Song Remains the Same

by R. W. Winters

For Alex Winchester, normal has never been in the equation. Mute since the nursery fire, she grew up on the road chasing ghosts with her brothers and father. When her voice is inexplicably restored and the angel Castiel appears claiming to be her guardian, both of their lives change forever in ways that Heaven and Earth never expected. Castiel/OFC. Sisfic - S4-9 - Alternate Ending.

77. Mommy Dearest

Song Remains the Same

Chapter 77 / Mommy Dearest

"I wanted so desperately to tell you to trust me, but I was lying anyway."
- Beth Orton

---

"Hey. Earth to planet Alex."

Huh? Alex blinked a couple times and realized she had gone still and was staring into space uselessly. In one of her hands she had a hammer and in the other she had an open-ended shotgun shell full of Phoenix ash. Dean was looking at her with an expression that said he was mildly concerned about her space-out but also annoyed by it. "Pay attention," he told her gruffly, frowning as he scrutinized her. He indicated the shell she was holding. "You almost dropped that thing."

She looked and saw, yeah… she almost had. It was drifting to a forty-five degree angle. Correcting it quickly, she reprimanded herself silently. "Sorry," she mumbled, refocusing. She'd been lost in conflict about a certain trench coat wearing angel.

They sat in Bobby's basement at one of the cluttered work tables. In front of them were a variety of tools and gadgets used for the purpose of loading empty shotgun shells. Right now they were using Phoenix ash. There wasn't much of the ash to go around and they had to be careful and try to stretch it as far as it'd go. Alex returned to finishing the shell she was working on. Using the hammer to carefully tap the endpiece into place, she sealed the shell to prevent the ash from spilling out. Then she put that bullet with the other ones they were prepping.

Dean's sidelong glances kept coming, but Alex ignored them. He'd all but dragged her down here for this because he said she needed to quit being a loner. And that maybe she'd gotten out of window-fixing duty but she sure as crap wasn't getting out of shell-stuffing duty. Alex had complied, but not with the best attitude in the world. She had kind of been avoiding much interaction with the family for the past few days because she was so deeply upset. She didn't know how to feel or even what was happening. Her world had basically imploded into a bunch of puzzle pieces she had no idea how to put together.

Dean cleared his throat. "You still feeling weird?"

Alex cut a glance at him. He meant physically, because of the soul touch. Alex selected another empty shell and dodged his studious gaze. "Not really."

It had been a few days since that happened. She had spent those few days recovering from the draining physical effect that the soul touch had put on her... or at least that had been her excuse for avoiding her brothers and uncle. The aftereffects weren't as bad as she had made them out to be—the pain and exhaustion were definitely real, but nothing she couldn't have soldiered through—she'd just needed to withdraw into herself to try and stay emotionally steady. Sam and Dean had been upset that Alex was injured by the soul touch but they'd also been grateful to her for being the reason they made it out of the past. Both of them were still pretty unhappy with Cas for it and hadn't bothered to hide the fact. Dean was especially vocal about it (big surprise, right?). But Alex had made it clear that she had insisted Cas do what he'd done ("I mean, I saved your dumb asses, didn't I? Stop bringing Cas into it.").

Stop bringing Cas into it. Ha. Kind of seemed hypocritical. She couldn't go one waking minute without her thoughts going to him. It was all she could think about, like at obsessive amounts now: Cas showing up in the middle of the night and asking if they had been a mistake. Cas saying he wasn't ready to tell her family about them being married in secret when before he'd been eager to. Cas pulling away from her forcefully and almost shouting at her. Cas rejecting her kiss and touch and then lying about having to leave. None of that was like him. All of it was out of character. The question was why? Why would he behave like that?

She didn't understand. She had seen him sacrifice the unthinkable for her, she had seen and felt his life like she never had before—hundreds of thousands of years of life rushed through her when Castiel touched her soul. All those centuries of existing, but she knew from firsthand experience that the first time Cas had ever felt alive was when he first saw her. She'd felt the depth and intensity and honesty with which he loved her and it had overpowered her. Because of what that soul touch had revealed, Alex had been ready to take her angel into her arms and make love to him for years… she'd felt in love with him all over again and stirred at the deepest levels.

So when he had appeared in the attic and behaved so erratically, when he cast such deep doubt into her and shook her emotions up then just disappeared, she had felt thunderstruck by insecurity and dread. Something was very wrong. She'd known it then and she knew it now. Left in the dark both metaphorically and literally, Alex had called Cas several times that night, begging him to just come and tell her what the hell was going on. There was no response and at first Alex was confused and worried. Then after some time she became angry that he wouldn't respond and lobbed a few accusations at the ceiling to no avail. She promptly became worried again and even more so than before. She resorted to calling Samandriel, who appeared right away unlike Cas. He said he knew nothing except that Cas was 'busy' and would 'return when he can, I'm sure.'

Not exactly comforting. Add to that the sudden strange way Sam was abruptly acting: a couple times when she entered the room her twin brother had gotten up and left immediately like he didn't want to be close to her. When he did stay in the same room, he kept giving her these looks like he felt physically sick and then he'd look away and swallow and appear to fight off a bout of dismay. Alex's inner instincts were blaring. Something was up with him too. First Cas, now Sam? When she'd asked Sam what his problem was, he said 'nothing' and brushed past her stiffly.

The lack of answers in every area was starting to piss her off and back her into a corner of severe, crippling worry. If something didn't give soon, she was going to explode.

So lost in her thoughts and unfocused on what she was doing, Alex knocked over the shell she had just filled and the Phoenix ash spilled out onto the back of her hand before the shell clattered to the floor. Dean jumped up, reacting like she was a toddler—snatching her hand away from the ash even though it was too late to avoid the spill. "Whoa whoa whoa! Careful!" he exclaimed, and his loud tone startled her more than anything else. He stared at her sooty hand and so did she—wasn't this stuff supposed to burn the mommy monster? It felt like nothing. "You okay?" Dean asked, staring with confusion and worry alike.

"Yeah, I'm…" Alex found her eyes going to look at the spilled ash that had been so carefully procured and she got pissed at herself for being clumsy and distracted. "Shit, I'm sorry."

Dean was looking at her hand and rubbing at the soot with a confounded expression. He frowned at the black dust that came away on his fingertips. "The hell? Isn't this stuff supposed to burn the crap outta Eve? It burning you?"

"…No," Alex answered slowly, confused too. "Doesn't feel like anything."

Satisfied that she at least wasn't hurt, Dean let go of her hand and frustration set his jaw tightly as he looked at the spilled ash on the floor. "If the lore was wrong I'm gonna be pissed," he muttered threateningly in the direction of the spill. He started to salvage the ash—grabbing a little dust brush and a sheet of paper before he crouched to sweep it up carefully. Alex crouched to help but he glanced her way and gave her attitude. "Just don't, if you can't do it, don't."

She sat back on her heels and looked at him sullenly, disliking his ugly tone. "I didn't wanna do this in the first place, Dean," she reminded in a pinched voice—he'd forced her into this, basically.

He glanced up at her tersely and she could already tell he was about to be parental. "I know, but you've been acting super weird the past few days and I'm tired of it." Oh well good for you. Alex stood up and crossed her arms, petulant at his attitude. She was already emotionally ragged from worrying and debating herself on Cas, so Dean's lecturing tone made her feel even more threadbare. "You gotta get it together," he told her, standing up and tossing the brush down on the table with a loud clack, seeing her sullen expression but not caring for a second. "Do something, quit feeling sorry for yourself." He began to funnel the ash into a shell silently.

"I'm not feeling sorry for myself," Alex muttered bitterly.

She got an oh please look from her brother and a sarcastic comment. "Nice try, but I've known you your whole life, remember? Think I know when you're throwing a pity party."

Ugh. Alex was annoyed and upset and she plopped back into the seat near him, determined to show him she was fine and functioning and not feeling sorry for herself. She began to slam around things on the table with a vengeance and for a couple seconds, Dean ignored her in aggravation and just let her do her thing. Then he stopped what he was doing and sighed tiredly, setting his tools down and sitting back in his chair. She could feel him looking at her but she ignored him pointedly. Then Dean reached out and gently stopped her by taking hold of her wrist. Whipping her head sideways to look at him accusingly in a silent let go of me, Alex glared. But the look on his face stopped her. He had switched tracks—he seemed very knowing and concerned. "Something going on with you and Cas?"

Alex swallowed, shocked and dismayed alike. Was she really that obvious? She suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable with that single question. Dean could be really shortsighted sometimes. He could be a total asshole. But when he was kind, when he was caring, when he asked her that question with no motivation except to see if she was all right… it softened her right away and swept away her immature anger. Bullet shells forgotten, Alex was quietly upset as she answered Dean's question while looking down. Talking about it out loud was worse than she thought it would be. "I… dunno. He's… not quite himself. I think it's the stress of the war but… I dunno."

Dean nodded as he listened with a measured, shrewd expression on her face. He was surprisingly considerate as he patted her shoulder a couple times then squeezed for effect. "Well, he's got a whole lotta pressure on just two shoulders. It'd be weird if he was rainbows and popsicles. He'll be fine."

Not entirely sure if Cas would be fine, Alex nodded tensely and looked down at the table in front of her then rubbed at the sooty residue still on the back of her hand distractedly. "Hope so." She was quiet a minute longer, glancing at Dean hesitantly. "I've… been calling him and he won't come." What's that mean? She just wanted answers and even though she knew Dean had no way of actually knowing what was going on with Cas, she needed him to tell her it was gonna be okay. Dean had always been the one to tell her everything was gonna be okay. And she needed that now more than ever.

Dean was slightly dubious. "Must be busy," he said thoughtfully, then became lightly joking for her benefit. "Better be busy. 'Cause no one ignores my baby sister unless they want a kick in the ass courtesy of me." He made a cheesy sound effect and karate chopped the air once with cartoonish flair. What he'd been trying to do worked—Alex's anxious exterior cracked and gave way to a little grin. He was such a dork at heart. And he always did that—managed to make her smile even when she didn't want to. When her anxiety softened with that smile, Dean smiled a little too, commiserating with her. He sobered slightly after a couple beats then spoke to her intently and confidently, in a way that made her believe him for sure this time. "But for real. Watch him show up and apologize for two whole years about screening your calls. You know how he is. He wouldn't ignore you, Al. Not without a damn good reason. Even I know that. Okay?" He patted her on the shoulder again then turned back to filling the shells. "Tell you one thing, this ash crap better work, dammit," he muttered.

He was right. He wouldn't ignore her. Not Cas. There was going to be an explanation like there always was. Cas would come through and prove her doubts wrong and she'd feel crummy for mistrusting in the first place. Right? But… what if? Every little fear she'd always had—that Cas would eventually tire of her, that she'd do something to make him fall out of love with her, that the situation she was in was too good to be true—it all hounded her and didn't let her stay comforted for long at all. Depressed all over again not even ten seconds after Dean had made her feel a little better, Alex listlessly watched her brother filling the last shell.

Two heavy footfalls began to clomp down the staircase and Alex turned slightly to see Sam and Bobby coming down. Sam glanced at her briefly before letting his eyes dodge away. When he spoke, he addressed Dean. "Hey. How's it going?"

Dean let the ash funnel down into the last shell from the paper and he answered as he concentrated. "Five shells. That's how it's going." His disgruntlement was clear from the tone of voice he used.

Sam drew in a breath and tried to look on the bright side. He sounded discouraged too, though. "Well, you know, it's a hell of a lot more than what we had a couple days ago."

Dean wiped off his hands and turned around. "Maybe."

Bobby looked at Dean expectantly, crossing his arms. "…Meaning?"

"Meaning space-case over here had herself a little mishap, and, uh, well, here, look." Dean took a pinch of ash from the bottom of the bowl and rubbed it onto his exposed forearm.

Sam's eyes widened in sudden alarm. "Whoa—!" When nothing happened, his expression fell and he looked vastly confused.

"I mean this stuff is supposed to burn the bejeezus out of Eve," Dean complained insolently, "doesn't even give us a sunburn."

There was a short silence. "Lore says it works," Bobby pointed out. But he sounded doubtful, too.

"Yeah and that's always so reliable," Dean muttered.

As Dean got up and walked across the room, Sam tried to be optimistic. "Well, you know what? Maybe it's like, uh—maybe it's like iron or silver. You know? Hurts them, not us."

Dean was wiping off his forearm with a rag. "Maybe, but a fat lot of good it does us til we find the bitch."

Bobby gave a weary exhale of air. "I'm looking. Been looking. Trail's gone cold. I'm thinking… maybe it's time someone made a call." He paused then looked at Alex pointedly, who still sat at the work table in deep and distracted thought.

She hesitated, slowly coming out of another fog. Make a call? Oh. To Cas. Dumbly, she looked at her uncle. "What, me?"

Bobby was a touch amused. "Well he sure as hell ain't gonna come running with bells on if I dial out." Alex felt like withering. Well, he isn't gonna come if I call, either, apparently. At the subtle shift on her expression, Bobby's eyes narrowed slightly and he looked at her closely. "Somethin' the matter?"

This was why she had been avoiding these men for the most part the past few days. Those studious, caring frowns and Sam's weird, guarded expression… Alex wet her lips and tried to be nonplussed. She stood up and became businesslike. "Look, I'd call Cas, of course I would, but he's really busy up there right now and I just don't think he'd—" she stopped, shocked and staring at the space behind Dean, Sam, and Bobby with a stunned expression. She finished her sentence in a soft, hollow voice. "…show up."

The boys turned to see what she was staring at. Cas stood there stiffly with a pinched, serious expression on his face. He met Alex's startled gaze for a brief second or two then looked at Sam, glanced at Bobby, then Dean. "Hello everyone." He was acting like his appearance was expected, like nothing was wrong, but he avoided Alex's eye line and skipped pleasantries and didn't even greet her specifically. "Have you made any progress in locating Eve?"

Sam's shoulders slumped and Dean gave a soft, frustrated growl as Bobby gave a cynical chuckle. "Well we were gonna ask you about that."

"We need your help finding her, Cas," Sam said.

Cas was unreadable, attempting to appear calm and indifferent but the way he wouldn't look Alex in the eye was pretty telling. But why? Why won't you look at me? Cas answered Sam, ignoring Alex's pleading gaze. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I'm not much help. Eve is hidden from me. She's hidden from all angels. I've tried to find her to no avail."

