Chapter 10

Aware of eyes on him from all directions, Dean let his father help him down from the RV to the ground. There didn't seem to be much point in resisting the inevitable, since if he'd tried to go down on his own, he'd probably have brained himself on the hard packed, frozen dirt of the parking lot. The night was so cold, Dean could feel the hair in his nostrils freezing. Controlling a shiver, he took a step towards where Caleb was hugging Sammy, but was pulled up short when his father abruptly threw something around him. He looked down and realized that his dad had actually taken off his own coat and draped it over his shoulders.

"Dad, I'm fine," Dean protested, trying to shrug the jacket off.

"You were shivering," his father retorted, and Dean scowled. "Come on, let's get you inside." He started hustling Dean along towards the rear entrance to the place.

"I want to say hi to Caleb."

"He'll come inside, too," John said.

Dean let himself be hurried along, reflecting that if he needed an extra layer, it was on the bottom, not the top. He did tend to get awfully cold lately. He'd thought it was just the hospital. Those places were always cold for some unknown reason, but he hadn't stopped. A girl with a very nice ass went ahead of them to open the door and Dean wanted to hit someone. He wasn't an invalid. He could open doors himself, he could even walk by himself. He stumbled on the threshold and his father had to steady him. Most of the time, anyway.

"You don't look to have changed much, John," the girl said.

"Thanks," Dad said. "You've grown a little."

"I would hope so. What was I, five?"

"Something like that," John said, and Dean wondered what they were talking about.

The girl got called over to the bar, and Dean looked around. "Dad, why is everyone staring at me?"

John glanced up and shrugged. "They all know who you are and that you've been missing."

Dean felt himself flush and turned his back to the room abruptly. "What do you mean, they all know I've been missing?" he demanded in a strangled whisper.

"I called Ellen for help," his father replied. "She gets information from all over the country, and I knew she would ask around."

"So you basically called the biggest hunter gossip in the hunter community?" Dean asked, his brows knit.

"Gossip, huh?" Dean froze at the sound of the deep, feminine voice behind him. "I like that." She came up even with him and put an arm around his shoulders, a smile taking the sting out of her sarcasm. "Come on, sweetheart, sit down over here. I'm Ellen, and I haven't seen you since you were about four or five years old."

"I didn't mean –"

"You meant that you were embarrassed to have the whole hunter community know you'd gone missing," she said, gently pushing him into a chair that gave him a view of all the exits. "I can understand that."

"Especially since I didn't even know there was a 'hunter community' till Dad and Bobby started talking about it at the hospital," Dean retorted, glaring at his father.

"We can talk about that later, son," John said, glancing around uneasily.

"What is this place, anyway?"

"Harvelle's Roadhouse," Bobby said. "It's a gathering place for hunters."

"You mean all these people here are hunters? And they all know about me?"

"Everybody knows about the Winchesters, kid," Caleb said, and Dean wanted to sink through the floor. "John's infamous, and he never shuts up about you boys."

"Dad talks about us?" Sam said, sounding startled. Dean had heard their father talking about Sammy, so it didn't come as quite so much of a surprise to him.

"Sure, I've heard all about how proud he is that you got into an Ivy League school, and how Dean's become a great hunter in his own right."

"Some great hunter," Dean muttered. He noticed how astounded Sam still looked as he sat down, and shook his head. "Dude, we may not have wanted you to go, Sammy, but that doesn't mean we weren't proud of the achievement." Sam immediately glanced over at Dad, who looked like he really wanted everyone to shut up about it.

Ellen settled herself in a chair across the table, looking over her shoulder towards the bar. Something about the way the angle of the light hit her face made her look about twenty years younger. She was beautiful anyway, but that glimpse showed him a woman who was positively stunning. As she turned back, Dean had a sudden flash of realization. "I know you!" he exclaimed, gazing at Ellen, who smiled at him.

"Of course, you know her, Dean," Dad said impatiently. "You and Sammy stayed here a couple of times."

Dean basically ignored this because his revelation was too powerful to ignore. "I remember you and . . . you had that really annoying little blond girl." At that moment, the girl with the nice ass showed up with a tray full of beers, and she shot Dean a look that could freeze alcohol. "That's you!" he said, looking up at her in astonishment. "You're the annoying little blond girl. Jo, right?"

Sam looked uncomfortable, and Jo's eyes narrowed, but everyone else at the table seemed to think it was a great joke. "Not so little anymore," Bobby said, pulling up a chair.

Ellen leaned back to look at her daughter, reaching up to touch her arm. "Honey, don't take it seriously. The last time he was here he was when he was about six, which puts you at about three."

