"Kylie?" Jack asked, looking around. This place was new. It had wooden walls, with an open window beside him. The curtains on either side flickered between three different patterns.

Outside, there was bits of forest that stopped at a gigantic wall. It was tall stone, the cracks lined with gold. There were a few holes here and there that peered out, and on the other side Jack could see a pair of hands slowly bringing the Rift together.

They were Kylie's hands.

"Kylie!" Jack shouted. The wooden space became a little clearer. There was a small kitchen behind him, and in front of him was a couch and a table. A wooden bookshelf was on the other side of it, with a chess set sitting on top. There was a small mirror in the back with a sink, and two doors on either side of it.

"Jack?" Kylie's voice sprung out from the left door. She came out looking excited and… Different. Her hair was darker, a dark dyed color with red and purple streaks intermixed. It was longer, too, like when he'd first met her. She was dressed differently too. Her clothes were a little nicer and sharper. They were darker colors too; a darker purple shirt with a black… was that a skirt? Yeah, it was a skirt. And her shoes were sleek and black as well.

She was dressed much nicer than he was used to, but she also looked more comfortable. She looked excited. She was actually, genuinely smiling at him. Not a polite smile, or one to make him feel better. It was one that portrayed real excitement.

She ran towards him, encapsulating him the biggest hug she'd ever given him. "Jack!" She exclaimed. "You're here! I'm so happy to see you!"

"Kylie?" Jack asked again. "You… I…" He pulled away from her, taking a breath. "I don't understand this." He admitted. "Where are we?"

"Oh, that's easy." She smiled, motioning to the outside. "We're in a part of my subconscious. I've been stuck here for a while." She let out a large sigh. "I've been in here alone, and acutely aware of it, for months."

"Months?" He asked. "But… But you're," he glanced back over at the wall, and could see her hands coming a little closer outside once more. "We're in the Bunker."

"We are." She agreed. "But we're also in my mind." She tapped a finger to her forehead for emphasis.

"I'm lost." He admitted. Kylie laughed a little, shaking her head.

"It is a little confusing." She admitted. "Here, hold on, let me explain," she waved a hand off to the side, and one of the books on the bookshelf floated calmly to her hand. Jack just stared at it, absolutely bewildered.

"You can do magic?!" He asked. Kylie nodded, giving him a look he could only describe as conveying the word duh.

"I'm a natural-born witch." She pointed out. "Of course I can."

"But you've been having difficulties with anything involving magic."

"Out there, yes." She agreed. "But in here?" She smiled, and Jack watched as she floated off the ground. She crossed her legs, and the book opened in front of her. A nod to the side and a mug of hot tea floated over for her to sip at. "I found it, Jack. I found my magic again."

"That's great!" Jack agreed, his voice strained. "But why are we inside your brain?"

"You started removing the magic I stole from you." Kylie started to explain, the book being replaced with a notebook. It flipped open in front of Jack for him to see calculations and notes. He'd poured over Kylie's notebooks before, but what he was reading here… This was new. This was brand new. "You're intending to remove all of it. Good call, too. I grabbed way too much out there to overcompensate, and at the rate I'm moving at in power usage I'm set to either explode or just completely shut down, so… thanks." The notebook closed and Jack looked back up at her. She floated back down to the ground with ease and stood. "But you didn't realize that you'd already left a small amount of magic in me."

"I did?" He asked. She nodded. "When?"

"When we first met."

"When we first met?" Jack asked, racking his brain. He remembered meeting her in that jail cell, but before then…

"I was dying on the ground." Kylie clarified. The second she said the words, Jack remembered it. He remembered seeing her on the ground, injuries appearing almost at random to him. He'd remembered seeing her face in Castiel's mind, and seeing how much he cared about her. He… He didn't want to let her die. His father, Castiel, wouldn't want that.

So Jack had just thought about saving her, and she was fine.

"I did something." Jack said. Kylie nodded. "I don't really know what I did, though."

"You built that." Kylie pointed at the wall outside.

"I built that?!" Jack said the words as though they were impossible.

"Yes." She said. "You saved me, and just let your magic react however it needed to. So you did that because you didn't know what else."

"I just wanted you to stop hurting." Jack said. Kylie shrugged.

"And I did." She concluded. "Kind of. Mostly. Physically, I did."

"OK." Jack's brows furrowed. "What about your magic? You can use it here?"

"I found it here, behind the wall." She said.

"And how did you get here?"

