Chapter 38: You're Worse Than Dead

Dean's heart dropped out of his chest when he saw Sophie's mouth stained red, but his body reacted instantly. "Lift her up, Sammy!" he demanded.

Sam gently slid his arms under Sophie's beaten body and lifted her up, and her eyes flew open and made contact with Dean's. He couldn't explain the feeling of panic that hit him straight in the chest when he saw the fear and agony in her gaze.

And then she started choking, blood dripping from her mouth, gasping for oxygen that didn't seem to be making its way into her body.

"Sophie!" Dean yelled. "Sophie, dammit, you stay with me! You stay alive until Cas comes back, do you hear me?"

His heart broke when he saw her weakly nod before coughing again, her body wracked with spasms from the pain it was bringing her.

"Sammy," Dean said, looking over at Sam, who was trying to angle Sophie so that she'd be able to clear her airway. It didn't seem to be working.

"Something's seriously wrong, Dean," Sam replied, his eyes filled with a growing dread. "I think she must have a punctured lung, and it's filling up with blood. If Cas doesn't get here soon—"

"CAS!" Dean roared. "CAS, GET BACK HERE!"

At that moment, Sophie stopped moving. Her eyes fluttered shut and she slumped into a bleeding ball against the pillows, blood dripping from her mouth as her chest stopped rising and falling.

"No," Dean said as he watched her. He pulled himself onto the bed next to her, Sam looking on in shock and heartbreak as Dean pulled Sophie's unresponsive body up against his, her head falling listlessly onto his shoulder. Dean wrapped his arms around her, remembering how he had held her similarly the night he'd told her that she'd always be his first priority. Tears stung his eyes. "No, no, no. Sophie, c'mon, just a little longer, sweetheart. Cas is coming, he's coming…. CAS! CA—"

There was a banging sound, and Cas was yelling as he tumbled back into the room out of thin air, wrestling with someone, or something. Sam leapt up from his spot by Sophie's bed and ran to help Cas.

"It's a demon, Sam!" Cas exclaimed, his arms grappling with his attacker.

Sam didn't need to be told twice. He grabbed Cas' assailant and threw him against the door of the motel before stepping back, pulling Cas back with him. The demon launched itself at them—and then froze, looking down and narrowing its eyes when it saw the symbol spray-painted on the ground.

Sam, breathing heavily, glared at the demon. "Devil's trap, you son of a bitch."

"CAS!" Dean yelled from across the room, feeling a cold dread creep through him as he looked down at his daughter. Sophie hadn't moved an inch since she had collapsed.

Cas whipped his head around and rushed towards Sophie. He gently cupped her head in his hands and closed his eyes for a moment before releasing her. Sophie seemed to shimmer for a moment, and then suddenly her wounds were gone. She was still covered in blood, but the cuts and gashes and bruises all over her body had disappeared.

But she didn't move.

"Cas," Dean choked out in disbelief. "Is it too late?"

The angel glared at Dean. "No. Her injuries run deep. Give the grace a moment to run its course."

Dean waited, his arms curled tightly around Sophie, his forehead resting on top of her head, his eyes closed. He didn't realize he was praying in his head until he realized Cas wasn't responding, because he hadn't been praying to Cas—he'd been praying to whatever force in the universe that had the power to keep his daughter alive.

And then Sophie slowly lifted her head up, causing Dean to lift his head up and look at her. Her eyes were wide and scared, and she sat up and turned to meet Dean's gaze.

"Dad?" she whispered shakily.

"Oh my God," he said, feeling a relief he'd never experienced course through his veins as he tightened his arms around Sophie, pulling her against him. She trembled as he brought her closer, and when her forehead hit his chest she started sobbing. Tears fell uncontrollably down her face and onto his shirt and he just held her, not caring that he was probably holding her too tightly, thinking about how just seconds before he had thought that she wasn't making it out of that day alive. He held her, letting his heartbeat slowly return to a semi-normal pace, rubbing Sophie's back mechanically. "You're okay," he said quietly, more to himself than to her. "You're okay."

