Song Remains the Same
Chapter 101 / The Rise of Dick
"I think you have to pay for love with bitter tears."
- Edith Piaf
His hand pushed against her mouth bruisingly, the back of her head ached against the hard tin shed, and he stood way too close—his weight and his other hand were preventing either of her arms from movement, trapping her in silence and stillness.
Even though Zip was an inch or two shorter than Alex, he was strong and he'd managed to make sure she had no way at all of getting any kind of jump on him whatsoever. Her blood pounded hard in her own ears and her hammering pulse matched her racing breath as her petrified eyes stared into a face she thought she never had to look into again. A youthful almost-teenage countenance was in front of her, and he was just as she remembered: owner of a head full of unkempt sandy brown curls and pale blue eyes set in a plain, clean-shaven face. He still wore jeans that were slightly too-long and a hoodie that was a little too big on him. Oddly enough, Zip's expression wasn't foul or hostile despite how he'd all but attacked her just now. To the contrary, he looked worried and then when he knew she'd recognized him, his hand softened on her mouth.
"Don't scream," he whispered, then slowly took his hand away.
Alex responded by writhing viciously against his hold as she got her wits back. "What the hell are you doing here?!" she demanded, a sound of frustration and anger escaping as she found that he was way too strong to break free from. The tin shivered as she fought his grip. "Let go of me!"
He didn't. His baby-young face showed desperation and his voice matched—he sounded urgent, like it was life or death, and his hands only tightened further on her arms. "I know you don't wanna see me and I know you said you'd kill me if you ever saw me again but Alex, it's not safe for you here!" He paused for effect, his expression over the top with an earnest pleading quality. He continued to beseech her. "If I could trace your brothers to this cabin that means they can too. Dick wants you, he won't stop until he has you, and I don't know what he'll do when he does!"
Alex winced and groaned from exertion as she tried to yank out of his steely grip. "You're crazy, lemme go!"
Zip's face descended into a dark expression. "I'm not crazy! I'm not the one mooning around planting a garden and dancing with bees while the entire fucking Leviathan population is out there to get my woman!" Alex went still, looking at Zip with a slightly-horrified expression. He had been watching them? He'd been watching Cas? Suddenly, Zip seemed a lot more threatening to her. He was dead serious and right in her face, his hot breath hitting her face as he spoke. "Look, I am here to tell you this: Dick Roman is seriously gunning for you. Like, won't stop until he gets you. So let me help you, please!"
"Help me?" Alex asked, her tone implying that was unthinkable. He was crazy.
He looked astonished by her reaction to him. "Yes! Let me protect you!"
"…Protect me?!" she echoed in growing incredulity. She struggled again valiantly, getting intensely angry when he didn't let go. "I want you to get away from me!"
Zip's hands tightened on her painfully as sudden intense anger flared in his eyes. "I'm not the enemy, why don't you fucking see that?!" he demanded, shaking her once so hard that her head knocked against the tin behind her. "I've only ever helped you and loved you! Stop holding what I am against me!" He sounded deranged and obsessed, and Alex found herself wishing so hard she hadn't been stupid enough to assume Zip was gone for good. I am so screwed…
And right at that moment a familiar person appeared behind Zip and the second he did, he seized the Leviathan and yanked him off of Alex in a blur of motion. Thrown aside like a ragdoll, Zip smashed into the old rusted truck nearby with a huge crash where he was momentarily incapacitated. A little shocked, Alex blinked rapidly as Cas quickly came to her, his touch so much gentler and more careful than Zip's had been. There was a sickened and worried expression on the angel's face. "Are you hurt?" he asked, searching for any sign that she was.
Breathless, her voice was faint. "I'm… I'm okay," she managed, looking at him and seeing Cas as himself for what felt like the first time in forever. His expression was fierce and dark, he looked like he was present and mentally sharp. She was astounded and taken aback. As his attention turned to the Leviathan, his expression became even more stormy and devastating. There was none of the crazy, distracted, silly Castiel there in that moment. He was him.
Groaning a little, Zip was standing and pulling himself out of the wreckage Cas had thrown him into. One of his arms reformed itself as black goo dripped out. At the same time, a huge gouge in his leg filled back in. He was on his feet again and Cas moved forward a little, putting himself between the Leviathan and Alex protectively. Cas regarded Zip with utter contempt and hatred. His low, furious voice shook as he made it crystal clear. "You are never to touch her again, boy, do you hear me?"
"…Boy?" Zip challenged, his tone colored by disdain. He stepped forward, not intimidated. "I'm older than you."
"That's debatable," Cas growled. At his sides, his fists were clenched tight.
Zip's eyes dropped to Cas's fists and then of all things, the slightest smirk crossed his face as his eyes raised back to Castiel's face. "Don't you have some gardening to do, bee man?"
Cas responded by moving forward more until he and Zip were only a few feet apart. He ignored the goading and drew the line in the sand. "I know who you are," the angel said in a voice laced with utter loathing. "You seduced my wife when she was grieving; you took advantage of her." There was an unspoken promise of vengeance in Cas's dark tone.
Zip obviously didn't like Castiel any better than Castiel liked him. Disgust twisted his face. "Took advantage? Seduced?" he echoed, then got this little look in his eye that really asked for it. "What we did…" he raised his chin a little and looked at Castiel with an air of triumph. "Trust me. She wanted it."
If Zip had been inviting a fight, he certainly got it. Apparently, Castiel wasn't as much of a pacifist as he'd been claiming he was lately. Apparently, when it came to certain things, he was still very willing to go to battle. The second Zip said Alex had wanted it, Cas's face became utterly consumed by rage and he grabbed Zip by his shirt, hitting him across the face so hard that a huge gooey black hole appeared in the Leviathan's cheek. Zip blindly grabbed a hold of Cas by the coat as he received the hit and the two of them went down to the ground, trading brutal blows. The second Zip got the slightest upper hand, the second he was on top, he slammed his hand into Cas's stomach, pushing it in hard until the angel screamed bloody murder, his eyes clenching shut in agony. "Did you forget?" Zip asked, straining as he pushed his hand further and further in, killing Cas slowly as he did. "Leviathans… can kill… anything," he hissed. "Even angels."
Not today. Alex had desperately begun to look around for any weapon the second Cas and Zip had started to fight—her jacket was inside and she was unarmed—she swiped up the first thing she saw: a shovel with a rotting wooden handle. She hit Zip with it hard, attempting to stun him and then chop his head off. But the swing was clumsy and she misjudged the impact and lost her balance even as Zip pushed her back hard in needless self defense, sending her stumbling backwards to fall to the ground.
At that second, Sam ran around the corner, his expression confused. He must have heard the commotion and the crash, because he had his hand hovering at his belt. The second he saw what was happening, his face went slack with realization. "Hey!" He reached for his gun, the only weapon he had on him, but Zip was too fast and rushed him even as Sam got the gun out, football tackling him into the shed, which collapsed partially and pinned Sam in place by the leg as a pained yell tore out of the hunter.
Even as that was going down, the stolen SUV pulled up fast and hard with a spray of gravel and Dean, machete already in hand, charged out about ten yards off. He had his murder face on and his sights set on the Leviathan. Zip turned and left Sam trapped in the collapsed shed debris then leisurely walked to meet Dean as though nothing concerned him in the slightest.
