Chapter 23 Found


Forest Edge, Oregon. April 9.

Dean opened the door and looked at his brother. Behind Sam, Trish stood with Adrienne on one hip, Marc and Laura beside her, peering solemnly up at him.

"You know, if Mohammed won't come to the mountain…" Sam said.

Dean shrugged inwardly. He hadn't been in the mood for visiting.

"Back on your feet okay?" he asked, pulling the door wider and standing aside to let them in.

"Yeah, shoulder's gonna take a while, but it's mostly okay," Sam said, stopping opposite his brother as Tricia and the children walked past. "How about you?"

Dean ignored the question and closed the door, his gaze on Marc and Laura. "John and Rosie are upstairs."

They nodded and ran for the stairs, small feet thumping on the treads as they disappeared.

"Dean, I'm so sorry." Tricia stepped in front of him, her face drawn and her eyes filled with misery. "I'm—"

"Forget it, Trish," Dean cut her off, knowing what she wanted to say, feeling an obscure satisfaction in not letting her do it. He didn't want to think about the days before they'd gone to Kansas, or what had happened there, or the days since. He was living in the moment and that kept him functioning.

"Just made a pot of coffee, if you want some," he said, turning and walking away from them toward the kitchen.


Sam glanced at Trish and shook his head. His wife nodded, turning for the stairs and following the children up. Sam watched her go then walked toward the kitchen. He didn't blame his brother for not being able to forgive and forget just yet. There were too many wounds in Dean.

At the doorway, he stopped and leaned against the jamb, watching his brother as he pulled down mugs and poured out black coffee. He could see Dean was a long way from being anywhere near all right. His older brother's eyes were red, the lids swollen, made more obvious by the deep shadows that lined the sockets and lay under the sharp-edged cheekbones. Tension and rigidity delineated every muscle in his brother's back, reminding him of a bow, strung and drawn to its limit.

"You sleeping?" he asked, walking in and sitting down at the table. His brother glanced around, carrying the two cups over and setting one down in front of Sam.

"No," Dean said, his tone blunt. He carried the second cup to the other end of the table and drew out the chair. "And to save you some time pussyfooting around all the other things you want to know: yes, I'm eating; no, I'm not drinking myself into oblivion every night; yes, I'm taking care of the kids; oh, and I'm trying not to think about anything and the pain is killing me."

He ducked his head and sipped the hot coffee. Sam looked down at his cup.

"Is there anything we can do?" he asked. "Take the kids for a while?"

"No," Dean said, the word coming out too strongly and his gaze snapping up to meet Sam's, filled with a tacit plea. "I need them."

Sam nodded. John and Rosie, and all they needed from their father, were the only reason Dean was still on his feet. The only reason he was still talking, still opening the front door when someone knocked. He recalled how he'd been, when his brother had been taken to Hell, and he closed his eyes.

"I'm…functioning, Sam," Dean said, making a vague gesture that encompassed the room. "That's about as good as it's gonna get. Don't ask me for more."

"I know," Sam agreed straight away. "Rudy told us what happened, but he didn't know the details, didn't understand how it all—"

"Don't," Dean said, anger a clean, bright edge in his voice. "I can't—I can't tell you about that. Ask Cas, or Sariel."

"It wasn't your fault, Dean."

His brother let out a sharp bark of disbelieving laughter at that.

"You think I'm blaming myself, Sammy?" He shook his head. "Or anyone else? No. It was fate…or destiny, God's will…whatever you want to call it." The anger seemed to drain from him, like air from a punctured balloon and his gaze dropped to the table, his fingers curling around the coffee cup. "There was no way I could get what I wanted and not have an expiry date on it."

"Dean," Sam said.

Dean raised his head, his expression screwing up. "I can hear her, Sammy, sometimes, in the night," he said. "I couldn't sleep in our, uh, room, for a while. But since…I can hear her voice. Sometimes I can hear what she's saying, sometimes it's just the sound of her voice…" he trailed away. "I know it how sounds."

"Dean, that's normal," Sam told him, leaning across the table. "It happens."

Dean shook his head again, his throat working.

"Don't deal with this alone. Please? Not again, not now," Sam said. "Dean? Please, let us help?"

"W-w-what the fu-huck can y-you do, Sam?" Dean turned away as the words emerged cracked and broken. "You can't he-elp me."

He stood, the chair grating over the floor behind him, looking at the doorway. "Can you, uh, let yourselves out, man? I gotta—go."

Sam nodded as he left the room, listening to the boot steps go down the hall, the front door open and close.


April 18.

Dean was leaning over the engine bay of the Impala when he heard the sound of wings fluttering softly in the garage. He didn't look up.

"Dean," Castiel said from behind him.

"What do you want, Cas?"

"Uh, I wanted to, um, see how you are," the angel said.

Dean sighed and straightened, turning around and leaning against the side of the car, looking at the angel stonily. "All right. You've seen."

"Dean…"

"Cas, so not in the mood for talking right now," he said, waving a hand to the engine behind him. "Things to do."

"Sam's worried about you, a lot of people are worried about—"

"I'm fine," Dean cut him off, turning back to the engine. "Just busy."

"You know Ellie wouldn't have wanted you to—"

His eyes narrowed and dark with fury, Dean swung around so quickly the angel took a couple of steps backward.

"No, she wouldn't have, but you know what? She would've understood why I was and she wouldn't have kept nagging me to let go, move on, face the facts, or any of the other fucking bullshit that everyone keeps throwing at me. She would've let me be!"

Castiel dropped his gaze, staring at the floor and Dean wheeled away, throwing the wrench in his hand at the wall above the bench hard, the heavy metal tool clanging against the lining and clattering as it bounced off and hit the floor.

