Sorry about the slow updates, dear readers. I started working on two other fics in addition to experimenting with drabble. So, naturally, I have been working on nothing because apparently my natural response to pressure is to play opossum. Also, this chapter was a stubborn asshole and did not want to come out. But here it is, and I'm hoping you're still here too, and you are both well met.

Somewhere Outside Duluth, Minnesota

"You know, whenever I say we should go camping more, I'm joking."

Dean's complaint came with an armload of firewood, hauled in from the forest that enveloped us in its lush arms. He dropped the haul beside a freshly made fire pit, dug a good seven feet from a seafoam green and white Shasta camper with cornflower blue curtains and a rusting propane tank.

Dean had been in a sour mood the moment Castiel returned to the bunker in a white minivan.

("A minivan? Seriously, Cas? Of all the cars you could have jacked, you lifted a soccer-mom-mobile?"

"I thought a van would be more conspicuous. I've noriced there are a lot of them. But I didn't lift it. I suppose I could if need be, but I'm not sure I understand why you would need me to lift a vehicle.")

"Yeah, Dean," Sam quipped. He was crouched in front of the pit, constructing a ring of fieldstone at the lip. "We heard you the first fifty times."

Castiel was standing between the parked van and the camper with his head tilted back, his eyes drinking in the trees that surrounded the small clearing we had sought refuge amongst. His expression was thoughtful and awed, like a kid from Florida seeing snow for the first time.

"Never seen a fuckin' tree before?" I asked as I passed him by with an armload of dry branches. Freya trailed after me, but paused when she spotted the angel and greeted him by pushing her snout into his palm. He returned her greeting with an affectionate pat on her head as he lowered his gaze to me.

"I have seen many trees," he told me flatly. "More trees than one human could possibly conceive. But it was always in passing. I never bothered to truly see them." He tilted his head up and around, scanning the birches and maples and oaks and evergreens that surrounded us. "My father made these," he said with astonishment. "They are his creation, and they're—"

"They're just fucking trees, Walden," Dean interrupted, dusting his jacket sleeves of splinters and dirt as he strolled towards us.

"I was going to say breathtaking," Castiel said, ignoring Dean's surly comment but eyeing him all the same.

"At least one of us is enjoying holing up in the great outdoors," Dean grumbled.

"I think you mean Thoreau," Sam piped up.

"What?" Dean shot, turning to look at Sam. Sam turned his head to give him that funny smile he always got when he was about to dispense a tidbit of his expansive knowledge.

"Walden was a book written by Henry David Thoreau," he told his brother, who returned this information with a blank stare. "It was a memoir about his experience living in a secluded cabin near Walden Pond."

Dean blinked, signaling the fun fact hadn't so much as gone over his head as it did reflect off him like light on a mirror. He shook his head and faced Cas again.

"Whatever," he said. "Quit ogling the trees and give me a hand hauling the library out of the…" He paused to cringe and hang his head in a dramatic display of shame. "Minivan."

Castiel nodded obediently and set to work helping Dean transfer boxes of books from the van to the camper. I took my haul of wood to the pit and dumped it on top of Dean's scattered stack, filling the timberland musk with the sound of wood rattling against wood. Sam continued his work, carefully selecting stones from a pile next to the firewood, carefully ignoring me.

After two days of traveling obscure back roads in a minivan, one would think his hostilities would have softened. But they hadn't. Two days and he had hardly spoken a word to anyone, unless it was to put in his two cents on location destinations and hiding places. Camping had been his idea; Crowley would check every seedy motel across every state. The last place he would expect us to land was among the wilderness in northern Minnesota. It was a good idea and I told him this, but he acted like he hadn't even heard me.

I hovered at his side for a moment, and put my hands on my hips.

"Got something on your mind?" I tried.

"Do you?" Sam returned, informing me in so many words that it was up to me to start a serious conversation.

I sighed and bowed my head.

"I'm sorry," I said. Sam abandoned his task long enough to crane his neck to give me a skeptical look.

"For what?" he challenged.

"Dragging you and your brother into this mess," I said. Sam shook his head and grabbed a round stone from the pile.

"Uh-huh," he muttered skeptically. I ambled to the opposite side of the pit so I wasn't talking to his back. I sunk heavily into a green canvas chair, rested my elbows on my knees and slowly rubbed my hands together.

"I should have told you from the beginning who I am. Was."

"No, I get that," Sam said without looking up. "You were right. We probably would have killed you for saying that."