Dean was aggravated and made no attempt to hide it. "Awesome," he said in a rough voice that indicated it was anything but. He wet his lips and looked at Cas closely, approached the angel by a step or two. "But listen, while I got you here, your little soul-touching self too good for my little sister now or what?"

Oh my god, Dean. Alex put a hand on her face, embarrassed at his timing. Cas appeared unsure of what Dean's question meant. That and a little shocked. "Pardon?"

Dean's tone was low and demanding. "Says you won't answer her calls."

Cas's eyes slid guiltily to Alex and he looked down quickly. "Oh. Um." His sandpapery voice, dark as night, grumbled out an excuse. "I apologize. I would have come if I could but I couldn't until now."

Staring at him hard, Dean narrowed his eyes further. "Sure about that, Cas?"

Abruptly bristling at the interrogation, Cas gave Dean a pointed, bitchy look. "Yes, I'm sure, now can we please change the subject matter?"

"Touchy," Sam noted darkly. There was a slight note of hostility there that drew Alex's attention and she looked at her twin questioningly. She knew Sam wasn't thrilled with Cas for the soul touch, but really? Why so quietly angry? Sam's mouth working oddly and a faintly bitter expression rested on his face as he stared at Cas like he wanted to hit him. Alex was utterly flabbergasted. What is up with all the men in my life right now?

"Okay, so we basically got jack squat on finding this soccer mom from hell," Dean muttered, apparently deciding to let Cas off the hook for now.

Cas was grim and a little confused as he repeated what Dean had said. "Yes, uh, 'jack squat.'"

There was a short silence in which everyone wracked their brains for some kind of solution. "Hey, wait—what if we find an inside man?" Sam said slowly. "Something with claws… and sympathy?"

Dean balked. "What, like a friendly monster?" His tone implied that was an outlandish idea.

"Yeah, I mean, I can think of a couple possibilities," Sam said.

Dean opened his mouth to protest but Alex held up a finger, shook her head. Her frustration made her tone short and slightly cynical. "No, wait a minute, wait a minute. I've got something much better and safer than a reformed monster… if that's even a real thing."

"Okay, what?" Dean asked intently.

Alex shrugged mildly. She was watching Cas, who was grave and unreadable and standing too far away. "Well. Jamie used to do locating spells a lot when we were on hunts."

That suggestion earned quite the look from her twin. "A witch," Sam surmised incredulously. "You wanna on-purpose work with a witch." He looked at Dean for support, but Dean wasn't saying anything. In fact, Dean looked like he was in agreement.

"She's my friend, she's good at what she does, and she's trustworthy," Alex said, her tone lackluster. She didn't have the energy to conjure up an indignant attitude. She just knew it was an idea worth pursuing and said as much. "It's worth a shot. You got any other ideas?"

Dean nodded a few times as he thought it through more then replied. "Huh. Yeah. Okay. Why not. Worth a shot."

Sam looked at Dean, totally thunderstruck. "...You're just cool with bringing a witch on board? Who are you?"

"Desperate, that's who I am," Dean replied offhandedly, making a face at his brother's expression. He hesitated, trying to appear self-assured. "And I mean, as far as witches go, as much as it pains me to admit it, she's not really that terrible, so…" he scratched the back of his neck and cleared his throat and looked at the angel. "Cas? Can you uh… go get her?"

The angel nodded once. "Of course." He disappeared out of thin air, leaving behind a stunned Sam, an unsettled Alex, and a suspiciously fidgety Dean—Alex glanced at him briefly. He was running a hand across the top of his hair to make it look a little nicer and he was standing up taller.

Castiel reappeared two seconds after he'd disappeared and with him, held by the upper arm, was a very surprised looking Jamie Ward. She had a toothbrush in her hand and her hair was in a ponytail. She wore dark jeans, leather boots, and an olive-green spaghetti-strap top that showed off strong shoulders and a pretty figure, as well as the intricate half-sleeve on one arm and various other little tattoos scattered around without pattern or predictability. It looked like she'd just gotten dressed and had been doing a bathroom routine. She stared at them with wide, surprised eyes. "Wha—t… the hell… is going on?"

Dean cracked a stupid grin at her. "Morning." He looked at the toothbrush in her hand and spoke to her on familiar, teasing terms. "Late night?"

Jamie was disconcerted but managed to remain poised after taking in a deep breath and assessing the situation. First, she gave Dean a prim look, then turned her attention to Cas. "You know, it's kinda rude to just yank someone from one place to another without a word." She smacked her toothbrush into his hand.

"My apologies," Cas said gravely, looking at the toothbrush studiously. He looked to Alex. "…What am I supposed to do with this?"

Despite everything, his simple question to warmed her heart a little. Cas: the warrior and all-powerful angel, not sure what to do with a toothbrush. She went to him however uncertainly. "Here." She reached out to take it for him. Their hands brushed and their eyes met and Alex asked him all the questions she had with her gaze. He made no reply, just looked away after the brief eye contact. "Sorry, J," Alex apologized to her friend with a thin smile.

Jamie was reserving judgment, but Alex's presence did seem to give her a little ease. "If you wanted to hang out you could have just called," she half-joked to her friend, then acknowledged the two men she knew least: "Bobby. Sam." Sam was taking a seat on the stairs and when Jamie said his name he acknowledged her with a pinched little excuse for a smile. Jamie looked to Dean and Alex for answers and crossed her arms. She wasn't hostile, but she wasn't overly friendly either. "Okay, the suspense is killing me," she deadpanned. "What's going on? Why the angel-napping?"

"Yeah, uh, sorry about that James," Dean said, and gave a self-conscious chuckle as he glanced over at Cas. "We're still working on our manners." Beside Cas, Alex gave her brother a rude look. Jamie was waiting for Dean to explain for real—his little joke hadn't gotten a laugh. He cleared his throat and got serious. "We were kinda hoping you could help us with something. We, uh, we got some bullets that are gonna ice that Eve bitch. Problem is, we don't know where she is." Understanding came across Jamie's features as Dean grinned and winced simultaneously, a hopeful but almost simpering expression. Alex couldn't help but notice how nice he was being to her—polite even. "Think you can find her for us?"

The blonde looked at Cas with a curious frown. "Your angel friend can't help?"

"No." Cas shook his head shallowly. "She's warded against angels."

Jamie seemed to be a little surprised at that, then deeply thoughtful. Alex glanced at Sam, who was staring over at Cas with a hard look on his face. Sam felt her eyes and cut his eyes over at hers and his expression changed but remained unreadable. He looked down at his hands, which were clasped tight as he leaned over his knees.

"So whatcha think?" Dean was asking Jamie. "Wanna give it a shot?"

She contemplated him with a strange, doubtful expression for a minute, then visibly decided to throw her caution out the window. "Ah. What the hell," she said, giving in with weary resignation accompanied by a trolling grin. "I mean, I wasn't doing anything today anyway." Her expression dropped into something more studious. "But I'll need something Eve's touched. Or some part of her. You got that?"

"Uh…" Dean looked at Sam, who shrugged, then Alex, who shrugged too. Then it came to Dean, who snapped his fingers in mild excitement. "That worm thing. That work?"

Jamie pulled a frown. "You kept that thing?"

Dean shrugged and put his hands up briefly with upturned palms, accepting her question as a compliment. "Nice to meet you. Dean Winchester, paranoid bastard."

"Fucking weirdo's more accurate," she corrected teasingly.

Dean joked back readily. "I get that a lot."

His reply got him a chuckle and grin from Jamie as she shook her head. "Yeah I bet you do."

Sam cleared his throat loudly and pointedly from where he sat on the stairs. He gave Dean a particularly pushy look—quit flirting, he was obviously thinking. Jamie saw the look too and got the message. Her tone became businesslike. "All right. The other things I'll need are a map of the US, crushed amber, feather of a crow, the tooth of a tiger… and some whiskey. Think you can swing all that?"

"…Is whiskey part of the spell?" Sam asked skeptically.

Jamie didn't miss a beat. "Nope."

Sam scoffed through a half smile that was probably more for the sake of being polite than anything else. "Right."

"I got some amber and the map, not the other stuff though," Bobby said.

"I can find the other required items," Cas said gruffly.

"And I got the hunter's helper," Dean said. He made to go upstairs and get her the requested liquor. He nudged at Sam with a foot. "Move your ass, Sammy." Grumbling, Sam got up and went upstairs too.

"This your place?" Jamie asked Bobby. She looked around curiously at the ramshackle collection of tools, weapons, and oddities littering the basement.

"It is," he confirmed. "And if you think this is a mess, you oughta see the salvage yard."

As Jamie and Bobby exchanged nothing-conversation, Alex pulled Cas aside slightly, taking the opportunity to talk to him. She let her voice be hushed and furtive. "Is everything okay? I've been calling you and calling you."

Cas looked at her regretfully and his bright blue eyes were guilty to look into hers. "I know. I'm sorry. Everything's fine. Just… I was unable to answer." Alex opened her mouth up to ask him why he'd said what he did in the attic but he spoke before she could and stood straighter, appearing nervous and flighty. "I'll locate the other elements the witch needs," he said, backing away. "I'll return shortly." He disappeared immediately, shocking Alex. She stared at the space he'd just been in. It was starting to feel like he was avoiding being alone with her.

"Yeah, me too," Jamie said, chuckling easily at Bobby. "What about you, Alex?"

No idea what was being asked and no care in the world to find out either, Alex muttered a reply. "Yeah, it's great." Bobby and Jamie frowned slightly at her nonsensical reply, but she didn't notice.

Dean came back down with whiskey and then he found the Khan worm—he'd put it in a plastic baggie and stuck it into the bottom of a box somewhere under lock and key. Bobby brought down spell supplies (bowls, candles, chalk). Sam cleared off a table for the map to be spread out on. Alex paced. Jamie and Dean took shots while Sam silently judged them. Then Alex demanded some too and drank a gulp straight out of the bottle.

When Cas reappeared, he brought the things Jamie had asked for and she began working on getting ready to do the spell. As she did, Cas stood with Dean. Not Alex. Even Bobby seemed to think it was strange and he gave Alex a couple questioning looks. Alex tried not to over analyze it. She tried not to notice the distance or Cas not looking at her but it was all she could think about.

She stared at Jamie unseeingly, not watching what happened. When a normal person did magic, they had to invoke the spell by chanting and using fire. For Jamie, that was optional—her mind was the magic. She took the ingredients in her hand as she stood over the spread map. She closed her hand into a fist and softly murmured a command. "Usque ad pulverem."

Jamie opened her hand back up and the ingredients had become a fine crushed powder. She blew the dust across the map and her eyes flared a brilliant unnatural blue as she cast the spell. The map began to catch fire on the table and in a second, all of it burned away except a small portion. Jamie grimaced slightly and shut her eyes briefly, exhaling heavily. "You okay?" Dean asked, a worry there that inspired questioning looks from Bobby and Sam. The oldest Winchester explained in a slightly huffy and defensive mutter. "Magic messes her up."

Jamie looked like she'd rather not discuss her well-being and was maybe even slightly embarrassed by Dean's concern. "I'm fine, calm down." She picked up and read the little piece of map that remained. She squinted at the little piece of paper. "Looks like she's somewhere in Grants Pass Oregon."

"You sure?" Sam asked.

He got a nonplussed glance. "The spell is good. Doesn't get more specific than a twenty mile radius, but I mean if this is that same 'mother of all' who's been behind half the crazy crap we've all been hunting this past year, then I mean… we get there, we should find a neon sign pointing us in her direction."

"Sounds good to me," Bobby said, nodding approval. "You kids up for a field trip? See if these bullets work?"

Dean looked at the angel in the room with a hopeful, solicitous expression. "Whatcha say, Cas? Care to beam us up?"

He took a couple seconds to answer then nodded yes. "Certainly. Eve must be eliminated."

Dean was studying Cas closely, noticing the angel's weird behavior all over again. But he said nothing about his visible skepticism and instead looked at the twins. "Sam, Alex, go get the bags out of the trunk and make sure all the stuff's in 'em, bring 'em here. Bobby, you got your gear?"

"I'll go get it."

Sam, Alex, and Bobby went up the stairs to do what Dean said, leaving Cas, Dean, and Jamie in the basement.

Dean glanced at Cas—he'd deal with him in a minute. For now, he had his sights set on Jamie. He cleared his throat and approached her, feeling a little awkward. She was pouring herself some more whiskey into a shot glass. By every appearance she was right at home, but he wasn't sure. He hadn't spoken with her since the bar in Illinois when they'd gone separate ways a few weeks ago. "We, uh, we good?" he asked her, attempting to disguise his apprehensive state.

Jamie looked at him questioningly, slight curiosity resting in her light blue eyes. She set down the whiskey bottle delicately and let her silence prompt him to clarify his meaning.

Dean lowered his voice slightly, trying to be discreet. "When you left, back at the bar… I… I was kidding about that. You know, with what I said."

Her eyebrows moved in together slightly in a pleasantly confused frown. "You're still on that?" Jamie shifted her weight, smiling awkwardly as she raised the whiskey shot to her lips. She gave him a look across the top of the glass that said she was surprised, and possibly pleased, that he was still thinking about that. See, the thing was… he'd kind of sort of hit on her by accident at that bar in Illinois—well, okay fine. Not by accident. She'd been cool to hang out with, and obviously he thought she was hot—and there for a second, he'd forgotten about everything she'd just gone through. The vibe between them had been pretty flirty for those two days they spent tracking down her shit, and Dean had interpreted it as sexual tension. He must have been reading the signals wrong because in a moment of mindlessness across drinks in the bar, he'd pretty bluntly asked if she wanted to get out of there with him. She'd withered, become uncomfortable and awkward, then turned him down. Dean had quickly tried to play it off like he was joking and Jamie had rallied, acting cool, but she left shortly after that happened. And Dean had been kicking himself since. He had the worst timing. Jamie hadn't said so, but Dean still felt like something really bad happened to her at the hands of Samuel Campbell. So him hitting on her like that, in hindsight, seemed extremely inconsiderate and dickish. He wished he could take it back.

