Author's Note: This chapter was an emotionally draining ordeal to write, I hope y'all think it was worth it. Happy Reading.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Reggie fought her way through the thick cobwebs of sleep and the tantalizing remnants of warm dreams toward wakefulness. Opening her eyes, she was appalled to see that the sun was fully up, and she was not only still in bed, she'd slept the entire night through. Muzzily, she berated her body, which was still sluggish and rebellious, wanting nothing more than to relax back into the arms of the deep, magical dream that she knew she'd had the previous night. The kind that you could only remember well enough to heartily regret not being able to recall the details.
She shouldn't still be tired. She'd slept like the dead. But she was, God, lately, she was always tired. Well, she reminded herself, Yesterday, you did battle an enraged, homicidal ghost, and go through the emotional wringer of unleashing all your personal demons. Not to mention, that little kiss and cry episode with Dean. The man is going to be the death of you. Reggie shook her head to clear it of the unpleasant thoughts, and looked around for her charge, who was no longer sleeping in the bed beside her, despite the fact that he was injured.
Dean sat in the scruffy armchair that was crammed against the back wall of the motel room, next to the small, stained table, and watched Reggie wake up. She had this thing were she really needed darkness to sleep. He'd noticed that, as soon as the sun came up, she'd semi-wake and bury her head between two pillows, to block out the offending rays. When they'd first hit the road her hair had been shorter, and as a result of her pillow sandwich, was routinely squished into a messy little Mohawk that he'd found adorable. She was no less alluring now that the lose ringlets had begun to grow out. Her skin was warm and flushed with sleep, her hair a tangle of sassy, golden-bronze curls which framed her face in glorious disarray. Her large, tawny, almond-shaped eyes were soft and unguarded as she cast them around the room, looking he knew, for him. When they at lit last on his large, dark shape in the corner, a small smile curved her mouth.
"Hey there cowboy, how're we feeling this morning" she asked. Her own hand going to the back of her head, indicating the place where he had been injured the night before.
"I'm okay" came the easy response.
She nodded,
"I'm sorry about last night. I guess I didn't turn out to be much of a nurse. Although, I can't for the life of me figure out why Sam's watch didn't wake me up. I set the alarm and stuck the darn thing right next to my ear". She lifted the covers and pillows, searching for the AWOL Timex amidst the tangled sheets.
"Over here" said Dean, holding up the watch.
"And don't worry about it. I turned it off. We both needed the rest."
Reggie's eyes narrowed, there was something in his tone that implied that perhaps she'd needed it more than he. But of course, he didn't know anything about the painful memories and fears that she'd re-lived the previous night, that had so drained her energy, and she had no intention of telling him.
Dean's next words said he had other ideas.
Rising from the chair, he moved out of the shadowed corner and into the sunlight, his hazel-green eyes with their golden centre capturing her full attention. There was a speculation in them that made her nervous.
She fidgeted where she sat in the bed. She always got uneasy when Dean stared at her, but this was different. For once, she understood how he must have felt when he knew she'd been sensing his emotions. She had the distinct impression that Dean knew something about the previous evening's battle, that she didn't want him to.
"I've been thinking" his voice was deep, his gaze, inscrutable,
"About how exactly, you managed to keep good ol' Ronnie off our backs long enough to get to my phone and call Sam."
Reggie dropped her eyes, unable to meet those probing green orbs.
"And I was thinking that, more than anything else, more even than death, what Ronnie wanted was to make people feel pain. Real, animal pain. Like the kind he felt."
Damn him anyway! Thought Reggie with irritation. Of course he'd figured it out, it was, after all, his job. To assess what the purpose of an angry spirit was, to discover its weaknesses and exploit them, and he was good at it. But she didn't want to re-open the tightly sealed box of anguish in her heart. She knew that he must have been extremely uncomfortable, doing this, trying to talk to her about it. In fact, she could feel his squirming unease, but she could also sense how responsible he felt. How he felt it was his fault she'd gone through, whatever she'd gone through, and he wanted to know what she'd had to do to help him. Of course he couldn't know that it wasn't really her run in with Ronnie that was the problem. That the demons and wraiths of her past pain haunted her daily. Still kept her from so many facets of the life she wished for herself. That they played a very large part in keeping her from him.