"And he was a very serious little six-year-old," Bobby remarked, making Dean blink.

"You ain't kidding," Caleb said, grinning a little. "Always watching after Sammy – and John, too."

"Okay," Dean said, sitting up and trying to ignore the turn the conversation had taken. "Where's my beer?" he asked, glancing up at Jo. She put a brown bottle on the table in front of him, and he looked at it in consternation. "Root beer?" he demanded incredulously.

"I don't serve alcohol to men who look like they might just blow away in a strong wind," Jo retorted, and then she headed back across the bar to tend other customers.

"Hard-hearted hussy," Dean called after as she walked away. He looked disconsolately at his beverage, then shrugged and took a deep swallow. It was good root beer, and ice cold. Sammy should sort of approve. It was calories, and it was liquid, both things he kept trying to pour down Dean in quantities that would choke a horse.

"So, how are you feeling, Dean?" Caleb asked.

"Peachy," Dean said with a grin, and Caleb gave him a dirty look. "Okay, I'm tired, and I'm not as strong as I could be, but I'm alive and I'm with friends. Can't do much better than that, right?"

"Well said," Ellen replied, raising her beer bottle with a grin.

Dean sat back and hoped the conversation would go on without him. He was feeling a teensy bit overwhelmed by all the people. Strangers were still sneaking peeks at him, but most of the crowd had gone back to whatever they'd been doing. Dad was talking, explaining Dean's stay in the hospital in general terms. Evidently he didn't want the demon being public knowledge. Dean was good with that, and he could tell that Sam got the point, too. Explaining how Dean had come to be missing for two and a half months might get dicey after a while, but maybe they could just avoid the subject until some new exciting event occurred.

A couple of guys, a black man about five or so years older than Dean and a white guy with pale, curly hair, took up positions across from a target on the wall Dean was sitting against. He expected darts and figured he could probably handle that, but then the black guy pulled out an absolutely beautiful, elegantly proportioned throwing knife of matte black steel. Dean's heart rate suddenly jumped, and he froze in place, feeling rather like a rabbit facing a really large coyote. The black man raised the knife up over his shoulder and let fly. With a very solid thunk, the blade seated itself in the target, and Dean gave an involuntary jerk.

Searing fiery lines etched across his back, new designs to join the old. It couldn't be called slicing, it was too precise, too slow and studied. Azazel carved bas relief images into Dean's skin, and he couldn't stop him. It had been weeks . . .

Sam saw Dean jerk, and then he saw the frozen immobility of his brother's body, the distance in his eyes, and he knew what it meant, but he didn't immediately know what had caused it. Then he heard a thunk, and glanced to his left to see a pair of graceful throwing knives side by side in a target about ten feet away from Dean's chair on the same wall.

No one else seemed to have noticed Dean's reaction yet, so he nudged Bobby and nodded towards Dean, then rose and crossed to the two men who were making use of the target. While a guy with sandy hair watched, a black man drew his hand back with a third knife that matched the other two and let it fly. Sam glanced back at Dean to see how he took it. He twitched when the blade hit home, but he didn't move otherwise. Bobby had gone over to his side and was squatting there, talking to him. Dad was on his way around the table.

The thrower walked over to the target and pulled the three knives out and started back to the throwing position. Sam walked right into their space. "Hi, I'm Sam Winchester," he said, putting his hand out.

The sandy-haired guy put his hand out. He had intense blue eyes and kind of a wacky manner. "Kubrick," he said, shaking Sam's hand.

The black man nodded and stuck out his hand. "Gordon Walker," he said. "I've met your dad, and I've heard a lot about you boys. Never figured on meeting you, though, college boy and all."

Sam shrugged. "Yeah, well, family comes first," he said, glancing back at the table again.

"Now, it's nice to meet you, but we're kind of in the middle of a game," Gordon said.

"I know," Sam said, grimacing. "That's actually kind of why I came over here."

Gordon chuckled and gave Sam a friendly buffet on the shoulder. "You can play winner, but it's Kubrick's turn."

Sam shook his head. "No, I was going to ask you to stop."

"Stop?" Gordon raised a supercilious eyebrow. "Now why would I do that?"

Sam sighed and glanced back at Dean. "My brother's been through a pretty hellish time involving sharp objects," he said, knowing full well that Dean would kill him if he found out about this later.

Gordon glanced over at the table, and his expression went rueful. "Yeah, okay, we can take this up again later," he said. "How is he?"

Sam shrugged. "Getting better," he said.