But here she was taking a shot of whiskey and offering him some too. He hesitated. With some people (okay, most people), he didn't care if he offended them or whatever. But Jamie… he'd kinda changed his mind about her. And witch or not, he owed her a lot and felt a degree of personal responsibility for what had happened to her where Samuel was concerned. He'd take her word on it, but he wanted to be a hundred percent they were cool: "You're sure."

"Yeah I'm sure," she replied readily, staying playful and light. She handed him a shot in the glass she'd just used. "And you're making it awkward now." She offered a surprisingly dorky grin his way.

Her impishness was rubbing off on him—he accepted the shot and contemplated it for a second with a self-conscious little grin on his face. "Yeah, I'm good at that," he joked. It was a little embarrassing to be turned down but whatever, he'd survive. He raised the glass slightly in her direction then down the hatch went the whiskey. Afterward, their gazes met with their fading grins and it became distinctly uncomfortable—her looking at him with this quiet consideration she tried to veil, him turning that shot glass between nervous energy fingers. After the eye contact became suddenly too intense or something, the same second they both chuckled and looked away, Jamie clearing her throat and rubbing the back of her neck, Dean stalking over in a fluster to pour himself just one more shot to deal with whatever the fuck this was. Cas watched in total silence, making everything even more awkward.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean watched the witch begin to study Bobby's many tools and doodads with interest. She was a hard book to read—which is maybe why he felt drawn in. After those two days hunting down her stuff together, he had a strong going theory that a lot of her demeanor was a front. He'd caught a million glances of her pain, her burden, and her deeper feelings. A softer, kinder, gentler side than he'd expected to see. And like it or not, Dean was left wanting to know more.

Alex's voice called down the stairs. "Hey, can I get a hand up here?"

Jamie went without a second's hesitation, maybe glad for an excuse to get away from Dean's awkward ass. As she jogged up the stairs, Dean definitely snuck a sidelong look and checked her butt out. He couldn't help it. He glimpsed more tattoos on what he could see of her back and the thought came before he could shut it down: he wouldn't mind seeing all of her tattoos, and he wondered where exactly they might be. Irritated with himself, Dean pinched his expression and shook his head. Once she'd disappeared, Dean glanced in Cas's direction and saw how the angel was watching him closely with his head tilted to the side slightly. Dean to threw his hands out insolently, feeling caught. "What?"

"I was just observing how you display marked sexual attraction to the witch," Cas replied without hesitation.

Dean's face fell. "Well go observe someplace else, Cas. Geez." He turned his back on Cas and headed for the bullets. "And she's not 'the witch,' all right? She's got a name."

"Most people do," Cas answered. It was a factual response but somehow sassy coming from Cas.

Dean gathered up the Phoenix ash shells and shut the case carefully for transportation. At Cas's continued silence, Dean looked at him carefully. "You okay, man?"

Cas's eyes crimped up slightly. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Oh, gosh, I dunno—pick a number!" Dean retorted, then sighed impatiently and gave Cas a pointed, important gaze. "Look, I know you got a war up there and whatever, but if Alex calls you, don't ignore her man."

Cas's expression was hard to pinpoint. It was almost angry or defensive. "Dean, I'm doing my best."

Dean's comeback was hard and rude. "Well your best sucks."

Stung visibly, Cas was quiet and he looked down while taking a long pause. "You say very hurtful things sometimes."

His soft, wounded tone made Dean feel guilty and he huffed in aggravation and lobbed another accusation at Cas. "Well I'm not the one going around poking people's souls and making them feel like crap, am I, Cas? I mean, come on! She was in bed for days. You did that to her and didn't have to. Couldn't you have gone and stuck your hand in some criminal? A prisoner? Or I dunno, someone in a coma?!"

Cas balked, obviously thunderstruck by the suggestions. "I… we didn't think of that. Dean. Please. I… I hate that I had to hurt her like that. I despise it."

"Yeah uh huh. Great." Dean heaved a short, hard sigh. He couldn't change what happened and he doubted Cas would make the same mistake ever again. Impatient with Cas and his lack of intuition with some things, Dean was direct. "Look man. Just… it really gets to her, this you-not-answering-her thing. It really upsets her. Send a text message, a freakin' smoke signal, I dunno. Just don't leave her down here miserable. She's a real pain in the ass when she's moping around over you." That last sentence was a joke… but also the truth. It was a sibling thing, honestly, to feel so annoyed with someone you loved so much.

Cas's eyes raised up and his expression showed anguish. "Miserable?" he asked, honing in one the word Dean had used to describe Alex's state of being.

"Yeah." Dean didn't mind making Cas feel guilty. Not after seeing how weird and quiet Alex had been for the past few days. He said the word again to drive his point home. "Miserable."

Just like he wanted, Cas was made even more guilty by those words. He appeared incapable of knowing how to process it and Dean wondered if something bigger than war was happening upstairs. Footsteps overhead clustered together and then began to descend the staircase and Cas looked up with a clenched jaw. Alex was behind Bobby with a bag slung over her shoulder. She looked at Cas and Cas looked away, his every feature burdened with weight unspeakable.

Jamie was now wearing one of Alex's cargo bomber jackets. Dean was slightly disappointed he couldn't see all her tatts anymore.

Bobby waited until everyone was downstairs and then gave an approving nod. "All right, we ready for our little camping trip kids? Saddle up."

---

Grants Pass, Oregon

Near downtown on a sidewalk, six people appeared out of thin air. A pleasant town greeted them: well-kept streets, kids riding bikes in front of the fire station, church bells ringing gently in the background. It looked normal and boring and fine. As such, the six newcomers were all slightly taken aback.

"Well, I was expecting more Zombieland, less… Pleasantville." Dean looked at Jamie sidelong. "You sure she's here?"

"The spell worked," she said, but she was clearly a bit skeptical. "Eve or whoever made that worm thing is here… somewhere."

"Yeah well just because it looks quiet don't mean it is, kids," Bobby said—he scanned around in high suspicion, like he expected one of the kids riding by on a bike to grow horns and attack.

"Well if she is here I'm glad we've got Smitey McSmiterton on our squad," Dean said, glancing at Cas meaningfully. "And Sabrina the Teenage Witch, too." He gave Jamie a stupid little smirk then he clapped his hands together, turning more serious as he looked at the town again. "All right, where do we start?"

"I'm gonna need a computer." Bobby nodded across the street and down a half block at a corner diner. "There. I bet they have the wireless."

"Wifi, Bobby," Sam corrected.

"Whatever," Bobby muttered. He began to head that way.

"I bet they have more than wifi." Beginning to follow him with everyone else, Dean cracked a grin. "Guess who has two thumbs and could go for a burger?" He pointed at himself with two thumbs and chuckled like he was begin super clever. "This guy." Sam rolled his eyes. Jamie sent Dean a half-amused, half-judgmental side eye.

Bringing up the rear, Alex took Cas by the hand and stopped him, hanging back a little as everyone else headed across the street. "Cas, can we just talk a second?" she asked furtively.

Cas was visibly cagey, glancing after everyone else with fidgety eyes. "Not yet, Alex, I—" he cut himself short and his tone became more stern as he looked at her without any discernible emotion. "The priority is finding Eve."

That struck Alex as strange. "Since when do you care about Eve?" The 'priority' was finding Eve but come on, didn't Alex's feelings matter? Weren't they a 'priority' to him? She knew Cas could tell she was upset. He had always been so attentive to her, so gentle and sweet in every way—so why was he standing in front of her while she begged him for understanding like he wanted to back away from? Why was he looking at her like he dreaded to speak with her? She pleaded with him to make her understand. "Cas, this is crazy, I have to talk to you, I've been driving myself nuts the past few days and I just need you to—"

After listening to what she said with an increasing look of apprehension in his eyes, Cas cut her off completely. "Alex. No." Confused and hurt and so stumped, Alex stared in hurt disbelief. Cas softened slightly at the look on her face. He breathed out softly. His shoulders slumped and his eyes pleaded with her. "Not yet. Please. Just… not yet." He held himself stiffly again and glanced around the town as his voice hardened once more. "Time is of the essence here." He broke her heart all the more when he moved to begin walking away toward the diner without her, effectively pushing her emotions to the side.

She stood there alone, staring after the man she loved, the one she called her husband, the one she would never think would treat her this way. Her chest hurt from rejection and the fear of the end of everything, because the way he was acting… almost made her think he wasn't in love with her anymore. Every step he took from her was murdering her heart and she swallowed a vicious lump down. "Did I do something?" she asked, and every impossible hurt she felt was audible in her stricken tone.

Her words stopped him in his steps and gave him a long pause. Cas turned very slowly to look back at her and the expression on his face killed her inside. "You've done nothing." His three word reply was soft, tender, but laced with so much despair.

Alex went to him slowly, appealing to him. "Cas, please, I—"

"Hey!" Dean called. Across the street he and Jamie were waiting on them. Bobby and Sam were almost at the diner. "You slowpokes comin'?"

Cas motioned for Alex to go ahead of himself and his eyes wouldn't meet hers. "They're waiting for us." And she was waiting for some damn answers, but she realized that for whatever reason, Cas maybe couldn't talk about it in front of the others. That was what she hoped, anyway. Alex and Cas walked across the street together but Cas didn't look at her, didn't hold her hand, and didn't even walk very close to her.

My god, what is going on? Did he not want me to see his life? Did the soul touch upset him? That's when he started acting so strange… or maybe he didn't like what he felt from me. Alex swallowed another painful lump. That had to be it. Something about that soul touch had upset Cas. Alex remained stony and silent and slightly sullen as they entered the diner and were seated at a six-person booth. He shouldn't keep her in the dark like this… he shouldn't treat her like her feelings and worries and fears weren't 'priority.' She stewed over it internally, growing more and more angry and upset as she did.

Bobby, Dean, and Sam sat on one side of the booth and Cas and Alex sat on the other. Jamie ducked out to a nearby store to snatch up a newspaper while everyone else ordered food. Well, not everyone. Alex had no appetite and Cas, of course, didn't eat.

"You should eat something, shouldn't you?" he asked when the boys plates were set down.

"Not hungry." She purposefully didn't look at him sidelong. Bobby was using Sam's iPad and didn't really notice, but both of the brothers heard Alex's sharp tone and glanced up in wary curiosity—Sam over a predictable salad, Dean over an even more predictable burger and fries. There was an uncomfortable silence. Alex's face was a mask and Cas appeared to be continually deeply disturbed over something.

"All right," Bobby said, not paying attention to the conflict at hand. "I finally got the police database, no thanks to this thing." He waved the tablet up for emphasis. "I asked for a computer."

"It is a computer," Sam said through a mouthful of lettuce.

Ever the sass master, Bobby gave him a look. "No, a computer has buttons."

"That has buttons," Dean said, popping a fry into his mouth. "I see at least two."

Bobby huffed. "Smartass."

"Anything on the database?" Sam asked, craning his neck a little and trying to see past Dean's head to Bobby's screen.

The older hunter shook his head. "Nickel and dime stuff, nothing weird." There was something about a meth lab on the screen. "Looks like a dead end."

Clicking footsteps and the rustling of newspapers sounded as Jamie reappeared and slid in beside Alex. She joined into the conversation easily without missing a beat as she smacked several local newspapers down onto the table. "Must be laying low. Hiding. Papers are a bust… nothing's happening here."

Dean frowned studiously as he chewed a huge bite of burger. "Can you narrow her location down any more than you did?"

Jamie shrugged mildly and pressed her mouth into a thin line. "If I could have, I would have."

"Great." Dean gave an irritated little eye roll in general at their situation. Then he quickly gave an indignant, "hey!" when Jamie snatched a fry off his plate and popped it into her mouth. "Get your own," he grumbled as she enjoyed his reaction and munched the fry with a twinkle in her eyes.

Cas looked around, turning a little in the booth. "I'll search the town," he said gravely. "Give me a moment."

Dean nodded and kept working on his burger as Sam speared several pieces of lettuce and tomato on the end of his fork. Alex looked at Cas oddly when he didn't disappear—he was just sitting there, staring into space blankly like he was waiting for something to happen. "Uh—Cas, you're still here," she said.

He was slightly confused, frowning as he looked down. "Yeah… I'm still here."

Dean prompted him to try again through a smacking mouthful of burger. "Okay, well you don't have to wait on us." Cas cleared his throat, shut his eyes, and strained. Nothing happened and he went nowhere. Dean watched him, unimpressed. "Well now it just looks like he's pooping."

Cas opened his eyes again and he was very confused and a little distressed. "Something's wrong."

His tone worried Alex. Dean's demeanor took a nosedive. "What, are you stuck?"

Cas was looking around in a slight daze. "I'm blocked." He seemed just as surprised by it as the rest of them. "I'm… powerless."

"What? How?" That made Alex nervous as crap. Who was powerful enough to pull one over like that on Cas?

"You're joking." Dean said. He sounded pretty displeased.

Cas shook his head slightly and he was staring hard at the table, trying to understand it himself. "Something in this town, is, uh, it's affecting me," he said. "I assume it's Eve."

Dean balked. "So wait, Mom's making you limp?"

He got a warning look from his sister. "Dean."

Cas, too, gave Dean something of a rueful look before he answered slowly and seriously. "Figuratively, yes." He sat up a little straighter and glanced at Alex. "Physically, I'm perfectly capable of—"

Dean held up a hand fast, making a face as he did. "Whoa whoa whoa. TMI, Cas. Come on. We've talked about this, man."

"You did start it," Jamie put in demurely. Her reasonable reminder got her a bitchy little wry smile from Dean.

"What about you, Enchantra?" he challenged. "Still got your voodoo?"

Jamie set her eyes on his plate, put an elbow on the table, pointed at the fries, then one of them danced up into the air and into her waiting grasp. As Dean went wan, she popped it into her mouth. "Looks like," she answered through a mouthful and a maddening little smirk.

"I mean I could have ordered you some if I knew you were gonna steal them all," Dean complained, then gave an aggravated sigh and turned his attention back to the angel. "So then why are your batteries dead, Cas? How's Eve doing that to a friggin' angel?"

Cas shook his head again. "I don't know, but she is."

Dean, ever the tactful one, threw a hand out at Cas for cynical emphasis. "Well that's great, because without your power, you're basically just a baby in a trench coat."

