Chapter title is from song by Chris Cornell.
56
Fell on Black Days – Chris Cornell
"Look her up."
"Dean…"
Sam was going to try to reason with him. It was in Sam's voice, the flex and the bend of it, looking for a rational explanation, for some way to save a cracked egg.
He threw the Impala's keys onto the motel's shabby dresser with a clatter loud enough to make Sam wince. Loud enough to drown out the silence behind them, the absence of the Durango's engine idling down, the lack of any sound coming from the room next door.
"Look her up, Sam. Like we're working a job. Dig it all up. I want to know what we're dealing with here."
He didn't have to turn around to know the face Sam would be making with that exaggerated huff.
"Dean, if this is about her being a duchess…"
He spun around, and Sam stopped mid-sentence.
"I don't care if she's the friggin' Princess of Tasmania, Sam! What else hasn't she told us, huh? What else?"
He'd gotten in too deep, sipping the kool-aid of promise and temptation, taking things at face value, thinking things. That they were in this together, all for one and one for all, except as it turned out, not so much, really. His cards were all on the table and where were hers? Still held tight to the vest, and this was how the hustler got hustled.
And he had no idea, none whatsoever, how much she was still holding back.
Oh, she was good.
Sam opened his mouth to argue, to point out that Garth had vouched for her, and in their world, that was normally enough. It was the life. You didn't go poking around under other people's scabs, because everyone got into hunting somehow, and it was never pretty. Everyone had a past. They had a past.
And Garth had vouched for them too.
He glared, because he shouldn't need to say any of that out loud. It would be pointing out the obvious.
With a huff and a puff, Sam ran a frustrated hand through his hair, because Sam wanted to believe. Puppies at the end of the rainbow, forgiveness and redemption, looking for a future, Happy Days and a way out of this mess. Hope. For Sam's sake he wished things were different, but the reality was this. Reality was shit.
Sam should have learned that by now.
And maybe Sam had, because Sam's lips twisted downwards hard before Sam pulled out his laptop, thunked himself unhappily into the rickety metal chair, and started tapping away at the keyboard.
She shouldn't have let her guard down.
She shouldn't have kissed him.
It was ironic, wasn't it, the way things turned out. Someone ought to make a note of it, slap a warning label on both their foreheads for all future comers—it wasn't the danger that you needed to worry about around the Winchester boys. It was the illusion of safety.
The highway stretched flat and featureless before her. She kept her foot on the gas, heading west, because west was where the ocean lay. She wanted to look out at the infinity of the sea, drown out the silence with the waves, and stand in the salt tinted breeze. She wanted to forget, to shed, feeling. Hot and bothered for days on end, a ghosting touch stroking over her skin at random moments, warm and wanting until she'd given in to it, and the reality was… so much better.
Her tongue skimmed over her lips, savoring. She caught herself and sucked down a deep breath.
Control.
It was ironic, wasn't it, that it hadn't been hers. She hadn't been the restrained one, hadn't kept her hands at her sides until the last, hadn't stepped back. She'd fallen headlong into it, even knowing this tended to happen to the best of them, the whirlwind around the boys. He'd stepped back, and she'd stepped forward, into the temptation of the dream, that we've-got-your-back togetherness, possibilities, the glowing certifiable certitude that was Sam, overlooking reality, breaking the rule that should never have been broken in the first place—always move on. It should have been hunt and done and onto the next job, because that was the way it was. Don't hold on, because what you held on to would be used against you.
Always.
She gripped the steering wheel harder, gazing into the distant haze that clouded the horizon, shutting out the past. The thin scars on her palm and the deeper one across her wrist had long since faded, but that didn't change the blood in her veins. It didn't change the fact that she alone opened the Vault.
She should have known better.
It wasn't ever safe.
Her fingers went over the amulet resting against her breastbone. She shouldn't be wearing it. It was a link, a tether, a vulnerability. She should take it off like she should keep driving, abandoning Sam and the thing he was asking of her, because Sam didn't know what he was tangling with, and if he did, he'd understand.
The sign for Cheyenne came into view, highway 80 west, and she should keep going. Sixteen hundred miles to the sea or a hundred miles back to Omaha, the other way, trying to buy time against the impossible, trying to escape fate. She should have told Sam to run now, that this was a battle no one won, it was all little cuts and little cuts until the big one, when the demon won out and nothing else mattered, and there were no exceptions to the rule.
