Take your time, don't live too fast. Troubles will come and they will pass.

– Lynyrd Skynyrd, Simple Man


Litter picking was at the top of their to-do list. Crappy job, but they'd lucked out on being assigned a task that just so happened to involve wandering the entire carnival. With her EMF reader tucked into a pocket, Caden tried to blend in alongside Dean as a regular employee. To no one's surprise, Sam had stalked off to search the opposite side of the park.

Going to college together had been her and Sam's plan for years. John had it drilled into Caden that college wasn't an option, and so even as kids, Sam took on the job of encouraging her academically, whether it was teaching her how to do math or helping her study for the SAT. Even while at Stanford, making a point of ignoring his family, not once had Sam stopped contacting her in secret.

That's why his sudden change of heart felt like such a slap in the face.

Caden shoved a crushed can into her trash bag with enough force to tear a hole in the black material. Trash tumbled out, spilling across the floor. She dropped the bag in resignation, letting out a frustrated puff of air through her nose.

Dean looked over, eyebrows raised. 'Everything okay over there?'

'Yeah,' she said, yanking a new trash bag out of her jacket pocket. 'Everything's great.'

'You can go without him, you know,' he pointed out. 'Plenty kids go to college by themselves.'

'I don't want to go all the way to California by myself,' she replied, filling the new bag with the mess that had spilled out of the previous one. 'If I'm going alone, I want to at least be close to Bobby.'

Caden wasn't naïve; she knew that going to college wasn't a get out of jail free card. Hunting would find her, just like it had found Sam, and the last thing she wanted was to get caught up in something supernatural, with Bobby hundreds of miles away and her brothers on the other side of the country. Renouncing hunting wasn't her intention, and it wasn't as if she couldn't handle a ghost or a couple rogue werewolves by herself, but if Yellow Eyes decided to make a surprise appearance in her dorm room, it might be a different story.

Dean's expression clouded over, like that thought hadn't occurred to him yet. 'You deferred your entry to next year, right?'

'Yeah,' Caden confirmed. 'I called the admissions office when we left the hospital.'

'Then we've got all year to figure it out,' he said. 'So, let's kill this clown and worry about college later.'

Postponing her worries seemed awfully similar to ignoring them, but Dean was right, and there were too many issues on her mind to sensibly add another. But her thoughts stuck around, as she got back to picking up trash, listening absentmindedly to the electronic hum of her EMF reader. She didn't need this. Not now.

At some point, Dean's phone went off – Sam checking in – and Caden rolled her eyes at the fact Sam was calling the sibling who'd done nothing but argue with him for a week and a half instead of calling her. Whatever.

'Found something?' Dean answered the phone. 'What's the matter? You sound like you just saw a clown,' he smirked a little at that, coaxing a grin out of his sister too. '… A skeleton? What, like a real human skeleton? … Did the bones give off EMF? … Alright, we'll head to you.'

Caden looked at her brother expectantly. 'Skeleton?'

'In the funhouse. A fake one, he says,' clarified Dean, 'but he sounded so spooked I wasn't sure.'

That earned another grin, and Caden might have quipped back if a pair of hands hadn't shot seemingly out of nowhere and grabbed both her and Dean by the arm. Automatic reaction had the two of them ready to reach for their weapons before they could even register what was happening – it was the blind man – Papazian, or something – who Dean had accidentally insulted shortly before their job interview with Cooper. He might have been elderly, but nothing about the man's grip on her arm suggested he was frail. Still though, Caden decided that shooting him in the middle of a family carnival possibly wasn't the best way to deescalate the situation.

'What are you kids doing here?' he demanded, glaring daggers at them – if a pair of dark glasses could glare.

'Uh,' Dean glanced at Caden, who was hurrying past confusion, one move away from wrestling the blind man off them. 'We're… cleaning?'

'Bull!' Papazian spat. 'What were you talking about? Skeletons? What's EMF?'

'Your blind-man hearing is out of control!' remarked Dean incredulously.

'Yeah, well, we're a tight-knit group; we don't like outsiders. We take care of our own problems.'

Caden tried to shake him off, but his hand stayed put. 'Is there a problem?' she questioned, making no attempt to conceal her growing displeasure.

'Well, you tell me! You're the ones talking about human bones!'

Great, the one time they didn't have a cover story ready to go just had to be now. Dean shot a panicked look at his sister. 'Uh…' he stalled, then in complete seriousness, 'Do you believe in ghosts?'