Cas was visibly hurt by that. Loyal to a fault, Alex threatened her brother in a low, fed up tone. She meant every word: "Dean, if you don't stop, I am going to hit you." In fact, hitting someone would really feel great right now.

He gave her a smugly sarcastic little smile. "How you gonna hit me? You're stuck between babyman and Bewitched."

The corner of the witch's mouth pulled into a troublemaker's smile and she flicked her index finger out at Dean—an ice cube flew out of his glass of water and smacked him in the face, surprising him and making him sputter and sit back in surprise. Grinning at his confounded expression, Jamie looked at Alex and held her hand out for a high five. Alex slapped her hand down onto Jamie's then gave her brother a wry smile that said see?

Dean was to indignant and touchy and maybe a little embarrassed, too. "Hope that was worth it," he muttered at Jamie, who no doubt was suffering a headache or wave of fatigue at the double use of magic.

"Oh, it was," she assured him, earning an eye roll from Dean.

Bobby glanced up at them from over the iPad. "If you kids wanna schedule your playdate for later, I got something here, maybe. Had to go federal go to get it. Call went out from the local office to the CDC last night."

"About what?" Sam asked, chewing his food noisily.

"A Doctor Silver called in an illness he couldn't identify," Bobby said. "Patient's a twenty-five year old African-American. Name's Ed Bright." He showed them an enlarged state-file driver's license with Ed's photo on it—he was young and had his hair picked out in an afro.

"Well that's not much to go on," Dean commented blandly. "A mystery virus? Sounds pretty weak."

Bobby shrugged. "Well it's only lead, so…"

"So beggars can't be choosers, right?" Dean finished for him. He ate another fry and then crumpled up his napkin and threw it onto his plate. "I get it. All right, let's finish up. Me and Cas'll hit up the doc's office. Sam and Bobby, you two check out the doc's house. Girls, go check on this Ed guy, see if he's on the mend. And wear face masks just in case."

"All right, let's go Alex," Jamie said, seeing no reason to stick around and wait. She stole a final fry off Dean's plate to his chagrin and amusement both.

Alex noticed that Cas made absolutely no protest to the pairings and was apparently totally fine with not being at her side as they went their separate ways. Another thing that seemed totally out of character for him. Alex and Jamie headed off by foot to Ed Bright's apartment which wasn't even a half-mile away. Cas and Dean set off by foot for a few blocks over where the doctor's office was. And with every step of distance Alex put between herself and Cas she felt worse and worse.

What is happening? Why is he being like this?

---

Dean and Cas walked in stride down the sidewalk away from the diner. The doctor's office was just around the corner. With his hands in his jacket pockets and his gaze straight ahead, Dean was pretty focused. He wanted one less evil creature off the face of planet earth, especially this mommy monster. Apparently Cas wanted her gone, too. Enough to take a break from his attic war and whatever else. Dean glanced at him sidelong. The angel was stone-faced and unreadable, giving off some majorly weird vibes. "You sure you're okay, Cas?" Dean asked. At Cas's stern sidelong glance, Dean was up front. "Actin' pretty weird."

Cas squinted at the place in front of himself before answering. His face was pinched into a frown. "The pressures of the war are gargantuan," he said in a flat voice. He was silent for a few seconds, then when he spoke again he sounded a lot more emotional. A lot more worried and anguished. "I'm… finding functioning increasingly difficult." It sounded like a confession Cas really didn't want to make and his voice softened. "You can't imagine the pressure, Dean."

They rounded a corner and Dean glanced at his friend again. Cas sounded stressed out as hell. Dean knew what that was like. But he didn't know how to help Cas out. War was war and war sucked and Cas was just in over his head. Poor guy probably hadn't known how tough it'd be. Dean tried a joke to lighten the mood. "They make heavenly valium? Sounds like you could use some." At that moment, he saw a woman locking up the little office they were heading to and he grabbed Cas by the arm, suddenly realizing they needed to be quick. "Come on, hurry it up, wingless. They're closing up shop."

The woman looked like the office receptionist. She was just pulling the key out of the door when they got to her. "Excuse me. Hi, uh, is Doctor Silver in today?" Dean jerked a thumb back at Cas and said the first thing that popped into his mind. "My friend is, uh, very sick."

Cas took that as a cue to make something up. However, what he came up with was seriously not cool. "I have a, uh, painful burning sensation."

…Say what? Dean tried to hold his facial expression but couldn't stop himself from slowly looking at Cas sidelong. You have got to be kidding me. The receptionist was unruffled by Cas's complaint—she must have heard crazy disease stories all the time. "Oh, well, the doctor's out. Sorry."

"Do you happen to know here he is?" Dean asked, refocusing.

She shook her head. "He hasn't called in. Not sure where he is." She glanced at Cas, then Dean again, then Cas once more, obviously jumping to a conclusion. "You… might want to find yourself some ointment." She smiled pleasantly and walked past them and away.

Great. She thought they were a couple. Dean could tell and it pissed him off. Yeah right. As soon as she was out of earshot, Dean leaned in close to Cas to hiss, "Painful burning sensation, Cas? You better have been talking out of your ass just now." Last thing he needed was an angel with an STD banging his sister.

At the comment 'talking out of your ass' Cas's face registered confusion. "I wasn't talking out of my…" he trailed off and got sullen, seeming to realize it was a figure of speech and not literal. "Never mind."

Dean frowned deeply at the doctor's office where the CLOSED sign hung in the window. He was back to focusing on the mission. "What kind of doctor calls the CDC and then goes AWOL the very next day?" he asked, starting to believe that maybe this was a lead. "Let's have a look, shall we?"

He began to lead the way around to the back of the office where they would break in to investigate.

---

Over on the other side of town, Jamie and Alex walked down a neighborhood sidewalk silently and watchfully. Everything was picturesque and quaint. Nothing seemed off. But something definitely was. Jamie could feel it in the air.

"They always stick you on the crap end of the deal?" she asked conversationally, because Alex had been really quiet since they'd parted ways from the guys at the diner.

Alex glanced her way darkly. "Basically." She was tense all over and looked like she was on her way to life in prison from the look on her face.

"Well that's bullshit," Jamie commiserated lightly. At Alex's lack of reaction and continued display of obvious distress, Jamie finally asked what she'd been wondering the entire time: "You okay? Seems like something's bothering you."

Alex's jaw clenched and she smiled caustically—she looked like she was grimacing, honestly. "I'm just tired," she said curtly, obviously trying to sidestep Jamie's concern. "It's no big deal."

"Uh huh." Jamie wasn't so sure about that. Normally she wouldn't pry—she never felt like anything was her business to involve herself in—but Alex really needed to get something off her chest. It was obvious. And Jamie was pretty sure she knew the problem, anyway. "I could sense some tension between you and tie-guy," she ventured, then cut her eyes sidelong. "And not the sexy kind."

Alex's nostrils flared slightly and she seemed irritated that Jamie had noticed that. She didn't reply for a couple seconds. "I'm just a little mad at him right now."

"Why's that?" Jamie knew next to nothing about this Cas guy except he was an angel and apparently he and Alex were a big-time thing—Dean had complained about them a couple times to her.

Alex shrugged at Jamie's question. "He's being weird," she said lowly, guarded but also flippant as she paid attention to where she was walking. "Not telling me something."

Jamie leapt to the first logical conclusion she knew she would come to. "You think he's stepping out on you?"

That idea seemed to startle Alex, like she hadn't even considered that. Her gait stuttered and she frowned, looking at Jamie with a shocked expression. Then her face screwed up into an expression that suggested the idea was preposterous. "No—no. He would never do that." And then the slightest doubt crept into her voice. "I don't think." She seemed to chide herself internally and became more forceful. "No. He definitely wouldn't."

Jamie gave her friend a sad little smile. She had felt that way once too. So in love that she'd remained blind to the million signs she should have seen. She had put trust in a guy who had played her like a fiddle. In the end she'd paid the ultimate price for her foolishness, too—because of Jake she'd lost her soul, become a half-defective witch, and been cursed to head for a brutal, unstoppable death that no one knew about. All because of a love that hadn't been real at all. "You have good instincts, Alex," Jamie counseled honestly, giving away nothing about her morose thoughts. "If it feels like something's wrong to you… find out what."

Alex was somber and anxious. "Trust me, I want to." She cleared her throat and sniffed loudly, attempting to appear casual. For a second they kept walking silently, side by side. Then Alex glanced at Jamie curiously. "So. Dean okay to you on that little road trip of yours?"

It was Jamie's turn to get slightly defensive and nervous. "Yeah." She made a face at Alex's sudden little knowing expression. "What?"

"You like him, huh?"

Jamie attempted not to bristle at the call out. She scoffed. "Oh please. I mean no offense, but he's kind of insufferable," she replied, then admitted this next part without being able to stop herself: "Cute, but insufferable."

Alex chuckled. "So you do like him," she said, earning an exasperated huff.

"I'm not interested," Jamie insisted, getting flustered at the thought of Alex's intriguing, green-eyed brother. "And anyway, I like to keep things casual these days," she said, maybe trying too hard to explain herself.

"That's what he likes too," Alex said offhandedly, shrugging. "So why not?"

Jamie resisted immediately. "Nah."

It wasn't that she didn't find him attractive. Because she did, and it irked her. Dean felt too familiar, despite only interacting with him these few times as an adult. Honestly, she liked him too much. And that fucking irked her too—because he was everything she couldn't stand: egotistical, macho, hotshot... and way too good looking. But he was also things she hadn't predicted: dorky, thoughtful, intelligent... and surprisingly kind and intuitive sometimes, too. There were all these glimpses of another side she was curious to know more about. A gentle side, a tender side. A vulnerable side. And Jamie shook her head at herself with exasperation at her silly thoughts.

She'd been the naive and moony little girl who dreamed of one man forever, a happy marriage, a bunch of kids, the white picket fence… but she'd ended up with a heart that was too afraid to love and a life that was ticking toward its end. After thirty-some years of heartrending loss after loss, Jamie Ward knew pain and didn't want to get close enough to anyone else to ever feel it again. And more than that, she didn't want to hurt anyone out of a selfish desire for companionship. She just wanted to be left alone and not take risks with her feelings anymore. And anyway: The Hellhounds would come for her. She was a bomb set to explode, she'd only leave pain in her wake when she died. So she couldn't selfishly involve herself with anyone in any kind of capacity. Too risky. But it was lonely. And it had been for a long time. So yeah, Dean and his loaded glances and little smiles and solid build were tempting. But the answer was no. Because no matter what Jamie might have wanted in the most secret places of her heart... she had sat herself down after her asshole brother died and decided the rest of her days would be spent alone. Saving people and making the world a little safer, because that was the only thing left that gave her purpose and peace. Everything else eventually just tore her to shreds. She wasn't allowed to be happy. The proof was her entire life.

Dark, vague memories of Samuel Campbell surfaced again, making Jamie hurt for herself all over again. The things she'd endured and never asked for. Not for the first time, the witch reflected that monsters came in all shapes, sizes, and species.

"You okay, J?" Alex asked quietly, observing the pensive look on her gone-silent friend's face.

Stowing her shit expertly, Jamie sent a rueful smile sidelong. "Are any of us?" She meant it to be sarcastic, but it sounded soft and sad instead.

"No, like really," Alex insisted gently. "A lot happened to you recently."

The concern didn't go overlooked, and Jamie appreciated it more than she let on. Not for the first time, she hated herself for not knowing who Glen was until it was far too late. "Guess that makes two of us," she commented in pained reflection, then dug deep for a disarming little cynical grin so that the mood didn't go too depressive. "Trust me… I am all kinds of fucked up. And have been, basically my entire life. I just gave up a long time ago on ever being fine. I think that's the trick." She shrugged, half serious, half joking. "Just accepting how fucking horrible life is. Don't hope for anything better and you can't be disappointed."

Alex made a slight face. "Well that's uplifting."

Jamie however had stopped walking and was staring at the little house ahead, grabbing a hand onto Alex's arm. "Hey—isn't that Ed Sheridan?"

Sure enough, a very sick Ed Sheridan was stumbling into the nearby house up the stairs and puking his guts out viciously as he went.

Alex made a slightly repulsed sound then did a double take and pointed at one of the windows. "There he is again." Another Ed Sheridan was panting and glassy-eyed against the window, leaned into it for support as he coughed and hacked violently.

The women looked at each other with deep frowns. This job just got all kinds of interesting.

---

Sam and Dean got to Ed's house at the same time in their respective borrowed rides. They parked across the street one behind the other and got out. Bobby and Cas followed suit.

"So we've got a missing doctor and an oozy patient, huh?" Dean asked his brother. He'd spoken with Sam over the phone and apparently Doctor Silver wasn't at home, either. And his entire family had disappeared, too.

"Yeah," Sam confirmed, glancing at the house across the street where Ed apparently lived. "Plot thickens." No kidding. Dean and Cas had found Ed Sheridan's gooey corpse out behind the doctor's office, hidden badly.

Alex and Jamie approached and from the looks on their faces, Dean could see something was up. His sister had called him a couple minutes ago and told him to move his ass over here stat and she hadn't explained why. "What was the big hurry, shortstop?" he asked as they arrived.

She ignored the nickname. "You said you found Ed's body, right?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah…"

Alex pointed to the open window. "Well… there he is. Undead. And we peeked in the windows and guess what? There's like ten Eds in there."

"Most of them are dead or about to be," Jamie added.

Everyone watched as the Ed at the window shuddered and fell over. "So what… shifters?" Sam asked, sounding more and more confused.

Alex shrugged. "Whatever they are, they're all sick and they all look like this Ed dude."

Sam reached for his firearm. He checked the sights and the chamber. He was the picture of focus. "All right, Dean and me are gonna go in and find out what's what. You guys stay here and watch the doors, front and back. If something comes out, shoot it."

"Yeah," Dean said, grabbing the weapons back out of the backseat of the stolen car. "Best guess—silver bullets." He shoved the bag into Cas's arms.

The angel caught the bag awkwardly and looked at it grudgingly. "I'm fairly unpracticed with firearms."

"You know who whines?" Dean asked. "Babies." Dad used to say that. Dean gave the angel a wan smile and patted him sarcastically.

Alex was baleful at the continued rudeness toward her Castiel. "You know who's a jerk? You."

