Carthage, Missouri looked exactly the way Dean remembered. He took in the buildings, a mix of old and older, a whole town in need of a paint job. The streets stood barren, cars abandoned in the middle of the roadways, parked sideways halfway over the curbs. It matched the imagined look of a town after God had taken the righteous, but Dean knew that no celestial being had swooped in front above to save anyone here. God couldn't be bothered with his children anymore.

Gabriel offered a smoother ride than Castiel, and he had dropped them on the street in Carthage without causing Dean to feel as if his bowels had turned to stone. They planned to face Famine with the barest traces of plans, all contingent on tiny aspects of the unknown.

John Winchester would be rolling over in his grave to know his kids were going into anything so unprepared.

As they started walking, Dean looked into the window of the nearest building. Inside the diner, people shoveled food into their mouths, licking pie plates and slurping sweet tea from the buckets it was made in. A gaggle of people rutted on the floor, surrounded by gluttonous patrons. The mixture of penises and vaginas, of licking and thrusting and groping, blurred through the window. Dean's stomach flipped inside out, nausea rising up.

"Christ Almighty," Bobby muttered. "How exactly are we still standing?"

"I'm shielding you," Gabriel said. "We'll see how long that lasts."

Dean knew he was the only one who could truly appreciate what that meant. He remembered Castiel viciously devouring burger after burger, insatiable for red meat, and Sam standing smeared with demon blood after slitting throats of human meatsuits, desperate to do anything for a drink. Famine's terrible power had brought them both to their knees. He had only escaped the feeling because he wanted nothing then, but this was a different 2009. He had a feeling he wanted much more than he had the first time.

They must look a sight, walking five wide down the street, angels serving as bookends for three men carrying shotguns and wearing grim expressions. Dean wondered if they should have tried subtle. Beside him, Sam had his phone to his ear. He had been dialing and redialing Jo's number repeatedly, trying to get a hold of her to tell her to turn around. Dean had given up ten minutes ago, worried she might just be dodging his calls.

"Lucifer's here. Somewhere." Gabriel, on Dean's other side, spoke without any tension in his corporeal form, but Castiel looked at him with something akin to panic. Gabriel must be transmitting fear on an angelic level rather than a terrestrial one.

"Can you find him?" Bobby asked.

"Not unless he wants to be found."

"Jo, thank God. Where are you?" Sam said into his phone, and Dean turned to watch him with his heart in his throat. "Slow down. Yeah. We're in Carthage too. Famine's here…. Where are they?... We're on our way."

He hung up.

"She's with Rufus and Ellen. She needs help. They're in the Liquor Store on the corner of 2nd and Broad," Sam said. He turned to Dean to add the piece of critical explanation. "She caught a red-eye here last night."

Dean thought of her sneaking out in the wee hours of the morning, stepping around them without waking them and finding airline employees she could bribe with hustled cash. He wondered if she had looked out the window of the plane into the darkness. He wondered if she knew he was afraid of flying, if she was even aware of the irony of her choosing a plane to get away from him.

"Can you poof us there?" Dean asked. Gabriel shook his head.

"Not going to risk that with big bro in the vicinity. We can walk. It's not fa-" Gabriel froze mid-word. He turned his face up to the grey sky, closed his eyes, and then opened them again. "He's trying to find me. I'll keep shielding you, but I need to put some distance between us."

Just like that, the ace up their sleeves vanished.

They carried on, for there was nothing else to do. Dean took on a breakneck pace, several strides ahead of anyone else, and tried not to let the terror in. For every fear sneaking into his brain, he found an action thought to replace it: find Jo, help her, find Famine, get his ring. He repeated the mantra of four items in his head to stay calm, but his stride became a near-run as he saw the signs for 2nd Street and a glowing neon sign boasting Beer and Spirits Depot. A few blocks down stood the hardware store, and coward though it made him, Dean could not look that direction.

The sidewalk outside the liquor store was littered with occupants; at first, Dean thought the people might be passed out, empty and broken glass all around them, but as he neared one body, he saw the beginning signs of post-mortem bloat. The middle-aged man's stomach had expanded to near bursting, his intestines pushing up through the flesh from the inside, a deadly coil of engorgement.

