For a moment, Rose thought she was dreaming and was tempted to pinch herself awake.

But if it was a dream, it was certainly a good one. Certainly better than the nightmare she had just experienced.

For the whole night, Rose was free of her thoughts. Free of the silence that haunted her. Free for now.

CHAPTER TEN

In which everyone does a lot of brooding

(Written to: The Veil of Night (Live) from Professor Layton and the Curious Village)

Listenonrepeat: /watch/?v=hvKPflvOYuI#22_-_The_Veil_of_Night_(Live)_%5BProfessor_Layton_and_the_Curious_Village_Soundtrack%5D

When Rose woke up, still buried in the simple linens on the simple bed in the simple little bedroom, she was thrown right back into her nightmare of reality. The silence was deafening to her mind. It all came back to her the moment she opened her eyes. All the pain and sadness and anger came flooding back.

She vaguely remembered Crowley waking her just before sunrise, telling her that he had gotten an urgent call and had some damage control to attend to. But now the sun was pouring into the room and Rose was alone with her thoughts.

It took a great deal of mental effort to pull herself from the comfort of the soft bedding. She threw her legs over the edge and the blankets back, then reached for her phone. Sure enough, there were five missed calls and two new voicemails.

The first was from Sam. Being fraternal twins, Sam and Rose had a deeper connection than either of them had with Dean. They were more often than not on the same page about most things. They had grown up the same way with the same circumstances and the same attitude about hunting and family. They understood each other better than Dean could. It drove the eldest sibling insane to no end, but he was grateful for Rose's insight when Sam left for Stanford and for Sam's insight when Rose left for Chicago.

So naturally, Sam had been the first to call.

The second message was - of course - from Dean. Dean had only called once compared to the four times Sam had tried to reach his sister. Dean understood when someone needed space, but he also couldn't shake the protective older brother persona. If his baby sister was hurting, no doubt he was beating himself up over it and worried to no end. Of course this time, it really had been his fault. He was the one that made the decision to keep Rose in the dark about everything. His reasons seemed noble enough, but they were also fueled by the betrayal he felt when she abandoned her family. But it didn't take him long to see that he had really messed up this time.

After a minute of deliberation, Rose decided that listening to the messages probably couldn't do more harm than had already been done. So she tapped on the screen a few times then held it to her ear.

Sam's voice droned through the small speaker. "Rose, I know the last thing you want right now is to talk to us. We had no right keeping that stuff from you. You can handle yourself, I know. Believe me, you've kicked my ass plenty of times to prove your point. We just….we thought we were doing something good for you - letting you have a normal life. I had one for three years and….well I won't say it was the best thing that happened to me, but it was nice to not have to worry about that stuff all the time. Dean and I…..we just wanted you to be happy. You're right, we should have told you. No apology in the world is going to make up for that…...but….just try to get where we're coming from? And give us a call or something. Or at least text us. Let us know you're okay."

With a small sniff, Sam's voice fell silent, and the message ended.

Dean's voice was the next thing to echo from her phone. "I don't expect you to forgive me any time soon. I messed up. Big time." Dean gave a small huff of a laugh. "You were right. Kind of. I was pissed that you left. We're your family, Rose. You don't just walk out on family. But when we came to visit you….you looked so happy. I hadn't seen you smile like that since….god...before we told you the truth about all the shit in the world." Rose heard a small sniff though the phone. "So yeah, I was pissed. You abandoned us. But you were happy. I couldn't just take that away from you. I already did that to Sammy, and I wasn't gonna do it again to you."

There was another huff of laughter. "Damn...listen to me spilling like a girl." He cleared his throat. Rose could picture him trying to shake the emotions off like they were bugs. "Listen, you call us and let us know you're okay, then you can do whatever you want with your life and we won't keep you in the dark anymore. If you even still wanna talk to us after this. Just...take care of yourself. And don't let that dickbag boy toy of your's push you around."

The message ended.

Rose sniffed and threw her phone aside. Her body followed suit and fell back against the cushioning of the bed. She was wrong. That made it worse. So much worse. But at least she hadn't been overwhelmed by her thoughts for a good few minutes.

It hit her all at once. The tears she hadn't shed came pouring from her eyes. A good day's worth of tears streamed down her face and on to the bedding in one great waterfall. Her abdomen shook with convulsive sobs. Her mouth parted with each gut-wrenching sob, silently screaming in pain.

