A/N: Just completed a large exam, so I thought I'd post a few days early in celebration. Shout-outs to Drakkillus Darksunn, The-Knight2000, sonya vasquez, jkmp28, and ForTheLoveOfEmmett. Spoilers ahead for SPN seasons 8 & 9.
To Dean's silent relief, after the first couple of weeks, Sam seemed to have finally learned to keep his damn mouth shut. He stopped asking the pointless questions that his brother refused to answer. He didn't need to answer them. There was, after all, nothing to say. He was fine.
Sure, maybe he made late night and early morning calls to a dead-end number, but that was fine. He was fine. Whatever he said - or didn't say - in those frozen minutes between the dial tones, well that was between him and the dead woman on the other end of the line. He took care not to clog the thing, only leaving messages once every two to three weeks or so. Still, those calls were his business, not Sam's.
Unfortunately, while his little brother might have learned to master his big fat mouth, he had yet to gain control over his eyes. For the first month after the Slayer's death, Dean left her silver and turquoise cross dangling from the rearview mirror of the Impala. It was nice to see it swinging there out of the corner of his eyes, a quiet reminder of the thing that had once been his.
Sometimes he even reached out to touch it, his fingertips skating over the smooth surface with its minuscule pockmarks from colliding with every weapon and monster known to mankind. The touching started out sporadic. Just once after a case or on the way to a fight or after a long few days in the Bunker. But then it became more and more frequent, until he was doing it habitually, almost every time he got into or out of his car.
Dean hardly noticed - it was more subconscious than anything - until a pointedly cleared throat and a suspicious pair of eyebrows from Sam let him know that he had been caught.
He'd had to move the necklace after that. For a spit second, he considered wearing it under his t-shirt, but the cross, while not girly - she had never been girly - was still too dang feminine. Instead, he tucked it into the back of his wallet where he could keep it close and remember.
Because with the way Dean's year was going, remembering was about the only good thing he had at the moment. Sam had embraced the idea of himself as the completer of the Trials with the expansive enthusiasm and self-sacrifice of a final-round auditionee for Gibson's Passion of the Christ. The further they went along that road, the worse his health became, and the more Dean had to step up to take care of his brother. They lost Benny not too long after that, when Sam made his big push to cross off the second Trial.
The whole time, he could practically hear her voice in his head - taunting, teasing, ridiculing. He knew it wasn't real, knew it was just his imagination, but sometimes Dean caught himself almost wishing that it was her after all. That was dumb - he knew it was dumb - and yet he couldn't help himself.
There were nights when everything just felt a little too much and he couldn't watch his baby brother cough up another cup of blood. On those nights, Dean would drift off back into his room, lock the door behind him, and pull out the necklace. He wound the chain around his hand, wrapping it tighter and tighter until faint red lines appeared branded on his skin. Then he stopped.
Dean never cut himself, never let it bleed. The last thing he needed was for Sam to catch wind of his newest habit. Given the way his brother kept watching him, all wide-eyed with concern, if Dean so much as broke his skin, Sam would jump down his throat with aggressive abandon.
In April, he began noticing other things. Dean didn't make too much out of them - he was too busy worrying about Sam, worrying about Cass, worrying about Kevin. If he hadn't been so preoccupied, he might have noticed them more.
The first odd thing happened when the A/C in the Impala went on the fritz for a few days. Without rhyme or reason, the air starting blowing cold when Dean wanted hot and hot when he wanted cold. The hunter was reluctantly acknowledging that he might have to take his baby in for a checkup when the car magically fixed itself and the air started blowing cool again.
His stereo was the next to act up. One week, every other radio station played Kansas' Dust in the Wind, no matter how many times Dean fiddled with the dials. The week after that, his favorite Led Zeppelin tape disappeared for five days straight, only to reappear in the same cup holder where Sam had already looked a dozen times.
And then there was the afternoon when he paid Kevin a little visit and forgot a six-pack of beer in the car along with his wallet. It spent seven hours languishing in the stuffy interior of his green cooler before Dean remembered. Although the Impala was baking away under the warm spring sun, the beer itself remained ice cold.
