A/N: Vivi here! Tried to post earlier this week. It wouldn't convert my doc. Worked today though. Anyway, sorry for the delay. Enjoy!

Previously on Enter the World:

"His lips are blue."

"I know, Sam."

Cas didn't die in the night. His leg didn't either. Neither brother got any sleep, even though they took turns caring for the angel. Any rest would have been a relief, but they didn't want to fall into a nightmare that was too real. They didn't want to relive… that. For the most part, they just watched blurry TV and tried to focus on keeping Cas out of hypovolemic shock.

"What are we gonna do with him?" Sam asked as the sun started to peer over the horizon and pour into their motel room. "We can't take him back to the bunker with us. We might get jumped; they'd kill him for sure if they got their hands on him."

"I was hoping Bobby would take him. He can watch Cas until we get back. Or at least until he wakes up. I doubt Cas has any angel juice at the moment, so it probably will take a good long time. All Bobby will have to do is check on him once in a while." Dean's voice was quiet, somewhat nervous. "He… he'll wake up, right? I mean, this isn't even the worst injury he's had."

"Dean, his wings are visible. I don't think that's a very good sign. I mean, I haven't read anything about angel's wings showing up before but it doesn't seem like an everyday kind of thing. But… he's still breathing, so I'm like 65% sure he'll wake up eventually." Sam got up from his bed and went to stand next to Dean, who was seated on the bed next to Cas, still holding light pressure on the wound.

"But will he wake up before he, I don't know, starves to death? He eats when he's like this. He's basically human, right? If he sleeps, he eats?"

"He'd die of thirst before he'd starve, Dean. And yeah. He's basically human. Just like us." Sam's voice was as quiet as Dean's, like they didn't want to disturb the stillness of the room.

"This is bullshit."

"Dean, he's not dead. We didn't lose him entirely. Chances are he'll recover and be able to function at least like a person, even if he doesn't get his mojo back. It's not like he's a vegetable."

"Well aren't you a ray of technicolor sunshine?" Dean grumbled, looking over Cas' face for the hundredth time. His cheek had stopped bleeding before they even reached the motel, but crusted blood still covered most of his features. "Go get a washcloth, dude. I can't keep looking at his face like that. It's makin' me sick."

"We're already sick, Dean. I doubt it's Cas who's making you nauseous." Sam said as he went into the bathroom and returned with a washcloth, presoaked in warm water. "How are you holdin' up, by the way?"

"Me? You're seriously asking how I'm feeling right now?"

"Humor me." Sam set to work removing the blood from Cas' skin, all the while studying the wings that laid to either side of his head. They were coated in blood too. So much so that Sam really couldn't say with any degree of certainty what color they were underneath.

"I feel like I'm gonna puke. My head's killin' me, I think I have a fever, and some demon probably bruised a kidney for how much my side hurts right now."

"Is your urine pink?" Sam looked back to his brother, who looked miserable. His cheeks were flushed, blood smeared over some of his face and much of his clothing, his hands hopelessly coated in the stuff, and he was squinting a little even in the dim light from the lamp in the corner and the sunrise through the part in the curtains.

It was by that light that his brother shrugged. "Haven't checked yet."

"We should before we leave. So… I guess your cold isn't some twenty four hour thing after all."

"No shit, Sam."

"We'll get something for you soon."

"What about you, huh? How did Sammy make it through the night?" Dean asked with a bitter tone, studying his brother who seemed to deflate at the question.

"I tried not to think about it."

"About being sick?"

"About Ali. And the baby." Sam got up to rinse out the once white washcloth, returning to a guilty looking Dean.

"I'm sorry, Sam, I shouldn't have-"

"We'll get her back. We have to." Sam's voice was quiet but sure.

It worried Dean that his brother hid his emotion behind that wall of his, but Sam hadn't checked out yet, so he saw this as an improvement over the last time he thought he lost Ali. Which was like friggin' three days ago.

Once Sam finally cleared all the blood from Cas' face and neck, he sighed. "We can't go to Bobby's house. We can't risk being followed there."

