Hold onto yo' butts - there's finally a breakthrough in this chapter.

You have been properly warned, even though you haven't been told who has the breakthrough and what it's for.


"What?" Dean squinted at Sam, not quite sure what he'd growled out through what sounded like a mouthful of pea gravel. He thought it might've been something like "nyad" or "naiad," whatever the hell that was. Dean stuck a pinkie finger in one of his ears and realized that the problem might be on his end. His ear canal was full of gritty mud. Not surprising - all his other holes were full of that, too.

"A naiad," Sam repeated in a much more normal voice. Dean still had trouble hearing him, though, because he was facing away. Probably staring longingly out the open door, fantasizing about getting away from him. "Just popped into my head. I took a mythology class my freshman year at Stanford. It seems like it might be a naiad."

"And that is...?" Dean prompted impatiently. He was cold and it hurt to breathe. So he wasn't in the mood for Sam to lord how much smarter he was over him right now.

"I'll show you tomorrow," Sam replied, stepping through the door and turning so that Dean could see half of his face. His profile, it was called - that little bit of trivia swam up from the swamp of Dean's memory. "At the library."

"Wait." Dean slapped both palms against the dingy wall and hauled himself to his feet with a groan, eyes clamping shut. His legs felt weirdly weak. He hoped that that was just because of the cold and not because the oxygen deprivation had messed up his brain when he'd come to with water streaming out of his mouth and nose. "How - how do I protect myself from this thing?" He touched his sore chest and struggled past an urge to cough. "I almost drowned."

"I...don't know," Sam admitted, and he looked so miserable about it that Dean's angry yelling died in his mouth. "Maybe don't go back to sleep? The myths didn't really say anything about warding one off. Maybe it just won't bother you again tonight."

"So stay up and cross my fingers that it keeps its distance," Dean said. He knew Sam was fragile or whatever, but right now, it was sounding more like he just didn't care what happened to him. That was why Dean couldn't keep a little acid from boiling over into his voice. "Thanks, Sam."

He wished he could take it back when Sam flinched, just barely, and looked at him with wounded, plaintive eyes. "I'm sorry, Dean! I really don't know, okay? Why're you mad at me?"

"I'm not." He wasn't, he guessed. He didn't know how he was feeling towards Sam right now. Like he'd said, he'd almost drowned, and he was hurting and weakened and completely freaked out. Dean remembered, out of the blue, holding Sam in Texas when he was stoned on painkillers. After the adlet had torn him up. Dean really would've appreciated getting a little of that back now, but after the way that Sam had reacted to his offer to help him warm up in the car, he knew better than to ask for it. "Sorry. Hasn't been a good night." Dean reached up to rub his face. He kept the other hand on the wall so he didn't fall down. He must have gotten mud in his eyes, too; they stung. "You can go ahead and go back to your room. I'm okay."

"Are you sure?" Dean wanted to hear concern in Sam's voice. But his childhood had made him way too much of a realist, and he couldn't fool himself into finding something that wasn't there. Sam sounded like he was asking out of a sense of duty and nothing else.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." Dean waved the hand he'd been using to rub his face at Sam. He could see goosebumps on his bare legs - he had to be freezing out there. "I'm gonna take a hot shower, and I know you don't wanna stick around for that."

If it'd been a week or two ago, Sam would've insisted on staying anyway, not bothered at all by the idea of seeing Dean naked. He might've even offered to join him in the tub. But if it'd been a week or two ago, they would've been sleeping in the same room and the same bed, so the matter of Sam staying wouldn't've even been a question.

Maybe there was an upside, though. If that naiad thing came back tonight, Sam would be in another room, and he wouldn't drown with Dean like that construction guy's wife had drowned with her husband. He'd be okay. So Dean told himself that he should be glad when Sam vigorously shook his head and shut the door.

Dean left the light on. He felt like a five-year-old - a pair of cheap sixty-watts wouldn't scare off the monster that was stalking him for whatever reason (he still didn't understood why that naked girl had it in for him. If it was even her; Sam hadn't said anything about her being the naiad, so maybe she was totally unrelated to this whole disaster). But it made the primitive, idiot part of his brain feel better. Sam probably could've explained that, if he'd been around and in the mood to listen to Dean bitch.

Dean pulled his T-shirt and boxers off, grimacing when they clung to his clammy skin, and tossed them on the bed. Which was probably ruined, with all the nasty water that had soaked into it. Even if it wasn't, he wouldn't be sleeping in it again tonight, and not just because of Sam's half-assed advice. He couldn't think of many things more uncomfortable than wet, gritty sheets.

Dean showered under water as hot as he could stand. It felt good, so he stayed in for what was probably over an hour. Way longer than what it took for him to get rid of all the mud and little plants. He tried to either keep his mind blank or focus on the case the whole time. Much to his relief, it worked. He was tired of wearing a mental groove, thinking about how Sam was acting. And he wasn't gonna be the guy who reminisced about his ex and jerked it every time he got in the shower, so remembering how he'd used to act was out, too.

Once he'd had his fill of the shower, Dean filled the remaining time before the sun came up, Sam emerged from his room, and the library opened with standard, boring routines. He got dressed. He bought a doughnut and coffee from the nearest gas station for a very early breakfast. He shaved, and trimmed his hair back down into its usual brush cut, because it'd been a while since he'd done either and he didn't want the next creature he tangled with to have anything to grab onto.

After all that, he was just waiting on Sam. He would've sat on the hood of the Impala, but not only was it cold enough to make any metal outside roughly the temperature of dry ice, it was also raining again. So Dean stood under the overhang of the motel's roof, out of the bone-numbing drizzle, with his breath steaming in the air and his hands shoved into the pockets of a canvas jacket that couldn't be hurt by water.

"Freakin' Washington," Dean greeted Sam when he finally opened his door, looking clean and spiffy. And also tired. Dean knew how he felt.

Sam didn't even grunt in response to that. He must not be in the mood for small talk, which was fine. Dean was fine.