One night, hunting a pair of werewolves in the Wasatch Mountains with Sam, he found himself upwind of his quarry, a nasty fellow who was rumored to have caught rabies. The werewolf was faintly visible in the moonlight, standing stock-still twenty yards further up the ridge. Dean watched the wolf as it turned its head in his direction, its snout uptilted towards the sky.
Miraculously, the wind changed. The beast lowered its head, and Dean was able to creep forward until he was close enough to put a silver bullet through the monster's thick skull.
As the wind switched tack a second time, Dean almost fancied that he could hear a voice. No actual words were spoken, just a low mumble in a familiar, skeptical tone. As soon as the thought passed through his head, the hunter disregarded it. He was always half-wondering if he could hear her. He'd been wondering that ever since - well, for quite a while now.
As usual, however, he chalked it up to wishful thinking. What's dead should stay dead, he reminded himself forcefully. Besides, surely out of everyone he knew, she deserved a little peace.
May 1, 2015, El Reno, Oklahoma, 9:27 p.m.
This ought to have been an easy hunt. Dean was out somewhere east of OK City, tracking down a nest of vampires. They were his kind, the real kind, not the dust-exploding knockoff version. A group of three or four, judging by the size of the bloodbath that the fangs had been leaving in their wake. Enough to provide a challenge, but not too many for him to take on on his own. A new consideration for Dean these days, now that his brother was singlehandedly fighting off the tuberculosis from Hell.
The beginning of the hunt went according to plan. Dean tracked the three vamps back to their nest, machete in hand. Then he strode in and set to work, decapitating the fangs with an enthusiasm that surprised even him.
Everything was working out just fine. Except after he slew the third vampire, four more emerged from the desolate hallways of the collapsing hovel. Turns out, there were seven fangs after all, not three. He couldn't take out another four vampires on his own, not when two of them rushed him from behind, catching him by the shoulders and knocking him to the ground. His machete tumbled loose from his hand, the steel clanging against the concrete. Two of the vamps restrained his shoulders while a third held his legs.
The tallest of the four, a heavyset man with thinning sandy hair and a solid beer-gut, tossed the usual combination of insults Dean's way. The hunter said nothing. In some ways, accepting his own impending demise in the face of overwhelming odds was something of a relief.
Growing irritated, the vampire snarled, revealing its jagged fangs. It leaned in for the kill.
Swish. Thunk. Swish. Thunk. Dean's machete rose from the ground on its own, spinning through the air to easily slice through the necks of the two fangs currently pinning the hunter's shoulders to the cement. Swish. Thunk. There went the one holding his legs.
Snarling, the fourth vampire leapt to his feet, turning to face his invisible assailant. As he did so, a faint figure flickered into view over the creature's shoulder. Dean blinked his eyes hazily.
The figure reached forwards with its free hand, its fingers sliding through the vampire's rib cage as though the ribs and muscle were butter. The vampire screamed as the spectral hand tightened once around some internal organ, and then the machete came whistling to separate the vampire's head from its body. As the corpse crumpled to the earth, Dean stared up at his erstwhile savior.
He knew that face. Even coated in a thick layer of goopy green slime, even with her hair wild and tangled, dropping grass and leaves and twigs onto her shoulders, Dean knew that face. Her eyes were narrowed and distant, and when they finally locked on his, all he saw in their dark depths was cold.
"Faith?" The name was ripped, guttural, from his throat, the first time he had spoken it since her death.
Dropping the machete, the transparent form of the woman took a slow step backwards. Already, her outline seemed faint, almost on the brink of disappearing.
Everything clicked into place, like a dislocated joint sliding back into its socket. Dean laughed, a frenzied half-sob of a sound born out of hysteria. "Faith?" he repeated her name and scrambled to his feet. "What the hell are you doing here?"
The woman opened her mouth to speak, but as she did so, the wind swept up behind her. Her outline wavered, then flickered, and then finally was gone.
May 1, 2015, El Reno, Oklahoma, 10:25 p.m.
What the hell . . . what the hell . . . This was . . . This was not the way things were supposed to happen. Frankly, none of this was the way things were supposed to happen.
