Dean sits beside the Grand Canyon. The sun is frozen in a perpetual state of setting, the sky painted in vivid pinks and indigos. It's like a postcard. It is a postcard. Because this is a dream.

A lucid dream, which means that it's only a matter of time before-

"And what merits a visit to the monolith of our childhood?" Sam settles beside him, too far in Dean's personal space. Dean waits, tense, but this isn't one of those dreams where he's only along for the ride. Sam nudges Dean, his elbow too sharp, and Dean shifts away.

"Not today, Sam." They've been playing this game for-too long. Dean is exhausted. Can't even get a moment of peace in his own head.

"What are you doing?" Sam asks. He sounds concerned. His hand settles on the back of Dean's neck, large and warm, fingers massaging tense muscles. Dean's first instinct is to lean into the touch; he's given in before. Hates himself every single time but these are his dreams, none of it is real. Sam sighs, as if he knows what Dean's thinking.

"What are you going after tomorrow, Dean?" Sam asks, his breath fluttering against Dean's ear. Dean shudders, eyes sliding closed, and half-heartedly jerks away. Sam hums and runs his lips the length of Dean's neck, his fingers slipping underneath Dean's shirt. "Is it a Seal?" Sam's teeth tug lightly on Dean's ear, distracting him. "Which one?" Dean grits his teeth and turns his head away because Sam's just told him tomorrow is meaningless. Even if he saves a Seal another will break.

"Will you stop it?" Dean asks, his voice coming out hoarse and choked. Sam always asks. Dean always lies. Except once, Dean had told him. Told Sam their target in some vain hope that he'd come to Dean, for Dean. That he might want to be saved.

They'd arrived and found everything laid out for the ritual-gleaming blades, pentacle written in lamb's blood, the sacrifices lashed to tables at each of the Watchtowers. Alive. With bows on their heads. Sam hadn't believed him, but he'd let a Seal go anyways. Just in case.

"If I tell you, will you stop it?"

"Say you'll stay with me," Sam whispers. "Say yes, and I'll do whatever you want."

From one moment to the next he's on the other side of the Canyon. Sam screams but his empty words sail away on the wind. Dean turns away and stares off in the distance.

It's bright and sunny when they pull up to the high school. The roads have been long abandoned and the school's windows are boarded. Unwelcoming.

Three teams—Dean's, Bobby's and Ellen's—have come together to try and save a school full of teenagers and a Seal. No time for recon, just a cryptic call from Castiel, coordinates and a timeframe. They've got maybe two hours to save everyone. Thing is they know better than to wander into a big fuck off school without knowing the lay of the land and only a sketchy idea of what ritual they're trying to stop.

Dean takes stock of who he's working with. Ellen's got Jo, Ichi and Ash with her. They lost their fifth a few weeks ago and it shows. There's a scar on the left side of Jo's face, purple and angry, still healing from that clusterfuck. Ichi, a stocky Japanese American kid with a mohawk and a quietly menacing demeanor, is better at close quarters combat and knife fights than with guns. He has fingerless gloves studded with ancient, blessed sliver blades at the knuckles that can kill demons. Dean wants them. Ash is hovering to one side making awkward conversation with Leslie, a doctor-cum-hedge witch who jumps from group to group and is currently travelling with Bobby's team.

Bobby only runs with seasoned hunters these days. Joe Mills, Creedy and Daniel Elkins—the man that first trained John Winchester—are all names he recognizes from Before. They never stick around long, too used to the loner lifestyle, but they'll run a few hunts and spread some gossip before they drift away, only to be replaced by some other lone wolf. Dean doesn't have to worry about them, they can all take care of themselves. And if they don't, well. They made their peace long before this Apocalypse.

Most of Dean's own team comes courtesy of Mer: Danny Chu and Trixton (no last name, thanks). Picked them up after a hunt in Scranton, the two of them green but scrappy, tagging along with a gypsy caravan. They had 'nice auras' and come time to leave were ensconced in the back of the Impala, Mer giving him a scarily bland look that just dared him to argue. Dean wouldn't have; he worries about her, cut off from everyone she knows. He never wanted this life for her but they didn't have much choice. He lets Danny and Trix hang around 'cause that the easiest way he can think of to avoid all the mistakes his father made. He doesn't think he's succeeding but at least he's trying. Her penchant for collecting strays is too reminiscent of Sammy to think hard about.