"There's a bagel and a cappuccino on your seat," Dean told Sam, pulling one hand out of its pocket to gesture to the car. "For breakfast. I'm kinda anxious to get to the library - y'know, so you can show me whatever it is that wants me choking on mud."

"Thanks." Sam hunched his shoulders against the light rain as he walked out into it. He waited for Dean to unlock the car before he pulled his door open, picked up the food, and folded himself into the seat. "That didn't happen again last night, did it?"

"Nah. I stayed dry. Chest still hurts, though." Dean thumped his ribcage with the back of one hand as he slid in behind the wheel. "Probably gonna be coughing for a few days." He just hoped there wasn't still enough water in his lungs to give him pneumonia. It would sure fit in with the whole theme of how shitty things had been going for him lately, though.

"I assume it'll wait for tonight to attack you again," Sam said, staring out his window at the rain as Dean started the car. Dean was surprised that he seemed to be carrying on a normal conversation, but then again, they were just talking about the hunt. Maybe that was okay for Sam while "them" was forbidden. "So we should try to either kill it or get it to back off before sundown."

"We'll only do the backing-off thing if there isn't anything out there we can do to kill it or take away its powers or...seal it up," Dean replied. He turned on the windshield wipers so that he could see to drive; the rain was beading in tiny droplets on the glass, making a fine mist that smudged everything into a blur of green and gray.

"...why?" Sam asked, giving Dean a quizzical glance.

"'Cause that's what we do, Sam - we kill monsters," Dean answered. It was an automatic response - and a speech that'd come straight from Dad. He hoped that Sam didn't pick up on that, because it would probably make him withdraw even more than he already had. "And if we can't kill 'em, we shut 'em down. This thing's dangerous. It's already killed three people, and it tried to kill number four last night." He bit back the angry "Don't you care?" that was building in his throat, not wanting to set himself up to get hurt for about the millionth time.

"I know, I just..." Sam shrugged and trailed off, looking out the window again. "It was self-defense. It lives in the river the first vic was gonna fill in."

Sam sympathizing with their quarry. Dean trying to persuade him that making a kill was the best option. The two of them chatting about it on their way down to the library to do research. Just like old times. It was so normal it made Dean's teeth hurt, and he wanted to hold onto the illusion for as long as he could.

"Look," Dean began, half-raising one hand off the wheel in a gesture of compromise. "Let's just hit the library, and you can show me exactly what we're dealing with. Then we'll find out as much about it as we can and decide what to do from there."

"Okay," Sam agreed. Not quietly, just...normally. Maybe Dean almost dying last night had cooled his crazy a little. "Sounds good."

They were almost to the tiny library when Dean spoke up again. The silence hadn't exactly been comfortable, but it hadn't made him want to crawl out of his own skin, like a lot of their long stretches of quiet had been recently.

"D'you think there'd be anything about naiads in Dad's journal?" Dean asked Sam as he turned into the parking lot. Sam made a face and shrugged.

"Well, I doubt it, but it can't hurt to look," he replied. "You can flip through that while I get my laptop all set up, if you want."

So Dean dug the journal out of all their other supplies in the trunk while Sam went inside with his computer. Dean had become pretty familiar with this thing over the course of their last few hunts, because he'd been pulling it out for every one ever since the ghosts in Nevada had handed it over, so he'd only need to skim through it to make sure Dad hadn't ever tangled with a naiad. For that same reason, Dean was pretty sure he hadn't, but like Sam had said, it couldn't hurt to look.

"Here. Go ahead and read this," Sam said, looking over his shoulder at Dean as he walked towards the table he'd set up at. "This'll tell you everything you need to know about what a naiad is."

"Cool." Without thinking, Dean tossed the journal onto the table and dropped into the chair right next to Sam's, so he could see the screen of his laptop. Predictably, Sam reacted like Dean had slammed a knife into his thigh, trying to scoot away and shoot to his feet at the same time. Which meant that he pretty much stumbled out of his chair and barely managed to keep himself from falling. There went the little bit of normal they'd managed to build up. "Oh. Shit. Sorry."

Dean couldn't muster the strength to really freak out or show how much that had bothered him. He was surprised that Sam had been able to, since he couldn't've gotten much more sleep last night than Dean had. Maybe he just wasn't tired of all of this in the same way that Dean was.

"It - it's okay," Sam said. His tone was a little too bright, and that and the smile that he forced let Dean know that it wasn't okay. He wondered if that'd been intentional. "You go ahead and read." He reached down to turn the laptop towards Dean. "I'm gonna go see if they've got any books on Greek mythology here."

"They're Greek?" Dean called after Sam as he wandered off into the stacks, because that was news to him. Sam didn't answer (he probably just hadn't heard him; Dean was proud of himself for scaling back his paranoia a little there), so he'd better get reading to figure out what else he didn't know about naiads. He made himself comfortable: slid low in the chair, spread his legs so that only the heels of his boots were resting on the library's nubby waterproof carpet, folded his arms over his chest. Then he focused on the screen.

By the time Sam got back with a pile of books that were thick enough to immediately give Dean a headache just from looking at them, he'd read the page that had been pulled up on the laptop screen, and flipped through Dad's disorganized leatherbound journal. He'd learned that naiads were female water spirits, kinda like little goddesses, and that their father hadn't ever written anything down about them.

Or him and Sam, either, actually. He never mentioned the two of them, even when he was writing about hunts that they'd helped him out on. Dean had just barely noticed that during his most recent read-through, and he wondered why it was.

"So," Dean began, looking up at Sam and clearing his throat. "Spirits. Those're kinda like ghosts, right? Which means we can't kill it."

"Her."

"Right. Her. Whatever. They're all girls, you knew what I meant."

Sam ignored him. "Anyway, not necessarily. I wasn't able to find anything about naiads dying..." He opened the book on top of his pile and flipped to a specific page, pointing to something that Dean didn't bother to look at. It would've meant leaning in and, most likely, spooking Sam again. "But this talks about killing dryads by - "

"And what the hell're dryads?" Dean interrupted.

"Tree spirits," Sam replied impatiently. "You can kill them by chopping down the tree they're attached to. So I assume you can kill a naiad by screwing up her river."