Dean's voice was low, harsh with guilt and anger, when he spoke again.
"What did you do Reggie? What did you give him, to satisfy his need for pain?"
She could feel the guilt, it was a white hot inferno inside him. His drive to know what he had cost her came from a dark place of self-loathing and destruction. He wanted to know so he could punish himself with the knowledge of her sacrifice. And she wasn't going to let him. He'd have to learn that he wasn't the only one in this fight. He wasn't the only one who could suffer for the cause, for the people he cared about. Because that was how he saw it. He thought nothing of sacrificing himself, of twisting and maiming and exposing his own soul. Of crippling it, to say nothing of his body, if only those he loved remained safe. But his very nature rebelled against the idea of allowing others to be hurt.
He'd shouldered the burden of saving the whole goddamn world, and it was supposed to be a solo mission. No wonder Dean, at his core, had so little self esteem. How could anyone live up to the standards he set for himself. In his eyes every failed hunt, every victim, every casualty, and every wound sustained by anyone, let alone by someone he genuinely cared about, was his fault. In his own eyes he was a failure, a disappointment, a murderer even. And right now, he felt like what had happened to her was his fault, and maybe she'd contributed to that last night in the orchard. She sighed, she was going to have to work on that.
Dean waited patiently for Reggie to answer him. He'd spent the early morning hours with her curled, exhausted and asleep in is arms, examining the deep circles of fatigue under her eyes, and the pallor of her fair skin. And he'd wondered what she'd been forced to do, that could bring her to such a state of weakness. In fact, lately, he was wondering about a lot of things. He knew that, though she masked it well, there was a lot of darkness and a great deal of pain buried behind those beautiful eyes. He'd never forget that night in the Impala when she'd broken, just enough for him to glimpse the coiling darkness that choked out so much of her light. His own wounded soul sensed the matching shadows in hers.
The more he thought about it, the more he wondered what could have happened in her past that would scar her so cruelly. What could have happened that would make her so afraid of him. It had occurred to him that his sudden interest in the personal pain of someone who wasn't Sam was rather unusual. But he chose not to think about that. All he knew was, he was tired of watching Reggie silently, almost inconspicuously, suffer the lash of some invisible torment. It went against the grain to sit idly by and do nothing. He wanted to know what in the hell was going on with her, and come hell or high water, when she told him, and she would tell him, he was going to fix it.
Dean was sharply observant by nature. He'd noticed long ago that Reggie was generally uninterested in men. He'd never seen her give so much as the time of day to a strange man, she'd spent a good deal of her time sincerely wary of him, and she very carefully and deliberately treated Sam like a brother.
She never talks about her father.
The possible implications of that observation made him sick to his stomach. To think that the man entrusted with protecting an nurturing a soul as special as Reggie's, had battered and abused her generous spirit instead. And somehow, he was sure that was part of it. Whatever misgivings either he or Sam might harbour about their father and the choices he had made while raising them, his love for them had never been in question, and above all, the brothers had always known one thing. No matter what horrors lurked in the dark, they were safe with their father. Silently, Dean wondered who had made Reggie feel safe. If she ever really had.
When she still didn't answer him, Dean drew a deep breath,
"Reggie, why don't you ever talk about your father?"
Her head whipped up, the snap of her neck almost painfully swift. He saw the fleeting shock, the fear in her eyes, and knew he was right, though she smothered the instinctive response with practiced speed and ease. She blinked, and the ragging storm was gone, her gaze was calm, easy, even mildly curious.
