Um, certain global political events have me too worried to speak, but I just wanted to say I hope everyone's staying safe out there.

Friday, September 19th, 2008

Pontiac, Illinois

After what seemed like forever, the ambulance finally arrived to take Pamela to the hospital. The EMTs asked what happened and Bobby must have come up with a lie that was at least halfway believable, because they didn't ask again. They loaded her up onto the gurney, rushed her out the front door and to the ambulance that was on standby in the middle of the street. (Dean and Bobby didn't think to move their cars, and the neighbors had parked on the other side of the street, so the ambulance had no choice but to block the road. At least it wasn't a heavy-traffic area.)

As the ambulance pulled away, Bobby told Dean and Sam that he was going to follow it in his car and instructed the boys to head back to the hotel in Pontiac. Both brothers tried to argue that they should at least stay and make sure she was okay, but Bobby assured them he had it covered. Besides, the hospital probably wouldn't like all of them crowding the ER and it was easier to keep a story straight when it was just one person coming up with the lies. Given all of that, the boys gave up and took the Impala back out the way they came.

The ride back from Pontiac was silent. Dean didn't even put the music on, he was so shaken up. Sam did try to get him to talk a few times, but Dean just kept shooting him down. It was a long four hours, but they did make it back to Pontiac without incident. Dean pulled up at a diner on the edge of town, citing that he'd hadn't eaten all day and hadn't had a burger since he rose from the grave. Sam told him he'd be in after he called Bobby and checked on Pamela. With that, Dean went inside and got a table.

Once he found himself alone, Dean took stock of himself. It didn't take much to see that he was a mess. He wished he could get control of himself, but he didn't know how. He didn't understand that vaguely frightened feeling he'd had ever since he'd "woken up," but it wasn't going away. All he could do was count himself lucky that neither Sam nor Bobby had said anything about it yet – if they had noticed at all. He couldn't be sure. He thought for a second back at Pamela's that Sam might've been catching on, but apparently, he still had the wool pulled over his eyes. That, at least, Dean could count as a win.

A waitress came over and asked if he knew what he wanted. Sam still wasn't back yet, so he just ordered for himself and asked for her to come back when his brother came in. Maybe that was what was wrong with him; maybe he was just hungry. He hadn't eaten since the day before and everything he ate then was insubstantial and was thrown back up, so an argument could be made for his anxiety being the result of starvation. That had to be it. Once he had a good old-fashioned American cheeseburger, he'd be back in fighting shape. At least, that's what he told himself.

Finally, Sam came into the restaurant. He was still on the phone, but it sounded like the conversation was wrapping up as he sat down at the table. Indeed, within a few moments, he was flipping the phone back shut.

"What'd Bobby say?" Dean asked.

"Uh, Pam's stable and out of ICU," Sam reported.

"And blind 'cause of us," Dean concluded.

"And we still have no clue what we're dealing with," Sam added.

"That's not entirely true," Dean said.

"No?"

"We got a name," Dean pointed out. "Castiel or whatever." Despite the nonchalance, he felt something weird when he was saying the name. He couldn't quite put a name to it, but it didn't trigger anything overwhelming, so he just brushed it off. "With the right mumbo jumbo, we can summon him. Bring him right to us."

"You're crazy," was Sam's predictable response. "Absolutely not."

"We'll work him over," Dean said. "I mean, after what he did?" Something twisted inside his stomach upon hearing his own words, but again, nothing overwhelming, so it was brushed off.

"Pam tried to take a peek at him, and her eyes burned out of her skull, and you want to have a face-to-face?" The way Sam's face hardened as he spoke was enough to make Dean think twice, but only for a moment.

"You got a better idea?" He asked when he couldn't come up with any other feasible options.

"Yeah," Sam said. "As a matter of fact, I do. I followed some demons to town, right?"

"Okay," Dean said, following.

"So, we go find them," Sam said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Someone's got to know something about something."

Right as Sam finished saying that, the waitress came over with slices of pie for both. Dean frowned. He hadn't ordered pie (yet) and he told her to wait for Sam to come in and place his own order. At the same time, Dean wasn't one to look a gift pie in the mouth…

…That was until the waitress pulled over a chair and sat at the center of the table between him and Sam. That caused him to raise an eyebrow. Though, looking her up and down, she was rather pretty. She probably thought she could extort something out of them by being friendly. It could work on some people, but not Dean. Not then.

"You angling for a tip?" he asked. The waitress smirked.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I thought you were looking for us."

Her eyes flashed to black. Automatically, Dean reached for the knife at his belt, but he kept the movements subtle as to not lose the element of surprise. His had rested on the handle when a man with similar dark eyes crossed the room and locked the front door to the establishment, the only apparent exit. He and Sam exchanged quick glances for a second, the quick connection communicating in seconds what would take too long to say in words.