Caden's mouth dropped open. What the hell kind of cover up was that!? This weird old man with an unbelievably strong grip was going to figure out they were up to something, tell Cooper, get them fired from their fake job, call the police, who were then going to find the arsenal in their soccer-mom minivan, and then they'd get arrested and that would be that. Great. Cool. Awesome. They were screwed.

'Me and my family – this is my sister, and that was my brother on the phone – we're writing a book about ghosts. Get this: killer phantom clowns, like the urban legend from around here. Scary, right? We think it's gonna be a hit,' he continued pursuing the single dumbest cover up story Caden had ever heard her idiot brother come up with. 'There's a ton of real-life horror story stuff about this thing, all the way back to the Bunker Brothers Circus in 1981.'

But, by some miracle, Papazian bought it and let them go. 'Oh,' he stood down, clearly disappointed. But before he left them alone, he leaned in to hiss one more warning: 'Just watch what you say before you start scaring folks. There's enough trouble here already. Cooper worked for the Bunker Brothers once upon a time, and the last thing that man needs is more people spreading horror stories.'

And with that, he left, stalking off in silence.


Exploring the carnival funhouse with his EMF meter had Sam more on edge than he'd be comfortable admitting. Cheap jumpscares and spooky circus music should've been lost on a hunter, but this whole damn case was creeping him out. The next time they heard about a killer clown, some other hunter could deal with it; he'd hunt a thousand vampires if it meant never seeing a clown again.

And to make matters worse, not one part of the funhouse had registered as more than a quiet hum of EMF. He'd endured all that awful circus music for nothing.

Maybe Dean and Caden had had more luck. They were on their way to meet him now, which, in all honesty, Sam was kind of dreading. Dean was still arguing with him almost nonstop, and now Caden was mad at him too over the college thing. They would put it aside for the sake of the case, but that couldn't stop Sam from dwelling on it.

Sam had studied pre-law for a chance at a normal life, far away from the supernatural. He'd sacrificed so much to pursue it. So much that it took his own father's death to knock some sense into him.

There was a sense of duty now. Not just in killing Yellow Eyes, but in being a hunter. After years spent rejecting John Winchester and everything he stood for, hunting was the only way Sam had left to connect with him; making up for lost time wasn't possible, but this was closest he could get. He was doing the right thing, there was no doubt in his mind about that.

It was different for Caden; she didn't want a ticket out of hunting. If on the day of her college graduation, hunting called her back, she wouldn't say no.

That's why she could go, and he couldn't.

Over the phone, during secret late-night conversations while he was still in Palo Alto, he would always tell her how great Stanford was. How different his life was. How much better things would be when she finished high school and joined him. Caden was smart, and he knew she'd get in, but if it had been up to their dad, she'd have been shut down the second she even thought about college.

Growing up, Sam's only academic support came from himself. It sucked not having someone who cared about that stuff in the same way he did, so he could never have let his little sister go through it alone.

He could understand why she was upset about his change of plans, but he really wasn't turning his back on her. Caden could go to Stanford and call him for essay advice, just like she had in high school, and he'd still be there for her. He just couldn't go with her.

Yellow Eyes was still out there, and for once in his life, Sam planned to follow in his father's footsteps. It wasn't his problem if his siblings took issue with that.

Speaking of his siblings, the two of them finally caught up to him outside the funhouse. 'What took so long?'

Dean shook his head, disgruntled. 'Long story.'

'We ran into the blind dude,' Caden clarified. 'Or, I guess he ran into us.'

Sam wasn't sure how to respond to that, but he didn't have to, as from a few feet away, a kid excitedly exclaimed, 'Look at the clown!'

Great. Sam steeled himself and turned around to look at the child, who was pointing eagerly to some spot in the distance.

A woman standing by the kid, presumably her mother, frowned in puzzlement. 'Sweetie, what clown?'

Reluctantly, Sam looked out to where the kid was pointing; both to his relief and unease, sure enough, there was not a clown in sight. The mother pulled her daughter away, back into the throng of the carnival. How wonderful that now both the presence and absence of a clown had become cause for concern.

'Follow that family,' Dean instructed, and they took off in pursuit.


