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.

91. Clowning Around

Song Remains the Same

Chapter 91 / Clowning Around

"Children though can never have grown up feelings until they've been allowed to do the growing."
- Fred Rogers

---

A little worse for the wear, Sam tiredly entered the motel room. He wore his FBI dress blues, just like his brother, who he found waiting inside. Dean sat at the kitchenette table in the tiki-themed room, pulling Chinese takeout from a brown paper bag.

As Sam came in, Dean glanced his way briefly. "Hey! So, what's the low down with trauma town?" He flashed a playfully-antagonizing grin at Sam, who pulled a wan face. In response to the face, Dean chuckled and smiled wider and returned to unbagging little white containers.

Very funny, Sam thought prissily. Dean knew—knew—that Sam had issues with clowns and yet had sent him alone the past few hours to spend time at Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie—aka hell. And now he was laughing about it. Sam smacked a few of the placemats he'd taken from the joint down onto the table right in front of his brother, who was immediately befuddled at the kiddie crayon creations.

"…What the hell are these?"

"Kid therapy," Sam answered grimly, sauntering into the room and letting his tone show his skepticism. "Draw your worst nightmare, poof, Plucky fixes it." He started pulling off his suit jacket. "They hang those up on this big wall smack dab in the middle of Plucky's."

The kid's pizza-and-game chain was currently becoming central to the job the Winchester brothers were working here in Kansas. Mysterious, wacky deaths (the first by an octopus-vampire, apparently, the second by a stabbing that involved a horse and maybe a lance) had one thing in common: the people who had died so far were both parents of different, unrelated kids who'd gone to the same birthday party at Plucky's a few days prior.

"Well, can't argue with this," Dean said in an overly serious tone as he looked over the placemats Sam had set down. He tapped the top drawing. "Leprechauns are deadly." Sam snorted, pulling at his tie to loosen it. Dean was in deep thought, however briefly. "Okay, so, that kid Kelly draws a monster, and then that goes after her father?" His tone suggested he thought it was nuts, even for them. "That's what we're saying?"

"Well, here's the thing," Sam said, picking up his carton of food and a pair of chopsticks then retreating across the room to the other little table set up by the window. "Plucky's employees label those when they hang them on the wall so that you know which kid drew what. And guess which two were missing." He corrected himself as he sat down. "Well, name tag was there—but no place mat."

"Little Miss Octovamp," Dean guessed. The first death that had transpired.

"Yeah," Sam confirmed glumly. "And... Billy." The second death. "So... somehow, whatever he drew came to life and killed his dad, riding a horse." He poked at his beef lo mein. It was harder and harder to summon an appetite these days.

"Close, but no Seabiscuit, Sammy," Dean said, a knowing smile on his face. Sam frowned over at his brother questioningly. Dean was pulling a folded up piece of paper out of his suit jacket. "See, I went and had a little chat with Billy. And he drew me this."

Curious, Sam got up and went to Dean's side—his brother was unfolding the paper so Sam could see what was on it: drawn crudely, a very malevolent looking unicorn with a rainbow for a tail was impaling a person through the chest.

Sam did a bit of a double take at the violent image. "So… now unicorns are evil?" he asked incredulously.

Dean made a face. "Yeah. Obviously." He turned his attention to food, pulling a takeout container toward himself.

"Great," Sam muttered, deep in thought. "Well, now the question is, how did a unicorn come off a sketch and kill Billy's dad?" He couldn't draw any conclusions about any monsters or creatures from those clues and it was frustrating. "How's any of this happening?"

Dean shrugged. He seemed pretty tired and not as into the job as he might have been in previous times. "Dude, all I know is I'm gonna chow mein down," he said, then waited for Sam to recognize his comedic genius. When Sam said nothing, Dean looked at him expectantly. "Get it? Chow down? Chow mein down?"

"Yeah," Sam said flatly, rolling his eyes lightly. "I get it, Dean. Ha ha." He turned around and went back to where his food waited.

"Tough crowd," Dean muttered, then rubbed his chopsticks together and dug in.

A couple bites later, Sam's phone began to ring shrilly in his back pocket and he sighed in annoyance and shifted so he could fish it out. Who the hell is it now? An unknown number was displayed on the readout and he frowned, considering whether or not to answer.

"Who's that?" Dean asked through a huge mouthful of food.

Sam glanced his way. "Dunno." He bit the bullet and pushed the answer key then held the phone to his ear after letting out a weary sigh. "Hello?"

The voice he heard on the other end sent an immediate shock through him. "Hey, Sam."

He sat up straighter as he dropped his chopsticks onto the table. "…Alex?"

Dean immediately stopped eating too and turned to stare at Sam with a frozen expression. "Yeah, it's me," his sister's voice said on the other end of the line.

Immediately nervous that something was wrong, Sam tried to sound nonplussed at her very out-of-the-blue call. "Uh… hey. Wh… what's up?" he asked, even as he wracked his brain for why she might be calling him. Usually she called Dean—but more usually than that, she texted. Was this a bad sign that she was calling him?

"Ah, you know… nothing much," came the noncommittal reply. Her voice sounded different to him than it had in recent times when he'd heard it. She sounded sort of… like herself again. "Wondering where you guys are and what you're doing."

Sam's eyebrows shrugged up in surprise. So, just a casual chat…? Across the room, Dean was making a 'what's going on!?' face and throwing his hands out impatiently for an explanation. Sam waved him off and mouthed 'just wait' then spoke into the phone. "Um—well, funny story," he said in chagrin, his eyes sliding to the placemats near Dean. "One that involves Plucky Pennywhistle's."

There was a pause on the other end. "Plucky Pennywhistle's… the creepy kid place?" He could hear her, of all things, grinning. "Where you cried about clowns?"

Sam pulled an indignant face and defended himself however lamely. "I didn't cry, I was… uh… concerned."

He heard a soft little chuckle. "You sobbed like a little girl."

Sam sat back in his chair, a half-amused smile playing on his face even as a quizzical frown moved his eyebrows together. "So did you call me to make fun of my very real phobia, or…?" he trailed off, waiting for her to tell him what was going on.

Alex sounded a little more serious. "No, sorry—actually… called to say I'm back in."

Her words knocked him back a little. "…Back in?" he repeated, shocked to say the least. He looked across the room at Dean, whose expression showed that he was anxiously hanging onto every word and getting extremely hopeful but was also vastly confused.

"Yeah. I've uh… gotten it together, I guess. I mean, as much as I can or whatever and um. Well, I'm ready to get back to work." Sam said nothing—he was fighting a sick pit in his stomach. It wasn't that he wanted Alex to stay away, it was just that… Lucifer. The hallucinations. The times when Lucifer was Alex. Would having his sister around again trigger things and make the hallucinations worse? At his continued silence, Alex assumed he was reluctant for other reasons. She cleared her throat on the other end and attempted to sound apathetic. "If you guys want or uh, need me, you know."

Sam abruptly fumbled to reassure her. "Wh—yeah," he said, coming off a little too enthusiastic. "Yeah! That's, that's great. Sorry, I'm just a little distracted right now. But, yeah, Alex, that's, that's great. We, uh, we'd love to see you and, um, yeah." Dean looked like he couldn't believe it. Sam shut his eyes, trying to find words to say. His mind was whirling. "We're in Wichita if you wanna meet up with us. The Tiki Motel on Washington Street."

"Oh wow, seriously?" she asked, and he could hear the genuine surprise in her voice. "Huh. I'm not far from Wichita at all. Guess I'll see you soon. Like… couple hours soon."

Sam's eyebrows went up high—one minute he had been wondering about freakish unicorn deaths, the next he was trying to process that it was about to be three of them again instead of two. "Cool—yeah, good," he said, distracted and half-there. His eyebrows knit in together into an expression of concern. He'd get used to it. He'd figure it out. He turned his thoughts to his sister, who would never know about the hellish, twisted, demented things he saw. "Drive safe," he told her a bit stiffly.

He could picture her nodding once. "Yup. Seeya soon." There was a muffled disconnecting sound, and the call was over. Sam lowered the phone slowly, slightly dazed.

Dean was leaning toward Sam, his expression intent and puzzled and hopeful and a little upset all at once. "That was Al? She's back in?" He sounded like he couldn't quite believe it.

Sam put a hand out briefly to demonstrate how shell-shocked he felt. "That's… that's what she said."

Dean began to grill him. "Just like that? How'd she sound? What'd she say? How come she changed her mind? Why'd she call you?"

Sam sent his brother an inconvenienced frown and held up a hand in a silent request for the inquiries to stop. "Dean, enough with the twenty questions," he said, trying to figure out how he was going to deal with all of this. "She'll be here soon—then you can ask her and get the answer straight from the horse's mouth." Sam had other concerns on his mind, worries that wouldn't let him go. It was hard enough seeing Lucifer every now and again, but whenever it was Alex as Lucifer, it made him feel dirty and disgusted. It was going to be even worse to have his real sister in the room with the Lucifer version of herself climbing all over him and trying to push him to the point of insanity. Sam pressed his thumb into the scar in the palm of his hand at the mere thought. Dean looked at him with a studious frown, shrewdly noticing what Sam tried to be discreet about. Sam sent Dean a churlish look. "You gonna 'chow mein down' or what?" he asked, wishing his brother wouldn't watch him so closely.

Dean made a face. "Shut up." He was bouncing his knee up and down and didn't seem as interested in eating anymore. For a minute he just stared with a frown off into space, then he seemed to think of something and he pulled out his phone. He'd been doing that more and more—checking his phone consistently almost on a schedule, and it was un-Deanlike of him if you asked Sam. He knew why, or at least he was pretty sure.

"You heard back from her yet?" Sam asked, testing his theory.

"From who?" Dean asked, a little too loudly and grumpily.

Sam gave his brother a catty look. As if there could be anyone else. "Dean." He hated it when his brother played dumb. But apparently he had to spell it out. "From Jamie."

Dean made a face like it didn't matter one way or the other to him. "Psh. No." He tossed his phone down haphazardly and shoveled an enormous mouthful of food into his mouth in an attempt to try and appear indifferent to the subject matter. A piece of food went flying out of his mouth as he spoke and chewed at the same time. "Not yet."

Sam eyed his brother closely. He didn't buy that I-don't-care crap for one second. A little exasperated, he made a face at his brother and crossed his arms, sat back in his seat a little more. "Are you two ever gonna like—I dunno…"

"What, Sam?" Dean challenged. "Ever gonna what?"

"I mean, you like her, right?" Sam asked, making a leading gesture with his hand. "So… what's stopping you?"

There was a short silence in which Dean's unfriendly gaze seemed to suggest Sam was really inconveniencing him at the moment. "Not my type," he finally replied, right after he took in another stupidly big mouthful of food.

Not his type? "Yeah, and Dawson's Creek is Oscar material." That earned him a prissy glare. "Dude. I'm just saying."

Dean shook his head and focused on combing his chopsticks through the contents of the food container. "James and I ain't like that, Sammy," he mumbled finally, trying to close the subject.

Really? Because all they did was flirt and give each other long looks across rooms and joke around to the point of driving Sam insane—that or they fought and bickered and picked at each other like an crabby old married couple. The sexual tension between them was utterly ridiculous, the constant texting was driving Sam up the wall, and he wanted them to either piss or get off the pot. With that in mind, for Dean to say they weren't 'like that' felt like a complete and utter lie. "Why?" Sam challenged.

Dean abruptly tossed down his chopsticks and then threw his hands into the air in exasperation. "She doesn't like me, okay!?"

Sam gave his brother an extremely dubious look. "Uh… seriously?" Jamie liked Dean. A lot. It was so fucking obvious even a blind person could have seen it.

"Yes, Sam, seriously," Dean insisted, getting flustered. "It's not—she doesn't—just… just let it go, man." He frowned suddenly and looked at Sam piercingly, moving to the offensive with dizzying speed. "You sure you don't like her?"

Sam's mouth opened, shut, then opened again. "Wh—no." There was another girl stuck in Sam's mind. The one he met in Las Vegas the day before all that crazy stuff with Becky—Annaliese. As far as Jamie was concerned… "She's not my type," he said honestly. "But she is a really cool girl."

"Well finally, we agree on something," Dean said sarcastically. He looked at his phone and gave a frustrated expulsion of breath through his nose. "But for real, why hasn't she texted me back, Sam? Or called?" He sounded aggravated and worried, which made him petulant. "It's been like two days and she was on some crazy dangerous sounding hunt with 'Owen the Magnificent' who by the way I don't trust." The way he said Owen's name sounded pretty full of animosity. "Don't like this," he muttered, eyeing his phone again.

Sam shook his head, sighing tiredly. Dean had it ridiculously bad for that girl. "I don't know her as well as you and Alex do but I know she can take care of herself, Dean," he offered. "I wouldn't worry."

Dean mumbled something grumpy under his breath in reply and slunk down in his chair sullenly. They ate in mostly silence after that, lost in their own thoughts.