It was true what they said about emotional pain being felt as physical pain. Her entire body was aching. Her gut felt like it had been through two stomach bugs and a tapeworm, not to mention the period cramps starting to come back. Her night with Crowley had numbed the pain well enough to let her sleep, but now she was alone and it hit her like a semi going 90 miles an hour.

The bedding around her was soaking up what her face and brunette hair didn't. Her eyes stung like she had been staring at the sun for ten minutes and her face was tense with the quick-drying salt water it was being doused in. Her silent screams turned into whimpers of desperation.

She had never cried like this before. All her anger, sadness, hurt, betrayal, guilt, and whatever other negative emotions she might have been keeping bottled up were all bubbling out of her in shaking, salty, painful sobs.

On the way back from the angel crime scene, the Winchester brothers and their angel buddy had stopped at a bustling truck-stop diner for some food. Cas had opted to wait in the car with the evidence while the boys got their meal.

Neither of them had said much since their conversation with Rose. They both seemed to be avoiding the inevitable. Sooner or later, they would have to discuss their new gameplan with Rose and Crowley, but at the moment they would much rather sit in brooding silence than talk about how they betrayed their own sister.

After what the pain they caused her, neither Sam nor Dean were exactly eager to talk about their plan to kill Crowley. If the two of them actually liked each other more than just fuck-buddies, then how could they kill him and let Rose suffer even more at their hands? But how could they just let Crowley get off scot-free? He had to pay for tricking them - more than once, they might add. Perhaps they should just give it a little more time…

"Think we should try calling Crowley?" Sam asked, mid-bite.

Dean glanced up at his little brother. "For what?"

"See if Rose is okay." Sam answered quietly. He didn't exactly like the idea either, but he wanted to be sure his twin was okay.

Dean sighed and put his burger back on the plate before him. "He's got Hell stuff to do. I'm sure he's busy and Rose is fine. If I recall, you didn't exactly want to talk to me right away after I told you about me and her sneaking out for ice cream all the time when you were asleep."

"That was different. That was ice cream, not six years of some pretty important stuff." Sam scoffed.

"It's close enough. You were nine. Ice cream was your life." Sam rolled his eyes in response. "Look, my point is Rose is gonna need time to cool off, then she'll be back on her feet and beating us into the ground before you know it."

"Don't you think we should at least check up on her?"

"And piss off Crowley? I'd rather not." Dean retorted, picking up his food again - only to have his phone go off. So with a sigh, he put the burger back down and fished his phone out his pocket.

Upon seeing the sender, he muttered: "Speak of the devil. Literally."

That caught Sam's attention. He snapped up from his food to look at his older brother with his eyebrows knit together.

"He wants to meet. Told him to just show up here." Dean explained somewhat ominously.

"Great." Sam sighed.

Not seconds later, Crowley walked in and sat beside Dean. His natural charisma and trademark mischievous smirk had been exchanged for a rather intense air of bitterness and a scowl. He was not happy in the least. For a moment, the boys were actually concerned for their safety. It had been a while since Crowley had been this furious with them.

"I don't exactly have a lot of free time, so I'll make this quick. You two are done protecting Rose. That's my job now, the same way it has been for the past four years."

Dean's mouth gaped open as he began to reply.

"Ah, ah, I wasn't finished, Squirrel." Crowley cut him off. Castiel (who had noticed Crowley entering the diner) all but slammed the door open and stormed over to the booth, taking a seat beside Sam. "You've done a bang up job so far considering that she's more likely to run for President than she is to forgive you. So let me make one thing clear-" Crowley leaned forward in his seat, his glare burning holes in each of the boys' heads. "You so much as go near her without her permission, you will pay a price worse than death."

Sam swallowed hard and exchanged a somewhat confused and concerned glance with his older brother.

"You can't make that decision without Rose. Sam and Dean are her brothers. They-" Cas was cut off by the seething demon sitting across from him.

"Some brothers they've been." He turned to Sam and Dean. "Consider yourselves warned."

As Crowley moved to leave, Sam called out: "Wait! At least tell us how Rose is."

For a fleeting second, Sam wished he hadn't said anything. Crowley looked ready to lunge across the table and rip the moose's head from his body. If anything, the human blood still somewhere in his veins had made him even more terrifying.