Alex was up after being knocked down and she was torn between who to go to—Cas was on the ground to her right writhing in pain and Sam was stuck to her left, groaning in pain with his leg under a metal beam that had fallen down from the shed frame. Alex rushed to her brother. Her boots made tin groan as she dug her feet in and bent down to grab the beam with two hands. She hauled the beam upward with gritted teeth even as Sam pushed it up with a loud, pained grunt. He scooted backwards and pulled his leg free and cried out as he did. "Think it's broken," he wheezed out between sharp, short breaths. His leg was twisted weirdly. It was definitely broken.
Even as Sam discovered he couldn't walk, Dean was bearing down on Zip, his machete held with white knuckles. The second he was close enough, he took a brutal, deadly swing at Zip, who was inexplicably just standing there waiting almost as if in boredom. When Dean swung, Zip abruptly ducked, dodging the swipe made for his neck and he caught the blade in his hand, suffering a blow that almost severed the limb completely—but he didn't miss a beat. His other hand came up to seize the blade hard and he caught the hunter completely off guard when he used the machete against Dean—swinging it hard and fast with Dean still holding on. Like Dean weighed nothing, Zip catapulted him into the air by letting go mid-swing. Dean soared through the air and hit a huge old oak tree about ten feet up, then crashed to the ground in a stunned heap. He didn't move once he landed.
Zip turned around to face Alex again. He'd incapacitated two humans and an angel, and Alex stood before him weaponless and terrified. The only one he hadn't critically injured. Breathing hard, Zip approached her, a wild gleam in his eyes. "You know why we were locked away into Purgatory, right?" he asked, and he seemed angry and also proud. "Because we can kill angels. We can kill anything." Zip walked a little closer. On the ground near Alex, Cas had a hand on his torso and his every breath was accompanied by a pained wheezing sound. He was trying to push himself up, but Zip had obviously wounded him. "Whatever Leviathans you've gotten the jump on before was pure, unmitigated luck, understand?" Zip said to Alex, then looked down at Cas with a spine-chilling fascination. "I could kill him right now. Do you understand that?" His pale eyes came up to hers, and there was an angry, slighted, wounded fire in there, especially when she edged closer to Cas protectively. "Even though I'm the weakest of my kind, I could kill this useless brain-dead angel you love so much and I could kill your brothers then take you with me and make you do whatever I wanted because I am stronger than all of you! All of you!"
Red-faced, he looked like the villain who'd lost his mind and was about to destroy an entire city. And then his expression softened, the fire in his eyes faded. Sadness became the predominant emotion "But I won't. I couldn't. The thought of hurting you or causing you pain is the worst thing conceivable to me. And I don't want to be the bad guy." He waited for her to respond, but she only stood before him with a tense expression and without moving a muscle. She was trying to figure out how to fight him or catch him off guard. No borax. No weapon at all. Behind Zip, Dean was stirring, dragging himself on the ground really slowly. He looked injured, his face a mask of determined pain, but he had his machete in hand and a mission in his eyes. Alex swallowed hard. Stall. Stall. "Doesn't that make you feel something for me?" Zip asked, eyebrows moving in towards each other in hurt confusion. He was unaware of Dean's slow approach. "Anything?" When she said nothing, Zip began to gain back his indignant fire. "Why would you sleep with me if you didn't feel at least something?"
It was like something out of her worst nightmare to have Zip here, nevermind him bringing this all up in front of Castiel. She could have tricked Zip or played him at this point to buy time and perhaps mercy too, but the thought of pretending to have feelings for him was so disgustingly unbearable to her that she found the sharp truth shooting out of her instead. "That was a mistake," she said tremulously in a hard voice. "I feel nothing for you. I never did, and I never will."
The Leviathan's face registered emotional pain and betrayal, like he had put all his hopes into her feeling any small thing for him. Then he swept a hand out toward Cas. "He's gone! He's lost!" he raged. "And not only him but your family doesn't want you around; if they did they would never have left you at Sunny Meadows! I protected you, I did all of their jobs, I kept you safe, me! I never abandoned you even once, I did everything for you! Why would you want to stay here with the brothers who left you behind and the angel who's in pieces on the floor?! I can give you whatever you want! Money, a home, things, I can become any man or woman in the world you desire! You don't have to love me, not at first, you just need to give me a chance. Alex, come on, we were friends… you know me!"
Alex felt real fear in that moment because he was so utterly fanatical that he came off as rabid and crazed. "You're insane," she whispered, not sure what she'd done to make him act like this.
Zip followed her retreat. On the ground, Cas was groaning and on his side, supporting himself with an arm as he breathed laboriously—he watched Zip and Alex hawkishly even through his strained expression. "You don't understand all these feelings he put in me," Zip said in a low, growling voice, his eyes locked onto Alex. "They won't go away or be quiet, they rule my life and I need you!"
Finally close enough and communicating with Alex with his gaze alone, Dean was still on the ground but he tossed his machete to her, and she lunged and caught it, shocking Zip, who lost his air of confidence when he found himself at the end of the sharp blade. "You need to leave," Alex warned in a trembling low voice. "Now."
His eyes, so vulnerable and full of misunderstanding and confusion, went from the blade to her. "You wouldn't…" he murmured softly, but he didn't sound so sure.
Zip was right. She wouldn't. He had been her friend for months before she found out who and what he was and even though she didn't want to believe it, she already knew that he was genuine in that respect. He had been her source of comfort, albeit the wrong one, on a stormy night not that long ago, and that had been real, he had been kind, he hadn't forced that—she'd done it of free will. She didn't have feelings for him, or at least not many. But he was right. She couldn't bring herself to kill him in cold blood. She tried to bluff and with a yell she slashed the blade across his chest, drawing sickening black goo at the action.
On the ground, panting and in pain from an apparent leg injury, Dean was aghast when she did nothing more. "Al, what are you doing?! Kill him!"
She heard the command, but she couldn't move. Zip stared down in disbelief at the damage she'd done, for a second so shocked that he didn't react at all. And then he abruptly snapped as his heartbroken eyes darted up to hers. There were tears in the pale blue depths. "You're just like everyone else in this godforsaken world!" he screamed, then shocked everyone when he shoved Alex backwards. His unchecked superhuman strength sent her ramming back toward the shed frame… and straight into old rusted rod that poked out haphazardly.
There was a sickening sound of flesh bursting open.
And Alex suddenly smelled the unmistakable tang of blood as pain ricocheted.
Silence overtook the scene as everyone stared in horror. Alex looked down at herself slowly, trying to locate the reason why there was a burning, agonizing hole of pain in the center of her chest. For a minute, nothing made sense to her. A smallish metal rod that was slick with dark red blood protruded out of her chest by about twelve inches and she stared at it, her mind slow to comprehend that she'd just been impaled. Breathing was nearly impossible—the pain was deafening and crippling—and for a minute she could only think I'm going to die. I'm dying. Oh my god. And then, as her dazed eyes found Cas's, she remembered. No. I won't die. I'll live in pain and heal slowly and this is gonna be just like when I tried to kill myself. The pain and the thought of walking around with a huge gaping wound in her chest and back for however long became something that pissed her off. "Ughh…" she complained through the agony, getting madder and madder as it sank in mentally and she realized how out of practice she was when it came to fighting. This was her fault. "Are you fucking kidding me?!" she grimaced, trying not to move. It hurt so bad. A wretched groan came out of her mouth as she shut her eyes against the quickly-intensifying levels of pain that were crashing over her.