Dean gave her a superior little smile. "Good one, sparky." He pulled out his gun and glanced around furtively then nodded to Sam and the brothers started across the street, urgency quickening their steps.

Alex nodded at the house tiredly. "All right Bobby, you and Jamie can watch the front, Cas and I can cover the back." She started off but Cas didn't follow and Alex stopped two steps into the street, confused at his stillness. She shrugged, silently asking are you coming or what?

He didn't move and he looked at her reluctantly. "I'll… stay with Bobby."

Inexplicable anger surged in her veins—and Alex looked at him in sheer disbelief. "Okay, you know what?" She marched over to him and grabbed him by the wrist, already pulling him along with her. "Come here, now."

Bobby and Jamie glanced at each other. "Yikes," Jamie commented under her breath.

"Yeah…" Bobby watched them carefully, like a worried father might watch a daughter. "Trouble in paradise."

Alex pulled Cas with her in total silence to the side of the house where the back door was visible and they weren't in earshot of anyone else. Her pulse was racing sickeningly. "Okay, Cas. Are you trying to avoid me?" she demanded in a low, hard voice. She was almost shaking at that point from the adrenaline that her distress was giving her.

He frowned as if confused by her question. "Of course not."

Alex felt slapped in the face. "Don't insult my intelligence!" she exclaimed, incensed all over again. "You've been avoiding me the last few times I've seen you… acting weird as hell and asking if you think we're a mistake…?" Her voice caught on that word and gave away her deeply afraid state of mind. She lowered her tone and tried to calm herself down. "I'm freaking out, can you just tell me what's going on with you?"

Cas looked at her with those impossibly sad eyes and his front fell for just a moment. "I wish…" he looked down and shook his head. His voice lowered to an almost whisper. "I wish things were different."

"What are you talking about?" Alex asked. Her alarm was tripling at his tone—her nerves were fried, her mind was full of doubts and suspicions that ate her alive. "Why were you asking me if you thought we were a mistake? Why wouldn't you kiss me? Why won't you look at me anymore?" He hadn't been looking at her then, either, but his eyes slowly raised to hers as if he could barely do so. Alex thought back to Jamie's question earlier and she felt like there was no air left in the universe. She couldn't ask this because she didn't want it to be the case, but what if? "Is… are you trying to tell me something? Is there s-someone else?"

His frown fell in favor of a completely shocked expression. "What?" he asked, seeming totally blindsided by her question. And then, quickly, he became hurt. "Alex, no. How can you even ask me that?"

Was he serious? "Well what am I supposed to think?"

Her question made his expression all the more pained. "Oh Alex." He looked as if he could cry and he hung his head, seeming to loathe himself and grieve his situation all at once. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." For what? She was stricken, waiting for some kind of explanation. But none came. Only more vague, miserable statements from him. "Please. Forgive me. I'm not… I'm not doing well right now. The things I've done, the mistakes I've made…"

Although they were close to each other, Alex felt worlds apart from him. "Cas, you're freaking me out," she choked in a whisper.

He heard the threat of tears in her voice and his eyes lifted to look into hers. Empathy filled his expression and his hand came to touch the side of her face, an unexpected action that she'd needed so badly to feel—his skin against hers made her let out a shuddering, emotionally charged breath. His eyes carried a heartbreak she didn't understand. "There has never been nor will there ever be anyone else for me but you," he told her quietly. Her heart clenched in hope.

"Then why would you ask if we were a mistake, Cas?" she asked, needing to know. "Why? Was it the soul touch? Did… did you see something you didn't like about me or something?"

His eyebrows worked slightly in confusion and dismay. "Of course not," he said, and his eyes flickered back and forth between hers. His thumb gently caressed the skin of her cheek and for just a brief moment, he was loving and there and himself. The softest little bittersweet smile tugged his mouth upwards. "You are perfect to me. In every way." The softness that had come across him faded abruptly and his jaw clenched. His hand, which had been so tender against her face, began to slip away. "I am the one who is imperfect. Detestable."

His wrist pulled out of her grip. Detestable? That word, the way he said it… Alex swallowed a feeling of dread she didn't understand. "What have you done, Cas?" she asked quietly. His eyes snapped up to hers in fearfulness, like he thought she knew something he didn't want her to know. The vulnerability in his eyes strangely gave her hope—maybe he was going to open up to her and tell her. She prompted him with increasing vulnerability of her own. "What's got you so torn up? Just tell me, I can help you."

For the briefest second, he considered it. And then he shook his head and stepped back from her, refusing her offers to help and hurting her all over again. "No." He looked away from her. "No one can help me."

He sounded so final, so done, so resigned. Alex stared at him in stunned disbelief. He nodded toward the front of the house. "Sam and Dean are coming out." He put a hand behind her back to guide her forward and his touch infuriated her. He was refusing her every solicitation for answers and attempting to cut her off and not tell her what was happening. As such, she jerked away from his hand angrily and gave him a hard look. Don't patronize me! As angry as she was, she was a hundred times more hurt than anything else. He should trust her with whatever was wrong. He should open up to her—she'd given him everything. And he was giving her nothing.

Alex walked blindly back toward the front of the house, so upset she could have kicked or thrown something.

"I don't get it," Dean was saying as he jogged down the front stairs of the house. Sam was already standing at ground level and Bobby and Jamie had joined him. "What, a bunch of regular Joes wake up shifters? What the hell?"

"Shifters usually run in families," Bobby said, glancing at the vomit crusting the side of the stairs just as Dean noticed it and jumped away. "This looks like an infection. Nobody touched nothing?"

Dean made a face. "I am bathing in Purell tonight."

Alex and Cas arrived to the little gathering at the bottom of the stairs and Alex pointedly stood beside Dean and gave Cas a baleful, wounded stare as Sam shared what they'd discovered. "So, all of the Eds in there are dead. But we talked to one before he kicked the bucket. He said they met a girl and that's when they all got sick."

"It's gotta be Eve," Dean said.

"Makes sense," Bobby said thoughtfully, nodding. "Mommy monster—make more."

"But did she intend to make them so… diseased?" Cas asked, frowning deeply. He glanced at Alex, who was unreadable.

"He's got a good point," Dean said. "I mean if she's gonna make a shifter army, why make one that's sick gooey and dying?"

"Add that to the pile of Crap That Don't Make Sense," Bobby said with a weary shrug.

"Maybe she's experimenting," Jamie put in.

"Not a bad theory," Dean said, mulling it all over with a disturbed frown.

Sam let out a heavy sigh through his nose then glanced around for input. "So should we hit the bar?"

His innocent question got him a sudden, unexpected reaction from his sister. "The bar Sam?" Alex snapped. "You want a drink now?" She looked like he had suggested she cut her own feet off and Sam wasn't the only one taken aback at her sudden outburst—everyone was looking at her oddly. Except Cas, who was looking at her in greatly ashamed reluctance.

"That's where Ed met Eve," Sam explained flatly, giving her a semi-challenging look.

Her face fell. "Oh." She cleared her throat and scratched at the side of her neck absently, trying to not look embarrassed.

"Bar it is," Bobby said, but not before exchanging a quick look with Dean.

As the group made their way back to the cars, Dean fell into stride with his sister and he nudged her shoulder. "S'wrong with you?" he asked softly, concern coloring his voice.

She was hard and cold but clearly deeply upset. "Nothing."

---

Most bars were a little less… massacre-y. After breaking their way in through a locked door, the hunters and the angel found a very unexpected sight. Eve had definitely been there, that was for sure. Dead, bloody bodies littered the area and the place was trashed like there had been a huge fight. Had these people all killed each other?

The hunters drifted in slowly, gaping at the bloodbath. "Well, the Sheriff's a moot, but still," Bobby breathed. "You'd think he'd notice this many missing folks."

Dean crouched down beside a body and using a cloth off the bar, he lifted the lip of the dead girl. In her mouth, vampire's fangs. "We got a vamp over here!" he called.

"You sure about that?" Jamie asked, crouching and lifting the body's arm. She'd spotted something else—a spike protruded from the wrist. She looked at Dean significantly and he looked at the fangs then the spike with growing astonishment.

"What the hell?" Dean asked, gaping. "What has teeth and a spike?"

"That sounds like a bad joke," Bobby quipped. He stood close to them and looked down at the corpse that made no sense.

"I wish," Dean said softly, standing up. "You seeing this? What, so Eve's making hybrids now?"

"Looks like," Bobby answered grimly. Behind him, Cas was examining a dead body laid across the pool table and Sam was toeing a face-down corpse over. Alex had sullenly gone behind the bar and was… ah geez. Raiding the cash register with an attitude.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Dean asked, a little surprised at her.

"Mind your business," Alex muttered, not even looking up at him, just counting through bills.

Dean made a slightly indignant face, glanced at Cas, and then returned his gaze to Bobby. He'd talk to his cranky sister later. "Yeah, okay, but what's Eve want with the—" he paused, not sure what these hybrid monster-mashes were even called. "What do you call these?"

Bobby shrugged. "Well, congrats. You discovered it. You get to name it." He walked over a few steps to examine another body.

Dean thought for a second, then grinned. "Jefferson Starships." He was grinning wider, imagining himself funny. "Because they're horrible—and hard to kill."

He looked around, waiting for everyone to recognize his genius. Sam was unimpressed, Alex was sullen behind the bar, Bobby didn't get it, and Cas of course didn't either. Jamie, however, gave him a little you're cute smile and nod. "I see what you did there."

"Thank you," Dean exclaimed, glad someone got his genius.

Sam, over it, was short. "Looks like the whole bar has been turned into these—"

"Jefferson Starships," Dean supplied.

"Fine." Sam looked around at the dead bodies with a terse expression. "But why are all the... Starships dead?"

"I can't say," Bobby said, "but looks like they all burned up."

"What do you mean, burned up?" Dean asked, looking at the bodies for burn marks.

"Like a high fever, like the flu," Bobby said.

Dean got a look on his face like oh. He glanced a Jamie who was crouched to look at a slumped young man's body at the end of the bar. "What the hell's going on here?" Dean asked, addressing no one in particular. "Does every monster in this town have the motaba virus?"

The front doors of the bar suddenly slammed open and the town sheriff entered with his gun raised high—two deputies were with him. "Hands where I can see 'em!" he shouted, startling everyone.

Crouched behind the bar and fiddling half-heartedly with the safe, Alex froze—hidden, no one saw her there. She heard Cas speak up. "Now, this is not what it looks like," his voice said somewhere nearby.

"Look, we're the Feds," Bobby put in.

"Yeah? Well Feds are not allowed to do this," said the sheriff. "Cuff 'em! Turn around." Alex could hear cuffs clicking closed and Sam huffing and Bobby muttering.

"Officer, we can explain—" Dean's voice said.

"Explain it in lockup, pal!"

"Easy, easy!" Dean complained.

Alex crouched there, frozen in place and silent, not sure if she wanted to get into a standoff with the cops or not—she couldn't just let them take her guys! Her hand hovered over where her pistol was. And then Alex heard a soft little sound to her left. She looked—Jamie had somehow avoided being seen and had ducked down and was about seven feet down the bar, hidden as well. She held a finger up against her lips and shook her head no.

The sheriff and his officers were already escorting the hunters and the angel out and Dean was saying loudly about how the FBI wasn't going to be happy about this treatment of agents.

When the bar doors shut and they were gone, the girls cautiously stood. They were alone in the massacre once more. "Great. Now we have to bust them out of lockup," Alex muttered, her bad attitude making her surly.

Jamie shook her head no, way more on edge than Alex was. "Those cops weren't cops—we gotta go now."

Alex faltered, thrown off. "…What?"

"Their eyes did funny stuff on the surveillance feed!" Jamie nodded at the tiny black and white TV that she'd found by accident when she hid. Alex looked at it dumbly as her old hunting partner grabbed her by an arm for emphasis, already pulling her along. "We need machetes and now. Those boys are in more trouble than they realize."

"Oh my god," Alex breathed, wishing she had been paying better attention. Every selfish petulant thought and feeling went out the window and all she could think of was the four people in the world she loved the most were at the hands of some very bad guys.

---

"Listen, if we can make a phone call, we can straighten this all out," Sam was saying urgently as they were brought in to the police station. They were walking through the office section toward the holding cells, hands cuffed behind their backs—Bobby, Cas, Dean, and Sam.

"Straighten out a massacre?" the sheriff asked sarcastically. "I'd like to see you try. And anyway, you boys aren't too long for this world." Sam glimpsed the security footage briefly as they walked past... and he saw that the sheriff's eyes were glowing on the video feed.

"What's that supposed t—" Dean started.

Before Dean could finish, Sam whirled and head-butted the sheriff, stunning him. "J-Jefferson Starships!" he shouted, warning the others as he reeled from the blow and wobbled backwards on his feet.

Immediately, Dean football tackled the Starship escorting himself by throwing a shoulder into his middle and ramming him into the nearby wall. The sheriff was recovering and snarling at Sam, who was off balance from the cuffs keeping his hands behind his back. Still, Sam managed to kick the sheriff hard in the face and keep him back a little longer. Bobby was thrown hard to the ground by one of the deputy Starships who then shoved and held a startled Cas against the wall. The Starship opened his mouth with a savage roar, preparing to either kill or turn the handcuffed angel.

"Hey!"

The Starship turned, confused… and then was cut down dead by a thwack of machete. Cas's trench coat was spattered with a shower of blood and he stared in slight shock at Alex, who had just cut off the Starship's head.

Even as Alex saved Cas's life, Dean crashed hard into a desk behind them and tumbled to the ground groaning, still cuffed. The Starship who had just thrown Dean down snarled with an inhuman sound and bared his bloody fangs—Bobby barreled into him with a yell, knocking the Starship down to the ground and saving Dean—and as the Starship tumbled down and regained his footing, he rose to his feet for the very last time. Jamie was waiting and the head went sailing off. She didn't pause—the body hit the floor as she was rushing to assist Sam.

Sam was yelling protest as the sheriff grabbed him and shoved him against a wall then opened wide, preparing to turn him into a Starship, too. Alex, who was slightly closer than Jamie, grabbed a solid metal paperweight off the desk and used it to bash the sheriff in the head full-force repeatedly and stun him—she couldn't cut his head off without hurting Sam, they were too close. Once the sheriff was stunned, Alex grabbed him and yanked him away from her brother without a plan of action. She unleashed a clumsy, hard right-hook across the sheriff's face. A normal man might have been knocked out from the speed she used, but the Starship was superhuman in strength. He stumbled backwards and turned a few degrees from the force of the hit—and got smacked in the face with sickening velocity by Jamie's machete. She used the flat side instead of the sharp end to stun him so bad that he fell down to the ground where he would stay.

