Welcome to the Club

And where there's smoke, there's fire, the flip side of desire.
And if it's true, it can't be you, it might as well be me.

Spy in the House of the Night, Blue Oyster Cult

"Where is that kid with the coffee?" Dean asked after ten minutes of the three of them sitting and staring at one another in silence, and Kole sipping her coffee.

"I don't think Tony likes you," Kole said and turned toward where the waiter was standing. It only took a second of their eyes meeting before he headed to their booth.

"Can I get you anything else?" the boy asked Kole, his back to Dean and Sam as if they were not even there.

"I could use a refill," she told him with a smile.

"And I could use a mug," Dean said before Tony had the chance to leave. Tony gave a quick nod and walked away. "Wow, you sure make friends fast," he told Kole.

"Well," she smirked, "I'll give it a little time yet. If he doesn't come after me with a knife or his fist in the next few hours, I'll count him as a true pal."

Dean and Sam were saved from having to respond by Tony's return. He didn't stay; just long enough to set down two more mugs. He poured the coffee at the table, starting with Kole, so it was a good sign that the kid didn't spit in Dean or Sam's.

"So," Kole began again, "how did you find me so quick?"

"Wasn't hard," Dean told her. "You were on foot, we have a car. When Sam saw the sign for WiFi and a coffee bar, he was pretty sure this is where you'd be. That must have been some slumber party you two had for him to be so certain."

"Well," Kole said, readily taking the bait, "maybe if you had stayed up long enough for the hair braiding and pillow fighting, you wouldn't have been so cranky this morning."

"Maybe if I hadn't been worried for my brother's safety," Dean said pointedly, "I wouldn't have been so defensive."

"And maybe," Kole said calmly, "if you'd have taken the time to notice…"

"Guys," Sam finally spoke up, cutting Kole off mid-sentence, "this isn't getting us anywhere."

"What's your point, Sam?" Kole asked, turning on him. "We've got a slight problem here, no matter how you slice it. If you have any ideas, then you take a stab at it."

"OK," Dean said, "that's enough." He sighed and blurted out the closest thing to a confession and apology that Dean Winchester was capable of. "This morning, I saw you out of the corner of my eye. My vision was still blurry, I guess, and all I could see was a dark shape. I just jumped to the wrong conclusions."

"I get that you were worried," Kole said, looking into her still-full coffee mug. "It was a crazy night and… well, if I seemed to sneak up on you, I didn't mean to."

So like Dean, Sam thought. So quick to dismiss anything that might turn emotional.

It was easy enough for Dean to explain his actions, but both he and his brother knew that Sam's would be much more difficult. Hell, Dean didn't fully understand what was going on, either.

They sat in silence for a few moments more, then Dean excused himself to pay the bill. Sam knew he didn't have much time to try and explain before Dean came back, but he knew Dean was uncomfortable with the subject so he tried his best.

"Kole," Sam started without looking up at her, "I don't know what happened." He tried to tell her about the asylum, Dr. Ellicott, shooting Dean, everything. He didn't know if they were connected, but the feelings were so similar. Only, instead of wanting to hurt Dean, he was trying to protect him.

"So," Kole said slowly, like she was trying to comprehend the uncomprehendable, "some psychotherapist's ghost attacked you and made you want to kill your brother. You had a dream about it and woke up wanting to protect him, making you want to kill me?"

"Yeah," Sam said sullenly, "now I don't even believe it. I don't want to kill you Kole. I don't want to hurt you. And this morning, I don't even know if I realized it was you. You slapped Dean and…"

"In your diseased mind you thought I was trying to hurt him," she said, slightly smiling on only one side of her mouth and arching an eyebrow. He looked so miserable it was hard not to try and ease his guilty conscience.

"Yeah, I guess," he said, sadly smiling.

"Is everything all worked out?" Dean asked hopefully as he walked up to the booth, looking back and forth between his brother and Kole. "Everything forgiven and forgotten?"