"Two groups," Bobby's saying as Dean brings his attention back. "One through the front, one through the back. There's so much EMF coming off the building the radios won't work but keep 'em on anyways. Ash and Leslie stay behind."

"Mills and Elkin'll roll with my team," Dean picks up. "Bobby, Creedy, with Ellen. We move fast, we get this done, and we get out." Everyone sets to arming themselves with their favorite weapons, acutely aware of the clock ticking down. Mer grabs a shotgun and her matching semiautomatics, returns to their little circle and sidles up to Jo.

"Hey Jo, switch teams with me?" she asks casually. No one pauses in what they're doing but she has everyone's undivided attention.

Jo glances at her mom, then Dean, who's glaring a hole in his gun, jaw tight. Bobby looks annoyed but he has more sense than to say anything. Last thing they need is a teenage showdown before this fight.

Jo glances at her Mom, who gives a slight shake of her head.

"Sure," Jo says, equally casual. Dean snaps the clip back into his Glock and primes the slide with far more aggression than necessary and Jo makes a mental note to talk to Mer about suitable times to stage displays of rebellion. Mer walks over to Bobby with a grimly satisfied look on her face.

Trix and Danny exchange a glance then play a quick game of Rock Paper Scissors. Trix loses and heads over to the other group. Ichi sees him coming and saunters towards Dean like that was the plan all along.

Ellen watches Dean stew and bild up to a head. He takes an angry step towards Bobby's group but she stops him.

"Not the time," she says softly.

"Yeah? Try telling that to her," Dean bites out.

"You can't keep her with you forever," Ellen says. She glances at Jo who's doing her best to look like she isn't hanging on every word. "I speak from experience. Let her have this one." Dean glares into the middle distance, jaw locked.

"It's not about that. She shouldn't be contradicting an order," Dean snaps. "She's throwing off our team dynamic, it's-"

"Boy, you are not your Daddy, do not pull that good little soldier shit with me," Ellen says, low and with a distinct thread of anger in her tone. "It never saved anyone." For a moment Ellen's pain is all Dean can feel; it passes, packed away per usual, but it helps clear away some of his own anger. "We're all used to each other; none of us are green. We've all fought together before, we will be fine, you let her have her little tantrum now or she'll pull it with a team you don't know."

"This one is going to be all demons," he tries to explain. "It's a Seal, she's-"

"Why do you think she chose it?" One day she's going to sit Dean down and explain a few things about the female teenager's mindset. After they all survive today. "You've got Bobby and Creedy on her, and I think Trix would walk through fire for that girl. None of them are you, but that's the point. So you either spend ten minutes arguing, order her and have a sullen, resentful soldier at your back or you let it go."

Dean's face goes blank and then he nods, once. Packs his irritation away, shifting to focused Hunter between one moment and the next. He secures his weapons and steps just inside Ellen's space, his expressions drawn.

"You can find her when this is over, and you let her know this does not. happen. again." Ellen swallows, refuses to let her nerves show in the face of this hard, unfamiliar person. He holds her gaze for a moment, probing, and then steps back. "Lets move out!"

-

Dean grits his teeth and dodges a knife thrown at his head. There's far more than demons guarding this place and way more than they expected to find. It almost feels like an ambush.

"'m out. Reload!"

Dean turns to cover Ellen as she drops to one knee and loads her shotgun with practiced efficiency. He nails two black-eyed demons in quick succession. He winces as a shot goes off right by his ear, taking down a third.

"Thanks, Jo," he growls over the tinnitus in his ear. "I didn't have that covered or anything." Elkins stands and they start moving through the abandoned school again, working together with an ease born of doing this far too many times.

"I could tell," Jo hisses venomously, "from the way you were just about to get killed." Dean grunts. They all pause as several sharp reports sound from elsewhere in the school and Dean spares a thought for Mer, Bobby and the rest of their merry band.

"Keep moving," Elkins snaps, brushing between them and taking point. They can't move too quickly, there are creatures lurking in the lockers. They've already been attacked twice. Dean really hates schools. This one looks like it's been abandoned for at least a year. Lockers are rusted, ceiling's caved in, end-of-the-world graffiti everywhere. The classrooms have all been empty so far. Except for the gym where they found a desiccated corpse hanging from a noose, a chair toppled over underneath it.

"I don't suppose your source told you where in the school this mass sacrifice is taking place?" Jo says at his side. They don't talk about the angels much but Jo manages to make her disdain for them glaringly apparent at every opportunity. The angels mostly stay out of their way, absorbed in some grand plan that Anna and Castiel assure them means the destruction of mankind. But the few times their paths have crossed have just solidified Dean's "All Angels Are Dicks" theory.

