Chapter 14

Shit Happens

"What the fuck is with the racket?" Chelsea managed to finally venture from her room almost a day later when loud rock music not only pulled her from sleep but agitated her already pounding headache.

Sam and Dean were outside of Sam's room, where Lucifer locked himself inside and turned the stereo as loud as it would go. The brothers looked up to answer her but immediately looked away when they noticed she was in a tank top that was skewed from sleep and a pair of pristine white underwear.

Before they could gather themselves the music turned down and Lucifer shouted, "If Dad has something to say to me I'll hear it from him! Until then I'll be in my room."

The music turned back up just as Sam huffed, "It's my room." Before banging on the door one more time.

Dean was over it and turned toward the witch. As he approached, trying so hard to focus on her face, he asked, "You alright?"

She waved a hand, "Totally fine. Besides," she motioned to the door, "you know."

She didn't look fine. Her eyes were puffy and dark, her curls were sleep tousled and tangled, she even looked a little pale. It was also the first time the Winchesters had laid eyes on her in almost thirty-six hours.

"I'm hungry." she mumbled, "You guys smell pancakes?"

Sam chuckled softly as he approached as well and held her upper arm gently, she looked a bit like she would collapse again, "Go put on pants."

"Right." she shuffled back off down the hall and into her room.

Dean sighed, "We gonna address that at any point?"

"The underwear?" Sam tried.

"I was thinking her being more work than help."

Sam was afraid that's what he meant. He wanted to argue otherwise; that Chelsea was a valued asset, but that honestly had yet to be seen. On an average day, average hunt, she had been stellar. But now...

"I did say I wasn't powerful enough to fight her." The witch brushed past the brothers.

"Thats not really the point." Dean said as he followed her, Sam trailing behind and feeling bad that she'd heard.

"Then what is?" She asked without looking back.

"You couldn't even handle being around her."

She whirled around faster than expected for someone in her state and glared at him, "No, you couldn't handle being around her."

"It was your idea to get me out of there!"

"And she fucked up my trajectory on purpose! I was nowhere near you when I landed and that's not my fault! Neither is your literal fatal attraction to her!"

Dean didn't like that, "What was with the amplified response to me then? You can't put that on me."

Chelsea looked down at her feet then immediately back up again, scoffing "You know what, that was my bad because I knew it would be like that. But excuse me if I thought you being around her alone was the dumbest possible idea."

The hallway was spinning but they didn't need to know that. She put a hand on her head and walked into the kitchen. Chuck glanced over his shoulder, "Ah, you're up!"

"Barely."

"What do you mean you knew it would be like that?"

Chuck once again looked over his shoulder, "Good morning."

Dean couldn't be bothered and Sam sort of replied with his expression as he sat down. Chelsea looked exhausted and put her forehead on the table as she sat.

"I really don't want to talk about it."

"Sam, make her talk."

"I'm not going to do that, Dean."

"That's very unfair, Dean."

Both Sam and Chuck replied to him and he scoffed, sitting between Sam and the Witch, side-eyeing her.

"I felt that." She said without lifting her head, the words muffled into the table.

The brothers looked at each other and Sam flexed his hand. Chuck stepped away from his pancakes to take in the three. He put his hands on his hips, "While it is unfair of them to make you talk, don't you think they deserve to know more about you given your partnership?"

Chelsea lifted her head, "Are you talking to me?"

He raised both hands in a light gesture and turned back to the griddle, "Secrets and mysteries will only make it harder for you to work together. Maybe tell them about her."

The witch glared at the back of his head, causing him to chuckle, "I felt that."

"I don't want to talk about her."

"You should pick a topic. Either you talk about her, or you talk about him and what he has to do with Dean."

She was getting the strangest looks from the hunters. She could sense they wanted to know about Him, especially Dean. But she really wasn't ready to go there.

"Fine. Her it is."

Chuck offered each of them a plate with three pancakes and lent onto the counter, smiling.

Chelsea sighed, "I had to kill a however-many-great niece of mine for reasons and felt bad so I took her name. Happy?"

"Awfully vague." Chuck answered.

"What happened?" Sam asked.

Another sigh, she guessed she should just tell it right. "At some point in the fifties I looked for and found my half brother's family, my mother's son, born after me." she paused to reach for the syrup, "I started watching from a distance, guiding subtly whenever I could. They were very religious, the whole family. After a while their awareness of me was misguided into thinking I was the family guardian angel."

Chuck cleared his throat as she continued, "In the early nineties Chelsea was born and just like almost every family member before her I was there for her birth. But I didn't think to single her out much until she was about fifteen." the witch chuckled almost wistfully, "For being a half-niece and so many generations down, she looked way too much like me."

Sam and Dean glanced at each other, her voice was getting sadder and sadder and she just poked at her pancakes.

"She was a lot like me too. She fought against her christian upbringing for no real reason other than she knew there was more in the world. She studied the religions of the world and travelled whenever and however she could. I was so fascinated that I forgot to keep my distance and she found me. It was the first direct contact with a family member I'd had and she knew of me, the first child born to her however-many-great grandmother who was taken away. Yet somehow standing before her, just as young as she was...essentially."

"Did she ask you about witchcraft?"

"She did." Chelsea nodded sadly, "And I wouldn't teach her." she looked at Chuck, "I wanted her to broaden her mind but not forget her faith. As foolish as that was. If I had taught her, she wouldn't have done what she did."

This time Dean asked, for once not gruff and annoyed, "What did she do?"