"Sam, they already know where his house is. That's where they kidnapped her in the first place, remember?" Dean couldn't believe that Sam hadn't made that connection already. They'd left her with Bobby when they had yet another job that was too dangerous for her to join them on, back before they trained her. She was kidnapped by demons and shifters who were under Francesca's command; Bobby barely made it out of his own house alive. It wasn't that long ago that they'd flushed the place out and put Bobby back in his rightful place.

"Francesca and her demons knew where it was. Tristram said not many of her followers were left. There's a chance that none of them are." Sam said, tossing the reddened cloth to the other bed and sitting on the edge of Cas'.

"As soon as we hand over that box, he's gonna let her out, Sam. She'll go there first to find us. Now I don't think she knows where the bunker is. She wasn't… there enough in Li's head to remember. Not as weak as she was then." Dean said, shivering at the memory of ripping the remnant of Francesca out of Li's body. It had been in there for five months before they noticed it. Cas hadn't even seen it; he'd brought her to them in the beginning because he needed help with this human he'd saved from a demon. This crying ball of a human, who said her name was Allison. Francesca supposedly smoked out before Cas could kill her, but a part of her was trapped in Ali, making either half of the demon extremely weak. That piece of hell was why Ali couldn't talk with them for more than a few minutes without having a panic attack during the first few months of their acquaintance. Why she couldn't be around Cas for too long before shutting down. Why she was suicidal, way back when.

She went from a sad puppy, an utter burden in Sam and Dean's lives, to their very own female protagonist. As soon as the demon was out, she blossomed into a different person than the Ali they'd known before. She was eager to learn, took no BS, and became unstoppable when one of them needed help. The woman hid in a car for hours so Sam and Cas would have no choice but to let her go look for Dean with them when he disappeared on a case. She was the one who found him.

Sam would never forget. Dean could have died before Sam and Cas found that dank cavern where a tiny, shivering, toddler version of the hunter was curled up under a jacket that dwarfed his now miniscule frame. If Sam had gotten his way back then, Ali would have still been sitting with their backpacks outside the mine even as Dean breathed his last. From that point on, Sam tried not to order Ali around. She knew what needed to be done, even if she didn't quite know how to do it safely yet.

"So we can't go to Bobby's with Cas and we can't go to the bunker or Tristram will know exactly where to find Ali when we get her back." Sam said, looking down at Cas once more, hopelessness slowly but surely filling his chest.

"We can probably shake whatever groupies we got goin' on and get to the bunker under the radar. But evasive maneuvers like that don't mix with a downed angel. And we can't let Bobby stay in his house. There's no chance they'd leave him alone."

"I didn't think about that."

"I think I got a plan."

"Thanks, Bobby. Hey- again, I'm sorry about all this."

"I know, kid. You've said that three times now. It ain't your fault some demon took the girl and banged up the angel. I'll miss the house, that's for sure, but ain't nothin' here that's irreplaceable. Not that I can't take with me, at least." Bobby sighed on the other end of the phone, his voice low and tired. "How's Sam holdin' up? You pick up somethin' for those colds 'a yers?"

"Yeah, finally drugged him to sleep. He's better than earlier this week, but that's not sayin' much." Dean said quietly, glancing over at his brother, asleep in the passenger seat. Cas was nestled securely across the back bench, wrapped in blankets and held in place with pillows and whatever else from the motel they could use as padding. At least this car had more leg room for Sam. That was the one good thing about the domestic chariot of an SUV in Dean's mind.

"You'll have to fill me in when you get back. You called 'er yet?"

"Nah, I'm doin' that next. She said it was an open invitation last time we talked, so I'm hopin' that still applies."

"I'm with ya on that one. Won't be thrilled to have five more mouths to feed."

"We'll make our keep one way or another. At least until we can come up with a better plan."

"Worry about that when the time comes, I guess. Where're you leavin' 'im?"

"I'll send you the coordinates from a burner phone. I don't want 'em trackin' us if they have these numbers."

"Sounds like a plan. ETA?"

"Three hours. It's about in the middle of nowhere."

"I'll be there."

