I remember you; We were Bonnie and Clyde.

We thought we'd go down in history, I guess we changed our minds.

You're a hundred worlds away now, I'm sure it's for the best.

You're practically a stranger now, but you stand out from the rest

'Cause I remember you

I remember you

Eileen Jewell, I Remember You

Two Weeks After That...

"Tell me what 'ittakes to letchoouuoouu goooooo!"

Loki watched a positively cringe-worthy performance from a bar stool situated a safe distance from the stage. Alice had requested numerous times that he stop bringing her places with karaoke machines and in his defense, this place hadn't owned a karaoke machine when they walked in. Loki only materialized it after he realized Alice had chosen tonight to indulge in tequila again after a week-long boycott, the result of Loki smugly showing her a video of one of her other performances.

"Hey, I take no responsibility for anything that drunk Alice does!" she had groaned. Even so, her mortified blush and the fact that she refused to touch a drink for the rest of the night contradicted her words.

Now onstage, Alice stopped singing for a minute to take another swig of what should have been a beer. What she was too wasted to know was that Loki had swapped her beer out with even more tequila about fifteen minutes ago. He laughed out loud just thinking about how sick she was going to be in an hour or two.

"Tell me 'thatchou're happy to be... to be... to- sshhit. Fuck! Tell me... damn it."

Alice polished off her 'beer' and tossed the bottle away. With another burst of manic, uncontrollable laughter, Loki materialized another full bottle in her hand as she picked the song back up, now incurably out of sync with the backtrack.

"Tell me how it ish 'thatchou can sleeeeeep..."

"Alice!"

Loki thought he heard someone calling his favorite laughingstock's name, and swiveled in his seat to search the bar. Near the entrance, a blonde woman waved at the stage.

"Alice! Alice! Hey!"

"Hello," Loki purred appreciatively. This one was close to being his cup of tea. She also struck him as a little familiar-looking. She made a beeline for the stage, but he intercepted her before she could reach her destination.

"Well hello there," he said, slipping into seduction mode. "I bet you get this all the time, but I could swear I know you from somewhere, dollface."

The blonde looked him up and down, turning her nose up in distaste.

"Don't put money on it, gambler," she informed him, pushing past him with the single-minded ill manners of a woman on a mission. "That's a bet you won't break even on. Alice!"

"Mrrrrowww!"

Loki could appreciate a feisty attitude when it was attached to a natural blonde with long legs wrapped in skin tight jeans.

Onstage, Alice finally noticed the blonde mid-chug. Her features contorted with enraged recognition, eyes bugging from her sockets while she choked on her drink. Her drunken spastic fit lasted long enough for the blonde woman to introduce herself.

"Alice, it's me! Allison! I'm... wow, are you ok?"

Alice gurgled, gargled, made a sound that was somewhere between a belch and a coughing fit, then finally managed to catch enough breath to speak.

"Ruby!" she called out, the single word an accusation that was loaded with a decades worth of built up animosity. She leveled a shaky finger at the blonde, who shook her head and put her hands up defensively.

"No, Alice, it's-"

"Dead bitsssh! 'Chou're a dead... I'm gonna- Waugh!"

Alice lurched toward the blonde threateningly, but tripped off the stage on her way to start the fight. She fell like a stone off the four foot stage, taking most of the karaoke equipment with her. When she tried to rise, she was held back by the microphone cord, tangled between her right leg and arm.

"Alice, it's me!" the blonde protested, stepping forward with, it would seem, the intention of helping Alice free herself from the wires she was caught on. Alice, however, took a swing as soon as she was in range that the blonde dodged easily. "It's Allison! Hey!"

"Yeah r-right," Alice slurred, swaying dangerously as she tried to extricate herself from the microphone cord. Somehow, she managed to remain upright, though she was forced to take a stumbling step back after pulling herself loose. "How shtupid do I... How dumb do you think I am anyway, huh? I'm gonna..."

She reached into her jacket, feeling around for a knife.

"Alice, it's really me!"

"Yeah r- OW! SSHIT!"

Alice found a knife, but blindly grabbed the wrong end of it. Her hand came out of her jacket bloody as a dagger clattered to the ground.

