Author's Note: This chapter doesn't really further the plot with Ember, but it was such an awesome episode that I just couldn't resist.

I don't own Supernatural. If I did, I'd have done something about that episode with the shapeshifter that came out recently. Like, after 12 years, suddenly Dean is unable to break out of handcuffs when this shifter is going after him? I know they needed a way for Jack to save Dean's life, but they could've at least inserted a line like, "These are extra-strong handcuffs!" or "There's nothing sharp here to pick the lock!" to make it believable. Otherwise it was a good episode though. Can't really complain. Misha vs. Misha was epic. Let me know what you thought in reviews!

***Ember POV***

November 6, Evening

"Hey babe," Dean said when Ember answered the phone.

"Hey," she said, finishing up her Wendy's take-out. "Thanks for the text last night."

"Yeah, sorry I didn't have a chance to call. Things got busy once we got to Samuel's place late last night… there's nowhere private to call there, at all."

"It's no problem. Where are you now?"

"In the Impala. It's just me and Sam."

"OK… so you didn't find out anything from Samuel about Sam's missing soul?"

"No," Dean said. "More dead ends. Samuel's soul is in tact. Cas checked."

Ember shook her head on the other end of the phone. "I still can't believe Sam's soul is still in hell. I guess it explains a lot though." She paused to take a bite of her burger. "What's the next step?"

"No idea," came Dean's voice. "That's our only lead. I still don't think Samuel is telling the truth, though. Meanwhile, you should know… we're going after the Alpha vamp tonight."

"What?!" Ember said, spitting out the drink of lemonade she had just taken. "Are you sure you don't want me to help? Where is he? How far?"

"Don't worry about it," Dean said. "We both know you've got that big court case tomorrow. Anyway, it's too far away."

"But Dean, you can't go after an Alpha with just you, Sam, Samuel, and two or three cousins."

"We're not," said Dean. "There's about twenty of us. Samuel russled up some extra goons at the last second."

"I thought you said you didn't trust him?" Ember asked Dean.

"I don't," Dean answered. "I know he's hiding something. But I don't think he'd sell me to the vamps, either. I should be okay. Anyway, I gotta go. I love you, okay? I'll call you when I'm clear."

"I love you, Dean. Be careful."

***Ember POV***

November 7, Early Morning, 3 AM

Ember's phone was ringing. Ember groaned, turning over in her bed. She hadn't really wanted him to call her when the crusade with the alpha vampire was over… a text would have been fine.

"I'm outside," Dean said. "Sorry, I just didn't want to stand creepily over your bed again."

"What happened?" Ember asked, letting Dean inside. He was drenched – there was a thunderstorm going on, and it matched Dean's mood, Ember noticed. The quest for the Alpha must not have gone well. Ember assessed Dean for injuries, but he seemed okay.

"It was Crowley," Dean said gruffly, not bothering to dry off before pulling Ember into a hug. "Crowley did everything."

"Wait, back up," Ember said, extricating herself from Dean and helping him pull off his drenched jacket. "What do you mean 'everything?' What happened with the Alpha vamp?"

"I mean Crowley did everything. He's King of Hell now."

"Yeah, I know," Ember said. "Bobby told me. Didn't he tell you?"

"Must've slipped his mind," Dean said sarcastically. "He raised Sam from the cage. And Samuel."

Ember gasped. "How is that possible?"

Dean shrugged. "King of Hell."

"Even still..." Ember shook her head. She couldn't believe it. "So where is his Sam's soul, then?"

"Don't know," Dean said. He followed Ember deftly back to their bedroom, now that he had taken off most of his wet clothing. "But Crowley's using it to make Sam and I tow the line."

"What?" Ember asked. "Wait… are you trying to tell me that you're Crowley's-…"

"Bitch. Yes. He's making us catch creatures. He thinks they'll lead him to the entrance of Purgatory."

"Purgatory? Does that even exist? He's crazy!" Ember was startled. Dean's eyes were blown wide in the light from the lightning, and she knew that his expression matched her own. She opened up her arms and hugged him. "Dean… what are we going to do?"

"You're going to stay here and pretend I never came," Dean said, pulling off the remainder of his wet clothes and grabbing some dry ones from the dresser. Most of his belongings had been taken with him on the road by now, but there was still a wide selection here. "I'll be gone before morning. I wasn't followed, I made sure of it. We'll have to be more careful from now on, if…" If you're sure you still want to be with me. He didn't say the words, but they both knew what he was thinking.

"Dean, I can take care of myself, you know that," Ember said.

"I know," Dean said, smiling. "And I love you for it."

***Ember POV***

November 15, Evening

"Baby, it's a birthday miracle for you," Dean said over the phone.

"Yeah?"