Once she was sure she had them trapped, the female demon's eyes changed back to the shade of hazel belonging to the woman she possessed.

"Dean," she said. "To Hell and back. Aren't you a lucky duck?"

"That's me," he said darkly.

"So," the demon said. "You get to just stroll out of the pit, huh? Tell me, what makes you so special?"

"I like to think it's because of my perky nipples," he joked, simultaneously glad that he was the only one who knew how dark that remark truly was. Regardless, the demon clearly wasn't amused, her face still stone cold and waiting for an answer. "I don't know," Dean admitted. "It wasn't my doing. I don't know who pulled me out."

"Right, you don't." Her sarcasm would only be lost on a deaf man.

"No, I don't," Dean insisted more firmly.

"Lying's a sin, you know," the demon remarked. Comprehension struck Dean right then.

"I'm not lying," he said. "But I'd like to find out. So, if you wouldn't mind enlightening me, Flo." The demon tilted her head, her gaze as sharp as a knife.

"Watch your tone with me, boy," she said. "I'll drag you back to Hell myself."

Sam tried to make a move, but Dean held out a steadying hand, stopping him. The woman looked back and forth between the two brothers. Whatever analysis she had was about to be proven wrong.

"No, you won't," Dean said.

"No?" The demon questioned.

"No," Dean said confidently. "'Cause if you were, you would've done it already. The fact is, you don't know who cut me loose, and you're just as spooked as we are, and you're looking for answers." The derision emanating from the demon's eyes was enough of an answer for him. "Well, maybe it was some turbocharged spirit, hmm, or, uh, Godzilla, or some big bad boss demon, but I'm guessing at your pay grade that they don't tell you squat. 'Cause whoever it was, they want me out and they're a lot stronger than you. So, go ahead. Send me back, but don't come crawling to me when they show up at your front doorstep with some Vaseline and a fire hose."

"I'm gonna reach out your throat and rip out your lungs." Dean wanted to laugh. That was really the best she could come up with?

Regardless, she didn't have squat on him, so Dean just let her threat hang in the air for a moment before slapping her sharply across the face. Twice. God, he wanted to do that for so long. Granted, she wasn't the demon he wanted to do it to, but nonetheless it still felt good. The demon looked at the two brothers, furious indignation written across her face. Otherwise, she didn't do anything to retaliate. Dean felt even more satisfied with that.

"That's what I thought," he said. The demon gaped at him, angry but at a loss for words. "Let's go, Sam."

The two of them got up from the table, but Dean didn't take his eyes off the demon wearing a stolen meat-suit in front of him. Just to add insult to injury, he pulled out his newly-returned wallet and threw a ten down on the table.

"For the pie," he said before stalking off after Sam. He didn't need to look behind him to know she was staring him down with the most predatory glare.

Good, he thought. Let her stare. Bitch deserves to burn where she belongs.

Once they were out of the diner, Sam tried to tell Dean that they should go back inside and take care of the demons, but Dean wasn't hearing it. They were outnumbered and still had "Castiel" to worry about. It was smarter to conserve their energy and focus on the bigger threat. Sam looked like he wanted to say something against that, but for whatever reason he just dropped it and spent the entire car ride back to the hotel sitting in the passenger seat with that ticked-off look on his face. Already, Dean could feel an argument coming on. He just hoped it could wait until they were back at the hotel and after he got some proper food in him. (Because it turns out he will look a gift pie in the mouth if it's a demon giving it to him.)

They made it through the parking lot and the front door of the motel without incident. Despite that, Dean's hope of getting home free was waning with each passing second. Just as he feared, they were pulled to a stop before they could even make it up the stairs to the room. However, it wasn't Sam's attitude that caused the abrupt halt.

It was the man shouting at the barely-five-foot-tall girl right in the middle of the motel lobby. Dean didn't clearly catch what the man said first, but he did catch Skye's reply.

"No, I am," she said. "You hired me last week. Remember?"

"No, I don't," the man stated bluntly. "Where's Jason? He's supposed to be on shift right now."

"Jason, Jason…" Skye looked up at the ceiling, clearly pretending to be trying to remember. "Nope, doesn't ring any bells."

"Oh, bullshit," the man said. "Did he put you up to this? Is he skipping work again?" Something akin to relief crossed Skye's face.

"Okay, okay, you've got me," she said. "Yes, I know Jason, and yes, he's doing both of those things."

"God damn it, Jason, not again!" Dean didn't know who Jason was, but just based on the situation he couldn't feel sorry for the guy. "Well, what the hell are you doing? Get out from behind there!"

