A/N: Shout-outs to Ninja Violinist, ForTheLoveOfEmmett, jkmp28, Sage of Wind Dragons, sonya vasquez, and The-Knight2000. Updates should be coming about every other week for the next while - I have a few hefty standardized medical boards exams to take in the next month and a half. Major spoilers ahead for SPN 9.11 First Born.

In the end, dying had been the easy part. You just relaxed and stopped fighting the inevitable. All dying really took was laying your burdens down.

Not that any of this had come as a surprise to Faith. She'd been half-listening to the whispered call of sweet oblivion for years. Long before her magical mystery tour inside Angel's memories; long before her blood-stained fall from that balcony in Sunnydale; long before she was branded with a tattoo that had linked her with that cloven-hoofed Kakistos, Faith had carried with her a subconscious longing for freedom, for escape, for something - anything - else, even if that something else resulted in her death.

It was what happened after the dying that was starting to become a giant pain in the neck. For some damn reason, she was caught in a steely web of cold gray nothing, an intangible blob unable to fight or touch or feel. The only highlights to this interminable afterlife occurred when she woke up enough to be drawn back towards the technicolor cacophony of the living.

At first, that happened only when the godforsaken necklace she was attached to was in physical peril - or when the carrier of the necklace was in physical peril. Faith should have known - if she was going to come back attached to something or someone, it would have been him. And at least it was preferable to being attached to, say, Buffy. That would have been far too Ghost Whisperer even for her.

As time passed, the Slayer grew stronger - and more bored. Soon, she was silently manifesting more and more frequently. She stood invisible in the corner of Dean's room whenever Game of Thrones came on, quietly grateful that Doctor Sexy, MD, was now off the air because it meant that the hunter's television picks had soared in quality.

She wandered through the hallways, dodging Sam and Cass and Kevin and Gadreel, always avoiding the isolated dungeon where Crowley sat in bespelled chains. She could not articulate quite why she strove so diligently to not be noticed, other than the vague feeling she had that discovery would end poorly. Dean tolerated her presence in minimal doses. The others would not be so forgiving.

Ultimately, perhaps, Faith was afraid. She hated this mind-numbing existence that surrounded her, but Hell would be far worse. And she knew without thinking that there was no way her tarnished soul could ever be polished up enough to be shiny and clean for Heaven. Too bad she couldn't find her way into Purgatory, the Slayer thought grimly. It had sounded just like her kind of place – and Benny was there.

Today, at this particular moment in time (keeping track of a calendar became rather tricky when you were nothing more than a pissed-off collection of memories), Faith was lost in the mist, contemplating for the thousandth time how bad Hell could really be, and wouldn't torture at least be more entertaining than this endless inability to touch anything?

It was a debate she revisited nearly every time she was focused enough for conscious thought. But now, the thing catching her attention was a familiar warning from the fragment of her being most closely tethered to that stupid cross. Danger.

Faith frowned. What was Winchester up to now? He had successfully kept himself out of trouble for the last little while, ever since that dust-up with Sam over Gadreel . . .

Her frown deepened. Gadreel. When she got her spectral hands on that feathered piece of crap . . . Faith was not sure, even now, if she had agreed with Dean's plan to save his brother. But it was a little hypocritical to criticize others when your entire existence centered on a damn piece of tourist jewelry. So she resisted her urge to be a backseat driver and kept her mouth shut.

Now, as the sense of danger increased, Faith abandoned her wool-gathering. She forced herself to concentrate on the feeling, following it through the mist to the land of the still-breathing.

With an uncomfortable snap! she found herself in a cluttered pawnshop, staring down the barrel of a shotgun. Beside her, Dean made hurried explanations to the weary-looking blonde with her finger on the trigger. Faith glanced over her shoulder to take in the subject of the blonde's irritation. Crowley. The demon stood on a knock-off Persian rug, watching the man and the woman through slightly narrowed eyes. He did not so much as blink in Faith's direction.

Oh, good. She remained invisible then. These days, the Slayer preferred to do a little recon before springing into action. She eavesdropped on the discussion that followed - something about blades, Knights of Hell, a weekend with John Winchester, and Dean's continued desire to kill first Abaddon and then deal with the current King of Hell. Well, fair enough. One demonic problem at a time, Faith supposed.

