Chapter Fifty: In Which There is Quite a Lot of Cleaning

"No way."

From Henry's description, Mary had been expecting a single, dark room, illuminated only by the wavering light of the weapon the Men of Letters had been so desperate to protect that they had sent a man barreling into the future. She hadn't been expecting—well—this.

The rucksack slipped from her shoulder as she stepped through the doorway, a half beat in front of her sons. Likewise, her knife hand dropped. She took a few more cautious steps forward, ready for the booby traps that surrounded the Campbell family compound, but after finding none, she stopped at the railing and looked out.

The lights had come on when the door had opened, so Mary had a full view of the room laid out in front of them. The table dominating the space had what looked like a glowing map of the world on it. Mary sucked in a breath as she drank the rest of the room in. Completely impenetrable. Located in the dead center of the continental United States. From the looks of it, quite large.

"No way," she repeated.

And there really wasn't anything else to say. Leaving their bags in the doorway (Sam carefully shutting the door behind them), the family thundered down the staircase and into the heart of the bunker.

It was Sam to gasp this time when they burst past the first room and into the second. Mary couldn't blame him. She had a feeling her detail-loving, journal-keeping mother would have killed to spend even an hour in here. Sam trailed his fingers down the spines of an entire length of books, tension draining out of his shoulders.

"We're never leaving," Dean said.

He plopped himself down at one of the chairs, claiming it. Mary fought down the giddy surge in her stomach the best she could, but it bubbled up anyway. She hadn't stayed in one place for more than six months since Wichita when she was still on the hunt for Azazel. Feeling a smile creep on to her face, Mary slid her hand over the table, grimacing at the dust she picked up.

"Dean?" she asked. "Where's the best shopping in Lebanon?"

The very first thing Mary did was call Ellen and Jody and urge them to bring Kevin and Mrs. Tran out for the weekend. It wasn't like Lebanon was an ideal travel destination, but she was willing to beat Kevin wanted some time out in the fresh air and had to be going stir crazy about now.

Besides, she was going to need some backup.

"No, not the lemon-scented stuff, that smells awful."

They'd had to drive a full hour to get to the nearest Wal-Mart, which Dean was now directing them around like he owned the place. Having never been much of a housekeeper herself, Mary shrugged and followed his instructions, grabbing an entire rack's worth of cleaning spray and dumping it into the cart.

"You know what we're going to need? Detergent."

Dean looked entirely too happy about the prospect, but Mary let him pilot the cart down the next aisle anyway. She shot a look over at Sam, who merely shrugged. After Dean had chastised him for grabbing "the wrong type of sponge," he'd simply given up trying to help. Together, both rolling their eyes, they followed Dean into the laundry aisle.

An hour and a half later, they arrived back in the little town they'd be calling home for the foreseeable future. Mary could practically hear the confused natives already. Dean remarked sadly that they'd closed both the apartment building he'd been renting in and the school he'd been teaching at.

"Recession must have hit hard," Mary said as they pulled up to the front of the bunker.

There was already two cars parked outside, which would have alarmed her except that she recognized Ellen's truck and Jody's van. Both were idling, even as their owners opened the doors.

Ellen grinned as Mary got out of the Impala and went to hug her. "It's been a while. Time travel, you said on the phone?"

Mary shook her head. "Later. I think Dean has a schedule drawn up for our cleaning efforts."

/

He did, as a matter of fact, have a schedule. Further examination of the bunker left them with the map room (which Mom had christened the War Room), the library (Dean had already asked Sam to get a room with the card catalogue), a kitchen (he was planning to ask Ellen for all her best recipes), a firing range (he thought he saw Ellen tear up a little), a garage (he actually did tear up a little), a dungeon (Kevin looked a little pale), a storage room (Jody made them promise to never touch anything unless they knew what it did) and a number of bedrooms.

On the upside, they had a lot of space, something he'd never really experienced before. Their house in Lawrence had been decently sized, but he'd been pretty young when they'd moved out, and the replacement about fifty miles away had been small, especially with the three of them. Then had come his college dorm, then the apartment here, then a bunch of motel rooms.

On the downside, there was a lot of work to be done.

After figuring out that the water worked, he'd assigned himself and Jody to one of the more enjoyable tasks—cleaning down the cars in the garage. He'd figured that if Bobby had liked her, she had to have at least some sort of appreciation for them. Sure enough, she let out a low whistle as they walked into the room, both lugging slopping buckets of water along.

"Well, if you can stop the apocalypse, you can beat fifty-odd years of dust, right?"

They started with the black Buick closest to the door. Dean found the keys resting in the driver's seat, but when he stuck them in the ignition, nothing happened. He lifted up the hood to take a look while Jody started soaping down the trunk.

"So," she said after about a half hour of companionable silence. "How's Cas been? He used to stop by sometimes to see Kevin, but he hasn't lately."