"Do you think…" Sam muttered, and Dean nodded.

"Yeah. They drank themselves to death."

Dean pushed the door open. Maybe half a dozen people lay on the floor in here, also dead. It made sense, Dean supposed. For the people who had craved food, death would be slow, torturous, days in the diner or grocery store overloading their systems. For the people who hungered for liquor or oblivion, death came faster.

He heard Jo's voice coming from the back storeroom.

"Mom, no. No more. Put it down. Put it down." She sounded desperate. He hurried into the storeroom.

Ellen and Rufus sat together, slumped on one another's shoulders. They looked more dead than alive. Rufus had sweated through his shirt, and the slick sheen on his flaccid face did not hide the line of drool coming from his mouth. Ellen retained her consciousness, but a line of liquor dribbled down the front of her shirt from her lips. The half-empty bottle in her hand dangled, and she tried with strength she did not have to lift it to her lips. Jo knelt beside her, pleading with her to hold on, and then turned a stricken face upward to Castiel.

"Cas, help. I think they fought as hard as they could, but there's too much in their systems," she pleaded. Cas looked at Dean, eyes on him as he answered. Dean had not seen him too affected to look directly at someone in a long time.

"I have been cut off from Heaven's power too long. I cannot heal them."

"We can't let them die," Sam said. "Bobby, can you get them to a hospital? Anywhere but here?"

Bobby nodded. "There's more abandoned cars out there than I can shake a stick at." His voice held steady, but Dean saw the tick of his jaw under his beard. Bobby's life had been carved by tragedy, and two of his oldest friends lay before him, clinging to life with hands too tired to hold on much longer.

"Help me move them." Bobby knelt down for Rufus first, putting his arm across his shoulders, and pulling him up. Both men shook, one from liquor-induced weakness and the other with the tremors of atrophied muscle forced into action. Dean took a step toward Ellen, but Jo was already gathering her mother over her shoulder, rising to her feet with steely strength. The two able-bodied carried their drunken loved ones out. Castiel looked at Sam and Dean. His blue eyes burned grave.

"Jo is not under Gabriel's protection. She will be ravenous for whatever she hungers," Cas warned.

"I know," Dean said.

The three of them walked shoulder to shoulder out into the street. Jo stood alone, watching the tail lights as Bobby hit the gas in his stolen car. He must have hit the turn onto 3rd Street at 60 miles per hour. From behind, Dean saw Bobby's shotgun hanging in Jo's right hand, her other hand lifted up over her mouth. She must be fighting not to cry. The urge to comfort her, to pretend they did not have to see this hunting trip through and whisk her to safety, hit him hard enough to clench his fists at his sides. He didn't want her to be here. It wasn't supposed to be like this, not again. He was supposed to make a better world for her this time around.

Sam, however, took the steps toward her to put a hand on her shoulder, offering comfort in his usual way.

"They're going to be okay, Jo. No one's better than Bobby."

"How'd he get his legs back?" Her voice was hollow.

"We've got an archangel on our side." Sam's voice had no happiness, hanging as empty as hers. "Listen, Jo. Gabriel has shielded us from Famine, but you've seen what it's doing to everyone else. Your mom and Rufus must have been incredible, to fight it so long. What are you craving? We need to keep you from it."

Dean watched her turn to look up at his brother, holding her head carefully so as not to see him. "I've got it under control, Sam."

"Okay." Sam's gentleness did not waver, but his fingers tightened on her shoulder as if he could transfer strength to her. "We need to find Famine now."

"Find Famine?" A cold, cruel voice rang out, eager enough to sound almost giddy. Dean looked up the street to the sound. Meg Masters stood there, one hip cocked out and a grin wiggling on her lips. She lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers in a wave that a civilian might have seen as flirtatious but that Dean recognized as a taunt. He wanted to pull his demon-killing knife out of his coat and savage her, but the cold dread held him steady. He remembered the kind of company Meg had liked for traveling in 2009: Hellhounds.