The moment was interrupted by a slow clap. "Well done, Winchesters and Co.," the demon in the trap laughed maniacally. "Really, spot on. My heart is so touched right now. Does anyone have a tissue? I could really use a tissue."

Cas lifted his hand and pointed towards the demon, and suddenly its ability to speak ceased to exist.

Sam whipped his head to look at Cas. "Why didn't you kill him?" he asked, his voice surprisingly harsh.

"Sophie begged me not to," the angel replied flatly.

"What?" Dean asked, unwilling to push Sophie off of him to ask her any questions. Her sobs were dying down, but she was still in a state of shock. He didn't blame her. She was a sixteen-year-old who just escaped death by a millimeter.

"The demon possessed her friend Jack," Cas said quietly. "She begged me not to kill him because she knew it'd kill Jack, too."

Dean took a look at the demon. His first reaction was that he was annoyed. Not because the demon who had just almost killed his daughter was in the same room as him, but because the boy it was possessing was a very handsome teenager who more than likely had a thing for his daughter. And then he felt frustration, because he knew that he could not kill the demon without killing someone Sophie cared deeply about.

And Dean wanted that demon to be very, very dead.

Slowly, Sophie lifted herself off of Dean, looking down at her still bloodied body. Shakily, she slung her feet off the bed.

"Woah, woah," Dean said, hopping off of the bed and quickly making his way to the other side, gently putting his hands on her shoulders, meaning to push her back down to keep her off of her feet and, more importantly, away from the demon, even if it was stuck inside the Devil's trap. But when Dean's hands fell on her shoulders, she flinched away from him, and he pulled his hands back in shock. "Soph…."

Realizing what she'd done, she sniffed, trying to keep the next onslaught of tears under control. "I'm okay," she said quietly. "I'm all healed. Let me stand up, please."

He stepped back, still surprised that she'd recoiled from him like that. She got up from the bed, standing and looking down at her ripped, bloodied party clothes.

Her lower lip trembled, but she looked up at Dean. "Do you have s-something I can wear?" she asked, her voice still weak with shock.

Dean nodded, grabbing his bag from underneath the bed and hastily rummaging through it before grabbing a green T-shirt that would practically be a dress on Sophie, not to mention longer than the skirt she was wearing.

He handed it to her, and when she reached out to accept it he couldn't help but focus on all of the blood left on her arms. "Thanks," she said before silently slipping into the bathroom. Dean stood, staring at the door until he heard the sound of the shower turning on.

Immediately, Dean charged towards the demon, who was wearing a smile on its face, and Sam had to use all of the muscles in his body to hold his brother back. "Dean, I know you can't see it, but that's her friend," Sam tried to reason with him.

"You almost killed my daughter, you son of a bitch," Dean practically hissed over Sam's shoulder, his face red, his jaw taut. "You're worse than dead."

The demon looked at Cas expectantly, and with a reluctant exhalation Cas let the demon have its ability to speak. "And how do you plan to kill me?" the demon asked in a syrupy voice that didn't quite seem to match it's physical form. "I'm riding the body of your precious Sophia's best friend. Or are they lovers? I really can't tell. Seriously, the will-they-won't-they is keeping me on the edge of my seat. Either way, she's not going to like it if you drive a blade into my heart."

"There are other ways to kill a demon," Dean growled menacingly. "And I'll make damn sure to find a way that hurts like hell."

The demon inspected Jack's nails. "Tell your daughter it should weird her out that her lover has perfect cuticles. This level of personal hygiene is not normal."

Dean shoved Sam off of him. "You mention my daughter one more time—"

"And you'll do what? Keep making empty threats? Why don't you start asking the questions you want answers to, Winchester, and then maybe we'll get somewhere."

Dean breathed heavily, staring straight into the demon's eyes. The only sound was the shower still running in the bathroom.

Sam spoke first. "Who are you?"