"You mean other than partially catatonic and debating slaughtering the lot of you?" Dean visibly winced. When no one replied to his indignant rhetorical question, Crowley added: "She's having some rest and relaxation in the French countryside. Nothing to worry about. Except, of course, her fury. The next time she sees you, she'll probably rip your beating hearts from your chests with her bare hands. So I'd watch my back if I were you."

Before anyone else could get in a word, Crowley stormed out of the diner and was gone.

Dean sighed and ran a hand over his face. He mumbled more to himself than his brother and the angel across from him: "Well, shit."

"Perhaps it wasn't the wisest idea to hide such things from Rose." Castiel offered somewhat quietly.

"No. No, it was not, Cas." Sam replied just as quietly.

Rose had stopped crying at least an hour ago, but she was still laying on the bed. Her body hadn't budged one inch and her face was so tense from the salty tears that she was concerned she might not be able to move it anymore.

Her mind was racing again after recovering from its temporary numbness. For the third time since she heard it, she was trying to piece together everything her brothers had told her. How had she remained so oblivious? Her brothers came to visit her relatively often, but apparently not often enough. She figured it didn't help that she rarely drove down to Bobby's to visit them.

According to them, Chicago had almost been wiped off the map once or twice. Rose had pieced together that it more or less overlapped with the little vacations she went on. An old hunter buddy would call her every now and then and ask her to visit them for a weekend or two. It always took a little convincing, but she would go when she got a call. Now Rose was beginning to realize that her brothers must have set that all up just to get her out. Part of her was thankful for them continuing to keep her safe, but the majority of her mind was even more frustrated. Why couldn't they have just called and told her to get out of town?

Well….she probably wouldn't have listened. She would have stuck around and tried to help them, which would have defeated their whole purpose of not telling her things.

Then there was the matter of Castiel. He wasn't exactly known for his understanding of secret-keeping or human conventions. Granted he didn't exactly pop in for a visit every time Sam or Dean did, but somehow he had kept his cakehole shut about everything. Perhaps that's why he never seemed terribly talkative around her.

There was also the fact that both Sam and Dean had died. Multiple times. In even less time than it took her to figure out her vacations were all setups, Rose figured out that there were no solo hunts for the boys. There were times that Sam or Dean would come to her place alone and spend an extended amount of time crashing in her guest room. They always told her the two of them were on solo hunts. Rose had noticed how 'off' they had seemed during those visits - like they were seeking some form of comfort by spending a full week with her, moping about and drinking all of her alcohol.

In some form of fairness, Rose had done a damn good job keeping Crowley under their radars. And for that matter, kept her brothers off Crowley's radar. Sure, she hadn't exactly been the best about sharing that information with any of them, but she didn't lie about it. And in her defense, she accurately assumed that they would be at each other's throats the second anyone found out. Although, it honestly had never occurred to her that she failed to tell Crowley her last name - even when he shared his life story with her.

In the end, it came down to luck. Pure luck that Rose hadn't found out a single thing. She had known about Crowley's side of the events surrounding Purgatory. Hell, he even hid out at her place after he faked his death (which she now knew was Castiel's attempt at burning his bones). She had also heard his version of the Leviathans and the prophet hunting (which she had not endorsed in any way). She had been there for nearly his entire addiction.

But she never once thought her brothers might be involved. Crowley never mentioned the 'damn Winchester brothers' and they never mentioned having anything past a brush with the King of Hell.

Rose was beating herself up about the whole mess just as badly as she was itching to beat up her brothers. She should have picked up on things. She should have put two and two together so much sooner. Had her time off really made her that rusty? What sort of hunter was she if she couldn't even figure out the Apocalypse was happening? Death had been in Chicago for pity's sake! Lucifer had roamed the Earth and the archangels had an odd love for the Winchester family.

How had she not noticed? How had she not been pulled into it sooner? How had she been so oblivious?

Now that I've written a few chapters into the future, it'll be a bit until the Winchesters have a little family reunion. I thought I would be able to tie up all the loose ends in this chapter, but that just felt too rushed to me.

On the other hand, somewhat in honor of the 10th chapter of A Rose By Any Other Name, I will be posting the oneshot series today! It is so poetically called 'Every Rose Has Its Thorn.' So if you're interested in their backstory and some fluff, go check it out!

In case you were unaware, I do not own Supernatural, its characters or its plot. I only own Marian Rose Winchester and the things that she changes.