'Dean, I cannot believe you told Papazian about the homicidal phantom clown,' Sam said, as they watched the house of the mysterious clown family. They'd spent well over an hour following the kid and her parents around the carnival, trying to go unnoticed – luckily their employee uniforms made them pretty much invisible to the carnival guests – until they finally returned to their suburban home, outside which the Winchesters now waited. Their first ever clown-related stake-out.

'He told him an urban legend about a homicidal phantom clown,' Caden corrected. 'He never said it was real.'

'Exactly, and get this,' Dean added, 'when I mentioned the Bunker Brothers in '81 and their evil clown apocalypse, he said Cooper used to work for them.'

'So, you think whatever the spirit attaches to, Cooper brought it with him?' guessed Sam.

Caden nodded in confirmation as Dean said, 'Something like that. I can't believe we keep talking about clowns.'

'Me neither,' Sam muttered.

The evening passed with mostly awkward silence. Any conversation that wasn't to do with the case was doomed to head into an argument, and none of them had the energy for that again today. Stake-outs were never fun, but this one really sucked.

As the sun went dipped below the horizon and evening became night, they switched to lookout shifts so each of them could get some rest. Sam was up first, followed by Caden, then finally Dean. For the first time in days, Caden was out like a light. Sleep hadn't come easy since John died, but the last few days had exhausted her. The minivan's silver lining was its multiple backseats, giving Caden the chance to lie down; as the smallest Winchester, she was never allowed the luxury of sleeping sprawled across the backseat of the Impala. That was always reserved for her dad, or one of her freakishly tall brothers.

It felt like she'd barely fallen asleep before a gentle hand on her shoulder was shaking her awake. 'Cay.'

Groggily, she opened her eyes. 'Already?'

'Yep,' Sam replied, already moving to lie down across the front seats – Dean had taken the very back – as Caden wiped the sleep from her eyes and took over lookout. The night was still, the house in darkness.

All was quiet for a moment before Sam stirred. 'Actually, can we talk?'

Caden blinked at him as he sat up again. 'What?'

'Keep your voice down,' he chided, glancing over at Dean's end of the minivan. 'About college.'

'What?' Caden said again, quieter this time. 'Now?'

'Yeah, now. I don't think you shouldn't go to Stanford.'

'All right,' she nodded once, and went back to staring at the house. 'Good talk.' Maybe it wasn't fair to be so curt with him, but this conversation didn't need to happen right now. This case was supposed to be a break, a couple days just to distance the three of them from the crap they were going through, but it was falling into disarray and the last thing she wanted was to face it.

'Caden.'

'What? Sam, I don't need you to greenlight my college plans.'

'I know, I just don't want you to think that I'm not on your side anymore,' he said.

She looked at him again and could tell he was being earnest. It did mean a lot to hear him say that, but she was so fucking tired, and the situation remained unchanged. Of the three of them, Caden was almost always the one to address things when they were avoiding a conversation, but it had been a long ten days since John died. As much as she knew ignoring things could only make her feel worse, no part of her wanted to talk about this. Not tonight.

When a light switched on in the house's living room, Caden was almost thankful for the interruption. If only it didn't involve a literal murder clown. The little girl from the carnival appeared in the living room window. Reaching over the back of her seat, Caden unceremoniously shook Dean awake, Sam already racing out the minivan.

It took all of one minute from waking up her brother to breaking into the house. The three of them hid in adjoining rooms to the hallway, hoping to catch a clown if it appeared, and stay out of sight if it didn't.

'Wanna see Mommy and Daddy? They're upstairs,' the kid's trusting voice drifted from the living room.

Caden could hear two pairs of feet shuffling into the hallway before Sam intervened, grabbing the child and pulling her to safety. At opposite ends of the hallway, Caden and Dean stepped out of their hiding places, finally giving her a chance to see the infamous clown – it was creepy as hell, the very definition of a horror movie monster. No wonder these things got Sam nervous.

Without allowing one more second to go to waste, both she and Dean fired salt rounds into the clown's chest, sending it crashing to the ground in a heap. But it didn't vanish like a spirit should.

Caden looked at her brother in alarm. 'What the hell?'

In horror, the two of them watched as the clown collected itself and got back on its feet like nothing was amiss. The little girl screamed in Sam's arms as Caden readied her weapon to fire again – not that that strategy had proved effective, but it was all they had. With a wailing cry, the clown seemed to have second thoughts, as it turned tail and hurtled past Dean, smashing through the glass of a window and disappearing into thin air.

