Chapter Eleven

Sam had begun searching everything else in the barren room and it didn't take him long before he came over to help Dean in looking through the desk.

"So? Found anything?" he asked hopefully, coming up behind his brother and peering curiously over at Violet in the corner. Her eyes were darting everywhere at every little noise and Sam wondered if she might have a heart attack if a rat scurried in front of her.

"Think I would've told you already if I had found something?" Dean asked back, leaving Sam to quickly raise his eyebrows in silent reply as he started shuffling through pages on the desktop.

A few minutes later, Dean elbowed Sam in the arm and held up a small box of little vials with weird neon blue things swirling around in them. Dean pulled out the one with a label on it that read 'Violet.' Sam took it from his fingers and examined it, his right eyebrow rising.

"This stuff looks like little blue hairs. How Harry Potter is that?" Sam muttered, looking back at Dean. "Well, now we've got her memories."

"Next, we get our Violet back," Dean murmured before going over to the upholstered chair. He sat down in it heavily, huffing a large sigh, making Violet look at him with a curiously weird expression. Sam held back a laugh as Dean began to fidget more than a normal person would, moving his body around on the material.

Sam peeled off the label as he walked over to Violet and held up the glass container, capturing her gaze.

"What is that?" she asked hesitantly, leaning back as he put it closer to her eyes.

"It's what we've been looking for," he replied as he heard Dean get up from the chair and carefully walk over to where they both were. Dean nodded at Sam as he approached, signaling to Sam to open the vial and he did so with quick, skilled fingers.

"What does it do?" she inquired suspiciously, her eyes narrowing and flickering from Sam to Dean and back. The brothers quickly exchanged glances.

"This," they replied in unison, with Dean touching his forefinger to her right temple, sending a minor shock into her brain just as Sam put the mouth of the vial against her left temple. She jumped from the jolt that worked through her whole body while the contents of the vial somehow slid through her skin and back into her mind. Her eyes rolled up into her head and her eyelids slid closed over them, her knees giving out and leaving her body to sink to the floor. Dean, surprised, hurriedly caught her before she hit the wood and she twitched in his arms several times before she was completely still.

Sam and Dean waited, unknowingly holding their breath until finally Sam broke the tense quiet.

"I-Is she alright? Did it work? What does fainting mean?" he murmured quickly, opening her eyelids and lightly smacking her face. No response.

"I don't know Sammy," Dean replied, his tone grave as he thought the worst.

"What…" Sam began, voicing the thought that was swirling madly in both their heads. "What if it didn't work?"

Suddenly Violet sucked in a gust of air, coughing and gasping like she hadn't breathed in a hundred years. Her eyelids snapped open and she blinked rapidly, taking in her surroundings. Dean and Sam once again held their breath, waiting for her to say something, waiting and hoping that it would be their Violet who spoke.

"Dean!" she exclaimed hysterically, throwing her arms around him and hugging herself to him. Then she realized who she was hugging and let go quickly, staggering awkwardly to her feet, a slight blush creeping across her cheeks. She stood, tipping to one side and putting a hand to her head as Sam grabbed her upper arm to steady her.

"Sam," she breathed with what could only be relief, smiling as she embraced him shortly.

"Violet?" Dean asked, making her turn to face him. She blinked at him.

"Yeah?"

He looked deep into her eyes, searching, trying to find something in them to confirm that it really was the Violet he knew. His green eyes flitted back and forth between her deep brown ones. Abruptly he stopped and smiled, pulling her into a hug and breathing her name. Overcome with astonishment, it took her a few seconds to realize that Dean was actually hugging her of his own will and when she did, she embraced him back.

"Dean," she whispered, sighing.

As he pulled back, Violet patted both brothers on their shoulders and smiled.

"Man I missed you guys," she murmured, involuntarily tipping back a little as her eyelids fluttered, threatening to fall closed. Dean pressed a hand to the small of her back to keep her from falling. A confused expression consumed Sam's handsome face.

"You missed us? What do you mean?" he asked as he set the empty vial down on the desk.

"Yeah. I…I'm not sure how it all happened, but one moment I was sitting in a chair, terrified for my life and the next I was in a white room. I didn't know where I was, but it felt oddly familiar…for some reason I keep thinking I was somehow locked inside my own mind."

She shrugged and waved her hand as if to banish the words away. "I know, it's weird, but anyway, I feel like I was there for a long time. Since I had no way to tell the time, I have no idea how long I was 'gone.'" She blinked up at Sam. "How long have I been out? Or whatever happened to me," she asked, cocking her head to the side. Sam sent Dean a worried glance.

"It's only been a day or two, Vi," he replied.

"Hm, that's weird. Well whatever, I'm back now," she said, smiling warmly. Dean smiled back at her. Yes, he thought, this is the Violet I know.