"Alice, come on, you're... you're really, really wasted," Allison observed, sounding disappointed. "God, I hate to see you like this."

"Loki!" Alice called. She sat heavily, leaning back against the stage as the world spun around her uncontrollably and she felt suddenly, intensely sick. "Loki, help!"

"It's cute how she thinks I'm on call," Loki said, sauntering up to stand at Allison's side while at their feet, Alice threw up.

"Demon," she managed to gasp out in between her gagging. "Kill... oh, Gooooooddd..."

Loki looked Allison up and down.

"Demon? I don't think so," he said. "Maybe an angel."

He waggled his eyebrows at Allison suggestively, eliciting a scowl from her.

"Tthhis 'ishn't uh... uh joke," Alice moaned. "Dangeroush... kill... her. Ugh, fuuck."

"You're not here to take her back to hell, are you?" Loki asked.

"No!" Allison denied vehemently. "I'm her sister, damn it!"

"Oh... really?" Loki asked, doing a double take as he processed the new information. Now that he thought about it, he could see the family resemblance. "Wow. My condolences."

"Excuse me, who the fuck are you?" Allison snapped, her scowl deepening.

"The name's Loki."

"THE Loki?"

"That's right."

"Seriously kid? Another trickster?" Allison asked, bending down to her sister's level. "Ugh. Come on."

She grabbed Alice under the arms and started to drag her away from the puddle of puke she'd left on the floor. Alice, slightly sobered by being sick, started to question her initial conviction that this was Ruby trying to lull her into a false sense of security so she could stab her in the gut. She had enough presence of mind to realize that, in her current condition, no lulling would have been required to kill her. If this was really Ruby, she would be dead by now.

Since she was still breathing...

"Al... Allissh...?" she asked. "Allishon?"

"That's right," Allison crooned, taking a seat on the floor and dragging Alice onto her lap. She pulled her little sister's hair aside and wiped the sweat off her forehead with the end of her own sleeve. "It's really me. I'm, uh... well. I'm back, I guess."

"You're back..."

Alice tried the words out for size while they rattled around and around in her scrambled brain.

"Yeah. I mean... I was thinking on my way here that we would get drinks to celebrate," Allison said, a wry smile tugging up the corners of her lips. "But, uh... well, it seems like your goose is already pretty well cooked."

"Nah, I could... I'fe got, mm... room for more," Alice protested.

Allison burst out laughing and Alice laughed with her, not knowing what they were laughing at.

"How about we get you some air instead?" Allison proposed. "This place smells like puke."

"Well. To be f-fair to the plashe... it didn't 'ushed to sh- shm- shit. SMELL that way," Alice managed, putting incredible effort into sounding less drunk than she really was. Allison kept laughing and started trying to help Alice to her feet.

"Come on, kid," she encouraged. "We've got catching up to do."

"Um, helllooo," Loki chimed in, reminding them that he was present. "Look, sister or not, you can't just waltz in here and make off with my entertainment."

Allison looked Loki up and down slowly. Shockingly, he found himself shivering a little under her gaze. He liked the feeling.

"You know what would be entertaining?" Allison said, starting to guide Alice to the door. "You, stuck on top of a pine tree like a christmas angel. It'd be a fun challenge to jam you far enough onto the thing to get the tip to pierce your heart."

"Kinky," Loki shot back. "Keep talking dirty like that and I might have to clear a day to see if you're all talk, or if you deliver."

Allison shook her head in passing.

"You keep bad company," she informed Alice disapprovingly. Alice just groaned in response, too busy concentrating on not throwing up again to say anything.

Dean dreamed of distant, looming flames that stalked slowly toward him like an unstoppable, inevitable beast. He could feel their hunger, patient, carefully restrained, promising pain beyond the wildest dreams of the living. Behind him, he felt steel teeth against his back while the heat advanced. He panted, smoke filling his lungs, stealing his breath. He didn't even have enough room to cough as sweat poured from him in waves, boiling against his skin, suffocating him with salt. Around him, unseen horrors cackled and called his name, chanted his fate. The fire flooded over him, blinding him with the intensity of its light as it consumed his flesh, smoke preventing him from so much as a whimper while the pain lit every nerve in his body with agonizing intensity...