The Slayer kept her eyes pinned on the blonde with the shotgun – what had Dean called her? Tara? After a quick ten minutes' of fast-talking, the younger hunter convinced her to stand down. Crowley popped off on an errand and then popped back with an unappetizing jar of tarry black Kraken goop.

Almost impressed, Faith crossed her transparent arms over her stomach and leaned against the glass counter of the pawn shop as the hunters and Crowley completed their blade-locating ritual. She watched the yellowed map of the lower forty-eight catch fire, orange tongues of flame licking at the edges of the old paper until the only section left was a small square surrounding Springfield, Missouri.

Then and only then did the Slayer release her death grip on the bond linking her to the necklace carefully tucked into that beat-up trifold wallet. It would take the Impala a day or more to race her way from the pawnshop in West Virginia to Missouri, and in the meantime, she had some thinking to do.

December 11, 2015, somewhere along I-70, Illinois, 10:30 a.m.

"So, boys," Faith flickered to bright visibility in the backseat of the Chevy, casually kicking her ghostly feet up against the upholstery. "What's the plan?"

Taken completely by surprise, Dean swerved into the oncoming lane and then hastily overcorrected, sending the car zooming onto the shoulder. Finally, he righted the wheel and brought his baby back into the proper lane. "Get out," he snapped through gritted teeth, glaring at the ghost's reflection in the rearview mirror.

"Fancy that," observed the King of Hell, his only physical reaction a slight lift of his right eyebrow. "Wondered what became of you. When you didn't show up downstairs, I thought Naomi might have reneged on our little deal. But now it's clear as crystal – you two aren't quite finished playing house yet, are you?"

"Shut up, Crowley," growled hunter and ghost in unison, their eyes still locked in the silvered glass.

I was right, thought Faith with an garbled mixture of disappointment and triumph as she digested the demon's words. I was doomed for the rack.

"What do you want?" Dean barked at her after a few seconds' silence.

Seated across from him in shotgun, Crowley said nothing, but his narrowed eyes followed every caustic remark that bounced back and forth across the black leather upholstery.

The Slayer made a show out of stretching her arms up above her head and yawning. "Looks like you could use some help on this side-quest of yours. Finding that First Blade thing and all."

He exhaled. "So you were there, back at Tara's. I figured as much."

"What can I say?" shrugged the ghost. "I got bored."

"You're always bored," he fired back. "And the answer's same as it's always been. No. I don't need you. Get outta here."

"Fine."

Rolling her eyes, Faith disappeared from sight; however, she remained invisible in the backseat. Dean Winchester was not the boss of her, especially not when he was headed off on something reckless with only Crowley for company.

The Slayer had a sinking feeling that she had heard mention of the First Blade, long ago back in those training days with Buffy. Whatever it was, she had forgotten the specifics. One thing she could remember, though: the mildly horrified awe on Wesley's spectacled face. Wes had reserved that particular flavor of awe solely for things with major mojo. Which meant that like it or not, the hunter was going to need her help.

Besides, Faith was half-afraid of what might happen should she listen to him and just get out. Her lucid periods had been growing further and further apart lately. And from what Crowley had said, there was some deal set up to drag her soul down into the Pit. At the moment, moving on was not an option. Luckily, the combination of a demon riding shotgun and likely explosions down the road was enough to keep her awake – truly awake – for the first time in months. No way in Hell was she letting go of this.

"What was all that about Faith showing up downstairs?" the hunter asked the demon in a soft, menacing tone, turning down the radio.

"Nothing at all." Crowley's innocent act fooled no one.

"You keep friggin' lying to me, and this little field trip ends here," said Dean flatly. "Did you . . . Did you do something to her?"

The King of Hell exhaled in exasperation. "I made a deal. With an . . . acquaintance on the board of admissions for the pearly gates. Given your friend's spotted history, they were more than happy to bargain."

"What was the deal?" growled the hunter.