Jamie stomped her foot down onto his throat, holding him there on the ground at the end of her machete. He stared up at her with bared teeth and an animalistic, wild expression. "My goodness, Sheriff, what pointy teeth you have," she crooned softly at her captive.

Breathing hard on the floor and walking on his knees, Dean was trying to stand up without the use of his arms. "We'll need silver cha—"

Even as he said that, Alex was tossing silver chains from her weapon bag to Jamie's waiting hand. She winked at Dean with a confident smirk. "Come on, Winchester, like I haven't roped myself a monster or two in my time before." She let her foot come off the sheriff's throat and when he immediately scrambled to get up, Jamie's voice was hard loud. "Immobilis." The sheriff smacked down to the floor, flat as a pancake. "Good boy," Jamie said sarcastically. A small trickle of blood ran out of her nose but she either didn't feel it or didn't care. She crouched over him and yanked his keys off his belt and tossed them to Alex so that she could un-cuff the guys. Jamie set to work chaining the Starship's wrists.

With the threats neutralized, Sam slumped against the wall where he'd fallen into a sit, Dean sagged against the desk where he was on his knees, Bobby grumbled about his knee where he laid on the floor. And then out of nowhere came a female Starship dressed as a deputy—she rushed Alex so fast and hard that Alex was knocked onto her back to the floor, completely blindsided by the attack. The keys went flying, her machete hit the ground with a clatter, and it all happened too fast to even see—Alex held the Starship at bay just barely—a spike shot out from the deputy's wrist and Alex was as good as dead—and then head of the Starship sailed off when a vicious slicing chop made the kill.

Cas stood over a shocked Alex, breathing heavily from adrenaline and anxiety. In his superhuman strength that remained, he had pulled his cuffs apart at the middle and grabbed the machete Alex dropped, moving faster than Dean or Sam or Bobby had managed. He shoved the Starship's body off of her and pulled her to stand in his arms, worry making his face tight. "Are you—" he began. He was cut off when Alex clamped her arms around him so tightly that his lungs were emptied of air. The two of them embraced tightly, wordlessly, genuinely, with eyes that screwed shut and hands that clenched hard into each other's clothing. Alex had her face buried into his chest and he crushed her close. Each of them was very reminded of how life shouldn't be taken for granted.

---

A few moments later the surviving Starship was chained to a chair in the police department's interrogation room. Jamie stood beside him, forcefully holding a cheap little thermometer into his mouth—she had his head shoved back so that he had no choice but to let her hold it there. It gave a series of little beeps and she took it out of his mouth and glanced at the readout. Bobby, who stood directly in front of the Starship, waited with a silver knife in hand. "Ninety-eight degrees," Jamie reported darkly.

No fever. Bobby narrowed his eyes at the Starship. "Well, I'll say this, you're the healthiest specimen I've seen all day."

The Starship sheriff sneered. "I take my vitamins."

Outside the room through the observation mirror, Sam, Dean, and Alex watched closely. Cas stood in the open doorway and watched the interrogation. His coat was still spattered with bright red blood.

"So you wanna tell us what's going on here?" Bobby asked lowly, beginning to circle the Starship. "You boys are, uh, Eve's cleaning crew, is that it?" he asked, trying to figure the mystery out. "You come around to clean up the bodies? Make sure the word doesn't get out? That why you snatched up the doctor?"

The sheriff gave a soft chuckle. "You're so wasting your time," he said breezily, smirking at Bobby. "You stupid head of cattle."

A sudden noise from further back in the station made the Winchesters frown and look back. "More Starships," Dean said, already moving toward where the noise had sounded from. Cas looked at Sam questioningly even as Jamie poked her head out of the interrogation room.

"Stay here," Sam said intently, looking at Cas and Jamie in specific. He turned to follow Dean.

"Yeah right," Jamie retorted, already grabbing her machete and hurrying after them.

Alex made to go, too, but Cas's hand shot out to take her arm. "Don't." His single-word command startled her and made her look at him in surprise—Alex quickly looked in the direction her brothers and Jamie had disappeared to and almost went anyway, but Cas's hand was still around her wrist. His control grab rendered her momentarily too stunned to react.

"Now listen, I got ways to make you squeal, little monster man," Bobby was saying to the Starship. "You sure you wanna test me?" The only reply was a low, wicked chuckle. Bobby sighed. "All right, your choice."

The Starship began to scream protest as the silver knife dug into flesh. Cas let go even as Alex pulled her wrist away. She began to pace out of anxiety. She was listening hard for any sign that her brothers needed her. She glanced at Cas repeatedly. He seemed to be sinking further and further into a shut-down state that she barely recognized. She felt pulled in two different directions and neither one felt right. Her life felt like a waking nightmare and the stress was enough to make her want to break down. Every single new thing that happened involving Cas made Alex more and more confused and filled with sick dread. A few moments passed.

After a terrible scream, shrill laughter came out of the Starship without warning. "You really think that's gonna make me talk?" he asked, apparently finding Bobby's attempts at torture hilarious.

Ever the patient one, Bobby was undeterred. "Something will." He slashed the Starship across the face—a loud howl pierced the air. "And 'sides, I haven't gotten to use a knife in awhile. I might cut your face up all day."

"Do what you want, old man," the Starship spat. "I'm not telling you a damn thing!"

Dean's voice boomed out right before he re-entered. "Got a couple of hungry human boys here," he announced loudly. Alex turned to look—her oldest brother came back into the office area and behind him were two smaller figures—a preteen and a middle-schooler. Sam and Jamie were bringing up the rear. Dean motioned the kids forward, toward the corner of the office area with the coffee maker. There weren't any dead bodies over there. "C'mon guys."

"Who are they?" Alex asked Jamie quietly, who hung back a little bit.

"Doctor Silver's kids," she replied. There was a note of sadness in her voice. "Found them locked up and gagged back there… parents are dead, the Starships were gonna eat these kids next apparently."

Alex looked at the younger boy—he had huge sad eyes and was clearly very upset. "Jesus." They were just children.

Jamie nodded once, grim. "Yeah." She glanced back at the interrogation room. "How's that going?"

"It's not," Alex muttered. Cas approached slowly, frowning studiously at Sam and Dean, who were speaking with the boys quietly about twenty feet off.

"So your Uncle's in Merritt?" Dean could be heard asking. "What's that, like fifteen miles outside of town?" The older boy nodded. He had his arm around his younger brother. "Okay," Dean said. "We'll get you there."

Cas's face darkened and he approached Dean and Sam quickly. "Dean, can I have a word?" he asked quietly, then retreated about ten feet. Dean got up and followed Cas, who spoke to him in a hushed, hard voice. Alex and Jamie could hear the conversation because it took place pretty close to them. "We need to find Eve, now. I'm afraid she's going to begin infecting more towns."

Dean nodded, distracted. "Yeah, sure, but first me and Sam just gotta make a milk run."

There was a short, startled pause. "We need your help here," Cas said, seeming surprised at Dean.

The hunter made a flippant face. "Hold your water. We'll be back in a few." He turned to walk off.

"Dean, Dean!" Cas said softly. He stared in what looked like shocked disbelief at his friend who turned and waited impatiently. "Millions of lives are at stake here, not just two—stay focused."

"Are you kidding?" Dean asked, indignant.

Cas seemed to think that was ridiculous. "No, are you? There's a greater purpose here."

Jamie cleared her throat and attempted to diffuse the situation. "Dean, I can take the kids if you wanna stay here…"

Dean glanced at her then fixed Cas with a hard glare. "No, no, 'cause you know what, I-I'm getting a little sick and tired of the greater purposes, okay?" He frowned even deeper. "Have a little heart, Cas!"

"I can't afford that, Dean!" Cas retorted emphatically. "The fate of the entire world is in the balance!"

"Cas, you serious?" Sam asked rudely. He'd stood up and joined his brother. "They're kids and they're scared—don't be such an asshole."

The rudeness shocked Alex. Cas looked at Sam in faint, confused surprise then let his face become hard. "Call me what you like, Sam, but the fact remains that our mission here is to find and destroy Eve, not play caretaker for children." It almost seemed like Cas was being argumentative just to prove a point now.

Sam scoffed through a cold, judgmental smile at the comment. "Wow. You are really a piece of work, aren't you Cas?"

"Sam, my point is that they can wait," Cas said. He sounded slightly desperate to have someone agree with him. "The urgent matter here is finding and stopping Eve."

"Real hero, aren't you Cas?" Sam asked insolently, as if he had some kind of gripe against the angel. "The 'urgent matter' here is these kids feeling safe."

Dean had already decided they were going long before the argument even started. "We'll catch up," he said, giving Cas a rude glance and ending the argument on his terms. "Okay guys, let's go." Doctor Silver's boys complied, getting up out of their chairs. Dean, Sam, and Jamie all headed toward them.

Sam turned and looked over his shoulder at his silent sister who hadn't moved. "Alex, come on," he prompted in a hard voice.

"No." Cas replied immediately, startling everyone including Alex. "She's staying here with me."

Dean's eyebrows shot high, Jamie blinked twice and looked at Alex, Sam approached Cas by a step or two as his face darkened. "Oh really."

Cas didn't move. "Yes. Really."

Sam went a couple steps closer, his narrowing eyes daring Cas to piss him off. From the way he was standing and looming over the angel, it almost looked like he was threatening Cas. "Alex?" Sam gave her an extremely pushy look, demanding she do what he wanted her to do.

Put on the spot, Alex gaped at the arguing men—she didn't even know what the hell was happening. Cas again spoke for her, and his voice darkened as he almost growled at Sam. "I said, she's staying here."

Dean was getting mad now too, and marched forward to join Sam. "Hey, you don't get to say that for her," he said in a hard voice then looked at Alex, waiting for her to move toward him. When she didn't, he threw his hands out. "You coming or not?"

Sam, who was closer, grabbed her by the shoulder to pull her with him. The argument was making her mad, but the touch made her furious. "Don't touch me! Any of you!" She yanked herself out of Sam's grip. The sudden action and her words seemed to really take Sam aback—abruptly his stony expression fell into a dismayed expression. Alex backed up and folded her arms and spoke in a tough voice. "I'm staying here."

Dean let out a huff and his face worked with impatient anger but he threw a hand into the air, giving up. "I don't have time for this right now." He clenched his jaw and spoke to the people who were going with him. Sam, Jamie, and the boys. "Let's go."

When the door slammed behind them, Cas looked at his wife regretfully. Abruptly, his hard expression was replaced with an apologetic one. "Alex, I only wanted t—"

She shoved him away. "Don't talk to me!" She stormed away from him and down a dark hallway.

Bobby hung back in the doorway to the interrogation room. Cas met his terse gaze and then walked off into the annex next door to the office space. A few moments later Bobby wandered after Cas—he couldn't find Alex. He'd never been good at hide and seek with that girl… she wanted to hide, she knew how to stay hidden. Cas stood and stared out into the fallen night with a stony expression.

"They won't take long," Bobby said, trying to get the guy to ease up a little.

Cas acknowledged him with a slight turn of the head. "You don't know that," he replied flatly. "They may find more wayward orphans along the way."

Bobby rolled his eyes at the attitude. "Oh now don't get cute."

"Right." Cas turned around, and he appeared miserable. "Pardon me for highlighting their crippling and dangerous empathetic response with 'sarcasm.'" The angel heaved a disgusted sigh and shook his head. Bobby wondered if he was really upset about what he was acting upset about. Either way, Cas was stuck on it, apparently. "It was a bad idea, letting them go."

"Come on. You don't 'let' the Winchesters do squat. They do what they gotta. You know that. Anyway, we want Eve, we need coordinates. So we can stand here bellyaching or we can go poke that pig 'til he squeals. Thoughts?"

Cas just walked off. Bobby rolled his eyes and looked around for the bathroom. He had blood all over his hands and needed a sink before he tried again with the Starship.

When Cas re-entered the office space, a voice to his left succeeded in startling him. "'Wayward orphans'?" Alex was leaned back-first against the wall with folded arms—she'd been listening to his entire conversation with Bobby and was straightening and standing up. "Do you even hear yourself?" she demanded, coming to stand right in front of him. "What is wrong with you, Cas?"

He looked down and was stoic. "Nothing."

"Nothing?" she repeated in heated incredulity. "Seriously, Cas? Stop lying to me!" she was shouting at that point—every stored up anger blasting out of her like a hurricane. "I know something's wrong! Is it Raphael? Is someone holding something over your head?" When he didn't answer, her face twisted in anger all over again. "And by the way you don't own me and you don't get to boss me around like you just did back there! This is not okay with me anymore, Cas! I've tried to be understanding, I've tried to be patient, but this isn't fair and it isn't right and you are not acting like yourself!" She heaved several impassioned breaths and Cas's eyes raised to look into hers unreadably. He said nothing and Alex waited pointedly for him to speak. When he said nothing, she lost her temper again. "Fine. Don't tell me. Don't give me a fucking clue what's going on! Leave me in the dark!" She shoved him and he let her, she pushed past him and hit a file folder off the desk she stormed by. Paper fluttered everywhere and she disappeared in an upset huff into the annex.

Cas watched her go and sank into a chair there in the dark and put his head in his hands. His stiff outer demeanor faded. He thought he might cry from the grief and confusion and out-of-control terror he felt. Nothing made sense and the people he loved didn't understand what was happening to him. Nor did he. Why did no one else see? That the war had to be won? That he could not fail? That he had to keep her safe? Nothing was working for him. Everything was falling apart. In Heaven his forces were scattered and weak. On earth, he had done the unthinkable.

He was torturing himself with the knowledge of taking Alex's memories. He couldn't face her or look at her or tolerate himself. She wanted answers and the answers he had would just turn her away from him. But look, he thought. She is already turning away from me. Perhaps it's inevitable. Perhaps I deserve this.