Splattered with vampire gunk, Dean limped his way back to the Impala. He eased himself into the front seat and winced as his shoulder banged against the leather upholstery. The hunter did not bother sliding his keys into the ignition. Instead, he tugged his wallet out of his pocket and flipped through the crumpled bills, worn credit cards, and dog-eared business cards until his fingers closed around a thin silver chain. Dean held the cross a few inches away from his face, the chain dangling from his tight grip.
He stared at the necklace with a faint sense of betrayal. First Bobby's flask, and now this. He really ought to have learned by now - try as you might, the only things you could hold onto were memories. Frowning, the hunter slipped the cross back over his rearview mirror. He touched the blue-green stone in the center for a half-second, then coaxed his baby from a partial rumble to a full-on roar.
As he drove, Dean could not stop his thoughts from racing. She was back. She was back. But he could not allow her to stay that way. It would end as it had ended with Bobby - the only way that these things could ever end. No ghost was benign, no matter how well-intentioned they were at the start. It always ended in ruin.
The hunter glanced at his rearview mirror and the cross, which gently twirled from side to side with the motion of the Impala. In some ways, he guessed, this ought to be a relief. If she was following him around, if her focus was the necklace, then at least he would not have to track down her corpse and start over from the beginning. Not that tracking down her remains would have been an option. He vaguely recalled Sam mentioning something about Buffy taking the urn back to San Francisco and scattering her ashes over the bay.
Still, it was easier to know that all he would have to do was destroy the cross. He thought fleetingly of the workroom back in the bunker and the Bunsen burner that he had used to make silver bullets only three days before. He'd need to turn the temp up a little higher, but if it could melt the bullets, it could melt the cross.
Then, and only then, he could lay her to rest once and for all.
Dean waited for the dead of night, waited until Sam was fast asleep, before he padded quietly along the halls to the old workshop. He flipped the light switch to illuminate the large ten- by twenty-foot room. Heavy cabinets with large steel countertops ran along the walls, and a heavy worktable of yellow pine stood in the center of floor.
The hunter calmly set out his equipment, trying not to think too hard about what he was going to do. Ghosts couldn't read thoughts, but if anyone was going to break that mold, it would be her. She'd always had a knack for being obnoxious that way.
Once he had his flame set up, Dean jerked a bar stool over to the worktable. Dropping his weight onto it, he reached for the nearly empty bottle of Jack that he had brought to accompany him. The hunter took a long swig. Might as well have a little fun while he was doing this.
After ten minutes, Dean held a single silver bullet over the fire, clasped carefully in a pair of tongs. The round softened but did not give way. Dean let the bullet fall into the small long-handled iron pan that he would use later to melt the cross. Replacing the tongs onto the table, he stretched out his hand for the bottle of whiskey and polished it off.
When the last swallow had drained away down his throat, the hunter fished the cross out of his wallet and dangled it tauntingly over the flame.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are." He needed to see her, needed to watch her fade as the cross collapsed into a pool of motel metal. He needed to be sure that this worked.
The temperature of the room plummeted ten degrees, and the flame of the Bunsen burner whipped from side to side as she appeared across the table from him. Her pale arms were folded over her chest. As before, her face and hair were streaked with ghastly green slime. She frowned but did not speak.
"What the hell are you doing here?" He repeated his earlier question, the cross sliding through his fingers onto the table top.
The ghost's frown deepened, but she remained silent.
Dean lost his temper. He wouldn't - he couldn't - "You're supposed to be dead!" he yelled, content in the knowledge that his brother was sleeping soundly one floor and fifteen doors away. He rose from his stool.
Slamming his hands down onto the table, he leaned toward her. "You don't get to stay here," he snarled. "You move on. You go to Heaven. You don't get to stick around here and - and ruin things. You don't get to ruin her. So you just find whatever light in the sky or hole in the ground that's calling your name, and you get the hell out of here."
She shifted from one mostly transparent motorcycle boot to the other, pursing her lips. Her eyebrows furrowed in either confusion or frustration. Dean had zero interest in discerning which.