"Just leave me alone," he said, leaning on the side of the car, his eyes closed. "Please."

"Of course," Cas said. There was a faint flutter and the garage was empty again.

It'd been two fucking weeks, that's all. All the time he'd had to accept that everything he'd believed was his had gone. People grieved for months, for years, but no one would give him two fucking weeks.

He couldn't live with the pain. It ripped through him like a chainsaw when he let his thoughts turn toward her, every night a mostly futile exercise in finding a balance between consciousness and indifference, finding that precise line where he didn't think at all, was hardly aware of himself or the house or anything at all. Where he could drift, not being.

He slept in the bed they'd shared and his dreams were an ongoing carousel of need and fear, of desire and anguish, all of them crushing him with their memories and leaving him wrung out and exhausted every morning, the pillows wet with his tears and the sheets damp with sweat or come, sometimes both, not knowing how to get free of any of it.

And he was still hearing her voice, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, sometimes just barely at the edge of his senses, feeling her close, riven with a desperate need to be able to hold her, to feel her in his arms. He'd snapped at John twice last week, driven by that desperation and washed in shame afterwards, seeing his little boy's face shocked, and a little afraid of the harshness in his father's voice.

He leaned over the engine, his head on his forearm, breathing deeply as he tried to shove it all back again, down, down into the dark. His keys and locks and walls and doors were all broken.

After a moment, he admitted it wasn't going, and he pushed himself off the car, turning and walking back to the house, to the cupboard and the bottle that would give him a little time of not-thinking, not-feeling peace.


April 30.

You can't hold everything in a fixed position. Life isn't like that. Change is the way it all works.

I can't accept that. I won't. Please. Don't leave. Don't leave me here alone again.

You're not alone, Dean. There are people around you who love you, who worry about you.

I don't want them! I want you—I want you here.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to be this way.

Please … please … Ellie …

He woke suddenly, hearing the whisper clearly in the deep silence of the room.

I love you …

"Ellie?"

Sitting up, he looked frantically around, seeing nothing out of the ordinary in the dim room that was lit only by the greyish light of the quarter moon outside. The EMF meter was on, but it was silent, dark, lying on the nightstand beside the lamp.

Dropping back against the pillow, he stared sightlessly at the ceiling. He could live without her, putting one foot in front of the other, getting through each day, doing whatever it was he had to do.

He dragged himself out of the bed every morning and showered and dressed and went downstairs to make breakfast for the kids, taking them to school and pre-school on weekdays, taking them to the park or down to Portland or to the sea on the weekends. He made sure they ate their food, and brushed their teeth and had their baths. He held them when they cried in the night and read to them and played with them. He talked to the people who lived around him and answered questions and offered solutions and listened to plans … and through all of that, for every moment of every day, he screamed inside and beat his fists against the glass wall encasing him and wished for something different. Something impossible.

He could live without her, but he couldn't live without her.

Food tasted of nothing, dust and ashes in his mouth, choked down with whiskey. The colours of the flowers, blooming in the garden with the spring warmth, were faded and grey. Nothing could make him feel warm. The very thought of touching someone else, having someone else touch him, made him recoil with a bitter revulsion. Where she used to be, inside of him, there was nothing but a field of shattered glass and he cut himself to shreds every time he went near it.

"I can't do this," he whispered to the empty room.

I want you to be happy.

He rolled over onto his elbow, searching the corners of the room again. He'd heard that. "Ellie?"

Silence answered him.


May 12.

Sam moved to one side of the drive as he saw the black car back slowly out of the garage, the engine's deep rumble sweet and perfect. Dean reversed to the front of the house and stopped, pulling on the handbrake but leaving the engine running as he got out.

He glanced at his brother and turned away, taking a few steps back from the car and closing his eyes as he listened. She sounded awesome, he thought, deeply satisfied. Perfect again.

Walking back to the car he leaned inside and turned the key, looking around at Sam.

"Sounds good," Sam offered, looking at the car. Not only sounded good, he realised. Dean had spent the last month in the garage, and the car looked like a million dollars as well, the deep black paint reflecting the sky and garden and house and man like a highly polished mirror.

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "You wanna beer?"

He walked up the steps to the front door and went inside and Sam followed, wondering how he was going to frame what he'd come to say.

In the kitchen, Dean pulled a couple of beers from the fridge and passed Sam one, leaning back against the counter as he twisted off the top.

"Might as well get it out, Sam," he said. "I'm guessing you came to say something."

Sam glanced down and back to him. "Yeah, I wondered if you're ready to have a memorial service?"

Dean looked at him, his expression flattening out to a cold stare. "No."

"Father Monserrat has been calling," Sam said carefully. "And a lot of other people have been asking about it…they just want to pay their respects, Dean."


"You must have me confused with someone who gives a rat's about what other people want, Sam."

"If you don't want to be a part of it, that's fine," Sam said. "But we're having a service at the church next Sunday. Father Dougherty agreed to have it after his morning mass."

Dean rubbed his hand over his jaw, staring at his brother in disbelief. "You just can't let it be, can you?"

"Dean, this isn't about how you're feeling. We get that," Sam said placatingly. "Other people need some sense of closure, and that's all it is."

Closure. Fuck he hated that word. As if the chapter was finished and all it needed was to close it and that would be the end of it. No one ever specified how it worked, though, how the whole thing worked, when it would stop or if it would ever stop, that fragile, crystalline feeling inside that was ready to break again with the wrong word, the wrong thought, the wrong image.

He looked at Sam's face and felt his anger subside abruptly. Sam looked guilty and worried and he knew it hadn't been his brother's idea to do this. He dragged in a deep breath and gestured to the table.