"Like filling it in," Dean realized. It really had been self-defense. Sam nodded. "Jesus." Dean let that percolate for a few seconds, then shook his head. "We can't do that, though. Not even with all that construction equipment they left out there. So how else can we do her in?"

"Well, I...I don't know," Sam responded, shrugging helplessly as he gathered up his books again and went to go sit across the table from Dean. "Maybe if we dumped something in there that'd kill all the fish and plants and ruin the water? Like, oil." He flashed a quick grimace. "But I really don't wanna do that."

"Yeah. No. I'm with you there," Dean agreed after he'd thought it over. "Poisoning rivers doesn't exactly make us look like the good guys, does it?"

Sam looked faintly surprised, but Dean wasn't sure what'd done it. He might not know much about ecology or whatever, but he was smart enough to figure out that polluting a wild river to kill a monster would probably do enough overall damage to outweigh the lives it'd save. Unfortunately, Dean didn't have a better idea, and it didn't look like Sam did, either.

After about a minute had passed with neither of them saying anything, Dean cleared his throat again. "We'll figure it out." He pulled himself up in his chair. "I think I figured out why I'm on this thing's hit list."

"Really?" Sam looked surprised again. Dean decided not to take that as an insult to his intelligence.

"Yeah. According to this - " Dean tapped the screen of Sam's laptop, indicating the thing he'd had him look at. " - these Greek nature spirits are all part of this big...chastity club thing." He spread his hands. "Like you get in high schools in the Bible Belt. But these spirits take it seriously. So I'm thinking that that girl I saw was our naiad, and me getting a glimpse of her cans was...um. Bad."

"Probably felt threatened." Sam muttered it out, and Dean barely caught it. He swallowed and forcefully pushed on before he could analyze it.

"So...what do I do?" he asked. "Apologize?"

"Uh." Sam leaned back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling and pushing one of his cheeks out with his tongue. "Yeah, that - that might actually work. Go back down to the river and tell her you're sorry and that you didn't intend to violate her? You can't run the risk of seeing her naked again, though, she'd probably drown you on the spot."

"So I should - what? Wear a blindfold?"

"That is not a bad idea," Sam said thoughtfully, shaking a finger and still looking at the ceiling. "No room to screw up."

"Well, you're gonna have to come with me this time, then," Dean pointed out. "I mean, to guide me. I imagine me falling in her river by accident'd piss her off, too."

"Yeah...okay. I - " Sam, who'd been sounding just super enthusiastic about helping Dean out like that, suddenly cut himself off. Dean shot him a confused look, and saw him reaching across the table to grab his laptop and drag it over to himself. He started typing furiously as soon as he had it. "I think I know how to keep her from telling anybody else. I mean, after you go apologize and get your death warrant revoked."

He seemed way too calm, talking abut the figurative bounty on Dean's head, but Dean wasn't sure that it wouldn't've been the same if things between them had still been normal. In other words, it wasn't important. So he brushed it off.

"Okay, well, that's awesome," Dean said, spreading his hands again. "Anything that means I don't have to kill a whole ecosystem just to get rid of one monster. What's your plan?"

"I'm gonna try to make it so that nobody can make plans to fill in the river again," Sam replied, closing his laptop with a triumphant-sounding snap. "If she doesn't feel threatened, she won't have to kill. I need to try and get it so that she's protected."

"How're you gonna do that?" Dean asked. "Gonna use your pull as an 'FBI agent'?"

"I'll try," Sam replied, standing up with his computer in his hands. "I need to go to this place's city hall. You can drop me off there on your way to the river."

"But - " Dean paused in order to stand up. Some belligerent big-brother part of him, swelled up with everything that'd been going on lately, balked at the idea of Sam literally talking down to him. "How am I gonna get around there if I'm alone? I'm not gonna be able to see."

"Oh." The expression on Sam's face told Dean that he'd completely forgotten about that. "Uh...maybe you could just...be...really careful?"

"'Be really careful'?" Dean repeated. He felt something puffing up inside of him like foam in a glass of freshly-poured beer, frustration and anger and grief, and his tongue twitched in preparation to start yelling at Sam. About how he could still care about him even if he didn't wanna be fucked by him. About how Dean really deserved better than this, after everything he'd done for Sam. About how Dad had taught them to always, always have each other's backs. Before he'd found out just how literally they'd been having each other's backs for most of a decade, but still.

And then it was just...gone. Dean was deflated before he could even start letting it out. He felt empty, and so tired that, for a second, he wasn't sure that his legs would keep holding him up. They did, though. Shockingly.

It'd only been a week, but like he'd realized yesterday, it felt like way longer, and he was already done. Dean had only been in this place a couple of times before in his life, but he knew what it was: this was what it felt like to give up. He just didn't have what it would take to coax Sam out of his twitchy, snippy shell all over again. So he was letting go.

"Fine," Dean said. "I'll drop you off at City Hall. Let's go."

He led the way out of the library. Sam followed him. He left the Greek mythology books on the table.


"Okay," Dean muttered under his breath, talking to himself as he dug through his duffel bag where it was sitting on the back seat. "Let's go ahead and get this over with."

He was back down at the river, parked in almost exactly the same spot he'd been in yesterday. It was still muddy and awful, but some of the water had either drained away or dried up, and at least it'd stopped raining. He wouldn't have to worry about slipping in a puddle, falling face-down in it, and drowning while he was stumbling around blind.

"This is freaking stupid." He knew he had a bandanna in here somewhere. He'd never worn it, and he had no idea where he'd gotten it, but he knew he had it and that it was in his duffel.

Dean had let Sam out of the car at Lamona's city hall, which was smaller and shabbier-looking than a lot of the houses in town - most of which were very small and shabby indeed. He'd walked up to the door in his FBI suit and coat, which they'd stopped off at the motel to get so he'd seem more official, without looking back once. Dean wasn't sure if he'd forgotten about abandoning him to the mercy of their river monster as well as the fact that Dean could actually die, or if he just didn't care. Whichever it was, it didn't matter. Dean didn't care anymore, either.