Sam and Dean were both staring at her from where they were stuck on the ground nearby, nearly-identical expressions of utter horror on their faces and that's what she first saw when she cracked her eyes open slightly. "I'm fine," she assured them in a raspy, winded voice—but they didn't understand, they both thought they were looking at their sister's last moments. "Son of a bitch!" she seethed, choking as she tried to take in a deep breath.
"I'm sorry—" Zip managed, wide-eyed and stunned at what he had done to her. "I'm so sorry—"
Cas was up, and he had stumbled over to Alex despite his own injuries. He stood in front of her as he leveled the shocked Leviathan with a furious glare. "Get—away—from her," he growled, his shoulders heaving up and down as he breathed hard. A soft little cry of pain from Alex caused Cas to turn and his face morphed into that of extreme concern.
"Get—me off—of here—" she wheezed pitifully, her hands weakly reaching for him. The levels of pain were so high that passing out was beginning to feel like an option. The shock and adrenaline was wearing off and leaving her more miserable with every passing second. Cas took her hands in his and gently, slowly pulled her forward, his expression twisted. Oh, the pain when he did that. Alex shut her eyes and gritted her teeth against cries of absolute torment as the metal rod made mind-numbing agony scream through her entire nervous system. Cas looked completely sickened at her pain, like it was hurting him just as much as it was hurting her. It was so much pain and her limbs gave out completely as he wrapped an arm around her back and pulled her toward him. She collapsed into his arms as he pulled her the last couple inches off of the rod. Weakened from whatever Zip had done to him, Cas collapsed down to his knees but kept his hold of her, one of his hands now against the bleeding exit wound in her chest, the other at her back at the entry point. Unbearable agony pulsed to the beat of her heart, and warm, sticky blood oozed out at an alarming rate.
"I can't heal you quite yet," Cas managed, his face conveying his utter despair at having to see her suffer. "He wounded me too badly…"
Half-cognizant, Alex stared up at Cas's face in a daze. She barely understood the words he said, and her vision was blackening around the edges.
Standing back and watching how the angel held the fallen hunter, Zip had a strange, jealous look on his face. "You're pathetic," the Leviathan accused of the angel, but his voice wavered and sounded defeated, blank, dazed. "You're broken. You're nothing. And… she's choosing you." He stared at Cas, completely mystified, then appealed to Alex one last time, his voice rising in pitch and volume alike as his desperation grew. "He can't give you anything, he can't do anything for you! He's a lost cause!"
Crippled by pain, Alex was stiff in Cas's arms and nearing delirium. "Maybe he is," she managed to reply in a faint voice. She held a hand uselessly to Cas's on her chest, trying to press away some pain. Her fingers curled into the spaces between his. Her voice was barely audible then. "But he's my lost cause."
Zip stumbled back a few steps, his face contorting as more tears came. "You'll be sorry you did this to me," he said, sounding as if he were about to become hysterical. "I promise you'll be sorry!" And he turned and ran, his footsteps crashing loudly against fallen leaves.
Alex shuddered then began to cry uselessly because the pain was so much—the most she had ever felt in her entire life. "It hurts, shit it hurts…" she managed in a cracking voice.
"I'm so sorry," he answered in a whispering voice that cracked a little, too.
Sam, panting and sweating nearby with his useless leg off to the side beside him, was frantic. "Cas, hurry, heal her, she's bleeding out!"
Cas looked Sam's way guiltily, much calmer and more resigned than what currently made sense to the middle Winchester. "Your sister can't die, Sam."
Dean was propped onto his arms with one of his hips bearing all his weight. "What?" He'd been watching in utter frozen horror. "Wait," he said, struggling to understand why Alex wasn't already dead. "Wait." He grasped for understanding, his face showing how he had no idea what was going on or how to process what he'd just been told. "You mean… like, ever?" he asked softly.
"Correct," Cas said heavily. "Never."
Alex's soft, pained crying continued and Dean looked like he couldn't handle it. "Cas, come on man, do something!" he insisted desperately, unable to bear the sight of his sister covered in blood and in pain.
Cas shut his eyes and concentrated hard, healing himself the best he could and enabling himself to be capable of healing humans again. Then he touched a hand to the place below Alex's collarbone, and the flesh knit itself back together, the pain faded, and she gasped in a deep breath as she was abruptly completely fine again. The blood was gone, but tear tracks remained on her cheeks. One of Cas's familiar hands came to cup the side of her face and he wiped away the tear, his expression strange and hurt as he looked at her. Cas then got up, helping Alex stand and then he left her on shaky legs and went to Dean, healing him of a broken and dislocated hip.
Dean pushed himself up to stand the second he was able and he brushed past Castiel then was crushing his sister into a hug the second he was close enough. "Jesus," he whispered in a choked up voice, holding her hard and close. He was shaking and rattled emotionally and he took a few seconds to hold her then he stood back and held her by both arms, looked her in the face. He said nothing, just nodded, his eyebrows furrowing together as his face bore an inscrutable expression. And then he looked off in the direction Zip had gone and his expression grew stormy as he let go of Alex. Sam, who was standing up after Cas healed him, seemed a little stunned by everything that had just happened. He looked around at the collapsed shed, his fixed siblings, and Cas in a bit of a daze. Dean was already grabbing his discarded machete off the ground. "Sam, get a machete," he said in a hard, commanding voice, motioning for the SUV. "Now." Shaking himself out of his shock, Sam obeyed, jogging over to the car to get a weapon. The brothers armed themselves and headed out immediately, intent on tracking down and killing Zip.
Alex and Cas were left behind, and Cas grew incredibly quiet. His expression was dazed and after he asked if Alex was all right and received a yes, he drifted over to the SUV without explanation then held a hand out and braced himself there against the hood. Alex followed cautiously.
"Are you okay, Cas?" she asked, standing beside him and peering at the side of his face. Zip had been close to killing him sight unseen. Was he still in pain? She felt completely fine, which was kind of disconcerting.
There was a very long silence and Alex nearly asked again because she thought Cas hadn't heard her. And then, his reply was very stilling. "I never wanted to know what he looked like," he said faintly, and Alex's heart did a painful jump of realization. Castiel sounded very chastened and morose. "He was shorter than I thought he'd be." He looked up, and then at her sidelong, his expression pinched and wretched. "What kind of lover was he to you?"
His question mortified her—and she looked away in embarrassment. "Cas, that's… don't make me think about that." Her neck burned and conflicted feelings rattled around inside of her.
There was another hollow silence between them. "He touched you," Cas said blankly, staring off across the hood into the woods unseeingly. "He touched you like I used to. You wanted him to. I don't understand." The angel sounded so lost and confused and his simple, childlike hurt at the entire thing was heartbreaking.
She didn't really understand, either. It had made so much sense in the moment when it happened, when she'd been caught up in getting whatever good feelings she could to drown out her grief. "It shouldn't have ever happened," she said faintly, and the memory of Zip on top of her flashed through her mind unbidden. She tried to shut it away, she tried not to think about it or hear the sounds he made, the sounds she'd made. "I wish it hadn't, Cas. I'm sorry." That was all she could say or do at this point. And really, she was sorry about so much about life in general and how it had turned out. There were more regrets left for her than anything else. Zip was something she wanted to forget about and never think about again.