"Oh, you know," Dean said, trying to be casual and accidentally catching his finger between two parts. Swearing under his breath, he straightened up to find Jody watching him shrewdly over the top of the car, "he's Cas. Flits in and out whenever."

Which had been becoming rarer and rarer over the years, but now he was right back to the in and out tendencies he'd had during the apocalypse. Which was fine, because it wasn't like Dean needed the guy to hold his hand or anything.

"I just thought if anybody would know how he was, it would be you," she said.

Dean had to be imagining the suggestive leap of her eyebrows. Right?

/

It was nearly eight o'clock at night before Mom stormed into the garage, her hair slightly singed from whatever she and Ellen had been attempting to clean in the kitchen and demanded that Dean, resident small Kansas town expert, go get them something to eat.

Dean found himself rummaging through the shelves of a Gas n' Sip for something that could pass for dinner. He was just eying up the packaged roast beef sandwiches in aisle two when there was a commotion at the front of the store.

"Hey—no—what the—hey!"

A tall, broad shouldered man had leaped over the counter and grabbed the tall, dark-skinned girl manning the register in a chokehold. Knowing he was the only other person in the store, Dean practically vaulted a display of miniature fans, gun raised.

"Don't think that's going to do you much good, Winchester," he growled, pulling a knife out of his pocket with the hand not wrapped around the girl's neck. "Where's the prophet?"

His eyes flashed black. The girl—whose nametag read Ellie! in a sort of bubbly handwriting—let out a petrified whimper. Dean lowered the gun, raising his hands. If anything, it seemed to make the demon even angrier.

"Crowley sends his regards."

With that, his head wrenched back, black smoke pouring from his throat. Before Dean realized what was happening, the demon twisted mid-air and turned to possess Ellie instead. The now empty meatsuit dropped to the ground, and not-Ellie straightened up, smiling.

"Tell me where the prophet is, or I kill the girl," she said.

"Exomious te—"

Dean barely got a few words out before not-Ellie snarled and launched herself across the space between them. Praying that Sam's latest idea would work (and that the phone case Mom had liberated from that annoying businessman was as good as the package said), Dean tossed his phone to the other side of the room after hitting play.

By the time not-Ellie realized that the exorcism was playing on his phone, it had already forced her out of the meatsuit. The real Ellie woke with a shuddering gasp to find her hands wrapped in the lapels of Dean's jacket.

"I—I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over—Mr. Winchester?"

Dean was so surprised to hear himself addressed like that that it took him a full five and a half seconds to realize why she'd looked so familiar.

"Ellie?"

He'd only taught her second grade class for about two months what felt like a lifetime ago before heading off with Sam to find his mother. He was a little impressed that she had remembered and was about to tell her so when she released him with a shriek and nearly fell backwards in her attempt to get away from him.

"You were on the news! You and your brother and mother!"

She scrambled for the phone, an old fashioned corded one, sitting at the counter. Dean hadn't thought about the Leviathan duplicate of himself in a very long time.

"Wait, how do you remember that? You would have been what back then, twelve?"

"Fifteen," Ellie corrected him with a sniff. "And my gramps is sheriff, I'll have you know, so he'll notice the minute something happens to me—"

"Nothing's going to happen to you." He spoke softly, calmly, trying to remember what he must have been like back when Ellie had known him. "Think about what just happened there, to you. You were—"

"Possessed." Ellie lowered the phone. "It felt like I was possessed."

She made a very strange motion, gripping at the bracelet on her wrist. Dean's eyes followed it, landing on a charm hanging in the middle. He thought he recognized the symbol, but Ellie spoke before he could ask about it.

"My gran always went on about that kind of stuff," she said slowly. "Towards the end, mostly. Demons—black eyes like that man—people losing track of themselves—"

"The Men of Letters."

Ellie blinked. "How'd you know she talked about that?"

He'd taken a wild guess, and apparently he'd struck gold. Ellie slowly set the phone back in the cradle, still watching him warily.

"Look, Ellie, I'm not that guy that mowed people down on TV last year, all right? I'm human, that guy wasn't."

Ellie looked about ready to ask about a million questions, but Dean had gotten her in deep enough trouble already.

"It's best if you just forget this ever happened."

From the way Ellie's eyes tracked him out of the store, Dean guessed that she was going to do the exact opposite.

/

That night, Dean retired to the room he'd picked out. Tomorrow, they'd all go furniture shopping with one of the fake credit cards and get something better than this stupid lumpy mattress. For now, he sank down on the bed, thinking to himself that it might be time to finally invest in something to call pajamas.

Ellen, Jody, Kevin and Mrs. Tran had agreed to stick around for a bit, Jody calling off work and Ellen deciding that the extra time closed would only make people want her cooking more. It was the most at peace he'd felt in a very long time.

Except.

Hey, Cas. We haven't heard from you in a while and I'm—we're worried. So, come down for a bit maybe? We've got this sweet bunker now, and I really think you'd like picking out colors for your room.