"Made a deal with a demon. Signed over her body and soul for power." a tear escaped and she quickly wiped it away, "I confronted her, which didn't do much. She was scared, angry and confused and the demon wouldn't get out..."

"You killed her."

"I did." she wiped a few more tears. "Demon to witch contracts can't be broken and the demon can't be expelled. So I had to kill her and leave her. Another casualty of the dangerous streets of Baltimore; a victim of supposed gang violence." she said the last of it almost sarcastically.

"Demon killing blade." the older Winchester said.

A silent nod, "Looked like she was stabbed as she was walking somewhere. I hadn't needed to use that blade in years."

"I'm so sorry." Sam offered.

"You aren't who I need an apology from." She glared at Chuck but didn't wait for him to say anything, "I prayed for the first time in a hundred or so years, asking God to help her keep her faith. By some miracle her family's faith had stayed strong up until her so I thought, just this once, he'd listen to me if it wasn't a prayer for myself. That wasn't the case though, huh Chuck?"

She stood, "They were just getting by on dumb luck."

Chuck sighed "You want what everyone wants, Lucifer included, an apology."

Her smile was one of delirious disbelief, "And you can't just give us one?"

He sighed instead of answering so she just turned and left the kitchen. Sam rubbed his hand, her sadness weighing on his shoulders. Somehow, next to him, it seemed Dean was feeling the same.

"Wow Chuck," he started, "is it that hard to say sorry?"

"It was tragic, but I can't apologize when I'm not sorry."

"So she's going to stay angry and so is Lucifer." Sam stepped in.

Chuck sort of shrugged and turned back to the griddle. Turning it off. "We'll go nowhere like this."

"Apologizing to her isn't going to fix anything."

"Lucifer then. We need him and he won't help until you say you're sorry."

Still Chuck idly shook his head, "He just needs time to cool off."

"How much time do you think we have?" Dean asked incredulously, "The end is fucking nigh."

Chuck sighed heavily and seemed to consider it. Sam interjected, "And Chelsea?"

"She'll be ok."

The brother's looked at each other. That didn't seem very likely.

"I'm fine." Chelsea opened her bedroom door to both men looking rather sheepish.

"Are you sure?" Sam asked, not at all surprised that she knew they were there. They hadn't even knocked yet.

"Chuck was being a real asshole." Dean followed.

She gave them a half hearted smile, "Getting an apology won't bring her back, it won't rewind time..."

"Still."

A sigh, "It would be nice. But I'm not going to dwell on it. Total waste of energy. Telling that story was mostly to shut him up. I've had yet another good cry about it, I'm set."

"Chuck said there was something else." Dean tried despite the now panicked look on his little brother's face at his prying, "About a him and, well, me."

The witch put her hands in her pockets and looked at the ceiling, "Right... That is a story for if we survive all this mess."

"That's hardly fair." he followed up.

"Are you saying we're gonna die?"

"I'm saying we might and I want to hear this story."

She squinted at him, "Do you though?"

"Yes!" he looked to his little brother as if to ask 'don't you?' then back to Chelsea.

She walked into the hall, making the brothers back almost to the wall opposite. Her gaze bore into Dean for a moment then she looked at Sam. "You want to know?"

Sam shrugged, "I guess." But not really, honestly. He couldn't shake the subtle envy at it being about Dean. The ring tingled on his hand at the thought.

Chelsea rolled her shoulder like she'd felt something touching her and slowly turned to re-enter her room "And with that I stick to telling you only if we live."

"Dammit Sam!"

"Don't blame Sam for your desperate need of a distraction." She turned and leaned in the doorframe as she spoke.

The younger felt uncomfortable as they glared at each other. Dean broke first, turning and heading down the hall, "C'mon Sam."

The witch sighed, a little annoyed, as they rounded a corner, "I'll just, be here…" she called sarcastically after them.

If the truth were being told, Chelsea's annoyance was with her awareness of the burden she was laying on the brothers. When she started this, all of six weeks ago, she thought she had this whole thing figured out. No way she was going to get out of them taking her ring, so fine, put yourself in the middle. She figured she'd dick around some, be of at least some use, then finally die.

Amara was a big enough bad to actually come through with ending the world. No world to come back to equals permanent death.

But since she'd seen what her death would be like…

"Am I just supposed to be alone in the dark?"

"Maybe Amara trapped your soul or something."

And of course there was this growing want to be useful, to win. She was afraid of a death that ended in that darkness again. The fear shook her focus, she was slacking and falling back into bad habits and these hunters were dragging her around.

Something needed to change.

She threw out an arm as the bed disappeared from beneath her. Thank god the magic around the ring somehow always made her land upright. And that Sam was paying attention and caught said arm with witch attached. But something was amiss...

"That wasn't you." she managed, realizing the magic that pulled her was not, in fact, the ring.

Chuck took a deep breath, "That was me. I'm sorry."

"Oh it's no big deal I just-"

"No. I mean, I'm sorry."

"Excuse me?" she asked, still obviously confused

"Everyone gets an apology." Lucifer said with a grin.

Chelsea felt her heart pound and her throat clench up, "Why do I get the feeling you're not sorry about her?"

"Because i'm sorry for so much more than just that."

The feeling that lingered after that statement was that he was referring to not just her past. Still, nothing changed. She moved forward from here.

"Thank you." she looked around, "I take it we're ready to move forward with this thing?"

"We are." Dean answered, "Here's the plan."