"Sit down," he said, pulling out a chair and dropping into it, his bottle clunking on the tabletop. "It's fine, Sam. If you want to have it, go ahead."

Sam pulled out a chair and sat down, tipping his bottle up and swallowing a mouthful in relief. "Will you go?"

It was on the tip of his tongue to say no, but he swallowed it, shrugging. "I don't know."

"It's not getting easier." It wasn't really a question.

"I didn't expect it to," Dean answered honestly, curling his hands around the bottle and staring at it. He raised his gaze to his brother, his mouth twisting up at one side in self-deprecation. "All the books, you know, they keep saying, go through the memories, remember everything good, but that…uh…that hurts worse. Like cataloguing everything that was perfect and knowing I'll never have it again."


Sam hid his surprise at the admission, both that Dean was reading about letting go, and that he was trying.

"It's different for everyone," he offered hesitantly. "I sure as shit didn't handle Jess' death in a healthy way, and it took years."

"Yeah, I remember," Dean said. He was silent for a moment, then he leaned forward a little. "I can still hear her, Sammy. More now, than before. Clearer. I figure—I figured I need to get a better handle on this, figure out if it's me or just…grief."

Sam's brow creased up, trying to imagine what Dean was hearing. "What does she say?"

"The usual stuff, I guess," Dean said, giving him a vague shrug. "Things I want to hear, mostly things I want to hear."

"But—"

"It's not her spirit, Sam," Dean interrupted. "There's no EMF at all. That's why I thought—well, I just want to make sure I'm not—"

Sam nodded. "Right. Yeah, of course."

"It's not like I haven't had plenty of practice at this," Dean said, his face twisting into a grimace. "I don't handle it all that well, but this…this is…"

"I know," Sam said. "No one expects you to be fine, you know."

Dean exhaled gustily and finished his beer. "So…what's going on?"

Sam shrugged, picking up the bottle. "Not much right now. Trent and Katherine got the okay to adopt Sara and Leah, they're going to finalise the paperwork in Portland next week."

"That's good," Dean said, turning to look out the window.

"Yeah, it really is," Sam said. "Um...Garth took off to look at haunting. Rudy took his crew back to Maine. Charlie went with them. Carl and Adam have been helping Jeremy to get the Michigan place closed up for the time being. Soleil and Callie got back to Jasper a week ago, and Jim and Ginny and Red took off. Marcus got back from Ray's yesterday."

"No big monster explosions?"

"No, the mutations we were seeing starting dying out, about two weeks ago, according to Frank. He said the bodies that've been found were hopeless; non-viable for survival, the deformities too extreme. So it seems like the populations might settle back to normal or a little less by the end of the year. Frank'll keep an eye on it anyway."

"That's good then," Dean said, feeling suddenly tired. "Anyone tried to take a shot at the Watchers' kids?"

Sam shook his head. "With everything that happened, everyone was shell-shocked for a while and they just…forgot about it, I guess."

Dean nodded. "Whole shake up in Heaven too, I guess?"

"Yeah, Cas said it was a mess but Amaros has reorganised most things."

"Maybe they'll mind their own business for a while."

Sam's smile was only a little disbelieving. "Maybe."

Dean stood up, tossing his bottle in the trash can and going to the window. The garden was neat, the lawn mown, shrubs clipped and the flowerbeds rioting with colour. He saw John in the tree-house, reaching down to grip his sister's hand as she climbed up the ladder to join him. Behind him, he heard his brother's deep exhale.

"Do you still pray, Sam?" he asked, turning around.

Sam nodded, a little self-consciously. "Yeah, still do."

The corner of Dean's mouth lifted slightly. "You always had more hope than I did."

"I guess."

"I'm tired, Sam," he said, his gaze dropping. "I'm so goddamned tired."

"I know you are, Dean," Sam said.

Dean shook his head slightly and walked back to the table. "If you're praying, send one up for me; ask him to make it stop hurting so much."

He walked out of the room, and Sam heard his feet on the stairs.

"I have, I am," he whispered, getting up. "Every night, man."


May 16.

The suit hung a little on him, Dean thought as he looked at his reflection critically. He'd been training, a couple of hours a day, usually with Oran, sometimes with Sam. But he hadn't put the weight back on that had gone in the last couple of months.

It was a nice suit, for a suit. A deep charcoal grey with threads of green woven into the fabric, giving it a subtle sheen and, she'd said, brought out the colour of his eyes. His mouth twisted at that memory. He didn't see it himself, straightening the tie and easing the knot up under the collar of the off-white shirt.

"Dad, do I look alright?"

He turned around. John stood in the doorway, wearing a dark blue suit and tie, his hair damp and combed flat.

"Yeah, you look sharp, buddy," he said, ignoring the tightness in his chest and forcing himself to smile. "Where's Rosie?"

"In her room. She says the ribbons keep falling out," John said with a disdainful sniff for the problems of girls.

"Better fix that," Dean said, walking to the door of the bedroom as John spun around and ran up the hall.

"Don't forget the cuff-links."

He froze in the doorway, turning slowly to look around the room. It was empty, as it had been for the last two months. He glanced at the nightstand but the EMF was still silent and dark, the flashing LED showing it was on, and working but registering no electro-magnetic fields.

It had been her voice, a little dry, underlaid with a warm affection. He'd heard it as clearly as he'd heard John's voice. Not in his head.

He scanned the room again, looking in every corner, at the curtains, in the soft taupe shadows between the furniture and the walls. The room was still empty. He walked back to the dresser and the small, silver bowl on top of it. She'd bought him two sets, for the rare occasions they needed to get dressed up for something. One was plain silver. The other held polished agate stones, in a white-gold setting. Looking down at them, he took a deep breath.

"Which ones?"

"The silver ones."