Not even an hour later, the brothers picked up a police scanner report that another freakish death had struck the small town of Wichita, Kansas. And this time, the murder had taken place at Plucky's.

---

Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie

Sam stared at the freakish clown face that topped the overly-colorful building. He couldn't take his eyes off of it. Police and ambulance lights washed the dark night scene in continuously changing red and blue light. If possible, that made the garish clown imagery even more freaky. Sam had never liked clowns, ever. However, since watching IT, the Stephen King miniseries that had aired in 1990, Sam had been downright petrified of clowns. He just didn't get it: How could anyone think clowns were cute or funny? The creepy leering painted-on faces and the frozen-forever grins that looked hungry for human flesh, the white gloved hands, the sinister music-box tunes he associated with them, the maniacal inhuman laughter, the blood-red noses…

Clowns… were… the worst.

"Um… sir…?" came a voice, jolting him out of his thoughts. Sam blinked and looked at the source of the voice. The manager of Plucky's, the woman he'd been questioning was looking at him oddly. "Sir?"

Sam realized he'd gone off to la la land and he was embarrassed. "Oh—sorry, I was uh—uh—" staring at the clown on your building because they terrify me more than anything else known to man.

The woman obviously thought he was weird, but she remained professional. Probably because she thought he was FBI. "So did you have any more questions for me, or…?" she trailed off doubtfully. Obviously, tonight had been hard for her after she found a dead, mangled body in the ball pit.

"Uh, no," Sam said, then pulled it together and used his professional tone and demeanor, too. "No more questions. That's all, ma'am. You have a good night. Thanks for your time." She nodded, glanced over at Dean who was with the EMTs, then walked off. A little mortified at himself—he killed demons and monsters and ghosts and didn't blink but a clown freaked him out?—Sam headed over to his brother.

"Well?" Dean asked. He was standing beside the stretcher which had a bloody sheet covering the body underneath it.

"Manager found the body in the ball pit," Sam said, eyeing the stretcher grimly. "Blood everywhere."

"Cops have a theory?"

"Yeah, they think the ball washer did it."

"The what?" Dean asked.

Distracted, Sam repeated himself. "The ball washer."

Dean had a tiny little smile growing on his face. "The what?"

"The ball—" Sam stopped mid-sentence and made a face, held up his hands in frustration. Very funny, Dean. Joke about the dead guy. His brother chuckled heartily, enjoying Sam's chagrin.

Behind them, footsteps approached. "The what, again?" asked a familiar female voice.

The brothers turned fast at the familiar and unexpected voice.

Standing there wearing a predictable jeans-boots-and-flannel outfit with a light cargo jacket to combat the night chill, police lights creating a halo of light behind her that made her appear a little on the fantastic side… their sister. She had a fond little crooked smile on her face and her hands were jammed into her jean pockets.

Sam's eyebrows shot up as a faint smile pulled his mouth upward. "…Hey!" he greeted, his surprise making his voice a little breathier than normal.

"Well, look who it is," Dean greeted—he sounded beside himself.

"Heard about the murder on police scanner, figured you guys would be here," Alex supplied, then clapped her hands together once and glanced around at the crime scene studiously. "So. What we got?"

The brothers glanced at each other very briefly, thrown off. She was just gonna dive back in headfirst? A police officer suddenly bustled over and prevented them from replying. "I'm sorry, ma'am, you can't be here—this is a crime scene," he said to Alex.

He got an immediately challenging look from her and a highly aggravated huff. "Of course it's a crime scene," she snapped. "Why the hell else would I be here in the middle of the goddamn night?" The cop gaped at her tone and her body language. Pulling out an FBI badge with a flourish, she opened it so close to the cop's face that he had to back off a little to see it without going cross-eyed. "Special Agent Carrie Fisher," she said flatly, using the tone of voice that said she was busy, important, and not amused at his mistake. She snapped the badge shut and nodded toward Sam and Dean like they were very unimpressive to her. "Headquarters sent me down to make sure these two tenderfoots were dotting all the I's and crossing all the T's because of some extremely shoddy paperwork." Her gaze cut to the boys, who looked as surprised as the cop was. "The bureau just doesn't play that game, boys." She gave her brothers a very convincingly superior and lecturing look before her eyes snapped back to the officer loftily. "Now do you mind, officer? We have work to do."

At a loss for words, the intimidated officer who stood nearly a head taller than her was apologetic and embarrassed. He bought the show hook, line, and sinker. "Oh, I—yes, of course, so sorry to disrupt, I thought—" Alex's eyebrows shot up in a deadly silent challenge for him to keep going with that sentence and imply something about her appearance or gender. The cop gulped and wet his lips and decided to just apologize and run. "Sorry about that, Agent. Y-you three have a good night, just let me know if you need our assistance with anything." He backed off and gave them a wide berth. The back of his neck was bright red.

As the cop scuttled away, Alex looked down and the smallest little trollish smile was playing on her lips. Sam had a little smile dawning on his face at the scene that had just unfolded and Dean had a confused, taken aback expression on his face that was slowly turning into a smile, too. Neither of them had expected to see that side of their sister ever again after seeing how burnt and broken she was before. Her eyes raised back up and looked at Dean first, then at Sam. Those hazel depths were sad below everything else and seemed older and quieter than before, but she looked strong, too. Resolute. Content somehow despite the bittersweet quality that rested in her demeanor.

With two words and a humble little shrug, Alex Winchester said what they were all thinking: "…I'm back."

---

About an hour later after poking around the scene of the crime and not finding much of anything, the Winchesters caravanned back to where the boys were staying. Sam and Dean were mutually taken aback at how their night was unfolding. Their sister seemed… okay. She'd examined Plucky's with them on the hunt for clues and it had basically been like old times. She had cracked a few jokes, seemed mentally sharp, and been extremely present and focused. A total one-eighty from the Alex who had seemed dead inside a few months ago. Sam and Dean had just watched closely for the most part and things had been very surface-level. They didn't question her—they both mutually and silently decided not to press the issue until they got back to the motel.

Which just so happened to be now.

Dean got her duffel for her out of the back of her stolen Jeep. Sam, ever the needlessly helpful one, took care of opening and closing her car door for her (she gave him an odd look for it, too). As they walked into the room and Dean flicked on the lights, he finally asked what he and Sam had both been wondering. "So, how do you go from, like… the way you were when we last saw you to…" he gestured at her vaguely from head to toe, "this."

She gave him a smile that was both playful and serene and played it close to her chest. "Therapy," she said, tossing her keys down like she was right at home. "Willpower. Watching Oprah everyday."

Her oldest brother's eyebrows slowly rose at her reply. "…And she's remembered how to make jokes, too," he commented. Dean was trying to match her playfulness, but he sounded skeptical.

She accepted his diagnosis with a difficult-to-read, impassive little smile. "Like riding a bicycle."

Sam shut the door as he came in and exchanged a silent tense look with his brother. Dean decided to cut the crap. "Seriously," he said, studying Alex hard with an intent, close frown. "We're worried about you."

She glanced at him briefly—she'd been giving the room a roaming once-over, taking in the tacky tiki decor theme. "Well, thanks. But… the time when you had to worry about me is kinda over now, guys. I'm okay. Moving forward. Worked through some stuff, better person for it now." She sounded too automatic or something.

"Wow, so do you do yoga and meditation now too?" Dean quipped. There was some bitterness in his little joke though, and no one in the room missed it. He crossed his arms. "Where were you this whole time?"

His sister considered him a couple seconds. "Like I said. In very intense sunrise-to-sunset therapy." At Dean's look of yeah right, Alex's expression held steadily. "I'm serious."

"Wow, really?" Sam asked, an amazed little smile on his face. "That's great." His expression conveyed that he was very interested to know more.

"Therapy is great?" Dean repeated incredulously, sending Sam a you're crazy glance before setting their sister with a disbelieving stare. "What, where they stuff you full of happy pills and you talk about all your bad feelings and then go make art out of all your shiny tears?" He scoffed deeply. "That stuff is a scam, Alex."

Sam looked offended on Alex's behalf, but she didn't look shocked. Just mildly disappointed. "Do you know how ignorant you sound right now?" she asked, and Dean had his turn to look taken aback. Alex shrugged, clearly not regretting her choice of words. "Just saying." She crossed her arms loosely and shifted her weight, giving the impression that she was pretty confident about what she was about to say. "Whether or not you believe in 'that stuff,' it worked for me. And until you give it a try, I don't think you get to have an opinion on whether or not it's a scam." Her cool expression was serious and firm, a little grim. "I'm not here for you to judge me on how I got back on my own two feet again. I'm here to hunt with you guys again. To take care of some Leviathan assholes and to be part of the family again."

There was a sudden humorless smile on her brother's face. "Oh, part of the family," Dean repeated cynically.

"Dean…" Sam warned, and it looked like he was about to step in and defend Alex.

But she looked at her twin. "It's okay Sam. I've got this." That simple statement surprised both of the boys. Alex aimed a steady gaze at her oldest brother. "Dean, I know you're pissed at me for leaving," she said evenly. There was the faintest hint of regret there. "I can't do anything about that except say I'm sorry for the hurt I know I caused you. I had to grieve, and I had to be alone with it, I had to just… figure it all out for myself." There was mild frustration in her voice. But a lot of resignation, too. "I had to take time so I could be strong enough to be here again. You can be mad about it, but if you give me constant shit, I won't stay." Dean looked like he was pretty upset at her wording and everything in general and like he was going to lecture her or guilt trip her. Just in case he wanted to call her bluff, Alex added in one final severe promise: "I'm serious. So, let's just try and move past it, all right?"

Dean looked between his two siblings and drew his mouth into a wan smile. Apparently, he felt ganged up on. But he didn't say anything about it. Instead, he gave a semi-sarcastic sounding, "Yeah, sure, that sounds fantastic," then stood up and headed out without a backward glance. "I'm gonna go get the booze outta the car."

He shut the door with a passive-aggressive slam and Alex, mouth drawn into a thin line, nodded silently and looked at the closed door as if she were thinking so, still same old Dean. Sam was quiet and apologetic and worried all at once. "He's… been drinking more. More than he ever has before." He paused heavily and grew even quieter. "Bobby… really got to him."

Alex nodded somberly, her eyes falling downward. "Me too."

Sam looked mildly sick, his eyes were far away with sadness. Obviously, he was the same. Wrecked by Bobby's loss. But he drew in a brave breath and visibly changed his thought process and offered her a small, bittersweet smile. "It's… it's good to see you, Alex," he said. There was some kind of hesitance to what he said, but he seemed to mean what he said either way. Alex noticed how he was pressing his thumb into his palm, but she didn't say anything about it. "Don't worry about him, you know how he is. He'll get over it. I'm just glad you're here again. It's always super weird when you're not with us."

A smile that was tinged with sadness crossed her face as her gaze turned to him. "Really missed you guys," she conceded. "But… it was worthwhile. Learned a lot about myself. Sucks to have to learn it the way I did, but…" she sighed softly and ran a hand through the hair at the side of her hand. "That's life, I guess." A sudden thought seemed to strike her and she snapped her fingers once. "Oh." She searched around inside of her jacket, reaching into an inner pocket there and digging around for something. "While I'm thinking about it…" Sam noticed her angel blade tucked there, catching the light and gleaming from where it was hidden in her jacket, but he made no mention of it. "I have something for you." Alex produced an envelope and held it out to him. Sam could see his name written in her recognizably elegant and firm penmanship.

Sam took it hesitantly, looking at her with uncertainty. "…What's this?" Was he in trouble…? Was this some kind of bad news or something?

She was looking at the envelope, not his eyes. "It's just some things you need to know," she said. Was it his imagination, or did she sound a little nervous? "Don't, uh, don't mention it to Dean. I don't have one for him, so…" she cleared her throat. "I'd read it alone." She glanced into his eyes.

Sam's face showed his confusion and apprehension, but he nodded either way. "Yeah. Uh, gotcha. Thanks."

The door to the motel opened and Sam quickly put the envelope into his back pocket and cleared his throat as Dean came in with a half-gone bottle of whiskey. "Booze fairy's here, who wants some?" he asked, apparently trying to sweep his jerk attitude from a minute ago under the rug.

Alex shook her head. "Nah, I'm good."

Sam didn't feel like it either. "None for me, thanks."

Appearing a little more annoyed at their refusal, Dean pulled a face. "Lightweights," he muttered. "More for me."

As Dean began to pour, Alex sat down on the end of one of the beds and looked at her brothers studiously. "So. Can you guys catch me up on the past… well… half year?"

Sam paused briefly and glanced at Dean, who raised his now-full glass of whiskey his brother's way in a silent go right ahead. Sam gave his waiting sister a consenting nod. "Sure," he confirmed, but he was already thinking of ways to downplay the parts that involved Lucifer.