Cas looked over at her slowly, reluctantly, his face a mask of deep emotional pain. For a minute, there was nothing said at all. And then without warning, his eyes darkened and suddenly he seized her into his arms and all but slammed her down onto her back against the hood as he pressed himself to her torso-to-torso, his hands ripping her flannel shirt apart at the middle, sending buttons flying and leaving her in the flimsy white camisole shirt that was underneath. His warm hands were on her waist, burning through the thin fabric of her shirt, his face was close to hers, his gaze was intent on her face, his eyes dropping to her lips, he stood between her legs closely, his weight pinning her against the hood. Shocked and also a little turned on at the grab and the intensity in his eyes, Alex stared up at him breathlessly. She had told him not to touch her unless she requested it—she had told him this today—had he forgotten? Or was he purposefully ignoring what she'd said? One of his hands crept upwards until his fingers brushed her rib cage. He stopped before he went any higher or took the encounter further. "Tell me to touch you," he beseeched in a husky, dark whisper. He hadn't forgotten.
Alex swallowed, and took a very long three seconds to reply. "No." A single, whispered word that maybe surprised them both.
Stung, Cas took a couple seconds then removed his hands from her and slowly stood back, his expression showing how confused and hurt he was. As Alex sat up awkwardly and slid down to stand from where he'd pinned her, Cas's contrite eyes met hers. "You don't love me anymore, do you?" he asked softly. He sounded like he could cry.
Overwhelmed with compassion, she felt the deeply abiding care that beat on in her heart of hearts forever in his name and wondered how the hell he could think that. "Of course I do," she said, going to him then taking his face into her hands. "Of course I do."
His eyes rose to look into hers, then he took her hands away from his face and thoroughly depressed, he stared at them. "It's all my fault," he whispered in a choked voice. "I ruined everything. You shouldn't love me, why would I think you would still love me? It's absurd, after what I did. I'm a failure. I'm what he said. Broken." He let go of her hands and stepped back away from her, blinking rapidly and staring at the ground as he valiantly tried to maintain composure. "I just… I need to be near flowers," he said, sounding vaguely panicked and like he might begin to cry at any moment. "And birds, and bees, and pretty things. Somewhere I can't feel this sadness, this deep, never-ending abyss that exists inside of me." He paused, fighting internal pain visibly. "I don't know what my feelings are doing. All I can think about is him with you and it makes me want to regurgitate and cry and lay down forever and never get back up." Jarringly, he began to grin for no reason, but the grin wasn't genuine, it looked more like a nervous, self-conscious grimace. Then he began to ramble. "You know what? I think we should forget him. I'm going to learn about honey, how to make it, how to harvest and process it, and I'll bottle and sell it, I'll call it Sweet Alexandra's, and we'll be happy in a house of our own and everything will be fine and nothing will ever be sad ever again, you won't need another lover because you'll love me again and I can make you happy on my own, because I'll grow a garden and build things for you and give you children, as many as you want, and I think there's something about a white picket fence too and a canine, but first I need to learn about honey, honey." He turned around in a small circle, looking for something in deep focus, ignoring Alex completely.
Watching him with a stumped expression, Alex was befuddled at his nonsensical rambling and unpredictable behavior. "Cas, what—"
Her question went unanswered and unfinished. Castiel disappeared into thin air and did not return.
After waiting a few minutes for Cas to come back, Alex realized he wasn't planning on returning and she barricaded herself back in Rufus's hunting cabin. First, she armed herself with borax in a pump-action squirt gun and she strapped a machete on and made sure all the ways into the cabin were locked except the front door. Then, she threw out her ripped flannel shirt which wasn't much use without the buttons and would probably draw a lot of questions and attention if her brothers saw it. She kept thinking about that strange, intense moment when Cas had made that move on her and pushed her down onto the hood of the car and ripped the shirt open. She was beginning to wonder if he were capable of rising above his mental impairment but just chose not to, especially because when she'd rejected him he'd all but immediately retreated into his loony tune persona.
Alex waited anxiously for anyone to return. The sun set and she got nervous when Sam and Dean didn't reappear and Cas didn't show. It was almost forty minutes she waited before a creak on the porch made her sit bolt upright where she'd slumped tiredly. She shot to her feet when the door opened. Dean walked in, but Alex didn't think it hurt to be sure. She fired borax at him straight in the face and he came up short, eyes squeezed closed and lips smacking sourly. "…Yum," he commented curtly, then rubbed at his eyes with the back of his sleeve and gave her a squinty look. "Not Leviathans, little sister." The brothers came in, the sound of their heavy footsteps comforting against the wood floor because of how silent it had been without them there. Dean set down his machete tiredly on the table. "Well, that little punk is fast, I'll give him that."
Alex waited for the good news that Zip was dead. But it didn't come. "Couldn't find him," Sam supplied grimly, letting his machete clatter down on top of Dean's. "But don't worry." He headed for Alex and hugged her, seeing the anxiety in her eyes. "Now we know he's out there, we'll watch our backs extra careful." He squeezed her arms as he let her go from the hug and he gave her a quick, tight little smile that sympathized with her. He looked as tired and as harrowed as she felt.
Dean frowned around the cabin. "…Where's Cas?"
Alex shrugged shallowly, not really caring to go into detail. "Got weird and left. You know. He's just…" she made a 'crazy' sign beside her head with a finger and avoided the very intense, watchful gazes she was currently being subjected to.
"You okay?" Dean asked, his eyes piercing and his question refusing to go unanswered. He softened just a little. "We—we thought you were dead for a couple seconds today." Alex looked into her brother's eyes grudgingly. He was trying to sound calm and okay about it, but she saw that he was having a tough time with everything and that he was deeply upset. They were still sort of fighting, basically, and Alex felt weird about how to conduct herself around her oldest brother.
"What'd he do you?" Sam asked in earnest worry when she said nothing.
She shrugged a single shoulder up as she rubbed her own forearm self-consciously. "Made it where I can't die even if I should." Rueful and deeply upset, preferring to ignore it and not have to think about it, Alex had a hard time elaborating and walked a thoughtless, slow little path around the cabin. "Cas can't change it back. I asked him to, but Destroyer did it and I guess he was more powerful or something." She paused then clarified. "Destroyer was… one of the Purgatory monsters that, you know. Possessed him." She pulled a false smile to offset her genuine despair about the subject matter. She tried to sweep it under the rug. "Looks like I'm stuck on alive for now, boys."
They didn't smile back. Dean looked positively ill and Sam could obviously see right through her. "We'll figure this out, Alex," her twin reassured in deadly serious promise. "We will."
"Yeah but first things first: we gotta get outta here," Dean said, glancing around the dark cabin. "Call me crazy but I don't think any of us'll sleep well with Alex's crazy ex-boyfriend out there peeking in the windows." Sam gave Dean a look that said to shut it. "What?!" Dean asked indignantly.
About an hour later, the Winchesters were packed up and had moved out from Rufus's. They'd switched cars again to duck anyone following them and were pulling up to a place they very often found themselves: a rundown hole-in-the-wall motel that promised to be just as gross on the inside as it was on the outside. Sam went to go check them in, leaving Dean and Alex alone in the stolen orange Plymouth. For a minute, it was totally quiet in the darkness. Dean was in the driver's seat and Alex was in the back as usual, absently chewing the inside of her mouth. The silence was broken as her brother turned slightly and the fabric of his leather jacket creaked. "Why didn't you write me a letter?" he asked, and his voice was really soft and even a little pained, like he'd been wanting to ask forever but had only just summoned the courage.