His fist closed over the necklace again, and he jerked it upwards, so that the cross hovered two inches above the Bunsen burner. Screw the heating pan. Screw safety. "What? You ain't got nothin'? Oh, sure, you can pop the heads off a handful of vamps, but you can't use your damn words? Say something."
Dean lowered the cross an inch, and the ghost's eyes widened. She strode into the table and stopped, the wooden edge slicing neatly through her midriff. Under other circumstances, Dean might have laughed at the ghost's predicament. As it was, his fingers only tightened in the quickly warming silver chain.
"Say something!" he half-commanded, half-begged.
Frown deepening, the ghost opened its mouth. "I . . . can't."
"You just did, damn you."
The ghost tried again. "Words . . . are . . . hard. Moving . . . easier. Helped when . . . you were . . . in danger."
Dean dropped the cross another half-inch closer to the flames as the ghost edged backwards so that she was no longer being split in half by the table. "I don't need no guardian angel, okay? I already got Cass. You need to get your ass out of here before you go Dark Side. You got two options, you hear me? Either you step on into the light or I send you there, tout suite. Your choice."
"I can't," said the ghost a second time. She tilted her head to the side. "Someone . . has to . . . watch . . . your back."
"Cass -" Dean started angrily.
The temperature in the room dropped even further, effectively silencing him. Her eyes darkening, the ghost pointed to the necklace. "Put that . . . damn thing . . . down."
"Or what? Or you'll knock it out of my hand? Slam me against the wall? Possess me? That's where you're headed. You don't clear out now, and that's where this road ends."
"Stop." The ghost opened her fingers, and a burst of wind blew out the flame of Dean's Bunsen burner. Another gust of air caught the pendant and yanked it out of Dean's hand. It hovered above the table momentarily and then flew into the ghost's outstretched palm.
"Castiel . . . is not enough." The more she talked, the less halting her speech became. "Castiel is not enough," she repeated herself. "But that . . . that's not why. There is no light, Dean. No gaping hole in the ground. Just mist." She waved her free hand dismissively. "I'm . . . I'm stuck. There's nothing. Can't see, can't hear, can't do much of anything . . . And then sometimes . . . I'm here." She gestured at the space around them.
"Look, you need to stop being here," he said forcefully, not listening to a word that she had just said. "You don't find the light, I'm gonna have to -"
"Gimme some time," cajoled the ghost. "Maybe . . . I dunno. Maybe there's a reason I'm trapped. Can I try . . . Can I try to get out of this? For a month or two?" Her words picked up speed. "And if that . . . if that doesn't work, you can blast my ass wherever it is you want to send me. Just, for today, could you please stop pulling a Dorothy and quit trying to melt me? I'm not the frigging Wicked Witch of the West, Dean. I'm . . . I'm still me. And I'm stuck."
"No," he said in an emotionless voice, yanking the cord to the Bunsen burner out of its socket and flicking off the gas. "You're not. You're not her. You're . . . You're something else."
The ghost's jaw tightened. "I did not give you this much sh-t when you got turned into a vampire," she pointed out.
"That was different!"
She flinched, and Dean almost felt sorry. Not quite, but almost. "Fine," he snapped through clenched teeth. "You get two months. But I don't want to see you around here, you understand? Now go. Get out. And leave the damn cross."
Just like that, she left. The necklace tumbled onto the wooden surface of the work table, and the room suddenly felt sweltering as the temperature zoomed back up to seventy degrees.
Dean exhaled. Although the thing was gone, he had a sinking feeling that this wasn't the end, not by a long shot. She did not play by the rules - she never had.
Leaning forward, he lifted the cross off of the table. He wrapped the chain around his hand as he eyed first it and then the extinguished gun-smithing equipment carefully. He could still . . . if he moved fast, he could cut this off at the knees before it went any further. Send her off to the Great Hereafter before things got any worse.
The hunter hesitated. He had never lied to her, never broken a promise to her - at least not intentionally. And even if this wasn't completely the Slayer, he didn't think that he could start breaking promises now. Two months. He could wait this out two months. And then he would act.