Skye jumped a bit but didn't hesitate in lifting the partition in the counter and stepping into the lobby. Before she could try to slink out, though, the man – who clearly had some hand in running the hotel – stepped in front of her, blocking her path.

"I want you to leave here and not come back," he said. "If I ever see your face in this hotel again, I'm calling the police. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Skye said. "That won't be a problem, sir."

"Good," the man said. "Now get out of here and tell Jason not to bother coming in for his last check."

Skye nodded and said nothing more before heading out the door. She did make eye contact with Dean as she passed and to say she was mortified wouldn't even partially describe it. Gears began to turn in his brain, and he didn't like the conclusion it was coming to.

"Hey, what're you looking at?" Dean – surprisingly – startled when the man turned his attention onto him. "Is there anything I can help you with, or do I need to throw you out, too?"

"Uh, there's no need for that." Dean hadn't even realized that Sam was still standing next to him. He figured he went up to the room without him. "We're paying guests who didn't mean to get caught up in this. We'll just head back to our room now."

Sam gave Dean a pointed look, but he didn't need it to get the message. The two of them headed up the stairs, but Dean could only hold back his outrage for so long before he finally burst.

"What the hell?" he said. "She doesn't even freaking work here?"

"Dean…" Sam couldn't even start his thought before he was cut off.

"No," Dean snapped. "Don't tell me it was just a coincidence because there's no way it was! She doesn't work here, I bet she didn't work at the gas station either."

"Alright, that is suspicious," Sam conceded as they reached the top of the stairs. "But what can you do about it. It's not like you can chase her down and force her to talk."

"Maybe I can." Sam stopped short.

"You can't be serious." Dean turned back to Sam, regarding him with a look of disbelief.

"What?" he said. "She knows something, that much is obvious. I say we go find her."

"You don't even know where she went," Sam pointed out.

"It's a small town," Dean said. "It can't be too hard to find one girl." He then turned and continued his way back down the hall.

"Alright," he heard Sam say behind him. "Say you manage to find her. What then? You gonna stare her down? Rough her up? Force her to talk?"

Dean had reached for the motel room door and was trying to unlock it when the shock of Sam's words hit him. The keys dropped to the floor and his hands shook a bit. He heard Sam say something, but it was lost on him as he focused on pulling himself together.

"I'm fine, Sam," he finally managed to say. It only took one glance at Sam for Dean to know that he wasn't buying it.

"You sure about that, Dean?" he asked. "Because you aren't acting fine."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're not thinking rationally," Sam said. "First you want to confront this Castiel-thing without knowing what it is and now you want to chase down some little girl because she might know something?"

Dean knew he was being ridiculous, at least about the latter. He could admit Sam had a point there. They had no way of finding her and she could be anywhere. However, that returned him back to the former, which he was becoming more certain was their best option. It was a better idea than what Sam had in mind, which reminded him…

"You're one to talk," he said. "You're the one who wanted to take an entire diner full of demons head-on. Which do you think is the dumber idea?"

"Summoning the thing that just blinded a woman in front of us." Sam just had to make it sound like the most obvious thing in the world. "I know what I'm doing, Dean. We can handle it."

"No, we can't," Dean said. "We don't have a freaking clue what we're up against. At least if we summon it, we can get an idea."

"Not if it kills us on sight."

"It won't."

"And how can you be so sure about that?"

Dean went silent. Honestly, it was just a feeling he had. He couldn't explain it, but he just knew that whatever this thing was wouldn't hurt him. It just wouldn't. It took Dean a moment, but he was able to rationalize that into something that made sense.

"Because why raise me from the dead just to kill me again?" he questioned. "Wouldn't make sense."

Dean picked the keys up off the floor and didn't miss the unimpressed sound Sam made at that argument.

"That still doesn't make it a smart idea, Dean."

With steadier hands this time, Dean got the keys in the lock and successfully turned it. He tried to say something as he pushed in the door, but whatever rebuttal he had in mind died on his lips as soon as he got one look at the room.

Tape. There was duct tape everywhere, on the windows, the ceiling, even the television screen. A silver X marked every glass surface in the room, marking it as a pirate would mark their buried treasure. However, the purpose of the markings was far more pointless than marking the site of untold riches.

Usually when a window was marked with a duct tape X, it was done to keep it from shattering in a storm. Unfortunately, that safety precaution rarely if ever worked and Dean knew that first-hand. He and Sam had been left at a motel in Florida when Hurricane Andrew hit. Whoever oversaw that place had been cheap and taped the windows instead of boarding them up properly. As a result, when a tree branch went flying through their window, it shattered upon impact and both were cut up badly.