Bright golden sunshine woke Dean. His eyes snapped open, breathing heavy as he jolted awake with a start. Every muscle in his body was tight, poised to run, but he quickly realized there was nothing to run from. Only the heat of the morning sun, soaking into his skin past the sweat that his night terrors routinely coated him with. He realized he could breath, so he did. It took him a few minutes to shake off the vision and force himself to relax, settling back down between crisp white linens, groggy and only mildly hungover. Beside him, the girl who's apartment it was still snored softly, out so hard from a fun night that neither the burning daylight nor Dean spasming back to consciousness disturbed her.

Dean shifted, moving away from the sunlight, sighing in relief at the cool reprieve of the shade. He sat up, pushing aside the covers and contemplating the window that had woken him. He could see the building across the street, old bricks chipped and failing. Outside, the sounds of the city hummed a familiar tune, grounding him in the world he was once again a part of. Feet fully back on earth, Dean said a phrase he found running through his head every morning like clockwork, rain or shine, health or sickness, in or out of the money.

"It's a damn good day."

The weight of hell fell away with sleep and Dean smiled at the life he was getting a second shot at.

Lynyrd Skynyrd interrupted his grateful pause, prompting Dean to glance around, searching for his phone. The sound lead him to his pants, discarded on the floor at the foot of the bed under a pair of lacy panties. Dean inspected them with a satisfied grin, only to toss them aside a second later to dig through his pockets. He flipped his phone open to see who was calling him.

"Son of a bitch," he said, surprised. Not unpleasantly. He took the call.

"Hello? Dean?"

"Sam," he replied. It was the first time in he'd heard from his brother since they parted ways.

"Hey, how you doing, man?" Sam asked.

"Good. Glad to hear from you," Dean admitted. Behind him, the girl sat up and stretched, woken by his ringtone. In the back of his mind, Dean started flipping through an inventory of names, trying to remember the right one. "Not gonna lie, I was starting to wonder if... well, you know."

"No, I'm, uh... I'm doing fine too. Not dead yet. Hey, are you... are you busy?"

"Well..."

"Good morning," the girl said, sliding up behind Dean to nibble his ear. "I wanna say... Deeeerek?"

"Hold that thought man," Dean told his brother and turning to face the girl with a smirk. "No, but don't sweat it. I'll give you a pass if you give me one."

"Done deal," the girl giggled. "You breezing out of here, or you want breakfast first?"

"I could eat."

"Bacon or sausage?"

"Bacon, please."

"Coming up."

She kissed him briefly with playful passion, then left the room. On the phone, Sam coughed to remind Dean that he was still there.

"Dude."

"What can I say? Living life to the fullest," Dean chuckled. "What were you saying?"

"You busy?"

"Oh. Well..."

"Are you working a case?" Sam prompted.

"Not right now, no. Why?"

"I got a gig for you if it's no trouble. Guy I know sounds like he's in over his head, I figured you might be interested."

"Anybody I know?"

"Actually yeah. You'll remember him when you see him."

"You gonna tell me who?"

"And ruin the surprise?"

"Fine, fine. What's the case?"

"I didn't get too many details. Pennsylvania, sounded like it might be a skinwalker?"

"And what, you're too busy to help your friend out yourself?"

"Honestly, yeah."

"Right. So busy that it took you a month to check up on me? And when you did, it was only because some buddy of yours needed a favor?" Dean pressed, letting some irritation creep into his tone.

Sam sighed heavily.

"Look man, I didn't call to stir the pot or rehash anything. You want the case or not? Before you answer, just let me say... I think you'll get a real kick out of seeing this guy again."

Dean was repressing some serious frustration with Sam, but he couldn't deny that his curiosity was piqued. Not to mention that a beast hunt would be a nice change of pace from ghosts which, as of late, had a tendency to dig up painful memories. Ones he was trying hard to bury.

"Where?" Dean asked, resigning himself to the idea that he was going to do Sam a favor.

"I'll text you the hotel he's staying at. You two can meet up and handle it from there."

"Sure."