"I go by Taylor," the demon said. "Typically, I like meatsuits that are, like me, female. But tonight I just couldn't pass up the chance to get up close and personal with a Winchester, so I hijacked Perfect Fingernails here."

"What beef do you have with us?" Sam continued.

"I'm serving my master, Lucifer," Taylor snapped. At the sound of the Devil's name, Sam straightened and Dean and Cas gave each other dark looks. "He's not a huge fan of you two plotting with Beelzebub to have him killed. And Sophia is the one thing he's able to use to strong-arm you into handing over your soul. So we need to remove her from the picture."

Dean glared at Taylor. "Well, it's too late, bitch. I already signed over my soul, so it's game over for Lucifer."

Taylor narrowed her—his?—eyes, and grinned. "My job is to be thorough. Besides, who doesn't want to say they killed the daughter of the great Dean Winchester? I'm sure she'll only cause more problems in the future. Call it a preventative measure, if you will. Either way, Lucifer would have loved me above all his other followers."

"Love," Sam cut in, giving a humorless laugh. "Lucifer doesn't love. He doesn't love, or like, or appreciate, or respect. All he does is hate, on varying levels of intensity. You picked the wrong team."

"So what?" Taylor asked. "Like Beelzebub's team is the right team? Either way, this earth is screwed. I'm just trying to pick the winning side here."

Cas turned to Dean, interrupting whatever he was about to say next. "We need to exorcise her."

Dean looked at Cas like he was crazy. "Are you kidding me? We need answers!"

"She'll be back," Cas said, looking at the demon closely. "Her master will command her, and she'll have no choice. We can deal with her then."

Dean knew what he was saying in unspoken words. We need to save Jack now, before something happens and he gets killed. Dean walked right up to the edge of the Devil's trap, looking Taylor in the eye.

"I want you to know," he said in a low voice, "that this is definitely not over, and that the moment before you cease to exist, I will be the last thing you ever lay your fugly black eyes on."

And then he began chanting the exorcism, and the demon writhed and twisted in pain, yelling at the top of its lungs. Black smoke poured out of Jack's mouth, and soon enough Taylor was catapulted back to Hell, and Jack collapsed inside of the Devil's trap, unconscious.

Sam walked forward and lifted Jack up from underneath his arms, dragging him over to the bed that Sophie hadn't been on and setting him down on top of it.

"It'll be a while until he wakes up," Cas said.

Dean whirled on Cas. "Tell us everything you saw from the moment you found her until the moment you brought Taylor back here."

Cas sighed, looking exhausted. Dean immediately felt bad for snapping at him. Cas has used up a lot of his angel mojo going back and forth to save Sophie and bring back Taylor, not to mention to bring Sophie back from the brink of death. If Dean had been an apologetic man, he'd have said he was sorry. As it was, Cas simply shrugged out of his bloodied trenchcoat and sat down at the table.

"I located Jack easily enough. They were at some sort of gathering, with awful loud screeching music and an exorbitant amount of alcohol, and it was all hot and full of perspiration—"

"A party?" Dean asked in shock. "Sophie was at a party?"

"Well, I thought parties were supposed to be fun, and that certainly did not look like fun to me."

"I can't believe Sophie was at a party," Dean said, looking over at Sam. "Maybe she does have a little of me in her."

"What happened next, Cas?" Sam asked, giving Dean a look.

"By the time I arrived there, it was almost too late," Cas said darkly. "They were up in a secluded room in the house. Jack—well, Taylor—was about to kill her, and she was barely conscious on the floor. I guess Taylor was…taking her time. There was also the body of a young man in the room, and judging by the way he was dressed he was one of the partygoers. It was too late to save him, as his neck had been snapped cleanly." Cas heaved a great sigh. "Anyway, I managed to incapacitate Taylor long enough to get Sophie out of there, and I brought her back here to you. By the time I got back to the party, Taylor had already tried to flee, but I managed to grab her before she could get too far, and I brought her back here."

Sam crossed his arms and shook his head sadly. "We need to figure out who the kid who died was. Maybe it was one of Sophie's friends."