Given that experience, the sight of their current room made Dean uneasy. It was a feeling that was only made worse when he tried to flip the lights on, and nothing happened.

"What the hell?" he said. "What is this?"

"I don't know." Sam approached one of the windows to inspect the tape. "Is there a storm coming?"

"How would I know?" Dean said as he continued to flip the light switch. "It's not like I've had time to check the weather."

Frustrated, Dean went over to the nearest lamp to try to figure out what was going on. The answer became obvious when he looked through the lamp shade to find that the lightbulb was missing. Upon further inspection, he found that the power chord had also been cut. He threw the severed wire down on the ground hard.

"Son of a bitch," he cursed. "She was in here!"

"Who?" Sam questioned.

"Skye," Dean snapped. "She was in here. She trashed the electronics and taped up the windows."

"Why would she do that?" Sam asked.

"I don't know," Dean said. "But it's the exact same thing she did at the gas station. The windows were boarded up, the lights were gone, appliances were destroyed… She knows something. She has to."

"You don't know if it was her, though," Sam pointed out.

"She was here," Dean countered. "She was working behind the front desk. She had means and opportunity."

"What about motive?" Sam asked.

"Good question," Dean remarked. "Look around, check to see if anything is missing." As an example, Dean threw one of their duffle bags up onto the bed and started sifting through it.

"You think she stole from us?" Dean shrugged.

"She had no problem lying to get two-hundred bucks off me," he said. "She's capable of it."

With that, the two brothers set about searching the entire room. Nothing of theirs turned out to be missing, but they did find more broken appliances. Without a doubt they both knew that if they weren't kicked out, they certainly wouldn't be allowed back.

Once the entire room had been checked, there was really nothing left they could do. Sam tried to peel the tape off some of the surfaces, but it took so much picking and scraping that eventually he just grew frustrated and gave up. Dean did walk out for a little bit to see if he could find Skye, but only having a first name and "might not be white" as a description didn't really make room for much headway. He returned to the room after walking around two blocks without finding hide nor hair of her.

Given that Skye had clearly become a dead-end, Dean decided to crack open one of their lore books to try to find something relating to this "Castiel." He kept flipping through pages until they all started blurring together. Before he knew it, his eyes were shut, and he'd fallen into something of a dreamless sleep. All things considered that might have been a good thing. He knew his nightmares were bound to be worse than normal since he came back from Hell, so being tired enough not to dream came as a blessing.

What didn't come as a blessing was the noise. It shocked Dean awake and left him confused as to what was going on. It was darker in the room when he fell asleep. That was one thing he knew for sure. The other was that the noise was the same one he'd heard at Pamela's house and in the gas station.

Thinking fast, Dean flipped over the bed and grabbed the shotgun he'd stashed between the other side of the bed and the nightstand. Getting to his feet, he was in a prime fighting stance and searching the room for any sort of a threat. If he was going to find it, he had to do it before the noise got too powerful and overwhelmed him again. As far as he could see, nothing was in the room with him, so he had to assume that it was going to come through the front door. He pointed his gun in that direction and moved slowly, ready to strike in an instant.

He tried. He really tried to block out the noise, but eventually Dean couldn't stand the pain in his ears anymore and was forced to bring one of his hands up to try to at least block it on one side. Then he fell to his knees. Then the let go of the gun completely. The only sound that got around the noise was that of the mirror on the ceiling cracking. He tried to look back at it, but he was forced to squeeze his eyes shut. He couldn't fight it anymore. He was having another vision.

"I know," the man in his vision said as he took a step towards him. "I know how you see yourself, Dean. You see yourself the same way our enemies see you. You're destructive, and you're angry, and you're broken, you're… You're daddy's blunt instrument and you think that hate and anger, that's… That's what drives you, that's who you are. It's not, and everyone who knows you sees it. Everything you have ever done – the good and the bad – you have done for love."

Dean couldn't be sure whether it was the pain from the noise, the glass that was coating the floor, or just the sheer impact of the man's words – but something was making his heart beat erratically. There was no air for his lungs to breathe. He only started coming to his senses when Bobby started rushing towards him, calling his name.

Thank you to Little One, And_Softheart, and READINGREADER for their comments on AO3, and to Galaxy_Children, SherlocksHound, and the two guests who left kudos! You guys rock!

I don't have much time to really write an author's note today, but I just wanted to say I appreciate everyone who is still supporting this story. I love reading your reactions in the comments, and I hope we'll all be able to see where this story goes.

Remember kids, it's a scary world. Stay safe out there.

Originally uploaded to FFN on 2/23/22.