Author's Note: Hey there everyone. I'd just like to say hello to the new reviewers we've picked up. Thanks for the support and welcome to our little fellowship. I, of course, appreciate any comments implying that the story should get more reviews, but I'm quite content with my little lot. You may be few, but you are fine, and you are loyal. I love you for it. These next couple of chapters are going to be our first real foray into some serious angst, our Reggie has a very dark past, and we're going to start seeing it. Caution, speed bumps ahead. Enjoy!

p.s. Please don't hesitate to lay the smak down on me if you feel I am wandering into Mary Sue territory with Reggie. As I have said before, I've worked really hard to make her real, and I will shoot myself if I degrade her that way. I'm counting on you to make sure I don't slip across the line.

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That night, as Dean drove toward the next place, the next motel, the next job, the next danger, he couldn't hold on to his earlier feeling of optimism, he couldn't help but think of what was to come. He was worried, worried about Sam. His little brother was retreating into himself. He barely ate, he rarely slept, and when he did, Dean knew it was never restful. But the demons that hunted and tortured Sam weren't the kind he could kill, and he wasn't having so much luck with more corporeal type either. Running a hand over his tired eyes, he played back the events of the past few weeks in detail, especially those first few days, when they had encountered and faced the demon in California. Why hadn't it shown up yet? What kind of game was it playing? He knew that they were doing a good job of covering their tracks, but not that good.

As far as he could tell, there weren't even any indications that the demon was trying to find them. Was it all some kind of manipulative ruse? How was Reggie connected to the other psychic children, and why had her grandmother's dead spirit sent her running to the Winchesters for help? How did the old woman even know about them? And what exactly had happened between Reggie and the demon in the church that night, or for that matter, between her and Hutchon? Thus far, he'd avoided probing to deeply into the abilities that went with Reggie's gift. It made him so uncomfortable, to think that she might know about the deep, dark battles that he fought each day, against the doubt and the anger that raged inside him. The fear and the pain he kept, even from himself. But, now, now there were too many questions, and not enough answers. And Sam's life and wellbeing were at stake. Something was coming, his hunter's sixth sense felt it as clearly as his younger brother's psychic one, he could feel the gathering storm of darkness as it condensed around them.

He was just going to have to deal with it. Right now, Reggie was the only person with some of the answers he needed. He looked over at her. She lay against Sam, tucked along his side, their eyes were closed. He listened to the sound of her soft breathing. He was intimately acquainted with steady, rhythmic patterns taken on by both of them in sleep. Sam was out cold, Reggie was awake. No time like the present he told himself, Time to bite the bullet.

"Reggie", her eyes fluttered open at the sound of her name.

"Yes", the answer was soft.

"Can I, erherm, can I ask you something?"

Her drowsy eyes sharpened, focusing on him,

"What's that?" she asked. Might as well cut to the chase he thought.

"You know, way back, in California, when we were in the church, what did you do to the demon? How did you use your….gift, against him?" he asked, getting right to the point, with characteristic bluntness.

Reggie's eyebrows rose, Dean never, ever, asked her about her gift, in fact, most of the time, he acted like it didn't exist.

"What?" she said, her tone conveying her surprise.

He shrugged uneasily,

"Look, I wouldn't pry, except" he let out a frustrated breath,

"Except, as far as I know, you're the only person or thing that's been able to hurt the demon, or his host, since we" his eyes darkened with remembered pain, "Since we…lost the colt" he finished.

"And I need to know what you know, there might be some way to stop it. Something, some detail that you don't even realize is important, might be the key to saving Sam."

Ah, now she understood. If it was about Sam, especially if it was about protecting Sam, there was no line Dean wouldn't cross, no torture he wouldn't suffer. He'd even go so far as to admit he needed her help. Well, almost. She shook her head, he was the consummate older brother.

"How many years between you?" she asked, surprising him with the unexpected question.

"Uh, four" he said, and looking over at the sleeping Sam, his eyes softened,

"But sometimes, it seems like a lot more" he murmured.

Reggie nodded in understanding. She had a younger sister herself, she knew what it was like. You always felt so much older, and she had finally come to realize that it was because older siblings lived everything twice. Once when they did it, and once when their younger brother or sister did. Only the second time, there was this heavy weight of knowing, and the desire to make it easier, better. You remembered, no, you felt, their happiness, their triumph, her eyes darkened, their pain, their confusion, more acutely than your own. She knew something about the brothers' childhood, their relationship, from her conversations with Sam.

She knew that Dean had only experienced childhood through his brother's eyes, that his own had ended when he was four years old, the day his mother had died. The day he saw her die. The day he'd become a man. She'd been able to see, so clearly, when Sam had described it to her, though she knew he hadn't meant to tell her as much as she had gleaned.

She'd seen Dean, forced to become father to his brother, and the emotional linchpin of the man who was supposed to be taking care of him, before he turned five years old. Seen the warrior in him forged in the hot fires of misery and rage and hate. Seen it tempered by love. Despite everything he'd gone through, he'd loved so much, fought to build a family out of the ashes of his former life. Carrying them all on his slim, straight shoulders, refusing to bow down in defeat. Accepting the responsibility, much of it unfairly given, that his father had heaped upon his shoulders. Not just accepting, but embracing his role as Sam's guardian, as the centre of their broken family. Trying to balance out the conflict between them, to be enough to both, to make them all whole again. Brother, father, mother, son, friend, protector, partner, soldier, peacekeeper. He'd done everything he could to keep them together, and she knew he thought he'd failed. But he hadn't. Sam was still here, Sam was still safe, and she knew he'd do anything to keep it that way. He was better at it than she had been, than she was. She had failed. Failed Abbey.