"I would have thought you boys would have been smart enough to be running from Famine. Wait a second. Where are my manners? Sammy, Deano, I didn't say hi to your friend." She ran her tongue across her top teeth in a blatantly sexual gesture. "You are a pretty little thing. Remember me?"

"I'm sorry. I don't," Jo replied, menace edging her tone. Dean admired the spunk.

"Well, I remember you, pumpkin. I had you all trussed up. Of course I was in Sam then, so you might have kind of liked it."

"Gosh, Meg, I didn't remember you being so talkative," Dean interrupted now. "Shouldn't you be running along to your boss?"

At the mention of Lucifer, Meg's face changed. The twisted amusement she typically bore turned to a terrible reverence. Her dark eyes snapped like kindling catching fire.

"He's here. Famine gets to work under a little extra protection after you lot were so mean to War. Lucifer is here to bring the promised land for us." Her eyes flickered black as she turned her gaze to Castiel. "You know that, don't you, angel? Your big brother's going to save the world. Drinks all around!"

"Silence." Cas's deep burr sounded like that of a garrison commander now. It contrasted sharply with Meg's cruel playfulness. She shuddered pleasurably without losing her grin.

"That's a very husky voice you've got there, Clarence, but I'm just not sure you have the juice to back it up. I hear you're cut off from Heaven right now."

"And you are cut off from Hell," Cas said.

Meg laughed, long and loud, and then crooked her finger at him. "Follow me. I'll show you where your precious Gabriel is losing a fight with our Savior, if you can keep up."

Her vessel threw its head back, the thick black smoke roaring out of her throat into the air. Dean opened his mouth to tell Cas no, but the angel was gone, chasing the demon. His money was on Cas in a prize fight between those two; however, it would have been nice for their team not to have dwindled from two angels to none. He looked at Sam and Jo. Jo looked back now, no evidence remaining of her previous evasiveness. In fact, her eyes on his stopped his breath in his chest.

She was losing her fight with Famine, and he knew now what she wanted.

"If you're going to find Famine, I'm coming with you," she said firmly. "No matter where you're going, I'm coming with you."

Dean's heart felt like it was going to break in two. She wanted him to let her come. She craved his respect and partnership, more than her favorite food or burning liquor or hot sex; she just wanted him not to leave her behind.

"Let's start walking and see what we can find," he replied. They fell into stride together, and Jo walked a little too close to him, brushing against him with each stride. If he hadn't been holding a shotgun, he might not have been able to resist the temptation to take her hand. He was scared for her.

Then he heard the growling. It began low, in the distance, and he found himself looking around for something he knew he could not see. Neither Sam nor Jo seemed to hear it, but he knew it immediately. You cannot spend forty years in Hell and not become familiar with the unearthly rumble of Hellhounds, sniffing out their prey. They could smell a targeted soul from any distance on Earth or below, so they tracked eternally, hunting for perpetuity. They neither slept nor ate nor stopped. Their growls and howls were the soundtrack to Hell.

And they were coming now. He heard a howl, so low and quiet that he wondered if it occurred on some frequency his companions could not hear, a frequency inside of him turned on by time served in Hell's Army. The hounds had no reason to have Jo's scent; she was not a part of this. Nor would they have been sicced on Lucifer's one true vessel.

But Dean Winchester, the man who escaped Hell… his scent would have been rubbed on their blankets as little hellpuppies.

Hunting meant being afraid, always, in a million tiny unacknowledged ways, and yet on some level, Dean wondered if he had ever been this afraid before. It was happening again. The details were different - Ellen en route to a hospital, Famine in Carthage instead of Death, Gabriel's presence - but once again, he could hear Hellhounds near the hardware store on 2nd Street. His lungs turned to ice.

Then he heard the growl that sounded totally normal, a growl that made both Sam and Jo jump. They were here.

"Hellhounds," Sam breathed like a particularly nasty curse word.

All hell broke loose.

