Part 5

The door slammed and someone kicked him awake. "What the hell?" Dean groaned and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He was having a good dream too. He was back at the graveyard where he got to put the deadly bullet into Azezel's shoulder. It was a dream he loved repeating.

"She's gone and she didn't come back!" Sam groaned pulling his hands through his shaggy hair. He rubbed the tiredness from his eyes and paced the room. He had run out of ideas.

"Who's gone? Who didn't come back?" Dean sat up so quickly his head felt dizzy and he grabbed on to it to try to slow it down. "What's going on?" The curtains swung open and the sunlight blinded his worn out eyes. The years of restless nights were finally catching up to him.

"Stacy!" Sam was standing over him now. "She didn't come back to bed last night. Usually, if she gets out, she comes back to bed but she didn't come back. I've looked everywhere and I can't find her. What if she has really hurt someone this time? What if the cops caught her? What do we do Dean?"

His big brother swung his legs out over the side of the bed and looked over at the empty chair completely confused. "How did she even get out of her shackles?" One handcuff was lying on the floor and the other was in the middle of the table. He was sure he tied them correctly. He knew covering her mouth wouldn't be enough and he shook his head. He took the first shift but he couldn't even remember falling asleep. "Wait...," Sam's words were slowly making sense in his head. "What do you mean… come back to bed?" He stood up next to his brother, his eyes widened when the realisation hit him. "No... dude! She's so close, we're practically related," he scrunched up his nose at the thought of them sleeping together. It would be like kissing a sister. "When the hell did this happen?"

"Two nights ago," Sam shrugged. "But it's not important, right now."

"Not important!" Dean bellowed. "You never put her in shackles, did you? You just tied her up a different way."

"Are you watching the news report?" Castiel suddenly appeared in the room with a breeze.

"Do you mind?" Dean snapped. "I'm giving out to my brother here."

Castiel apologised and waited his turn.

"She's posessed, Dean. She's not dangerous. It's a demon or a ghost." Sam felt sick with worry and if he wasn't so angry with Dean's response, he thought he might actually cry.

"It's neither of those," Cas interuppted.

Sam turned around. "Then it's something else… an animal... something?"

But Castiel dashed all his hopes by saying it was impossible.

"Hang on a minute," Dean lifted up a finger and cocked his head with a thought. "The other night, she said she saw a raven. Remember at dinner? She said that tongue twister thing," he walked over to the table and searched through his bag for Bobby's journal.

"Um, yeah," Sam shook his head and tried to think back, hoping it was going to lead somewhere worthwhile. "Quoth the raven, 'nevermore,'" he turned to Cas and told him it was a poem by Edgar Allen Poe.

"But I don't think it was a raven," Dean flicked through some pages. "I think it was a nightjar. In several countries, they're called night hawks," Dean found the page he was looking for and entered an address on his laptop. "They're also known as goatsuckers. Lore says that at dusk they suck the udders of goats and cows infecting them with a disease that eventually leads to their deaths," he read from the website and turned the laptop around to let Sam see. "There have been human cases. Although, they've never been officially connected to the bird because they've always been closed as accidental."

He looked up at Sam and wondered if Stacy had been bitten that night of the festival too. Maybe there was a bird in her tent that she wasn't aware of.

"It's poisoning their nightmares," Sam conluded. It had been annoying him since they spoke to the last victim. "The mother who was hit by a school bus, was afraid that it would happen to her children. The old woman who had a panic attack when she got locked in her basement, was terrified of the dark. The girl who witnessed he boyfriend fall off his bike, was terrified the same thing would happen to her step-brother. And the diabetic was afraid if he started eating chocolate, he wouldn't be able to stop."

Dean shook his head. "So, what's Stacy afraid of?"

"Maybe she's afraid of her family abandoning her when she needs them the most?" Sam replied sarcastically. "Or maybe she's afraid of her only friends not trusting her anymore?"

"Okay Sammy, I get it," Dean groaned and rolled his eyes. "I'm a shitty friend but what's her greatest fear?" They both wondered quietly.

"How about being pocessed by Raphael?" Cas interuppted them and switched on the television. There was a news report informing everyone to stay out of Texas where a wild fire was out of control. "It's not a wild fire," Cas informed them.

"Oklahoma? What the hell is she doing in Oklahoma?" Dean closed the lid of the laptop.

"She's hilucinating, remember? She could be seeing anything right now," Sam said and looked to Cas. "Can you take us there?"

Cas nodded. "I thought you'd never ask."

Cas transported them to within two meters of where she stood. Any closer would be too dangerous, he told them. He also placed a protective shield between them and her instructing the brothers not to pass it otherwise they would receive serious burns or suffer a quick death.