Reggie fought frantically for control, for nonchalance. He'd thrown her. Here she'd been preparing to attack some of his demons, and instead, he'd completely turned the tables on her. How in the hell did he know, how had he guessed? She knew from long years of experience that she wasn't obvious, that she hid it well. Too well. No one, absolutely no one, knew the whole truth of her painful childhood and her slow battle back into sanity and self-esteem. And she wasn't about to start sharing now, not with a man who could be no more to her than a casual friend. Who would allow himself to be no more, whom she was far to afraid to trust completely mostly because, for the first time in her life, she was truly tempted to lean on the strength of another. For the first time she wondered if she had met someone strong enough to bear the weight.
"What do you mean?" she asked, her tone all innocent confusion.
His gaze was steady.
"When you first joined us, you and Sam spent a lot of time talking about your family. You almost never mentioned your father. I remember even then, thinking that was strange."
He shrugged,
"Probably because my father is the first person I would think of."
She shook her head at him, her eyes full of surprise, and he detected just a hint of defiance.
"I'm not sure what you mean Dean. What would you like to know about him?"
He shrugged, throwing out his arms,
"Anything" he challenged her.
He had to admit, he hadn't thought she would out and out lie to him. She had to know that it wasn't going to work, that he knew, had had his suspicions confirmed by her reaction, as brief as it had been, but he conceded that she was good. A much more consummate actress than he'd expected. Her easy denial, her innocent protestations, they were almost enough to make him believe he'd imagined it. That quaver, that flash of pain. Almost, but she couldn't fool him. Dean had made a career of deception. It was as natural to him as breathing. You can't con a con sweetheart, he advised her silently, as she sat cross-legged on the bed, studying him.
Reggie wasn't lying. There was a difference between a lie and an untruth. A lie was something you told, an untruth was something you lived. And this particular deception was one she practiced on herself as much as on anyone else. It was what allowed her to go on, it was the wall that confined the crippling reality of her past to a nebulous psychological plane of ambiguity. When she was away from him, from that life, immersed in the new circumstances, new places, new people, new world, the new life, she fought for and won, she could function normally, at least on the surface, because if no one else knew, in a way, neither did she. All that pain and rage and fear, it faded into some kind of echo, the distant voice of a nightmare that belonged to someone else. It only reared its ugly head if she was directly forced to confront it. Unfortunately, lately, she had been made to just that, regularly.
She couldn't deal with Dean and the feelings he aroused in her without falling back into that truth. But she wanted to, oh how she wanted to. She couldn't let him know, didn't want to make that a real part of their relationship. It was something she clung to, a belief that if she confined the truth, the blight of it, to herself, she could stop it from tainting what she had with others. She knew that it was hardly a perfect coping mechanism, but it was functional. No, it did not exactly allow her to have normal relationships with people, and yes, the cracks showed rather more glaringly, when presented with a man like Dean Winchester, but at least she could have relationships. Even if their scope was limited to friendships, that was far better than the loneliness of her youth. She would just have to adjust, adapt. She was good at it. All she had to do was figure out how to keep Dean at arms length, without completely cutting him off.
That was how she would normally have dealt with some one who so threatened her carefully won control. But circumstances dictated that she couldn't just walk away, and, truth be told, she was in too deep now, cared to much, for that. But she could keep her distance, and preserve some vestiges of what they might have had. It was the saddest, most frustrating result of her childhood. If she hadn't been able to see the possibilities, it wouldn't have been so painful, but she could. She could always see, and that made her hate herself, for never being brave enough to take the chance. But she didn't want Dean to know how weak she was. She didn't want him to look at her differently, didn't want him to offer her comfort, mostly because she was afraid she might take him up on it. And that would spell disaster. Her whole life was balanced on a razor's edge, somewhere between what she wanted to be true, and the self-deception that allowed her to obtain some fraction of that coveted reality. Deceiving others was really a way of protecting them, and herself.
