A/N: This is an extra long chapter because a) sorry about the wait and b) I had nowhere to cut it.

Episode Guide: Set during 3x06: Red Sky At Morning

Chapter 37: Actual Ghost Ship!

Dean and I had agreed to give Sam a week to come clean about taking the Colt. Technically, he had every right to take it. Dean didn't own the gun personally. It was their gun. My concern was what Sam had taken it for and what he had killed with it. Clearly he hadn't dropped dead for trying to get Dean out his Crossroads contract, but that might have been sheer luck.

I wanted to visit New York City, but on the way there, we'd caught wind of a case. A woman had drowned in the shower, and that definitely wasn't normal. It meant a little turn north and into Massachusetts. We were headed for a seaside town and that was pretty exciting for me, whatever happened with the case. I'd been to the coast twice before, once in Florida and once in California and that had been within the past three months. Every glimpse of the ocean was still a novelty for me.

It was nowhere near the week Dean and I had agreed to. Only three nights after Dean had discovered the missing bullet, we were driving the last few miles through Massachusetts. I was in the backseat as usual, and I didn't notice I was falling asleep until Dean's loud shout jolted me awake.

"Ellie! Wake up!"

"Huh? What?" I asked, sitting up straighter, my eyes wide open. "I'm okay!"

"So, Sammy says he doesn't have anything to tell me. Not hiding any secrets. Doesn't even know what I'm talking about."

I rubbed at my eyes. We had agreed to wait a week, and we had agreed that I would be the one to try and talk to Sam. But Dean wasn't exactly the most patient man.

"Dean, you agreed…"

"There's a bullet missing from the Colt," Dean said. "You want to tell me how that happened? It wasn't me. I know it wasn't Ellie. So, unless you were shooting at some incredibly evil cans…"

Sam must have known it was pointless to keep denying it. Dean had woken me up as a witness and to make it perfectly clear that we both knew what he'd been up to.

"You went after her, didn't you?" demanded Dean. "The Crossroads Demon. After I told you not to!"

"Yeah, well…" Sam began.

I couldn't imagine what justification he would have that Dean would accept and I wasn't going to give him the chance to try.

"You could have died, Sam! That's the deal! You could have died!"

"I didn't," Sam said.

"And you shot her!" Dean yelled.

It was a tag team scolding, with Sam stuck between us. "She was a smartass!" he said. A response I would have expected out of his brother, but not him.

"So, why didn't you tell us?" I asked. "Is Dean out of his deal or what?"

"You think I wouldn't have mentioned that?" Sam asked. "She said someone else holds the contract."

"Someone else?" I asked. So, the Crossroad Demon made the deals, but someone else held the contracts? Some superior, maybe? That did make a kind of sense. "Who?"

"She didn't say."

"Well we should find out who," said Dean. "Of course out best lead would be the Crossroads Demon. Oh… wait a minute…"

"That's not funny," Sam said.

"No part of this is funny, Sam!" I reminded him. "We're talking about your life, here! I promised to help you do this safely!"

Dean took his eyes off the road to glare back at me for a second. "Dammit, Sam! It's bad enough you conned Ellie into helping you do exactly what I asked you not to do. But now you're going behind her back, too? Jesus!"

"She wouldn't help me! I had to try!"

"You shouldn't have done it!"

"You're my brother, Dean! No matter what you do, I am gonna try and save you. And I'm sure as hell not gonna apologise for it, alright?"

Dean's grip tightened on the steering wheel, and he was suddenly really focused on the road. Sam gave an exasperated shake of the head, and turned back to look at me. I thought for a moment he was going to say something, probably angry that I was still taking Dean's side on the issue. I just glared at him. He wasn't going to apologise for trying to protect Dean's life. Dean wasn't going to apologise for doing the same for Sam. They were trying to save each other, regardless of the consequences.

I wanted to save both.

At least it was late by the time we rolled into town, and we still had to look for a motel. We didn't find one, and I thought our only option was going to be some fancy hotel by the water. But Dean preferred to squat in an empty house. At first I was going to object, but what the hell difference did it make? I always slept on the floor anyway, and unlike the guys, I had a comfy bedroll. It'd be like camping, only inside.

We found an abandoned house, two stories, and pretty old looking but structurally sound and safe. There was no running water, which was a shame, but if we didn't clear things up quickly, I could always head to a swimming pool or somewhere else with public showers. Unlike camping, there was no convenient stream to wash in.