"No," Dean says, peering into a classroom. It's dark and doesn't look like it's been dressed for a demonic ritual sacrifice.

Footsteps scurry behind them; Jo and Dean spin around, shotguns raised. Elkins and Ichi hold position, covering their blind side. Mills shifts constantly, scanning the lockers for movement, Danny mirroring him on the other side. They listen for any warning in the silence.

A figure launches itself out of the darkness and Dean fires on instinct. It screams, skin sizzling, hitting the floor with a wet thud. It pushes itself up and its face is a decaying mess of scoured flesh and rotten teeth.

"Shit, that's a Fury!" Dean recoils back, away from the poisonous claws swiping at him. Jo calmly steps in front of him and uses a spray bottle of holy water to drench the creature. It screams, an inhuman howl that crawls up Dean's spine. It launches itself at Jo, who ducks and slams the butt of her shotgun into its face. It dents the lockers and stumbles, dazed. That gives Mills time to pull out his silver-only gun and put a bullet through the creature's heart and head.

A series of muffled gunshots cut through the silent aftermath, one shot on top of the other fired from a semiautomatic. Dean counts the shots in his head and swears when he hits the end of a clip and the sound of gunfire ceases. Another series of shots comes from the opposite side of the school. Shit.

"They've been split." He moves towards the sounds instinctively; Elkins puts a restraining hand on his arm.

"Dean," he warns. "Stop acting the fool. The best thing you can do for them is stop this mess." Dean strains to hear anything else but the school remains eerily silent. Dean swears and turns back to the task at hand.

***

"Trix!" Mer yells as a demon jabs a broken pipe into her partner's chest, a sickening squelching sound filling the room as it's pulled back out. It smirks like it's won, but Trix is a badass and shoots it in its stolen face with some of his new-and-improved demon-hurting shot. The creature screams and vacates the dead host body, streaming into the air in a shower of smoke and sparks. It's going to be at least a week before the fucker can possess anyone else. Probably longer considering Trix hit it point-blank.

Mer hears more gunfire in the school and the sound of people moving swiftly through. Not her people, more demons, and Trix is slumped against the wall, bleeding. On top of that, she has no idea where Bobby, Danny and the others went. Fucking stupid getting split like that. Amateur. Her father's going to kill her if the demons don't get them first.

"Fuck!" Mer mutters. The footsteps are coming closer. She hauls Trix up by his shirt, using a little of her powers to make it easier—he's a short guy but solid muscle. The demons can sense her if she opens up too much, but Mer can only hope they overlook the tiny amount she's using now. "Christ, you have got to lay off the candy, T."

"Then what...would be the point...of living?" Trix pants, leaning against her. His shirt is soaked with dark blood and his eyes are going glassy. "I don't feel good."

"You got yourself stabbed by a rusty pipe," Mer accuses, hauling him into an abandoned science classroom.

"Oh right," Trix says inanely, trying to move his feet in the direction she's guiding. "Sorry about that, kiddo."

"Thank me by staying alive, Trixton." She shuts them in a storage closet and rips her top shirt off to use as a makeshift bandage. Trix muffles a scream when she presses down against his wound. With what attention she can spare Mer imagines the confines of their hideaway and tries to encourage anyone walking by not to pay it any attention. It's a long shot but there's a possibility the demons will accept the suggestion and overlook them.

"It's bad," Trix mumbles, trying to pull his shirt to one side. Mer swats his hands away and checks the wound. It's still seeping steadily, and Trix is getting paler by the moment. "You gotta leave me. I'll be fine. Find you...later." Mer snorts and ignores him. She pulls a couple of pressure bandages from one of her pockets and puts them on underneath the ruined shirt.

"Yeah, right. Not going to happen." Trix's eyes flutter and Mer feels cold fear settle in her. "T? Shit, Trix, you can't go to sleep. You need to stay awake. Trix—" She senses several demons hovering in the hallway outside their hiding place and pulls into herself as completely as possible. They can't find her. She doesn't have a lot of room to fight here, especially with Trix out of commission. Can't find her, can't fin her, she's invisible, can't find her.

"The brat's here somewhere," a deep voice growls in frustration. Mer really wishes they'd stop calling her that. Sam put the biggest bounty in the world on her head, the least they could do is respect their potential meal ticket. "I want her dead."