Eyes snapping up to him at the out-of-the-blue question, Alex's eyebrows moved in together slightly in genuine surprise. "…What?" Her first reaction was that he had to be talking about something other than what she thought he was. But it turned out he wasn't.
Dean was looking out of the windshield, not her. "Found Sam's the other day when I was trying to find a bottle opener," he said in a half-sad tone. "You sure had some nice things to say to him." He sounded forlorn, she realized. A little wounded and jilted. "No wonder you two have been best buddies here lately."
How could Dean go from one hour telling her he wished she never got her voice back to wanting her to reassure him? Alex was tired and his question, however genuine and sad, made her even more tired. Plus, she was still so deeply hurt—it literally put a wall between them, a wall she didn't want to knock down or scale just yet. "I did write one, but… a lot of it was only gonna upset you, so…" she trailed off and picked at her thumbnail. "Seemed pointless to give it to you." Quite honestly, she just wanted to sleep this day off and ignore the world for awhile because her emotions were frayed to threadbare levels and nevermind Dean's emotional crisis, what about hers?
He was thoughtful and quiet, taking a couple seconds to speak again. "Guess I just feel like somewhere along the way I stopped being important to you," he admitted very slowly, making her feel guilty because he would always be important. "And that doesn't feel right," he continued. "You're... you're my little sister, Al. So much of my life was about you and Sammy. Maybe it shouldn't have been, but… it was." He let a gusty sigh out and fiddled with the wheel of the parked car absently. Alex watched him furtively out of the side of her eyes. "Look, I know I'm jacked up. I know that. You got every right to be mad at me for what happened. What I said. You be mad at me however long you need, okay?" He surprised her when a rueful little self-deprecating smile crossed his face—his eyes vaguely wandered the side of the motel. "I deserve that," he said firmly. "I'll take it." And with that he glanced at her, then looked away, leaving Alex dubious. She opened her mouth to reply, not even sure what she was going to say yet, but Dean was getting out of the car. "Help me carry this stuff in, will you?" he asked. Sam was approaching with a room key and apparently Dean wanted to leave the conversation as-is.
"Two-oh-one," Sam said, motioning a few doors down to their room. Alex silently took what Dean handed her and he was all business as they settled into the room. After they had plunked bags down and Dean had cracked open a beer, Sam set up his laptop and motioned for them to come over. "So guys, check it out." One of them leaned over either of Sam's shoulders. "Found this earlier before everything went sideways. It's big." He read off the news website in a wan tone. "'Roman acquires SucroCorp."
"What's SucroCorp?" Dean asked, frowning hard and sitting down beside Sam with his brew.
"They make food additives, namely high-fructose corn syrup," Sam said somberly. "That crap is in—well, it's in just about everything—soda, sauces, bread…"
Dean's face fell slightly. "…Don't say pie."
Sam's answer was immediate. "Definitely pie."
Looking like a kid who'd just been told Santa wasn't real, Dean was stricken. "No…" he said softly.
Alex, who sat down on Sam's other side, raked a hand across her scalp and let out a weary breath. "Okay. So, why? What are the Leviathans doing with a corn syrup company?"
"Whatever they want," Sam said grimly, looking at her sidelong for effect.
"So… total takeover of the food supply, pretty much," Alex surmised dubiously. Damn. That was huge and bad. Only the hippies would escape.
Sam didn't look any more excited about it than she was. "Exactly."
"It's the rise of Dick," Dean quipped, fishing for laughs. When the twins both gave him little shut up frowns, his smile faded. "What? Come on, that was funny!"
"Dean," Sam lectured, trying to stay on track. "This takes them way past their restaurant crap they pulled—this puts them in every grocery store in America, in Gas-n-Sips, vending machines… any food with the syrup in it, they can lace with… whatever they feel like." He paused. "Which, two guesses, is the same mind-melting stuff they were putting in those turducken sandwiches. This is bad."
"Okay, well—so we gotta stop them," Dean said like it was that simple. "Like, yesterday."
"Yeah but short of going Al Qaeda on their trucks and plants, what can we actually do about it?" Sam asked doubtfully, his frustration mounting. "There's too many Leviathan out there for the three of us to do a, psh, corporate takedown."
Without warning, the laptop slammed shut with a loud snap and all three Winchesters sat back in their seats, jumping in surprise. Dean was the first one to realize. "…Bobby?" he asked slowly.
Alex withered slightly. "Oh. Right." She had forgotten, but she guessed that was him trying to remind her. "Um… Bobby and I had a little conversation a little earlier, back at the cabin."
Dean's eyebrows shot up high. "Wait, you saw him?"
"Loud and clear," she confirmed. Her brothers looked absolutely shocked that she hadn't said anything sooner.
"When?!" Dean asked, wide-eyed.
"Today. You left your jacket in the bathroom, flask was in there, and… well, anyway, he had some ideas on the weapon and the spell. It's sounding like the only way to stop this Leviathan thing is gonna be to, how did the tablet put it?" She looked at her twin for specifics.
"'Cut off the head and the body will flounder'," Sam supplied, quoting from the translation Kevin had given them. He pulled the notebook out of a nearby bag and opened it, studying it with a thoughtful frown.
"Okay, so what were Bobby's ideas?" Dean asked, leaning over the table and peering at his sister intently.
Alex crossed her arms and sat back in her chair, realizing there wasn't going to be sleep tonight. "Well… the first one involves a guy whose name starts with a 'C' and ends with we hate his guts."
"Cas?" Dean asked.
That earned him a totally done look from his sister. "Crowley, Dean. Crowley."
"Oh. Yeah. Sorry."
About ten minutes later in the middle of room 201, Dean let his blood drip down into a metal bowl that they'd set onto the little table there. Chalk summons were scrawled across the wood and the required ingredients were all present in the bowl. "That's enough," Sam said, nodding to his brother, who grimaced and squeezed his fist closed to stop the blood flow even as he reached out to Alex, who had a piece of gauze waiting.
"Can't say I'm looking forward to this," Dean muttered, shoving the gauze into his fist.
"Would be weird if you were," Sam commented, pulling out his book of matches and looking around for agreement. Dean nodded. He was ready. Arms folded, Alex lingered behind her brothers slightly but nodded, too. "Here goes everything," Sam muttered, and let out a tense puff of air. "Et ad congregandum eos coram me," he recited, then struck a match and dropped it into the bowl to complete the summons. Flames rose up high then flared out and when they did, the softest, darkest chuckle could be heard.
The Winchesters turned to see a familiar face that they hadn't seen in quite some time. Crowley, smarmy and haughty, smirked at them from near the ends of one of the motel beds. "Hello, children," he purred in greeting, his devilishly dark voice every bit as oily as Alex remembered. He was dressed immaculately in an all-black suit, looking exactly the same as ever—cocky and unruffled. "Seems like I haven't seen you since last season," he teased. "What can I do for you?"
"You can tell us what you think about Leviathan," Dean said in a hard voice, sauntering forward by a step to establish himself as the primary communicator.
Completely at ease, Crowley's eyes traveled upward in mock pondering. "Squicky little bottom-feeding chumps. Hate 'em. Why?"
"Because we know how to wipe their fearless leader off the playing field," Dean replied. "You want in on that action?"