The little girl screamed again, understandably terrified, so Sam let her go and the Winchesters bolted away before someone called the police.


Dean shoved the soccer-mom minivan's license plate into his duffel bag as Caden and Sam removed the last of their belongings from the inside. They'd managed to hide it on the edge of the woods, several miles away from the house and the carnival. The last thing they needed was the police on their trail.

'You really think they saw our plates?' Sam doubted.

'I don't wanna take the chance. Besides, I hate this freaking van,' Dean grumbled as they abandoned the vehicle, getting back onto the road by foot. 'Well, one thing's for sure: it ain't a spirit we're dealing with. That rock salt hit something solid.'

'And the way it smashed that window when it escaped? A spirit wouldn't need to do that,' added Caden.

'So, a person? Or maybe a creature that can make itself invisible?' Sam guessed.

'Yeah, and dresses up a like a clown for kicks?' Dean furrowed his brow. 'Cade, did you find anything in Dad's journal?'

Caden shook her head. On the getaway drive from the house, she'd speed-read through John's journal again, but for clowns this time instead of yellow-eyed demons. 'Nope. There is not a single mention of clowns in that thing.'

Sam pulled out his cell phone. 'Maybe Ellen or that guy, Ash, will know something,' he wondered, dialling. 'Hey, uh, you think Dad and Ellen ever had a thing?'

'No way,' Dean and Caden said in unison.

'Then why didn't he tell us about her?'

'I don't know, maybe they had some sort falling out,' Dean shrugged.

'Yeah.' Sam stopped dialling. 'You ever notice Dad had a falling out with just about everybody?'

Dean rolled his eyes and gave no response. Neither did Caden. How was she supposed to answer that without opening the door to another fight?

'Well don't get all maudlin on the man,' Sam said flatly, hanging up his phone.

Her oldest brother took the bait. 'What do you mean?' Dean's tone was accusing enough that Caden felt it. There was only one way this conversation could go now. Intervening wouldn't stop it. All she could do was wait it out and hope she didn't get caught in the crossfire.

Sam threw his hands up exasperatedly. 'I mean this strong, silent thing of yours. It's crap. I'm over it.'

'Guys, come on,' Caden appealed, knowing full well it would be to no avail. She was sick of this.

'This isn't just anyone. This is Dad,' Sam went on, ignoring her. 'I know how you felt about the man.'

Dean was glaring at him furiously. 'Back off, all right? Just became I'm not caring and sharing like you want me to-'

'No, that's not what this is about,' Sam cut him off. 'I don't care how you deal with this, but you have to deal with it, man! I'm your brother, all right? I just want to make sure you're okay. Caden, you're with me on this. Right?' Sam looked at her expectantly.

Dean didn't wait for her to answer. 'Guys, I'm okay!' he snapped. 'I'm okay! I swear, one more person asks if I'm okay, I'm gonna start throwing punches. These are your issues, Sam. Quit dumping them on me.'

Sam stopped in his tracks. 'What are you talking about?'

'I just think it's really interesting, this sudden obedience you have to Dad. You spent your entire life slugging it out with the man,' Dean was angry for real now. 'I mean, hell, you picked a fight with him the last time you ever saw him! And now that he's dead, you wanna make it right? Sorry, Sam, but you can't; it's too little, too late.'

Caden's jaw dropped open at her brother's words. There was truth in his message, but to say it like that… Dean had meant for it to sting.

'Why are you saying this to me?' Sam asked, the fire gone from his voice.

'Because I want you to be honest with yourself!' Dean yelled. 'I'm dealing with Dad's death. Are you?'

Sam just stared at him, hurt. There was a long moment of stunned silence from all parties until he muttered, 'I'm gonna call Ellen,' and stalked off ahead, leaving Caden and Dean behind.

Caden shook her head bitterly once Sam was out of earshot. 'Nice, Dean.'

'I wasn't wrong,' he defended, still bristling.

'I know,' Caden said, and continued walking down the road.


Rakshasa was Ellen's best guess: an ancient Hindu creature that fed on human flesh, had the ability to turn invisible, and couldn't enter a home without first being invited. They fed every twenty to thirty years, which lined up with the Bunker Brothers in 1981.

Unanimously, they agreed Cooper was the prime suspect, and so, planned for Sam and Caden to break into his trailer in search of damning evidence while Dean sourced the one weapon capable of killing him: a dagger of pure brass.