Sam called out to Stacy and tried to get her attention. Even with the shield, he could feel his body sweat with the heat. Stacy had her hands up at her sides, palms out. Beams of light were being sent from her body over to a tall tree that stood across from her. Amazingly, the tree hadn't caught fire yet but it was quickly burning from the inside out. One slight breeze could easily blow the charcoal remains away.

Sam cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted her name again.

"What are you doing here?" she snapped at him with anger in her voice.

Sam worryingly looked to Dean. She had never spoken to him like that even when she was angry.

"What are you seeing right now?" Dean called out. The roar of the light was deafening.

"What do you care?" she yelled back barley acknowledging his existence.

"You've been poisoned. Whatever you're seeing right now isn't real," he informed her.

She gave him a quick look. "Yeah right," she smirked. "As if I'm going to believe you after what you said to me earlier."

Dean looked to Sam and shrugged. He hadn't spoken to her since he tied her up. Even after Sam had fallen asleep, she was quiet. He assumed she was worried about what was happening to her and so didn't speak either. "It was a nightjar you saw the other night at the festival. When it bites people, it infects them with a poison that heightens their greatest fears. You've been infected. So whatever you think I said to you or whatever you think you're seeing right now… it isn't real."

He saw her eyes twitch and he tried talking to her again.

"You can fight this, Stac. Just think about it logically... I really don't want to use your kryptonite, especially in front of company."

Castiel looked over at him and wondered what he meant. Did she have a weakness? If so, why wasn't Dean using it? Surely it would be safer to bring it out now before the situation turned more dangerous. He walked away from Sam and towards the tree. He turned to her and wondered what she was seeing. The heat blast from the light was so strong that it wasn't even safe for him to stand in front of the protective shield. The temperature was increasing and he could see what it was doing to Stacy. Cuts and burns were taking longer to heal and blood had started to drip from her arms. They didn't have long, Cas thought.

Stacy increased her strength. They were all after her now. They all wanted a piece of her. Raphael was still standing in front of her. He was a lot stronger than she could have imagined and was still fighting back. Alastair suddenly appeared into view and stood next to Raphael. They whispered something to each other then turned to her and smiled. She increased her strength again. She could hear Dean speak but she was trying not to listen. He was standing next to Lucifer. Of course, he wanted her to stop.

"Please Stacy," Lucifer yelled. "This isn't real. You have to look at me," he ordered.

She quickly glanced over at him and noticed he was crying. Not just one or two tears but the whole flood gates had opened up and he was trying, unsuccessfully, to stop his bottom lip from quivering.

Her strength decreased in confusion. She wondered why he was crying. Was it a trick? She decreased her strength a little further to listen to his thoughts and one word immediately popped out, love. "Sam?" she whispered.

"That's right," Lucifer nodded and swallowed his tears. "I'm Sam," he placed his hand on his chest. He then pointed to his right. "And this is Dean," and to his left, "and Cas."

She followed his hand gestures. "Cas?" she repeated. Alastair nodded. She looked back to Lucifer and Dean and shook her head. Her head was so confused she didn't know what to think. Her strength decreased a little more. She looked back to where Raphael stood. He wasn't smiling anymore and for a second she swore she saw leaves.

The clouds parted and the sun hit off everything in it's path. It slid through the shades and beamed onto her eyelids. She squirmed her eyes away from the brightness and pulled at the chord that lay across her top lip. Her feet felt trapped and for a moment she thought she was in the shackles again. But when she awoke, she realised it was an oxegyn tube that was around her mouth and a morphine drip that was in her arm. Sam was sleeping in a chair on the other side of the room. His head was hanging over his shoulder and one leg was crossed over the other. She huffed a laugh and pulled herself upright.

"What's so funny?" Dean appeared at the doorway with a cup of coffee in one hand and some magazines in the other.

"It's just the last time I was in a hospital room, I was getting a scan of Connor," she smiled as he walked around the foot of her bed. She didn't even deliver in a hospital. She was working a case with John when he had to pull over to help her deliver in the back seat of the Impala.

Dean placed the magazines on the table beside her and offered her some water. "Cas said your healing defenses would be down and it was better to bring you to a hospital."

She nodded and took a sip. Her lips tightened as she handed the cup back to him. It wasn't water. "Do I even want to know what's in it?" she asked concluding it was a medicine to the poisin.

He leaned against the window blocking out the sun and tilted his head. "I wouldn't!"

She nodded and asked how long she had been down.

"Three days now," he told her he sent Connor home to get some rest. "The lack of sleep has caught up to you. How do you feel?"

"Like a right fool," she sighed. "It all seemed so real."

"Hey," he shrugged. "It's happened to the best of us."

She looked over to Sam. His dreams were making him drool. "Has he told you what happened between us yet?" Dean nodded. "It was just a one night thing... well, a two night thing," she corrected herself.