The months flew past, racing by so quickly that Dean did not have time to remember his own ultimatum. He was too busy stopping his brother from killing himself with the Trials; finding a way to keep Sam alive; babysitting Kevin; tracking down Cass; and keeping Crowley securely locked up in the dungeon downstairs to think too much about the ghost in his wallet.
Luckily, the ghost kept herself to herself, never manifesting when anyone else was around. There were moments when he suspected her interference - conveniently timed breezes that blew tree branches into the faces of his opponents; monsters tripping over invisible obstacles; the plummeting temperature in the bunker when the Wicked Witch had attacked. But those moments remained nothing more than that - simply suspicions.
After their first little tete-a-tete, she stayed away until Randolph, when Dean found himself alone in that hospital chapel, staring blankly at the pew in front of him. He had been sitting in the chapel for fifteen minutes, wrestling with decision before him. Castiel . . . Castiel was not answering his prayers, and Dean was beginning to run out of options. Still struggling inside himself, the hunter watched as the ghost flickered into view out of the corner of his eye.
"What took you so damn long?" he snarled, his fingers tensing on the silver chain locked tight as a noose around the palm of his hand. "Sam's dying."
Since their initial encounter, the ghost had never spoken. Nor did she do so now. She simply scooted a few inches closer along the wooden pew until a line of ice collided with Dean's side. The hunter froze in place as she reached out, taking his hand in hers and slowly unwrapping the cross from between his fingers. As soon as she had finished, she dropped the necklace onto his leg, and then sat there beside him in silence.
Dean picked up the pendant, clenching it in his grip. He had made his decision. Clasping his hands, the hunter bent his head. "To any angel out there with your ears on. This is Dean Winchester . . . and I need your help. The deal is this - Linwood Memorial Hospital, Randolph, New York. The first one who can help me gets my help in return . . . and you know that ain't nothin'. Hell, it's no secret that we haven't always seen eye to eye, but you know that I am good for my word. And, uh, I wouldn't be askin' if I wasn't needin', so . . ." His voice trailed away.
Opening his eyes, he stared down at his lap, where the gleaming tip of the cross protruded from between his interlocked fingers. A single tear spilled out of the corner of his left eye and dropped onto his wrist.
The ghost reached out a second time, her icy touch trailing along the skin of his arm from shoulder to elbow. When she got to his clasped hands, she squeezed until Dean winced in pain. There came a soft noise, almost a hum, before she vanished and was gone.
Dean did not see her again for the rest of the summer. Oh, he had a feeling she was there - his radio still played odd songs unexpectedly from time to time, and his room became untenably cold when he watched HBO some nights - but always she made it easy to ignore her. Sometimes he wondered if Zeke had caught on, but he spoke so infrequently with the angel hibernating inside his brother that he had no trouble avoiding the subject.
Summer passed, and Dean did nothing about the turquoise cross quietly burning a hole in his wallet. He let it be, let her be, trying his best to forget that she even existed as two months turned to four, and then four months turned to six.
He pushed everything away until the very tail end of fall, when the fires that he had been struggling to contain for months all exploded at the same time in a burning conflagration that sent everything - everything - straight to Hell.
November 13th, 2015, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 11:30 p.m.
He made it an hour down the highway before he had to pull over into a crummy motel on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. His hands were shaking, his throat dry like the dessert. Everything . . . everything had blown up in his face, and now even the walls of his familiar car were closing in on him.
Cass . . . powerless. Crowley . . . loose. Kevin . . . dead. Gadreel . . . in the wind. Sam . . . in some ways Sam was more lost to him that he had been before Crowley convinced him to cast the fallen angel out of his body.
Moving stiffly, he stepped into the motel office and booked himself the cheapest room that they had. It didn't matter which one. He just needed to find a stationary place long enough to drink himself to sleep.
Dean locked the motel room door behind him, but he did not bother with any protection or warding. Anything that wanted to kill him tonight was welcome to take the opportunity. Collapsing into the sole wooden chair, the hunter fumbled in his duffel for whatever he could find. Alcohol, benzos, other downers - he'd take any or all of them.