He closed his eyes tightly. What the hell was happening to him? He thought he'd been making some progress, finding ways to accept she was gone…but this, this was worse than it'd been before.

"Ellie?" he breathed her name.

This time, there was no answer.

Maybe it was just in his head, maybe he was kidding himself about being able to let go. Maybe he really was holding on too hard and forcing his mind into these half-terrifying, half-comforting delusions.

His fingers scrabbled in the bowl for the silver cuff-links and closed tightly around them, and he swung around, walking fast out of the room.


Dean opened the front door and stopped dead, staring at the Impala. He'd had every intention of getting in the car and driving down to the church...until this very moment, looking at the polished car, sitting out the front of the house, and realising he couldn't. Couldn't be with people when he said goodbye, couldn't face that in front of anyone else but John and Rosie.

He looked down at his children. "Uh, let's go for a walk."

John looked up at him, a faint frown drawing his brows together. "What about the church? I thought we were going to say goodbye to Mommy?"

"Yeah, we will," Dean said, dropping into a crouch in front of him and Rosie. The little girl was wearing a deep green dress. He'd never even seen it before, but it suited her, made her copper-red hair blaze against it, made her eyes even more like her mother's, the gold flecks bright against the jade green. "But just us. Not with everyone else."

He stood and took their hands, walking down the steps and past the car, heading for the trail that led up through the woods to the clearing higher on the ridge. Neither child spoke, and he hoped he was doing the right thing.

They came out into the small clearing; the valley spread out to the left, mountains far off in the distance and the peaks of the Cascades hidden from them on this side of the range. The clearing was surrounded by oaks, and John tugged free of his hand, running to the overhung hollow under one oak where the vixen had always had her cubs.

Dean sat down on the grass and looked across the valley, aware of John and Rosie's exploration but not concerned about it.

Letting go had always been his problem, he thought. And it wasn't the guilt or the responsibility he'd felt. It was wanting to go back. Never forward. Only back.

For eight years, he'd lived a life that had gone forward, in fits and starts sometimes, but he hadn't looked back, certainly not in the last six years. Was he going to undo that now, cling to what he'd had and miss out on his children's lives in that desperate need? He wouldn't be the man he was now if he hadn't known her, if she hadn't loved him, if he hadn't taken a risk and let himself fall so deeply and so trustingly in love with her that understanding himself became not only possible, but essential. Wouldn't have what he had now.

He'd thought all this was his forever. And, he guessed, in a way it was. No one could take away his memories, the things he'd learned, the man he'd become. No one could take this life from him, even if she wasn't there to share it anymore. The pain would stay, he thought, because everything came with a price. It might become more bearable, as time passed. It might not. He didn't know, couldn't imagine.

The life was still here. His children were here, incredible gifts they'd made together. That was important. That was what he needed to keep his focus on, all the things they'd made together.

John dropped beside him, his face flushed with exertion, leaning against him with the casual insouciance of complete trust. Rosie ran up a moment later, thumping into his lap and wrapping her arm around his neck.

He listened to their breathing, Rosie's heartbeat against his chest, John's against his arm. They were real and here and they needed him. And he needed them.

"Did Mommy die?" John asked, looking up at him.

Dean felt the automatic desire to deny it. It didn't do anyone any good to pretend. Not him. Not them.

"Yeah, John. I think she did."

"You said she disappeared," John said, a hint of accusation in his voice.

"I know," Dean said. "I didn't want to admit she died, wanted to tell myself that maybe…" He shrugged, putting his arm around the boy and pulling him closer.

"I don' want her to be dead," Rosie said, her lower lip pushing out, wobbling a little.

"Me either, sweetheart." Dean looked down at her. "Sometimes things happen, and there's no reason for it, nothing we can understand. Bad things happen and we just have to accept them."

"Jessie's mommy died, last year," John said. "Jessie says he misses her, every day."

Dean nodded, not sure who Jessie was, one of the kids at the school, maybe. He wondered if John had talked about it with Ellie. She hadn't mentioned it if he had.

"We're going to miss your mom, too, John," he said. "Every day. For a long time."

"It hurts inside, when I miss Mommy." John pressed his face against his father. "It makes me feel bad."

"I know," he said. "Maybe we need to remember the good things about Mom, remember the things when we were happy, so it doesn't hurt so much."

"Is Mommy in the ground?" Rosie lifted her face to his, and he saw a little fear in the wide green eyes.

"No, baby, she's not," he said, kissing her forehead. "She just kind of…disappeared, and there wasn't anything left."

"Rudy told me the angels took her away." John looked down and Dean saw his lashes trembling.

"I don't know…maybe they did," he hedged, unsure of what he wanted to tell them about that. His mother had believed in the goodness of angels. He couldn't.

"Are you going to find another Mom for us?"

He looked down at John. His son's face held an expression he wasn't sure how to read. "No—why do you think I would?"

"Jessie's Dad got married, before Christmas, and he told Jessie and his brother the lady was Jessie's new Mom."

Christ, he thought tiredly. "Oh…uh, no. I don't think so, John. I—no—don't—there's no one who can really—I don't think so," he mumbled. Never say never, but he couldn't imagine it, for himself.

"Jessie doesn't like his new Mom," John confided, relief lightening his voice. "He says she isn't nice."

"Uh…" He didn't know what to say to that. "That's not going to happen, John."

"Can we pray to Mommy?" Rosie shifted around on his legs, settling herself against the crook of his arm.

"Yeah, I think that would be a good idea, Rosie. We can tell her how much we love her, and say goodbye."


Dean looked at the cars in his drive as he walked down the trail, Rosie sitting on his shoulders, John's hand in his.

"Can we play with Marc and Laura?" John asked, recognising his uncle's car.

