Cass didn't know what had woken her, but she knew she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep unless she ate something. The tell-all conversation with Sam and Dean had taken the whole day, and none of them had really stopped to do anything besides make more coffee. Not that Cass could have eaten anything at the time, given her nerves, but now her stomach was tying itself up in knots and as much as she'd like to roll over and go back to sleep, she could tell her empty stomach would keep her awake if she didn't do anything about it.

She pushed herself out of bed with a sigh and opened her bedroom door quietly, not wanting to disturb any of the light sleepers in the house. She trailed her hand along the wall, familiar enough by now with the hallway that she could maneuver with no more than the moonlight shining in from the hall window.

At the top of the stairs, she froze. Hushed voices were drifting up from the living room. Sam and Dean. Cass bit her lip, weighing her hunger against her desire not to see either of them so soon.

"I don't know what you want me to say, Sam." She could hear the irritation in his voice. "I'm pissed. I'm pissed at Dad, and Heaven, and Hell, and Bobby and, yeah, I'm pissed at Cass, too. She shouldn't have kept all that stuff from us."

Cass closed her eyes and swallowed. Well, that settled it. Hunger was the lesser of two evils. As she turned away from the stairs, she almost missed Sam's quiet words.

"I agree."

She froze again at that. Dean scoffed. "Oh, really?"

"I do. Of course I do. You think I like being left in the dark any more than you do? I don't. I'm sick of lies. I'm sick of not knowing."

Cass hurried back to her room before she could hear anymore. It shouldn't have stung, but it did. She knew they'd be angry, but she'd withheld information anyway. She'd always known they'd be pissed if and when she was forced to reveal just how much she hadn't told them. But somewhere along the way she must have taken Sam's reassurances to heart, because she'd held out hope that he wouldn't hold it against her.

She curled back up in bed and pulled her knees into her chest. At least she wasn't hungry anymore.

She never really got back to sleep after that. By three in the morning she'd given up trying, and the library was empty by then, so she crept downstairs to eat a bowl of cereal in the still-dark kitchen. Then she moped in the dark for thirty minutes until the kitchen clock hit four, because making coffee at four in the morning felt slightly less pathetic than making it at half past three, and then she trudged back up to her bedroom with the largest mug Bobby owned and a book she grabbed at random off one of the library bookshelves.

When she got back to her room she discovered the book was in Japanese. Of course it was. She booted up her computer instead, scrolling through news articles and checking album release dates to see if any more of her favorite music had come out yet.

There were footsteps in the hallway around dawn, and by the volume and gait she could tell it was Dean storming around. She didn't care to investigate. She would be happy to stay out of his way for as long as it took him to cool down.

She wasn't expecting the knock on her door, though she could guess who it was before Sam called softly, "Hey, Cass? You up?"

Was it a good sign that he was seeking her out, or a bad one? She extricated herself from the covers and opened the door, not sure what to expect.

There was a bag over his shoulder. Which meant he was going somewhere. Cass frowned, finding his eyes and trying to read his expression as she said cautiously, "What's up?"

"Dean found a hunt," he said simply. She was surprised, though she really shouldn't have been. Hitting the road to distance himself from her and Bobby and blow off some anger was pretty much classic Dean. "We're heading out in a few minutes."

Cass waited, because Sam had drawn half a breath, like he was contemplating saying something else. She couldn't quite place the expression on his face—sadness? Consternation? The moment drew long, and then uncomfortably long. Sam shifted on his feet.

Oh.

He wasn't going to say anything. Cass had made her invitation very clear, back in the bunker, had told him that she'd still be here if he still wanted her after he'd heard everything. And now—well, it wasn't an explicit rejection, but the wordless distance was answer enough.

Cass swallowed and looked over his shoulder, hoping he wouldn't read the hurt and disappointment in her eyes if she didn't look directly at him. She forced her voice to stay light.

"Right. Well… good luck, then. Be safe."

Sam hesitated. Then, "Yeah. You, too."

And then he was gone.

She nursed the pain for a day.

And it did hurt, Sam's unspoken rejection. It wouldn't have been nearly as painful if he hadn't kissed her first. If he'd never done that then Cass could have believed he wasn't interested. Unrequited love wasn't a great feeling, but there wasn't much to be done about it, either. People had feelings or they didn't.

But he was interested. Or at least, he had been.

She hadn't forgotten the way he'd touched her, the way he'd tangled their fingers together and touched her shoulder and looked at her with equal parts affection and exasperation before pressing his lips to hers. She hadn't forgotten the way his lips felt moving against hers, the way he tasted, the way he hummed and pulled her closer by her waist and tangled his fingers in her hair like he couldn't get enough.