"Think about it." Kylie raised an eyebrow at Jack, and for a moment he could imagine what she was like before, well… Him. Before he put this wall up. Before she became the person he knew now.

When she was happier.

"Think about what?"

"Right now, out there," she pointed out the window again. "What are the two things I can't do very well?"

"Magic." Jack stated the first one with ease. "But it looked like you're figuring it out with this."

"We'll get to that part. What's the other thing?" Jack furrowed his brows again, thinking. What wasn't she doing very well? She'd been an admittedly driven soldier out there, striving to survive and do what she was needed to do, even if she didn't remember who she was.

She didn't remember.

But in here, she'd remembered how they met.

"You," Jack said the words uncertainly. "You remember everything." She nodded, excitement once again coloring her face.

"I remember how to do magic. I remember my past. I remember all my favorite songs and how I met everyone and I have those memories along with those that are happening out there." She explained. "And every time that me out there that doesn't remember anything gets a memory back, it's me."

"Huh?"

"I keep splitting into two parts." She summed. "It happens frequently, whenever I'm almost dead. I always thought it was a split between a desire to live and an acceptance with death. But it was more than that." She grasped his hands, still smiling brightly. "It was magic. My magic, trying to keep me alive. I've been trying to re-connect the me out there with the me in here, connect my physical presence with the rest of my magic and memories."

"But I put up a wall." Jack said.

"Yes." She said. "You put up the wall, and you saved my life. My powers had turned toxic on me. I'd accepted I was going to die in a spell, pushed that idea unintentionally into the intent of the spell, and," she shrugged. "It happened. My magic started to kill me. But when you put that wall up, it was like putting a cone around my powers to stop them from biting at me." Jack nodded. He felt like he kind of understood so far. "But it's still your powers that you used, your magic wall. In turn, if you do magic, I get headaches. That was the part of you that you placed in me trying to return back to you. Your powers want to be whole again too, and you stashed a little bit in me." She shook her head, smiling. "Magic wants magic. Your magic wanted to be a part of itself again and mine wanted freedom. The more of yours I took in, the more it acted like a sedative on my magic and kind of eased off the need to be re-connected. Channeling it back out into the world eased it even more because it pushed it back out where it belonged, which was mostly not in me." She motioned to herself.

"So, I did this." Jack said. "And… and I can take it down. If having all of this inside of you is hurting you and killing you, then I can fix it and take it down."

"Good!" She cheered. A shadow flickered across her eyes, though.

"What?" Jack asked. "What's wrong?"

"It's just that…" She let out a sigh. "I don't know what will happen."

"Huh?"

"I've been studying this wall since I've been here, along with everything else." She said. "It's been a part of me for so long, I've grown accustomed to it both in here and out there. I've adjusted and adapted and become dependent on it, in a magic sense." A small look of concern passed over her eyes. "You don't want to know how long it took on my end in here to get my magic out of the 'destroy Kylie, it's her will' stage. The wall helped make sure it didn't actually destroy me. But by tearing it down it'll be like taking an addict's drugs and making them quit cold turkey, except with results that could be much more drastic than withdrawal. I," she stopped, and Jack could almost see her brain stopping for a moment as it came to a result. "I honestly don't know what will happen if you tear it all down. I have multiple different theories," more notebooks floated to her side. "I could go catatonic. I could spontaneously combust, which will happen anyways if we don't get your power out of me," she mused. "I could have a psychotic break. I could lose any memories left in with me for good. Or I could theoretically just be fine and call it good." She shrugged. "But I don't know. What I do know is that the second that's gone," she shook her head. "Any connection I had to the Rifts are gone."

"How?"

"They were born from you." She said. "It was your powers that made it possible, your powers that knocked over the first domino in this sequence. It's tied to you, and the second I stepped in to use my magic and close it I tied myself in too."

"You tied yourself to that?" Jack confirmed, pointing once more outside.

"Not intentionally." She admitted. "I should've died when it happened the first time and I closed it, that was my intent, but he tried to cheat the spell." A sadder smile crossed her features. "He… He changed the spell slightly. Just enough to cheat it, but the spell didn't want to be cheated. It was supposed to destroy me to close it, and keep it closed."

"Who is he?"

"Crowley." Kylie waved a hand to the side, and a little photo appeared. It was Kylie with a man Jack didn't recognize. He was portly and wore a black suit. He and Kylie were sitting at a bar, drinks in hand, smiling for whomever was taking the photo. For a moment, the man's eyes changed to a solid red. "The photo is fake. It's a memory I made a snapshot of for here." She explained.