"Aha." With a little grunt of satisfaction, Dean grabbed the square of thin fabric that he'd just touched and pulled it out. It was navy blue with white paisley - pretty standard. Maybe it'd been Dad's, originally. It was crumpled from being balled up at the bottom of his bag for so long, but that was just fine, with what he was going to use it for.

He folded it up so it was a wide band and pressed it over his eyes. He could still see slivers of light at the top and bottom when his eyes were open, so he loosened it and tried again. This time, it worked perfectly. Dean twisted the two ends into a tight knot at the back of his head. Maybe it'd be easier to just try and keep his eyes closed while he went down to the river, but he knew that they'd automatically fly open if he stumbled or ran into something, and then he might see the naiad's intimate areas again.

Blindfolded and swearing softly under his breath, Dean shut the car door, felt his way along the glossy paint until he reached the front and could lock it, and set out. He took tiny, shuffling steps to avoid putting his foot in a hole or onto a fallen branch that might roll out from under him. He held his hands out, occasionally sweeping them in a wide arc around himself to make sure he wasn't about to run into anything. And he kept an image of what he could remember from yesterday about the area firmly in his head.

For the most part, it worked. It was slow, but he managed to make his way around big rocks and trees, and only got slapped in the face with a branch once. It sent him jerking back, a string of loud expletives bursting out of his mouth. Then he ducked and went under it. It felt like the stiff needles and spiny bark scratched his face up a little, but he was okay.

It was a huge relief to finally reach the river. Dean had been able to hear the mindless roar of it ever since he'd gotten out of the car, but now it was way louder, and a couple of tentative steps and arm-waves in every direction told him that the only trees here were behind him. He was standing on the little strip of mud and slippery rocks that passed for a river bank. So he firmly planted his feet, cleared his throat, and called out.

"Hey," he said. He had to yell so that he could hear himself over the sound of the water. It seemed louder today than it had yesterday; maybe the rain had filled it up. "Uh...naiad?" He wished he'd asked Sam about the proper way to address these things. He might end up offending her again without ever laying eyes on her. "It's me. I was here yesterday - I'm gonna guess you remember."

Dean waited, but he didn't hear anything that could've been a response to that. Maybe the naiad wasn't even here, and he'd stumbled through a patch of very sharp, very wet forest for nothing. But, hell, he'd come all the way out here, so he might as well keep going.

"I...insulted you," Dean continued. "And I understand that what I did was pretty bad." He did feel guilty. He'd never been the kind of guy who'd try to get a look at a naked woman without her knowing - or anybody else, for that matter. He was practically married to Sam (or had been, a couple of years ago), and he thought he'd been very respectful lately about staying away when he didn't want to be seen undressed.

Of course, he also thought that this water-ghost, or whatever she was, was overreacting by trying to drown him. But according to Sam, she was both super-shy and from a pretty prudish culture. It must've seemed like the only logical course of action to her.

"But it wasn't intentional," Dean went on after letting another few seconds of silence pass. "I didn't come down here yesterday wanting to see you like that. I didn't even know you existed. And today, I'm here to apologize." He reached up and tapped his blindfold. "I made sure I couldn't, uh...besmirch your honor again or anything." He suddenly remembered something. "Oh! Also, I came to tell you that your river's gonna be safe from now on. You won't have to worry about anybody else trying to kill you."

He really hoped that that would at least take a step towards appearing her. Dean knew it'd have an impact on him if someone he'd been trying to kill made an effort to protect him. And maybe he'd said something right, because when he stopped talking and listened for a response this time, he heard some quiet splashing.

It was almost lost in the noise coming off the river, and it was probably just a fish, but it was new. Dean shifted his weight from one foot to the other, grimacing when he felt the heel of one boot sink into the mud. And then somebody spoke.

"Take off your veil." It was a girl's voice - a woman's voice. Young, but twenties young, not teens young. She sounded regal and commanding, and she had a hint of a really weird accent that Dean felt like might be older than his country. "I'm covered, this time. You may look at me while we talk."

Figuring that, by "veil," she meant his blindfold, Dean reached up and tugged it off. Even though the sky was full of rain-heavy clouds, the daylight threw him for a loop after spending twenty or so minutes in total darkness, so he blinked rapidly to try and force them to adjust. When he could make out more than just vague shapes, he focused on what was in front of him.

It was the girl he'd seen yesterday. Except now, just like she'd told him, she was wearing clothes - a loose, sleeveless dress the same greeny-brown color as the river mud that had wound up in Dean's bed last night. A thick belt made up of about ten different kinds of water plant was knotted around the bottom of her ribcage, right underneath where her breasts had to be (the dress was so loose he couldn't actually tell). Her hair was twisted up into a complicated 'do on the back of her head, making it much shorter than it'd been the day before. It was grayer, too...but there was a streak of sky blue near her left temple. Now that Dean was close enough to make out her eyes, he could see that they were the same weird combination of colors.

A quick, almost involuntary look at the river behind her made Dean realize that her hair and eyes were the same color as the water, which was reflecting the sky. Gray clouds with a few scattered patches of clear blue. He also realized that he couldn't see her feet. She seemed to merge with the smooth flow from her calves on down.

"I tried to drown you last night," the naiad said. Her voice startled Dean; she'd been silent for almost a full minute and he'd been starting to get used to it. "But you woke up before I could fill your room."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. The reminder made his abused lungs start aching again in his chest. "I'm a pretty light sleeper."

"You're much harder to kill than the builder was," the naiad went on. Dean sucked on the inside of his lower lip. For some reason, he felt like that was a compliment "And you came to apologize. To restore my honor. That makes me think you deserve to live."

"Oh, well, thank you," Dean said, nodding. "Yeah. I feel bad about...what I did, and I'd really appreciate it if you stopped trying to kill me."

The naiad stared at him in silence for what felt like another solid minute. Dean swallowed a few times, noticing that she didn't blink at all. She probably didn't need to - she was a water spirit, maybe she could make her eyes as wet as she wanted just by thinking about it.