"Oh, you don't say. Well color me intrigued," Crowley said, giving away nothing. He sauntered over to the bed where Sam had moved and laid the translation out. The demon peered down at one of the pages in vague interest. "I don't suppose this is your little cheat-sheet for how to blow Dick…" he paused, "off the game board, hmm?" he asked, then looked up at the three unfriendly hunters with a playful smile. "Well don't just stand there with those idiotic looks on your faces. Obviously you need something from yours truly. Why else would you bother me? So what, exactly, are you trying to get me to hand over?"
"All right Crowley, look," Sam said, his tenor voice forceful and impatient. "We can gank Dick once and for all. And once we do that, the rest of the Leviathan won't be as hard to kill, either."
Crowley gave a lofty sigh. "Bored, Moose. Get to the finale."
"We need your blood to create the weapon to slice Dick up," Dean said, his voice growing more gruff as he got impatient.
A slow, knowing smile grew on the demon's face. "Ah. There it is."
"Yeah," Dean retorted. "There it is. So you gonna give us the blood or not?" Dean paused threateningly. "Or do we need to take it out of you?"
"Now now, Dean," Crowley chided mockingly. "I'm happy to give you my bodily fluids any time of course." He smirked at the look that crossed Dean's face. "But not quite yet. I'm all for chopping Dick, but I can't have you running around with a vial of my blood in the meantime now, can I? You know the sheer number of nefarious spells my enemies can use that blood for?"
Alex, who'd been silent and stone faced until then, was very wan. "Trust me, we'd love to use your blood to do any number of nefarious things to you, but right now the priority's Dick," she deadpanned, then nodded her head forward expectantly. "So…"
"Sorry, love," Crowley said, giving her a special little smile. "Sounds kinky, but I don't put out without a candlelit meal first."
"Just shut up," Dean said, thoroughly irritated. "If you won't give us the goods now, then when?"
"Last," Crowley murmured in that dark velvet voice. "After you've got all the other components. Most difficult, the angel part, I'm assuming. Given your role in their little apocalypse and your sister's seedy little… whatever the hell it was with the one in the trench coat, I can't imagine the choirboys upstairs are wetting their vestments to do you—what's the word?—a solid." He paused pointedly and looked at Alex closely. "Unless, of course, you have an angel up your sleeve…?"
She had never fought harder to keep her poker face on. "I still have some connections upstairs, Crowley. We'll get the blood." If he knew Castiel was alive, she was pretty sure he wouldn't stop until he killed the angel.
"Yeah," Sam echoed his sister's sentiments and tried to close the subject for their own protection. "Don't worry about that. We just need you to be ready next time we call."
"Can do," Crowley said affably then paused, growing marginally more ominous. "By the by, heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend that Meg was with you lot just a day or two ago. Now, that couldn't possibly be true, could it? That traitorous whore, the one I so despise and want to see tortured for all eternity was with you?" He looked around at them and no one replied. Mildly irritated, Crowley's eyes narrowed. "So, you won't say either. Seems to follow the pattern. I can't get her to talk yet either, you see, but she will soon enough."
"What?" Alex's arms dropped out of where she'd had them crossed as her face fell. "You have Meg?"
Crowley pulled a surprised face at her reaction. "Don't tell me there's some kind of bromance going on here I don't know about," he said, then feigned hurt. "Blimey, I thought if you ever decided to friend it up with one of my kind it'd be me, Mouse." He chuckled like he was enjoying his own inside joke. He suddenly stopped and held up a finger in concentration. "Oh, before I go, here's a tip for my favorite plaid-wearing trio. I have it on good authority there's one alpha still among us…" he trailed off and smiled coyly.
"What?" Dean asked, his voice hard with surprise and suspicion. "Whose authority?"
Crowley looked at Dean, faintly testy. "Mine. Wily character, that alpha vampire. Somehow made good on a prison break before Cas went nuclear on the place… but got away all the same."
"And you know this how?" Dean challenged, his eyes narrowed in doubtfulness.
"Keep your friends close, your enemies, blah blah," Crowley sighed, waving the question off in boredom. "Needless to say, I keep tabs. He moves around quite a bit. But I have an inkling I know where to start the Easter-egg hunt." He grinned widely and wiggled his eyebrows. "Happy trails." And then he disappeared.
"Okay," Dean muttered, then raised his voice to a shout. "Where, jackass?!"
"Oh shit!" Alex gasped, jumping back from the table which had just caught fire beside her.
"Hoople, North Dakota…?" Sam asked incredulously as the flames died out to reveal words burned into the wood.
Disgruntled, Dean made a face. "Piece of paper would have worked…"
"Don't like this," Alex muttered, staring hard at the words that had been burned into the table.
"What's to like?" Dean asked sort of flippantly. "But hey. Soon enough Dick'll be dead on the floor."
"Yeah and what if this is a trap?" she asked. This was Crowley after all. And she didn't trust him.
"Eyes wide open," Dean said with a helpless shrug, basically saying he acknowledged that as a possibility. He raised an arm and sniffed his own armpit and made a sound of revulsion. "Okay. Before we go, I gotta take a shower man."
"But we just got here," Alex complained, not loving the idea of heading out right away. She wanted to sleep please god and in a bed if that wasn't too much to ask. Utter exhaustion had her pretty desperate to stay in one place for at least eight hours, if not more.
Dean grabbed his duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder, heading to the bathroom. "You got five minutes, make it count," he said, shooting down her request as he shut the door behind himself.
Alex sat down on one of the beds muttering and then scrubbed her face with her hands. She might as well go get in the car and sleep there. When she absently looked over at Sam, she wasn't expecting to see the trollish little expression that was there on his face. "We're not going anywhere," he said knowingly, and his voice had a distinctly playfulness to it that wasn't there very often, like he was up to no good and was already enjoying the coming reaction. "You need some rest. I got this."
Five minutes later, Dean walked out of the bathroom shirtless with a towel wrapped around his waist and an annoyed expression on his face. "Okay, very funny guys, where are my clothes?" he asked peevishly. Sam had taken all of his things and hidden them.
But neither of his siblings answered. Sam and Alex stared at him, squinting at his left arm, the bicep to be exact, where there was something new they had never seen. Dean remembered and a hand shot up to clap over the tattoo as his face dropped. But it was too late. "… Is that… is that what I think it is?" Sam asked, a disbelieving grin growing on his face.
Dean sighed in aggravation and after a couple of seconds gave up his attempts to hide the tattoo, probably realizing it was an exercise in futility. "Okay, look in my defense, we were really drunk and it must have seemed like a good idea at the time," he muttered indignantly. Surly, he crossed his arms and waited for them to comment, obviously already knowing he was going to hear it.
Alex gaped at what was permanently inked onto Dean's big upper arm. It was one of those cliché red hearts with a ribbon scrolled across it. And inside the scroll was a name that had Sam laughing so hard he was bending forward slightly and tearing up. "'James'?" Sam asked, and laughed even harder "'James'? And the… the heart and, and everything?" He was laughing harder than he had in a long time. "You look like a cartoon character!"
Dean's mouth was drawn into a thin line and in chagrin he looked down at his arm, then an amused smile of his own popped up, softening his embarrassment and he gave them a look. "You guys should see the one she got," he said, sounding distinctly self-pleased.
Sam's eyebrows were high, his grin was cracking his face in half. "Does it have your name on it?"