Sam and Alex ended up sitting opposite each other on the beds in the motel room as Dean paced, drank, and mostly listened. Sam detailed the hunts they'd been on, the Leviathan crap they'd seen, the big picture stuff they were working on now (which was trying to find a way to figure out how to unseat and thwart the growing Leviathan population). The past year's highlights were all given: Sam told Alex about the ordeal with Osiris and his judgements on Dean, the crazy witch couple who tore a town apart and how Jamie helped with that job among others, the Turducken slammer crap, Frank Devereux, how Dean almost became a monster-baby daddy when he almost slept with an Amazon woman—apparently he changed his mind about the rendezvous at the last minute and some other poor sap ended up with a murderous daughter, but still. Sam skipped going into much detail about the Amy Pond murder or the animosity it had put between himself and Dean, he glossed over the Lucifer struggles, and he didn't mention how worried he and Dean had been over Alex… because she knew that. Of course she knew. He didn't want to rub anything in her face.

When he had finished bringing her up to speed, he very gently requested to know what her past few months had been like. Alex was ready to tell them, but was very glum when she explained it all. She told them about Sunny Meadows and not wanting to even try anymore, how she'd given up on herself and the world. She said Bobby's death and 'some other stuff' pushed her over the edge and made her want to seek real help finally. She said she went to a new place (Sam wondered why but didn't ask). She told them therapy was hard and had done a lot of good for her. It was easy to tell she'd changed, Sam thought. She had this quiet and jaded strength to her. She'd always been strong, but this was different—she was different. Maybe the most notable difference was the deep sadness she radiated—she wasn't necessarily sullen or downright depressed, but there was a pensive quality to her that never went away, even when she smiled or chuckled. Dean seemed very skeptical of the entire thing but he held back on more rude, thoughtless comments and just hovered like a storm cloud.

Alex didn't mention Cas by name, not even once.

When the conversation wound down, Alex went to the bathroom and Dean lowered his voice to the quietest volume it could go before becoming a whisper. "You buying this, Sam?"

Emotionally exhausted by everything he'd just had to explain and then hear, Sam looked up at his brother from where he sat on the bed. "What do you mean?"

Dean's harsh, quiet tone was accompanied by a half-scowl as he threw a hand out for emphasis. "What, she's all Beautiful Mind just a couple months ago and now she's magically back to Alex one-point-oh?" He frowned at the bathroom door for a long few seconds. His glare gave way to a more worried expression. "Just… keep an eye on her."

Sam nodded, concern making his young face appear older. "Yeah. Of course." He always would. The brothers exchanged a tense glance. They both always would.

---

The Next Morning

When Sam woke up from a night of tossing and turning on the floor (he insisted Alex take his bed, he never slept well these days anyway and it was honestly starting to become a problem), he realized Dean was gone. He could hear the shower running and deduced that it was his sister in there because her stolen Jeep was still parked outside (whereas Dean's stolen Lincoln Continental was missing). Not too worried because Dean had probably just gone for food or coffee, Sam slowly padded around the room in his socks and boxers and faded v-neck shirt. He stretched, rubbed the heel of his hand into a tired eye, and yawned, running a hand through his bed-head hair as he tried to wake up. Then he caught sight of his jeans, which he'd tossed on the floor last night. A little white line stuck out from the back pocket and Sam suddenly felt fully awake. He'd forgotten about that until now.

Curiosity burning through him, Sam crouched and pulled the letter out of the envelope hesitantly and glanced at the bathroom. Shower was still going. He decided he was gonna read it and see what he'd done now. First, he stood and threaded his jeans on, maybe procrastinating slightly. He knew her handwriting well, could pick it out immediately, it had been her voice for so many years. A voice she had chosen not to speak to him with for a long time… circa the Stanford years. Feeling a certain amount of dread, Sam sat on one of the beds and pulled the letter out of its envelope. The papery sliding sound seemed loud to him. Apprehensive about what this letter could possibly be about, he made himself unfold the page and begin to read it with a sharp exhale. As he began to realize what the letter was, Sam's breathing quickened and his heart began to pound with emotion.

Dear Sam—

I'm writing this letter to you as part of the treatment I'm in right now. My therapist told me to write letters to the most important people in my life and in these letters make apologies I've never made, let out bottled up emotions, and basically just express myself. Sounds really fun, right? (That was sarcasm.) It's been hard… you'd think I wouldn't have an issue writing with pen and paper especially considering it was my main way of communicating for so long in the past. But digging deep has been tough, and putting words down even tougher. I put off writing this letter to you for three days because of how difficult it was to face some things and write them down. It feels more real and permanent to see words on a page versus just having these thoughts floating around inside my skull.

Rambling now. Let me try not to do that. Okay, before I get into anything else, first I have to say I love you so so much. I haven't let you know that enough and I'm sorry. You are one of the only people who has ever mattered to me, truly and deeply mattered. I know we've had our ups and downs through the years but none of that can ever overshadow what you mean to me or how important you are. My twin, my wombmate, my first best friend… forever the one with the better hair. I remember being kids with you and how you were always at my side, taking care of me and looking out for me. You were the glue that held me together so many times. When Dean couldn't be there for us, I always knew you would be. You are a good person, Sam, an amazing big brother, and you have given so much for me. Thank you.

So, here we go with the tough stuff. In recent times I realized some things I never thought about before. Like how I've spent a lot of my life being jealous of you and expecting you to be perfect/selfless (for my own fucked up reasons). I was jealous because out of all our family, you had the best shot at normal. I wanted to be normal so badly and it hurt me so deeply that I quite literally couldn't be normal. So I resented you for wanting your own life and being capable of having it and even for labeling yourself as a freak when I knew out of all of us, I was the most freakish of all. I was angry that your world didn't revolve around me and that I wasn't your reason for existing. Stupid (and embarrassing), I know, but true. Anyway, when you left for Stanford, I was incredibly furious and hurt and it turned to bitterness. I carried that bitterness for so long and never fully forgave you or let it go. It's really fucked up how much I blamed you for my own issues… and now I realize that I was the problem, not you. I should have been able to be happy for you and what you wanted. But I did what Dad did… held you to impossible standards and when you didn't want to meet those standards, I gave you shit for it. Remember when we fought after Dean died? In my mind you were the one who caused that and I was the victim. I should have seen that situation for what it was. I was bitter, angry, and resentful toward you… why would you want to stay around someone who was constantly digging at you and making you feel worse?

It's so crazy how time gives you all this perspective. I'm sorry, Sam, that I made you into the bad guy and treated you accordingly. You've never been anything but a hero. Loyal, kind, smart, supportive, reasonable. You are a better person than I could ever hope to be and I'm so proud of you for it. Basically, I owe you the world's biggest apology. You weren't wrong to try and live a normal life. You were brave to try and break away from what Dad chained us down to.

I know you and I have made huge strides in the past couple years and have come to terms with a lot of things… but I am writing this letter to once and for all apologize. For passively aggressively shaming you all that time and for mistreating you in general. For judging you and expecting you to run your life to my standards. That wasn't right of me and I'm really ashamed I ever thought it was. I'm asking you to please forgive me for that. You're important to me and I hope you know I am completely sincere about this apology. Well… time to wrap up this letter before I get any more uncomfortable than I already am. Love you more than Dean loves pie, Samantha.

Sincerely, your better half (that's a twin joke)…
— Alexander

He read it twice. Sam's eyes were filled with tears, his heart was tight and full in his chest, he felt as if he'd been hungry to hear those things from her for a lifetime but had never realized it before. His hand was covering his mouth and his eyebrows were knitting in together almost painfully as he read the last part one more time.

The shower stopped running and Sam quickly dashed his hand at his eyes and breathed out a sharp puff of air in an attempt to get it together. He folded the letter back up and put it into the envelope, still in a daze. He was amazed and shocked at the touching, heartfelt, loving nature of that letter. She had never spelled stuff out like that to him before in such detail that was so thoughtful and considerate of his feelings.

Nearby, a female voice was speaking in a sultry voice and commentating on the letter. Sam's nostrils flared and he pressed his thumb into his palm, queasy as Lucifer giggled and cooed about his 'love letter' and tried to ruin the moment for him. The image flickered out and the voice stopped as pain and discomfort radiated out from his palm. He shut his eyes. It's not real. Just remember that. And it's not you. Not you thinking or imagining this shit.

What was real was this letter. Sam opened his eyes and looked at the plain white envelope. His heart was warm and he felt so undeserving of love from his sister of all people, but it was a lifeline for him in that moment.

Alex came into the room wearing jeans and a tank top. Her hair was wet and she had a towel and her dirty clothes wadded up with her. She was frowning in distraction, not really paying him much attention. "Hey Sam, do you guys have any extra—" she was unable to finish the sentence when she found herself crushed to her brother's solid chest in a tight hug. "Mffph…?" Oops. Too tight. Sam loosened his grip sheepishly and looked down at Alex wordlessly. She was looking up at him in what looked to be a mixture of amusement, trepidation, and discernment. "You read the letter."

"Yeah," he confirmed, feeling a little embarrassed. "Um—Alex, just—" he cleared his throat and searched for the words.

She gave him a look. "Don't make it weird, Sam," she advised—she was definitely being playful, but there was an honesty to her joke, too.

He cracked a helpless grin. There she was. The no-chick-flick-moment Alex he knew and loved. She was a tough one to figure quite honestly… deeply emotional and a consummate feeler—but she pretty often chose to act as if she didn't go that deep at all. He understood the need to self-protect. He got that about her. But just because she said no chick-flick stuff, didn't mean he couldn't say what he needed to say. Sam took in a breath and tried not to be too sappy about how he worded his gratitude. "This—it really meant a lot," he said, indicating the envelope in his hand. And it did, god it did. He swallowed and his face tensed into an earnest expression. "I forgave you a long time ago for all that stuff—it's in the past. I hope you know that." He felt himself fighting off another bout of strong emotion and his fingers tightened on the envelope. "But this was… was really important to know. Just… thanks for sharing it with me."

Alex nodded silently as she pressed her lips in together. She looked close to tears herself all of the sudden. Filled with empathy and the feeling of camaraderie and a new sort of closeness toward her, Sam hugged her again, tightly, and she hugged him back too—he was so grateful that Lucifer hadn't ruined this for him. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Sam refused, actually. You can't take her away from me. You can't make me want to run away from her like I have in the past. His eyes closed and he struggled to maintain composure. He had almost lost her so many times, but this time—the breakdown, the mental hospital, the suicide attempt—to see her come back from that stronger for it but willing to admit she had a long way to go…? He was so proud and glad he could burst. Everything is gonna be okay.

Alex hung on to her just-slightly older brother's huge frame. His heart was thudding really fast in his chest and he breathed a little unevenly as his emotions made him tearful. Alex shut her eyes and hugged him as tight as she could and was so glad that she had followed through with all the therapy and painfully hard work of unpacking her emotions. Look where it had gotten her: to a place where she and Sam no longer had bitterness and anger and a million other roadblocks wedged between them. That moment—that hug between them—was the final step for her in letting go of all those bad feelings she'd saved up over the years. It was Sam had forgiving her for all the childish bullshit she had subjected him to. It was Alex knowing things had changed. It was Sam getting closure he had always needed. It was something they had both needed for a long, long time.

The door opened abruptly and in walked Dean holding a drink carrier that held three gas station coffees. The tearful twins separated, immediately awkward and trying to appear less emotional than they were. Dean raised an eyebrow at the display then quickly became rude. "Did I miss the hug convention or something?" he asked moodily, then shut the door with his foot and came into the room like a dark cloud. "You girls wanna keep braiding each others' hair or are we gonna try and figure out which flavor of the week big bad's killing people in this town?" He plunked himself down at the window-side table and scowled at the laptop that was there, tapping the space bar impatiently in an attempt to wake up the screen. Jealousy really did have a funny way of manifesting.

---

Later that day, the two siblings sat at a tacky red table at Plucky's and probably looked more like an unhappy married couple than anything else. Dean sat back in his seat crookedly and scowled around, drumming his fingers on the table impatiently as Alex sat still with an elbow on the tabletop and her jawline rested against her hand. She looked bored and a little glum, half glazed over.

Goofy cartoonish music played overhead. Arcade game noise competed with the music—a headache-inducing chorus of dinging, clicking, cheesy looped sound bytes, and shrill tinny whoops. Kids ran wild all over the clown-covered establishment—there was screaming, laughing, whining, all of it seemingly to the point of mania. Around Dean and Alex at all the other red tables there were tons of soda-wired kids pestering their sleep-deprived parents.

Sam was currently playing bad cop and pressing all the employees of Plucky's in a back room one at a time. Dean and Alex were there to tail the employees after Sam's rigorous questioning—the idea was that they could possibly determine guilt or involvement by the behavior exhibited by suspects after interviews.

Alex glanced across the table at her brother. He was checking his phone. Again. "Why do you keep doing that?" He had never cared about his phone like that before.

She got the briefest surly glance. "I can do what I want," he retorted, ducking her question and reminding her that he was pissed at her.

Alex said nothing and resisted rolling her eyes as she looked away. Fine.