Dean shouted for them to run without even knowing which directions contained hounds or how many of them there were out there. He heard Sam get a round off even faster than he could. If the moment had been quieter, Dean would have been proud of those reflexes; Sam was a fighter. Dean's muscle memory kicked over even his adrenaline. He chambered his round, shot, reloaded, and did it again. The hot breath of a hound to his right made him tilt his shotgun down, trying to figure out how to aim close without catching himself. A spurt of black blood fell across his pants and ended the debate. He looked over to see Jo reloading.

"In here!" Sam shouted from the door of the hardware store, wrenching it open.

Dean's military upbringing calculated the moment. Jo already moved at half-speed, chambering another round into her shotgun, and was about 25 feet from the door. She would be through the doorway in about 3 seconds if she moved to a spring. He was maybe 15 feet behind, two more seconds from the door if he kept facing the other direction to assess the threat. Another three seconds would be needed to get Sam in and the door shut.

8 seconds.

"Go!" He shouted. His mental timer ticked them off as Jo exploded through the doorway at full pace. Good girl. He made his pace as well, darting through the doorway. Sam turned to pull the door shut when he screamed in agony. His pants ripped, the skin through them bloodied, and he went down hard. Dean couldn't risk a shotgun's spread next to his brother, but his one-handed pull and fire of his pistol happened instinctively. He heard Jo fire at the same time, and in front of him, the air filled with black and grey spray, a mix of blood and brains that splattered onto Sam. Dean kicked at the space in front of him, feeling his foot connect and move a warm, limp body. Sam pulled himself through the door, the leg dragging behind him uselessly, and Dean slammed it shut behind them.

They panted for a moment, breathing in that second's relief of no one being dead.

"Jesus." Jo broke the silence first. "Everybody okay?"

Dean followed her question to his brother. Sam braced himself against a shelf, clutching his leg with his other hand, and with every passing second, the adrenaline seemed to be rushing out of him. In its place, pain and weakness crept in. He slumped lower, barely upright. Dean closed the space between them and put himself under Sam's arm. He held him across his shoulders the same way he had a thousand times before. He ain't heavy, he's my brother always came to mind at moments like this, appropriate and inappropriate all at once.

"I've got you, Sammy. I've got you," he whispered the words, volume unnecessary between them. They eased Sam over to the main counter and helped him sit down. He extended his good leg himself; Dean took the grisly task of straightening the useless mangled leg forward as well.

His commanding voice took charge of the moment. "Jo, get some rags. They're on a shelf somewhere down to the right. Something to clean it with might not be bad either."

"How do you know…" She began to question but then caught herself, succumbing to his tone, hurrying over to find the needed items. Dean appreciated not having to come up with a lie right now. The truth was that he had once stuffed those rags into a bomb to blow her up.

He knelt at Sam's side and investigated the leg. He pulled his knife out of his pocket and sliced the denim out of his way, opening a swath from upper-thigh to knee and examining the damage. The puncture wounds from the teeth extended down into the flesh through the skin and muscle. The bone beneath showed in fragments. Dean made a face. A leg bone shattered by compression might take out a grown man, but without arterial damage, it was not life-threatening. Relief flowed from his extremities into his core.

"You might end up with a limp. Chicks dig smart guys with limps."

"Shut up, Dean," Sam hissed through his clenched teeth. Sweat beaded on his pale forehead. "You and Jo are going to have to go find Famine without me."

"Let me get you fixed up before we worry about that," Dean said. Jo moved back into view, rags in one hand and a bottle in the other. He could see the rubbing alcohol label from here.

"It's going to hurt like a bitch, but it's all I could find." She knelt down. "I can clean this if you want to get the perimeter. I don't see any more of them."

Dean let her set to work and did the same himself, grabbing jugs of road salt from the shelves. He listened for growls from one direction - he heard none - and to little hisses and grunts of muffled pain from the other direction. Jo talked to Sam while she cleaned the wounds, telling him she was doing okay holding out against Famine, her wants were nothing too dangerous, but she also applied no unreasonable mercy. If a puncture mark needed to be cleaned, she was vigorously applying the rubbing alcohol to it. Sam restrained himself, but he dropped a few choice curse words into the quiet moments.