After they'd fought on the walk back, conversation was the furthest thing from their minds. Brief sentences were exchanged about the case, but beyond that, the journey passed in silence, leaving them to brood alone. Being cynical never helped matters, but Caden couldn't believe she'd really thought things would feel normal again on this case. The three of them were back together, and yet she struggled to recall ever feeling so alone.

It was dark by the time they made it to the carnival, the lights shutting off as performers retired for the night. Dean left to find a brass blade, while Caden and Sam stole through the shadows of the trailer park, avoiding the eyes of straggling employees.

Cooper's trailer was conveniently labelled with his name. On the doorstep, Sam fumbled in his pocket for a lock pick, as Caden stood behind him, eyes darting across the trailer park to catch anyone who might notice them. A tiny click indicated Sam had opened the lock, and so the two of them slipped through the door, closing it silently behind them.

Immediately, Caden spotted what they were looking for. 'That's his bed,' she pointed to a cheap mattress in the far end of the room. According to Ellen, rakshasa slept on beds of dead insects. Gross. 'Did you bring a knife?'

Sam looked at her like she'd asked the dumbest question he'd ever heard. 'No, I left it in the minivan,' he answered sarcastically, pulling the weapon from his pocket. Caden rolled her eyes; was it really that difficult to be civil for two fucking seconds?

They knelt beside the bed, Caden lifting the sheets as Sam took the blade to the mattress cover. But before he could cut into it, the familiar sound of a firearm loading caught their attention. Caden's hand instinctively moved to the gun tucked into her waistband as they both snapped round to look; it was Cooper. Shit.

'What do you think you're doing?' he bellowed, levelling the gun at them.

'Oh, uh, Cooper! Hi!' stalled Caden, putting on her best harmless teenage girl voice. 'We were just, uh, looking for you. To… thank you for a, um, nice day at work…?' Maintaining eye contact and an innocent smile with Cooper, she elbowed Sam. He got the hint and slashed a hole in the mattress.

Cooper's jaw dropped open. He looked utterly incredulous, his aim faltering. 'Hey! That's my bed! What are you- Get out of my trailer!

'No bugs,' Sam said. 'It's not him.'

If Cooper was aggravated before, he was furious now. 'GET THE HELL OUT OF MY TRAILER!'

This time, he actually looked he might shoot them, so Sam and Caden scrambled to their feet and threw themselves out the door, slamming it in Cooper's face as he yelled something about them being so fired that they would never even set foot in another carnival in their lives.

Caden could live with that.

They kept running, hoping to intercept Dean before he could wrongfully attack Cooper. As luck would have it, they ran right into each other. Dean was acting frantic, like he'd a seen ghost or, more accurately she supposed, a rakshasa.

'Cooper thinks we're creeps, but it's not him,' explained Sam.

'It's the blind guy. He did his invisibility thing and tried to kill me,' Dean's eyes were wide, alarmed. 'He's here somewhere.'

'What about the blade? Did you get it?' Caden asked.

'No, it's just been one of those days.'

Sam chimed in, 'I've got an idea. There's a pipe organ in the funhouse – it looked like brass.'


Fortunately, the funhouse was yet to be shut down for the night. Sam, being the only one who'd fought through the maze before, took the lead, storming on ahead past creepy props and doorways framed with fluorescent paint.

There was no way to tell whether the rakshasa had followed them until, less than a minute in, a black door was slammed shut by an invisible force, cutting Caden and Dean off from their brother. The monster had joined them, after all.

'Sam!' they called in unison, Dean futilely trying to pry the door open with his hands.

'Find the organ, okay?' shouted Sam from the other side. 'I'll meet you there!'

Awesome. These things were hard enough to navigate as it was, never mind with an invisible murder clown on their trail, and without Sam, they had no idea where they were going. Dean took the lead, though he was no less lost than his sister. 'Stay close, all right?'

Caden didn't need telling. She fell into step as close behind as she could get without tripping them both up.

The creepy funhouse music did not make matters easy as they ventured further into the maze. Caden half-wondered if the cheap tricks and jumpscares were the fault of the funhouse, or if the rakshasa was messing with them for kicks. How on Earth did clown-phobia-Sam make it through all this earlier!?

Luck must have been smiling on the Winchesters, as Caden and Dean caught up to their brother without further incident. Sam was standing at the aforementioned organ – not an actual organ, she noted, but a prop made of brass pipes arranged in rows and billowing steam into the room – and struggling to wrench a pipe free.