"Then keep looking!" another voice snaps back. "We already got her away from her keepers." Heavy boots stomp across the floor. Doors are flung open and slammed shut. What must be an entire bank of lockers crashes to the floor. Mer freezes as the outer door to their classroom opens and someone comes in. Light steps—a woman's body or maybe a teenager's, given the venue. The footsteps pause. Mer tenses as the demon continues walking and stops right in front of their hideout. Fuck, what if Trix's blood left a trail.

The door swings open on silent hinges.

The demon's host was pretty, a young woman with long blonde hair and green eyes. The demon tilts its head to one side then lets her eyes flicker black. Mer's gun doesn't waiver, held in her dominant hand while the other keeps Trix's insides where they belong. Her finger tightens on the trigger until it's at the pull point.

She doesn't fire.

She can hear her father berating her in her head, but something tells her not to shoot and Dad's number one rule of hunting is to trust your instincts.

The sound of gunfire comes from farther down the hall, moving away from their hiding spot. More footsteps rush past and away, presumably towards Bobby and the rest of the team.

The demon glances towards the hallway then back at Mer. Her eyes travel to Trix and the pool of blood spreading out underneath him. She tilts her head and Mer feels dark power slide over her skin like oil, leaving goosebumps in her wake. She curls protectively over Trix and glares, but the demon just smirks and drops two hexbags on the floor. Even practically sense-blind Mer can feel how powerful they are. The demon turns away with a wink and Mer can hear her even, unhurried steps as she saunters away.

What the fuck?

***

Judging by the number of demons pouring out of the basement door and the bodies Bobby and his team have already racked up, they've found the sacrifice venue.

"'Bout time y'all showed up," Bobby grunts. "I'm running out of bullets."

"I'll believe that when I see it," Ellen says and blows the head off a tall teen in a sports jersey. Dean ignores the flair of regret he feels every time he shoots a teenage host body.

They've set up a pattern—two shooting, one reloading in rotation—that's helping keep the horde at bay, mostly because only so many demons can get through the doorway at once. Dean has a sinking feeling that the wrong kind of back up is about to come pelting down the hallway and then everything's going to go, almost literally, to hell.

"Bobby? Where the fuck is my kid?" Dean asks the second he has a chance to process. A particularly determined demon clings to his body despite the herbs and rocksalt and gets too close for comfort. Bobby steps forward and jams the butt of his shotgun into its face, then shoots it again. The demon abdicates with a scream.

"We got split up. She's with Trix."

There are too many demons. It looks...it looks like the entire town was infested at once. Or at the very least, any family with a teenager in it. Dean sees Creedy take down a young girl with dirty-blonde hair and his heart seizes in his chest.

Not Mer, he tells himself. He'd know. Without a doubt he'd know. He takes his fear and channels it towards the demons coming for them.

"They've doubled back behind us!" Elkins yells. Ichi, Mills and Jo peel off and take position guarding their flank. Dean's watch beeps: zero hour. Ten minutes to interrupt the ritual or the Seal breaks.

"Plan F!" Ellen barks out, and they fall into position. The goal is to get to the door as fast as possible, lob a few flash-bangs down the steps and hope it's enough to stall the proceedings. They line up, four covering, two moving forwards. It's like leap frog, moving forward person-by-person, gaining ground with rapid-fire.

It takes them too long to get there.

They lay down suppression fire while Creedy, Elkins, and Ellen pull the tabs and lob the grenades over the demon's heads one right after the other. They hear screams and curses and Dean's watch beeps again.
The silence is deafening, only their harsh breathing audible in the aftermath. Nothing comes out of the darkened stairwell.

No one moves.

Ichi slides more rounds into his shotgun and Dean winces at the noise.

A Fury hurtles out of the darkness and slams into Elkin's chest. He fires wild and yells when its claws sink into his ribs. It's blown away from two sides by Mills and Jo, and just like that the fight's back on, demons thirsty for blood, uncaring that they're bottlenecked in the stairwell. Dean has the sickening feeling that they're just killing host bodies.

Without warning a bright light fills the school and the demons fall lifeless to the floor, like dominos pointing away from Anael.

"Deus ex angelica," Jo mutters to Dean, wiping sweat off her face. Her eyes are flinty. "It's the latest fad."

"We cannot stay long. Trixton is hurt," Anna announces.

"Mer?" Dean asks, fear making his tone sharp.