"This doesn't seem like a good plan, Dean." Sam said as they hauled Cas into another motel room, four hours away from the last. "He could take a turn and be long gone before Bobby even gets close."

The brothers settled Cas on the bed, taking care to not snap a wing or pull a feather in the process. Not that he hadn't already lost a few sticky red ones. Dean propped Cas' leg up to hopefully keep him from re-bleeding. They hadn't been able to stitch the cut, so all that held it shut was the pressure from a few washcloths pushing in on the edges, held tight by a towel tied around his leg.

"I know the risks, Sam, but he can't come with us if we want him alive at all in the future. This way he'll at least have a chance. Bobby won't be more than like half an hour out by now, so if we split, we can take our demon entourage with us and clear the way for Bobby to do an angel life-flight in relative safety." Dean ran his fingers through his hair nervously, remembering too late that they were coated in crusty blood. "Bobby knows what he's doing. He thinks this'll work."

"Well, I don't like it, but I don't see any other choice."

"Lesser of two evils, right?"

"I'll get the salt."

"What the hell does 'a few days time' even mean?" Sam snapped suddenly, surprising Dean.

"What?" Dean reached down and turned the music off, dividing his attention instead between the road and his newly irate brother.

"Tristram said 'make yourselves known when you have Francesca. I'll seek you out in a few days time'. What the hell does that even mean? Two days? Five? How long are they going to keep her?" Sam asked, his anxiety no longer hidden under a confident facade.

Dean could see Sam's nerves fraying from across the car. "I don't know, Sam. But we'll be ready as soon as he decides to come looking, okay? We'll get her back, one way or another."

"What if they're not taking care of her, Dean? What if they're not feeding her, or letting her sleep? She could probably make it until we do the trade… She has to, right? They wouldn't let her die, they need the baby. But, I mean, they just need the baby's blood, they don't need him to be healthy and thriving when he's born. What if they do permanent damage? Cas might not be able to save them again." Sam bit at his fingernails and looked out the window as if the farmland rushing by them had the answers to his questions.

"She's a fighter. Kid is too. And so help those pieces of shit, if they hurt her or Junior we know more than enough ways to make them regret it."

"Why her?"

"'Why her' what, Sam?" Dean glanced over again and found Sam slouching in his seat, face getting more and more red by the minute.

"Why did demons target her? She didn't do anything wrong."

"No, she didn't. Tristram wants her because Francesca's obsessed-"

"No, Dean. Why did Francesca have to take her in the first place? She was happy, she was married, she was having a kid. Getting her medical degree. That bitch could have singled out any female in her family. They were all descendants of that vessel she had and beat to hell before it died. Why her?"

"Don't do this now, Sammy. I know it sucks that Li was singled out. I know it totally screwed up the life she spent her whole life building. But it happened, and it's done. We can't change it. And if all of that hadn't happened, we wouldn't know her, Sam. Cas would've bled out after that first ambush 'cuz of that binding spell the witch put on his grace. I'd be dead in a mine in Centerville and who knows where you'd be. I know it's kinda morbid, but I'm glad she's in our lives. Right now, we just need to focus on getting her back. That's priority one."

"Yeah."

"Don't check out, Sam."

"I won't."

The bunker was uncomfortably silent as they pulled into the garage in the blood soaked SUV. Dean was pretty sure they had been able to shake the demons they knew were trailing them, watching their every move. They weren't inside for more than five minutes. Just enough time to pack some clothes, gather any weapons and spell ingredients they would need, collect some personal effects- theirs and Ali's- and grab Francesca's box. It still sat exactly where Bobby placed it twelve weeks ago, in room 7B, just outside the dungeon.

They took a minute to use the bathroom, too. The brothers washed the blood from their clothes, then their bodies, in the showers before getting ready to head out again. Dean found out that he had, in fact, bruised a kidney during the fight at the store. But there was only a little blood in the toilet bowl, so he decided against telling Sam or Bobby. There were bigger fish to fry.