"I'd already intended to," the naiad said eventually. "Leave you be, I mean. The builder and his household were the first lives I'd ever taken, and I don't like the idea of having more blood on my hands." Her pale hands had been hanging by her sides, but now she lifted them and stared down at her palms. Like she could actually see that figurative blood. Dean noted that her fingernails matched her hair and eyes - which wasn't all that important, but it was interesting. "My kind aren't usually violent. Some of us hunt, occasionally, but we don't murder."

"You don't like killing unless it's absolutely necessary," Dean guessed. That was what he'd gotten out of that. "Bet my brother'd like you. He's, uh, the one trying to make your river off-limits to development right now."

The naiad waited a heartbeat before responding. Dean was starting to think that English wasn't her first language - she had to translate what he'd said into her mother tongue, then translate her reply back into English before she started talking. That was what was taking so long.

"I feel I might owe you an apology, as well," she said. She looked vaguely embarrassed. "There are very strict rules about men seeing virgin nymphs in their natural state, but they're from a different time. What you did probably didn't warrant death - especially because it was accidental." She heaved a sigh. Somehow, Dean could hear that soft sound; the racket of the river seemed to have faded into the background while they were talking. "I haven't had a good time of things lately."

"Well, yeah," Dean agreed with a short laugh. "Somebody tried to kill you. That tends to throw me off, too." He rubbed his chest without thinking about it. Even though he'd almost drowned in his bed because of this naiad, he was starting to realize that he would've felt really guilty about killing her. And not just because it would've ruined the river and everything around it. There'd been extenuating circumstances.

"I'm Minthe," the naiad said, pronouncing it "min-thy." Since it'd come out of the blue, it took Dean a fraction of a second to realize that she was introducing herself.

"Oh. I'm Dean Winchester," he replied. "My brother's Sam. You've never seen him."

Minthe tilted her head a little, looking like she was gonna correct him on that, but what she said instead was, "How is he planning to protect me?"

"I'm not really clear on the details," Dean admitted. "I know he went to City Hall. The people there control all the land around the town, so he's gonna tell them something that'll make them declare your river a protected area. That means nobody's allowed to fill it in or pollute it. I just don't know what he's gonna say - he didn't tell me."

Minthe studied him for a second, then rolled her shoulders in a fluid shrug. "You aren't on good terms with him."

The question - no, it'd been a statement - caught Dean just completely off-guard, so he blurted out his knee-jerk response before he could think of a better one. "What? No, we're fine...or, I guess, no. We're not." He paused, not sure why he'd decided to admit that to her. Was he really low enough to be sharing his personal problems with a random monster? He tried to move the focus off of himself. "How the hell'd you know that, anyway?"

Minthe smiled. Now she looked proud. "We're well-versed in the emotions of mortals. We're taught from an early age, and we have an affinity for it - especially the water spirits, like my kind, and the nereids, and the Oceanids. Your feelings and the language of your body are, after all, fluid."

"Okay," Dean said. Feelings weren't really his strong point, so he couldn't argue about that. "Well. Yeah. Sammy and me've kinda hit a rough patch." He wished it still felt like a win to use the nickname when Sam wasn't around to snap at him for it. "But that ain't really your problem." He kept his voice friendly, because the last thing he wanted was to piss her off again.

Minthe dipped her chin. It would've been a nod of agreement if she'd lifted her head back up, but she didn't. She just stared at Dean with her weird river-eyes. He was starting to get a little uncomfortable when she spoke up again.

"What is wrong with him?" It was a simple question, her voice holding nothing but curiosity.

"With who?"

"Your brother. What's wrong with him?" Minthe tilted her head back suddenly, looking at the sky. Dean had no idea what she was doing until the first drop hit his scalp. It was raining again, and of course she'd be interested in that.

"What d'you mean?" Dean forced himself to ask, instead of blurting out the first, bitter response that popped into his head. You mean besides being a total bitch recently and acting like I spent our whole childhood raping and beating him?

"I saw him when I came to end you," Minthe said calmly. She paused. "Not...saw.Sensed. That's the word. He was in his room, next to yours. And there was something wrong. Darkness, evil, covering light." Minthe looked up again, raising her arms to the sky as the rain picked up. Dean set his teeth and endured it, noticing that she was in almost exactly the same position he'd seen her in yesterday. She was facing him this time, though. "Like rainclouds covering the sky." She dropped her arms and looked at him again. "Did something happen to him? I understand that there are...others out there. Not here, though. Things that aren't human." She clasped her hands together over the slick fabric of her dress. "Was he changed into one of those?"

Dean was numb with shock. It seemed to've spread to his tongue, because he had a hard time getting out a "No" without making it sound weird. A second later, some of the feeling returned, and he could add, "Not as far as I know. And I think I might've noticed that."

Minthe was a spirit. A little goddess, like he'd thought to himself earlier that day. She obviously had all sorts of powers that a human didn't - she could fill a whole house with water from her river and drown everybody in it (though Dean was pretty sure by now that the wife and the maid had been unintentional collateral damage). It made sense that she'd be able to see things Dean couldn't. Monster souls. Other, more malevolent spirits.

That was an explanation for Sam's behavior that meant it wasn't Dean's fault. His heart felt like it was up in his throat, choking him with excitement with every rapid beat. Maybe something had attached itself to him? Some kinda ghost feeding off of and multiplying all his bad feelings? Or maybe something was possessing him. Moving him around like a puppet and speaking through him, saying stuff it knew would cut Dean right to the bone.

But...he guessed that Minthe could just've seen the stormclouds of Sam's negative emotions. His anger, his guilt, his fear, his disgust...his hate, even though Dean didn't want to believe that Sam was really feeling that for him. Minthe'd said she was really good with human emotions.

Dean swallowed. His heart had fallen out of his throat, back down to where it belonged in his chest, but a big, sore lump had replaced it.

"Could you tell what it was?" he asked Minthe. The sudden high and harsh drop made his voice come out even lower and rougher than usual. "I mean, d'you have any ideas?"