Dean nodded, easing himself into a low crouch for Rosie to scramble off as John ran down the path. He walked to the house, looking quizzically at Sam as he came up to the porch.

"Nice suit," Sam said, one brow lifted slightly. "Were you going to come?"

"Yeah." He shrugged. "Got the suit on, got as far as the car...but...that was it. I couldn't."

He glanced past Sam, at Cas and Amaros, both waiting behind his brother. "Angel visit? How'd I get so lucky?"

"They, uh, went to the service, Dean," Sam said. "I told them you were still hearing Ellie, and they wanted to ask you about it."

Dean pushed the front door open. "Sure. Why not."

"You pissed at me?" Sam asked as Dean walked past and into the house

Dean's expression smoothed out. "No, Sam."

"Where do you hear her, Dean?" Castiel asked as he followed Dean and Sam into the hallway.

"In the bedroom," Dean answered, waving a hand toward the stairs.

"Anywhere else?" Amaros' gaze was intent. The angel's construct looked the same as the last time he'd seen him, but the wings were now invisible…or hidden somehow.

"No."

"Can we see the bedroom?" Cas glanced at the staircase.

"Be my guest," Dean said. "She's not there."

He walked up the stairs after them, Sam's heavy tread behind him and waited until they'd walked into the bedroom before following them and stopping next to the bed. He loosened his tie and pulled it off, throwing it across the bed as he watched them move around the room. Sam held his EMF meter, the gadget remaining resolutely silent.

"Have you let go?"

He froze by the dresser, closing his eyes. "I thought I had," he whispered.

"I miss you too."

"Dean?"

He turned around and looked at Sam.

"Did you hear that?" Sam asked.

He nodded, then frowned at the implication, looking from his brother to the angels.

"She's not a spirit." Amaros looked at Castiel. "I heard her too."

"You heard her?" Dean asked disbelievingly, his thoughts churning furiously.

"Yes, quite clearly. She said she misses you too." Castiel said, looking around the room. "You're not delusional, Dean."

His attention sharpened suddenly and Dean followed his eyeline to the framed photograph that stood on the nightstand on the other side of the bed. Ellie's side.

"Where did you get this?" Castiel crossed the room and picked up the smoky crystal pendant he'd looped over the photograph frame when he'd found it in his jeans pocket.

"I don't know. Ellie was wearing it. That day. I found it on the warehouse floor," he said, staring at the angel's tense face. "Why?"

Castiel closed his hand tightly around the pendant, his eyes shutting. "This is a node-stone."

He opened his eyes and looked at Amaros. The archangel frowned, walking to him and holding out his hand. Castiel dropped the pendant into it.

"What's a 'node-stone'?" Sam asked, his gaze flicking from Amaros to Cas.

"It's a crystal, with particular properties, sometimes—rarely—found in the nodes of the ley lines," the angel said.

"What kind of properties?" Dean asked suspiciously.

"Properties no other stone on earth holds." Amaros turned around. "It can be spelled to be a doorway, for instance."

Dean frowned at him. "A doorway where?"

Castiel's gaze flickered between the Watcher and the hunter. "To another plane, or to a protected dimension."

"What?" Sam's eyebrows shot up. "How?"

"Where did Ellie get this?" Castiel ignored Sam, his stare fierce on Dean.

"I don't know," he said, looking at the crystal in the archangel's hand. "She was wearing it that morning. I saw it when she was getting dressed."

"The Rom had a ritual, a spell, to hold the victim inside a crystal," Amaros said, looking at Castiel. "Did Ellie have any dealings with them recently?"

"Uh, yeah," Dean said, leaning back against the foot of the bed as his knees seemed to weaken. "Months ago. We had a job, saw a family about lifting a curse."

"Did she accept something from them?" Castiel asked. "It's important, Dean. Very important."

"I don't know," he said, spreading his hands out helplessly. "She said the negotiations were successful and…" He closed his eyes, trying to remember back to the drive home. To what she'd said about the Aljenicato family. "She had to take something as the favour for the cooperation of the woman who'd put the curse on Garth. She said it was a locket. When she got home…"

He opened his eyes and looked at the angel. "She put it in the safe."

"I'll check it," Sam said over his shoulder as he went out of the room, running down the hall for the stairs.

Dean looked at Cas, his stomach coiling and uncoiling, filled with butterfly shivers as possibilities filled his mind. He couldn't make himself think of it clearly, skirting around the hope like a wary animal, sniffing at it but not approaching.

"What was the name of the family, Dean?" Amaros said, dragging his attention back from his thoughts.

"Aljenicato. The woman's name was Jofranka."

The archangel disappeared, the curtains and bedspread fluttering with the breeze of his departure.

"Cas…" Dean turned back to the angel, his hands closing into fists.

"I don't know, Dean," Castiel said sharply. "We heard her as well. But I don't want to raise your hopes until we're certain."

"Too late," he muttered to himself, turning away from the angel and going to the window distractedly.

They both turned as they heard the pounding of Sam's on the stairs and along the hall.

"Safe's got nothing in it like that," he said, dragging in a lungful of air. "Could she have met them, sometime? Handed it back?"

Dean shook his head in frustration. "I don't know. I didn't see anyone. And she didn't mention it."

"Then she could've known—could've worn it deliberately, in case…?" Sam pressed, looking from Dean to Castiel.

"If she'd known what the crystal did, why would she still be trapped?" Dean demanded, hearing the edge to his voice.

"Perhaps she didn't know what it did," Castiel said, his brows drawing together. He looked from Sam to Dean. "Perhaps she doesn't know where she is, only knows that she can hear you somehow."

Dean turned away from the room, looking back out the window. He didn't know what to think about it—any of it—his heartbeat accelerating with his hope.