There were four bedrooms upstairs which meant exciting new opportunities for privacy. One of them even had a bed. We let Dean flop down onto it and fall straight to sleep. He'd been the one doing all the driving, and we could always swap the next night. Sam went out to the Impala to get the sleeping bags and a blanket for me. Meanwhile, I brushed my teeth in the cracked bathroom sink and used a bottle of water to scrub a few key areas so I wouldn't smell awful.

I found Sam in the living room, sitting on the abandoned sofa with the sleeping bags and blanket. I flopped down beside him, and turned to look at him. He was waiting for me, so it was pretty reasonable to figure he had something he wanted to say, right? But he opened his mouth once and closed it again.

After waiting a moment longer, I decided to just go for it and start the conversation instead. It wasn't like I didn't know what he wanted to talk about.

"He's been told his whole life he has to take care of you," I said. "He sold his actual soul. You can't be surprised he's worried."

"I didn't ask him to do that!" It started as almost a yell, before he quickly lowered his voice, obviously remembering Dean was upstairs asleep.

"I know you didn't," I said, keeping my own voice soft and calm. "And it wasn't fair of him to put this kind of guilt on you."

"So help me…"

"But," I interrupted him, "he did it. You have every right to be mad about it, but risking your life again to fix it isn't going to help. You know what my nightmare is?"

"No…"

"It's you dropping dead because you try and break the deal. And then Dean goes to Hell anyway."

"Oh…" said Sam.

"Yeah. What Dean did wasn't fair to you, and I get why it's hurting you, and you want to fix it. But we have to do it right, or else it'll just make things worse. We can't just go back and change the past so you die and he's safe."

"But what if we could undo it?" asked Sam. "If there's a way to undo the deal, so Dean keeps his soul, and I have to die… would you help me?"

I wanted to cry at the very thought. As scared as I was about Dean going to Hell, it was still many months away. Not exactly in the far distant future, but it wasn't immediate. Even while I worked to prevent it, I could still think of it as a thing that wasn't quite real, yet. But I'd already experienced Sam dying once, and that had been devastating. Could I handle it a second time? Could I help him to die, even if it was to save Dean from Hell?

There was another question that had been bothering me, deep in the depths of my heart, too. A question I knew the answer to. If we were just talking death, if Hellhounds and eternal torment weren't a factor, and it was inevitable that one or the other had to die, could I choose? If it came down to losing either Sam or Dean, could I really pick between the brothers? I was deeply ashamed to know that I probably could. I loved them both. But equally? No.

But Hell was a factor, and it wasn't just a matter of one of them dying. The choices were Sam alive and Dean in Hell or Dean alive and Sam dead. Just dead and at peace. Well then, the answer was easy. I had to choose Dean's life. His eternity in Hell was not worth Sam's life, a maximum of eighty years. It just wasn't a fair exchange.

"I want to save you both," I said.

"But if we can't?"

"I guess… if you're willing to die and go… wherever it is you'd go, then that's better than Dean going to Hell. But it's not my first choice, Sam. It'd be a last resort."

"But you'd take care of him, right? You and Bobby? If I was gone, you'd make sure he was okay?"

Oh God. He was serious. He was really considering death and somehow that felt more immediate and terrifying to me than Dean's eventual death in seven months time. I instinctively reached out and grabbed Sam's hand on top of the blanket on his knees.

"No… we can't talk about that yet, okay. Not yet! We'll think of something else."

My two hands barely fitted around one of his. He flipped his hand over somehow, so that I lost my grip. But he kept hold of my left hand, and I guess it gave him something to look at as he ran his thumb over my skin, up and down. He stared at my hand in his.

"I'm sorry," he muttered. "I know you're doing everything you can to help."

He looked so sad and so tired. Maybe he wanted to die to save Dean because it was easier than the worry and the fear he was feeling. We were sitting in the half light, and it was getting real late. We had a case in the morning, and Sam was going to need to sleep. How could he, when he was feeling so dark and hopeless?

Maybe I couldn't save Dean for him, but I could at least try and make him smile a little, give him some good thoughts to try and push out some of the bad ones.

"We'll think of something," I said. "Anything can happen in seven months."

"I guess," he said, but he definitely didn't believe it.

"It might seem like we haven't made any progress, but we know all kinds of things that won't work, and that will help us focus the research on things that might."

This almost earned me a smile. The corners of his mouth turned up, just the slightest bit. "I hadn't really thought of it that way."

"And in the meantime, we're working cases, helping people! Doing what we do."