Dean had a naughty little expression on that confirmed the answer was yes... then he suddenly seemed to think of something and sobered up fast. "You didn't hear it from me, okay?"
"What, so are you guys like… a thing now?" Alex asked, caught between laughing and frowning.
Dean was given serious pause at that question. "I mean… no." Pause, slight frown. "I don't think so. But, maybe, sorta." He shook his head. "I'm not sure." He glared slightly, ducking any more of the question. "Where's my stuff, guys?"
Sam gave Dean a highly pointed look but the amusement was still there, which only made Dean more surly. "You can only have it if we get to sleep here tonight, Mr. Tattoo," he said.
"Fine, whatever," Dean agreed, totally exasperated.
Sam picked up Dean's duffel from where he'd stuck it under a bed and he tossed it to his brother. Dean caught it and Sam was thoroughly entertained, chuckling again as he looked at the tattoo on Dean's arm. Dean grabbed a pair of boxers and gave the customary, "it's about to get full frontal" warning just before he dropped the towel and pulled his boxers on. "Decent," he muttered once he was such, then pulled on a gray undershirt.
Sam's amusement had faded, like he was remembering something. "What about her soul deal though?" he asked.
What? Alex's head snapped up as her eyebrows slammed together. Dean looked caught and quieted. "Uh. Alex didn't know about that," he said, and Sam realized his mistake.
"Soul deal?" Alex repeated, and she was totally devastated, looking between her brothers in the hopes that it was a joke. But they weren't laughing. "…Jamie? Since when, why?"
Dean's expression became hard to read. "The why is a long story, and it ain't mine to tell," he said tersely, like he knew it all and had a lot of unhappy feelings about it. Alex was even further taken aback—Dean and Jamie had to be a lot closer than she had thought. "The when, I, uh… I don't know," he admitted reluctantly. "Best I can figure it was in two-thousand six or seven maybe. I got no idea when her time's up. She won't say." He sounded distinctly hurt and worried. "But I get the feeling it's only a year or two out now." He paused heavily, and from the look on his face, Alex could tell he was about to say something he'd thought about for a long time. "Once we button up this Leviathan thing, I'm actually, uh, gonna take some time off and see about tracking down the demons who were involved, see what I can do to, you know. Call it off." He cleared his throat, uncomfortable as he scratched behind his ear. When neither of his siblings reprimanded him for saying he was going to pursue something on his own, he seemed to gather small courage. "It was a bullshit deal, a total setup," he said. "Any two-bit demon would be an idiot not to agree. As far as I'm concerned, she doesn't owe anyone anything and I'm gonna get her off the hook. And maybe tear a son-of-a-bitch or two in half while I'm at it."
His siblings were both pretty stunned. That was the kind of stuff they only did for family, this was the kind of challenge that was fueled by obviously serious feelings. Sam and Alex exchanged a look. Sam spoke up first. "Dean, how? We couldn't get you out of the deal, so how will you get her out?"
Dean shook his head with a set jaw. "I'll figure it out," he said, and he sounded pretty damn sure about that. "Trust me. I'll find a way."
"I had no idea," Alex said softly, a little horrified that she'd traveled and hunted with Jamie for the better part of a year and had never picked up on the fact that Jamie was a dead woman walking. Had there been signs? Should Alex have picked up on clues?
"She's good at that," Dean said ruefully, his tone faintly fond in a bittersweet way. "Keeping things close to the cuff." He seemed to remember his siblings were there and he toughened up. "But, you know. This past half year or whatever, I dunno. We just… got close I guess." He paused, his eyes far away. "Can't see letting this happen to her. It's like, I dunno. She doesn't have anyone else in her corner. Just me."
Even though he'd taken a seat across from Alex on the other bed and was close by, Dean seemed a very far distance away and it sort of hurt to hear him talking about another girl like that. Like he'd do anything for her and was gonna fight with everything he had for her survival. Alex wondered when this had happened—when they had grown up and gone their separate ways—because it seemed like just yesterday it had been just him and her and the road and a whistle around her neck and Dad calling now and then and Sam at Stanford. And now this. Alex was left to realize that even though she felt cautiously glad that her brother had found someone she felt more disturbingly jealous of Jamie even if she didn't want to feel that way. She remembered feeling that same way with Cassie too back in the day. Alex even suspected Dean had ended things with Cassie because of her unhappiness with another female getting so much of her brother's attention.
God, we are so screwed up… Alex looked at Dean today—sitting there in his boxers and wrinkled shirt with wet hair that stood up in all directions—and she thought that maybe she wasn't as different from him as she'd thought. She'd in theory wanted him to have someone and had even played a part in trying to set the two of them up, but now that Jamie and Dean were a thing, it made her feel slighted and she wondered if she was now second-most important to her brother. Wasn't that the way it was supposed to be, though? Alex thought it over, troubled by her own mind. Maybe she was every bit as selfish as Dean was. Maybe even more.
Oblivious to her, Sam was nodding and taking Dean's words in stride. "I'm sure she's glad you're there for her, Dean," he said earnestly, always willing to be optimistic. He thought a second. "This could be good, actually," he said, getting more invested in the idea as he talked about it. "Someone you can maybe… I dunno, have some normal kind of future with." At the semi-dirty look he got from Dean, Sam spread his hands briefly. "What? Do you honestly think we can just do this until we're old and gray?"
"No," Dean answered immediately, cynically. "I think we die young in a blaze of gunfire and violence. That's kind of a given, isn't it?"
Alex looked at her two mortal brothers and her throat caught. "Not for everyone," she whispered. They looked at her and no one knew what to say.
The Next Day
Hoople, North Dakota
Gas-n-Sip
Alex perused the snack aisle of the convenience store without much interest. What she really wanted was chicken alfredo, the kind you could get at Biggerson's with lots of sauce and bacon bits. But Cup-O-Noodles were basically her only choice here. Eugh.
The Winchesters had gotten up early at the motel and then driven the fifteen-ish hours from Whitefish here to Hoople. Dinner was next on the agenda and then they'd set to work tracking down the alpha and getting his blood for the Dick-killing spell. Alex had called Cas a couple times but he wasn't showing, so that was… annoying. Frustrating. Mystifying. Worrying. Alex thought it was strange he wouldn't come to her calls, but chalked it up to him being so upset about the Zip thing.
Other than that, things were okay. She and Dean were still kind of weird and not talking much, but at least they weren't ripping each other's throats out. But he was all business and that was hard to take. He hadn't said anything else about Jamie and she and Sam hadn't asked.
Approaching quickly beside her, two big, tall figures could be seen on her periphery. Turning a little, Alex saw that they were who she thought. "Hey," Sam said. Their approach struck her as distinctly mission-filled and she frowned slightly.
"What?" she asked, wondering if something were wrong.
"We left Bobby in the car where his happy little ears can't hear," Dean explained, making a drinking motion with his hand even as Sam jumped straight into questions.
"Did he seem angry when you saw him the other day?"
Feeling slightly ambushed, Alex took a second to reply. "Well… yeah…" she thought back to it somberly. "He cracked the mirror and yelled." Hesitating, she grew even more morose because it was such a heavy thing she was about to reveal. "And you know that rush of cold you can feel sometimes around really pissed ghosts before they do some murder?" Her brothers both knew precisely what she was referring to. "It… it was exactly like that."
"Damn," Dean commented tensely, sending Sam a worried glance. "He's getting worse, man."