They were both silent for a long minute, Dean waiting for Sam to say something, Sam out of things to say that wouldn't start a fight. Finally, Sam cleared his throat.

"I'm happy to know you're doing good, man," he said. "Look, I gotta..."

"Yeah, sure."

"Take care, Dean."

"You too, I guess."

Sam hung up, leaving Dean holding the phone with a deep, dark frown. Finally, he shook his head, determined not to let Sam and his bad attitude bother him.

"Hey, you mind if I use your shower?" he called out.

"No problem, make yourself at home!"

Dean rose, catching a glimpse of skin on his way to the bathroom that quickly put him back in a good mood. That, and the prospect of killing something with a heartbeat soon.

"Sam, huh?"

Allison took her sister to a pier to talk. The night air was crisp and cool, but stunk faintly of sewage. Still, the company was good and the cigarette Alice was lighting covered the stench a little.

"Yeah. I gotta say, my money was never on him outsmarting Ruby, but... turns out the guy's got a good head on him. Hey, since when do you smoke?"

"I don't," Alice said past the cigarette in her mouth. Allison raised her eyebrows critically while her sister exhaled tarry chemical fumes into the night.

"Got me fooled," Allison retorted.

"It's a long story," Alice sighed.

"So was mine. I've got time."

"It's like... pesticides, I guess."

"I don't follow."

"The shapeshifter I'm possessing comes with a downstairs tenant."

Allison shook her head, still not understanding.

"It's pregnant," Alice spelled it out.

"Oh."

"Yeah. And, uh... well, modern medical practices all use surgical grade stainless steel, I guess. I must have run through half the abortion clinics in the country and none of them could get the job done."

"You think it would take silver to... you know. Kill it."

"If you consider it killing."

"So you're... how far along?" Allison asked, struggling to wrap her head around the news. "Were you in there when... you know."

"For the conception? I guess. As for how far along, it's a couple months by now. I'm not keeping track."

"Oh. So the smoking..."

"Hoping for miscarriage."

Allison couldn't help examining 'Alice's' belly, looking for signs of a niece or nephew through clothes that she now realized were looser than was typical for Alice. Still, Alice looked gaunt and pale, far from the rosy, nurturing picture of health that came to mind when Allison pictured a pregnant woman. She felt a twinge of sadness, a helpless excitement at the thought of being an aunt, even as she realized that physically speaking, her relation to the child would be... nothing. She was nothing to this kid, even if it was wanted, which, judging from Alice's attitude, was far from the case.

"It's not really something I want to talk about," Alice sighed.

"Got it. That's fine."

Allison wanted to know more, but she bit her tongue for Alice's sake and forced herself to move on to another subject.

"So, you and Loki... what's the deal there?"

"Just trying to stay alive."

Allison scoffed.

"You don't need him for that."

"You'd be surprised. I've got demons on my ass like a hooker's got crabs on hers."

"Gross. Are you saying you can't handle demons?"

"I can handle them," Alice snapped. "I'm just... I'm tired, you know?"

Her appearance and tone backed her up. Alice looked like hell, hair wild, skin pallid and eyes bordered by deep, dark circles.

"With Loki... it's easy. Sure, it sucks that he's constantly making me the butt of his jokes, but it's a lot better than the alternative."

Alice gave a dry chuckle while Allison listened with a terse frown.

"And I have to admit, it's fun to watch him screw with other people. So, all in all..."

"Alice, ditch that clown," Allison said abruptly. "Come with me."

"What, so you can deal with demons busting your door down every other night?" Alice asked skeptically. "I can't do that to you. You just got out. You need to stay out."

"I'm not out of anything," Allison argued. "I signed a contract that's about six years overdue, remember? I've already got demons knocking my door down."

She pulled a hex bag out of her pocket and tossed it to Alice to inspect.

"We've both got heat on us," Allison went on. "But at least we can deal with it together now."

"Like old times?" Alice mused, turning the bag over in her hand while she took another drag of her cigarette. The habit was meant to be temporary, another toxic substance to convince the fetus she was unwillingly carrying to give up on life, but Alice had to admit that she was going through more packs a day than was probably necessary. Deep down, she wondered if she would be able to kick the habit when the time came.