Their next stop was the supermarket where Ali was kidnapped. They ditched the SUV in the parking lot and got their blood free, classic, red two seater back. Dean could see why the MOL chose this model; it had some kind of giddy-up to it. They flew down the interstate, going nowhere in particular, as long as it was far from the bunker and relatively west.

"So we just… wander around until they decide to find us?" Sam asked, absently turning a small box over and over in his hands.

"Hell no. We're gonna use every trick in our book to find her first. There's no going back once they have that lockbox, Sam. Handing it over is our back up plan's backup plan." Dean couldn't bring himself to look at his brother. He'd been sulking since they set off with no destination in mind and he hadn't stopped fiddling with that box since they got back to the red car. Sam hadn't even had it a full week yet. "Put that thing away before you break it. You're drivin' me nuts."

Sam heaved a sigh and held the box still for a few moments before putting it back in the glovebox. "What's the plan? If we have a backup plan, we must have a plan, right?"

"Like I said, every location tracker we know of."

"That's not gonna work, Dean. She's warded. Unless they ruined the tattoo, she'll be impossible to find."

"Then let's hope she messed it up herself."

"Goin' on thirty six hours, innit?" Bobby sounded just as tired as the boys felt. "You slept at all yet?"

"Sam caught some z's in the car." Dean said, unwilling to reveal that he hadn't slept at all. Sure, he'd taken some non-drowsy cold meds to relieve the headache, dull the ache in his side, stop the constant begging of his stomach to view the outside world, and bring his fever down, but no way was he going to risk closing his eyes and seeing that jackass drag his adopted sister away over and over and over. He knew he had failed her; he didn't need a constant reminder.

"Boy, put that brother 'a yers on the phone. You go take a few hours so you're not a sneezin' zombie when the mud hits the fan. He can do these by himself." Bobby's voice was stern but quiet. "You're only as good as your split second decisions in situations like these, son. You have to be at the top of your game."

"Yeah." Dean scrubbed a hand down his face and sighed. "I can't just tap out though, Bobby. I can't just stop looking. This is Li we're talkin' about." He stopped himself just short of saying 'the mother of Sammy's child'. They'd agreed to make it a surprise for Bobby right after Ali asked them not to make a big deal about it. The man would practically be a grandfather, after all.

"Dean, if you don't take care of yourself and all this goes south, you'll be a long time comin' back. Just rest for a while. Sam and I can handle this." Bobby said, trying to sound convincing while also keeping his voice down. He wasn't the only person around, but he was the only person awake at the moment. It was nearing- or just past- midnight in his time zone. Bobby wasn't really sure. He hadn't looked at a clock for a while; the basement office didn't have one, and there were no windows.

"Bobby, I can't-" The dial tone ran loud in Dean's ear.

A few seconds later, Sam's phone rang. He stopped the preparations for the next spell and pulled it out of his duffel. "Yeah?" When the person on the other end spoke, Sam looked to his brother in confusion. Then he shook his head and the bitchface made an appearance. "Dean, seriously, get some sleep. You look like hell."

"I'm fine."

"You almost puked during the last one, dude. Take some cold medicine and go to bed. I'll wake you up if any of these actually work." Sam said, producing a half empty bottle of sloshing liquid cold medicine from his duffel. He tossed it to Dean, who caught it with an angry glare. "Be pissy all you want. Just lay in the bed and I'll stop bugging you."

"Whatever."

It took three minutes for Dean to fall asleep once he hit the bed and two of those were spent arguing with Sam about how he wouldn't be able to conk out.

