Chapter 3- Reunited, Well Sort Of

Dean Winchester was by no means a patient man; he was never one to really plan out his next move and just went on impulse, but when Tatum called a week ago, two days after Dean had called her, and told them she'd be flying out to Los Angeles to meet them; Dean nearly hit the roof. He had fought with her for an hour saying while they'd be waiting for her another death could happen, but so far that theory didn't pan out. There hadn't been an eighth death or any other articles about the seven previous ones, so Dean had no choice, he had to wait for Tatum. So now parked in one of the huge lots outside LAX, he waited for Sam to return to the Impala with Tatum in toe. Her flight from Boston was supposed to get in at twelve forty five, they had gotten there at eleven and now it was inching on twenty after one. Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes, trying to figure out what changes Tatum was going to bring with her.

Dean and Tatum's history wasn't a faerie tale, story book romance or anything of the sort, it was a story all right; a long one. The two had dated when they were younger, from the time they were eighteen till they both were twenty two. Those four years held some of Dean's best and worst memories; it was the same for Tatum. There was fights, hushed promises, secret 'I love yous' screaming matches, too many sloppy drunken kisses, gifts and small trinkets that were still stored away in shoe boxes and several slaps that still stung Dean's cheeks. Hearing a knock on his window, Dean snapped up, eyes blazing and looked at Sam's smiling face outside. Beside his younger brother stood a brunette who's changed features he barely recognized. It had been four years since Dean and Tate had laid eyes on each other, when Sam left for Stanford, Tate flew to Boston and threw herself into a 'normal' life. She seemed taller to Dean and it wasn't because he was sitting or the possibility of her wearing heels, her hair was longer and had more red in it, the red almost over taking the brown; but it was her eyes that shocked him the most. The lavender gems that once had the power to hold his attention for hours seemed to fade and the spark that had once resided there was long gone.

"Dean? Dean, did you hear me?" Coming back from his thoughts he looked back up at Sam and shrugged. "I said unlock the doors!" Pressing the button on his right, he heard the doors unlock and waited for the two to get into the car. Sam took his normal seat next to him and Tate slid in behind Sam, throwing her duffle bag next to her.

Tatum looked up at Dean and Sam from her place in the back seat, her hand still wound around the duffle bag's strap and nervously bit her lip. She was waiting for a snide remark from Dean about her flight getting in a few minutes late, for her making them wait a couple days or for her leaving. But nothing came, only the sound of Impala roaring to life and flying into reverse.

"So Tate how was your flight?" Sam asked looking at her in the rear view mirror.

"It was okay, I've been on plane after plane for the past nine days."

"Why?"

"I rented a car and drove up to Maine, then from there I flew to Florida, then to Tennessee, New Mexico, Montana, Washington and then here."

"You were checking up on the other cases." Sam said.

"Yeah." She said simply her eyes searching for Dean's, but she found nothing.

"What kind of information did you get?"

"Basically the same crap, all of the girls were good kids, honor students, came from white bread middle class hardworking families, never got in trouble at school, had boyfriends and were damn good photographers. So why whatever this thing is that's killing them did it makes no sense." She told them and it was true, every person she had spoken with about one of the girls had said the same thing, they were good people.

"Do you have any idea of where to start?" Sam asked her, pulling her eyes away from starring at the back of Dean's head.

"I guess at the school, with that Professor guy." Tate answered as she played with the bag's strap some more and looked out the window of the restored car. Last time she had been in that backseat, she was sitting in the same place with her eyes starring out the same window and had been barely listening to what was going on around her. It was the night her and Dean finally called it quits.

"So you're just leaving then?"A twenty two year old Dean Winchester asked a recently turned twenty two Tatum King, her eyes spilling over with tears and when this story would be retold, he'd always omit the part about him crying too.

"Dean, what choice do I have? I don't want to hunt these things any more. I can't stand it. I want out."

"You're going to leave me just like Sammy did?"

"He left you to go to school, I'm leaving you because if I don't, I don't think I'll ever have a chance to be normal again."

"You can't just go back to being normal after seeing all the shit we've seen."

"And that is exactly why I want out." The two didn't say much for a long time, but Dean did open the driver's side back door and slid into the front seat, his hands resting ontop of steering wheel.