'Hey!' Caden got his attention.

Sam's tense shoulders relaxed slightly at the safe arrival of his family. 'Where's the rakshasa?'

As if in answer, a knife soared through the air and caught Dean by the sleeve of his jacket, pinning him with precision to the wall. A second blade was close behind, pinning Dean's other arm in similar fashion.

Caden ran to her brother and grabbed the hilt of the first knife. She pulled with all the strength she could muster, but a third blade whizzed by, slicing clean through the material of her shirt to open a gash in her arm. Caden yelped in surprise, her hand instinctively flying up to cover the wound. But Dean needed help, so she prayed that adrenaline would numb the pain, and continued pulling at the knife.

Risking a glance behind her, she saw that Sam had broken a pipe off the organ. He brandished it out in front of him, eyes darting frantically around the room for any sign of the monster.

'Cade!' Dean's voice grabbed her attention again. He nodded upward to a small red lever on the ceiling, connected to a system of pipes. She followed it with her eyes until the it met the organ across the room.

The steam. She understood and jumped up to grab it with her uninjured arm. Steam erupted from the organ as she yanked the lever down, filling the maze around them with thick, opaque fog.

A silhouette passed through the cloud, the faintest glimpse, but it was enough; the rakshasa, finally.

Pain was creeping in now, and Caden pressed a hand over the cut to slow the bleeding. There was no telling how bad the injury was; big or small, knife wounds always bled like hell.

As Dean tried to wriggle free of the knifes pinning him to the wall, Caden caught another glimpse of the rakshasa's silhouette as it slunk around the back of Sam.

'Behind you!' she alerted him over the sound of the organ billowing more and more fog into the maze.

Sam didn't even waste the time it would take to spin round; he thrust the brass pipe back, sinking it into invisible flesh. With a strangled cry, the rakshasa's silhouette vanished, its clothes – visible now – falling to the ground in a crumpled heap. It was done.


They returned to Harvelle's Roadhouse, not one of them eager to spend another second anywhere near the carnival. Unlike the first time they'd seen the Roadhouse, it was packed with hunters drinking, socializing, and sharing stories of the day's adventures. Caden had never seen so many hunters gathered in one place.

Ellen offered a first-aid kit to fix up Caden's arm – they'd had to take a bus back to Nebraska, so the best she'd been able to do was haphazardly bandage it on the way, much to the alarm of other passengers.

She and Dean were sitting in Ellen's kitchen, Caden with her arm propped up on the table so her brother could stitch the knife wound shut. Sam hadn't joined them, choosing instead to sit alone at the bar and reread their dad's musings on Yellow Eyes. It was nice to be back, but everything was still so messed up between the three of them that Caden couldn't really find it in herself to be comfortable.

It certainly didn't help that there was a needle in her arm.

'Owww,' Caden groaned. Sitting on a kitchen chair, she had her knees drawn up to her chest, her head lowered onto them as Dean got it over with as quickly as he could. She swore this part was always worse than whatever injury warranted it. 'Are you done yet?'

'Nope,' Dean poked the needle back in. 'Sorry, kiddo.'

She groaned again. 'We are never taking another clown case.'

'I'm with you on that one,' he chuckled, but only for a second before he abruptly changed the subject. 'Cay, be honest here, was I out of line with Sam yesterday?'

Caden lifted her head to look at him. His face was mostly a picture of concentration as he continued stitching, but there was something solemn about his eyes. 'What do you mean?'

'I dunno,' he shrugged almost nonchalantly. 'I guess I've been a dick recently.'

'I mean, you had a point, but – ow!' she yelped, waiting for the pain to subside before speaking again. 'You didn't have to start a fight. All you guys do anymore is argue.'

Dean didn't say anything for several seconds. 'I've been kind of a shitty brother, huh?'

'It's fine, Dean.'

'No, it isn't,' he sighed. 'I hate to talk about what Dad would've wanted, but, man, he'd be pissed.'

'That's not saying much. He was always pissed.'

Dean laughed humourlessly. 'Yeah, he was. Nearly done, okay?'

'Thank God,' Caden grimaced, burying her head back into her knees.

He finished working in concentrated silence, bandaging the wound back up so the stitching wouldn't get torn out; that was the only thing Caden could imagine was worse than getting stitches in the first place. Ouch.

