldn't let Sam go."

He stared at me, and I could see the shadows, of all those memories, flitting behind his eyes.

"Okay," he said uncertainly. "But that was all about Lucifer, the dicks long-range plan to get him into another fight with Michael and get their paradise."

"Yeah," I said, trying to work out if that was the important thing or not. "But Metatron's an angel too. Maybe he was waiting for his paradise? And you and Sam stopped it from happening."

Dean frowned. "An' he waited another couple of years before making a move?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe he couldn't do anything then, maybe he didn't have the right…mojo…then."

I shook my head, feeling hopeless and useless. That faint twinkle of an idea had vanished along with the exact memories that supported it and while I still felt like it was important, very important maybe, I couldn't get it back.

"Hey," he said, his arms coming around me, pulling me higher up his legs and closer. "We'll figure it out, okay? We just need to find all the pieces."

Find all the pieces, I thought with a hollow feeling. Now. After all that'd happened. I leaned close to him, his distinctive scent overwhelmed by the lavender and comfrey scents of the numbing lotion, but enough to give me an instant feeling of comfort as I tucked my cheek against his neck.

"This place won't have the Winchester histories," I said after few minutes of close contact and feeling quite a lot calmer. "No one was here to take notice of what you and Sam did."

"Someone saw it all," Dean told me slowly. "Chuck. He wrote it all up, right to the cage opening."

Lifting my head, I looked at him, realising he was right, but that a lot of the stuff detailing more of their history, and how much the angels had really manipulated their family didn't get shown until the following season.

"But some of this stuff didn't come out until after that," I said, my voice rising little by little. "And Chuck disappeared. And Kevin didn't see any of it."

"Didn't that Wickfield guy say something about reading about us?" he asked, his face screwing up a little as he tried to remember what Dominic had said about them. I couldn't remember the details of that conversation, it was all mixed up with werewolves and legacies and superiors.

"I can't remember," I fretted, thinking that was another thing I'd failed to hang on to.

"Terry," he said, very quietly. "We'll check it out, in the morning."

In the morning, I repeated to myself, hoping he wasn't expecting me to get any sleep tonight whatsoever.

Some of that must've been showing my face because he shook his head slightly, reaching past me to pick up the pot of cream and move it to the nightstand, then he leaned back, pulling me with him until we were both lying down, me mostly on top of him.

"C'mon, relax," he said, his hands mimicking the long strokes I'd given him earlier. "Not sore anymore, we could both use a distraction."

His mouth slid over my jaw and down my neck, sending a small stampede of shivers through me and I couldn't argue with that.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Dominic had left a message on Dean's phone, requesting a meeting. Dean and Sam drove to Salina to get him, and when they got back with him, he was blindfolded and had a black hood over his head, Sam telling me later that they'd practically strip-searched the poor guy to make sure he wasn't carrying anything that might give the bunker's location away.

He walked unsteadily down the stairs, the brothers to either side of him, and blinked madly as the hood then the blindfold was removed in the library.

Bobby sat at the end of the library table closest to the fire, and I sat to his left, Lauren to his right. Wickfield looked around, running a hand over his hair to smooth it down.

"This is quite small, isn't it?" he remarked, and I saw Dean's face harden behind him as he took the comment personally.

"You're here," he snapped at the Legacy, pushing him forward to the table. "What did you want to tell us?"

The legacy stumbled forward, and caught his balance on the back of the chair, looking over his shoulder with a disdainful expression.

"Rudeness is its own reward," he said, pulling out the chair and sitting down. "Foul tongue never gained fair lady yet," he added as he looked up the table to Lauren and I, the sneer disappearing and replaced by a smile that might've pleasant if it wasn't so darned superior.

"Ladies. Sir," he said. "It's Theresa, isn't it?" he added to me, tilting his head then looking over to Lauren with a slightly arched brow. "And I haven't had the pleasure of making your acquaintance?"

I could see Dean was ready to shoot him, and I guess Lauren could too because she nodded briskly, and said, "I'm Lauren, this is Bobby Singer."

"A wonderful –"

"Yeah," Dean said, walking past him and dropping into the chair next to me. "Blah blah blah…what did you come here for?"

I'd spent about two hours with Dominic when he'd shown up at our motel room in Michigan, waiting for the brothers to return from their searching for clues on what was killing students on the U-M campus, and something about him began to bother me as he leaned back in the chair and started talking.