"What about us?" Dean asked, looking back and counting the tears that fell down Tate's face.

"There is no more us, there hasn't been an us for a long time De, not since that night the accident happened." She told him and then grabbed her purse. "I'll see ya around Dean." She said as she popped open the back door and disappeared into the dark.

Tate was literally thrown from her thoughts as Dean slammed on the breaks and she went flyng into the back of Sam's seat. She let out a small yelp as she face connected with the vinyl covering the seat and let a few muffled curses escape her lips as she sat back, this time bringing her seat belt across her chest. Looking up, prepared to shoot Dean a very cold stare, their eyes met in the rear view mirror and she watched a small smirk tug on his lips.

"You okay back there Tate?"

"Peachy Dean, just peachy." She answered, a sacractic and smug grin playing on her lip gloss covered lips. Rolling her eyes, she curled up on the seat and rested her head on her bag, her eyes quickly falling shut. It had been a long nine days and she barely got any sleep.

Sam sat next to his brother and rolled his eyes at the small interaction between Dean and Tate. It was obvious that the two still felt something for each other and he knew it was more than the hatred Tate had told him she felt for Dean over the past couple of years. They had this weird connection that brought them closer than any other girl Sam had seen his older brother with. They both carried scars and secrets with them that not even Sam knew about and he would probably never know, unless there was a large amount of liquor involved. By the time Tate and Dean met when they were eight, the two had seen more in those short years than most people saw in all of their long lives. Tate carried the disappointment of not being everything her father wanted her to be and Dean brought similar baggage, scraping and crawling to be just as good as John. The two had so many similar issues that it confused Sam as to why they weren't together. Busted, broken, damanged and as very screwed up as they were, the two were perfect for each other.

"Look, she's asleep and it's a five hour drive to this art school, are we going to go straight there or start fresh tomorrow?" Sam asked Dean in a hushed voice, knowing Tatum was a light sleeper. It was from all the hunting she done with her father, attempting to wipe out all of the Wendigos; that was Ben King's mission.

"What do you think Sammy?"

"We're going straight there."

"Yep." Dean told him as he turned on the raido, keeping the volume to a dull roar as the beginning of a Black Sabbath song started. As Dean turned onto the highway, Sam took one last look at the sleeping vision from his past and then back to his brother.

"You know, you could try and talk to her."

"What's there to talk about? She broke up with me."

"You still love her."

"Sammy, I never told her I loved her when we were together, how do you know I still or ever loved her?" Dean knew that was a lie, but it was his lie and wad going to stick to it.

"You do love her, I can see it in your eyes."

"Whatever. We've got a long drive ahead of us and I really don't feel like talking about past relationships and all that other shit." He told Sam as he set his eyes on the road ahead.

Two hours later, after stopping to get gas and some junk to eat, Dean looked back at Tatum in the mirror and smiled. He prayed that Sam was too involved in reading a local newspaper to notice the look he gave her reflection. She was still as beautiful as he remembered.

"You know, she told me she wanted out of this the last time we really talked." He said more to the mirror than himself or Sam. "And look where she is, back here with us hunting some thing, some demon spirit. She swore she'd never come back."

"Tate always came back to us Dean, you know that. Even for those few weeks after the accident, she came back."

"She left me because of the accident, I think she blamed herself and me, but she took it on me and that's why she left."

"She didn't know how to handle it Dean, it was and still is a lot to take in."

"Can we change the subject?" Sam was right, it was still a lot to take in and he thought about the night that was literally the final straw between him and Tate everyday, just like he thought about his mother. Just this event was still crystal clear in his mind, unlike his kind of fuzzy memory of being four and watching his home go up in flames.

"You brought it up." Sam said laughing and going back to reading his paper.

As the sun started set around seven that night, Dean pulled into the San Francisco Art Institute's vistors parking lot and killed the engine. The Impala quieted itself with a faded whine and then nothing. Sam had fallen asleep an hour ago and with a punch in the shoulder, his eyes snapped open again, an angry tired glare lingered in his dark eyes.

"Wake Tate up, we're here." Dean said getting out of the car.