They were silent again until a kid ran by with a huge rainbow slinky and for the first time, Dean perked up—he looked absolutely enthralled. "Dude… that slinky is awesome," he said, swiveling in his seat and spotting the prize counter. He was already getting up and leaving. "I gotta have one."

O…kay. Alex stayed put and watched the door of the room Sam was interviewing in. Near to it, a little blond boy was crouched and trying to tie his shoe and getting continually frustrated when it wouldn't tie. He was just swirling the lace around and around the other one, what did he think was gonna happen? A soft smile turned Alex's mouth upward just slightly. He kept trying the same failing method over and over and got more and more adorably aggravated. Dean suddenly plunked back down in front of Alex, jarring her out of the moment. He didn't have his very-desired slinky with him—he was empty-handed. "They don't take cash here," he announced sourly. "Only tickets won through 'hard work and determination.'" He scoffed and made a face and sat back in his seat unhappily. "Buncha crap." His brief euphoria at the prospect of a slinky was apparently over with.

Alex set him with a suggestive shrug, not commiserating with him or stooping to his level of petulance. "We could pull the old bait and switch?" she suggested, trying to be helpful, trying to bridge the gap between them a little bit. "You distract, I swipe?"

He glanced at her and for the briefest second he looked reminiscent and like he might be about to soften—then he darkened, remembering he was mad at her. He looked away and shook his head stiffly, rejecting her offer. "Nah."

Alex studied the side of his face sadly. She knew Dean Winchester and this whole thing—the passive aggressive comments, the avoidance and the snide attitude, the little digs—those were all him having hurt feelings and trying to make her feel bad right along with him. But she wasn't gonna buy a ticket for that train. She cared about him and tried to look past how he was hurting her. "You okay, Dean?" she asked, gentle and earnest about her question.

He gave her a cool, almost haughty look and crossed his arms. "Why wouldn't I be okay?"

"I can think of a few reasons," she replied evenly as their gazes held. She tried to take the high road even though it was making her sadder and sadder—she just wanted her best friend back. She never would have imagined Dean would be further from her than Sam was. "I don't want you to be mad at me."

"And I didn't want you to disappear off of the face of the goddamn planet and leave us when we needed you the most!" he retorted hot and mean and loud. Around them, a few people were stared at his loud, crass exclamation. Alex tried not to show the automatic hurt she felt at his tone and words, but she couldn't. Dean saw it and the second he did, he obviously regretted the outburst and grew frustrated with himself and quickly apologetic. "Sorry—sorry." He let out a charged, regretful breath and rubbed a hand down his face, struggling. He looked tired, ragged, and near to his own breaking point. "I'm not trying to make you feel bad, I know you had to do what you had to do, I just—" his jaw clenched and he looked at the table with a wretched expression. "It's been hard. Ever since he died, it's… been hard."

Alex nodded faintly. "Yeah," she agreed softly, thinking of Bobby.

And then Dean clarified himself and sent a shocking feeling of sadness crashing over his sister. "Cas."

That name spoken aloud seemed to punch the air out of her and she struggled to say something to fill the ensuing silence. "…Oh," she managed in a weakened voice. She guessed that was when everything hit the fan. Sam's mind, Alex's breakdown, the Leviathans. Dean looked incredibly sad and Alex tried to appear busy picking at a spot on the table. "Um, yeah." Inside, she was struggling against the constant sadness she carried, the thought of Cas's coat folded up and hidden away in the bottom of her duffel, the knowledge that she was stuck alive from now until forever.

Dean mistook her silence and her suddenly avoidant gaze for the desire to be alone. Uncomfortable and guilty over his behavior, he silently considered for a minute then stood up, excusing himself from his sister's side. "I'm gonna go try and win some tickets with hard work and determination," he wisecracked without much enthusiasm. He forced a grin that even come close to reaching his eyes. "Wish me luck, because I'm the laziest bastard I know."

He walked off and Alex tried not to feel the guilt she was abruptly drowning in. Dean's bitterness toward her was a tough pill to swallow and had her mind working itself into knots. You abandoned your family. You hurt Dean. You probably hurt Sam, he's just too nice to tell you how it is unlike your other brother. You missed so many hunts that they needed you on. You were selfish to act like the world revolved around you and your 'therapy' and 'breakthroughs' didn't fix you, not entirely—you're stupid as hell to think you can do this again…

Alex shut her eyes and focused on deep breathing and shutting down the negative thoughts. Refuse to sit in thoughts that will tear you down, Doctor Ekwensi had always told her. Acknowledge them, then move on. Challenge the narrative.

"Are you a mommy?" came a high-pitched little kid's voice, jolting Alex out of her thoughts.

She opened her eyes, finding the owner of the voice: a little girl with curly brown hair and a curious gaze. Frowning—is this kid talking to me?—Alex looked around briefly in confusion. Obviously, the kid was talking to her. "What?"

"I said, are you a mommy?" the little girl repeated innocently, eyeing Alex with a lot of curiosity. "Where's your kid?"

Alex fumbled for words, completely blindsided by the question. "No I don't—I'm um… just sitting in here."

"Oh." The little girl blinked twice. And with nothing further, she ran off, her curls bouncing as her short legs carried her away.

Alex stared after and it felt like everything was sinking down around her—or maybe what was sinking was her.

Are you a mommy?

A question that unexpectedly cut through her like a knife.

I could have been one. I was going to be one.

Alex wondered what kind of father Cas would have been and could picture him holding a small baby so gently and tenderly. Not just any baby. Their baby.

The sounds of all the games, the kids shrieking, the overproduced kiddy music playing over the PA—it was beginning to press down on her and suffocate. Alex got up from the table abruptly and removed herself from the room, finding a nearby quiet hallway where she focused on slow, deep, measured breathing as she leaned against the wall. She didn't see how Dean witnessed the whole scene or followed her. She didn't realize he was there at all until she heard his gentle, "Hey. You okay?"

Vaguely startled, Alex looked up at him and he peered back at her in concern. She tried to hide her distress, thinking he was going to berate her for it. "Sorry, I just—I still get overwhelmed sometimes," she said, trying to be strong. "By everything." It was hard though and she looked down as her face contorted against very powerful inner emotions.

Dean nodded, that tight expression of concern never lessening. "It's okay. Of course you do." He paused, then pulled her into a long overdue hug, the kind that said he was there, it was gonna be okay, and he had her. "Of course you do," he repeated in a fierce whisper, holding her close by the back of the head. She shut her eyes against his jacketed shoulder and stifled a sob. They were quiet for a long moment as brother comforted sister. Then he spoke again, his chest rumbling against hers as he continued to hold her tight. "You just tell me. When I'm being a dick. I promise, Al. I'm trying. It's hard for me too."

"I know," she replied, nodding hard and hugging him even tighter. A silent I'm here for you. This family can be a family again.

---

That Night

The day came and went and the Winchesters ended up having to divide and conquer—Sam took Alex's stolen Jeep to go tail one of the suspects while Dean and Alex checked out the sub-basement that one of the employees gave them a heads up about. Apparently some 'freaky shit' went down in said basement. They waited until after hours, then Dean and Alex went and checked it out. They found, among other things (like creepy broken clown figurines and lots of dusty canned goods and frozen pizzas) some witchy looking hex work, and when all was said and done, the murderer. It turned out that the peppy, overly-cheerful front desk worker, Howard. He had been taking the children's worst fear drawings and exacting revenge onto parents who he said 'deserved' the brutal deaths they got. However, as the Winchesters quickly discovered, he was misplacing his own childhood rage at his parents, who he blamed for his brother's drowning death.

Howard taunted Dean and Alex about sabotaging Sam—he told them that at that very moment, Sam would be facing his worst fear and then would be dying at the hand of it, too. You didn't have to say anything more—Dean killed Howard, severing the magic and saving Sam, who sounded pretty damn traumatized (but alive) over the phone when Alex called him in a panic. He said he was on his way back and with that, the job was wrapped up. Dean and Alex waited for their brother at Plucky's in the parking lot and discussed, briefly, what the hell the cops would think of this one when they found Howard's body. Hopefully just a random shooting or something.

Things were better between the oldest and youngest Winchester now. That kind of happened when you hugged it out and then saved each other from certain death at the hands of a creeper like Howard. Still, they weren't talking too much. Alex had to sneak off and take a painkiller to calm her shot nerves at one point when the anxiety became too much. When she came back to the car, she found Dean smiling at his phone, engrossed with the screen, and then quickly snapping it shut and crossing his arms and acting like nothing was going on. Dean, ever the observant one, noticed Alex's suddenly-calmer state of mind and made a comment about how she went from paranoid puppy to a cool cucumber and she said it was deep breathing and a moment alone that had gotten her so zen. That was a lie—it was narcotics. But she didn't want him to know that she was struggling with substance abuse.

After about ten minutes of waiting around, Sam pulled up in the stolen Jeep and got out.

Alex had stood up straight at the car's approach, anxious to lay eyes on her brother. But when he got out of the car, she was given a befuddled pause halfway to him. Sam was covered in metallic, rainbow-colored glitter. It was dusted through his hair, splattered across his front, and stuck to one of the blood trails trickling down the side of his head where he'd apparently taken a good hit. Dean stared, too, and Sam, obviously fine if not just a little worse for the wear, spread his arms wide and invited them to react.

"Go ahead," he said ruefully, glitter flashing and catching the parking lot lights as he moved. "Say it."

Alex started. "…Did you roll around in the arts and crafts aisle?" she asked, and Dean began to laugh. Soft at first and then harder, then all out belly-busting.

"No, no, he got attacked by some PCP-crazed strippers," he managed through genuine laughter that reached his eyes, relaxed his face, and made him look genuinely happy. Sam looked down and smiled despite himself and Dean held a hand out like he was trying to make himself stop. "I'm sorry," he apologized through laughter.

Sam looked at his sister, whose mouth was forced shut and fidgeting around on her face as she tried not to laugh too. "Dude, one of them sprayed me with seltzer from his flower," Sam said, apparently seeing the dark humor in the situation and Dean laughed even louder, so hard that Sam made a bit of a face through his smile. Alex was giving Dean a weird look too—he seemed so overjoyed that it was bordering on bizarre.

Dean wheezed a little, trying to get it together. "I'm s—whew." He sighed, a happy little sound. "That's…" he took in a deep breath and cleared his throat then made himself be serious. "Sam... look, I'm sorry for... psychologically scarring you."

Sam took a second to reply, frowning studiously. "…Which time?"

"Shut up," Dean replied immediately. "Seriously. You know, me—me ditching you and Al at this place when we were kids, that was a dick move, especially since, you know, your whole clown thing—"

"You know what, man?" Sam shrugged his mouth downward, seeming at peace with the whole thing. "Honestly… getting my ass kicked by those juggalos tonight was, uh... it was therapeutic."

"You faced your fear!" Dean offered, and he sounded amused again.

"Exactly," Sam said, grinning widely and approaching his sister. "And now what else could a clown possibly ever do to me? I feel good." He slung an arm around Alex and squeezed. "Therapy, right?" He cracked a conspiratorial grin at her. "Gimme a hug there, shortstack." He abruptly forced her face into his chest and rubbed so that her hair and cheek came away with a shit ton of glitter.

"Hey!" she protested indignantly, pushing herself away from him with a hand (which she then looked at and realized was glittery from doing so). She set him with a playfully warning look. "Oh, there will be payback."

"Can't wait," Sam returned, still grinning, then went back to the Jeep, a finger in the air as if he were about to announce something. "Alright. So! A little birdy told me someone had their eye on the prize booth and…" he reached into the open passenger-side window and pulled out a giant, still-in-plastic rainbow slinky and headed toward Dean, whose face abruptly looked like a kid's on Christmas morning.

"No!" he exclaimed in breathless disbelief and surprise.

"Yes," Sam confirmed.

Dean looked at Alex and pointed, dawning joy on his face. "You?"

She shrugged and spread her hands humbly. "Me."

"Oh birdy—you are speaking my language!" Dean exclaimed as Sam put the slinky into his hands. He gaped at the thing like it was the coolest thing he'd ever seen in his entire life. "Dude—Sam—you win this?"

"We earned that," Sam said with conviction as he rounded the other side of the car. Alex followed slowly, trying to rub away the glitter on her left palm—unfortunately, all that seemed to do was cover her right palm in glitter, too.

"Ha ha!" Dean whooped, examining his prize before remembering something. "Hey. I got you a little something, too, actually." He set the slinky onto the roof of the car then reached into the car for a clown doll, which he tossed across the car to Sam, who caught it and shuddered then made a face at his brother. "What?" Dean teased. "You said you were over it. You can think of it as a... clown phobia sobriety chip."

Sam looked like he'd never heard anything stupider in his entire life. Alex, near to Sam, decided she could help out with this one. "Gimme that."

She grabbed the clown by the feet and swung the doll hard against the nearby wall of Plucky's. The porcelain head smashed into a million pieces and Sam nodded once, hard. "Yup," he said approvingly. "Much better."