He glanced up at me, his brows raised in expectation, waiting for me to continue. It was then I realized I didn't know how to go on, or if there was anything to go on with. There were so many things that should have been said, but nothing came to mind. My accusation of the angel's hand in my life, how I lived and how I brought up my boys, had cleared my conscious. Even if they hadn't been somewhat responsible with their meddling Fate, I'm not sure I could apologize for raising Sam and Dean the way I did. It wasn't the best way to bring up kids, and it might not have been fair, but that's life, and that was the card we had been dealt. Apologizing for doing something I would do again if I had to would have been a lie, and, demon or not, I wasn't going to hand out empty sorrows.

When Sam grasped this, that I had nothing else to say, he nodded and returned to his task. I sighed and pulled my smokes from my jacket, stuck one in my mouth and lit it.

"You got something to say to me?" I tried. Sam paused. His eyes darted to and fro as he debated this before a faux smile teased the corner of his lips.

"I'm working up to it."

"Goin' on a supply run," Dean announced, stealing our attention as he slammed the van's trunk. He twirled a set of keys on his index finger and ambled towards Sam and me. Castiel followed close behind with the last of the boxes and my traitorous hound on his heels.

"You sure about that?" I quizzed with a raised brow.

"Why wouldn't I be?" he returned, a question that was meant to be rhetoric.

"Because Hell is on our ass," I replied anyway.

"Hell wishes it was on our ass," Dean scoffed in a timbre that would have amused himself were he not still sour about the van and the great outdoors. "I need some civilization before I go Jack Torrance on everyone."

I took to my feet and flicked ash to the forest floor.

"You're not going out there," I said with an authoritative air and a breath of smoke. Dean's expression deadpanned.

"Look, dad," he started as gently as he could, all things considered. "I know you're used to giving orders, and that's fine. I get it. But you were gone a long time. Sammy and me, we're not kids anymore. We've got this shit figured out. So with all due respect, I think we're about done taking orders."

I tried to clench my jaw, but it dropped instead. I might have expected this kind of sass out of Sam, but not Dean. Never Dean.

Castiel paused near me and placed the box between two canvas chairs. Sensing the tension (which had never truly gone anywhere, but fluctuated like a tide), his gaze lifted and shifted awkwardly between me and Dean.

"Need anything, Sam?" Dean asked without turning his gaze from me.

"Nope," Sam replied.

"I'll be back in a few," Dean promised. He turned tail and ambled towards the minivan. I watched, jarred and baffled and angry. How dare he defy me? His own father, and a demon to boot.

Have you considered that's why he has a hard time taking orders from you now? Max questioned. I sighed heavily, but didn't respond.

A hand of compassion placed itself on my left shoulder. I looked around to find Cas and the flat, empathetic half-smile-half-frown he frequently wore.

"He just needs a little time," the angel told me. "They both do."

I shrugged Cas's hand away with a violent shake and flicked the remains of my cigarette into the empty fire pit. Castiel didn't need another hint. He took my gesture with understanding and moved to one of the canvas folding chairs where he took a seat. His eyes scanned the cardboard box on his right and he carefully selected a green leather bound volume titled Reincarnation, cracked it open and quietly began to read.

I ran a hand down my face before I backtracked to the chair beside the angel and lit another cigarette. Sam disappeared to the trailer and returned shortly with his laptop. He took a seat in his own chair on the opposite end of the pit, booted his computer up, and went back to ignoring me.

You just gonna sit there moping about your luck or are you gonna do something about it? Max barked, not unlike a drill sergeant. I rolled my eyes blindly grabbed a book from the box.

I was getting there, I insisted grumpily as I opened the book.

Bullshit.

"Have I mentioned yet how much I'm beginning to hate you?"

Max laughed at my outburst. My eyes snapped up to Sam, who hadn't bothered to look back. Castiel, on the other hand, had drawn his attention from Reincarnation to me, his gaze empathetic and kind.

"What?" I snapped at the angle. He gave me a flat smile but said nothing and instead turned back to his book.

I turned my eyes down to the book open in my lap, but I didn't get a chance to discover what truths it held. My eyes had barely read the title page (Crossroad Blues; The Legend of Robert Johnson and Other Tales of Deals With the Devil) a slow line tore across my left palm, causing my hand to tremble and bleed.

It didn't just bleed. It burned worse than fire. Hot. Pure. Familiar.

Angel blade.

I stuck my cigarette between my lips and stared down at my hand, forcing it to still as blood submitted to gravity and trickled down my wrist and disappeared into my jacket sleeve. When the pain ebbed, I was left with a deep cut that ran the length of my palm.

