Disclaimer: Don't own Supernatural, don't own Castiel. The rest belongs to me.

Target

"I know, I know! He was right there in front of me the whole time and I'm staring at the wall behind him, and I didn't even see him, so he comes up to me—"

"Wait, you said the other guy—"

"No no no no, that was later, duh, and anyways, he's coming up to me, and I'm thinking he wants to talk, you know? So then—" Jane paused dramatically and sucked in a huge breath, which she promptly let out in an enormous giggle.

"Don't do that to me!" Danielle hopped up and down in mock-aggravation, laughing along with her friend.

"Okay, okay. So he's like 'Hey', and I'm like, 'Hey yourself, you hot hunk of man-pretty'—"

"You did not say that to him," Danielle burst in, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, but I was thinking it. So I'm expecting him to ask me about our last class, right? And then I notice that he's totally drunk—"

Danielle rolled her eyes again, as if to say that should be obvious.

"—like, really, really drunk, and he starts asking me if he can use my phone—"

Danielle squealed in delighted outrage, and Jane tossed her hair back to show her annoyance of ten minutes ago.

"—and I'm getting pretty miffed, you know? So he's standing there slurring about my phone—"

Jane's phone at that moment began ringing. Danielle screamed and immediately laughed. "It's him, it's totally him!" she shouted.

"No way, he's probably passed out in a bathroom stall right now," Jane said between giggles. She flipped open her phone and held it to her ear.

"Hi, Mom," she said a moment later, to which Danielle responded with an exasperated eye roll. She pointed to her watch and whisper-yelled, like she always did when she was trying to talk to someone occupied on the phone. "I'm just gonna go, okay?"

"Yeah, bye," Jane whisper-yelled back, flapping her hands and grinning to show she'd heard. "No, Mom, that was Danielle. Mom says 'Hi'!" Jane yelled at Danielle's retreating form, now strolling down the darkened sidewalk on her way to her apartment. Danielle waved a hand behind her and started singing something unintelligible.

"It's not that late Mom. And I swear, I did not touch the tiniest amount of alcohol. Yeah, it was a club, but it's for the college students, you know? They know—" Jane paused in her conversation as her mother talked over the phone. "—okay, okay. And it is a Friday night, you know. I'm allowed to have fun once in a while" She kicked an aluminum can down the sidewalk and watched it veer into the gutter.

"I'm only three blocks from my apartment, Mom. And this part of town is really safe. I'm a big girl, I can walk home by myself," she said into the phone. "Okay, okay enough about me," she said after a few more moments of her mother's tinny voice berating her over the line. "How's everything over there? What's Maggie been up to?"

Another pause as Jane walked down the sidewalk, shadows twisting as she moved under the street lights. She laughed into the phone. "Jacob said that? Can I talk to him? Oh wait, he's probably in bed right? Yeah, curfews suck when you're seven. …. No, it's okay, I'll see you guys tomorrow. I told you I'm stopping by. …. Laundry, remember? .... I know, I know, I have the craziest family. …. Okay, love you, see you tomorrow. Bye."

Jane snapped her phone shut and put it in her purse. She listened to the sound her shoes made clicking against the pavement and hummed the song Danielle had been singing. How did it go again?

Jane was not afraid of walking home at night. She had lived here for two years, and what she'd told her mother about these parts being safe was true. She had never had any trouble. The streets were clean and brightly lit. She was not worried.

Jane stopped abruptly on the sidewalk. The streets were still brightly lit, but suddenly she realized there was very little noise. No passing cars, no fellow pedestrians, no friendly chatter from late-night restaurants. The street light hummed above her and coated her with a harsh, yellow glow.

Jane turned around slowly. She had not been quite right about there being no fellow pedestrians. There was a man on the sidewalk. Close by, maybe twenty feet. He stared at her as she stared at him.

Jane ran for it. Her purse thumped behind her and she wished to God she hadn't worn high-heels as she ran at a speed that might literally be breakneck, expecting to trip at any moment. She didn't need to turn around to know the man was following her.