She couldn't face some one who knew the truth, who could see her cowardice, and her scars. It would change what was between them, and she didn't want to lose him, so if she were going to protect what she and Dean had, she needed to end this now. This disturbing and uncharacteristic new desire of his to know. In her head, she began to filter rapidly through her options, carefully selecting her tools, building a personalized, anit-Dean web of deception. A little confusion, some irritation, some defensiveness, just enough to be convincing, and a suitably altered version of reality would make for a potent cocktail, and if that didn't work, she had a fail safe. Shut down. It was a cruel card to play, but she had come to know Dean well enough to understand that, if she shut him out, he'd get mad, and then, he'd get scared. And then, he would back off. It was her only choice.
Reggie gave a very genuine smile, and started talking,
"Well, his name is Daniel, William Thorpington. He grew up four blocks from my mother and was a good friend of her eldest brother, my Uncle Theo. He comes from money but didn't get along with his father and got himself disinherited just after he married my mother. S'okay though, somehow, my paternal grandparents were still a part of my life. My Mom and Grandma made sure of that. Dad's an electrical engineer at the power plant near where I grew up in New York."
He was still standing there, regarding her silently.
She raised her eyebrows
"More?" she asked, injecting her voice with just the right amount of mockery, just the tiniest hint of irritation, to convey how absurd the whole process was. To convince him of the ridiculousness of his persistence and to make him feel just a bit unsure, to undermine some of that confidence, which would in turn allow stronger uncertainty and eventually embarrassment to creep in, effectively killing his inquiry. At least that's how it should have worked. Dean stared her down and nodded his head for her to continue.
She took a deep breath,
"Well. When I was little my sister and I were both kinda tomboys. So we liked to do stuff with him. You know, stick our heads under the hood of the car. Wrestle." Her smile was just a shade to brittle to be convincing, when she launched into one of her four stock, "happy family" stories. They were built around the handful of happy memories she did have of her father. Though she knew that they were as much a warped product of her desperate childish imagination as reality. Still, usually, they did the job.
"He was the Mean Green Giant, and we were the Sweetheart Sisters. We used to just go nuts. Jumping and crashing around in the family room. I once almost killed him, came down with both knees right in the kidney." Her laugh was warm and her head-shake the perfect facsimile of sentimental affection.
He still wasn't buying it, but Reggie wasn't backing down.
She busied herself getting out of the bed and straightening the covers, yanking at them just a little to forcefully, as she continued in a bright voice. Telling stories about fishing trips and her first tool kit, a Christmas Present. About summers at the lake and the patented Thropington Thriller, a specially designed move where Daniel would throw both his daughters backwards into summersaults, sending them crashing spectacularly into the water.
Another false smile.
"We were real daredevils. Loved that kind of stuff. Right before bed, he would do this thing called, The Plunk. Where he'd lift us up, lying flat on our backs, until our noses almost touched the ceiling, and then drop us onto the mattress. It's like jumping on the bed times a hundred, a real adrenaline rush. Used to make our Mom crazy of course. I mean, it didn't exactly settle us down to sleep but…."
"Reggie" Dean cut off the flow of words.
She spun around to face him, her features still a mask of denial, of congenial remembrance.
He looked deeply into her golden eyes, sensing, but not seeing, her distress.
The offer was quiet, simple.
"I'd like to help. I want to know."
And she shut down on him. The fake glitter went out, leaving her eyes shuttered pools of darkness. It was not the effect he'd hoped to have. But the look on her face was so closed, spoke of such isolation, he knew he had blundered.
"No Dean" her voice held a chilling certainty, "You don't."
And with that, she swept up her things and brushed by him toward the bathroom. His hand caught her arm, just for a moment, but when he turned to look down at her, she was as blank and cold as stone.
"Leave it alone Dean" it was a warning, a demand and a plea all rolled into one.
He had no choice. His hand opened and she walked away from him.