"Simple, really. Her soul in exchange for some meaningless information. The location of one of Lucifer's crypts along with any . . . items of special interest the crypt might contain."

Dean raised his eyebrows. "Steep price."

"Well, she never specified that it had to be an unadulterated crypt. Nor did she require proof of delivery before making the deal."

"So you cheated."

"I never cheat," said Crowley emphatically. "I simply am not responsible for those who choose not to read the fine print."

The hunter had better things to do than listen to this. "Look, whatever deal you made, I don't really care. Just take it back."

"Excuse me?"

"Take your deal back. You want me to help you deal with Abaddon, you take the deal back. Send Faith upstairs instead."

Crowley shook his head. "I'm afraid it isn't that easy. My contact was, er, killed in Metatron's takeover of Heaven. And even if they had not been, a devil cannot send a soul to Heaven. Would make rather a mockery of the entire process, don't you think?"

For a moment, Dean said nothing. He scowled at the road, half-lost in thought. Then the man cleared his throat. "I know you're still listening back there," he said gruffly to the rearview mirror. "Get."

"Quite the little lapdog you've got," remarked the King of Hell.

Eyes snapping from the mirror to the demon and back to the road again, the hunter snapped, "Crowley. Shut. Up. Or I'll save Abaddon for seconds and get rid of you first." The hunter glanced up at the mirror one final time. "You heard me. Out."

Reluctantly accepting that the game was up, Faith fully manifested herself just long enough to make sure Dean saw her middle finger extended in his direction, and then she followed his instructions and peaced out.

This time, the Slayer waited in the veil, twiddling her transparent thumbs, until the shrieking of her danger warning became too powerful to ignore. She attempted to resist a little longer, trying to hold out for the moment when the place that had once been the insides of her ears started to ache. Faith had to wait until the danger reached its peak, until Dean Winchester was up to his neck in whatever nasty mess Crowley had gotten him into this time. Otherwise, he'd never appreciate her help.

Finally, the pressure became too much to bear, and Faith snapped from her gray fog into the well-appointed kitchen of a spacious farm house. She took in her surroundings in the space between one thunderous crash and the next. Shattered glass and crockery was strewn across the floor beside a blood-stained corpse wearing a gray baseball cap and a black jacket. The Slayer noted dispassionately that something had blown the right side of his face off.

At the wooden table in the center of the room sat a tall, burly man with a neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard, husking corn. The stranger was humming to himself as he watched the struggle happening at the far end of the table. Two demons – one a straggly-haired blonde who reminded Faith faintly of a younger Tara, the other a scruffy-looking man in a red and tan plaid coat – were pinning Dean down to the wood. They each had a hand on his wrists, and the man was brandishing a switch blade.

As the demon flicked the blade open, Dean looked over his left shoulder to the corn-husking man, an irritated demand for assistance plainly written across his features. His eyes widened and then narrowed again as he caught sight of frost forming on the single non-shattered window, and his gaze jerked past the corn man to land solidly on Faith.

"Little help here," he grunted, kicking the female demon solidly in the gut and knocking her off her feet.

"You'll do great," said the corn man complacently.

"Wasn't talking to you," replied the hunter. He threw a rapid punch at the plaid-jacketed demon, his knuckles colliding into the demon's right ear with a meaty thud. The blow was quickly followed by a second, and then a third as he pushed the demon away from him and onto the linoleum.

Snarling, the blonde retrieved Dean's demon-killing knife from where it lay abandoned beside the body of her baseball cap-wearing comrade. She charged across the floor to attack him but was brought up short by a wall of pure cold that froze her into place.

"I've got this one," announced the Slayer for Dean's benefit, her left hand extended in the direction of the demon, palm open. She jerked her arm to the right, and the blonde flew through the air to crash into the shelves of white china plates on the far side of the sink.

Furious now, the demon struggled to her feet. While Dean continued pummeling his foe on the other end of the kitchen, Faith watched in near-amusement as the blonde demon regained her balance, the knife hilt still clutched tightly in her fingers.

"Ah ah ah. I don't think so." Another gust of arctic wind swept through the room and slammed the demon into the already shattered china. "Drop it."