He'd been particular…well, yeah, okay, a real old-fashioned dandy, when I'd spent that time with him. Not my favourite trait in a man, so I'd noticed it. The air of superiority had been there, definitely, but it'd been more…innocent…than now, I thought, watching him. Like something he'd grown up with but hadn't ever considered. Now, it was deliberate – or at least it looked that way. He didn't seem to be trying to be polite, which he had the last time.

"You cannot become Legacies here on your own," he was saying to Sam, his head tilted to one side, the effect being an adult explaining something to a child. A not-bright child. Beside me, Dean was simmering at the condescension and I noticed even Sam, who's usually pretty tolerant, starting to feel it. "You need to study with an Adept, learn, be tested and taken through the Initiation process."

"We're doin' fine on our own," Dean said with a snap.

"As Hunters? I suppose you are," Dominic said, his lip curling up. "But there is much more, so much more you must learn to become Legacies."

I could see, and Sam, Lauren and Bobby too, I bet, that was like waving a red flag at a bull and Dean was readying himself to launch into some blistering flood of expletive and invective when Sam cut in ahead of him.

"What are you suggesting?"

"Come back with me," Dominic said, waving a hand toward the door as he leaned closer to Sam. The exclusion seemed deliberate, and again, was not what I'd seen of the man in Michigan. "Train with us, a couple of you, at least."

"No." Dean bit out, and Dominic turned to look at him.

"Then your brother," he said. "And perhaps this lovely lady would also like to learn of our Order."

Lauren's expression was neutral as she said, "I thought you required only those of the correct bloodlines to become Legacies?"

He laughed, tucking his chin against his chest as he looked at her. "There are always exceptions, my dear. You seem to be well-versed in this milieu even now?"

"My father spoke to the Order, many times when I was a child," she told him.

"Your father? Really?" he asked, looking at her. "He was a Legacy or one of the Informants?"

"An angel," she corrected him and I saw his eyes widen comically at that piece of information.

"You are…nephilim?"

There was a kind of breathless awe in the way he said the word, as if he'd never expected to meet one – or as if he'd been looking for one for a long time.

"Yes," she said.

I think she might've regretted letting that out to him, but even I couldn't see the particular harm in it right then.

"How fascinating," Dominic said, leaning his chin on one hand as he studied her. "I have long desired to meet one of your kind."

"We're just like everyone else," she said disparagingly, bristling a little at the 'your kind' emphasis as she glanced at Sam.

"Oh, no," Wickfield exclaimed, apparently still oblivious to his own faux pas. "You're immensely rare."

I saw a glint in his eyes, and it sent an immediate ripple of ice down my spine. He looked…what, I wondered? Excited? Greedy was the word that finally seemed to suit best.

"I would very much like you to meet my superior," he said, drawing in a breath and straightening in his chair. "All of you, of course," he added, glancing around the table, his gaze seeming to skip right over Dean and Bobby. Neither missed that, of course, both of them tensing further.

"And he would very much enjoy meeting you," he continued, looking at Lauren and Sam. "May I arrange it? For perhaps, a weeks' time? In the town, naturally, not here."

"I don't think you're peddlin' anything we –" Dean started to say, and Sam cut him off.

"Yeah, in the town. In a week."

He gave his brother a quelling stare as Dominic clapped his hands together.

"Splendid," he said. "I've brought the histories, as I promised."

He reached for his bag, a fine leather briefcase, sitting at his feet, and set it on the table, opening it and removing two huge files.

"Winchester and Campbell. Unfortunately, not entirely up to date, we lost track of you after the Raphael incident," he said, pushing them toward Sam. "If you could update them, it would be most satisfactory."

"Wha-wait a minute," Dean said, swinging around to stare at him. "You knew about that? And you did nothing?"

The legacy gave an embarrassed sort of shrug. "Well, what could we do? We're not field agents, after all."

"A fucking phone call would've been nice," Dean grated, half-rising from his chair. Sam's hand flicked out and grabbed his arm as Dean reached for his coat pocket.

"Lemme go, I'm gonna shoot him now –" he muttered.

Dominic turned a peculiar shade of white and pushed his chair back as Sam wrestled Dean back down.