Glad the ordeal was over, she pulled down the sleeve of her flannel shirt – one that had probably belonged to Dean at some point in the past – as her brother got up and headed to the sink to wash his hands. 'Dad's death,' she said after a long moment. 'It wasn't a coincidence, was it?'

Dean shut off the water, grabbing a towel to dry his hands. 'No, I don't think so.' His tone was neutral, unreadable.

'Whatever healed us, killed him. Like a reaper, or something,' she hypothesized. 'But why would a reaper do that?'

He sat back down at the kitchen table beside her, silently repacking the first-aid kit.

'Dean, he knew he was going to die. Why else would he say all that stuff to us?'

With that, he lost his cool. 'I don't know, Caden!' he snapped, throwing his hands up defensively before he seemed to think better of it. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Dean took a long breath. 'It doesn't change anything.'

'No, it doesn't. He's still dead,' Caden muttered in resignation, 'and we still haven't done a damn thing about it.' They didn't know where Yellow Eyes was, they didn't have the Colt, and they'd just wasted three days on a hunt so the three of them could fall out with each other even more.

She expected him to retaliate, or get up and storm off, but instead, Dean just put an arm around her shoulders. 'We'll figure it out,' he told her, back to that unreadable tone of voice.

Caden wished she could believe him.


Back at Bobby's the Impala was waiting for him. The car was still in bad shape, hours and hours of work away from driveable, but she was a far cry from the mess she'd been after the accident. Dean hoped he could get her up and running again by the time Ash found a sign of Yellow Eyes.

Ellen hadn't been kidding about Ash's intellect; he'd constructed some kind of programme, way beyond Dean's understanding, that would pick up any sign or omen anywhere in the world the second the demon showed its face again.

Dean had been out in the salvage yard for a few hours, the sun beating down as it did at this time of year, when Sam joined him. He glanced up from where he was working but didn't speak; Caden was right that they all he and Sam seemed to do these days was argue, and for once, he just didn't have the fire.

So, Sam kicked off the conversation. 'You were right,' he began.

Dean kept working, barely sparing him another glance. 'About what?'

'About me and Dad.'

That got Dean's attention.

'I'm sorry that the last time I was with him, I tried to pick a fight. I'm sorry that I spent most of my life angry at him. I mean, for all I know, he died thinking that I hate him,' Sam went on. 'So, you're right. What I'm doing right now, it is too little. Too late.'

Dean was shocked to see his brother's eyes threatening to tear up as Sam took a breath and admitted, 'I miss him, man, and I feel guilty as hell. And I'm not all right. Not at all. But neither are you, Dean.'

It wasn't an accusation, or a dare to bite back at him, or even really an invitation to reply. And that was just as well, because Dean didn't know how to answer.

Sam muttered something about letting him get back to work and left without another word. He watched him go, the words 'but neither are you, Dean' still echoing in his mind. It was true, and Dean hated it. He hated this whole fucking situation.

He had shut himself off after leaving the hospital. Closed down every opportunity to feel something in fear that would lead to his façade crumbling. Letting that grief anywhere near him would make it real. Too real to push aside or forget, and Dean was fucking terrified of what it might to do him.

But the façade was crumbling. There was a tide inside him, battling for control, and it was stronger now than when he had first sealed it away. He could feel it, every emotion he'd ignored since his father died merging into one another, rising up into something he couldn't fight anymore. He was overwhelmed. Angry, maybe. He couldn't tell.

Dean wandered a few steps, aimlessly, pointlessly. Needing an outlet. Losing what little control he had left over the tide inside him. Before he knew what he was doing, there was a crowbar in his hand, and he was staring at the Impala. Everything he'd been rebuilding, before him.

Since Dad died, it hadn't just been a car.

He turned around and raised the crowbar, bringing it down hard on one of Bobby's scrap vehicles, smashing through glass. It wasn't enough. The tide was roaring now, and he wasn't thinking straight.

He brought the bar down on the Impala.

And then he did it again.

And again. And again, and again, and again.

He hit the Impala with everything he had left. Every last ounce of grief he had pent up, every moment he'd spent avoiding talking about Dad, every time in the last two weeks he'd argued with Sam or ignored Caden. Everything.

He hit the Impala until there was a hole ripped straight through the black metal. He hit the Impala until the crowbar felt too heavy to lift again.

And for all it might've felt better in the moment, Dean struggled to remember it ever feeling worse.