Dean rubbed his face with his hands, looking towards the bathroom. "She's been in there for a long time," he noted in concern.

"There was a lot of blood on her," Cas pointed out.

Dean gave him a look.

"Girls take long showers to have alone time, Dean," Sam said. "And God knows she might want some right now."

Dean walked over to the little fridge the motel had supplied them with and pulled out a beer. "I need something about five million times stronger than this," he said, cracking it open and taking a long drink of it.

"Maybe you should go to the party," Cas offered. "They appeared to have more than enough to share."

Dean sat down at the table across from Cas. "I still can't believe Sophie was at a party. I mean, the girl is a saint." He looked at Sam. "Remember when she wrote her librarian an apology note for turning in a book late?"

Sam gave a little grin. "I do." Then his grin fell, and he looked thoughtful for a moment. "She's a teenager, Dean. She was bound to do something less than perfect at one point or another. Considering the fact that you're her father, we should be lucky a party is the worst we've gotten."

At that moment, the door to the bathroom opened, and Dean turned quickly. He hadn't even heard the shower turn off. Sophie walked out, the blood washed off of her body. Dean's shirt nearly fell to her knees, and her wet hair fell around across her shoulders. From a distance she was whole and healthy. But Dean saw her eyes, and they were dark and fearful and haunted.

The first thing she did was take her torn, ruined party clothes and dump them silently in the trashcan. Then she walked meekly up to Cas and whispered something in his ear. Cas looked at her with calm affection. "Of course," he said.

He disappeared again, and wasn't even gone long enough for Dean to ask Sophie what she'd asked him before the angel returned, a bag in his hands. He handed it to her and she disappeared back into the bathroom, reemerging a minute later wearing sweatpants and a large, thickly knit cardigan over Dean's shirt.

"Thanks, Cas," she said quietly when she closed the bathroom door and tossed the bag on the floor. Sam, Dean, and Cas looked at her. She shrank back under their stares, crossing her arms and walking over to the bed that Jack was passed out on, sitting on the edge of it and looking at his calm, sleeping face. "Is he okay?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "He will be. He's going to be pretty confused when he wakes up, though."

Sophie looked upset looking at him. "I hate that out of everyone that demon could've used, it was him."

"Demons like to do whatever it takes to hurt their target as much as possible," Sam explained in a gentle voice.

Sophie nodded, her eyes going hard. "Yeah. I get that now."

Cas walked up to Sophie. "I'm glad you are safe now, little lion, but I have to go. There are things I need to take care of back at the party so that people do not suspect that anything out of the ordinary has happened."

Sophie nodded. "Thank you, Cas. For everything."

He nodded, and then for the last time that night, he disappeared.

Dean cleared his throat. He knew what he needed to talk to Sophie about, even though he didn't want to. "Soph…I know this is a bad time, but… Sam and I need to talk to you about something back at that party."

"I know, I shouldn't have gone," Sophie cut in, turning her gaze from Jack to Dean, her voice at such a low volume Dean could barely hear her. "Believe me, I know that now."

"No," Dean said, shaking his head. "The party...Soph, I could care less about the party. It's about someone at the party."

She looked a little confused. "The demon?"

Dean shook his head again. "No. You should know that...in the room Cas found you in, there was a body, and it was someone from the party. It was probably one of your classmates that you've gotten to know so well. And that's probably what Cas is going to deal with right now."

Her reaction was nothing that he could've expected. Her face went blank, and for the first time Dean couldn't get a read on how or what she was feeling. "I know," she said emotionlessly. "His name was Ryan."

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. This was not the normal reaction of someone whose peer had just been killed, probably right in front of her eyes. "Soph, I know that this is hard—," Dean tried again.

"It's not," she cut in. "Ryan's dead now, and there's nothing I can do to change that."