The sound of beating wings filled the room and the air brushed against him, the curtains fluttering at the windows, two of the photo frames on the dresser falling flat. Amaros stood in the room with an old woman beside him, her jet-black hair mostly hidden beneath a richly coloured and intricately woven shawl, her face dark and wrinkled.

"Can you release her?" Amaros asked, holding the pendant out to Jofranka.

"She wore it then? To the meeting of the firstborn?" Jofranka stared at the pendant. "I couldn't see that far ahead."

"Is she alive?" Dean walked across the room.

"Oh yes, boy, alive, in her body, soul intact." She held out a bony and withered hand to the archangel and Amaros laid the pendant and necklace in it. "O Del's power burned through her but the stone caught her as she was shattered."

Dean heard his knuckles crack, distantly, as he tightened his fists. Jofranka looked at him, smiling slightly.

"Everything is energy, boy. It cannot be destroyed or created. It can only change form."

She crouched down, laying the pendant on the floor and gesturing impatiently around her for the men and angels to move back. Dean heard her muttering something, low and soft, the language unknown to him, rising and falling fluidly like a song with no words.

On the creamy carpet, the node-stone lit up, a pinpoint of light forming in its heart, the faceted cut of the stone spreading the light around it and upward, to the ceiling, growing stronger as the Roma's voice strengthened.

There was a sharp crack and the light disappeared, and Dean stared down at the crystal on the floor, broken in half, it's heart dark and lifeless now. His gaze snapped to Jofranka, who knelt on the floor with her eyes closed, panting from her exertions.

"Where is she?"

"What happened?"

It was Ellie's voice, and he looked around, seeing her standing near the doorway behind the old woman. She was naked, lifting a hand to her head and looking around in confusion. A small cut, just below her eye, trickled a thread of blood down her face. He didn't think of moving or feel himself move; he was just there, his arms going around her, feeling her solid against him, breathing in her scent deeply, eyelids falling as her arms crept around him.

Sam turned to the angels, dragging in a deep breath as relief filled every cell. Castiel looked at the floor, his face expressionless but the slump in his shoulders showing an unangelic emotion.

Amaros knelt before Jofranka, as she picked up the two pieces of the pendant and tucked them into her clothes. He extended his hand and drew her to her feet.

"You angels," she said. "You think you're the only ones who know about the planes and the flow of O Del's energy through the conduits of the universe? Hmmf."

"Take me home," she commanded the archangel imperiously. "I am too old for this kind of adventure anymore."

Amaros inclined his head, glancing at Cas and Sam over her head for a moment, then drawing the woman close to him, his wings curving protectively around her. They vanished, and the curtains swayed again.

"We should probably leave them alone," Cas suggested, waving a hand toward Ellie and Dean, his expression discomforted. Sam nodded and following him past the bed to the bedroom door.

"Yeah." Sam reached out and closed the door behind them.


"What do you remember?" Dean asked, not caring, not really. Back was back and that was more than enough.

He'd put a plaster on the cut on her cheek, recognising it belatedly from the day she'd become the key. She was dressing, pulling on jeans, and that raised the memory of watching her do the same thing in Kansas. He couldn't take his eyes off her, some part of him afraid that if he looked away, she would disappear and he'd be alone again. He couldn't stop touching her either, not even willing to rely on his eyes as a means of verifying that she was alive, and here, and real.

"Not much," Ellie admitted, buttoning the fly. "I looked up and we were surrounded by angels. Then I woke up in a room, somewhere inside, I guess, on my own. Maluch turned up about an hour later and told me what happened, said Michael was helping them now. I tried to make him see reason on that, but he didn't want to hear it."

Dean nodded. The nephilim hadn't wanted to see reason on anything.

"When the rational approach didn't work, I went for offence, but Idra came in before I could get past Maluch." She reached up and touched the plaster on her face. "I remember Maluch doing this, and then nothing until twenty minutes ago when I was suddenly here."

He rubbed a hand over his face, watching her pull on a tee shirt and a soft flannel shirt over that.

"You disappeared," he said, his voice deepening. "When the door opened, we could still see Adrienne but not you. Amaros said you tapped into his strength to pull the power from Adrienne to yourself."

She turned to him, and he knew she was weighing his pain, what he'd seen and felt, her face paling.

"I didn't mean to happen that way, Dean." She sat down on the bed beside him, lifting her hand to his face.

He smiled a little. "Yeah, I know."

"I want to see John and Rosie, and…everyone else, I guess too." She got up and looked at him.

"They had a memorial service for you today, so, uh, there might be a few surprised people."

"I'll bear that in mind." She snorted softly. "Did Jofranka say anything about the crystal?"

"No, just that everything was energy."

"True but vague," she said, her nose wrinkling up. "It would've helped if she'd given me more advice than just a cliché about storms and willows!"


"Daddy said you went with the angels," Rosie said, glancing at her father accusingly. "He said we had to say goodbye."

Ellie tightened her arms around her daughter, looking over her head at Dean.

"I didn't know where Mom was," he explained to Rosie. "I thought she might've gone—"

Rosie shrugged a shoulder haughtily at him and pressed her face close to Ellie's neck. "I'm glad you came back," she whispered.

"Me too, sweetheart," Ellie said, closing her eyes. "I'm so glad to be back with you and John and your Dad."

John looked at his mother and sister, then turned to his father. "Grownups can make mistakes too," he said, his tone understanding. "I know you didn't mean to tell a lie, Dad."

Dean stared at him, hearing the muffled snort from Ellie. "Thanks, John."

Looking back at her, he raised a brow. "You could jump in anytime here, Ellie."

She smiled at him, a wide, warm smile that lit up her face. "To be honest, I wouldn't know where to start."