Minthe shook her head, looking like she genuinely regretted disappointing him. "No. I'm sorry - I can't travel far from my river, and only humans ever come here. I know that there are other things out there, but I'm not familiar with them." She paused. "I suppose it was something like black smoke. Does that help at all?"

And Dean's heart was back in his throat. He swallowed again, but it didn't budge. "I - yeah. It does, actually. Thank you."

Minthe waited, looking at him with an endless sort of patience that must come with the territory when you were immortal (or ageless, or whatever. Dean was fuzzy on this, since exact definitions were really more in Sam's wheelhouse, but he thought that immortality meant you couldn't die no matter what, and he already knew that naiads could be killed), and Dean realized that she was waiting for him to tell her what it was.

"I think it's a demon," he said to her. She looked blank; they must not have demons, or any equivalent, in Greek mythology. "It's something from - they're Biblical. Christian."

"Ah." Distaste flashed across her face. "I'm not very familiar with that, either."

For a second, standing in the rain and talking to something he'd never even heard of until way earlier that morning, Dean wondered what Minthe was doing here. She was a Greek creature, she probably spoke Greek as her first language, and she was about as far from Greece as she could get in this place. It wasn't like Washington even looked like Greece - not that Dean knew a whole awful lot about that area of the world, but he was ninety-nine percent sure that it didn't rain all the damn time there. So how had she even ended up in this tiny, muddy American river, fighting for her life against construction companies?

Maybe the same way an adlet, an Inuit monster from the far north of Canada, could end up in Texas. Dean still remembered what Sam had said back then: things migrated, just like people did. If the naiads had been breeding or something, they might've needed to spread out all over the globe. Into other countries.

"They're just smoke," Dean told Minthe, coming out of his thoughts. He figured explaining demons to her couldn't do any harm. Weird, how comfortable he was feeling with something that'd tried to kill him less than twelve hours ago. "They get inside you - possess you. Then they can control you and make you do whatever they want."

Minthe shrank back a little, and Dean blinked as she...rippled. Just a bit, like what happened when a raindrop fell in a pond. That must be her version of shivering.

"That sounds awful," she said. "And you think this is what happened to your brother?"

"Might be," Dean agreed, and then repeated it, just to try the words out and see how they sounded: "He might be possessed." They felt odd in his mouth. Like a puzzle piece that was supposed to fit, but hadn't been cut quite right. "With the way he's been acting. And...you sensed black smoke around him. Sounds like a demon to me."

It was still too new - almost raw. Dean shied away from thinking about the possibility he'd been given, and was grateful when Minthe started talking again, distracting him.

"Can you help him?" she asked. Her voice was gentle, almost like she could tell how sensitive of a topic this was for him. Maybe she could, Dean realized, remembering, once again, how she'd said she was good with feelings. "It's clear to me that, even though he's upset you, you still care deeply for him."

"I do," Dean said honestly, not hesitating for so much as a second before admitting it. "And I can. Help him, I mean. I know how to force it out. I've done it before." A bitter taste in his mouth prompted him to add, "If it is a demon you saw."

Minthe didn't reply to that. After a couple seconds, she gave him a tiny smile and said, "I think our conversation is over. We've exchanged apologies, you've told me how you plan to save me, and in return, I've told you what I saw around your brother."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. He checked his watch - crap, he'd better go get Sam. He'd been down at the river, talking to the naiad, for almost an hour and a half now. Freaky, how fast time went when he was talking to someone he could be totally honest with. And sad, how the only thing he could be totally honest with these days was a Greek water monster. "I'd really better take off."

Minthe bowed slightly, which Dean thought might be some sort of old-world sign of respect. When she straightened back up, she said, "In the heyday of my kind and all others like us, when we took it for granted that mortals knew we existed, we had a term specifically for men like you and your brother. We called them heroes."

Dean blinked again. He had no idea why he was suddenly feeling uncomfortable about having that term applied to him. Usually, he was comping at the bit to get a little damn credit for what he did.

"Uh," he said. "I don't think I - "

"You knew about me," Minthe interrupted. "You knew about the demon. It may be a leap, but I am inferring that you and your brother slay monsters and protect innocents. Like Bellerophon, Theseus, Odysseus, Heracles, Perseus. Isn't that what almost all of the great Greek heroes did?"

Dean didn't really have an argument for that. Minthe smiled at him again, then turned away. She took a step out into the river, and as soon as her foot seemed to hit bottom, she dissolved into the water. Like a time-lapse video of an ice sculpture melting. The noise coming off the river popped back up to its previous volume as soon as she was gone.

Dean felt like his current mood (shocked, still sort of numb, and, as had become normal for him during the past week, melancholy as hell) and the current ambiance (gray sky, steady rain, lonely stretch of forested river) dictated that he stand there and stare into the fast-moving water for at least a few seconds, lost in thought. But like he'd told Minthe, he had to go. God forbid he put Sam through the agony of deciding whether or not to call him to figure out if he was still alive, and he wasn't sure he wanted to be alone with his thoughts right now. So he just turned around, stuffing the bandanna absentmindedly into one of his pockets, and started hiking back towards his car.

Navigating through the trees was a million times easier when he could see, but it was still difficult enough to hold most of his focus. Once Dean was driving back to town, though, behind the wheel, clothes damp, sitting on a towel again to protect the leather, he had to start thinking. He gritted his teeth and plunged in. Might as well get it over with fast. Like jerking a dislocated shoulder back into place.

Possession. Sam was possessed. Sam was possessed by a demon, and that was why he was mumbling and avoiding Dean's eyes and panicking every single time he touched him by accident. Dean tried it out again, and it still felt weird, but it was a neat explanation with a simple solution. He could just exorcise it and then everything would go back to normal. If it was a demon, it would mean that Dean hadn't done anything wrong, and that Sam didn't really hate him or fear him.

If it was a demon. If. Tapping his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the rhythm of the windshield wipers, Dean sighed. Felt like he'd been doing that a lot lately. If was the story of his freaking life, every aspect of it. If it was a ghost, they'd dig up the grave and burn the bones. If Dad didn't find out, him and a seventeen-year-old Sam could keep on sleeping in the same bed when they were alone. If the hunt dragged out another couple of days, Dean could score with that pretty witness and spend an hour or two forgetting about his soulmate choosing college over him.