Dean walked up to Sophie, meaning to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Soph, I'm sorry—"

"Don't," she snapped quickly, pushing his hand away and cringing away from him, standing up from Jack's bed and putting a few feet of distance between Dean and herself. Dean took a step backwards, trying not to outwardly show that her reaction hurt. Realizing what she done, she looked horrified. "I'm sorry," she blurted out. "I just…I wasn't…." She took a moment to collect herself, taking a deep breath. "Ryan died because he was with me when the demon found me. And as crazy as it sounds, the demon killing him…saved me."

Sam and Dean could not have looked more confused. Sophie ran her fingers nervously through her hair and sat on the edge of the bed she'd nearly died in, and Sam and Dean sat down at the table. They looked at her, not pushing her, waiting for her to explain.

Sophie looked down at her fingers, which were tightly clasped together in her lap. Her first instinct was to not tell Sam or Dean anything about what had happened with Ryan that night before the demon had come. But she'd already lied, or at least omitted the truth, about going to the party.

And look where that had gotten her.

She took a deep breath. "Ryan was one of the guys taking money at the door. He liked me, I guess. And later, he came up to me and while I wasn't looking, he sort of…put something in my drink, I don't know what." She looked up and her eyes sparkled with more tears. "I was being as responsible as any dumb teenager at a party can be, I really was, I only had two drinks the whole night! But I knew when everything started spinning that something was really wrong, so I tried to find Jack, and I ended up in the hall trying to call Jack and then I was going to call you but there was no service and then…and then Ryan was there." Her voice had shrunk back to a small, hollow version of itself.

Dean didn't want to hear anymore. He felt sick, knowing where she was going with this. And judging by how Sam had tensed up angrily beside him, he knew where she was going with the story as well.

Sophie looked up and saw the angry, protective vibes that Sam and Dean were giving off, and quickly she kept going. "He didn't actually…you know. But…it was really close, and it would've…would've happened if…if the demon hadn't showed up." She cringed at her own words. "God, I can't believe all of this is happening. I can't believe I was almost…and then I almost died…and now Jack! He's going to think I'm c-crazy!"

Dean didn't know what to say to her. He was still trying to fathom everything that she'd been through in just a couple of hours. Luckily, Sam jumped up, sitting by Sophie and slowly wrapping an arm around her. She looked up at him, watery eyed. "Soph," he said, "today has been awful. You don't need to dig up anything else to tell us right now, okay? We can talk about the rest of this later. How about we find some new sheets for this bed, and then you can try to get some rest?"

She sniffed and nodded, looking over her shoulder at Jack. "When is he supposed to wake up?"

"I don't know," Sam said truthfully. "But Dean and I are going to stay up and watch out for you both."

Sophie sniffed again. "Thanks, Sam."

He pulled her into a quick hug and kissed the top of her head. "I'm just glad you're okay," he said before letting her go.

Sam and Dean silently stripped the bed of the bloodied sheets as Sophie sat by Jack, unwilling to watch. Then, when Sam pulled out a fresh change of sheets from the closet, Sophie helped him put them on the bed.

When the bed was made, she silently crawled under the blankets, letting her head hit the pillows and her eyes shut. She could feel the exhaustion eating her from the inside out, but a part of her brain didn't want to shut down. It just kept thinking about the fear, and the pain.

And then the mattress creaked, and her first reaction was to defend herself from some monster, supernatural or otherwise. But then a familiar hand gently tucked an unruly strand of hair behind her ear, and she looked up to see Dean sitting next to her, looking at her intently. "You're safe now, Sophie," he promised, his eyes unreadable. "So sleep as long as you can."

Hearing his words of reassurance had a calming effect on her, and she nodded, closing her eyes again.

She felt him lean down and place a short, soft kiss on her temple. If she hadn't just been traumatized, she might have grinned.

And then Dean spoke one last time, in a voice so quiet that Sophie almost missed it. "I think it'd be okay if you kept calling me 'Dad' from now on, too, kiddo."

And just before she slipped into a heavy sleep, Sophie smiled.

Hope you guys liked it, and thanks a million to all you readers, favoriters, and reviewers! Look out for an early update later on in the week! ~ Lacey :)