"I can assure you, Mr Winchester, there was nothing we could do –"

"Forget it," Sam said over the top of him. "Just – look, we'll meet with your boss, alright? We could use some help here."

He got to his feet and glanced at me. "I'll take him back."

Which was Sam's way of asking me – or telling me – to get his brother calmed down. I stared at him, wondering what on earth I was going to be able to do to achieve that, but he'd already turned away.

As Wickfield rose to his feet, I saw him look at Dean, his eyes narrowed in a way that seemed to make his previous nervousness look like an act. His gaze flicked to me and the calculating expression disappeared, a worried smile replacing it and I watched him follow Sam down the steps and across the next room, wondering what the heck I'd just seen.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

"Should've let me plug him," Dean said an hour later as his brother walked up the steps to the library. He was sitting at the table, a drift of paper in front of him, a glass of whiskey at his elbow. "Save us all a lot of time and trouble."

"He can help us," Sam said tiredly, dropping into a chair across from him.

"We don't need their help," Dean told him pugnaciously, pushing a loose set of clippings across the table. "What's that look like to you?"

I was sitting in the armchair near the hearth, supposedly reading but actually keeping an eye on Dean. He'd gone through all the printer bins in the situation room as soon as Sam had left, searching for something for them to do. What he'd found was…well, questionable really.

"Any verification on this?" Sam said after a minute of reading through them, his forehead wrinkling in that way that usually indicated that he didn't want to step on his brother's enthusiasm but he nevertheless didn't think there was a case there. He's a good brother that way.

"Nope, but I mean…what else?" Dean asked him, leaning back in his chair with a grin.

"You think it's a zombie," Sam stated flatly.

"Bingo."

"It could be a million things, Dean," Sam said, looking down at the clippings again. "Like, an actual dead person."

"Who got up and walked away on their own?" Dean asked derisively. "State trooper Sam, twenty-year vet. No drag marks, he says."

"Or he didn't look real hard," Sam countered.

"We going?"

"Yeah, alright," Sam said, shrugging. He started to get up and coughed a little, covering his mouth and leaning on the table.

"You alright?" Dean asked, looking at him over his shoulder. "Great Falls' a fifteen-hour drive and chasing zombies –"

"I'm fine," Sam said sharply, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Just got some dust or something." He watched Dean walking purposely out of the room and raised his brows. "You wanna go now?"

"Daylight's wasting," Dean tossed back at him, heading for the doors at the other end of the room.

Sam turned to look at me. "I thought you were gonna calm him down?"

I snorted at him. "By giving him Prozac in his whiskey?"

"By talking to him," Sam said, scowling at me. "He's been on edge since you two got back from Missouri – what's going on?"

I sighed and closed the book I hadn't been reading, putting it on the table beside me.

"C'mon, Sam, he's worried about you," I said, getting up and walking to the table. "He's worried about the trials, about Hell, Crowley, some creepy archangel messing with his head –"

Sam leaned against the table. "Worried about you?"

"I don't think so," I said. "We were talking, last night, about why Metatron would be focussing on you two."

"And?"

"And I remembered something Michael said, when you went back to 1978 to try and save your parents," I said. The memory of the other reference to the bloodlines hadn't come back and the whole mess was more or less churning away in the back of my mind, along with all my messes, but nothing more had emerged. "About the fact that Heaven went to a lot of trouble to make sure you two were born, and grew up."

"And?" he asked, more impatiently. "You think Metatron's working on the same plan?"

"No," I said, the question making me rethink it. "The opposite, in fact. What if he's trying to rewrite what happened – at least in your heads – so that you aren't stronger together?"

"What do you mean?"

"Dean said that the two of you have done a lot of things to ruin a lot of Heaven's plans," I said. "And Hell's for that matter. That can't've been the plan, right? So, somehow, despite all the manipulations, you were strong enough to stop the things they kept putting into play."

"Alright," he agreed cautiously.

"So what if Metatron thinks you're going to stop whatever he's got in mind? That's why he tried to change your memories, your history, put you at odds with each other?"

He chewed the inside of his cheek as he considered that. "We're not really doing anything to do with angels right now," he said after a moment.

"No, you're trying to close Hell," I said. "What if he doesn't want that? Or," I added, the thought coming to me. "He thinks you might going after the angel tablet and Heaven next?"

"Then he's got a lot more faith in us than we do," Sam said, his tone disparaging.