Serves you right if you can't, Danny griped from the back of their mind. Lung cancer was never part of my plan, but if it drives you out of my body, I'm all for it.

I doubt shifters can get cancer, Alice shot back.

Oh, is that like how you thought shifters couldn't get pregnant?

You are literally male and literally a different species than Dean, so don't act like that was such an unreasonable assumption.

Fuck you, Smith.

Alice went back to ignoring Danny, refocusing on her sister.

"Nah, nothing like old times," Allison said, surprising Alice. "Not if I can help it."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Alice asked, handing the hex bag back to her sister.

"I'm getting on with my life now that I've got it back," Allison informed her. "I needed to find you first, but now that I have, I'm starting over. Doing everything I always wanted to, but never could. I want you to do it with me."

Alice's eyebrows shot up as she remembered the things she and Allison used to dream about as children. Shared dreams, fantasies they concocted together, plans that Alice never believed would be reality, but that she indulged in because it was fun. It took the edge off of a gritty reality and gave her and Allison another thing to bond over.

"What, acting? You're heading out to Hollywood?" Alice asked, tone heavy with disbelief.

"Why the face?" Allison chuckled. "Seriously, why not?"

"Allison, that's..."

Alice burst out laughing, unable to contain herself even as she realized that her sister was serious.

"That's crazy," Alice said after she pulled herself together. "It's silly, it's... come on!"

"Crazier than hanging out with the norse 'god' of mischief for the rest of your life? Sillier than spending the rest of your life as his personal clown?" Allison questioned.

"Yeah! Yeah, just about!"

"Alice, come on!"

"Seriously, Allison, no offense... but it's a stupid idea," Alice scoffed. "If I was gonna split from Loki, it would be to do something I actually enjoy."

"You love to act!"

"I love to lie and be believed," Alice countered. "I'd prefer not to be videotaped while doing it."

"Ok, fine. I'll act, you can... I don't know, what is it you want to do?"

"Hunt."

Alice surprised herself with how immediately the word escaped her, how naturally it came. No thought, no ponderance, just an ounce of passion and a spark of excitement that she hadn't felt in over a month.

"Hunt?" Allison asked with a frown. "Really? That's it? That's all you can think of?"

The disdain in Allison's tone caught Alice off guard. She couldn't help but take a little offense to it.

"You say it like it's a bad thing."

"Yeah, because it is. Come on, Alice, you're just saying that because you've never done anything else. What if-"

"Hey, fuck you, ok?" Alice snapped, cutting Allison off mid-sentence. "Just 'cause you never liked it, don't project that shit onto me too."

"Alice-"

"Did you ever stop to think that maybe I never did anything else because I never really wanted to do anything else?"

"Yeah, because you grew up with Grandma brainwashing you into thinking the job was all there was!"

"No, because I don't see it as a job," Alice argued. "Hell, it sure as fuck doesn't come with a salary."

Allison opened her mouth to keep arguing, but closed it again, swallowing her words. Alice was as immovable as ever.

"You know what? Ok," Allison said, putting her hands up in surrender. "I believe you. You're right. I'm sorry, ok? I just... look, I don't want to lose my sister again, ok? That's all. I want you to come with me, Alice. I can look out for you just as well as that egotistical sack of shit you've been running around with. Hell, I can look out for you better than he can."

Allison held her breath while she waited for Alice to answer. Alice took her time to think it over, staring out over the water while her cigarette shrank. She thought about it until the thing went out and she ground its remains with the heel of her foot against the concrete pier.

"That would be awfully nice," she admitted. "I missed you a lot."

"I missed you too."

Alice nodded to Allison's side, to a duffel bag she'd been carrying with her the whole time.

"So if you're not hunting, what's clattering around in the bag?" she asked. "Didn't sound like clothes. Got your acting props in there?"

"Screw you," Allison chuckled. She rattled the bag, then held it out to Alice. "It's for you, actually. Call it a reunion present."

Something long and hard poked Alice's thigh through the bag.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say I just got stabbed by someone's femur," she observed.

"You probably did."

Alice started to unzip the bag, but paused, raising her eyebrows at Allison.

"Are there bones in here?" she asked.