"Huh."


Dean held Rosie, watching as Tricia approached Ellie.

"I'm so sorry, Ellie," Trish said nervously, standing a few feet from her sister-in-law. "I was just—"

"Don't think about it, Trish," Ellie said, stepping close and hugging her. "I didn't pay any attention to what you said; you shouldn't either."

Well, that let Trish off the hook, he thought with a small amount of bitterness. There probably wasn't any point to rehashing the things that had happened, and Trish had certainly acknowledged them, but it seemed to him to be too an easy a let-off. What his sister-in-law had said, in anger and fear, still had its effects.

Behind Trish, Sam stood waiting, and in clumps around the room, the hunters and Watchers, the nephilim and their friends who weren't any of those things but were still connected, in different ways, to the life they lived, waited for their turn to see her, to touch her and prove to themselves she was still with them.

He looked at his daughter, seeing her drooping eyelids and looked back at Ellie, raising one brow at her.

She nodded, disengaging from Trish with a smile, and turned to him, taking Rosie so he could pick up John. There was no way she was going to miss out on putting them to bed tonight.


The lamplight turned her pale skin to cream and lit her hair to flame as Ellie undressed in their room. Lying there, watching her, Dean was aware that his pulse had accelerated again, his palms were lightly sweating, his breathing a little too fast. There was a shivery, thundery feeling inside of him and he couldn't relax, couldn't just put the last nine weeks aside in his memories and pretend that everything was back to normal. He didn't think he'd ever be able to forget or bury the memories.

She slid into the bed next to him, and leaned on one elbow, looking at him for a moment.

"Too much?"

He nodded, slipping his arms around her and pulling her close, his face buried against the side of her neck. Her hands stroked slowly over his shoulders. She couldn't miss the tension in his body, or his reactions to her touch. Her hands soothed him at the same time as they sent crackling tendrils of lightning through him.


Ellie felt the fine trembling through his body and wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly as the tremble escalated to a fast shivering, then became shudders that wracked his frame, shaking the bed with their force. He needed to let go of this too, this fear that he was dreaming, that he'd wake and it wouldn't be real, wouldn't be permanent.

She remembered nothing of the last nine weeks. He'd told her she'd talked to him, he'd heard her voice in this room, sometimes just saying the things he'd wanted so badly to hear, sometimes commenting on what he was doing or thinking. She couldn't remember that although enough of her must have been sufficiently coherent she'd been able to see him, hear him.

For her, the time had not existed at all. It'd been a shock when he'd told her how long it had been, and seeing the emotions in his eyes had sliced through her. She couldn't do anything about it, except be here and be real and hope that it would fade in time, overlaid by more memories, good memories.

He had let go, on his own and with no help or guidance from anyone else. That was a miracle in itself, she thought, wondering if he would realise the import of that achievement. He'd brushed it off when he'd told her, but Sam had filled in some of the gaps, and one day, she would raise it and they would talk about it. One day when it wasn't so close and raw.

For now, it was enough to just be again. To be here with him and their children, in their life, drinking in his scent, her lips against his skin, holding him close so he'd know she'd never let him go.


Forest Edge, Oregon. December 25.

Dean looked down the fully extended table, over the dishes and baskets and bowls of food, past the steady flames of the candles. The dining room doors were pushed apart and he could see the tree from his chair, towering to the high ceiling, the gleam of the star at its peak, boughs weighed down with decorations and tinsel.

At the table his family, and their closest friends, sat side by side, their faces another year older, a few more lines, a little more grey threading their hair, lit up softly by the candlelight and firelight in the hearth to one side, smiling, talking, listening, laughing.

Ellie and John and Rosie, Sam and Trish, Marc and Laura and Adrienne in the high chair, pushed closed to her father. Baraquiel and his partner, Talya, the beautiful red-haired nephilim's belly heavy with a child who would be born in the new year. Father Monserrat and Tatiana, Garth and Tamsin and their one-year-old son, Henry, Tamsin's older boy next to her. Frank and his new wife, Rona, who had accepted the hunters with surprisingly little fuss. Twist and Carl and Marcus. Trent and Katherine, with Sara and Leah, taking up the chairs at the end of the table and arguing amiably about the workload over the next few months. Faces that had become more than familiar to him, faces that had become family, people to put his back against and know they would never let him down.

He was eating with one hand, because the other was curled around Ellie's. She hadn't complained, deftly managing her fork and knife with the hand he'd left her, her fingers occasionally tightening around his, reminding him it was real. All still real.

They'd spent the last seven months at home, more or less hermits within the small community, neither wanting to leave the children or the house or their friends. It'd taken him a while to not follow her around, from room to room or up and down the garden, to feel that if he got on with something else, she would still be there when he returned. She'd known it, of course, and had stayed put or spent time with him, just talking, just listening, just waiting for him to find his way out of the mental labyrinth he'd built for himself.

On the mantle in the living room, there were more than two dozen framed portraits now. Ellie had gone through all their stuff, and Bobby's and Rufus' and Jim's boxed up belongings, finding the old pictures of their lives and having them cleaned, blown up and framed. They'd been her Christmas present to him, a tangible, touchable connection to his past.

There had been more; photographs and letters, documents and drawings, details of lives. Those filled several albums, and they too were in the shelves of the living room. He'd taken them down, the evening after they'd put up the tree, looking through them. They'd prompted his surviving memories, more good than bad, of the times and the lives of the friends they'd lost along the way. Energy is energy, the old Roma had said. It cannot be destroyed nor created, it can only change form. Remembering the dead was a way of not letting them truly die, Ellie said, sitting close beside him when he'd looked through the albums, asking him about them. He'd started talking and when he'd stopped, those memories had found a place to rest in him.