"He's looking at your track record," I told him. "Which is impressive in the meddling department."

"But now," Sam extrapolated slowly. "He can't get to us."

"And now, we have a way to maybe find him," I said.

I hadn't even thought of that last night. Now, we had a way to maybe find the angel – well, at least we would have a way as soon as Bobby got all the ingredients. The bunker was missing one. The blood of a god. How unprepared could you be, I ask you?

Dean came back in through the doors at the end of the library and stopped, looking from Sam to me. "You ready?"

Sam frowned, his shoulders hunching up then slumping in defeat. "No, gimme five minutes," he said, heading out of the library for the stairs.

Dean walked over and looked at the files on the table. "You think there'll be anything in there that'll give us more info on this bloodline crap?"

I looked down at them as well. I'd been wondering the same thing. "Maybe."

Looking back at him, I tried to get my scattered thoughts back together. There were way too many strings for this kitten to play with and I could feel myself getting more and more tangled up in all the possibilities, probabilities, half-baked guesses and wild stabs in the dark.

"Dean, did you get the feeling that there was something…off…about Wickfield today?"

His mouth curled down. "What wasn't off about him?"

"He didn't seem the same as when we met him in Michigan," I said, trying to get a better description of my unease with the man than that vague statement. "I don't know what it was, he seemed…more…"

More what, I asked myself as the words failed me. More manipulative? More crafty? More aware of everything?

"Seemed like the same douche-bag to me," he said, looking down at me. "What?"

"I don't know." I looked at the chair where Lauren had been sitting. "Didn't he seem a bit – you know – over-excited when Lauren told him she was nephilim?"

"He's a damned librarian." He shrugged dismissively. "He looks like he'd get excited over the latest release of the dictionary. He probably would've shot his load if he'd known you were from a different dimension."

That might've been true, I thought, wondering if I'd imagined the rest. This is the problem with not being able to nail things at the time, you get paranoid enough and everything looks off.

"We got lucky that Crowley didn't you see, in St Louis, you know," he said, taking a step closer. "Those necklaces might deflect but if he's looking hard, he's not going to miss you."

I nodded and he glanced toward the library doors, both of us hearing Sam's heavy tread coming down the hallway. "Don't tempt him, don't tempt anyone."

"I'll…um…catch on these," I promised, waving a hand at the files, then looking up at him, my mind full of zombie images from the dozens of horror flicks I'd spent my teenage years watching in fascinated dread. Don't you think there's something totally spine-crawlingly-creepy about the way they just kept coming, on and on, losing limbs and bits of them falling off, not even noticed, their eyes fixated on living meat? "Dean, be careful."

He put his arms around me and grinned down at my expression. I don't know what he saw on my face, but it can't have looked like I had that much faith in him, judging by that grin.

"Got it covered," he said, ducking his head to drop a light kiss on my lips. There wasn't time for anything more, and I could feel the impression of his mouth, a slowly fading warm pressure on mine as I watched him turn away, walk back up to the end of the library to meet his brother, and both of them disappear through the door, heading for the garage.

Time alone, I thought, glancing back at the files. I could use it for reading, I told myself firmly. It was a bit of a joke, that. I knew I'd spend be spending a lot of the time he was gone chugging around and around in my head, in circles.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Lauren came into the library a little past midnight, and sat down on the opposite side of the table from me.

"Find anything?" she asked. I looked up, then shook my head.

Nothing that we hadn't already known, really. The order's viewpoint of the Winchesters had been interesting.

"You know what's really hinky?" I said to her, looking at my stone-cold cup of coffee. "Until Henry disappeared, the tone to these histories is, uh, respectful, like they liked both the Winchesters and the Campbells."

"Then?"

"From then on, it gets more and more derogatory," I said, pushing a section of the Campbell history across to her. "And not just because they were hunters," I added. "Read it."

She did, her gaze skimming down the pages. After a couple of minutes and several pages, she looked back at me.

"It's like a campaign – against the family, or hunting in general," she said, reaching for the Winchester file.

I nodded. "Exactly. Even Wickfield wasn't that revolting when I met him, although he seemed a lot worse the second time."

Lauren pulled the file toward her and hesitated, her fingers on the cover. "I was very surprised to see that too," she said, staring at the file. "None of the Legacies I remember from my childhood were at all like that."