"And too much information," his eyes widened as he sipped his coffee.

"So, you're not mad? Sam said you were always rooting for him and Mandy to get back together."

Dean shrugged and shook his head. "I used to think that a hunter's life was to hunt supernatural at night and go back to an empty motel room during the day. That was the gig… a life of loneliness. I even tried to make it work with Lisa and Ben but it ended just as badly as it did for Sammy." He looked to his little brother slouched in the chair. His eye lids were moving rapidly from a dream he was experiencing and Dean hoped it was a good dream this time. He knew his little brother had been experiencing a lot of nightmares since Amanda and his girls were attacked. He looked down to his black coffee and sighed. He wished he could make it Irish. "And then I met Sarah and now I have two beautiful children. And I see you with Connor. He's in college with every possibility in front of him and not one of them is demon related." He looked up at her. Her eyes were so narrow he could hardly see her pupils and her nose scrunched up like she smelled something awful. "What?" he shrugged.

"You're not getting all chick flick on me in your old age, are you?"

He laughed. "I wouldn't consider myself that old!"

She raised an eyebrow. "Those grey hairs might tell a different story."

Sam woke to laughter in the room. Stacy was proped up in the bed. Her neck was bandaged on the left and her left arm was in a hard cast. Her face was heavily scratched on one side like she had just been dragged along a concrete floor. But still she laughed. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and the drool away from his chin and got out of his chair. He cleared his throat to ask her how she was.

"Bruised like a peach," she smiled, "but this morphine is helping," she raised her arm in the air.

"Chuck Norris has nothing on you," Dean grinned.

Sam sat on the edge of the bed and gently held her bruised hand. He looked up to his brother who immediately figured he wanted some privacy. "I'm going to…" Dean stumbled. "Look for a way of ridding this town of these birds." He shared a smile with them and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

Sam turned his attention back to Stacy. A feeling came over him like it had suddenly been awoken and was about to burst through his chest. He hadn't felt this much love since his girls were born. He didn't even feel this much love around his, now, ex-wife. He loved everything about Stacy. He loved the way her eyes widened with delight when a new demon was discovered or when she got help working a new case. He loved the way the corner of her mouth tightened when she tried to keep a straight face while handing out a sarcastic comment. He loved how her cheeks blushed slightly whenever she retold old cases she messed up. He loved how he could sit in silence with her and not feel uncomfortable. And even though she always cursed the day she met him, he loved to see how much she loved, his father, John Winchester. Whenever she spoke of him, she always closed her eyes, smiled and raised her shoulders up to her ears like she was remembering some special moment they shared. She knew his father's habits and traits, what he was like through his good days and his bad. He loved how, when he or Dean would do something outrageous, she would roll her eyes and say they were just like their father. He also loved how he didn't have to explain things to her. She knew what winning a case felt like and how much it hurt to lose.

"Stop it, Sam," she whispered pulling him out of his thoughts.

He tilted his head wondering what she meant when the realization hit him. "You know it's rude to eavesdrop," he said, slightly hurt that she would read his mind. They had agreed many years ago that, apart from her family, she wouldn't read the minds of three people; his, Bobby's and Dean's.

"It's not really eavesdropping when the other person is screaming," she pulled her hand away from his and sighed. "What you're feeling for me isn't love, it's… relief… and friendship."

Sam's eyes sadden and she couldn't look at him anymore. "I think I know what I'm feeling and it isn't friendship." He went to hold her hand again but instead decided to just touch his index finger on one of hers.

"I don't think… I deserve to be loved," she looked down at his fingers gently touching hers. She could feel her face blush and her eyes water. A tightness formed around her throat and she knew if she spoke another word, she was going to cry. Breaking up with someone you aren't even involved with was harder than it seemed.

"Why?" Sam whispered. "Because of who you are? Because you're a witch? We all deserve a little loving sometimes… even us freaks." He gave a small smile even if she didn't reciprocate. "Tell me you don't love me and I'll stop. Look at me and tell me you don't love me and I'll believe you." He waited for a reply that never came. He leaned down to her and placed his fingers under her chin, slightly tilting her head upwards. He then rested his warm soft lips onto hers. He felt her hand move over the back of his neck and he opened his mouth to kiss her again. He could taste her tongue slide into his mouth and could feel her hand gently pull his head closer towards her.

When she finally released him, he sat back up and smiled. "Now, how can you say you didn't love that?"

The corner of her mouth tightened as she tried to keep a straight face. "Sweetheart, I just did that to shut you up."

His face lit up with a wide smile. He loved her.

AN: Yeah, so I went down the soppy route. I figured everyone's been through so much crap, they deserve a little happiness.

Thanks to everyone who stuck with this. Think I'll give the long stories a rest for a long while.

37 chapters just melts your mind!