"John," the angel's voice said. I tore my attention from the wound to the angel, who wore a look of concern. Sam peered over his laptop.

"It's nothing," I spoke around my cigarette, shrugging off the sudden injury. "Crowley's going to have to try a lot harder if he wants to get to me."

Famous last words.

They had hardly left my lips when a new pain surfaced. It lacked the heat of a divine instrument, but it was razor sharp. Unlike the hand wound, this new assault was abrupt, and it struck me in the abdomen like a knife to the gut.

Literally.

I looked down and watched my t-shirt absorb wet crimson in a single dot that grew out before it bled down. The injury – the pain and the blood – would have been easier to ignore if it weren't for Max. Demons, they don't feel pain the same way humans do. It wasn't exactly the pain itself that Max shared with me, but the panic that stirred in his mind at the feel of a blade chewing through flesh and muscle, burying itself in my – or his – stomach.

Shrapnel, his mind screamed, sending a reflex wave rippling through the body we shared. It seized our chest, closed around our throat, tightened every muscle and sent the world spinning in a wave of dizziness.

If I had been a stronger demon – if I had turned right – I might have been able to override it all. At the very least, I might have been able to ignore it entirely; let the "meat suit" suffer while I laughed. But I was a lesser demon. I was as low a demon as a demon could get, and, until recently, I had no practice at keeping my host at bay.

Mid-panic attack is a difficult time to try to regain control.

Castiel slowly rose to his feet and lowered his book to his side. Sam was leaning forward, trying to get a better look as he slowly folded his computer. Freya whined and wandered to my side. She knew something was wrong, but she couldn't do anything about it but lay her head on my knee and watch me bleed.

"I'm fine," I spoke in a gasp.

Get a grip, private, I barked at Max. This isn't Afghanistan.

Max didn't respond. I caught flashes of memory. Max's memory. Hot desert sun. Cloud of brown dust settling around a pile of rubble. Hearing lost to an ominous ringing. The sensation of something sharp eating its way through muscle.

"I'm fine," I repeated like a mantra, more for my benefit than the benefit of Sam and Castiel. "Just a little–"

My words were cut short when I could feel the knife move. Not out. No. The blade twisted, chewing at my insides.

Shrapnel!

Another rush of anxiety clenched every muscle in my body. I lost balance and I slipped to my knees. My book tumbled from my lap, the cigarette from my lips.

Castiel leapt to my side. Sam snapped his computer shut and bounded forward. Freya whimpered with nervous uncertainty.

"I'm fine," I said again, holding my left hand out to stop Castiel from advancing any further. "Don't–"

Words caught in my throat and were carried away by a rush of acid and blood that worked its way up my esophagus. I threw it up in a pitiful display that left me on my hands and knees like a dog.

If there was anything good that came from vomiting, it was the opportunity to regain control. For a split second, the act distracted Max from the panic that had seized us, and I slipped in and shut it down. With Max unconscious, I was left with his blood on my hands and what felt more like a drum stick in my stomach.

The acidic pressure rose again and I threw up more blood.

"Shit," Sam swore apprehensively. He looked to Castiel. "What do we do?"

"I'm not certain there is anything we can do," Castiel said remorsefully. "I don't believe he'll die."

"No," I agreed. I spit a glob of blood and wiped the corner of my mouth with my jacket sleeve. "But Max just did."

"What?" Sam questioned.

"Throwing up blood," I said, my voice muted by the earth I spoke down to. "Sign of internal bleeding." I pushed myself into an upright position and looked up at Sam. "Soon as I'm gone, Max is, too."

"I'm calling Dean," Sam decided, and pulled his phone out of his pants pocket.

"No," I protested. "Dean can't." I paused, lurched forward and threw up more blood. I coughed, cursed God and righted myself. "Dean already blames himself. He doesn't need to see this."

"Your father is right," Castiel agreed. "It would be best if Dean didn't know."

Sam debated this before returning his phone to his jeans pocket with a defeated sigh.

"Right," he mumbled grudgingly. "So what do we do?"

"Figure out what the fuck we're going to do about Crowley," I said with a harsh tone I did not fully intend on using. Sam blinked down at me and took a cautious step back. Castiel kept on with his flat, empathetic look.

"Come up with some good excuses that put me in the woods." My voice was calm this time. Quiet. Resentful. "I got a bad feeling Crowley's just getting started with me."