"High five," Alex suggested, and only after he'd high-fived her did he realize he had just given himself a palm speckled in glitter by doing so. He huffed at his hand then gave her a look as she smirked, well-pleased with herself for that one.

Dean began to laugh again as he took them in—glittery and disgruntled and play-fighting and together again. "You two need to douse yourselves in glitter more often, oh my god, it's hilarious."

The twins turned their attention to him and didn't seem to love how amused he was or how loud and unbridled his laughter was. Sam crossed his arms, giving the impression that he was masterminding something. "You thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked his sister while looking at their brother the whole time.

She nodded, eyes on Dean the whole time as a little smile worked on her face. "Big brother better be careful or he might wake up with his favorite clothes covered in glitter glue."

Dean's eyebrows shot up high and he pointed a finger at them in turn. "You do that and I will make you both ride in the back for the rest of your lives," he threatened noncommittally, enjoying himself. He opened his door and shook his head, gave a laughing sigh once more. "Well, gang? Onto bigger and better?"

"Bigger and better," Sam confirmed, his dimples showing as his lips turned upward in a surprisingly contented smile.

They piled into the car—Sam beside Dean, Alex in the back—and Dean looked into the rear view then smiled over at Sam. "I missed this," he said.

Sam glanced at him and apparently it was the sap hour. "I think we all did."

In the back, Alex pulled a face. "Oh my god girls, can we just go?"

"Hey, I thought you were into all that feelings crap now!" Dean protested.

"I'm into burgers," she replied factually. "Can we get some freaking food?"

Sam chuckled down at his lap as Dean nodded his very clear approval and made eye contact with his sister in the mirror. "I like the way you think, Al."

---

Two Weeks Later
Portland, Oregon

Cursed objects. That was pretty run-of-the-mill for the Winchesters. But this job was beginning to feel like a little more than that.

It had started gruesomely enough, with a pair of pointe ballet shoes that apparently danced a ballerina to death. The Winchesters had tracked the cursed slippers to an antique store called Out With the Old where the clueless son of the recently-deceased shop owner had pulled a bunch of cursed objects out of storage and sold them in an attempt to clean house. After painstakingly tracking down three other cursed objects (and not being able to stop one more senseless death from taking place) then returning the objects to their hex boxes where they would stop causing problems, the hunters thought the job was over. And then Dean and Alex had spoken with Scott (the deceased owner's son) and gotten more details about his mother's very recent death.

Dean and Alex exited Out With the Old and the bell tinkled pleasantly as they entered the night. Sam was across town currently, so it was just the two of them. In their FBI clothes, they walked the deserted sidewalk together in deep, mutual thought over what they'd just learned.

"So, this lady is holding out and not selling the family business come hell or high water 'cause she's owned it for forty years—then out of the blue changes her mind, signs on the dotted line, dies in a mysterious car crash the next day?" Dean surmised.

"Yeah, something else is going on here," Alex muttered grimly. It was easy to tell the mystery was bothering her just as much as it was bothering him.

They walked further in silence and Dean began to notice that almost every single business on the block had the same SOLD! sign plastered in its window along with a real estate poster with the same smiling face on it. Dean's gait slowed as he became aware that this was a huge clue. "Hey… you seeing what I'm seeing?" he asked.

Alex had been watching the ground and looked up, taking a few seconds to try and figure out what he was talking about. "A bunch of real estate signs," she said flatly, then it hit her too and she looked at him in surprise. "Oh. Oh."

"Yeah," he confirmed meaningfully even as he wondered what the hell it meant.

Alex gave a thoughtful hmm. "Well I guess I know who we're going to see ne—next." Her voice did a weird thing at the end of the sentence and Dean frowned at her. She was staring at a Suzuki motorcycle that was parked along the road. It was sleek and modern and dark blue.

Dean didn't know why she was staring, but he immediately got vaguely worried that something was wrong from the look on her face. "What is it, Al?"

She came out of her little trance and abruptly looked nonplussed. "Nothing," she said, shrugging it off and walking onward.

Dean followed, guessing maybe she just loved Suzuki motorcycles or something…? Or hated them…? He couldn't tell from that weird stop-and-stare routine. Either way, she wasn't saying. And they had other things to do. "You know what, let's change outta this FBI crap and go get some coffee and free wifi, huh?" he asked, glancing at one of those real estate posters they passed. "See what we can see about this Joyce Bicklebee lady."

"Sounds thrilling," Alex replied sarcastically. Dean chuckled and put his arm around her briefly. That got him a little smile.

---

A little later, they sat in a local café together beside a huge floor-to-ceiling window. The sleepy street the café was on was dark and not much traffic passed. Brother and sister both had steaming mugs of coffee and focused expressions on their faces. Dean was on the phone with Frank Devereux and learning some pretty interesting things about Bicklebee Realty and the company that owned it. Alex was hunched over the laptop with a frown, engrossed in the screen. As soon Dean hung up the phone, Alex was quick to question him over the top of the laptop.

"What'd Frank say?"

Dean didn't answer. He motioned with a thrust of his chin at the road outside, where Sam was visible getting out of the truck he'd stolen to get across town. The job momentarily forgotten, Alex watched her lanky twin brother come inside at a tired, almost stumbling lope. He was not doing good. Apparently his Lucifer hallucinations were going out of control. He wasn't sleeping at all, he couldn't eat much, and he was even starting to appear sick physically. As she watched him, Alex's eye was drawn across the street, where she saw that same Suzuki bike she'd been seeing everywhere she went. Her stomach jolted and her guard immediately went up. Always the bike, never the rider. Where the hell are you, Zip? Watching me right now? It made her skin crawl to think about it. She hadn't told Sam and Dean about who he really was or what had happened. Maybe it was time. She didn't like this. Being stalked was kind of unsettling.

Sam arrived inside, distracting her from staring out the window. "Hey. How's it going?" he asked his siblings, dragging over a chair and plopping down into it with an exhausted, rag doll effect.

"You okay?" Alex asked. He looked miserable.

"Eh… I'm here," Sam said, smiling feebly to mask his clear suffering.

Dean eyed Sam closely for a moment, evaluating him. Then he finally answered Alex's previous question while letting Sam know the deal, too. "I just got off the phone with Frank. Apparently, we have a bit of a Leviathan issue in this town."

"Wait, Leviathan?" Alex asked incredulously. "How you figure?"

Dean shrugged wanly. "Apparently we're lookin' at a big, old giant nesting doll of Dick, as far as property sales go."

Alex frowned and drew the first conclusion she could. "…The real estate lady?"

"Looks like."

Alex's frown deepened. "Okay, but why?"

"Hey, if I had all the answers, I'd be writing high school textbooks and quizzes," Dean joked. Sam was staring into Dean's shoulder with a totally absent expression. Dean waved a hand at him. No response. Dean snapped his fingers a few times. "Hey—you paying attention?"

"Yeah," Sam replied, making his eyes bulge and blinking rapidly then dragging a hand down his face as he tried to get with the program. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry."

Dean gave a soft, aggravated sigh. "Okay, you know what? Enough with the insomnia crap. All right, Pacino? You need to crash. I'll keep working. You and Al find a motel and you get some sleep—she can drive you so you don't fall asleep at the friggin' wheel. Okay?"

Sam was totally devoid of energy. Speaking seemed to take a huge effort. "It doesn't matter what I do, Dean," he said quietly. "Lucifer will not shut up."

"Even now?" Dean asked, eyebrows working in hard toward each other.

Sam shook his head once, his expression showing displeasure. "No-ope." He popped the p at the end of nope, which resulted in him sounding extremely forlorn.

"Tried the hand thing?" Alex asked in growing worry.

Her voice seemed to make him flinch slightly. "Doesn't seem to work anymore," he said, avoiding looking at her.

"Okay, so we get you some really strong ganja, some downers, some sleeping pills," Dean suggested firmly, not about to be told there wasn't a solution.

Sam shook his head, the picture of defeat. "Don't think those will work, Dean. I'm stuck awake."

Exasperated, Dean made a face. "Sam, you can't stay awake forever, you—" he suddenly dead-ended in the middle of his sentence. "Okay, Al, what the hell are you staring at out there?" Alex hadn't even realized she was staring at the Suzuki again. Dean saw it, too, and grew a little more suspicious. "Wait, isn't that the same bike we saw across town?" Alex shrugged like she didn't know. Now didn't seem like the best time for this discussion. Apparently Dean thought otherwise. He was giving her one of those tell-me-or-else looks. "Something you need to share with the class?" He watched her a second longer and concern began to come through. "Come on. What aren't you telling me?"

Alex decided to just go ahead and bite the bullet. "I'm pretty sure I know who that bike belongs to," she admitted grudgingly.

When she said nothing else, Dean fixed her with an expectant look. "Well don't keep us in suspense," he wisecracked. "Sam might fall asleep before you say it."

Alex wet her lips. "You… you guys remember Zip?"

"The prepubescent looking guy at Sunny Meadows?" Dean asked, scoffing slightly. "Yeah…"

Sam nodded. "Yeah, I remember seeing him lurking around," he confirmed tiredly.

"Well… I found out something about him," Alex said, taking her time wording it. "He's… a Leviathan."

Her brothers reacted the same way—their eyebrows flew up and their mouths gaped open and they leaned forward ever so slightly to look at her better. "You're sure?" Sam asked.

"Oh, trust me."

Dean was aghast. "Was he one that whole time?"

"Yeah."

"And what, you didn't gank him?" Dean asked in mild disbelief. "And now he's… following you or something?" He gestured at the motorcycle, getting protective and pissed.

Alex fiddled with her cup of coffee and avoided her brothers' gazes. "Guy's kinda obsessed. Thinks he's gotta protect me, thinks he loves me. Might be because I… sorta, kinda, I dunno…" she cleared her throat and looked down further—she felt like disappearing, "um, you know, slept… with him."

Dean's eyebrows jumped practically to his hairline and Sam looked like surely he'd heard wrong. "…You screwed a Leviathan?!" Dean exclaimed, then abruptly threw his hands out. "Dude, are you ever gonna date a human, or…?" Alex gave him a very done look and Dean shook his head, deciding he had reacted a little too strongly. "Never mind," he said, then shuddered slightly. "Eeesh."

"Well, in my defense I was pretty drunk and a little high and grieving Bobby and didn't know he was a Leviathan, so…" Alex tried not to remember the specifics of that night. She grew morose. "It just kinda happened."

Sam looked a little stricken and deeply worried about her. "Wait a minute. Was there—he didn't—make you?" he asked tensely.

"Nah," Alex replied, shaking her head and looking down, scratching her ear in awkward discomfort. "I knew what I was doing. It was consensual." And one of her biggest regrets.

Dean was beside himself. "Please god tell me you used protection this time."

Alex felt like there was a bad taste in her mouth and she wanted to give him shit for acting like she wasn't a nearly-thirty year old woman… but she just shrugged and confirmed in a bland tone that Dean had nothing to worry about. "Yeah. We did."

Sam was giving Dean a pretty good you're an ass look despite his fatigue, then quickly refocusing on Alex. "When'd you find out what he was?"

Alex had to recognize the irony of it all. "Like… an hour after."

"Damn," Sam commented softly, commiserating with her.

Alex nodded, her mouth pressed down into a wan like. "Yeah. Eeesh." She pulled an extremely chagrined face, obviously embarrassed. "Never again." She glanced at Dean, who had this funny look on his face. "What?"

He shook his head briefly. He almost looked sad. "Just… you. Moving on."

Her throat caught because Dean recognized how huge of a step that had been in trying to leave Cas's memory behind and he sounded stunned by it. "Yeah," she said, thinking of Cas's coat. Of his ring in her pocket at that very moment. Her world was stuck on Cas, even if her life did go on. The only good thing was Cas never had to know. Being dead kinda meant you'd never have to know anything ever again. But she knew. She'd always know.

There was a brief, tension-filled silence in which it looked like the brothers were silently arguing over who had to say something next. Dean apparently had to in the end. "Look," he started awkwardly. "You and Cas—"

Alex felt every single atom inside of herself flare up with immediate resistance to that subject. "I don't wanna talk about him," she said, quickly cutting off the conversation. She wasn't sure if she ever would be able to talk about him for more than a sentence or two. Castiel was a deep and painful chasm inside of herself that felt bottomless and too raw to even think about breeching. "Can't. Not yet."

Dean nodded, sympathy and worry making his expression rigid. "No pressure, little sister," he said. "No pressure." He cleared his throat and nodded at the front of the restaurant where there was a glass display of confections and pastries. "Hey, they got some pretty badass desserts over there. Think I see cupcakes. You want one?"

The sugar-bribe was one he'd used a million times before—mostly when she was small—but the mention of cupcakes just made her feel a little lower. "Maybe it's dumb but I prefer the two dollar Hostess kind," she said, remembering a morning nearly three years ago when her brand-new husband had bought those to her.

Not knowing her inner thoughts, Dean cracked a joke to try and lighten the mood. "Hey, at least you're a cheap date."