When the blonde still did not relinquish the knife, Faith reappeared across the kitchen, a scant six inches away. Her transparent hand closed over the demon's wrist. She tightened her grip, and bones cracked audibly. "I said, drop it."

The knife fell to the floor from nerveless fingers.

"Good girl," smiled the Slayer, as empty and unfeeling as only a ghost can. "Watch this."

She opened her hand, releasing the demon, and the knife sprang up into her palm. Still smiling that same, empty smile, she drove the ragged blade into the space between two ribs and up and into the demon's heart. Red lightning flashed in the blonde's eyes, open mouth, and along the steel edge of the knife, and then she crumpled to the ground, dead.

Turning, the Slayer took in the sight of the demon in plaid spread-eagled on the wooden table while Dean landed blow after blow onto his face and the corn-husking man watched with an appreciative expression and an open beer. Faith coughed once. Without looking, the hunter reached his left hand back towards her, his fingers spread wide. The ghost pressed the hilt of the knife into his palm.

Dean's fingers closed over the hilt, and he drove the knife downwards into the side of the third demon's throat. There came again the familiar flash of red lightening, and the demon went limp. With a wordless grunt, the hunter jerked his knife free of the demon's flesh. Then he rolled the corpse off the table and onto the linoleum, where it landed with a soft squish.

"What was this, some kind of a test?" he demanded angrily of the stranger, never once glancing at the specter standing behind him.

The corn-husking man was not similarly afflicted. He took a calm sip from his longneck and then nodded his chin in the direction of the ghost. "Didn't realize you'd brought another friend, Dean," he observed mildly, as the double doors that led to another portion of the house opened and the King of the crossroads stepped through.

Something unnervingly like a smile lingered at the corners of Crowley's mouth. "Guardian poltergeists," he quipped. "I hear they're all the range these days."

Both Dean and the stranger ignored him. "So," said the bearded man, frowning now at Faith. "Who are you?"

"She's nobody," said the hunter hurriedly. He shifted his weight to the left in what might have been an attempt to stand between the ghost and the stranger.

"I used to be somebody," Faith reproved him. The sentence came out more snappish than she had intended.

The corn-husking man raised a single bushy eyebrow. "Did you?"

Dean grumbled, "She was a vampire slayer."

"And now he can't get rid of her," Crowley interrupted, looking carefully from the hunter to the bearded man and back to Dean again. "The course of true love never did run smooth."

"How interesting," the man drew the second word out as he continued to examine the ghost closely. "Do you know who I am?" he asked her.

Faith shook her head. If she had been alive, the hair would have been rising on the back of her neck. As it was, she almost wished the 'here and now' was a little less pressing so that she could have slipped off into her mist again. "I missed that part. Kinda busy being elsewhere."

"My name is Cain," announced the bearded man.

"Sh-t," said the ghost. What in God's name had Dean gotten himself into now? "The Cain?" she asked tentatively, hoping for a negative response. She edged slightly to the right, slowly working her way around to the front of the hunter.

"Yes." Cain's eyes tracked her movement knowingly. "What did you say your name was again?"

"She was just leaving – " blurted Dean at the same time that the ghost said, "Faith. Faith the Vampire Slayer."

The man's eyebrows crept up his forehead. "Ah. I suspected as much." He glanced from the ghost to the hunter. "Like I said, Dean, I may be retired, but that doesn't mean that I don't hear things. So – attached in life and now she protects you in death? Is that how this works?"

Crowley cleared his throat. "Like I said. Guardian poltergeists. Very popular with the kids."

Cain ignored him. "Dean, care to take a walk with me out back? I need to speak with you alone."

His face growing pale beneath the three days' worth of dark scruff, Dean nodded. "Yeah, of course. Just let me take care of one thing, first."

Stepping past the ancient white refrigerator through the back door with its broken glass, Dean headed onto the back porch and strode angrily towards his Impala. Faith dragged unhappily at his heels, half-constrained by her need for proximity to the cross, half-anxious to make sure no other demons got the jump on him.