"See for yourself."

She opened the bag and peered in. Sure enough, a disassembled skeleton presented itself, bones heaped together in a jumbled mess. The top half of a skull stared back at Alice with eerie empty sockets.

"This is... I mean..."

Alice cleared her throat, puzzling over why on God's green earth her sister would bring her such a thing.

"What, hallmark doesn't make cards to cover a reunion with your little sister after years spent running around the country trying to kill each other?" she finally asked.

"I know you think cards are stupid."

"So you figured a random skeleton would do the trick?"

"Not random."

Alice couldn't stop herself from picking the skull up, gazing into it's empty sockets like she might find a hint as to who it had been in their gaping, vacant depths.

"Someone I used to know?"

Alice racked her brain, struggling to imagine who the hell's skeleton this might be and why Allison thought she would want it.

"It's you, stupid."

Alice froze for a long moment while she processed the realization that the skull she was holding had once held her. It took some time for the information to settle into her new brain, but once it did, it filled her borrowed skull with more questions than answers. She grabbed the jawbone out of the bag and turned the skull to face Allison, joking to cover up how unsettled she was.

"Allison," she said, doing a poor job of making it look like it was the skull speaking, "Where the hell did you dig me up from? And why the hell would you do a sick thing like that?"

"I saved it from getting torched," Allison explained. "Wow, no offense, but... don't quit your day job to take up ventriloquy, ok?"

"You mean like... salt and burn, torched?" Alice asked, ignoring the insult to her non-existent voice-throwing skills.

"Yeah."

Alice chewed the news over for a long time. At first, she wondered who it was that had been trying to get rid of her for good. Then she wondered what would have happened if Allison hadn't stopped them in time. What would have become of Alice? She'd seen plenty of ghosts go up in flames, burned more than her fair share of bones, but she realized for the first time that she never stopped to think about where the ghosts went after that. Were their souls forced back to hell or heaven or wherever it was they were headed? Did they go somewhere else? Did they just disappear from existence completely with a poof?

"Alice? You ok?" Allison asked, concerned. "I didn't rock your world too hard today, did I?"

"No, no, it's... this is all just... it's a lot," Alice sighed, dropping the bones back into the duffel and zipping it up.

"No pressure or anything, but... what do you think? Will you come with me?" Allison asked hopefully.

Alice wanted to go with her sister, but there was also something nagging at her that went deeper than the existential fear of what awaited her outside the invincible radius of Loki's protection. Questions that demanded answers.

"Give me the night to think it over, ok?" Alice replied. She could tell from Allison's expression that it wasn't what she wanted to hear. Still, she nodded.

"I understand."

"I want to come," Alice said, feeling the need to explain herself. "I just... I have a lot to think about."

"It's fine. I get it. I won't be far."

"Thanks."

"Hey, you know, no matter what you decide, I..."

Allison paused, nearly choking up with emotion. She had so much she still wanted to say to Alice, but she felt like they had run out of time. Even though the night was quiet around them, no one was chasing them at the moment, there was no one to fight, it felt like Alice was pulling away from her as abruptly as they had been reunited. Their time had been eaten up with catch-up stories and Allison had yet to make her apologies. Was there enough time in the world for her to say she was sorry for everything that had happened between them? Would it matter if there was? From what she could tell, Alice held nothing against her. Whether it was generosity on her sister's part, or just that Alice didn't realize she'd been wronged, Allison couldn't say. All she knew was, she didn't want to let her sister leave without settling all that was between them. From where she was sitting, it was a hell of a lot, whether Alice realized it or not.

Finally, she managed to shove down everything else and distill her sentiment to it's simplest form.

"I, uh... I'm really happy I finally found you," she said. "Seeing you tonight, it's been great."

"Right," Alice agreed with a faint smile. "It has."

She stood, putting a hand on Allison's shoulder as she prepared to head back to the bar where she hoped Loki was still partying.

"I'll see you again soon," Alice told her sister.

Then she left her sitting on the pier. Her footsteps echoed out across the water and faded into the night. Allison felt empty once she was gone, like Alice was taking part of her soul with her. All she could do was wait and hope that she would decide to bring it back.