Dean wasn't exactly sure what he was seeing in Reggie's eyes, but he didn't like it. She seemed haunted, as she stared, having fallen silent, out into the night.

"I always forget that you have a sister" he said, breaking the thick silence that had settled in the car between them.

"She's a ballerina right?" he asked, trying to engage her, he was pretty sure he'd heard her tell Sam that. In his mind it fit. Reggie had this unconscious grace, this quiet elegance to her. He could see a younger sister, a bit shorter perhaps, more coltish, without the lush curves but with the same delicate face.

"Yes" her smile was sad.

"She's a soloist with the New York City Ballet." A cool, distant princess living in an ivory tower, far away from the sister who loved her, who needed to be loved by her.

"Are you close?" Long lashes swept down to cover amber eyes that filled with pain.

"We're fine" the banal statement, the uninflected tone, whispered of past betrayal, of past agonies. It wasn't right, thought Dean, that someone as caring and committed as Reggie, should be estranged, hurt, by the ones she loved the most.

We were once. Thought Reggie to herself, silently answering Dean's question in full. It's my fault that we aren't now. She hadn't known, couldn't have realized, what growing up in the pretty blue house with its white picket fence and secret atrocities would do to them, to her. They had lived in a world where the air was fairly thick with hatred and fury. Their nightly lullaby was the sound of their parents raging screams. At first, it had brought them closer, they had leaned on each other, for comfort, for support. Reggie had been the big sister who'd always insisted that her little sister join her and her friends, since Abbey had none her own age, rather than sending the younger girl away.

Reggie had held Abbey when she cried, and worse. She swallowed hard, remembering the desperate need that had engulfed her, to protect Abbey, the day she had found the seven year old in their shared bathroom, small fists beating on her own chest, tearing at her own hair, in an attempt to make something, anything, hurt more, hurt enough, to wipe away gnawing, constant pain of their parents war, of their father's cruelty. The black hole that opened in your chest and perpetually threatened to suck you in. To end you. Reggie had felt it to. They had known the truth, a heart really could be made to physically ache, to bleed, by words that were said, and equally by silences. Eventually, what had saved Reggie had doomed Abbey. She would never have let it happen, but she hadn't been able to see.

As Reggie grew older, she began to recognize the malicious manipulation, the deliberate infliction of pain her father engaged in. He would do anything to control them, and it was an effective tactic. She had turned to her mother, and Kristen Thorpington had tried to lavish enough love on her eldest daughter to make up for all the pain, or done the best she could, and reached out to her youngest, but in vain.

Abbey, unable to admit that her father was the source of her pain, insisted on blaming both equally, and she wouldn't accept Kristen's consolation, wouldn't accept her love. She saw demons everywhere, but still, her valiant, naive sense of loyalty wouldn't allow her to abandon him in the face of Reggie and Kristen's increasingly united front. He used it, used her guilt and her innocent trust, to torture her, and to hold Reggie and Kristen prisoner. Kristen wouldn't leave him, having been told that the courts would award him partial custody, because what he did didn't leave the kind of scars that you could see. She wouldn't leave them alone with him, without even the paltry buffer she could supply.

At first, Abbey had turned to Reggie for the succour neither parent could provide, but as her hate and rage escalated, their relationship began to disintegrate. She began to resent Reggie's relationship with their mother, and to be angry at Reggie because Reggie blamed their father.

Unable to lash out at either her father or mother, for fear of their rejection and further torment, Abbey had turned on the one person she trusted enough not to abandon her, even in the face of her blinding and bitter anger. She had poured out the cruel, acid anguish onto her sister, and Reggie had accepted it. Hoping that by doing so, by allowing Abbey to purge some of the darkness that built up so violently within her, she could stop it from poisoning the little one's soul. It hadn't worked. She had failed. Eventually, guilt and shame over her actions, and a continued inability to acknowledge her father's abuse, drove Abbey away. Away from all of them, even Reggie. And now, she stayed away. Oh they saw each other. Reggie had conducted a hundred late night study sessions over the phone while Abbey was in high school, had driven her to her audition for NYCB, had been to every opening night performance, but it wasn't the same.

Abbey still trusted Reggie to be there for her, but she no longer trusted anyone to soothe or comfort her broken soul. She was alone. Reggie had failed. She looked up at Dean, tawny eyes glittering with the tears she would not shed. She hadn't protected Abbey, and yes, she had failed, but Dean hadn't, and she could help him, she could help him to protect Sam.

Seeing the wrenching grief, the suffering, the heartache in Reggie's eyes shocked Dean. Shocked and infuriated him. It was pain that he knew, pain that he recognized, the comfortless, desolate kind that stripped the soul bare. Every protective instinct he had kicked into overdrive. He knew that if he could see it, if she couldn't hide it, it must be eating her up inside. It was wrong, that something so gentle, something so faithful and warm and brave as Reggie, should have been hurt so much. And in that instant, with the night's black cloak close around the car and Reggie's pain laid bare to Dean's eyes, he would have given anything, anything, to take the inconsolable, wounded look from her eyes. But he couldn't, she wouldn't let him. So he waited, until she'd tamed the emotional storm which had risen within her. And when she began, at last, to speak, pushing it all aside, to help him, to help Sam, he sat silently and listened, a little awed, because she was stronger, stronger than he'd thought.