"Concerned for her companion's safety but unharmed. They are in the science classroom." Dean forces himself to be rational and signals for Creedy and Mills to go get them.

"And the Seal?" Ellen asks.

"Unbroken." At least they have that, Dean thinks in relief. It's short lived when they finally enter the school's basement, carefully picking their way over broken bodies. Ellen cuts off a gasp before it's fully formed.

"They didn't have to kill them," Jo says, her voice small. Of course they didn't. She knows that, but even after everything she's seen this kind of massacre will never makes sense. It never should. She abruptly turns around and walks back up the stairs, her breath coming in short bursts. Ichi follows close on her heels. Ellen takes a moment to lay a hand on Dean's shoulder before following her daughter up the stairs.

Dean forces himself to take in the sight, to linger over every dead teenager in the room and to commit their faces to memory. They're all Mer's age, high schoolers who hadn't had a chance to really experience life yet. Several of them have been killed in gruesome, painful ways—the sacrifices, Dean assumes, from the expressions frozen on their faces and the tears still gleaming wetly. Or sport, after.

He squats down and closes the eyes of a young boy. The rest of the team checks for survivors but angels are fairly blunt instruments. Its easier to destroy everything in the vessel than separate the human from the demon.

"You shouldn't linger; I have information for you." For a moment Dean is filled with complete and irrational loathing for Anael and her distance from the scene before them. She claims she's out to save humanity but its suffering never seems to touch her. He wonders if saving humanity is just a side effect of her chosen agenda. He pushes the emotions down and paves them over with concrete.

"Yeah," he manages, and his voice comes out deep and rough. He turns to go, forces himself to look away.

***

Dawn has just broken when they assemble in the kitchen of an extended-stay motel that's been long abandoned. They haven't paid for a room in months. Cash stopped working months ago, skills and trades more valuable than a piece of green paper.

"Move again, Trixton, and I'll stake you to the wall." Darling Leslie, diminutive but with more than a share of Power in her, patches them up with the attitude of a drill sergeant.

"If you ever got possessed," Trix says as she sews up his shoulder, "we wouldn't be able to tell."

"Sure you would," Leslie says cheerfully, tugging at the string. "I'd just let you bleed out on the floor while I laughed." Trix smiles crookedly, but his heart isn't in it. They're all aware of Bobby, Mills and Creedy sequestered one room away. Sitting with Elkins and doing what they can while Fury venom eats away at him. Leslie gave Elkins a shot of morphine, but he hadn't wanted more than a small dose. Said he wanted to go out of this world with his eyes open or some old Hunter bullshit like that.

Dean studies them, his team and people, and wonders morbidly what it would be like to lose them. Danny is covered in grease and has car parts spread over one of the beds; his mechanical skills border on the supernatural and are always in demand when they meet with other people, but it's too dangerous for him to work outside right now. Jo and Ellen are mixing demon repellant and filling shotgun shells under Trix's direction. Trix will play up his injury to the full extent of his laziness once Leslie's finished with him, but he's got a sharp mind and an impressive intuition when it comes to the occult that's only matched by Bobby. And Ash...better not to ask what he's doing.

Which leaves gun cleaning duties to the Winchesters, something Dean could do in his sleep and doesn't really help him forget they're loosing a good man and a good soldier.

And he's still pissed at Mer but right now he's too tired to deal with that.

"You okay?" Dean asks his kid as they settle into their tasks. Mer rolls her eyes and were it not for the guns, Dean may have been able to convince himself they were just an ordinary family for a moment. Her eyes are bright but no tears will fall; they've both lost too many brothers and sisters in arms to let it show anymore. Not even to one another and Dean doesn't even have the luxury of wondering where everything went pear-shaped. He can chart it down to the minute.

"I didn't get stabbed." Or clawed, she doesn't add. Dean doesn't have the words to explain how that doesn't make him feel better at all, so he changes the subject.

"Anna left us a message," Dean says. He keeps a phone on him-largely a dead technology in this day-because Anna and Cas can always get a text to him. And even when she's actually around, Anna prefers to send him information by text instead of telling him face to face.

"Oh yeah?"

"We're headed to Appalachia tomorrow. She says there's something odd we have to check out." Dean tosses her a map, the coordinates already marked off.

"An angelic geo-cache," Mer sighs. There's no time to rest these days. There's always another hunt, another Seal to save. One right after the other. "Fantastic."

The dull sound of a fist crashing into drywall comes from the other room.