Alex let out a soft, short huff of a laugh. "Moron." A loving and affectionate insult that Dean obviously took that way. She was kind of surprised he was being so understanding about Zip, to be honest.

He turned the conversation back to the business at hand. "All right, so everyone keep an eye out for this Ziploc guy and we gank him the first chance we get, got it?" Sam nodded through his half-asleep expression. Alex looked at Dean tentatively, and he frowned a little. "Right, Alex?" She hesitated—she didn't know about killing him. Did he deserve to die just because of the species he happened to be? Dean looked like he was beginning to suspect something awful. "Don't tell me you have... feelings for him."

Alex's reply was immediate and quiet. "No."

Sam's loudly ringing phone pierced the dubious silence and he ran a hand down his face as he answered in a sapped, drained voice. "Hey, Scott." He straightened and woke up a little—Dean and Alex could hear indistinct shouting from the other end of the line and Sam frowned deeply. "W-what's happening?" More shouting that sounded panicked and scared. Sam shut his eyes briefly and seemed reluctant, but nodded and expelled a heavy, tense breath out of his nose. "All right, hold tight. We're on our way." He hung up.

Dean was already shutting the laptop and getting ready to vamoose. "Lemme guess. He touched something he wasn't supposed to."

Sam made a psh sound. "Of course he did."

---

About five minutes later, the three siblings rushed into Out With the Old expecting to find Scott and the cursed mirror he'd called them in hysterics about—but instead, they found him tied, bound, and gagged to a chair in the dimly lit interior of the antique shop. To his left stood a clean-shaven man in a regrettable red suit jacket—this man's face was blank and his dark eyes had a leering quality to them. To Scott's right stood a woman in her fifties—she was in a pencil skirt, a dress shirt, and a tailored women's red suit jacket. Alex recognized her immediately from the real estate signs she'd seen around town. This was Joyce Bicklebee—or at least the Leviathan version of her.

The woman smiled graciously as the Winchesters skidded to a halt, realizing far too late they'd been set up. With her hands on her hips, Joyce greeted them affably. "Sam and Dean! It is such a pleasure to make your acquaintances!" She clapped her hands together gleefully as she spotted and recognized Alex, who stood between her brothers. "And you brought your sister!" She walked forward, her pumps thudding against the area rug. She looked delighted with herself. "Gosh, this is just really turning up roses for me, isn't it?" She had eyes just for Alex. "We all have memories of you, sweetie, but goodness me aren't you just a treat in the flesh!"

The second the brothers had realized Leviathans (which they already knew to be unhealthily interested in their sister) were present, their hackles had raised high. Dean stood a little taller and put himself in front of his sister even before Joyce had finished speaking, demanding the Leviathan's attention. "Hey, how about you talk to us, psycho real estate lady?" he growled.

"Leave our sister out of this," Sam added dangerously. Sleep-deprived or not, he still looked like he could murder.

Joyce continued to smile pleasantly and cast her gaze between the brothers. The Leviathan real estate agent was absolutely unruffled—and Alex knew that she and her brothers were / unarmed. Or practically unarmed, anyway. All she had was a squirt gun full of borax water and her angel blade to put a dent in these bastards—and two of these monsters put the Winchesters into the outnumbered category. Alex suddenly spotted a mop in a bucket full of soapy water nearby. Her stomach flopped. Was it too much to hope there was borax in there?

"Well sure, boys," Joyce said in an overly helpful tone, unaware of Alex's formulating plan. "I mean, it's not gonna be a long conversation, but—" she stopped and made a face like she was chiding herself. "Oh gosh, look at me. I'm being rude. Let me help you put names to the faces that'll be eating you. I'm Joyce, and this is my assistant, George." Her serial-killer looking partner, complete with creepy silent stare, was moving forward slowly toward them. Joyce's tone of false politeness continued. "Now, fellas, I'd offer to show you some properties but I'll be too busy to do that, seeing as I'm going to be picking you out of my teeth and then taking your cute little sister here to Dick Roman and cementing myself as his new best friend." She grinned, eyes sparkling. "What is it you humans say? Ah, yes. 'Winning!'" She giggled, and it was an absolutely grating sound. "What say we get started, hm?" Her smile evaporated and a suddenly terrifying expression of malice twisted her botox-y face. She reared her head back and her face transformed—a huge gaping mouth full of rows and rows of sharp teeth showed, and beside her, George did the same.

It happened so very fast. Joyce grabbed Dean and whirled him, throwing him hard to disable and wound him. He crashed shoulder-first into a medium sized glass and wood bookcase. It shattered and broke, groaning forward to fall on top of him as he fell to the ground with a hard grunt of pain, clutching the shoulder he'd hit. As Dean went down, George attacked Sam who managed to grab a fire extinguisher off the wall and clock the Leviathan in the head hard enough to stun. Joyce was grabbing Dean up to stand on his knees and commenting on how she wished she had her salt and pepper shakers with her.

The second the fight broke out, Alex made a dash for the mop and bucket she'd spotted. As Joyce opened wide to eat Dean, who couldn't break the superhuman hold on him, Alex grabbed the mop like a fighting staff and smacked Joyce in the face with a loud wet squelch thanks to the sopping wet mop. The Leviathan dropped Dean, screaming and tearing at her own face as skin fell away like she'd been burned by acid. She was momentarily blinded, and Sam, who had beat George into a briefly stunned stumble, swung the fire extinguisher like a bat and hit Joyce in the face, sending her arcing through the air with another furious scream.

Dean looked up at his sister as he panted and held his wounded shoulder with a grimace. Alex stood the mop at her side like it was a walking stick and smiled down at him briefly as she offered him a hand up. "Cleanup on aisle five," she quipped, then promptly got a are you kidding me look from her brother for the bad joke. She pulled an apologetic face. "Sorry, it was the only thing I could think of."

Nearby, turning red with fury, the recovering Leviathan were standing together and looking like they had absolute murder on the brain. "You little bitch!" Joyce accused in a growl—she bore down on Alex furiously and Dean shoved his sister behind himself and promptly got seized and thrown aside like a rag doll—he crashed into another bookcase and hit the floor in a daze. Joyce grabbed Alex and shook her hard. "No one hits me in the face with a mop and lives to tell about it!" she roared, then shoved Alex backwards hard to crash into a glass display case where a bunch of old jewelry was on display. The steel rod that ran along the top of the outer edge of the display case impacted the back of Alex's head and when she went down, she stayed down. Joyce marched toward a disoriented, sprawled Alex, and even as Sam was slammed into a vintage writing desk and rendered down for the count thanks to George, there was an explosive crash. A sudden maelstrom of broken glass rained as someone or something completely shattered the storefront window. Before anyone could register what was happening, a small, lithe figure had rolled in and stood up, seizing a thousand-pound armoire and then launching it at Joyce like it weighed nothing at all. The heavy structure smashed into her with a crack and it forced her to go down. She screamed at the unexpected impact and was pinned underneath it briefly.

Alex stared through spinning vision at the person who had just burst in through the window. It was Zip, and he looked pissed. George, who had just rendered Sam into a groaning mess on the floor, apparently recognized the other Leviathan and circled slowly, giving him a wide berth. "Well, look who the cat dragged in!" he exclaimed, sounding angry and delighted at the same time. "Purgatory's weakest link!" He gave a sharp, biting laugh. "Kinda wish I didn't have to kill the loser who makes me look competent."

Zip tilted his chin up just slightly and narrowed his eyes, an antagonizing little smile playing on his lips. His more high-pitched voice held a surprising note of command and superiority. "You couldn't catch me then, how do you think you can catch me now?"

That seemed to really piss the other Leviathan off. "Like this!" George yelled, and rushed his opponent.

Apparently, Zip had been waiting for that and used George's bloodthirst to his own advantage. As George leapt at him, Zip snatched the antique sword that was displayed on the counter he stood beside—George's eyes bulged as he realized his fatal mistake—a millisecond later, his head was sailing off his body thanks to a quick, brutal slice made by the old buccaneer sword. The body fell to the floor and Zip's eyes darted to Alex's. The sword lowered, his expression changed, he took a step toward her—and then Alex's mouth fell open as her eyes popped wide. "Behind you!"

Zip turned on a dime, his sword up high again. Joyce's attempt at a sneak attack failed as she found herself beheaded. Her body hit the floor beside George's and Zip looked around the room, breathing hard. Black splattered him and he stood there breathing heavily, half shocked at what had just happened. And then he turned around, looked at Alex and swallowed then dropped the sword, disarming himself. "I told you it wasn't safe for you," he said, and that soft, caring voice made her feel something very strong. Hatred. She hated him. Hated him. For being her friend all that time at Sunny Meadows, for tricking her, for looking so forlorn right now, for having sex with her, for following her and for saving her life just now. Her angry, mistrustful glare conveyed that to him and his expression showed confusion and hurt.

Across from Alex, Sam was slowly pushing himself up from the ground with a groan of concentration. He had taken a few hits and was grimacing hard but staring at Zip in shock and then looking at the Leviathan bodies on the floor. "Did you—did you just save our lives?"

Zip turned to Sam and gave him a somber look. "Yes, and it's not the first time either, Sam." He said that then turned back to Alex—she was pushing herself up to stand, albeit like an old lady thanks to the back and neck pain she was currently feeling—Zip approached her by a timid footstep as she leaned heavily onto the steel frame of the glass case she'd broken. "Are you all right?" he asked quietly.

"She's fine, asshat," came a very decidedly unfriendly, gravelly voice. Dean was standing and holding his shoulder but still managing to point a threatening finger at Zip as he limped over to his sister's side. "And it's none of your damn concern."

She might have been a little shaken up and injured, but Alex was still Alex. And she was seeing red. She had promised to kill him if she ever saw him again, and she had every last intention of doing that. The mop bucket full of borax water was nearby and with a sudden leap, she grabbed it and flung the entire contents at him. He immediately cried out in pain and clutched his face. Alex shocked her brothers when she yanked out her angel blade and shoved Zip against the wall and held the length of the blade against his neck, seething and panting and… not killing him.

As his face smoked and dripped off in places from the painful borax douse he'd been given, his pained eyes raised to look into hers. He looked like a wounded, disillusioned puppy dog. He didn't struggle against her or try to fight her. In effect, he was going to let her kill him if she so chose. Her eyebrows worked in together, her emotions were going nuts, she was tangled inside of herself with painful amounts of anger, betrayal, confusion, hurt. He had been her friend, he had been there for her. The hunter in her wanted to kill him, but another part of her felt like this would be nothing but cold-blooded murder if she did.

"Alex." Sam's gentle, firm voice was right behind her and pulled her out of her thoughts. "I got this."

She didn't protest his offer. She backed up, breathing hard and shaking from sick adrenaline, running a hand through her hair as she tried to steady her racing heart. Sam had picked up the discarded sword and held Zip at the end of it.

Dean hobbled over to Scott, who had sat there the entire time with tape over his mouth and a shocked expression on his face. When Dean ripped the tape off his mouth, the thirty-something year old gasped in some deep breaths and looked around with crazy eyes. "Wh-what is even going on right now?" he asked, voice high with fear.

"Leviathan," Sam said grimly, his hard eyes staring into Zip's the entire time.

Scott looked absolutely stumped. "L-le-what-athan?"

Alex's high-strung state of emotions caused her to give him a short, cynical, angry answer that hadn't even been asked of her. "Monsters are real, demons exist, ghosts fuck shit up all the time, and basically every terrifying urban legend you've ever heard of is true."

Scott looked even further confused. "Wh…ah?"

"Way to make him feel good about it, Alex," Dean muttered, cutting through the duct tape strapping Scott to the chair he was in.

Alex was staring at Zip again and she stood beside Sam, crossed her arms, gave him a deep scowl. "Give me one reason why we shouldn't cut your head off right now."

At the end of a sword, Zip looked entirely desolate and lonely. His voice was soft and despondent when he answered her. "Because I'm your friend."

Dean glanced over in aggravation. "Okay, hold up on the Hallmark hour," he said sourly. He pulled Scott up by the shoulder and made the move out motion by circling his finger around then jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "Scott, you gotta go. Now. Pack enough to get you by then drive and never come back."

Scott, struggling to understand what was happening, looked absolutely resistant to that idea. "Okay, I get that these things mean business, you know, but I can't just, like, uproot my life!" he protested.

"Sure you can," Dean replied cynically—he wasn't paying much attention to Scott. He only had eyes for Zip, who he clearly loathed. "It's not as hard as you think. If you like being alive, don't look back till you get someplace where you don't speak the language."

Scott seemed to sense that none of the Winchesters had much interest in telling him more and he swallowed down his misgivings. "All right. I... I'm going. Thank you… I guess." He left the shop with a few sad backwards looks around the place that had always been in his family. And then he was gone.