None.
"Huh."
Halfway through his second tasteless beer Dean braced himself, watching as Sam did the wrinkle-y thing with his face.
There was something. He knew it. There had to be something.
"She's an orphan, you know."
He glared at Sam, because he'd already gotten that salient fact from "sole heir."
"Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for her?"
Sam flashed him an irate look and went back to reading.
"With a title and a fortune like that, you can imagine the custody battle was pretty fierce. Looks like everyone and anyone who could claim to be a distant relative twice removed crawled out from under a rock to put in their bid. The Ashcrofts, Harclays, the Ambelyns, the Wodehouses."
"Whoa, whoa. As in the Wodehouse Manor, interdimensional pit of hell, Wodehouses?"
Sam nodded without taking his eyes off the screen. "Yeah. Old families, all of them. It totally makes sense now that they'd give her an invitation to the Manor, no questions asked. It's almost as if…Whoa."
"What?"
"There was an uproar when the court appointed an outsider as her guardian. An American. Someone no one's ever heard of. A Rufus Turner."
The beer he was in the process of drinking came up with a splutter. "WHAT?"
Sam looked up mildly. "You heard me. Rufus."
"RUFUS? Rufus Rufus?"
Sam was squinting now, turning over everything that had happened in his mind. "You have to admit, it would explain an awful lot."
"Our Rufus?"
With a flourish Sam swiveled the laptop around so he could see the screen for himself. The photograph was fuzzy from a bad scan, but it was Rufus, fancied up in a suit and tie, earring and all, holding on to the bandaged hand of a solemn mini-Zee, already nine-tenths of the way to her current expressionless expression, standing in front of some huge old pile.
Dean breathed out, one long breath, and set the bottle in his hand down hard. He avoided looking at mini-Zee, too young to be in so deep, a backstory there he didn't want to hear, didn't want to know, tugging him in too close in ways he couldn't deal with. He needed to keep his distance. He fixated instead on the thing he could handle. The look on Rufus' face, years ago and yesterday, an exact mirror of Dad's in those first years after the fire, grim and a grief so great whiskey couldn't drown it out, hanging on by a thread, by a need for vengeance.
"Rufus?"
Sam watched his reaction play out, before adding quietly, "'87 was not that long after Omaha. She'd have been four. I'm surprised he fought for custody at all."
"He would have. That he was there at all means there was a job. If there was a job…"
"Yeah. And after Omaha, he wouldn't have told Bobby squat, especially if she wound up in the life." Sam sighed heavily before turning the laptop back around and scrolling down. "Well, he did right by her. Brought her back here for a few years and enrolled her in some pretty exclusive boarding schools from the word go—St. Mary's. St. Andrews. Then back across the pond—St. Bartholomew's. St. Katherine's." Sam tongued his cheek. "Huh."
Two of a thing was luck. Three of a thing was a pattern. Four of a thing was a plan.
Holy ground.
School after school, always one with holy ground.
Big honking devil's trap under her house.
A small frown creased Sam's face as he read on.
"From these records it looks like she spent her summers and her holidays at school. It doesn't look like he spent that much time with her at all. Certainly not enough to teach her the way Dad taught us. The only gap is six months between the first two schools, when she would have been six, really too young to learn anything."
Maybe. He knew a lifetime's worth of vigilance when he saw it.
The chair scraped across the floor when he stood abruptly up, lips bit tight around the breath he wasn't breathing.
Rufus wouldn't have let anything slip by him. Not with that look on his face.
He'd been protecting her all along. Her, and whatever she was sitting on.
From demons.
Sam glanced up at his sudden movement.
"Dean?"
The room was too small, the walls too close. Even if it didn't show up in the records, Rufus would have taught her, and taught her well. Whatever it was she saw in him, whyever she held off trying to exorcise his ass, whether it was because of Toby, whether it was because of Sam…he grabbed his jacket and Baby's keys. He was halfway out the door when Sam's voice chased after him.
"Dean! Where are you go…"
"Out! I'm going out!"
He slammed the door on Sam's last words. The night air was cool as he slid behind the wheel, fired up the engine, and let Baby run.
How do you know you won't be the problem?