She hadn't forgotten. She could never forget that. And that was the tragedy, that was what made it hurt so much—the taste of it. Of joy. Of hope.

It was one thing to love Sam with the knowledge that it could never happen. It was another thing entirely to love him and know that it could have happened.

She wondered what it was that had changed his mind. Was it one thing, or lots of little things together? Was it what she'd told him, or was it the fact that she'd kept it from him for so long? She wanted to ask. She wanted to shake him until he told her just what it was so that she could apologize, could make it up to him, do something. She pulled out her phone half a dozen times, ready to call him and demand answers. But she didn't. She wouldn't.

What was the point? If there was one thing Sam was good at, it was talking through problems. If he just needed some distance, or time, or an apology, then he would have just told her that.

But he didn't. He didn't say anything. And that said more than enough.

She let herself cry. She let herself stay in her pajamas—Sam's shirt, she was still wearing his shirt—and lie in bed all day.

Tomorrow she would pull herself together. It would still hurt, but tomorrow she would get out of bed. She would go for a run and take Forrest with her. She would cook a healthy meal and try to translate the tablet for as long as Bobby let her. She would email Sinclair to check on his progress on tracking spells, and then she would call Castiel to ask just how many seals had broken by now. She would text Pamela and Jo about normal, everyday things, and she would pretend her heart was not shattered.

But that was tomorrow. Today was for grief.

Bobby didn't bother her until the sun was sinking low in the sky, and even then it was just to hand her a plate with a few slices of pizza on it. He made no comment about the fact that she was still in bed, that she'd never gotten dressed and her eyes were red-rimmed. He just paused in the doorway, nodding expectantly at the plate.

Cass took a bite. The pizza tasted like cardboard. She bit off another piece and hoped Bobby wasn't going to watch her eat all of it.

He didn't. The second bite seemed to satisfy his concern that she was trying to starve herself. Before he left he assured her, "Dean just needs some time."

She almost laughed, because she'd hardly thought about Dean at all, but she wasn't about to correct him. With difficulty, she swallowed her pizza and rasped, "Yeah. I'm sure you're right."

The days that followed were quite productive for her. While there were certainly drawbacks to her obsessive need for control and her reluctance to confront her emotions, these habits did tend to result in increased efficiency in times of emotional distress. When she felt overwhelmed and like the world was out of control, she compensated by exercising ruthless control every inch of her life that she could control.

She exercised. She texted Jo and Pamela, giving no indication whatsoever that she was upset. She emailed Cuthbert Sinclair and learned from Castiel that 37 seals had broken. She trained her dog and made vegetable lasagna and deep-cleaned the kitchen. She uploaded her uncensored notes and sent Sam the encrypted files, because even with the wordless rejection they were still stuck together trying to stop the Apocalypse and now that he knew everything he might as well have all the details, especially since it might help them on their hunts. Then she did her laundry and baked some bread and pretended she didn't care that no response to that email ever came.

That was fine. This was fine. She was—well, not fine. But she would be, eventually.

She couldn't help the small flare of hope that sprang up when her phone rang a week after Sam and Dean had left. It was an unknown number, but Sam and Dean had half a dozen burner phones each, so that didn't mean much. She answered it.

"Hello?"

"Miss Holmes. Hello."

She tried not to sound too disappointed when she said, "Henry."

"Yes." He sounded a little unsure. "Bert gave me your number."

That caught her attention. "Did he find something?"

"Ah, no," Henry said, apologetically. "I'm sorry, he hasn't. We're still working on it."

"Okay." Cass frowned, not sure why else he would be calling. "Is everything alright?"

"Fine." Then, hesitantly, "I was actually hoping you might put me through to my grandsons."

Cass closed her eyes and breathed through the emotions that caused. "I'm sorry, they're not here. But I can send you their numbers, and Sam's email."

"I would appreciate that," said Henry. "Though I don't know about the email. My typing skills are… rather lacking."

Right. He'd come from the 50s; Cass was pretty sure typing was still the domain of secretaries back then, not the everyday skill it had since become. "I can imagine. You've had quite the adjustment."

"As have you, as I recall."

"True enough," Cass allowed. Between being yanked into a fictional universe she was already familiar with or being yanked forward fifty years in her own world, she thought she had the easier time of it. "I had foreknowledge, though. You've got fifty years to catch up on."