"Even young children know that there is no such thing as 'forgiven and forgotten'," Kole told him cynically. "Forgiving is hard, forgetting is harder. Let's say we're square. Last night, you two saved my life. This morning, you both seemed ready to kill me. I'd say we have all the ingredients in place for an interesting afternoon." With that, Kole slid out of the booth.

"So," Sam said hesitantly, "are we OK?"

"Normally, I'd say no," Kole told him. "Who am I kidding? I don't exactly consider this a normal situation. I may have had students who disliked me, but no one has tried to kill me before."

Dean cleared his throat, interrupting her. She glared and started again.

"Fine. Until last night, I have never had anyone try and kill me. Basically," she said turning to face them both, "you guys are getting a not-so-free pass. I'll give you both another chance because of your father. He was there to help me when I thought I had no one. Don't make me sorry about this!"

As she walked out ahead of them, Dean and Sam exchanged glances. It seemed Dad was full of surprises. Apparently, John Winchester had made quite an impression on Kole.

"So, here's how I see it," Dean said when they returned to the motel parking lot. "There are three of us, so we can break up the research accordingly. Kole, you look into this cult of yours. Sam, check out Dad's journal and see if there is any mention of a spirit or demon that latches onto anger and makes you want to kill your friends or family. I'll go into town and see if I can find out anything on the local front."

"Wait a minute…" Kole said, shaking her head in the back seat. "First of all, 'my cult'?" She rolled her eyes at him. "Second, are you seriously telling me that you think we are in a haunted hotel and Sam was possessed this morning? Third, I thought the plan was to leave."

"Well," Dean said, turning around in his seat to face her and speaking as if she were a child, "the plan was originally to leave, but then there was the business this morning with the knife and the trying to kill… Oh, and we're in a 'motel'."

"Dean?" Sam began before Kole could ask another question. "Actually, Dean, I think you and I should swap. If there are any Woodcreek students or faculty in town, they are more likely to recognize you than me."

"Why?"

"Because you were the one who spoke up in Kole's class. And, you came face to face with the cult leader." Sam lowered his voice and leaned in, closing the gap between them. "Besides, I think Kole would probably feel more comfortable if you were the one to stay. You might have attacked her, but your reason didn't include demons or spirits."

"Sam," Dean said, almost whispering, "you know you're better with the computer stuff…"

"But you're better at finding things in the journal…"

They both stopped talking, realizing that Kole was staring at them.

"OK then," Dean said, "it's settled. We'll swap. What are you doing?" he asked Kole as he sniffed the air.

"It was still a mess back here," she stated. "I was just cleaning up."

"Are those baby wipes?"

"Yeah," she smirked at him. "They will take out almost all stains. Oh, and they're lavender-scented, so your car should smell nice for a little while."

Sam drove away in the Impala back to the Mom & Pop shops they noticed in their short search for Kole. Dean handed Kole the room key she had left behind and then took out his own and opened his motel room door. Kole pocketed the key and followed Dean into his room, but stopping just past the threshold so that the door remained open.

"So," she said when Dean took no notice of her and began rummaging through his duffle bag, "I still don't understand. If you are worried about the cult, we should hit the road and put more miles between us. If you think that Sam was possessed earlier, we should hit the road and put miles between us and this motel. And, if neither of those are true, we have no further business here and I don't see why we aren't hitting the road and…"

"Because we don't run away from our problems," Dean interrupted, finally turning his attention to her after finding what he was looking for. "This is our job. It's what we do. We don't run away. We stay and we fight. And, if you are planning on tagging along for awhile, you're just going to have to get used to it." He fell onto one of the beds in his room and made an attempt to get comfortable.

"Right now," he told her, "we're on the boring part." He held up the journal for emphasis. "Research." And, as if that were explanation enough, he began to look through the journal and tried to pretend she wasn't staring at him.

The only reason Kole finally walked through the adjoining door to her own room was so that Dean did not see her yawn. She didn't know why but she had always felt that yawning was a sign of weakness and she tried not to give into it whenever possible. But, after all that had happened yesterday, the sleepless night, and the events of the morning, Kole was starting to wish she had actually drank that second mug of coffee and not just ordered it to spite Dean.