Sam's eyes narrowed in discernment as he questioned Alex further. "Was he showing signs of fatigue, like—like fritzing?"
Alex shook her head, reluctant to tell the truth because of how dark it was. "No, he looked totally fine, no fritzing at all, except he doesn't seem to have much control over when he shows up and when he poofs away." She clenched her jaw briefly, knowing what that meant. "But from what he said, sounded like he's… he's getting better at it."
There was a short silence because they all knew what that meant. "That's what I was afraid of," Sam said softly. "The stronger he gets, the angrier he gets and the more action he sees, the closer he comes to going full vengeful spirit." There was a thick silence in which all three of the Winchesters bore sickened expression. "That's reality," Sam said heavily, his face twisting in concern and earnestness. "We need to talk about what we're going to do with him."
"Do with him?" Dean asked, frowning abruptly at his brother. "Three weeks ago, you were—you were talking how this could work. And now—now you want to go Kevorkian on his ass?"
"I'm just saying that the lore doesn't have a single real-life example of Casper the Friendly Ghost," Sam protested. "It's all basically poltergeists until a hunter comes along and… well, we know the rest."
"Yeah, well, the lore sucks," Dean muttered, crabby.
Sam kept going on and on, making points they all knew. "I'm talking pure hatred, Dean. No humanity left—that's where he's headed, we all know that. It starts with a broken mirror and it builds up to possessing and killing people. I mean, Bobby could burn this friggin' building down if he got mad enough. Look, if he goes off the rails—"
"I know, Sam," Dean said, impatient and on edge. "I know." He was a little sour, but he turned to Alex, maybe in an attempt to ditch the more uncomfortable subject matter. "You okay with this? I mean seeing him had to be sorta… I dunno, intense."
"It was fine," she said stiffly, avoiding eye contact.
Dean looked like he was thinking about rolling his eyes. "O…kay." He sighed out of his nose and glanced around cagily, then narrowed his eyes, noticing something. His voice lowered furtively. "Hey."
Sam looked at Dean oddly. "What?"
Dean nodded, indicating the twins look. "Check out that guy over there. He seem a little… out of it to you?"
They looked. A man stood at the condiment counter and was pumping mustard over his hot dog slowly and methodically. Mustard spilled over the edge of the dog but he kept going and going, his eyes glazed over as he kept pumping and pumping slowly. "I-I don't know," Sam replied lowly. "Maybe?"
Dean began to canvas the place for anything else odd, then nodded toward the refrigerated beverage section where a gray-haired woman stood and stared unmovingly into the selection. "What about Paula Deen over here?" he prompted quietly.
Sam was getting more and more intrigued and worried. "Yeah, they—they look like, uh…"
The hot dog guy was still pumping mustard onto his hot dog and bright yellow liquid dripped onto the floor. Another man was slurping a slushy as the machine filled his jumbo cup up—the mixture overflowed from the full cup and down onto the floor and the man's shoes but he gave no reaction whatsoever, just kept drinking dumbly as bright red slush pooled onto his feet and down the front of the machine.
"Way too many downers?" Alex suggested in cautious confusion.
"Or like those Turducken people," Sam said, then gave Alex a knowing look. "Remember how I told you about Dean and the sandwich? Yeah." He suddenly seemed to realize something. "It's starting." He picked up a random can from a nearby shelf and read the ingredients quickly. "It's the corn syrup," he said, shaking the can he held for emphasis as his expression went cold. "Everything in the store is laced with it."
Dean seemed to grow paler. "…Everything?" he asked, and began to frantically check ingredients of his favorite things. He became alarmed when he found that nothing he liked was free of the substance the Leviathans had tainted. "Hey, man, I'm gonna go into toxic shock, okay?" He was growing panicked. "I-I... I need my road food!"
"That's what Roman is banking on," Sam replied, picking up another can and frowning at it hard.
"Hey. Hey." Dean held up a pie in a plastic container. "This one says 'natural.' Th-th-that means it's safe! Right?"
Sam took the pie from him and put it back on the shelf. "I hate to break it to you, but corn syrup is natural, technically."
"Well then what the hell are we supposed to eat?!" Dean asked, voice tight in semi-panic.
Sam pulled a face like Dean was kind of dumb. "Fruit? Vegetables? Water?"
Dean looked like he had been completely betrayed. "… oh no. No. There has to be something else," he protested weakly.
Alex held up a long rectangular shape in a white wrapper and read the cover. "All-natural granola, honey, and flax bar with seaweed protein. No fillers, pesticides, or high fructose corn syrup."
"Seaweed?!" Dean asked as if he had never heard of anything worse in his life. "Ugh!" he threw his hands up high in the air. "Why!"
Dean stalked out of the convenience store alone with his phone to his ear as he waited impatiently for the other end to pick up. His brother and sister were still inside, trying to find things that was safe to eat. Jamie's end of the line picked up and Dean was talking before she could say anything. "Hey, so don't eat anything with high fruity something syrup in it," he said gruffly, marching over to the stolen car angrily.
There was a long pause at the other end. "…High fructose corn syrup?" she asked slowly. He could hear the confusion on her face.
"Yeah, that," he said, so mad he could have spit.
"Why?"
"Those Leviathan bastards, that's why," he said, completely beside himself that this was happening. Visions of juicy burgers covered in cheese and ketchup with salty french fries and chips and soda and candy danced through his head and all he could think of was carrots and lima beans and plain chicken with nothing on it. Please god no, this was a nightmare. "Apparently all I can eat now is like bananas and sugar-free granola," he fumed, "like… you kidding me?! This has gone too far!" He let out a frustrated sigh and waited for her to commiserate and joke around with him. When there was only silence, he paused, wondering if their phone call had been cut short. "James?"
"Yeah, that's really terrible Dean," she said, and that's when he realized something was wrong. Her tone was weird, she sounded forced and distracted, upset in some small, hidden way. "No corn syrup, got it."
He stopped walking completely. "What's wrong?" he asked, his ears straining to hear her reply.
She paused tellingly. "Nothing's wrong." Yeah right. He could tell something was wrong.
"What is it?" he asked, then frowned deeply off into traffic. He tried to go the lighthearted route, knowing she often responded best to sarcasm and ill-placed humor. "Someone mess with my girl? Do I need to kick someone's ass? "
She laughed weakly, and it almost could have been a shudder. "Maybe mine…" she said cryptically, making him frown abruptly.
"Yours?" he asked, seriously confused and also getting really worried at her uncharacteristically weak voice and shaky-sounding emotions. He dropped the comedy hour. "Jamie—seriously—what is it?"
She sounded like she was having to gather courage. "J-just promise not to freak out," she said, and he barely recognized her voice right now. She sounded scared and distraught, two things she barely ever was.
"Why would I freak out?" he asked, becoming filled with dread. She was quiet again and Dean's heart was beating faster and faster as he waited for whatever horrible news she was about to give him. A million things spun through his mind: her death day was a few hours away, or maybe she had discovered she had cancer, or maybe she was leaving the country and breaking up with him—even though you kind of had to be with someone to break up with them. Dean waited on pins and needles, worrying himself sicker and sicker at every millisecond that passed. "Come on, Jamie, you're starting to make me nervous," he cajoled softly, trying to sound less freaked than he felt.
And then she answered him with the last thing in the world he had ever expected to hear. "Dean." She paused and her voice dropped to a mere whisper. "I… I think I might be pregnant."