He let out the breath he'd been holding, air he didn't need. He knew what they were doing, her and Sam, the dagger throw, the machete, all this tedious legwork, doing things the old fashioned way, keeping him off his powers, the First Blade out of his hand, as if that were the problem.
Trying to save him. Whatever they thought was left around the darkness.
It couldn't be done.
Involuntarily he licked his lips for the taste of cinnamon and honey and whiskey, intoxicating, and he breathed deep, sweetness and pain burning down to his lungs. He could see how Cain had fallen for it, even knowing better, even knowing the destruction he brought in his wake, the heady promise of warmth, tight around his chest, temptation beyond measure.
He hung a hard right, down to the main drag, street lights and neon caressing the dashboard, white and pink and blue playing over his hands. The way she'd reached for him, her touch skimming over his skin, and God he wanted it. Like a damned moth to a flame, but who was the moth, and who was the flame?
There were things Rufus would have taught her, no matter what Sam said. It would have been for her own good. And she'd learned it. It was there in the way she never slept easy, never let her guard down. Next to never. That kiss was a crack in the armor, a mistake, and she wouldn't make it again. Fire to ice in a half second flat, Soulless and emotionless again because it was the edge she had to have, living the razor's edge that was the life. Remembering what was relevant, remembering how anyone could turn.
He breathed in again, the air frigid because he hadn't cranked on the heater since it made no difference to him. Ironic, wasn't it, that for all that he'd kept reminding her of what he was—he'd overlooked the one thing.
What she was.
A hunter. A damned good one. Almost as good as Sam.
A red light up ahead forced him to a stop when he wanted to keep driving. Two-lane highway in the dark, enough gas to keep on going, with only the engine hum for company. Looking for some way to clear his head, to think straight, to see where he was going, an idea forming in his mind. He knew Sam wouldn't see it, because Sam wanted to believe.
And that was just as well.
The light turned green and he laid on the gas, outstripping the Prius on his right easily with a roar of engine, his eyes on nothing but the road. They'd been on it forever, him and Sam, bound to it by destiny and by doom, Lucifer and Michael, Abel and Cain, the one ending in the distance they couldn't seem to avoid.
His hand stayed steady on the wheel, following the double yellow into the thickness of night beyond the last streetlight. He scrubbed one hand over the day's stubble, rough on his jaw, and considered all the angles.
If Rufus had trained her, there was a way he could make this work for him.
And it'd be better this way.
He was playing with fire and he knew it. In the silence that followed the Impala pulling out of the parking space out front, Sam sat back. He stared at the screen in front of him.
Dean had left before he'd gotten all the way through telling him everything, and maybe it was better this way. The things Zee hadn't mentioned she hadn't mentioned for a reason, and they didn't need to know. There were things in the Vault that should probably never see the light of day, and Rufus hadn't gone to the lengths he'd gone to retrieve them so demons could pop the lid on the treasure chest open once again.
Abruptly he sat up and put his hands on the keyboard again. With a series of quick taps he cleared the screen and erased his search history. He closed the laptop with a definitive click, stood up, walked across the room to the mini-fridge, and grabbed himself a beer. He needed to think.
He let out a self-mocking scoff, because thinking was all he could do, thinking and twiddling his thumbs, with both Zee and Dean AWOL and in the wind, and while he had some faith Dean would be back once he'd cooled down, he had no idea what Zee would do. He reached into his pocket for his phone, thumb over the GPS app before he turned the phone off again and looked at his shadowy reflection in the blank screen. He'd promised Toby they would watch her back, and now he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't.
Slowly he put the phone away.
It wasn't his call.
He paced across the room again, restless. Dean had taken the Impala instead of teleporting—a habit, a human one. Dean slept now, little catnaps here and there. Enough. More than before. They'd come so far. If they could make progress like this, what Suriel had said—if there was something out there that would remove the Mark completely, he just needed time to find it.
With a long gulp he drained the beer. He hadn't realized when he'd sat down at the table that the stakes were so high, but he couldn't quit now. They couldn't quit, none of them. This wasn't just killing the odd vamp and revenant here and there anymore. The things Crowley said, demons and angels binding heaven and hell together in one ugly knot; the world a mess and getting messier by the day. If for no other reason than that, she'd come back and Dean'd come back, both of them by morning, because this was bigger than them. It was a hell of a thing to buy time with, the end of the world, but he'd take it.
He'd take whatever he could get.