Sam still held Zip at the end of the sword and Alex stood beside him with her arms still crossed tightly. Dean, recovering from his injuries, was able to walk much more normally as he swaggered over. His eyes were sharp and accusing as he approached Zip and stood on Sam's other side. "I knew you were shady the second I laid eyes on you, kid," he said in a low growl.

Zip's eyes darted over to Dean's. "So shady in fact that I just saved all three of your asses and have been doing that for a pretty extended period of time now," he challenged. He had a way of speaking that gave the impression that he was on some kind of substance from the fidgety, nervous, fast gait his speech pattern took.

Dean didn't like Zip's reply. "Enough bullshit, explain yourself." He grabbed Zip by the front of his hooded jacket and shook him hard enough that Zip's head cracked against the wall. "Why are you following her?!"

"I protect her," Zip answered through gritted teeth, and he obviously disliked Dean just as much as Dean disliked him. "Like I always have."

Dean let go with a shove, letting Sam's sword keep Zip in place. "Okay well riddle me this: why do you care at all, huh? For whatever jacked-up reason the rest of your gooey dickhead family does? Or maybe it's because you screwed her!"

Zip's face registered shock. "Don't talk about her like that," he said, immediately defensive at Dean's thoughtless comment. Dean's eyebrows shot up high in indignant surprise. Zip's jaw ticked as he struggled to not lose his temper. "The angel. His thoughts and feelings… they became our own. And forgive me if I'm wrong, but… I think I got the strongest dose." His eyes slowly slid to look at Alex.

Dean looked like he had a bad taste in his mouth. "Well that's just…" he couldn't seem to find the word he was looking for.

"So, what?" Sam demanded uncertainly. "So now you're—you're on our side or something?"

Zip seemed earnest and heartfelt. "I always have been." He paused and attempted to explain himself. "I'm not like the others of my kind. They say it's because I'm defective. I think perhaps it's because… because I'm special." He chuckled just slightly. "Seems like an egotistical conclusion to jump to, or perhaps a naive one, but it's one I've reached all the same."

His intellectual way of phrasing himself seemed to really piss Dean off. "Forget the philosophy class!" he barked. "You are just like the rest of your kind, and I'll tell you why… because you were created to be an evil, bastard, asshole monster—it's in your fucking DNA and I don't care what you say or what you think. You're the bad guy!" He was getting in Zip's face. "Now you tell us right now and maybe we don't cut your head off... what the hell is Dick Roman building in Wisconsin?" Zip looked confused and Dean mistook that for being caught out. "Yeah. That's right. We figured it out, and my friend Bobby Singer died to find that out, too. So what's he building?"

"I'm sorry about your friend," Zip said, shaking his head evenly and ruefully. "I don't know—if I did, I would tell you. But I'm simply not in the loop. Him and all the others view me as the weakest link—they'd like to see me dead just as much as they'd like to see you dead." He had the audacity to give a little smile and laugh as he stood there at the end of a sword and looked at Dean in a quizzical fashion. "You—you think it's just gonna stay like this? Petty little murders here and there under the radar? No. Trust me, no. Dick wants the entire world to be his, just like he always has. Whatever's in Wisconsin is part of his plan to subjugate the human race, I guarantee it. My advice is keep your heads down and stay out of his way. Let me protect you."

Dean scoffed deeply. "You, protect us? No offense but you're out of your damn, hundred-pound mind." He got no response and when Zip remained distracted, he snapped a finger in Zip's face, demanding the Leviathan's gaze. "Hey—stop looking at her," he thundered, making Zip look at him instead of his sister. "You're talking to me right now."

Zip became cold and lofty and threatening. "Don't forget who you're talking to, Dean Winchester," he said quietly. "I could end your self-loathing riddled existence all in a heartbeat. I could gobble you down before Sam even knew what was happening." Chilling words that he said so casually. And then he gave a mild shrug and he became less ominous. "But I won't. I choose not to."

Dean looked at the scrawny little Leviathan and narrowed his eyes, considered something for a very long moment—looked at his silent, stony sister then exchanged a brief glance with his brother. And then Dean did something he hadn't predicted he would do. "You know what?" he asked Zip in a hard voice. "Call me crazy, but I'm gonna let you walk today. You saved our skin, killed your own kind… I'm gonna give you a chance to live. But you stay the hell away from us. Especially my sister, you understand?"

Zip's eyebrows moved in together slightly. "I… I don't know if I can do that."

Dean darkened and his voice grew intensely dangerous. "Well lemme make it easy for you. Next time I see you hanging around, expect your head to detach from your body. We clear?"

Zip swallowed down Dean's words then didn't reply at all. Instead, he looked at Alex pleadingly. "Please—just, just give me just a chance. I know I don't dese—"

Sam looked absolutely pissed and smacked Zip in the side of the face with the broad side of the sword, startling Zip out of his lovesick plea. "Hey, idiot—leave her alone."

Alex rolled her eyes and walked off a little, shaking her head at the lunacy of it all. Sam and Dean backed off of Zip carefully, eyeing him the whole time. The surviving Leviathan gave a very hefty, regretful sigh and began to roll up his sleeves as he knelt over George's body. "…What are you doing?" Dean asked with a pinched expression.

There was a self-conscious shrug. "I'm gonna eat them." At the three disgusted stares he got from the Winchesters, Zip huffed. "I don't like it anymore than you do, but you got a better way to make them stay dead?" He waited for them to stop staring at him, and when they didn't, he grew mildly sheepish. "Please don't watch," he mumbled. "It's intensely embarrassing."

Dean practically sneered. "Oh gosh, sweetheart, we just wouldn't wanna embarrass you, now would we?"

The Winchesters left him in peace after that and Zip made sure Joyce and George would never threaten them ever again. When he finished, a depressed Zip went outside to find his Suzuki had been demolished—the tires were slashed and the bike had been hit with a car, it looked like. No doubt thanks to Dean Winchester. Crestfallen, Zip wandered the streets of the city, trying to find them again. He didn't know what his purpose was if it wasn't to protect Alex Winchester.

---

Five Days Later
Lebanon, Indiana

Sam hadn't slept since the showdown with Zip—first he tried sleeping pills, then going for an exhausting run, then reading a boring book on theology—none of it worked. Trying for a definitive solution, Dean had brought tons of liquor to the motel room where they had been staying and the siblings had gotten rip-roaring drunk. The idea had been Sam would have to pass out. But Dean and Alex woke up the next morning with splitting headaches and no idea what happened the night before (Dean found himself passed out in front of the air conditioning unit with a pair of boxers on his head, Alex came to in the bathtub wearing a pair of Sam's huge boots). Also, no Sam. He was missing. His phone was there and so was the car. He had just… disappeared.

After a frantic search, they found out that a 'Sam Smith' had been admitted to the local hospital after being hit by a car. They were given no other information and double-timed it down to the hospital with no idea if he were even still alive or what. The on-duty doctor told them that Sam's injuries were pretty mild (sprained wrist, broken rib, some lacerations and cuts and minor scrapes). However, Sam had been admitted to the psychiatric ward because he was hallucinating so badly and so sleep-deprived that the doctors were concerned for his mental health. Apparently they had given Sam as many sedatives as humanly safe and he still wasn't sleeping.

Dean and Alex hurried down the hospital hallway and to the room the doctor directed them to. They couldn't lay eyes on their brother soon enough—they were both sick with worry (and still pretty hungover, too, which only made things worse). They were beginning to realize how serious and deadly the situation had become, how maybe Sam hadn't been totally truthful about how bad off he was.

When they found his room, they could see in through the small viewing window on the outside of it. Sam was laying in bed and propped up on some pillows. He wore a white shirt and white linen pants. He looked absolutely wretched and exhausted and miserable. One of his wrists was bound and wrapped, the other had a hospital bracelet on it.

Wordlessly, Dean and Alex entered, suddenly quiet and cautious where they'd been hellbent and hurried before. Sam looked up as they entered and he looked faintly relieved to see them. "How you feeling?" Dean asked. There was a certain grimness to the question, because it was pretty damn obvious how Sam was feeling.

"Maybe you should cancel my UFC fight," Sam replied drearily, trying to smile. It looked more like he was in pain.

Alex looked at him and quite literally felt pain for him. "Jesus, Sam," she breathed.

"I know," he said heavily, still trying to smile. "I look great, right?"

Dean sat down at the end of the bed very carefully, using his big brother voice. "Sam, we're gonna find you help."

Alex was dragging the chair from the little nearby desk over to sit closer to Sam up at the top of the bed. Sam exhaled and looked away from his siblings. "I don't think it's out there, Dean."

There was a slight frown. "We don't know that," Dean replied.

"We know better than most," Sam replied. His voice barely had any tone to it—it was so flat, so weary, so absent. "It's all snake oil. Last faith healer we hooked up with had a reaper on a leash, remember?"

Dean got mildly frustrated. "Yeah, Sam, I remember." He stood up and faced away in an effort to gather himself.

Alex tried, too. "Sam, there's other options out there, I mean…" she trailed off and couldn't come up with anything to say. Her chest was tight, her mind raced. There had to be something, something.

Sam smiled ever so slightly. "Can't think of anything, can you? I can't either. I mean, I'm just saying…"

"What?" Dean turned around, getting a little combative. "That you don't want help?"

"No, I'm just saying…" Sam looked from his brother to his sister sadly and it sounded like he'd given up completely. "Don't do this to yourselves."

Dean stiffened. "Sam, if we don't find something—"

"Then I'll die," Sam supplied, cutting his brother off and leaving the room silent and shocked. "Dean… we knew this was coming."

"No," Dean said, refusing to accept it.

"When you put my soul back…"

"No," Dean repeated, shaking his head all the more.

"...Cas warned you about all the crap it would—"

"Screw Cas!" Dean exclaimed, his face twisted and angry and hurt. "Quit being Dalai frickin' Yoda about this, okay?" He punched his own hand with his own fist. "Get pissed!"

Sam sighed long and hard. "I'm too tired," he said. "I'm just done with this, Dean. This is what happens when you throw a soul into Lucifer's dog bowl. And you think there's just gonna be some, some magical cure out there?"

Dean looked utterly angry and sad, all at the same time. "I'm gonna find something," he retorted stiffly. "Don't you tell me I won't." And without anything further, he left the room in an upset huff.

Alex reached out for Sam's hand, touching him gently and reassuringly. "Sam…"

He flinched at her touch and immediately pulled his hand away, seeming incredibly uncomfortable at the gesture. Confused, Alex pulled her hand back halfway. Had she done something wrong? Sam saw her expression and his eyes glanced behind her a few times like he was seeing something there. "Can you… I'm sorry, please just, I can't—just don't touch me," he said feebly, and Alex nodded understanding even though she didn't understand at all. Sam looked embarrassed and upset and swallowed, let out a breath, then stared at the end of his bed bleakly for a minute as he thought about something. His eyes moved toward Alex but didn't look at her. "Cas did warn Dean about this being an eventuality," he said quietly. "I mean… even though he broke my mind, I think it was gonna break eventually, you know?" His pained eyes rose to look into hers. "I'm just trying to tell you… it's okay. I've accepted this. There's consequences to everything. Especially what I did. I mean did any of us really think I could take on Lucifer and jump in the pit and come back from that without paying a price?" He saw how Alex was reacting with nothing but despair and guilt and Sam shook his head faintly. His eyes appealed to her gently. "Don't blame yourself, Alex. I would do it all over again. Lucifer's locked away. You're alive. I'm happy with that." He gave a soft, cynical laugh. "I think me dying is the least of everyone's problems."

"Don't you fucking tell me that," she told him in a trembling, low tone. "Don't give up. Dean and I are gonna find a way."

Sam sighed again, seeming to find everything tiresome. He nodded a little. "But if you don't… just know I don't blame you." He smiled at her a little, and it was bittersweet. "Everyone has to die eventually, right?"

Alex's face worked oddly. "Yeah," she said softly, her mind in a deep, dark place. "Everyone has to die eventually." Her eyes met his again and her stubbornness reared its head as her voice hardened. "But you're not dying yet, Sammy. Not yet."

He didn't seem to hear her. His eyes were locked on a place over her shoulder and he had a growing expression of horror on his face. She looked, and there was nothing there at all.

---

About Twenty-Four Hours Later

The Impala carried two silent, worried people across hundreds of miles fast. Too fast to be legal. But Sam's life was on the line.

Dean gunned the Impala's engines for all they were worth. Alex fretted in the passenger seat. Why had Sam been so adamant about her leaving? She had tried to stay with him so he wouldn't be alone while Dean called a bunch of contacts and tried to find a healer, a shaman, someone who could help. But Sam had lost it at one point and screamed for Alex to 'get the fuck away from me!' and 'don't you know I'm the villain!?' and the doctors themselves had asked her to leave the premises as she seemed to trigger something in Sam that he couldn't handle.

She was so worried about her twin brother that it had her feeling physically sick. She'd taken more painkillers than usual but they couldn't numb her out of feeling scared shitless. What if Sam died? If he didn't sleep, he would die—it was science. Humans died if they didn't sleep.