"You stay here," the hunter said firmly once he reached the car. He wrenched open the driver's side door with more force than usual and leaned into the front seat, digging his wallet out of his pocket. Dean fished inside for the turquoise and silver necklace and slipped the chain around his rearview mirror.

"Stay put," he repeated as the ghost reappeared inside the backseat of the Chevy, regarding him sullenly. Slamming the door with a little extra heat, he locked the car and returned to the back porch, where Cain was waiting for him.

"Right. Where were we?"

December 11, 2015, Manhattan, Kansas, 9:30 p.m.

He dropped Crowley off outside the same dingy roadhouse where he had picked up the King of Hell six days ago. Dean felt gritty down to his bones, and he was desperately in need of a shower. As he pealed out of the gravel parking lot, he glanced back over his shoulder into the backseat. "You get all that?"

The Slayer appeared on the bench seat beside him. With Crowley gone, she was reclaiming her proper place in shotgun. Dean reached out absentmindedly and turned the heater up a little higher.

"More or less," said the ghost. She had spent the better part of the drive back absorbing and memorizing every fragment of conversation that Dean and Crowley had dropped. And now she knew practically as much about Cain and the First Blade and the half-glowing, pulsating red mark freshly branded into Dean's right forearm as either of them did.

"Knew you'd been eavesdropping." For a split-second, the hunter looked nearly pleased with himself. Then the pleasure vanished, and his usual bitter gloom descended. "So . . . What do you think?"

"You actually want my opinion?" Faith wondered in shock.

"If you've still got brain cells rattling around in that non-corporeal head of yours, yeah, I do."

Momentarily taken aback, the ghost glanced down at her transparent hands on her transparent knees. This was the closest thing to an olive branch that the hunter had extended in their eight-plus months of ignoring each other. "Gift horses," she muttered, her voice barely audible over the blowing of the heater.

"You think I should've spent more time checking this one's teeth?" surmised Dean, a hint of irritation creeping into his tone.

"No," the Slayer assured him hastily. She didn't want to ruin things, not when he seemed to have taken a momentary break from the constant hostility. "Not . . . Not necessarily. Just seems like this particular blade thing might have two edges."

"Always does," he countered. "And we always handle it."

If ghosts could breathe, Faith would have sighed. "Right."

His expression softened fractionally. "This doesn't change anything, but thanks for the assist back there."

"You could've handled it without me."

"Yeah, probably could've," the hunter agreed with her. "But thanks all the same."

"You're welcome," Faith replied. She toyed with taking her leave before things got ugly, the way they always seemed to. "Now, let me guess, hit the road?"

The hunter's gaze flickered down to the crimson brand on his arm, and the corners of his mouth tightened. "In a minute," he said, his voice strained.

"You okay?" She followed his line of sight down to the slightly-glowing mark.

"Never been a huge fan of tattoos," he deflected. "Can you put that Zeppelin tape in?"

Faith was already reaching for the cassette box with spectral fingers. "Sure." She located the cassette in question and carefully pushed it into the stereo. Blasting demons across a room was easy. It was the fine motor skills that got tricky. The familiar rolling guitar intro filled the car, and Dean turned up the volume.

Leaves are falling all around
It's time I was on my way
Thanks to you, I'm much obliged
For such a pleasant stay

. . . .

"This's one of my favorites," he said to have something to say. "This and – "

"Traveling Riverside Blues," the ghost finished for him. "You've only told me like a gazillion times. One song or two before I hit the road?"

"One," said Dean decisively, but there was something else, something more fragile, lurking beneath.

But now it's time for me to go
The autumn moon lights my way
For now I smell the rain
And with it pain
And it's headed my way

Ah, sometimes I grow so tired
But I know I've got one thing I got to do

. . . .

Faith watched the hunter carefully as they listened to that one song. She glanced between the man's closed-off face and the painful-looking gift from Cain. As she watched and listened, the Slayer slowly came to a decision.

Crowley's jokes about a guardian poltergeist aside, Dean Winchester needed her. And however much she might long to finally lay her burdens down and be truly dead - whatever that meant - moving on could not be an option. Because gift horses or not, bad idea or not, consequences or not, as long as he needed her, Heaven and Hell would simply have to wait their turn.