If Sam was possessed, he could solve all his problems with a ring of salt and a few verses in Latin.

Dean licked his lips, which were chapped. He hadn't been drinking enough. Or he'd been drinking too much, depending on what kind of "drinking" you were talking about. He didn't have an appetite for his favorite foods, but he was a bottomless pit when it came to booze. He'd leave his bacon cheeseburger untouched and pound back ten beers without even tasting them, when they ate at the one diner that Lamona had.

For just a second, Dean forgot about Dad's opinion of what he'd had with Sam and wished he was here. Or that Dean knew where he was, at least, so he could call him and ask about this. Dad was the best hunter Dean knew, and he'd be able to tell him if it was really a demon or if he was just grasping at straws, only from his description of what was going on.

It'd been a while since he'd thought about Dad, or the fact that the whole reason he'd gone to get Sam from Stanford was that he needed help finding him. Dean felt guilty about that. He didn't miss the old man, per se, but he was definitely worried about him. He was family, and he'd taught the two of them everything that'd kept them alive over the years. He'd also ordered Dean to completely ice his relationship with Sam...but Dean could kinda see where he'd been coming from with that one.

But Dad wasn't anywhere nearby, as far as Dean knew. And there wasn't anything real he could do to find him. He was on his own here.

The rain was coming down harder now. It seemed to come in waves throughout the day here, and Dean would've lived for the lulls between them if the humidity hadn't been so freaking high then. He was tired of constantly feeling damp, his clothes sticking to him and itching. He was tired of a lot of things.

Dean crept around a curve. Being on his own, having to depend on his judgment and only his, meant acknowledging that Sam probably wasn't possessed by a demon. He probably wasn't possessed by anything. Possession cases were rare, and almost all of them were demons. Which were also extremely rare. Dean could only remember one or two demon cases from when he was younger, and he was sure that Dad's journal would back him up on that.

And he and Sam had just barely run across one of those. The chances of tow of them popping up within a month of each other - and of the second wearing Sammy - were probably about as good as the chances of Dean himself spontaneously turning into a demon.

He couldn't blame all his problems on supernatural crap. Dean briefly closed his eyes, but opened them again a second later, since he couldn't afford to miss something and wreck. Yelling "monster" every time somebody did something he didn't like struck him as a really weak, petty thing to do. He was sure there were hunters out there who lived like that, but he wasn't gonna be one of them.

Dean guessed he could just test Sam and put it completely to rest. Say "Christo" and see if he flinched, splash some holy water on him and watch for steam and screaming. He was sure they still had some in the trunk. But if it was a demon (and it probably wasn't), testing would tip it off that he was on to it, which might put both of them in danger.

And if it wasn't a demon, he could end up really upsetting Sam if he tried to make sure. It'd indicate that Dean didn't trust him. He wasn't sure if Sam cared about that or not, bu he might. He also might get pissed off over Dean thinking that there was no way he could be pulling away without having something wrong with him.

Dean put all of that in the back of his mind when he reached the edge of town. Lamona was pretty spread out, but it was also pretty small, so it only took him about ten minutes to make it to the town hall once the roads were smoother and he could speed up again. He didn't want to be thinking about what he might've learned from Minthe when Sam got back in the car. His hunter's instincts wouldn't let him give anything away and risk tipping his hand, and the sixteen-year relationship in his past wouldn't let him do anything that might hurt his little brother.

Sam must've been watching fr the car and staying outta the rain inside the building, because he came out practically as soon as Dean pulled up to the curb. He jogged down the wet sidewalk with that familiar long-legged lope of his, head bowed to keep the drops from hitting him in the face. He looked happy as he pulled the passenger door open. Or satisfied, at least. Whatever it was, Dean could tell just from watching his expression that it cooled away to nothing as soon as he got in the car. With him.

If it is a demon, it sure knows how to push my buttons, Dean though. He wasn't sure they could be that subtle, though. Lucy in Nevada had been torturing people to death, so if one of those things had hopped into Sam, wouldn't it've just killed him by now? One point for Sam just being too sick in the head to love him anymore.

"So how'd it go on your end?" Dean asked, clearing his throat. It felt like it was full of slime, which he was sure was a side effect of almost drowning in dirty water.

"Good," Sam replied. "They agreed. Didn't take a whole lotta convincing from me - I think they were already leaning towards closing the river to development. It's a real big tourist draw, apparently."

Dean snorted, throwing the car into first gear and pulling out into the street. "This town looks like a zit on the map. A map of the county - doesn't even show up on most maps of the state. They've got a tourism industry?"

"Apparently."

"So what'd you tell them?" Dean asked. He was honestly a little curious.

"Well, the mayor, the sheriff, and the head of the, uh, Economic Development Committee all came in to listen to me," Sam replied, pretty much talking to his window instead of Dean. "I told them I'd seen an endangered species of fish in the river yesterday, so they were legally obligated to protect it. I don't think they know too much about the Bureau out here - none of them brought up how far outside my jurisdiction conservation would be. Y'know, if I were a real FBI agent."

Under normal circumstances, Dean would've laughed at that. With things as they were, he forced a smile and drove.

"And the three dead bodies they've still got on their hands?"

"Said it was an ongoing investigation. That pretty much shut them down."

Dean guessed that that was okay. People died weird, unexplained deaths all the time, after all. Even in the normal, safe world of the people who lived here. He thought about telling Sam what'd happened with the naiad, but he waited for him to ask instead, wanting to hear it.

Eventually, Sam did ask him. "What about you?"

"Went pretty well, I think," Dean replied, turning onto the long, winding road that led down to their motel. "Got her to agree to back off, at least. And I told her she'd be safe from now on. So I don't think we've gotta worry about her anymore."

"Good," Sam said, nodding. Dean adjusted his grip on the wheel, letting the silence stretch out to the point of awkwardness before he broke it.