"They don't seem to be like that in the histories either," I agreed. "He seemed to like you."

Her eyes, clear and a beautiful blue, flashed up to mine. "You noticed that?"

"Hard to miss," I said, with a shrug. I needed more caffeine. A lot more. I got up from the table, picking up the half-full cup of blech.

"That's what I thought, but Sam thought he was just trying to recruit me to the Order," she said, getting up as well. "He thought he was trying to recruit both of us."

That I'd noticed. Until she'd told him about her father.

"Well, he nearly jumped out of his chair when you told him about your lineage," I said, walking into the kitchen and looking at the empty pot with a sigh. I put the cup on the counter and pulled the glass jug out, taking it the sink to refill it.

"Why'd he make such a big deal out of how 'rare' you are?" I asked her, filling the machine and turning it on.

"I don't know," she said. "I mean, we're not, that rare, that is. There must be fifty or sixty nephilim in this country alone."

I almost laughed. "Out of three hundred million, I guess that's rare."

"The order used to know all the angel families," she told me, her voice dropping a little, as she thought back.

"We know something happened, around the time of Henry's disappearance," I said, half-closing my eyes as I thought all of the things we'd managed to find out about the order since moving in here. "We know that they used to regard hunters with the same respect as the legacies, and that sometimes a legacy would be a hunter, and vice-versa, right?"

"Right," she said, leaning against the table and looking at the floor. "We know that at that same time, the Chicago group was wiped out by something, and never reformed."

"And the attitudes in their reports began to change –"

"And they started fussing about the bloodlines, becoming more elitist –"

"And Heaven were manipulating John Winchester and Mary Campbell into falling in love –"

"And they stopped sending the legacies out to keep in contact with the angels –"

"They were watching the Winchesters," I said, opening my eyes and thinking of the file. Someone had been watching nearly the whole time.

"And they must have known about Azazel's being released, his trips to feed blood to the infants –"

"But they didn't even tell their elite hunters about it," I said, looking at her. "Didn't try to do anything about any of it."

The silence that fell between us at that point seemed pregnant with possibilities. Too many darned possibilities. Heaven and Hell had made a deal, but how far reaching had it been? Had they infiltrated the order, somehow?

My phone rang, the shrill tone in the middle of all my close-to-freaking-out-thoughts making me jump. I dragged it out of my pocket.

"Dean?"

Lauren lifted a brow at me as I listened. They were in Great Falls and the zombie wasn't a zombie. They didn't know what he was, but apparently he died, every single day, without fail.

"Hang on, Lauren needs to hear this," I said, putting the phone on speaker and walking to the table to set it down. "Go."

"He says he doesn't remember anything," Dean said, his voice loud and clear from the cell. "We need to know – uh – anything you can find on what dies a lot –"

"It's got to be a curse," Lauren said, looking at the phone. "A powerful one to control life and death."

"Yeah, but put on him by what?" Dean's voice sounded frustrated. "Dude doesn't remember a damned thing. He was in an avalanche, got rescued, built a cabin, lived alone in the woods."

"Nothing in the files?" I asked.

"No, I ran a search as soon as we got him to the motel room," Sam piped in. "You'll have to search the books, sorry."

He didn't sound all that sorry and seeing Lauren's mouth twist up a little, I thought she didn't think he sounded all that sorry either.

"Alright," I said, shrugging at her. "We'll look."

Dean hung up and I picked up the phone and put it back into my jacket pocket, glancing around at the coffee pot. It was nearly full.

"I'll take the spells and magic," Lauren said with a sigh, grabbing a cup and filling it.

I nodded. "I'll see what there is on the cursed object index."

We took our cups and trudged out of the kitchen, splitting up at the stairs, her going up and me going down.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Four hours later, I was ready to concede defeat. There were cursed objects in abundance, hundreds of them, probably thousands or tens of thousands, I thought, staring at the shelves that surrounded me, but none, so far at least, that resulted in a person dying every day.

Hoping Lauren'd had more luck with the spells section, I climbed the stairs, my thoughts wandering aimlessly as I stifled another in a long line of yawns.

Curses and dying, angels and a secret society that was changing its stripes, or did I mean spots? Trials and contracts with a deity that none of us, except Lauren, really had any faith in. Plans between Heaven – supposedly a good place – and Hell, supposedly the worst. Well, not much supposition about that, I thought, flinching away from my memories. Two men. Both tested and sacrificed and scarred.

