"Me? It has to come back through me?" Isabel asked in dismay "Why?"
She had come back from her honeymoon the day before, and Sam and Dean had given her exactly 12 hours of domestic bliss before cornering her after Paul had left for work the next morning and telling her what they'd found out from Ash. She looked at them with piercing eyes. They were lucky her honeymoon had temporarily mellowed her out, or she would have thrown one of her legendary hissy fits.
"It was in your body when it was exorcised, you're its portal back" Dean explained "He can only return through you"
"Is there a way to stop it?"
"No" Dean said weakly as he and Sam shared a look "But, we're looking into it"
The look didn't go unnoticed by her and she narrowed her eyes suspiciously at them.
"You're lying"
"OK" Dean confessed "There is a way, but it's not gonna happen"
"Why not? What is it?"
"He's bound to you as long as you're alive"
It took her about five seconds to fully understand what that meant "You mean…he can't come back if… I die…"
She had the sudden urge to pack her bags and leave for Jamaica again, and never come back. It had been easy to forget everything that had happened when she'd been lying on a tropical sun-drenched beach day after day working on a tan with no mention of demons, ghosts or spirits. Escaping reality had never seemed so tempting.
"If you die before he gets a chance to return, he's trapped in hell forever" Sam said, confirming her conclusion.
"Oh my God" She whispered as her face paled. She stood from her chair and took a wary step back. Away from Sam and Dean. She looked at them unsurely "What…what are you going to do?"
Sam stood up also and made a move towards her but stopped suddenly when she took another step away from him. He looked down at her dejectedly. Her eyes betrayed her. Right there, buried under the concern and shock, he could detect the faintest trace of fear. And it hurt.
"Please don't look at me like that" He begged her.
"I'm sorry, it's just that…I don't know what to think"
But she did, and they did too. It was easy to read her mind at that very moment. She was asking herself how far her cousins would go to stop that demon. She was also asking herself how far she would go.
"We're going to find another way" Sam said, his tone resolute and snapping her out of it "You hear me, Bel? No one here is dying!"
A week later Sam and Dean decided to hit the road once more. Isabel and Paul had settled together in life as husband and wife, and it was time for the Winchesters to move on. The decision had been reached with a lack of enthusiasm, both because they knew they would miss their cousin, but also because there was now a more pressing element of danger in leaving her behind.
As much as Isabel would have loved for her cousins to stay behind in Lawrence and settle down once and for all, this time around she found herself out of steam to protest their departure. Stopping the demon had now become not only a matter of revenge or justice, but urgent necessity. Dean and Sam's vendetta was now a race against time to stop the demon from taking what little was left of their family. As much as she had always hated their unrelenting pursuit of the demon that had killed their mother and recently, their father, being unwillingly caught up in the middle of it all made her realize that, just like her cousins, she now just wanted it to be over. No matter what.
Reluctantly, though with a certain sense of resolve, Sam and Dean packed their bags and prepared to leave Lawrence, both assured by Missouri and Isabel to be contacted immediately the moment anything felt out of the ordinary. But they didn't leave without leaving their mark. Salt, holy water, chalk, pendants, crystals, incense; Sam and Dean had turned Isabel's house into a new age pagan repository. Isabel looked around at the obscure and abstract artifacts around her house, clearly not impressed by how the new additions affected her home's decor.
"It looks like a sixteenth century alchemy lab" She said "Is all this really necessary?"
"This is serious, Bel" Sam said, still marking window sills with chalk "You have to take as many precautions as possible"
"I feel like I'm in the Supernatural Witness Protection Program" She said dryly "How long do you think I can hide like this?"
"Not forever" Dean said shaking his head as he painted a thin line around the doors with silver-based paint "But hopefully long enough until we figure out what to do"
"This isn't just to make it harder for him to find you either. It should hold him off too" Sam added, turning to her "Wear your pendant when you leave the house. Missouri's going to check in on you everyday. Salt your windows at night, the chalk should…"
"Yeah Sam, I got it the first twenty times you told me" She interrupted him tiredly. She would miss the days when all she had to do before going to bed was brush her teeth and turn the lights off.
"Just make sure you do it" Dean said more authoritatively "All of it"
They had breakfast together before Isabel had to go back to work, and as Sam and Dean stood to gather their things and leave, she stopped them, pulling them into the living room and taking a seat.
"Before you go, I want to say something" She pronounced ominously.
Sam and Dean shared an amused look as they followed suit and sat down as well. After a moment of silence Dean rolled his eyes impatiently. She always had this habit of announcing she had something important to say then sitting in motionless silence, presumably contemplating how to actually say it.
"Are you going to actually say it?" He asked impatiently.
"Listen, guys" She started and Sam immediately disliked her tone "If the last couple or so years I've been around you two have taught me anything, is that there is a much bigger picture out there. Beyond each of us individually, right?"
"Oh God, not another philosophy lecture" Dean said with a groan. He looked at her with a bored expression.
"That wasn't actually an invitation for you to speak, Dean" She said wryly.
"Sorry, please continue, because I'm dying to know where you're going with this" He replied with sarcastic enthusiasm and a matching smile.