"Just like when you were a baby." Sam went back to prepping the next spell, a tiny smile on his face as he recalled those long evenings with Ali, both of them trying to get Dean- who was de-aged into an eighteen month old child at the time- to go to bed. He'd thrash and cry until the last minute sometimes, falling asleep so quickly after going silent that they worried he hurt himself or fainted. Baby Dean was all cuddles and dreamy eyes when they'd put him in the play pen where he slept after fits like those. At times, Sam wished Dean remembered more of his second childhood, but most of the time he was glad those memories were gone. Dean didn't remember Ali getting her shoulder torn to pieces before finding him in that mine, the frantic escape from the wendigo, or the mad dash out of the woods and away from the witch that cursed him. He didn't remember being in a shootout with the witch, Ali holding him as she was shot in the leg. He didn't remember throwing cereal at Cas every morning and laughing like a maniac when the weakened angel flinched or when a piece of cereal stuck to his very annoyed face. He didn't remember Sam's breakdown, the night of drinking that ended in Ali literally slapping some sense into him. Dean remembered the important things though. Like playtime with his brother and adopted sister as the pair secretly fell in love with each other. Being lulled to sleep with rock songs sung slow and soft while Ali or Sam held him and walked around the bunker. And most importantly, the feeling of safety and love that he so craved for much of his life.

"Got it all set up?" Bobby asked when Sam returned to his phone.

"Yeah. Let's get this over with."

None of the spells they tried worked. That came as no surprise to the three men; they knew how powerful her warding was. Unlike the Winchester brothers who had theirs carved into their ribs, Ali had an Enochian ward tattooed on her side. It was the same one Cas had. The angel personally oversaw its application. If that ward kept angels from finding and detaining Cas after he abandoned them, then it sure as hell wasn't going to let some flimsy spell find Ali. That had been exactly what they wanted at the time she had it put on. Now, though… Sam wished they'd found another way to hide her. Let her be untraceable to everyone but Sam, Dean, and Cas.

"That's all I got, son. I could make a few calls and see if anybody else knows somethin' I don't about findin' a person who's warded, but I doubt I'd come back with anything worthwhile." Bobby closed a thick, old book and pushed it aside on the small wooden desk. "You picked up that box?"

"We had to have a backup plan. It's in the trunk." Sam ran a hand through his hair and paced the room, listening to Dean snore in the dim light.

"You seal up that trunk well enough?"

"Men of Letters did most of it. We added a few things yesterday. No demon can get into it, period." He sighed and waited until the latest wave of dread passed. "Bobby, there's no way we can win this. We'll get Ali back, yeah, but Tristram is just going to release Francesca as soon as he gets his hands on that thing. And she'll come searching- we can't hide forever."

"You can hide long enough to come up with a better plan than hidin', Sam. Point is to get the girl back and regroup somewhere safe. Just focus on that for now. No 'big picture' thinkin', not until everyone has their sanity back."

"Right. I'm trying, I really am. This situation is just so screwed up."

"Ya got that right. But she's alive, kid. You'll get her back soon or we'll summon the SOB and make him regret takin' his time."

"Hey, how's Cas doin'?" Sam slowed in his pacing somewhat. They would get Ali back one way or another. But Cas had been on death's door when they left him in that motel room for Bobby to find.

"Well, he's alive. Stitched up that gash and got an IV into 'im. He needed blood but I ain't no blood bank, so I just watered down what he had to keep his blood pressure up. He hasn't gone back into shock yet, so that's good. We cleaned him up when I got here and I got someone checkin' in on him every fifteen minutes or so. His condition don't change much, but the last time I was in there his wing twitched. Can't say I didn't jump. Creepy lookin' things to be comin' out of a person."

"That's better than the last time he was down like this. He didn't even move before." Sam said, allowing just a touch of hope to flare up. "How're they takin' it?"

"Well, there was some screamin' and cursin' when I dragged 'im in, but they got over it pretty fast. Say they can't wait for the three of ya to get here. Allison has been quite the hot topic."

Sam smiled. "How's that spell comin'?"

"Really, boy? I just spent how long doin' locating rituals with you and you ask about the damn shroud spell?"

"I was just wondering. I don't want to put anyone else in danger."

"It's comin' along. Got a few more things to pick up before it'll have the power to cover a couple miles diameter. Someone's gonna have to meet you at the edge and let you in until we get that blood, though. It'll work on everything until we put that into it."

"Then only demons and shifters will get lost?"

"Exactly."

"Good."

"What're you gonna do now?"

"Uh, probably go shopping."

A/N: I promise that last line will make more sense once the next chapter is up. Leave me a review and tell me what you think might happen or what you think of the fic so far. See you very soon!