"Yes, well…" He clearly didn't want to talk about it. That was alright with her.

"I'll let you go, Henry. I'll send Sam and Dean's contact information along to Sinclair's email."

"Thank you."

When the line was dead she composed an email with Sam and Dean's numbers, as well as Sam's email. As a postscript she added, I'm sure Dean will be happy to give you a long list of music, movies, and television from the past few decades that you need to catch up on, but until then, it's hard to go wrong with Sam Cooke, The Lord of the Rings, and The Twilight Zone.

The sun was just starting to rise when they lit the funeral pyre. The flames caught quickly, enveloping Travis's body and ensuring he wouldn't linger as a vengeful spirit.

Both Sam and Dean had been optimistic going into the case when they'd got the call from Travis, one of their dad's old hunting buddies. This hunt had been one that had been covered in detail on Cass's show, which meant that they had a lot more information going in than they otherwise would have. They knew that just talking to Jack Montgomery wouldn't be enough to convince him that he was becoming a rugaru, and they knew that they might be able to avoid tipping Jack over the edge if they could prevent Travis from breaking into Jack's house and threatening his wife. They hadn't thought it would be easy, necessarily, but neither of them anticipated just how wrong it would go.

"We couldn't change it."

Dean shoved his hands in his pockets. "We gave it our best shot, Sam. Besides, what were we gonna do? Watch Jack for the rest of our lives to make sure he didn't chow down?"

"No, that's not it." Sam shook his head. "I mean, we knew everything going in. We knew how Jack would react—I mean, we tied Travis up in our hotel room to stop it, and it still happened just the way Cass saw it."

"How the hell were we supposed to know Travis would slip the ropes?" Dean said incredulously. "The guy had a broken arm!"

"Yeah, he did," Sam said, because Dean was just proving his point. "Despite everything we did, Travis still got free. He still went to Jack's house, he still threatened Jack's wife, and Jack still turned."

"Yeah, well," said Dean. "We can't win every time."

Sam was quiet for a moment, debating whether or not to voice the question that had been haunting him for days. "What if we can't win at all? What if we can't change anything?"

Dean frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, we tried to stop the first seal from breaking, but it still broke. Gabriel still won't help us. Jack still became a rugaru." Sam could go on, but he didn't. "For everything we've done, not a lot has really changed, Dean."

"Are you kidding me?" Dean's eyebrows shot up. "I got out early. There's a whole angel war. You aren't addicted to friggin' demon blood. I'd say a hell of a lot has changed."

"But none of that matters if we can't stop the seals from breaking," Sam said, frustrated. "Maybe some things can be changed and some things can't. Maybe there's a, a destiny here that can't be changed no matter what we do."

"Bullshit," Dean said immediately, voice harsh. "Maybe there is a destiny, or there's supposed to be. So what? We beat it once, and we can beat it again. We fight as hard as we can to stop the devil from getting out, and if we can't then we fight twice as hard to ice him. What we're not gonna do is give up. Alright?"

"Yeah," Sam said, not because he agreed but because he could tell Dean wouldn't even consider it. "Alright."

Dean had waited. He didn't really want to have this conversation if he could avoid it, so he hadn't brought it up when they took care of the rugaru. He hadn't brought it up when they took care of the geeky movie-loving shapeshifter, either. But it had been two weeks now, and Dean wasn't willing to wait any longer.

"So." Dean handed Sam a beer, leaning next to him on the front of the car once they'd put enough distance between them and the graveyard where they'd just wrapped up their most recent salt-and-burn. "You wanna tell me what's up with you?"

"What?" Sam's voice was just a little too high for Dean to believe his surprise was genuine. "What do you mean?"

"Don't play dumb, Sammy. You've been weird ever since we left Bobby's."

Sam's eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he smoothed his expression. It was more than enough for Dean to know it was bullshit when Sam said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You've been quiet," Dean said, raising his eyebrows. He repeated it, because he really couldn't stress enough how weird this behavior was. "You have been quiet. Before we left you were giving me the 'don't shoot the messenger' talk, but since we've been on the road you haven't brought it up once."

It was unsettling. He'd been expecting Sam to poke and needle at him about his feelings—how he was dealing with everything they'd heard, if he was still mad at Cass and Bobby. He'd prepared himself for the inevitable questions, and Sam's infuriatingly patient, too-understanding looks when Dean inevitably dodged those questions.