Dean marveled over the reality of Jo being alive. Whether he had done it or God had lent an unseen hand… he had no idea. He just knew that the Hellhounds in Carthage had not gotten her this time. He should have been thanking his lucky stars for that and getting her the hell out of here.

But they needed to stop Famine. The world still hung in the balance, and he knew that if given the choice, she would die to save it. He thought of her note, folded somewhere in his coat pocket: I should have been able to tell you I'm scared to death of how you make me feel.

He tossed the last salt jug aside, perimeter secure, and moved back over to them.

"I'll live," Sam answered Dean's unasked question. "But Jo was right. It hurts like a bitch."

"Think you can shoot anyone with black eyes who comes through that door?" Dean grabbed his shotgun off the counter and held it out to Sam. He felt a flutter of concern about leaving his brother behind. He didn't know if he was more afraid of the demons getting Sam or Sam getting the demons. Dean was just going to have to have faith that Gabriel's protection would keep Sam's famine at bay.

"Yeah."

"Then I guess me and Jo better go kick Famine's ass," Dean replied. When he looked her way, she was already standing back up, pumping another round into her shotgun's chamber.

"Let's go."

His insides crawled up into his throat in the face of risking her again.

They followed the tug of Jo's famine to the source itself, winding over the empty streets and down alleys, until it became apparent where they were headed. The only building left in front of them was an elementary school. Its sign boasted eager primary colors and a cheery "Reading is cool" slogan, and the bushes on either side of it still had all of their leaves in the mild Missouri winter. It hardly looked like the place to battle a Horseman of the Apocalypse.

"Think he's in there?" Dean asked. He carried Sam's sawed-off in one hand and a jug of road salt in the other.

Jo's knuckles on her shotgun whitened, hands tightening even more, and she nodded. She tried to tighten her jaw to hide her shakiness; it didn't quite work.

"Okay. Hold up here for a minute." Dean grabbed her arm. "As much as I prefer blazes of glory, we can't go in there without a plan."

"You came to Carthage without a plan?"

Dean looked skyward for patience, wondering how she could manage to sass him even in the most dire of circumstances.

"We could go with the original plan if you want. We're short a couple of angels, but hell, what's a little risk amongst friends?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Sorry. I'm just…" She gritted her teeth and stomped her boots on the ground, a staccato two-step. "I'm just having a little trouble."

He accepted the explanation without asking questions. Looking back at the school building, he let the gears in his head spin logistics. Assuming Famine had been slurping up demons in this version of 2009, exorcism would still be the way to weaken him. Only this time exorcism could happen without Sam ingesting demon blood. A small-town elementary school had many rooms, tons of books and motivational posters, but more importantly, it had a PA system. If Jo could break into the office and get into the PA system and he could find Famine on the security cameras in the building, they might just stand a chance.

He relayed the information to her, framing it as a question rather than a stated plan.

"You make it sound easy," Jo replied.

"It could be easy." Dean shrugged. "I've gone into situations with worse plans and come out alive."

"Works for me."

The building stood unguarded, a testament to Lucifer's confidence. He had not counted on chasing Gabriel around the cosmos, Castiel challenging a street demon, or his Hellhounds taking concentrated salt shots through the head.

They moved together to the door, a red-frame swing handle, left invitingly unlocked. The front lobby sprawled in front of them with cheerful forest animals on bulletin boards, a few cozy chairs, and a glass-front office on the right. Jo pointed.

"That's it. Damn, every elementary school looks the same." Her hushed voice still reverberated in the silent space.

"You have no idea." Dean almost irrationally chuckled. He had attended more elementary schools for a week here and a week there than he could count.

The inside of the office itself had the stacked desks of two secretaries, and Dean absently picked up a picture frame on one of them. He silently hoped that the woman in the picture had not shot those four children in her famine for a few minutes of peace and quiet. He saw the tangled black buttons and wires of a sound system on the wall but then glanced back at the glass wall behind them. In small-town Missouri, he was pretty sure the glass wasn't even bulletproof, let alone demon resistant.