"Are you trying to cheer me up?" he asked.

"Depends, is it working?"

"A little," he admitted. "Hard not to feel a little better with you being aggressively optimistic."

Aggressively optimistic? I liked that. That was a good description for me. Ellie Singer: forcing folks to smile since 1982.

"You know, one of the best ways to make yourself smile is to try not to," I told Sam.

He forced his neutral face into a firm frown. "If you say so."

"I can make you smile," I said. "I can make anyone smile."

He shook his head, probably because it's harder to maintain a frown when you talk.

"I got skills, Sam. You know, I can even make my father smile."

He shook his head again. "That's not possible. Bobby doesn't smile. His mouth doesn't work that way."

"He smiles at my jokes. One time, when I was nine, he even laughed. He laughed, Sam. That's my superpower. Making even the grumpiest people happy. You'll be a pushover."

Avoiding looking at my face, he was still frowning with determination, but it was more of a grimace, as I could see the strain as he tried to avoid smiling at me. It's totally true that trying not to smile makes you more likely to do it. Try it some time. There's something about forcing yourself to frown that makes everything seem funnier and more cheerful as you fight against it. I used that strategy myself sometimes. The effort of trying to be grumpy makes you forget what you're actually sad about.

He couldn't avoid looking at me as I extended a long finger towards his face, and tickled his cheek where one of his dimples usually appeared.

"Come on, Sammy. Let's see those little dimples."

"No," he said.

"Don't fight it," I teased. "Bring out the face craters. They're so cute!"

"No they're not."

"You're adorable and you know it." He shook his head, fiercely fighting me and frowning more deeply than any real sorrow had ever made him frown. He was overcompensating. "Should I wake up Dean and ask him? Ask him if you're adorable?"

He shot me his angry bitchface and that was real, because if I told Dean I thought his brother was adorable, that was something he would never let go of. Sam would be mercilessly mocked for it.

"Oh, oh… you're bringing out bitchface?" I asked. "Okay… then I'm bringing out the big guns."

There was one thing that always made my father smile, no matter how mad at me he was trying to be. Aggressive optimism is all very well, but I also knew how to manipulate someone to get what I wanted.

I leant forward and threw both arms around him for a hug, then lifted my head up and kissed him softly on the cheek. Before I even had a chance to let go, he was looking at me with a broad smile, straight teeth and gorgeous dimples turned directly on me with their full mystical power. If the roles had been reversed, all he'd have had to do is smile at me, and I'd have been forced to smile back. When he meant it, Sam's smile was magic.

"Oh come on," he protested. "That's not fair. No one can fight that."

I didn't know whether my game had made Sam sleep any better, but I hoped it did. As for me, I was plagued by exactly the nightmare I'd told Sam about: him dead, Dean in Hell and me left behind, with nothing I could do about any of it.

When I woke up, I was exhausted and grumpy. I might have been better off not sleeping at all, my night had been so restless. I'd had to sleep on my bag instead of a pillow. The coffee helped a little, preventing me from actually strangling anyone, but I was still short-tempered and probably unpleasant to be around. I didn't really feel like interviewing an old lady about how her niece had drowned in the shower. The drowning in the shower part was cool, but I was not in a good head space to be talking to the public.

We had to park near the docks, and go a little distance down the boardwalk to get to the victim's aunt's place. The sight of the sea cheered me up a little, and the breeze was cool, so I told the boys to go on in and tell me about it after.

I sat on a wooden seat on the boardwalk, watching while tennis-shoed yuppie types did boat stuff. I had no idea what any of it was about, but there was a lot of complicated-looking action involving ropes, and they also seemed to walk the length of their yachts a whole lot. They weren't really talking each other, but each was clearly aware that others were there. They were all the kind of men who wore cardigans over their shoulders, and I gave them some names and backstories to pass the time. Nigel was just passing a few hours before he went to meet his mistress. Julian was an investment banker and he'd called in sick so he could do stuff with ropes on the deck of his boat. Basil was involved in a bitter custody dispute with his ex-wife, in which they both wanted the yacht and there were also children whose names neither of them could remember.

It was half an hour before Sam and Dean came back. I was so engrossed in considering Julian's probable cardigan collection that I didn't hear them coming. The first I noticed them was when Dean's hand brushed across the back of my head.

"Hey, Princess. Perving on the yacht club crowd, now?"

I shook my head as I stood up. "Horrifying thought."