Their only hope against Sam's demise was apparently some guy named Emmanuel. He lived out in Colorado with his wife and was reportedly a legitimate healer. One of Bobby's old hunting buddies swore on his grave to Dean that this Emmanuel character had healed him of blindness in his gimp eye. Alex just hoped this guy was the real deal and could please god do something for Sammy. They were almost there to the address they'd tracked down. Maybe fifteen more minutes.

Another thing had Alex feeling glum and mournful. The date on her wristwatch. She had noticed halfway through the day. It was April 28th. As if he could sense her many thoughts that were begging to be spoken out loud, Dean glanced at her and shifted his hand on the wheel. "Awful quiet over there."

She glanced his direction and wondered if she should tell him what was on her mind besides their brother—Sammy was a given. But she doubted Dean knew or remembered what tomorrow was for her. She took in a deep breath and looked out the window at the passing scenery. It was sunny and pleasant outside, mocking the way her heart felt. Like a winter night—dark, cold, bare. "Tomorrow's April 29th," she said quietly. One of her hands was in her jeans pocket, fingers lightly caressing the ring she still carried. "Would've been three years."

Dean couldn't hide his surprise. "Oh." He cleared his throat and frowned a little, obviously unsure how to react to her talking about Cas, much less her marriage to him. "Wow. Uh… you okay?"

Ever since Plucky's, that moment in the hallway, Dean had been much more understanding about things. Not that she'd given him many opportunities, but seeing her near tears had softened him, apparently. That and the whole Zip thing. She would never forget how Dean looked so puzzled that she had been with someone besides Cas. She felt the same. Confused about how that had happened at all. Even Dean, who had kind of hated that relationship, didn't understand her being able to leave it behind. "I just wish things hadn't turned out the way they did," Alex mused faintly, still staring out the window and trying to pinpoint for the thousandth time where it all went wrong. "He was a good person. He didn't deserve what happened to him."

She expected a scoff or a psh. But instead, Dean just looked mildly pensive. "Probably not," he agreed in a similarly thoughtful, apprehensive tone. "Seems like most of the decent people out there who try end up royally screwed in the end, huh?"

Alex looked at Dean in confusion. "…He's a decent person now? I thought you hated him."

Dean glanced her way. "I hate what he did. I hate the choices he made. I hate that Sam's in the shape he's in 'cause of Cas." He shook his head, pressed his lips in, visibly tried to work through something. "I still can't even get it through my mind that he killed you, Al. I never thought he would so much as let you get a paper cut and then I find you on the floor and you're not breathing and…" he trailed off, his expression pained. "He did that." Dean shook his head slowly. "He did some pretty terrible shit there at the end."

Alex couldn't disagree. "Haven't we all though?" she asked softly. "I mean we steal, lie, cheat for a living. I can't count how many innocent people we've murdered because they were hosts to demons…" It was a dark reality. One they didn't talk about much or ever. "None of us are exactly innocent, Dean."

Dean was silent for a minute. "You just wanna defend him," he finally said, but he wasn't being argumentative. He sounded pretty down. "Make it okay, what he did."

Alex shook her head. "No. It's never gonna be okay." She hesitated. "But, I understand why he did what he did. At least parts of it. Just like I understand what Dad did." She didn't really know where she was going with what she was saying so she tried to sum it all up. "We all make mistakes."

Dean sounded dark. "Yeah, well, some worse than others."

"It's not a contest," Alex replied vapidly, staring out the window unseeingly. Her eyes flickered back and forth over trees, houses. She imagined all the normal lives lived in those houses. She would never know what a normal life was. Not now, not ever. "Life is one clusterfuck after the other and we were born and raised into that so I mean, I've come to expect it," she reflected flatly. "But Cas…" her voice caught around his name. "This was all so much for him. It was new, it was overwhelming. It was too much." Her chest felt tight because she just wanted to hold him one last time and protect him from the things that had spelled his death. She needed Dean to understand that Castiel wasn't bad and that he wasn't evil and that yes he'd fucked up beyond belief but… it hadn't been entirely his fault, he wasn't the bad guy. "Something just broke inside of him. I didn't even recognize him that day. He changed. Got so angry at me. He… he thought I was with someone else, did you know that?"

She already knew he didn't—she'd never told Dean the details of Cas and how he'd ended up accidentally killing her. Dean gaped at her. "…With someone else?" he questioned incredulously. "He was jealous? …What was he, nuts?"

The sad truth was yes. "Yeah. He was." Alex remembered that moment and it was the worst thing she could think of or feel. "He just got stuck on that thought and forced a soul touch because he wanted to know the truth and…" she looked down, swallowed a painful lump in her throat. "It was an accident."

"Jesus," Dean breathed. He was quiet a long moment. He didn't look as much angry as he looked confused, disillusioned, sick. It would appear that the half year since it all happened had given him some kind of new, somber perspective. He sighed quietly. Sometimes Alex forgot Cas and Dean had been approaching a friendship and an understanding at the end until the shit hit the fan. "I guess you and I both know desperation does funny stuff to a guy."

"You mean Dad?" Alex asked, not sure if she were right or not.

"Yeah," he confirmed quietly, eyes far away as he watched the road ahead. "You know… Cas did a lot of stuff for us. Saved me from Hell, gave you a voice, helped us fight Heaven, got himself kicked out of the halo club… we owed him. Still do. No doubt. Just don't get how the hell he could have ever thought working with Crowley and keeping it from us was gonna do him any favors. Look where it got him, you know?"

She had the same thoughts every single fucking day. "He thought he could protect us," she said blankly. "He thought he could handle it alone."

Dean gave the softest, most pained laugh. "Sounds kinda like me, huh?" he asked, startling her. He shook his head, off in his own mind. He was incredibly grim. "This life ruins people. Tears you apart inside. Makes it impossible to see a reason for existing, some days. Sometimes I think…" he swallowed and his expression grew vastly more tense. "Maybe I'm next in line to go off the deep end and do a bunch of unthinkable shit to the people I love."

Alex pulled a face that said she was considering it but didn't find it very likely. "Not sure if Sam or me could have anything more unthinkable happen to us than what has already."

Dean sobered. "True."

She looked at him and prepared to ask him why he thought he was next in line—maybe try and help him talk through some feelings even though she was so exhausted emotionally. And just then, Dean's phone rang. He frowned, shifted, then pulled his phone out of his pocket and quickly muttered "crap, forgot," before answering. Alex listened to the following one-sided conversation.

"Hey James. No, no we found him—yeah, I forgot to call you back, sorry. Thanks for checking. Yeah. Been kinda freaking out. Uh—they don't know, he hasn't slept in like five, six days now. Yeah. No, no. We're only trying your magical witchy stuff if this Emmanuel guy doesn't work out. Don't want you down for the count unless it's last option. Mm-hm, some healer out in Colorado. Yeah, we hope so too. Oh, are you? Well maybe we can meet up once Sam's on his feet again. Still got some Leviathans to take down." He suddenly chuckled richly as a genuine smile made his eyes crinkle. "Ah, shut up, dork," he teased, very amused about something she'd just said. At Alex's watchfulness, Dean cleared his throat and wiped the boyish smile off his face and attempted to look serious. "Yeah, yeah, I'll talk to you later. Yup. You too."

Alex had turned her head to casually look out the window at the passing scenery—and then she whipped her head back to gawk at someone they had just passed—a man with hair the color of Cas's was sitting with his back to them on a picnic table at the park they had just passed—he was sitting on top of the table, with his feet on the bench part—just like Cas used to after Alex had shown him how. She swore he looked exactly like him, from the back at least, and her heart was racing, her breathing had picked up.

Jesus, now I'm seeing things like Sam does. Christ. It was just a guy with brown hair, calm down.

"Al?" Dean asked, seeing her heightened state of distress. "What's up?"

She shook her head, trying to calm herself. "T-thought I saw something," she said, a little worried about her mental state. "It was nothing." She tried to chalk it up to stress and the thoughts about the anniversary tomorrow. She cleared her throat and tried to concentrate on real life. "So… you and Jamie."

Dean tried to look like he didn't know what she was talking about. "Me and Jamie what?"

"I mean…" Alex remembered, clearly, Sam detailing the recent hunts to her and how Dean had mysteriously turned down some hot chick for no good reason. Alex had a private theory she'd maintained, and decided now was as good a time as any to test that theory. "Why else would you turn down some hot bar girl out of the blue?"

Dean knew what she was talking about, which sort of seemed to confirm it for her. "You mean the Amazon chick?" Bingo. He shrugged, trying to play it off. "Maybe I have a second sense about these things."

Alex made a horse sound—psh. "Yeah, and maybe I'm a good cook."

Her brother shot her a flustered look. "I just wasn't feeling it with that girl, is that really front page news? Sometimes it's there, sometimes it ain't." He apparently forgot to be sensitive because he felt put on the spot. "Speaking of, I gotta say, I'm curious. Leviathan versus angel, who wins that award?"

Alex looked at him with no expression whatsoever. "Seriously?" Did he honestly just ask her who was a better fuck…?

Dean stuck with it, even if it was a kind of insensitive question. "I mean, I'm curious."

Alex looked off and crossed her arms. "Angel. No contest." She glanced down at the map she had across her thighs, and her mind was very far away. "The house should be just ahead on the left."

Dean slowed the Impala and craned his neck to try and see the two-story home better as he parked on the street in front of it. The house was pretty run of the mill, but it did have a really nice landscape. Apparently Emmanuel liked gardening. Or maybe that was the wife that had been mentioned. There were flowers everywhere. Alex noticed they were mostly yellow flowers. Her heart tugged.

"Well, this it?" Dean asked dubiously. "Looks kinda… not what I was expecting." He shook his head and it was clear to see how worried he was about this panning out. "This feels like a long shot."

"Long shots've saved our asses before..." Alex offered hesitantly.

Dean considered that briefly. "Here's hoping." He put up his fist. "Pound it." She touched her fist to his and they got out of the car.

They wandered up the stairs slowly, eyeing their immediate surroundings closely. Alex paused to touch a handmade-looking birdhouse that was stuck beside the railing and through the shrub there via a tall post. Something about the birdhouse made her smile briefly to herself. Whoever had made it had obviously put a lot of heart into it.

Dean had already knocked on the door and a forty-something man answered. Dean hesitated as Alex, hands in her jacket pockets, joined him. "Hi. Uh, is this, uh, Daphne Allen's house?" Dean asked. "I'm looking for Emmanuel."

"Well, you found him," the man replied pleasantly. "Daphne's resting. If you don't mind…?" he gestured for Dean to move aside.

Dean nodded. "Oh, yeah, sure."

Emmanuel stepped outside and closed the door behind himself, waiting for Dean to speak. Alex had expected someone less… soccer dad. Dean seemed a little surprised, too. "Um… So, I was hoping, uh…" he trailed off and suddenly stiffened. Then Alex saw what he'd seen.

Visible through a gap in the window curtains, there was a woman bound to a chair and gagged—she was struggling profusely. Emmanuel's eyes abruptly turned black and he seized Dean and whirled him, smashed him against the door, raising a hand as Alex, angel blade already out, had been about to stab him. She went flying back with devastating force and hit her head hard against the porch railing—so hard that her vision went white and hearing became muffled. Groaning in pained protest, she put a hand to the back of her head—pain exploded at the touch and her fingertips became warm and wet thanks to a good gash. Alex tried blinking repeatedly to get her clarity back. Dean—demon—her blade—she tried valiantly to push herself up. She heard the demon talking to Dean somewhere close and she tried to find them, but her vision was still white-hot and everything was crossing over everything else. "Sorry, buddy, but we can't have you two whisking off this Emmanuel guy. Whatever Emmanuel is, Crowley's gonna want him—a lot more than he wants the likes of you these days. So…"

There was a sudden scream as the sound of metal plunging into flesh squelched. Struggling to push herself up onto an elbow, Alex caught sight of Dean through her wavering vision—he was kicking the dead demon off the demon blade and down the stairs of the porch. She relaxed, incredibly thankful Dean was okay. She thought it was odd he didn't immediately rush to her or even look at her, but he was staring down the stairs, past where she could see—a shrub cut off her vision. Woozy, she blinked a few more times and opened her mouth to ask Dean for a freaking hand and maybe a trip to the hospital.

And then, the moment that would change her life.

"What was that?" she heard someone ask. That voice made her veins freeze up. "…Who are you?" the voice asked again.

Dean was dumbstruck. All the response he could muster was a very stunned, "uh…"

Alex thought she must have hit her head harder than she thought—because that voice. And then footsteps began to sound up the stairs and the man who had been speaking came into view.

Immediately, Alex's body was struck by emotional lightning, her breath was knocked out of her all over again. Her mouth fell open into an expression of incredulous semi-horror and she lost the ability to function for a few short seconds.

Standing there in the flesh and staring at her with a strange, stunned, confused expression, wearing clothes she didn't recognize… the man she had dreamed of and mourned and, she thought, lost forever.

Castiel.