"He looks halfway to dead," Kubrick commented. "Has he always been a skinny guy?"

Sam snorted and shook his head. "Not hardly. He used to be shaped a lot like my dad." He nodded at both men. "Thanks." With that, he headed back over to see how Dean was doing.

Dean came to himself with a profound sense of something being very wrong. Something beyond the headache that pounded between his eyes. That was when he heard Bobby and his father discussing him. "I think we'd better take him back out to the RV," Bobby said.

"You want to try moving him through the room like this?" Dad asked. "Ten to one if we try to get him to his feet, he'll panic, and we don't want that."

"I'm good," Dean said, but his voice sounded wobbly. Both of them turned towards him in surprise. "What happened?"

"I think you had a flashback," Bobby said. "Here, have a swallow of this." He handed Dean a small glass, and Dean took a drink. He coughed. He really hadn't been expecting whisky. "Now, how do you feel?"

"Like an idiot," Dean replied. He glanced around, but they didn't appear to be the center of attention for the whole room. In fact both Ellen and Caleb had left the table. Dean grimaced as Bobby took the whisky away and replaced it with the root beer. "Did I do anything embarrassing?"

"What, you mean like foaming at the mouth?" Sam asked, grinning down at him, and Dean gulped, alarmed by that very idea. Sam shook his head. "Nope. Just froze in place, staring." His brows knit humorously. "I think Ellen thought you were coming on to her at first."

"Sam!" Dad growled. "If you can't be helpful, go away."

"He's fine, Dad," Dean said hastily, seeing Sam's anger on his face. "He's just trying to make me laugh."

Their father glared at Sam for a moment, and Sam glared back, but neither of them said anything. "You two, behave," Bobby ordered, and Dean glanced up at him with some amusement. "You want to go back out to the RV?" Bobby asked him.

"We only just got here," Dean protested.

"We're staying for a day or so, Dean," Dad said. "No need to feel like you're missing out."

Dean closed his eyes and let out a sigh. "I feel like crap," he said. "But I spend all my time in bed, and while I don't usually mind that, it's no fun when I'm alone or with sasquatch there. No offense."

"None taken," Sam replied, and he was smiling again. "I'd rather be sharing my bed with someone else, too, as it happens."

"Well, have I had enough to eat today, oh slave driver?" he asked his brother.

"No. Do you think you could eat?"

Dean shook his head. "Actually, all I want right now is a glass of water, about fifty aspirin, and somewhere soft to lie down."

"That can be arranged," Bobby said, and both Dad and Sam gave him such identical incredulous looks that Dean had to laugh. Bobby rolled his eyes. "I didn't mean the fifty aspirin part, you idjits."

"No aspirin at all, Bobby," Sam said earnestly. "It's really hard on the stomach. He's got perfectly good prescription meds that will –"

"Sam, shut up," Dean said, and his brother fell silent, staring at him. "Come here." Sam leaned closer, all innocence, so anxious and grave and worried that Dean's smack upside his head might have come out a little harder than he'd originally intended.

"Hey!" Sam exclaimed, leaning away. "What was that for?"

"For being a giant dork. And a girl."

John drew Bobby aside. "Am I overreacting to Sam?" he asked, and he could see Bobby's eyes widening at the question. "Bobby, you don't know how it's been," he said urgently. "I really can't tell sometimes."

"Yeah, John, you overreacted. Sam was just doing the gallows humor thing, and I think it was working for Dean."

"You think?" John repeated, not sure that was sufficient a guide in this circumstance.

"Well, it got kind of hard to tell once you two started in and Dean had to separate you," Bobby snapped, and John grimaced, looking away.

Ellen walked up. "You fellows heading out?" she asked.

"Actually, I was hoping you wouldn't mind us staying the night," John said, and Ellen's eyes widened.

"I got a couple of rooms in the back if you want 'em," she suggested.

"Bobby might take you up on that, but I want Dean out in the RV. We've got some heavy duty protections out there."

"You expecting trouble?"

John started to respond, but Bobby beat him to it. "It's John," he said sardonically. "Of course he's expecting trouble."

Ellen rolled her eyes. "I'm not asking if either of you is paranoid. You're hunters, that's part of the definition. Is there actual trouble coming?"

John glanced around. "Ellen, I am not talking about it here, in a roomful of hunters," he said in a low voice. "And we need to put –" His phone rang, and he picked it up to look at the screen. He grimaced when he saw that the number was blocked, but he answered the phone anyway. "Winchester," he said gruffly.