"Yup! We caught a case in Elwood, Indiana. We're on our way now."

"Seriously? That's great!"

"Don't get too excited," said Dean. "Trust me, it is really not a picnic hanging out with frickin' Dexter over here."

"Still no luck on the soul reunification front?"

Dean scoffed. "No, and I swear he becomes more of a dick by the day. At least the fact that he doesn't sleep means that he's good to drive through the night now. We'll be there by morning."

***Dean POV***

November 16, Evening

Dean missed Ember a lot, though (as usual) he didn't want to admit it. He yearned for the days of the apocalypse, when Ember was always with them and Sam had a soul. For tonight, though, just for tonight, things felt almost back to normal again. Sam had promised to keep an eye on the suspicious clock maker, and he and Ember were spending the evening investigating crop circles.

Well, they were supposed to be investigating crop circles. What they'd really been doing was having sex in a corn field.

He had laid out a blanket from the back of the Impala, and she was as beautiful as ever under the starlight. More beautiful, perhaps, because Dean hadn't seen her in over two weeks, unless you counted the four hours he'd spent warning her about Crowley.

"Remind me why the hell I went back to hunting, when I could have this every night?" Dean asked her, kissing her neck and down her breasts.

"Quit trying to be romantic," she said, palming him through his jeans and shoving up against his partially naked chest. "You're already getting laid. And we are hunting."

He smirked. "I know. I'm killing two birds with one stone."

Suddenly the phone rang, and Dean recognized Sam's ringtone.

"Do you have to take it?" Ember asked as Dean reached for the phone.

"Probably, yeah," Dean said begrudgingly. "I'm pretty sure I'm the only string holding Pinocchio's morals right now." Ember chuckled, appreciating the sarcasm despite the dire situation.

"What?" Dean said, answering the phone irritably.

"Only thing this guy's up to is alcoholism," Sam said.

"Good," Dean replied.

"Maybe I should go talk to him again," Sam suggested. "I mean, you're the one who said he's hiding something."

"Dean!" Ember said in alarm, nudging him. But Dean had heard it too – a noise like a car starting up. "Shhhh!" he told Sam over the phone.

"What? You see something?" said Sam's voice. "Dean, what's out there?"

"Hang on a second," Dean said. He took out his gun, signaling Ember behind him. His pants were unbuckled, neither of them had shoes on, and Ember was quickly struggling to put her bra back on… but none of those things stopped the UFO. It rose above them, shining light directly in their eyes. And then they knew no more.

-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-

Dean and Ember couldn't have been gone more than an hour, and most of that had been walking back to town. Both of them were freezing – Dean moreso than Ember, as he had loaned her his top. Once the aliens had sent them back, all of their clothes, their blanket, the Impala, and their phones were gone. They'd been forced to walk 15 minutes into town to a gas station and call a taxi.

Both of them were horrified to find that Sam had apparently used their time away to sleep with one of the hippie girls they had spotted earlier at the camp for UFO sighters.

"Dean!" Sam said in surprise, and both Sam and the hippie girl turned to face the newcomers in the room.

"What the hell?" Dean and Ember both said at the same time.

"Oh that's Dean?" said the hippie chick. "Sam, they brought your brother back!" She gave Dean a wide smile.

"No offense, lady," Ember said, shivering despite Dean's overlarge top. "But get out."

Two minutes later, Hippie Chick was finally dressed. "It's alright," she said to Sam. "I totally understand. You need time as a family." She began to head out the door, then stopped. "But it's just- what were they like?"

Ember had tossed Dean's shirt back to him and taken the blanket from the bed, wrapping it around herself. She hadn't noticed Sam's brief appraisal of her body during the brief moment between Dean's shirt and the blanket, but Dean was seething inside. He hadn't thought it was possible to be angrier than he already was. "They were grabby, incandescent douche bags. Good night."

"Too soon?" asked Hippie Chick, and Dean shut the door in her face.

"You're upset," Sam said, facing Dean.

"Dean, do you think it would hurt my entrance into Heaven if I killed him?" Ember said, standing behind Sam. "Soullessness is basically like being a demon, right?"

"Hey!" Sam said.

Dean, finally summoning his will to confront the situation, turned around to face Sam. "I was abducted," he said. "And you were banging Patchoulli."

"I didn't think she smelled that bad," Sam said.

"I was abducted by aliens!" Dean screamed at his brother.

"I was looking into it," Sam protested.

Dean heard Ember's scream of rage from behind him. "Looking into it?" he asked. "I was gone for like an hour! And most of that was walking back to town!"

"An hour?" Sam asked. "Dean, I think your watch is off. You've been gone all night!"

"What?" Ember shrieked. "I have work in the morning!"