She ignored his remark and continued, turning to Sam, who was not sharing Dean's casual attitude.
"I'm trying to say, that whatever you find out, about the demon, how to fight it, kill it, whatever…in the end you have to consider the options"
Dean stared blankly at her with a frown of his face, like she'd asked him the atomic mass of plutonium. He turned to Sam.
"Sam, please translate"
"I'm not sure I follow either" Sam said unsurely, but a little apprehensive.
She took a deep breath and tried again.
"We've established that if this demon comes back, one of the things you have to be prepared to do, Dean, is…stop Sam" She said, still unable to replace the word 'stop' with 'kill'.
"Where are you going with this?" Dean asked, joining his brother in the apprehension department.
"I'm saying that it might not lie solely with Sam. Maybe we all have to be prepared to make a similar sacrifice, if push comes to shove"
Dean and Sam exchanged an uneasy look and Dean turned back to Isabel suspiciously.
"Explain exactly what you mean by that" He said firmly.
"I mean that everything could hang on a split second decision, and maybe, for once, we need to think about what's at stake…weigh up one single life against however many other innocent ones"
Dean clenched his jaw and gave Sam another look. Yep, that what he'd thought she meant. He turned to her again, trying to maintain calm.
"Isabel, if you're thinking of doing what I think you're saying, so help me God I'll…"
"No, of course I'm not!" She said alarmed. She'd contemplated the idea of suicide for a maximum of two microseconds "Remember how the demon said you had a chance to kill it while he possessed your dad?"
"Yeah" Sam said slowly, only mildly relieved at her denial of what he'd also for a moment feared she meant.
"You couldn't do it and in the end he died anyway, and you're still no closer to killing this thing and, we have no way of knowing how many more people will die because of him"
"Get to the point, Bel" Dean insisted, not in the mood to hear how the inability to kill his only remaining parent could be used as proof of failure.
"If this demon comes back and you have a chance to kill it, promise me you will…no matter whose body it's in or whose life is at stake"
"What?" Sam asked in shock.
Dean knew what she meant; 'no matter whose life is at stake', meaning even hers.
"No" He said with a stubborn shake of his head.
"You want to discuss the other option?" She asked bitingly.
"Don't even think about it" Dean threatened, trying to keep his anger in check at her glib attempt to use suicide as a bargaining chip. He knew she wasn't serious, but it didn't make it any easier to hear her say it.
"Listen, I know this isn't something you want to think about, let alone talk about, but I would rather give my life than risk yours, or Paul's, or Missouri's, or God knows how many others if this demon ends up winning" She said gently "So, I'm just saying, that if at some point it falls on you to make that choice…I guess I'm saying that I'm OK with it"
"So I have permission to kill you? Awesome! I have Sam's, too" Dean yelled with heated cynicism. He stood up and started pacing "That's just great! That's a huge weight off my shoulders, thank you Isabel!"
"You're the one who called the demon without reading the fine print! Now it's stuck to me" She countered "You owe me this"
"Emotional blackmail. Nice!" He said bitterly "I was wondering when you were going to use that"
"You're not leaving me much choice, Dean. Look, I'm only asking you to do it if you absolutely have to" She insisted, ignoring his rant "I won't hold you responsible"
"Do you think I could have that in writing?" He said dryly "That way, when I've got your blood on my hands, I can still go to sleep at night with a clean conscience!"
"OK" Sam said with a gentle nod of his head.
Dean turned sharply to his brother and realized he was talking to Isabel, not him.
"OK?" He asked incredulously "You're actually going along with this…madness?"
"Dean, we're going to try everything we can to prevent this, but…if all else fails" Sam pleaded "She's right, there's more at stake than just our own lives"
"I can't believe this" Dean said shaking his head as he looked down at his cousin and brother.
"It's a last resort, Dean" Isabel added "Let's promise each other we'll stop this demon, no matter whose life is on the line"
Sam, already having come to terms with the possibility that one day he might turn evil and have to be killed, could not without a degree of hypocrisy, deny his cousin or disagree with her. Survival wasn't worth it if it meant other people had to die, especially people you loved. And one thing he knew with certainty about this demon was that it would go after the people closest to them first. Isabel was proposing a fair deal.
"I promise" He said agreeing with her.
They turned to Dean expectantly.
"Fine" He said finally, his tone still on edge "I promise. But it won't come to that. We will find another way"
"I know you will" She said with a faint smile.
After that conversation the goodbyes were somewhat tense. Both Sam and Dean embraced their cousin warmly, and Isabel tried hard not to cry as she once again bid them goodbye. They promised to come visit her again and for the hundredth time made her promise to call if anything happened.
But nothing did happen, and a month later, after a couple of hunts and no developments on the demon front, they found themselves on the way back to Lawrence, to finally be greeted by a surprising piece of good news.
XXXXXX
AN: Thank you all reviewers: HYPERLITE, Hidden Writings, Dean's Baby22, LorGilFan, snchills, Younique, mooneasterbunny, hotforjensen101. Yeah, you guys rock!
OK, I'm going to go back to finish the next chapter now. Toodles, AT