I shook my head and decided I needed to get one of those organisational charts up somewhere, where I could write down all the pieces and see if any of them matched up to some kind of coherent pattern.

Hitting the kitchen, I made another pot of coffee, wondering absently how much longer I'd have before I gave myself stomach ulcers with this routine. Through the high, narrow windows above the sink, the sky was getting lighter and I leaned against the counter, knuckling my eyes as if I could force some focus back into them.

One thing about it, I thought with a certain amount of self-mockery. I was never bored.

Lauren came in about an hour later, and I forced myself to look up, my chin leaning on my hand to keep my head from thunking onto the table top. The coffee wasn't having the same effect it used to.

"Nothing," she said, catching my bleary questioning look and heading straight for the pot. "There are resurrection spells, but they all require so much power that they could never be done daily, not even yearly."

"I'll call Dean," I said, stifling yet another yawn and giving my apparently useless coffee an accusing look as I pulled out my phone.

"Hey," I said when he picked up. "We can't find anything that matches."

"Yeah, well, he's dead again," Dean said, his voice getting all mushy for a second then clearing. He was yawning too, I thought. "We're waiting for him to come to – or back – or whatever it is he does."

"What happened this time?" I asked.

"Some chick broke into his room and tried to kill him," Dean said, sounding a little annoyed at the memory. "She disappeared in a puff of smoke, and then he had a heart attack."

"What?"

At the other end of the line I heard him snort. "Yeah, exactly."

"Did you see her?"

"Not real well," he said. "It was dark and she – uh – she – well, she kind of got the drop on me."

"On you?"

I could hear his smile in his voice as he said, "Yeah, hard as it is to believe. Knocked Sam into next week too," he added, a little note of defensiveness creeping into his voice.

"Did he know her?"

"Said he didn't, but she knew him," he told me. "Uh, Ter, I'll call you back, someone's at the door."

He hung up and I put the phone away, looking down into my cup.

"Anything?" Lauren asked, sitting down, her fingers curling around her coffee.

"Um, hard to say," I said slowly. "Apparently someone – a woman – tried to kill the not-zombie and failed, but she was good enough to put both Dean and Sam down while she did it. Then the guy had a heart attack and died."

Said like that, it sounded…well, it sounded ludicrous, right?

"They're waiting for him to come back to life," I added, circling my fingertips over my forehead as I realised I was developing a headache. I wasn't sure if it was from the lack of sleep, the overdosing on caffeine or the sheer chaotic mess that seemed to be surrounding us.

"Sleep," Lauren said firmly, looking at me. "We'll get some sleep, then look again. You look like something that could be a zombie right now, Terry."

Since I felt like it too, I didn't like to argue with her. The thought of my bed, filled with his scent and soft sheets, warm doona, dreams, peace and quiet…it was a wonderful prospect.

We parted company at the stairs again, me going up, her going along the hall to the staircase on the other side of the library. It wasn't until I'd reached the door of the room that I realised after twelve hours of drinking coffee, I might have some small difficulties in actually getting to sleep. After a moment spent pondering the problem not very coherently, I turned around and went back down, going to the apothecary and hunting through the cupboard until I saw the potion Lauren had been giving Kevin in small doses. It was a dark blue and smelled like socks that have been left at the bottom of the hamper too long, but the dose on the label was only a teaspoon and I poured it out, held my nose, gagged a couple of times then swallowed fast.

I probably should've read the label in more detail, but yeah, live and learn. I got into my room, glancing at the clock on the nightstand as I pulled my clothes off and left them in a heap on the floor. Six thirty-five. Collapsing into the bed with a deep exhale, I figured I could probably sleep for about eight hours, be ready to go again after a late brunch. I burrowed under the covers and – I think – drifted off instantly.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

When I woke, I twisted around and looked at the clock, feeling completely rested and relaxed. The time was six forty-eight and I stared at it for several long moments, trying to work out how I could feel so rested for what was less than a quarter-hour nap. Duh. It did eventually dawn on me that I'd slept around the clock, twenty-four hours, and I fell back onto the pillows in astonishment.

With uncanny timing, there was a thumping at the door that just about gave me a coronary and I scrambled out of the bed in a rush, grabbing a robe and slinging it on as I reached for the door knob.