"What are you talking about, no I haven't!" Dean said.

But he had. According to Sam's watch, it was "4AM!"

"Yeah!" Sam said. "UFO time slip. That actually falls in line with a lot of abduction stories."

"Why couldn't they have abducted you?" Dean heard Ember mutter, though Sam was by that point out of earshot.

"Nothing's falling in line!" Dean screamed.

"Here," Sam said, giving both Ember and Dean a glass of whiskey. It was a mark of how bad the situation was that Ember actually drank it. Dean couldn't count the amount of times she had told him that "whiskey tastes like piss and motor oil."

"Come on, talk to me," Sam said. "What happened?"

"Well, uh… there was this, uh…" Dean paused, realizing his words sounded cliché. "God help me, Sam, there was this bright white light."

"It's okay," Sam said, putting his hand on Dean's knee, and Dean jerked back in alarm. "Safe room."

"We were taken to this… I don't know, we weren't in the corn field anymore," Ember finished for Dean. "And there were these… aliens, I guess, but it was too bright to see. And we were holding hands, and, we could feel them trying to pull us apart, and pull us to these tables…"

"Probing tables?" Sam asked.

"God, don't say that out loud!" yelled Dean.

"Maybe," Ember said, shuddering. "Anyway, so I used all the powers I could muster to shove the tables at them, and Dean yelled 'Duck' and stared firing…"

"I started hacking, and slashing, and firing…" Dean laughed. "They actually seemed surprised." He felt Ember's presence next to him, and he reached his arm around her and pulled her closer. "I don't think anybody's ever done that before."

"I'm going for a shower," Ember said, standing up and heading in the direction of the bathroom.

"I had a close encounter, Sam," Dean said, taking another sip of whiskey. "And I won. And now, I'm going to join my girlfriend in the shower so that I can get laid.."

"How come you can have sex but you got mad when I had sex with the Hippie Chick?" Sam said in a nonchalantly curious voice.

"Here's a thought," Dean said. "Why don't you go find Patchoulli again? Don't kill her, and be back by morning. Okay? Wear a condom. I don't think being soulless prevents pregnancy." And with that, he slammed the door to the bathroom.

***Ember POV***

November 17, Evening

When Ember came to the hotel after work the next evening, Dean and Sam were busy going over lore. Ember's eyes couldn't help but be drawn to the microwave, which was open and covered in a substance which looked suspiciously like blood.

"What did you guys do, explode a cat in the microwave?"

"You can see it too?" asked Dean.

"Not a cat," Sam clarified. "A fairy."

"Yeah," said Dean. "Apparently, we got abducted by fairies."

Ember split into a big grin. "You know, I love my job, I do. But God I miss hunting." She paused. "Wait, hold on. Are you trying to tell me you exploded Tinkerbell in a microwave?"

***Ember POV***

November 18, Evening

"Ember?" said Dean at the other end of the line.

"Yeah?" Ember was driving to Elwood, IN from work. She had hoped she wouldn't miss too much of the rest of the boys' continued hunt for the fairies, but she could tell by Dean's tone of voice that she already had.

"I'm in jail." Wonderful.

"Give me the address, I'll come see you." I'll come break you out, because I can go invisible. That's what you really want, otherwise you would've called Sam.

"555 Court Street, Elwood, IN."

"OK, thanks. I love you."

"Love you too."

It was another hour before Dean was out of jail, and just as they both got into Ember's Cruise, a man popped up in their back seat. Ember knew immediately it was one of the fairies. She had seen him a couple of times over the past couple of days, watching her. Sam was battling the leprechaun back at the clockmaker's home, Ember guessed, and now all of his fairy henchmen were pissed.

Ember kept driving. Dean took the iron knife Ember had placed in her front seat that morning and stabbed the man in the chest with it. He recovered, though it took a second, and Ember saw Dean dodge a blow and attempt another stab. The man grabbed Dean by the throat, and just as Dean began to lose his breath, the fairy man disappeared.

-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-

"I'll give you this much," Ember told Sam an hour later. "You're soulless, but at least you're effective."

"Cheers," Sam said, holding up his glass. Apparently Sam had won his battle against the leprechaun at the last possible second.

"I miss this, you know?" Ember said to the other two. "I love my life, and I love being a therapist, but… I miss this.

"It'll be even better once Sam gets his soul back," Ember continued.

"Was I… how was I different before?" Sam asked curiously.

Ember thought a moment. "You cared about things," she said. "You were… a person. Friendly. Sam… you're lucky Dean's your brother, instead of your enemy. Because I'll be honest with you right now, there's a fine line between what you are right now and the things you hunt."

Sam nodded thoughtfully. "I know that."

Ember nodded. "Good. I miss you, Sam. I miss the real Sam."