To his chagrin, all he had tonight was a pint of cheap vodka. His fingers closing around the neck of the bottle, Dean grimaced. It wasn't the best, but it would do. He drank steadily as the clock edged past midnight and his thoughts drifted inexorably towards her.
Where was she? The last four days had been an utter sh-tstorm, and she had not shown up once. Not a single inexplicable gust of wind, no dark figures at the corner of his vision. Nothing.
No sooner had that thought passed through his half-drunken mind than it began to give way to resentment. Dean shoved his hands into his pockets, withdrawing first his wallet and then his Zippo. He pulled out the silver cross and flicked the lighter beneath it. Instantly, the cheap fluorescent lights overhead began flickering in and out. The temperature in the room plummeted about fifteen degrees, and then she was there.
Dean opened his mouth to tell the thing that was masquerading as his dead best friend to piss off, but something else came out instead. "Why didn't you turn up earlier?" His voice was remarkably steady for someone nearing the end of a pint of vodka.
"I don't know." The spirit leaned against the opposite wall beside the broken television set, her hands tightening into fists at her sides. "I don't have total control over it. I just get a weird sort of feeling, and then I'm here. Wherever here is," she added, glancing around at the impersonal motel room furnishings.
"Pittsburgh," Dean supplied shortly, clicking off the Zippo and returning it to his pocket.
"Haven't been to Pennsylvania in a while," observed the ghost of the Slayer. Her eyes met his. "What's going on, Dean?"
He hated it when she said his name. Hated it with the sort of gut-burning feeling that he used to reserve for the bitchiest of his brother's bitch faces. But as much as he hated it, he couldn't quite find it in him to ask her to stop.
"You see what happened to Kevin?"
She nodded. "Like I said, I don't always control things. And . . . and I can't always get through when I want to. But, yeah, I've been keeping an eye out. I know about Kevin. That's . . . that's maybe the last thing I saw, though. You burning the body."
The hunter cleared his throat. "Sam found out. About Gadreel. He doesn't understand why I did it."
"Why did you do it?" asked the ghost curiously.
Dean looked away. He couldn't believe the creature was making him explain this - to her, of all people. "You know why. I just couldn't lose anybody else. And I couldn't lose him. I – I need him."
"Did you tell Sam that?"
He shook his head. "I tried to. Don't think he listened. I said I was gonna go, and he said I should. I . . . I don't think I'm ever gonna be able to fix this one." Hands trembling, he reached for the bottle of vodka only to realize that it was empty.
The ghost surveyed him impassively for a long moment. Finally, she said, "What do you want from me, Dean? There's gotta be something. Or else you wouldn't've called."
The man swallowed, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing up and down against the skin of his throat. He blinked once, and then stared directly into those brown eyes that were somehow just not right. Their gaze always appeared to be focused a little too far away.
"Make me feel something," he said quietly. "I don't care what. Anything - anything is better than this."
Accepting the invitation, she closed the distance between them in the space of half a second. Dean shut his eyes reflexively. He couldn't watch this. Freezing cold brushed against his thighs as the ghost straddled him. Her icy fingertips brushed gently at the hairline on either side of his face. The hunter shivered.
When she had first come back, the first time she had shown up, the cold was simply too much. It had burned and cut and had him longing to turn the heater on in the middle of May. Now, he was used to it. It still hurt, but it was a different kind of hurt - an inside-him kind of hurt.
"Poor Dean." The whisper was a frigid breath of air against his ear. The ghost traced the outline of his cheekbones one at a time, first the right, and then the left. "Poor, poor Dean."
"Stop talking," growled the hunter.
And then there was nothing. Nothing but the freezing, burning chill as the ghost pressed herself against him from hips to shoulders, the glacial touch of her arms winding about his neck, those biting fingers working their way through his short hair. If he wished hard enough, he could almost feel the faintest pressure of lips against his.
Dean allowed the ice to fill him, working its way in from his skin through gut and muscle until it reached his aching heart. He scrunched his eyes tighter as the darkness and her cold consumed him, until there was nothing inside left to ache at all.