The sound of footsteps approached and Cas looked up, wanting it to be Alex—he resolved to talk to her, to tell her some part of the truth, to comfort her, to let her comfort him if she would. But it was Bobby. "Round two," the hunter muttered, brandishing the silver knife as he headed to the interrogation room.

Cas watched him and stood up slowly, making himself stop feeling. He shouldn't be pitying himself. He should be working toward getting Eve's location. With Eve, he and Crowley would be able to open Purgatory and then use all those souls for greater power. Power that could win the war once and for all. And Heaven help him, he had to have this end. He was so bone-weary. So used up and worn thin and made exhausted by the killing, the endless problems, the war.

It would never end. Sometimes he truly believed that. And what did he have to show for it? A crumbling relationship with his beloved. Her brothers angry at him and misunderstanding his every motivation. Impossible loneliness and despair. So many mistakes. And possibly the end of all things if he didn't achieve victory. The pressure was insurmountable. The odds were worse and worse. Cas was being stomped down into a corner he couldn't get out of. And the worst part was how he carried the responsibility all by himself.

"You know, she can see you right now," Cas could hear the Starship saying to Bobby. "And you're just making her mad."

"Then tell the bitch to come get me," Bobby retorted.

Decisively, Castiel approached the interrogation room with one thing on his mind. Finishing this. The war, everything. Find Eve, open Purgatory, defeat Raphael. He repeated this in his mind over and over. Bobby looked at Cas curiously when Cas entered the small interrogation room. "I need five minutes alone with him."

"What for?" Bobby asked. He then leaned closer. "Cas, your batteries are dead."

Cas felt as if he were entirely dead inside, truth be told. "Five minutes," he said lowly. Even speaking took every effort and concentration.

Bobby shrugged. "All right, fine." He exited the room. Cas shut the door behind Bobby. But before the door was shut, Bobby caught the following exchange:

"Where's your weapon, trench coat?"

"I am the weapon."

---

Bobby leaned against one of the office desks with his hands in his jeans pockets. Alex lurked at the doorway into the annex, drawn in from wherever she'd been hiding by the screams of the Starship. "You okay, grasshopper?" Bobby asked her, trying to get her to stop paying so much attention to the sounds of torture.

Attention captured, Alex looked at her uncle and gave a short, honest answer. "No." Well, he'd known that much. She came and slowly sit-leaned beside him on the desk and jabbed her elbows into her knees, scrubbing her face in her hands. "Everyone's pushing me around and not telling me shit and I'm…" she let out a heavy, charged breath and her lips made exasperated horse noises. "I wanna punch something."

Bobby chuckled and jokingly offered himself as a punching bag. "Well, here I am, but can't say I'm looking forward to it."

That got him a tiny smile and the girl he'd come to think of as some kind of a daughter looked at him sidelong. She appeared too tired for her age and too harrowed for her own good, but a certain degree of gratitude rested in those hazel eyes of hers. "Thanks for never trying to force me into anything, Uncle Bobby."

"Look, those idjits do what they do 'cause they care," Bobby said, knowing she was mad at her overprotective brothers and her even more overprotective boyfriend. "Maybe they got a dumbass way of showin' it, but they just want you safe."

"Screw being safe," Alex muttered petulantly—she was pretty clearly pissed at her kin, but the attitude was a little over the top.

Bobby wouldn't listen to that nonsense and gave her a correcting look. "Hey. None'a that, now." Chastened, Alex went quiet. After a minute punctuated by the odd scream and the indistinct sound of Cas's low voice within the interrogation room, Bobby looked at Alex carefully. "Cas okay?"

Alex shrugged, trying to look like she didn't care. "Hell if I know." Her voice wobbled and her carefully hidden emotions burst to the surface. "He… won't talk to me." She shut her eyes and hung her head as she visibly fought a sudden flood of tears.

Bobby hated to see her like that and put a hand on her back, spoke to her softly. "Hey, come on now, don't break my heart." Shaking hard from trying not to sob, Alex put her face into Bobby's shoulder. He pulled her close with the arm that had already been at her back and patted comfortingly. He'd never been too good at comforting anyone, but he still tried because he really couldn't stand to see her tears. "It's not all that bad, is it?"

"It's the worst," was her broken, honest reply.

"Aw sweetheart," he said softly, wishing he knew what to say. Never was too good with words.

The door to the interrogation room opened, and when it did, Alex sat up and immediately stopped crying. Cas came out and he was wiping blood off of his hands with a rag. "Eve's at twenty-five Buckley Street," he said heavily. He sounded bland and dead inside. "You can call Sam and Dean." He saw Alex's tears and his apathetic expression wavered. She stood pointedly and left, going down the hallway that led to the cells. Cas watched her go and looked at Bobby. "Is… she all right?" he asked quietly.

Bobby peered at the angel carefully and crossed his arms. They both knew that Alex wasn't all right. Why bother asking? "Go apologize to that girl for whatever you did, Cas." There was a tone of warning in his voice. "I ain't happy when I see her cry."

Cas looked down and a muscle in his jaw clenched. "Neither am I, Bobby."

---

Cas found her at the back of the station. Through the room of holding cells, the emergency exit was propped open. Alex was sitting on the ground outside at the back of the building, against the air-conditioning unit that was out on some grass. She silently stared into space and her cheeks had tear streaks on them. But she was quiet and unreadable. Her knees were bent up and her arms each rested on a knee.

Cas stood beside her and waited for her to acknowledge him—tell him to go away, look up at him, anything. But she didn't. Just kept staring straight ahead. Finally he sat beside her gingerly. Not too close, but not too far either.

After a very long ten seconds, Alex glanced his way briefly. "So. How'd you get him to talk?" she asked. Her tone was neutral and careful.

"With methods I'm not proud of," Cas answered honestly and slowly. He looked at his hands, which had been covered in blood before he washed them with soap and water a minute ago. He could erase the evidence of the actions, but the blood had still been spilled. It struck him as being very poignant and morbid at once. "This war… has made me into someone I dislike," he confessed softly, staring ahead into the night. "The things I've had to do… the choices I've made… the blood on my hands…" he wished he had done things differently and taken a different path. "I feel as though it's all slowly killing me." That sentence got her to look at him. Her expression was pained, confused, hurt, desperate. "I… I know that you're upset with me," Cas said. The irony wasn't lost on him. "And believe me. You have every right to be."

Alex wasn't angry and fiery as she had been before. Instead, she was tired, lost, afraid. "We're supposed to be in a relationship," she said in a weak, faint voice. "We're… we're supposed to be married." She clenched her jaw and shut her eyes for a brief second. Castiel felt like his heart was cracking inside of his chest. "We're supposed to tell each other things. I just wanna know what's going on," Alex said, frustrated to no end and looking at him openly now. "I'm so goddamn worried about you that I can't sleep some nights… and you're trying to push me away!" Her eyes were filling with tears again and she looked away from him, obviously deeply angry and hurt but even more grieved than anything else. He had done that to her. "I don't understand."

Cas was so ashamed of himself. He had failed her in every way—deceiving her, tricking her, making her upset and hurt and confused. He didn't deserve her trust or love and yet he craved both so obscenely that he could explode from the intensity of it. Hopelessness made him morose and he just wanted her to know that however flawed, he loved her completely. "Alex…" he started, gently touching one of her hands with his, reaching out to her in a small way. "If… if something happens to me. If I perish, I want you to know—"

Her eyes widened and an expression horror tightened her features at the subject matter. "No. No." She was getting upset again, and fast. "Don't you even say that to me. No."

He looked at her and couldn't stop the surge of emotion that overtook him. He felt so small and incapable of saving her, and he loved her enough to do anything on earth for her at all. If only he was half the man she deserved. He just wanted her to know that he'd tried. "If I should die in this war," he said steadily, "just please know that I loved you more than I knew how to hold. Everything I did was me trying to protect you best."

Alex sat there and looked at him in great quiet fearfulness. "Cas, you're scaring me," she whispered.

She was scared. And so was he. Nothing felt controllable anymore, everything was slipping out of his grasp, including her. His voice choked on his own vocal chords and something horrible happened to him. "I'm so sorry." His eyes stung and flooded and his chest felt like it would crack in two. Grief overtook every part of him and a sound he didn't even mean to make escaped him. He realized it was a sob even as he buried his face in his hand. His shoulders quaked and his body betrayed him. Beside him, Alex was stunned and horrified and immediately moving to comfort him.

"Oh Cas." She wrapped her arms around his neck and he grabbed hold of her tightly with both hands, trying to hold onto her. He heard the shameful noises he made and grief controlled him, wouldn't let him go. Alex was holding him fast and strong, but she shook too. "Shh, it's okay, it's okay," she whispered. Her voice bore evidence of tears, too.

"No, no it's not," he replied. His voice was distorted strangely by what was happening to him. He felt her hand cradling the back of his head fiercely, he felt her kiss the side of his head long and hard and turned his face toward hers, not even thinking, just needing. His mouth found hers. Tasting her tears and his on their lips, Cas kissed her with grieved fury and a hunger borne out of desperation. Without hesitation, Alex grabbed his head in her hands and kissed him all the harder with a passion he let out a soft sound at. He cupped a hand to the back of her head to pull her closer and she let out a soft mmf into his mouth as heat leapt to life between them. Tortured by her sweetness, her warmth, her spellbinding perfection, Cas let out a softly anxious moan of ah into her open mouth. He felt a hot tear roll down his cheek and he shuddered and pulled away slightly, ashamed of himself and his emotional weakness—his body and mind were still producing tears he couldn't seem to stop. Alex pulled him closer and kept kissing him deeply—her expression was fiercely anxious and he saw how a fresh tear slid down her face even though her eyes were shut tight. He crumbled and resisted no more.

Coerced every atom in his body, Cas was pulling her close and gathering her into his arms and standing up lurchingly, shutting his eyes against the world so that all he could feel or think was her. He stumbled them back into the cellblock, blindly pulling the door to the outside closed behind them with a loud clang.

It was too dark to see once the door was closed. But they didn't need to see. Familiar with each others shapes, curves, edges, Cas and Alex somehow stumbled their way into an open cell and onto a small cot, pulling everything off of each other that would stand in the way of them being as close as they wanted to be.

Behind those iron bars they loved each other desperately and intensely, quickly, the knowledge that they could be caught urging them on to take whatever comfort and reassurance they could get from one another. Afterward, they held each other close in the dark, breathless and trembling, tangled together in recovery.

Cas traced the curves of Alex's face in the dark, resting his forehead to hers. Her elevated heartbeat pulsed through him, her soft breaths were what his Heaven would be like, her arms around him were the place he never wanted to leave. He thought of who she was, then he thought of who he was. "I don't deserve this," he whispered softly, brokenly.

"Of course you don't," Alex replied, thinking he meant the hardship of the war.

Cas didn't correct her… but he meant the love she gave him.

---

Forty Minutes Later
25 Buckley Street

The address that Cas sliced out of the Starship was the diner where they had been earlier that day. Cas, Alex, Bobby and Jamie all waited outside of it and across the street with their weapons. Sam and Dean had gone in to 'draw out' Eve about two minutes ago.

Alex and Cas exchanged a brief glance and with a certain degree of discretion, Alex reached over and took Cas's hand in hers. He squeezed gently.

She still had no answers. After the jail cell, they'd re-dressed just in time for Sam to find them. He hadn't seemed too pleased either to find them off alone in the dark together. He wasn't dumb and could put two and two together. His newfound strangely judgmental attitude toward Cas was mystifying Alex completely. He'd always been the one out of her two brothers who was more easygoing and accepting. But suddenly it almost seemed like Dean was the more accepting. What the hell, right?

One thing was for sure. Once Eve was out of the picture, Alex and Cas were going to sit down and talk. She was determined to have a heart to heart and get to the bottom of his behavior. Although, she was honestly beginning to think it was him stressing out and not being able to handle the emotional weight of it all. It seemed like maybe he was putting too much pressure on himself. Maybe, Alex thought… maybe she had misjudged everything. Cas was new at emotions, after all. Maybe his odd behavior was just him not being able to cope well.

"You see that?" Jamie suddenly asked intensely, stiffening in hawk-like focus.

Alex looked up at the diner, frowning.

"Yeah, blinds just all shut," Bobby said lowly, suspiciously. Immediately assuming the worst, Alex made to move in—but Bobby's arm smacked out to stop her. "Wait, wait. Give 'em a minute. Don't run in hot-headed."

Alex glanced at the weapon duffel Bobby had. She was itching for her shotgun. About two or three more minutes passed in which nothing happened. It felt ominous and Alex needed to lay eyes on her brothers to feel better. "I don't like this," she muttered, staring at the diner across the street with a hard gaze.

"Something feels wrong," Castiel agreed quietly. And at that very moment, they realized why. There was a soft cry of distress and they all turned around to see that Jamie had just been knocked out cold. Five Starships stood there, and one of them held a gun right on Alex.

"Drop that bag of weapons, now," the one with the gun said to Bobby. He complied immediately but with great chagrin. "Mommy wants to see ya," the Starship said, cracking a grin and winking. "Think you might be in trouble."

They were dragged into the diner, even Jamie, who was unconscious. The diner was full of people who looked normal but couldn't be. They were all silently looking at one singular figure for direction. A woman dressed in a short yellow dress and white apron. And then Alex faltered. She recognized that woman… as her mother, Mary Winchester.

Dean and Sam sat at the bar and when they saw who was being paraded in, they visibly stifled dismay. "Well, so much for your plan B," the woman said breezily, observing the newcomers with a triumphant, casual smile. Eve, Alex realized. This was Eve. "An old drunk, a stupid young girl, a powerless angel, and the little witch who could. Sounds kinda like the premise for a pretty lame sitcom, doesn't it?"

The Starship who had dragged Jamie in tossed her down like a sack of flour and Dean sat up a little straighter, indignant at the treatment. "Hey! What'd you do to her?" he demanded.

"I'm not stupid, Dean," Eve said, smiling coyly. "I'm not bringing a powerful witch in here unless she's unplugged. Angel boy over here's useless. Her… not so much." Eve approached Castiel, who was being held tightly by a Starship. "Wondering why so flaccid? I'm older than you, Castiel. I know what makes angels tick. Long as I'm around, consider yourself switched to the off position."

Eve's eyes darted over to Alex. "Now. Alex, sweetie. Help me talk some sense into your brothers."