Only, they never came. At first he'd appreciated Sam staying quiet, giving him the time to get some distance and blow off steam, but then one day had turned into three, and three days had turned into a week, and now they'd been on the road for two weeks and Sam hadn't even so much as sent him a sympathetic, searching glance. If they hadn't just iced that wanna-be Dracula shapeshifter, Dean would have tested his brother with silver, because this was not normal Sam behavior.

"Seriously?" Sam huffed. "You always complain when I ask you about your feelings, and now you're complaining that I'm not asking about your feelings. I don't know what you want from me here, Dean."

Classic Sam deflection. Dean didn't bite. "I want to know what's going on with you. Annoying and touchy-feely is normal—it's when you stop being annoying that I get worried."

There was that bitchy little scowl. With biting sarcasm Sam said, "Thanks."

Nothing else for it—he pulled out the Serious Big Brother voice. "Sam."

Sam rolled his eyes. "I'm fine, Dean. I've just got a lot on my mind, okay? It's kind of a lot to take in."

"Right," Dean said skeptically, not buying it for a second. It was a lot to take in, but that hadn't seemed to be a problem for him before they'd left. Falsely casual, he asked, "You heard from Cass lately?" He almost sure she had something to do with it, because for all that Sam wouldn't talk Dean hadn't failed to notice that Sam wasn't texting nearly as much as he'd gotten used to.

Sam shook his head. "I'm sure she or Bobby will call if they get a lead on Lilith, or if she finds anything useful in the tablet."

Dean stared. "Seriously?"

"What?"

"Dude. You two text each other every day for weeks, and now suddenly you're strictly business? What, are you angry with her after all?"

"No, of course not," Sam said, quickly but sincerely. That, at least, Dean was pretty sure was the truth. Though it still didn't answer any of his questions.

"Then what gives?"

"I'm just—" Sam looked away and sighed. "I'm trying to focus, okay? Learning everything, what might happen if we fail… I mean, this is bigger than anything we've ever dealt with before. And if we can't find Lilith in time then everything we've been trying to prevent might still happen. We should be focused on stopping the seals, seeing if we can't get any information about Lilith out of any demons we run across, not… getting distracted."

Dean was tempted to ask when Cass had become a distraction, but he knew it wouldn't get him anywhere. Instead he took a swig of his beer, resigning himself to the fact that Sam was going to keep lying about whatever it was that was really bothering him until Dean found a way to wring the answers out of him. "Yeah, okay."

Dean let the matter lie for another week, until they came upon the death of Frank O'Brien and had to call on Bobby to borrow the spell-engraved iron chains to scare the ghost of Luther Garland to death. Dean sent Sam to pack up the motel room while he volunteered to help Bobby get the chain back to his truck. It wasn't really a two-man job and Sam knew it, but he hadn't called Dean on it and that's what mattered.

"Thanks for this, Bobby," Dean said when the chain was stowed away.

"No problem." Bobby eyed him cautiously. "We good?" It was a fair question. Dean had been pissed at both Bobby and Cass when he'd left, and while his anger had cooled he'd still been a little stiff with Bobby when he'd first arrived.

"Yeah. We're good." Dean cleared his throat. "Hey, uh—how's Cass?"

Bobby raised an eyebrow. "She's fine. Or as fine as she can be, at the rate the seals are breaking. I've started giving her three hours with the tablet papers per day—that seems about the limit she can look at the damn stuff without a nose bleed."

Dean frowned. "She doesn't seem upset?"

Bobby's other eyebrow joined the first. "Compared to what?"

"I don't know, before."

"Yes, Dean," Bobby said slowly, emphasizing how stupid he apparently thought the question was. "She's been a little less chipper since she spilled her guts and you and Sam skipped out." Bobby paused to let that sink in, then added, "I didn't figure you cared."

The guilt trip would have been more effective if Dean weren't still so worried. "She and Sam aren't talking."

Bobby blinked, clearly surprised by that. "At all?"

"She sent him her notes the day after we left, and she texted both of us when she gave Henry our numbers, but other than that? No." Bobby frowned thoughtfully. Dean added, "And when I asked him about it he gave me some lame excuse about not wanting to get distracted."

"You ever stop to think maybe that's the truth?"

"He's been quiet, Bobby" Dean said seriously. "Sam has been quiet. You know that's never a good sign."

"He's probably just processing," Bobby reasoned. "It's a lot to take in."

Dean frowned. That was exactly what Sam had said. "Yeah, okay, maybe. But it's still weird that they're not talking."

"That, I'll grant you," Bobby allowed. At Dean's expectant look, he sighed wearily. "I'll see what I can find out."

"Thanks, Bobby."