"So, Sammy has a new girlfriend," Dean said with a snigger, as we started heading back down the boardwalk.

"Bite me," said Sam.

"Not if she bites you first," Dean grinned. He bent down to whisper to me as we walked. "She wants him bad."

I pulled a face. Gross. Wasn't she meant to be seventy-something?

Poor Sam didn't look very amused by it, and after a brief roll of his eyes, he changed the subject. "So who's Alex?"

"Another player in town?" Dean asked.

"Alex?" I asked.

"Yeah, our questions made her think we were working with someone called Alex. Could be another Hunter."

"Doesn't really matter," I said. "What else?"

"Apparently, our vic saw a ghost ship," Dean said.

My day instantly got better. Drowning in the shower was interesting, but ghost ships? Seriously cool.

"Ooh! Seriously?"

"Not the first one sighted around here either," Sam said. He'd been doing some reading while Dean and I got ourselves ready that morning. "Every thirty-seven years, like clockwork, reports of a vanishing three-mast clipper ship out in the bay. And every thirty-seven years a rash of weirdo, dry land drownings."

"A rash of them?" I asked. "So… there's gonna be more mystery drownings?"

"Yeah," Sam said.

"An actual ghost ship, guys!" I said, and Dean winced at the squeak. "Like the Flying Dutchman or the Griffin!"

Dean looked at Sam, one eyebrow raised. "Is there anything she won't geek out about?"

"They're usually death omens, Dean!" I said, my day instantly improved by the prospect of solving a case with an actual ghost ship involved.

"So what happens?" Dean asked. "You see the ship and then a few hours later, you pucker up and kiss your ass goodbye?"

"Yeah," I said. "And you can try and run from it, but death omens are never wrong! Sometimes running is the thing that gets people killed."

Sam had a slight smile, but he obviously didn't find ghostly ships that predicted people's death to be quite as exciting as I did. "Will you be this enthusiastic after we spend a few hours trying to ID the ship?" he asked.

"She loves that crap," said Dean. "Anyway, it shouldn't be too hard. I mean, how many three-mast clipper ships have wrecked off the coast?"

"I actually checked that," Sam said, and now he was smiling. "Over one hundred and fifty."

"Wow," said Dean, as we stepped off the boardwalk and onto the pavement. We were parked pretty close by. "Crap."

"Time to hit the books!" I said. "You want to come to the library with me again, study buddy?"

Dean turned to look at Sam, and in one fluid, casual movement, mimed shooting himself in the head. Not everyone is a fan of my aggressive optimism.

I laughed at him. If he was determined to be irritated by all my best qualities, I might as well enjoy it. Sam remained quietly neutral, but I could see the slight sparkle in his eyes that meant he was enjoying his brother's frustration.

A few more steps and we had reached the road. We'd parked the Impala at the back of a small line of parked cars. There was the red curb of the no parking zone. There was the white Lexus that had been in front of us. There was the meter. And there was an empty parking space.

"This is where we parked the car, right?" asked Dean.

"Yeah," I said.

"Where's my car?" The agitation in his voice was already apparent, and his breathing was heavy.

"Did you feed the meter?" Sam asked.

"Yes, I fed the meter!" Dean's voice was rising in tone and volume with every word. "Where's my car? Somebody stole my car!"

"Hey, hey, hey!" Sam said, trying in vain to soothe his brother. "Calm down, Dea…"

"I am calmed down!" Dean insisted. "Somebody stole my…"

He couldn't get any more out, his breathing had become too hysterical as he began hyperventilating. He bent down, clutching at his knees. People were looking, obviously wondering what the fuss was, and some of the tennis-shoe crowd seemed very displeased that someone would raise their voice in public, like a common animal. Screw them. They didn't know what that car meant to Dean. Plus, there was all manner of weaponry in the trunk.

We both rushed to him, and tried to calm him down. As I urged him to breathe in rhythm with me and Sam tried to pull him up straight, footsteps approached and someone with a posh English accent spoke.

"The 67 Impala? Was that yours?"

I looked up. The English woman had amazing cheekbones, beautiful green eyes, brown hair with a nice wave to it and a gorgeous figure. She was wearing a thick brown coat, and it was long enough, and her neck line low enough, that I couldn't tell what she was wearing underneath. She might have been naked for all I could see. Over all, she was just gorgeous. She was smirking at us as she approached.

"Bela…" muttered Sam.

"Bela?" I whispered. "The one who shot you?"

He nodded.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I had that car towed."