Alex was understandably confounded. She standing in the same room with the mother she'd never really known, and it was upsetting. Dubious, Alex spoke to her brothers while staring at Eve. "…Why's she look like Mom?"

"Because she's a bitch that's why," Dean growled at Eve.

Eve sighed softly and rolled her eyes with a slow, measured air. She turned to Sam and Dean and strolled down the length of the bar to speak with them. "Look, boys. I'm tired of my children being slaughtered," she said, leaning casually against the counter as if she owned the place. "I tried being nice and waiting it out but you know what? Mommy can only stand by and watch her babies get ripped to shreds for so long." She fixed Sam and Dean with a knowing smile. "Work for me, boys. It's a good deal. Bonus, I won't kill your little entourage."

"All right, look," Dean started in growing ire. "The last few months we've been working for an evil dick. We're not about to sign up for an evil bitch. We don't work with demons. We don't work with monsters. And if that means you gotta kill us, then kill us!"

"So dramatic, Dean," Eve said, not bothered by Dean's tone. In fact, she seemed amused. "I'm surprised at you. Maybe I believe you'd let me kill you and the other two guys but… the girls too?" She was playing with Dean, teasing him, seeing how much she could goad him. "Is chivalry really dead?" She walked around the bar and looked down at Jamie's still form. "I could start with this one. Wouldn't feel a thing…"

Dean's glare intensified even as Eve touched Alex on the shoulder then brushed a hand down the hair at the side of her face in a motherly gesture. She smiled at her, studying her thoroughly. "Or I could kill this one, see how loud I can make her scream…" at the bristling reactions that the brothers and Cas gave, Eve grinned. "Ooh. So, fan favorite right here. Good to know." She patted Alex on the face patronizingly. Alex grimaced at the touch. Eve turned from her and sauntered back down the employee-side of the bar, eyes on Dean. "So maybe I don't kill you all. Maybe I turn you. And you do what I want anyway."

Dean was unmovable. "Beat me with a wire hanger, answer's still no."

Eve gave a slightly impatient sigh and put her hands on her hips. "Dean, haven't you heard that mother knows best?" she asked, then got a slightly devious smile on her face. She looked at the other Winchester brother. "Sam, do you think he might listen to me if I'm a little… more…" her appearance began to change. "This?" Her blonde hair flew back from her face and began to darken rapidly, her features morphed, and instead of Mary Winchester, Alex Winchester stood there in the yellow dress and white apron. "The teen mom model," Eve explained innocently, using Alex's appearance and voice. She looked at Sam for reaction.

Sam looked ready to kill. Dean was livid. "Okay look lady, you're really startin' to piss me off!"

Suddenly, Eve was right behind Dean. She grabbed him hard by the shoulders where he sat and put her face next to his. Sam jumped up and immediately was restrained and pulled back by Starships. "Feeling's mutual, Dean," Eve whispered in Alex's voice. Her fingers traced down his neck, pulling his collar down slightly to expose more skin. "Don't… test me."

Everyone watched with bated breath. And then Dean did the inexplicable. "Bite me." She paused. And then Eve did as invited and swooped down and savagely bit him in the neck. Dean shouted in pain, eyes screwing shut as her teeth dug in.

"No!" Sam shouted, pulling with every ounce of strength he had at the grip his captors had him in.

"Dean!" Alex screamed, struggling valiantly.

And then Eve staggered back, coughing and clutching her chest as if in great pain. Everyone faltered, unsure what was happening. Dean had a hand against the bloody bite mark on his neck and he stumbled to his feet to look at her. "Phoenix ash," he explained, managing a triumphant grin through great pain. "One shell, one ounce of whisky. Down the hatch. Little musty on the afterburn."

Eve's face showed absolute distress, and even though it was Eve, Dean obviously had a hard time watching her in Alex's form. A light seared through Eve's chest and her form warbled between Alex, Mary, and then a young brunette girl with large, striking features. She choked, retching as dark liquid ran down her face and gagged up out of her mouth. "Get close to me, get close to me!" Cas said urgently to Alex—then when Eve fell over dead, chaos erupted. The Starships all attacked, screaming and snarling and clawing.

Alex heard Cas shouting and felt him grab her, smashing her face into his chest. "Shut your eyes!" A light brighter than the sun erupted from his hand and the entire diner was engulfed in blazing celestial fury. Every monster fell over dead, and when the light faded, a car alarm was blaring outside. Alex looked around in a daze. Every Starship had burned out, blackened eyes. "Are you all right?" Cas was asking Alex.

She, however, had her sights set on Dean, who had slumped into a barstool and was holding a hand against his neck in great pain. "Dean!" she rushed to him, took hold of him. He looked like he was getting a little delirious. "Dean? Oh no…"

"I think she turned me into a Jefferson Starship," Dean wheezed, eyes half shut against the pain. "Could you clear that up, Cas?" Castiel touched his shoulder and Dean was abruptly fine. A bit disconcerted about the sudden switch from blinding pain to total fineness, Dean blinked a couple times. "Whoa. Uh, thanks." He looked down at where Jamie was in a heap on the floor and went to her, crouching over her and smacking her in the face. "Hey. Hey, wake up!"

She came to, confused and slightly cross-eyed before she shook her head and made a face then sat up with Dean's help. She looked around at the dead bodies. "What… what happened?" she asked slowly.

Dean stood and offered her a hand up. "Tell ya later. We gotta go."

Cas had been staring down at Eve's body with a strange expression. He looked up at Dean's urgent tone. "Where?"

"The kid," Dean said gravely. "The little kid. He's one of 'em."

"What? Ryan?" Jamie asked, stunned.

"Yeah," Dean said, dodging everyone's stunned expressions. "Eve's final test or some crap like that."

Cas shook his head darkly. "Unbelievable…"

"Yeah, I know Cas, you told me, all right," Dean sighed, obviously regretting a lot of choices made that day. "Let's just go."

---

What they found at the house where Dean and Sam had left the boys was another bloodbath. The uncle was dead on the floor and the boys were nowhere to be seen.

"So we kill the evil bitch and she still wins," Dean said as he stared down at the dead body. He was filled with guilt. "I mean they could've turned half the town by now." Beside him, Cas opened his mouth. Dean held a finger up, cutting him off. "Don't say it."

"Found 'em," Bobby called. Everyone went over to see that on the basement staircase, the little Starship boys were dead with bloody mouths. It was a sobering, sad sight.

"Oh no," Jamie said quietly. Two words that gave away a very tenderhearted disposition.

Sam bent down and touched a substance he noticed at the floorboard. "Sulfur," he said grimly. "Demons did this."

Standing in the back and unnoticed, Cas took in a short inhale of panicked breath. He had suspected that this would happen and he prepared to pretend to be surprised by what was about to be divulged. His stomach twisted unpleasantly and he glanced at Alex, who was about to be very surprised.

"The hell?" Dean was asking in a slightly higher voice than normal. "Why would demons give a crap about monster tweens?"

"Maybe she was telling the truth," Sam suggested, standing back up and shaking his head tensely.

"The truth about what?" Cas asked convincingly.

Dean hesitated. "She said that Crowley's still kicking."

Alex did a double-take. "What?" she demanded, thinking surely she misheard. But her brothers' grim expressions suggested otherwise. "Crowley's alive? How?"

"But I burned his bones, how cou—?" Cas stopped mid-sentence, face screwed up in confusion. "Was she certain?"

"Sounded pretty sure," Dean confirmed. "According to her, Crowley's still waterboarding her kids somewhere."

"I… don't understand," Cas said slowly. He appeared extremely vexed and even a little sick. The way Alex felt. How could this be true?

"Well he is a crafty son of a bitch," Dean suggested wearily.

"And I'm an angel," Cas said in a hard voice. "I'll look into this immediately."

Without warning he disappeared, startling everyone present. Dean was the first to react. "Cas!" No response. "Let us know what you find out!" He shook his head ruefully.

Bobby and Sam exchanged a signifiant, sour look that prompted Dean to frown. "What?" he asked, following them back into the dark living room. "What?"

"Just… how did Crowley get away?" Bobby asked. He glanced at Alex reluctantly as she trailed in after Dean. "I mean… it's not like Cas to make mistakes like that."

"Cas makes mistakes," Alex defended immediately, not liking where this was going. She looked around for agreement. "Everyone does. What, we're just gonna take this Eve bitch's word on this? Without any proof?"

"This is proof." Sam was impatient. "Who else would put out a hit on these kids, Alex?"

His tone grated her nerves to a raw nub. "Okay, if Crowley is alive and that's a big if, he tricked Cas somehow," Alex argued, trying not to lose her mind and scream at everyone. She wasn't gonna believe Crowley was alive until she saw him with her own damn eyes.

Bobby hesitated. "Unless…"

"Unless what?" Dean asked, seeming just as appalled as his sister was.

"Unless he didn't," Bobby said, grudging to even suggest it.

Alex felt shockingly betrayed, punched in the stomach. "Are you serious? You're suggesting… what, Cas is… working with Crowley? Why the hell would he do that? Are you out of your damn mind?" She got a watch it look from Bobby for that comment.

"Bobby, this is Cas we're talking about." Dean looked at Sam. "Do you believe this?" There was no answer. Dean faltered slightly. "Sam?"

Sam sighed and shook his head tiredly, ran a hand through his hair. "Look it's probably nothing, it's just... you know what? You're right. It's—it's probably nothing."

Angry with her twin, Alex didn't let it go. "No. No. Cas has done.. everything for us," she insisted. "Everything!" She was impassioned and flustered and shaken up at what was happening. They were crazy to suggest this. Crazy! "He's, he's not like other people! He's good. How can you guys even suspect him of this for one second?"

She had unwittingly set Sam off. "Cas is good?" he asked, seemingly disgusted by the thought. "Do you even believe what you're saying?"

Fed up with Sam and his passive aggressive weirdness and little snide comments, Alex decided enough was enough and she threw her hands up in adrenaline-packed insolence. "Okay Sam, just what the fuck is your problem?"

"Hey hey hey," Dean held a hand up at the growing hostility between them. "You two calm it down or you're both gonna regret it."

The twins were in a world of their own and didn't even acknowledge Dean. They drew in closer, facing each other down. "Cas isn't smart," Sam snapped vehemently. "He makes mistakes. Repeatedly. And I don't trust him!"

"What are you even talking about?!" Alex shouted, so mad she could spit. "He's saved our lives a million times and come on, everyone makes mistakes—especially you!"

That might have been a little low. Sam's face clouded over. "Yeah, let's make this about me and how screwed up I am like we always do!" he spat. "'Cause you're so perfect."

Dean shoved himself between them physically, and he was pissed. "Hey, I said stop!" he shouted. The twins glared at each other like angry bulls and Dean stayed right where he was. "Look, first things first," he said in forced patience and calm. "We are gonna find out if Crowley's alive, okay? And then you two can beat each other's heads in with bricks to your hearts' content. But right now, you two shut your mouths, you hear me? Not another damn word." He pushed Alex toward the armchair in the room. "You, sit down." He turned and poked a finger hard into Sam's chest. "And you, outside!"

The twins stared at each other in silent fury for a second longer, then Sam stormed out and Alex plopped down into the chair like she was trying to destroy it. Dean scrubbed a hand across his face and walked off a few steps, muttering. "Killin' me."

Quiet in the doorframe that led to the hallway, Jamie watched Dean. She'd watched the entire exchange from there. "They always fight like that?" she asked when he was close enough that only they could hear.

Frazzled, Dean ran a hand through his hair. "No. I mean…" he let out a long sigh. "No. Not that I've ever seen." He looked at his sister who was silent and stewing in the living room. "Something's going on with them," he muttered. "Both of them."

"What about you?" Jamie looked at Dean carefully. "You okay?"

The question seemed to surprise him then he shrugged, made a face, then scoffed it off. "Doesn't matter." He cleared his throat awkwardly and quickly changed the subject off of himself. "Look, I got a feeling things are gonna be pretty damn awesome on the car ride home." And by awesome, he meant horrible. "You, uh, you might wanna head off separate back to wherever Cas snatched you from this morning." He hated to send her off like that but… oh well. He had no other real alternative. "Sorry."

"No big deal," Jamie said, shrugging a shoulder up. "He did just strand you guys without a ride, too."

"He likes to do that," Dean complained, then leaned against the other side of the doorframe beside her. He would much rather just hang out with Jamie for awhile longer, especially after having done exactly that for a couple days last month. "Why can't we go on another road trip, huh?" he joked. "Crappy takeout, you cheating at pool…"

Jamie cracked a grin, and Dean noticed once again how she looked really irritatingly beautiful when she did that. "I won fair and square and you know it," she replied playfully.

Dean found himself smiling a little despite everything—her smile was contagious. "Sure you did," he said, then stuck his hand out for a shake, because he didn't really know how else to leave it. "Thanks for everything, James. Not bad to have around in a pinch."

She shook his hand with a good, firm shake. "Anytime, Jacket."

---

Castiel stood over the body of Eve at the diner he had just been at a few moments prior.

Now what would he do? The idea had been to take her alive. He'd handled this poorly and had been too distracted by Alex and his own personal woes to focus on capturing Eve for Crowley. And truthfully, his heart wasn't in this endeavor. He was so tired of the fighting that his stamina was dying down and his resolve was frayed. He just wanted it to be over and he was slipping, losing focus.

The outright lying was not sustainable or desirable to him at all. It had to end.

"Really, Cas?" came a smooth, dark voice. "This is getting ridiculous. How many times am I gonna have to clean up your messes?" Crowley sauntered over and looked down at Eve's dead body with distaste. "I can take the corpse but I wanted the real thing."

"How unfortunate for you," Cas muttered, sick with himself. If Alex could see him now… if any of the Winchesters could…

Crowley lifted a single eyebrow challengingly. "I don't appreciate your tone, wingsy."

"This is better than nothing else," Castiel said stiffly. "Do not call me again unless you have something of significance to discuss." With that, he ported himself away. He was too distraught to speak with the King of Hell any further. He was too distraught for anything. He ignored the battlefields and his responsibilities and instead went to a corner of Heaven, to a placid winter garden.

It was here that he would make his final and desperate plea to his father for help; it was here that he would try to justify his own actions to himself one last time.

Little did he know that he was well on his way to destroying everything he had ever fought for and loved.