Lauren stood there, hands on her hips as she looked me up and down. "About time, come on."

She turned around and started down the stairs and I dithered in the doorway, belting the robe around me as I wondered if I should get dressed first. She stopped a few steps down and looked back at me over her shoulder, her expression impatient.

"Come on!"

"But, should I get dressed –?"

"You'll do, hurry up," she said, turning back for the stairs. I hurried after her. The Trans had been incommunicado for days, Charlie had gone, Bobby had gone the same morning as the brothers and really, it was just us here, now. It still felt weird to be traipsing down the hallway in just my robe – like walking through a big hotel in just a robe. I mean, it's not like it doesn't cover you, but still, the draughts whistling up from underneath…well, you know what I mean. Did flashers feel like this, I wondered as I half-trotted along behind her?

"What is it?" I asked when I caught up on the next landing down.

"Dean called," she said. "He got worried when you didn't answer and called me. I told him you were just sleeping, which only worried him more." She turned to look at me. "You know, you didn't even wake when I took your temperature?"

"I – uh – well, I was worried about getting to sleep after all the coffee and I took some of that stuff you've been giving to Kevin," I admitted unwillingly.

"You what?" she asked, her voice rising to a squeak – that high-pitched change alerted me to the fact that it hadn't been a good idea. Normally she has a rather contralto voice. "That's – oh, Terry, that's to force sleep, it's not – how much did you take?"

"Just what it said on the label," I said, looking at the floor, my arms crossed over my chest defensively. "A teaspoon."

She snorted and shook her head. "Guess we're lucky you only slept for twenty-four hours," she said, looking at me sideways. "Didn't you read the label? It's to be taken by weight. The teaspoon is for an average male."

"Oh."

"Oh," she mimicked me. "Anyway, Dean said they're heading home, with the guy and his family –"

"Family?"

"Seems he's got a girlfriend and son," she said. "It also seems that he's actually Prometheus."

I looked blankly at her. "Pro-methee-who?"

She rolled her eyes, in a gesture very reminiscent of Sam's. "Prometheus, the Greek god, son of the Titans? Who stole fire from Zeus to give to mankind? And was cursed by the Father of Gods to die every day?"

None of it rang any particular bells for me, despite going through Bobby's collections of mythology on the Greek gods when we'd been searching for info on Purgatory and Hell.

"Uh! Illiterate!" she said, throwing her hands in the air. Another of Sam's little mannerisms, I thought, wondering distractedly if I'd picked up any of Dean's. I couldn't think of any offhand.

"So, why are they coming here?" Twenty-four hours sleep straight does something to the mental processes. I should've felt crystal clear, sharp as a tack, on top of the world, but I was still a bit muzzy. And possibly a trifle uncoordinated, I thought, as I tripped over the hem of my robe and nearly brained myself on the doorway.

"They have to find a way to break the curse," she said.

Of course, I thought. Why not? Just a curse from – what had she called him? – the Father of Gods? No problemo. A very vague memory of thunderbolts and bulls trickled down through my cotton-wool thoughts.

"If this guy's a god, think he'll give us the blood for the tracking spell?" I asked.

She nodded happily. "That's the plan."

"And there was no time for me to get dressed because –?"

"I think I've found a link between Metatron and Raphael," she said, reaching back to grab my wrist and pull me along faster.

"Raphael's dead," I said, a little aggrievedly as I stumbled behind her. Maybe more than just a trifle in the unco department. "His troubles are over."

"Raphael orchestrated the manipulation of the Winchester and Campbell families," she said, letting go as we reached the library. "I went through my father's notes yesterday."

"And?"

"And I want you to read them, tell me what you think," she said exasperatedly.

"This couldn't have waited for a shower, some coffee and breakfast?"

"It won't take a minute," she countered, unrepentant.

On the table closest to the fire, a dozen books, notepads and journals were spread out. Lauren pushed me toward the chair in front of them and picked up a finely bound journal, putting it in front of me. The handwriting was beautiful, a delicate cursive hand that was perfectly precise in every letter. I looked up at her.

"This will go faster if I can have a cup of coffee," I suggested.

She waved her hand at the book, nodding. "Just read."

As she turned away, heading for the kitchen, I hoped, I started to read.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~