"Into the principal's office with you, Jo Harvelle," Dean said, an inappropriate flash of thoughts jumping through his mind.

"Shut up."

He grinned and located the door, tucked in the back behind the nurse's office. Unlike the school itself, the office was locked by its last conscientious occupant. He knelt down and put his hand into the inside of his jacket for his lock-pick. His fingers wiggled over a few odds and ends but couldn't find the object in question.

"Here." Jo passed him her lock-pick over his shoulder. That soft spot in the center of his chest warmed, blossoming with something unknown.

"Thanks."

He set to work, his father's voice in his head guiding his actions in gruff, unforgiving orders; Sam had been the better brother at B&Es, and John had always ridden Dean about his trouble with locks. This time, Dean made quick work of it. He led Jo into the office, and she closed the door behind them. The principal - Farrah Michaels, according to her nameplate - had no warmth in her office, none of the family photos and cheery wooden desk signs seen in the main office space. Two diplomas hung in frames on the wall, and the glass-top desk stood empty except for a few tidy office supplies. Behind the desk, though, stood the old school PA system hookup for her to make morning announcements.

Damn if Dean hadn't really needed that stroke of luck. He saw no security cameras, but he would take what he could get.

"I guess we'll stay on the phone with each other. You can't start the exorcism until I find Famine. That's got to be our back pocket move." His stomach fluttered at the thought of walking out of this room alone to face a Horseman of the Apocalypse. Jo's face seemed to flicker the same thoughts.

"But hey, once I find him, you better exorcise the shit of him, and we'd better hope that we're right about him slurping down demons. If we're wrong…" He grinned a grin he didn't feel. "Well, then don't let anyone play Tom Petty at my funeral."

"I like Tom Petty." She bit her lower lip, almost smiling.

"You would," he replied, and then she did smile, the expression sneaking out of her restraint and lighting her up. Her hands were still shaking, her face still too pale, her insides probably still quaking with uncontrollable hungers, but that smile made her face beautiful anyway. The warmth in his chest expanded again, threatening to crack his ribs if he didn't do something about it.

"Look, Jo." He emptied his hands of weapons, setting them on the desk. "I was an asshole. You can sleep with whoever you want, and instead of saying anything like I said, I should have just been appreciating the fact that you picked me."

"Are you being sarcastic?" Her eyes were guarded.

He took a deep breath. He needed to do better. Just in case.

"No. I'm being serious. I was a dick, but you were wrong about why. It's not that I don't see you as a hunter. Hell, the day I met you, you shoved a shotgun into my kidneys and punched me in the nose. You're awesome. I know I screwed up our first date-"

"Not all of it," she interrupted. He reached into the pocket of his jacket, and though he had fumbled to find a lock-pick, he grabbed her note in one try. He pulled it out and unfolded it, holding it up for her to see. Recognition flickered through her eyes, and then her eyes brightened, a mist forming there that he knew better than to acknowledge. He kept talking.

"But if we live through this, I'll do better on the next one. If we get time, I'll use it to get this…" He motioned between them. "I'll use it to get this right."

He saw the flicker of emotions across her face, the brightest of which was hope. Jo's mouth actually quivered as she answered after a few long seconds.

"I don't want to say anything stupid. Famine might get in the way of me keeping my self-respect."

"You and that damn self-respect…" Dean shook his head.

This time, she was the one who kept talking, ignoring his comment.

"I want to get this right too."

"Okay." Somehow one word held the weight of a thousand unspoken promises.

They stepped toward each other at the same moment, filling the space together, and he kissed her with a desperation he didn't realize he felt. She held his face in her hands, stretching up to his mouth, and he gathered her up to him. He took in the feel of her in the circle of his arms, her thin, wiry strength and her soft, hungry kiss, and he memorized her. Just in case. He licked the cupid's bow curve of her mouth, tasted the sweetness and the tang of fear, and then she let go first. He recognized the effort that cost her and stepped back as well.

He picked up the sawed-off. She picked up the salt.

"Kick it in the ass, Dean."

He gave her a casual salute and headed out the door.