"You wanna pull out your laptop when we get back to the rooms and start looking for a new case?" Dean asked. "We do enough of these things, we're bound to find Dad, eventually. Or at least somebody who knows what happened to him."

Dean could feel tension sprout up between him and Sam as he talked, growing big enough to fill the whole car by the time he'd finished. That couldn't possibly be good. He looked over at him, waiting for him to say whatever was on his mind. Sam was still looking out the window, but Dean could see his throat, and he watched his Adam's apple bob as he slowly swallowed.

"I don't know," Sam began quietly. "We've been at this for months, Dean. We haven't found any trace of Dad since that first hunt, the demon one - maybe he doesn't want us to find him."

"You mean, like, he got into something bad?" Dean asked, knowing that Sam probably hadn't meant that at all. "Something he wants to protect us from?"

"I'm not sure he cared about us enough for that," Sam replied, and Dean couldn't help it - he flinched. He wasn't sure if it was from Sam implying that Dad didn't love them, or from Sam talking about him in the past tense. It didn't really matter, because Sam didn't even seem to notice his reaction. "But...what I'm trying to say is that I'm not sure we're accomplishing anything here. I don't think there's a point in us looking for another case."

"Well, what if Dad wants us to - to pick up where he left off?" Dean challenged. "Saving people, hunting things - the family business."

"Maybe that's what he wants you to do," Sam shot back. He was starting to sound angry, and Dean knew he should stop pushing, but that was another thing he was getting tired of: coddling Sam. "But I'm not good at this, and I don't like it. I never did. I got out, I had a girlfriend, and I was gonna live a normal life. I was gonna be happy. And I'm pretty sure I can get all that back, just so long as I don't get all tangled up in...in this again."

Dean wanted to say something cruel in response to that. Maybe something about how he doubted Sam's girlfriend would want him back, now that she knew he'd spent most of his teenage years letting his brother diddle him. But he held himself back from doing that, at least.

"What d'you mean, you're not good at this?" Dean demanded. "Yeah, you're a little rusty, I'll go ahead and give you that, but that's gonna happy when you spend two years cooling your heels. You were practically born into hunting, Sam. All those skills aren't gonna just go away." He couldn't quite muster up the courage to look at him while he was talking. "You're smart, you're a whiz at research, and you're strong and fast and real clever when it comes to fighting. You're good at this."

"I don't want to be, then," Sam said. I left because I was tired of being a freak. I'd wanted to run away since I was eight or nine, and when I got that letter from Stanford, that was finally my ticket out. I'm not gonna just give up and jump back into the life for Dad - we fought all the time, and he completely cut me off when I went to school. And I'm definitely not gonna go back in for you."

"Why don't you tell me how you really feel, Sam," Dean deadpanned through a dry mouth He immediately jumped to sarcasm as he stared hard at the road, because he'd never heard that much venom in Sam's voice before, and he knew he'd tear up if he didn't distance himself. He kept thinking that Sam'd run out of new ways to hurt him, and he just kept on being wrong.

Dean had interviewed enough people - friends and family of the victims of monster attacks - with an ax to grind to recognize the kind of hate Sam seemed to be feeling right now. It only came from being hurt, wronged, betrayed in a major and visceral way. Something had made Sam really, truly believe that Dean had done horrible things to him when they were younger.

"...I'm sorry," Sam said quietly, after the silence had gone on for what felt like a couple of years. He somehow managed to say it in a way that made it pretty clear that he wasn't sorry at all. "Dean, I...I've tried so hard to do this. To work with you, and forget everything, and...do the right thing, I guess. But it's just not working. You can believe it's 'cause I'm not strong enough, if it makes you feel better."

If it makes you feel better. Dean swallowed, letting the condescension go.

"I think..." Sam hesitated. "I think you'd better just take me back to Stanford. Okay? And then you can do the next hunt on your own." He looked down at his lap, at his hands. "Call me if you find Dad. But other than that...please. Just leave me alone."

Dean turned into the motel parking lot. He found a spot, which wasn't hard. They were all empty, except for the one right in front of the office, so he just had to take his pick. He killed the engine, then looked over at Sam. It was like staring at the sun. It made his eyes water.

"One more hunt," he said with a firmness that he didn't feel.

Sam was already shaking his head. "No, Dean. Trust me, this'll be better for both of us."

"No," Dean parroted. "Look, you wanna walk away from me forever? That's fine. That's your choice. I'll let you do whatever you want, I'll never both you ever again. But only if you work one last case with me."

Sam looked at him. All of a sudden, he seemed as heavy-lidded, bone-deep, soul-weary tired as Dean felt.

"Just a short one," Dean said. "A coupla days. You can pick it out, it can be anything, and I'll treat it like any other case. I won't try to drag it out, promise. He had to bite the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood and then focus on the pain in order to force himself to say the next part. "And then I'll drive you...home."

Saying that was rough. Sam's home should've been here, with Dean, in the car where they'd both practically grown up. Not in one place - and not in California, where Dean hardly ever went. There weren't a lot of monsters there.

Sam just kept looking at him. It would've been normal, or at least good manners, for him to ask Dean why he was so adamant about doing one more hunt. But he must've decided that he didn't care enough to even pretend to be interested, because he didn't ask.

"Okay," he said, opening the door on his side and swinging his legs out into the rain. "I'll go start looking."

Dean sat back in his seat, watching Sam walk to his room, unlock the door, and disappear inside through the windshield. So this was it. Sam was leaving again, and this time, he'd explicitly said that he didn't want Dean coming after him. Sure, they hadn't talked for two years the first time Sam'd run off, but on Dean's part, that'd just been out of respect for his brother's clear need for some time to himself. It hadn't been because Sam had told him not to call.

He guessed he had two options. Let Sam go, and find some way to cope with spending the rest of his life (which probably would be all that long, anyway, in his line of work)alone. Or...

Dean rubbed his face, thinking back on what Minthe had said to him. Black smoke. Or he could look into that explanation. And maybe get Sam, the real Sam - his Sam - back.

Maybe he should give Bobby another call.