"Hullo, can I speak to Dean?" It was a female voice, unfamiliar, with a strong midwestern accent.

"Who is this?"

"I'm a friend of Dean's," she replied cheerily. "Who are you?"

"I'm his father," John said curtly.

"Cool," she said. "Can I talk to Dean?"

John mustered his patience. "May I tell him who's calling?" he asked sarcastically.

There was a smothered laugh in her voice when she replied. "Tell him it's Princess Little Feather."

John blinked and gave Bobby a dark look before turning towards Dean. He and Sam had come across to join them near the door. "There's a 'Princess Little Feather' on the phone for you," he said, handing it across to his elder son. Bobby snorted, and Sam looked slightly appalled. Ellen just chuckled.

Dean grinned broadly. "Seriously! Cool." He took the phone and turned away. "Grace, hey!" John knit his brows and tried to remember where he'd heard that name recently. He turned towards Sam. "Take your brother out to the RV. Keep a listen on the conversation and make sure nothing too weird comes up. I need to explain things to Ellen."

"Sure, Dad," Sam said, looking sober, and John put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, trying to put his confidence and pride into the gesture. He didn't know how to express himself in any other way that Sam would believe. Sam's eyes widened, and he glanced at his father's hand. There was a bit of warmth and more confusion in his eyes when he looked back up to John's face, but he nodded. He went over to Dean and made sure his coat was zipped up tight and guided him outside.

John turned back to Ellen. "Is there somewhere where we can talk more privately?"

She glanced around the bar, then caught her daughter's eye and jerked her head towards the back. Jo nodded, looking a bit irritated but not unreasonably so. Ellen led the way towards the stairs. John knew the way already, from years gone by. Not much had changed. She'd repainted the walls of her living room, but the sofa and chairs were still the same. A lot of new pictures littered various flat surfaces. Jo's high school graduation, a few posed shots, some snapshots clearly taken while she was in college. "She didn't finish, did she?" John asked, picking up a framed photo of Jo in front of a college dormitory with three other girls.

Ellen snorted. "No, and now she's already trying to make Sam's return into part of her case for why she dropped out."

"You might point out that he only came back because his brother was missing," John said, putting the photo down and sighing. "He was all set to throw me out the door until I said that." He shrugged, turning back to face her. "I don't think she wants a reason like that to pull her into hunting."

"Next time she starts talking about it, I'll mention it. God knows if she'll even hear it, though." Ellen shook her head and walked over to a small table with a collection of liquor bottles on it. "Anything for you gentlemen?"

John walked over to the window while Bobby gently nudged Ellen aside with a remark that she served enough drinks. The sky was dark, not a star in sight, and this far from town, the light pollution wasn't bad enough to hide them. When he'd arrived, the stars had shown in patches, but now it was like there was a ceiling. Looked like a new storm had rolled in.

"Well, John, come over and sit down and tell me what's going on," Ellen said.

John grimaced and crossed to a chair, but he didn't sit down, he leaned against the back of it. He couldn't manage ease at the moment, no matter how hard he tried. "It was a demon, Ellen, the demon."

Ellen blinked at him. "The demon?" she repeated, and then her eyes widened. "You mean the one –" She broke off, and John got the impression she wasn't saying what was in her mind for fear of upsetting or hurting him. It was no wonder. There'd been a time when he couldn't bear to hear her name spoken aloud, and Ellen hadn't seen him much since then.

"The one who killed Mary," he said. "He abducted Dean and tortured him for more than two months." His voice sounded unnaturally calm. He had to decide how much to tell her. Swallowing an uncomfortable lump in his throat, John turned away again towards the window. He was reasonably certain that Bobby wouldn't fill in the blanks till he'd made his intentions clear. He didn't know if he had the right to pull her into something this big.

"John?" Bobby said with a note in his voice that made John turn towards him. Bobby pointed towards the stairs, over behind Ellen, and John turned the rest of the way around and stared in surprise. He'd never done this before.

"What is it?" Ellen asked, turning in her chair. She leapt up with an exclamation when she saw the figure standing behind her.

"Hello, Ellen," Castiel said. "It is good to see you again."

"Again?" She glanced at John and Bobby. "Have we met?"

"Not yet." Both Bobby and Ellen seemed a bit taken aback by this, but John just rubbed his forehead tiredly. He hated it when Castiel talked about the time travel thing. "But I have been here before," Castiel went on, and John looked up. "I have been observing Dean since his conception, and he spent time here."

"Ellen this is Dean's stalker angel, Castiel," John said with a bite in his voice that he couldn't quite help. "Castiel, meet Ellen."