This was the glowing, real-life moment he'd looked for his whole life, this moment right here and right now, he knew. It could be taken away from him, but he'd always remember it, bright in his memory, everything he'd wanted, everything he needed, surrounding him and filling him and making it all worth everything he'd endured to get here.

"Dean?" Trent called from the end of the table, his voice raised only a little. "When are you back on deck again?"

He looked at Ellie, who lifted a brow at him and shrugged. "What've you got?"

"Possible skinwalker regrouping, in Pennsylvania, Jeremy eyeballed the town yesterday, said that there was a pack of thirty there, seemed to be more coming," Trent said.

"You talk to Rudy about it?"

"Yeah, straight after Jeremy called." Trent nodded. "He's got a team out looking for a vamp nest in upper NY state, said he could use a few more."

Dean shook his head. "Ask for volunteers—?"

Carl looked at Dean. "I'll go, with Idan and Tagi."

Ellie ducked her head, smiling slightly, and he caught the movement and expression from the corner of his eye, his mouth tucking in at the corner.

"There you have it, Trent."

"Rudy asked for you," Trent persisted, flicking an apologetic glance at Carl. "He sounded…determined."

Dean sighed. "I'll call him tomorrow."

"Right."


The bedroom was lit by the gentle firelight, the flickering flames casting shadows that chased each other over their skin as they moved, the only sounds the rasp and hitch of their breathing and the low, almost soundless moans as touch drew out sensation and pleasure built and spread, a languorous wave through nerve and muscle, peaking close to unbearable satiation then falling away to leave them both hungry for more.

There was no rush, no sense of time at all, just their senses intimately involved with each other, a heightened awareness of touch and taste, of smell and sound and sight, each feeding into the next, super-sensitising their skin and nerves, deepening perception and response, an attenuation of arousal that drowned them separately and together until there was no division between them—he could feel her pleasure and she could feel his, and inside her, he stroked into a furnace of pressure and reverberation, every thrust through the jittery vibrations surrounding him pulling at him to go deeper, harder, faster.

He'd thought he'd never feel this particular ecstasy again, the way it was between them and with no one else, and for the last few months, he'd been subliminally aware of that feeling, of making every second, every moment count, be treasured and remembered and held close. The unexpected result had been a deeper knowledge of each other, of sensation and feeling and an understanding of how they fit together, when itch turned to ache and ache stretched into yearning and yearning made every moment discrete. He felt her lift under him, felt her muscles close around him, felt her blood swelling the tissue inside of her and squeezing him hard and he felt himself cross the line, his muscles contracting sharply as she bucked under him, driving him deeper, taking his breath, taking his control and shredding it.

The aftershocks trembled through them, sparking along nerve endings already hypersensitive, and she laughed, low and soft, her cheek against his, her arms wrapped hard around him.

He lifted his head, enough to see her eyes. "Merry Christmas, I guess?"

Ellie drew in a deep breath, the laughter fading from her face as she looked at him. "Let's make it a tradition."


35 miles northeast of Mashhad, Iran. December 25.

"Terence," Collette Bennoit looked up from the narrow trench she was working in, her fingers remaining on the lump of clay she'd found buried there, turning her head to find her husband. She saw him a moment later, tipping a canteen of tepid water into his mouth in the shade of the white canvas tent.

"Terence!"

He lowered the canteen and stoppered it, putting it back in the deeper shade beneath the table and hurrying across the grey powdered dirt of the dig toward her.

"What is it?" He looked at the lump, one grey eyebrow lifted. "Lift it out."

"Have you seen this before?" Collette asked, her voice still firm and still holding a trace of a Parisian accent, though she'd been working in the Middle East for half a century and spoke more fluently in Arabic than either English or the language of her country of birth. She pushed back the loose tendril of silver hair that had escaped the white cotton headscarf she wore and looked at her husband's expression.

"I'm not sure," he said, getting to his feet and extending a hand to her to help her out of the trench. "The Wasiid would coat rare objects in clay and bury them, the clay would help to preserve and protect the objet from harm."

"This is older—a lot older—than the Wasiid, Terence," Collette said. "I don't even recognise half of the cuneiform we've seen on the artefacts that were nearer the surface."

"I know," he replied, walking to the tent, his wife following him closely. "This will be just a protective covering, though."

"Perhaps," Collette said, ducking under the canvas flap and going to the table, clearing their notes and the laptop from its surface and spreading out a smooth sheet of clean, white cotton over it.

"Pass me the small chisel," he said, setting the clay down on the table. "And the ball hammer."

She passed him the tools, watching as he found a small crack in the clay's surface and set the narrow-edged chisel delicately against it. He tapped the chisel's haft once, sharply, and they both started as the clay fell apart, precisely into four pieces, revealing what had been hidden inside.

The shock wave came a fraction of a second later, knocking them to the floor of the tent, spreading outward in an invisible surge of power. It passed from Israel to the west and Afghanistan to the east in a heartbeat, growing and travelling faster and faster, leaving a wake of unexplained births, deaths and small, localised disasters in its path.

It crossed the borders of China two minutes after the clay had been split, racing across the vast Pacific Ocean eastwards, and hit the eastern shore of the United States of America a minute earlier, the two edges meeting over the Cascade Mountains, in Oregon at 12.54 am precisely.


Forest Edge, Oregon. December 26. 12:54 am.

John sat up in bed and screamed. In the room down the hall, Rosie sat bolt upright, her high-pitched wail filling her room at the same time.

Two houses down, Sam jerked awake as he heard his children's screams—all three of them in their different rooms.


Now this is the Law of the Jungle,

as old and as true as the sky;

And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper,

but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk,

the Law runneth forward and back

For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf,

and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

~ Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book


END