"You were friends with a demon?" Jack asked.

"Yup." The photo disappeared as though it never existed.

"Well, I don't know who Crowley is beyond that," Jack said. "But I'm glad he changed the spell on you."

"Yeah." She said hollowly. "I hope he is too." She stared not at the wall out this window this time, but at the flickering curtains instead. They caught fire, surprising Jack and sending him back towards Kylie. She just laughed a little, putting her hand into the fire directly. A moment later it was absorbed into her, and the curtains looked as though nothing happened.

"So, what do we do now?" Jack asked. At those words, the world around them shook. More pieces of the wall began to fall now, much more rapidly. Her hands out there, closing the Rift, were almost together. "Kylie, what do I do?"

"I don't know." She admitted.

"What?"

"I don't know!" She exclaimed. "I… I don't want to die." She said. "I know I'm the magic and memories part taken consciousness, not the full her, and maybe if I was put together and complete instead of this split in two shit I would have different thoughts but right now all I know is that I don't want to die." She looked frantic for just a minute before pulling herself together. "Not this time."

"Good." Jack agreed. "Not dying is a good start."

"But I want to be back out there and complete." She continued. "And if that wall comes down, I don't quite know what'll happen but I know that the odds are against me. I won't ever be me again. That's why I'm trying to break through slowly, but your magic," she pointed at him. "Yours makes it difficult. I get my best breakthroughs when we're channeling your magic out of me, but all of it at once?" She shook her head. "Worst. Idea. Ever."

"Then what do we do?" He asked again.

"Magic withdrawal will kill me." She muttered, thinking fast. Notebooks and things were flying around her. "I'd need time to stabilize again and get my magic back to a sort of stasis where it works without needing your magic or angelic grace or anything else other than me." She was thinking more. "It could kill me. Not a guarantee, it could." Jack could see a thought cross her mind. "Dying could work." She said.

"What?!" Jack exclaimed.

"It's a thought!" She said. "I don't want to die, but if I do," she motioned back outside. "That goes away. It's not meant to last in a dead body. In death, you're just you within your memories. I'd still be dead, though." More thinking. A new thought.

This time from Jack.

"What if you did it?" Jack asked.

"What if I did what?"

"What if you put up your own wall?" He asked. "To keep out my magic and to keep the bad affects of taking it away from your physical body?" He could see her mind racing, thinking it all out. "And then you can control it from here, slowly repairing yourself until it's OK to break it down yourself."

"I…" She was still thinking. She was thinking hard. Notebooks and spell books flew around and in front of her, opening to different pages and closing. One notebook had a pen in front of it and was writing down something. "That would work." She said. There was another rumble, and as Jack looked down he could see himself starting to glow. Kylie looked back up at him, her face pale.

"You need to get out of here." She said. "We gotta finish this."

"Wait, are you sure it'll work?" He asked. She nodded.

"It's your idea, man." She said with a smile. "And it's a genius one." He watched as she moved to stand in front of the window. She waved her hand across, and the glass burst in front of them. With the barrier removed, streams of gold began to move from the wall towards Jack directly. "When I tell you, take in the rest and get out of my brain. Tell me that the only way to get back my memories is to study magic. It's the best way to reconnect everything on my end."

"Kylie," Jack turned to look at her, and he realized he was at a loss. "Wait."

"No time."

"But," Kylie gripped his arm tightly, looking back over at him. "I…" He had things he wanted to say. He'd never seen her like this before, and it was… It made him happy to see, but at the same time sad to know that it was his fault he had never seen this. Even if it was unintentional, it was still on him.

"Hey," she said. She was smiling at him. "Don't worry. You can tell me everything you want to tell me back out there." She laughed a little. "I'll actually remember it there."

"I'm sorry I did this to you." He said.

"If you hadn't, I'd be dead." She replied. "Don't apologize for saving my life." She hugged him quickly. "Be safe."

"You too." There was still a lot more that Jack wanted to say, but she was right, they didn't have time.

He could tell her back out there. It might help connect her back to herself.

"One." Kylie said. She kept one hand on his arm, and the other was raised out towards the wall. "Two." He could see a shimmer of a new wall beginning to form, just an outline in place of the crumbling remains of the one he was tearing down. He heard Kylie let out a breath.

"See you on the other side." She said.

Jack propelled himself back into his body, bringing every bit of power he'd left in Kylie with him.