She was not accustomed to sleeping in front of other people, whether they were asleep or not. It became a problem during her first year of college and she was soon demanding a room of her own, no roommate. Still, it was difficult knowing that there were other people outside those thin dorm walls, just as it had been difficult when she lived at home and her father was still alive. Though it had helped with her schoolwork, giving her extra hours for studying that others used for sleep, a few days of only catnaps could really take their toll.

And, without meaning to, Kole just realized that she had only had three hours of sleep in the last few days. Somehow, knowing how little sleep you have had always makes you even sleepier. It was really time for that coffee now.

She set her laptop case down on the table and then walked over to the counter where the room's coffee maker sat. Once it was filled with coffee grounds and water, and she heard the melodious sound of brewing, she inhaled deeply and relaxed. She then took off her backpack and dropped it on one of the beds on the way to the bathroom sink, where she splashed some cold water on her face.

Kole had walked away from the sink and across the room when Dean came through the adjoining door. She jumped backward and tripped over her own feet, her eyes wide with shock.

"Sorry," Dean mumbled, as he hurried over to help her back to her feet. "I smelled the coffee brewing and..." He smiled sheepishly at her.

"Got it," she said absent-mindedly, "the smell is your snake charmer or Pied Piper..."

"Are you OK?"

"Sure," she lied. "Why do you ask?"

"Because you look awful," Dean said before he had time to think. He flinched, expecting her to react like a girl, but she took the comment in stride. "I mean, you look tired. You didn't sleep at all last night?"

"No big thing," she said and sat down on the end of one of the beds a little harder than she intended. She stared at the coffee maker, willing it to brew quicker.

"Can I ask you something?" Dean sat down on the end of the other bed and looked at the coffee maker as well.

Kole decided that she was not in the mood for her typical bitchy answer to this silly question and simply shrugged her shoulders as a way of saying 'yes'.

"What did he say to you?"

"Who?" Kole asked confused and looked at Dean. "Sam?"

"No, that dude with the knife. The cult leader. We saw that he said something to you. What was it?"

Kole closed her eyes and tried to make up her tired mind whether or not to answer. It wasn't the answer part that she was worried about; it was the explanation that it would demand. She laid back on the bed and didn't open her eyes.

"He said that I was Agni's sacrifice and…"

"And?"

"And that's why I know this cult has nothing to do with what's going on at this motel!" she said, more exasperated than intended. She sighed deeply and opened her eyes, but did not sit up. "From what I can piece together from different questions I've been asked by people I now know are in this cult and from what I know about the mythologies of different cultures… It's just a… a joke! True, Agni was, at one time, one of the most important of the Vedic gods. He was the god of fire and the acceptor of sacrifices, but he isn't worshipped anymore and is now seen as an incarnation of Shiva or Brahma.

"Plus, it seems that the cult's beliefs are an amalgamation of mythologies. The Islamic fire-demon Shafan, the pre-Roman god of fire Cacus, the Basque god of fire and storms Eate, the Japanese god of fire and wisdom Fudo… even Vulcan, the Roman god of fire… destructive fire… they are all there in some way or another.

"It all leads me to believe that the entire thing was started as a joke… as something for a bunch of frat guys who had nothing better to do with their time… and somewhere along the way, student after student, class after class, they started to believe it as fact… as something to have faith in…"

She closed her eyes again and pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. Her head ached. Her body ached. She was beyond tired; she was exhausted.

"That wasn't what I meant," Dean said quietly, calmly, from the bed next to her. "You were supposed to be a sacrifice… and…"

"And…" she just didn't have the strength to lie or argue anymore, "that I would be with them again. 'You were meant for the fire,' he said."

The cold sting on her face where Dean had slapped her made Kole's already-open eyes wake up and see.

"Oow! What are you doing?" she asked, holding her burning cheek. She looked around and realized she was no longer in her motel room. "What's going on?"