Dean is motionless in the doorway, eyes fixed on Marie. He called her Sleeping Beauty as a joke, and to be honest he really did mean it as a joke, but seeing her now, her hair combed but her eyes still sleepy, the beauty shines through in a way he never wanted it to, in a way he never wanted to admit could happen. He holds up the bottle of apple juice without looking away from her.
"Sam. Go get some ice." Sam hears the slight, almost perfectly hidden tremor in Dean's usually strong voice and obeys without question, leaving the two alone in hopes that they'll work something out. Marie keeps her gaze locked on Dean as he crosses to the chair beside her bed and sits down.
"Are you feeling better?" Whiskey-rough, coffee-black, endlessly deep, his voice envelops her with a kind of hot, uncomfortable purpose.
"I'm still tired."
"Do you remember what happened?"
"I remember." His expression is guarded, even more than it has been before.
"Are you angry?"
"I don't blame you." She didn't answer his question, but he accepts the answer anyway because sometimes you just have to let the question go unanswered or you'll drive yourself insane. As he watches her eyes closely for any flicker of anger, he sees something in her he hasn't wanted to see before. She is not as passive as he once imagined; in fact, she is not passive at all. There is something innately feral in the back of her eyes, something so wild that Dean shifts in his seat uncomfortably. Her heart, though, is the more prominent, warm and caring and ultimately welcoming of whatever he has to give. No malice. No anger. She really doesn't blame him.
"I didn't want to believe you," he says. She nods.
"I know. You wanted it to be my fault."
"Yes." Sam returns just then with the ice and they are still staring at one another, forming a tenuous bond of civility.
"I won't push you again," she says finally. "I know you want to fight this demon. I will help you kill it and then I will leave. I will help you and then I will go home."
"I want to know what happened to her," he says, ignoring her, and Sam looks back and forth between Marie and Dean with a sort of panicked expression that neither one of them acknowledges.
"Juice first," he interjects, and Dean nods, his eyes never leaving Marie's face, even though Marie breaks the contact to look at Sam. Sam pours and hands the juice around to each of them, and as Dean sips his, Marie can see the way he hides his cringe at the sweetness. A few sips into her own ugly plastic cup she clears her throat and begins, unable to keep it back any longer.
"Missouri woke up in the middle of the night three months ago with the first premonition she'd had since you boys left Lawrence the second time – after saving Jenny, remember, and seeing your mom. She said she'd seen another death, another death brought on by that same demon. Said it had the same modus operandi but also that same energy footprint, good and true evil. Except this time there wasn't a man to see her body pinned to the ceiling, wasn't anybody, really, except her. Except Missouri. And she couldn't for the life of her figure out why it had been sent her way. 'It felt like that demon wanted me and only me to see it,' she told me. Like the two of us – because of course the demon knows I work with Missouri – were the only ones he wanted to see it.
"We started looking for fires all over the country. I set up a computer search – I'm about as geeky with a computer as Sam – and then tried to sense the element's activity, but I've never been as good at the scrying part of this witch thing as I have the healing part. Missouri did her routine trances, usually with something from your old house, just because it was one of the first. Sure enough, not but a few days later we caught wind of a fire up in Ohio and we both knew that was her. And just as soon as we got there Missouri knew you'd been there too. Didn't take much digging to figure out why. With her working at the paper and all the deaths you boys had tried to solve – well, we could feel the darkness and Missouri could feel Sam's presence in some of the buildings. The kind of prints she can pick up – I hope to someday be half as good at it as she is. Still, all told it took both of us scrying to find the connection between you and Cassie, and all the time we were hoping. But…"
"But he killed her because I loved her." Dean's voice is wet with the tears he's holding back, and Marie nods. Her tears are unchecked.
"I'm so sorry, Dean. We wanted to save her."
"Oh, Marie," Sam croaks out, unafraid to cry, and sits next to her on the bed, pulling her into a hug. "You – oh, Marie, don't you cry too. It wasn't your fault. You couldn't have stopped it." She laughs a little, ruefully, and shifts tighter under his arm while Dean looks around in that helpless, unfortunate way he doesn't want to admit he has and rubs the back of his neck.
"What a sight we must make," he says callously. "I have to leave." She closes her eyes, wets her lips, grabs his arm and squeezes once before letting him go. There's a look thrown over his shoulder as his arm slides out of her grip, one of fear and pain and disgust and implicit, unintended, unconditional trust.
"I'm not even sure he'll be back tonight," Sam says, tucking Marie back into the sheets. She smiles softly and yawns, drinking what's left of Dean's juice before closing her eyes again, still exhausted.
"Oh, he will," she says confidently, and is asleep before Sam has left the room.