Her feet pounded at the ground. Her breath was catching in her throat, ragged and thin. If she reached for her phone she would have to slow down—all the building were closed up—her apartment was two blocks away—she was five foot five and a hundred fifteen pounds and she would never be able to fight him off—his footsteps were getting closer and they were much stronger than hers, pounding, pounding—

Jane turned a corner and scraped her shoulder on the brick wall. Pain. She ran a few steps more, wondering if she felt blood trickling down her arm. She stopped in her tracks and lurched. The man was standing in front of her. No, he couldn't be, he was behind her—

"Hello, sugar," he said. He smiled.

Jane recognized him now. It was the man from the coffee shop, the one who'd asked for the sugar. Leering, smiling, teeth white and glistening. She felt the panic rise, felt her eyes go wide and her legs shake.

She dashed across the street, desperate to get anywhere but here, there must be someone nearby, must be someplace open, must be a light in one of those windows. But there wasn't. Cold, dark, empty. There was no help. She couldn't help herself, she turned around to look behind her. The smiling man was following her, not bothering to run, but he would get to her.

Jane made one last desperate bid for escape and summoned all her energy into a burst of speed. She was almost across the street, just a step to go. And she tripped. Fell over the curb, knelt sprawled on all fours, knees grazed, hands stinging, and certainly about to die. There was no way she would get away now. She had barely half a second to realize the man was about to catch her and she couldn't get up in time. She turned to look at him, and there he was, almost there, her death.

The next thing Jane saw was a blinding light. It came from down the street and appeared behind a corner and hit her like a solid force. She couldn't tell if everything was moving too fast or too slow, but it all felt unreal as she watched the car hit the man head-on. He turned to look at the car and the lights illuminated his face so that Jane could see his expression perfectly just before it hit him. He did not look scared. It hit him dead center and he flew fifteen feet back, tossed like a rag doll, like he had no weight. His body fluttered in ways that it shouldn't move, bones broken and crushed and fluid. He fell to the ground with a hideous sound, wet and cracking, and the car skidded away, tires squealing and the acrid smell of burnt rubber and exhaust in the air. The red tail lights disappeared from view. The car didn't even stop.

Jane sat for a moment, barely a second. Then she stood up, eyes still locked on that immobile body in the middle of the street. He was dead. There was no way he could survive that. She'd seen it, heard it, smelled it. Broken bones and blood leaking out.

The man stirred. Jane started like she'd been shocked. There was no way, no way….

He stood up. Looked toward her. He could see her right there, standing paralyzed, entranced by what she was seeing, horrified as he walked over to her, like some creature from a horror movie, dead but walking. Half his face was crushed. She could see the bones sticking out in wrong places, but there was very little blood. Strange, that. She realized she as going to die if she didn't find the courage to run.

Suddenly, Jane felt a hand pull her up. She turned and saw a figure, a man, dark hair, khaki coat. The man from the bus stop, the lost tourist, the man outside the coffee shop with the intense stare. Castiel. She remembered his name and gripped his hand and ran.

Jane did not look behind her as they ran. Castiel pulled her along faster than she would have thought possible, flying along the sidewalk, down some path she didn't know. He stopped abruptly outside some building, she couldn't tell what, and didn't care either. He pushed the door open and pulled her inside. She wanted to ask questions, desperate to know what was going on, but his look told her clearly enough that this was no time for talk. The door slammed shut and he put his hands on it and whispered something in a desperate, hurried tone. Jane stepped back, the feeling of dis-reality sinking in again.

She looked around the room. It was almost completely empty, clearly old and abandoned. Dirty, cracked concrete floors and dirty, cracked brick walls. Most of the windows were boarded up and the only door was a rusted industrial sheet of metal. She was glad to see Castiel had pulled down the bar, locking it.

Castiel turned away from the door. A mixture of relief, worry, and anger marked his face. Suddenly, he stopped.

"Jane. What's wrong?"

Jane stood in the middle of the empty room, facing him, lit in a puddle of light from a bare bulb in the ceiling. She could not move a muscle. Her eyes went wide with panic as she found herself paralyzed. She tried to move a finger, take a step, but it was as if her muscles had been turned to lead. She could not even shake when she heard footsteps in the dark reaches of the warehouse.

Behind her, a figure emerged from the shadows, shoes tapping on the cement. Jane could not turn to see him, but she knew it was the man with the broken face, the man who should be dead but wasn't.

The man stepped into the light and smiled at Castiel.

A/N: Yay, action chapter! Next one tomorrow.